If the income was legitimately made from sales overseas fine that's a fitting analogy, but many companies will have a company in a low corporate tax area hold all the IP and the portions of the company that are making money and selling products will 'license' that IP to make it seem like they have lower profits. The overseas income is just from the company paying itself to shuffle money into a cheaper tax location.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

I was under the impression that the trillions in question were made here, accounting tricks (e.g. IP licensing) were used to pretend that the money was made overseas, and then it was left overseas until the political system could be bribed into allowing a tax holiday. CMV.

One of those accounting tricks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_pricing

Yes, in the United States, even if you don't come back, you have to file income taxes on that foreign income. There is no differentiation between foreign and domestic income (although you can get tax credits for foreign taxes paid).

That's true if the "you" we are talking about is an individual. If the "you" is a corporation, they are taxed by the US when they bring that money back to the US, not when they earn it abroad. They can defer the tax arbitrarily by not bringing back the money.

Is this another one of those "only America" activities?

No, this is also the law in North Korea.

And Eritrea