This is especially true for tech companies, which have R&D tax credits and are able to shift much of their income offshore because their profits are based largely on intangibles (which can be moved by signing some contracts, as opposed to factories or restaurants, which are geographically fixed).

The most authoritative, recent report on the matter by the CBO:

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-...

It clearly makes the case that the US is non-competitive with other G20 nations on the corporate tax rate. The US average corporate income tax rate for 2012, was 29%. In Canada it was 16%; Brazil 22%; China 19%; UK 10%; Germany 14.5%; Australia 17%; South Korea 20%; France 20%. How much more non-competitive can the US get exactly?

And when it comes to the OECD, the US is once again far from competitive:

"The most recent estimate comes from the World Bank and International Finance Commission, which put the United States’ effective rate for 2014 at 27.9 percent. That’s second-highest behind New Zealand among OECD countries and 15th-highest among the 189 countries measured."

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/...

What is total US corporate profit before taxes per year? And what's 27.9 percent of that.

Or from GAO: http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/654957.pdf

"For tax year 2010 (the most recent information available), profitable U.S. corporations that filed a Schedule M-3 paid U.S. federal income taxes amounting to about 13 percent of the pretax worldwide income that they reported in their financial statements"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_tax_holiday dropped actual tax rate to 5.25% in 2004. Companies are more than happy to wait for the next one.

PS: Also of note a lot of overseas profit is anything as it's easy to pretend US operations only break even by shifting around costs on paper.

Apple's international subsidiaries net tens of billions in profits every year, after paying substantial taxes in their home countries. Those aren't taxable in the US until they are returned to the US. Since Apple would owe over 42% in income taxes to the state of California and the US government if they moved them, they keep them in Ireland instead. Which means they can't be paid as dividends to Apple shareholders.

The day Apple repatriates those profits they'll pay the full US corporate tax rate, which is currently one of the highest corporate tax rates in the free world. Then they'll pay the remainder as dividends, which will be taxed again at the shareholder level, for a total effective tax rate on those profits of over 50%. And that tax rate is not progressive, the little old grandma with apple stock in her savings pays the same rate as a billionaire.

The fact that it's only 11% of US income tax receipts is a great argument for abolishing corporate income taxes entirely. We can replace some of it by taxing dividends and capital gains at personal income rates (as long as capital gains are indexed to inflation). But the trillions of dollars in capital trapped overseas that will return to the US will more than fill the gap. And making the US a far more attractive place to invest, increasing our productivity and GDP growth. All of that will generate even more tax revenue.

People who think the corporate tax rate is fine or that corporations should pay even more are like a medieval tax collector complaining to the king that a farmer hasn't paid enough taxes. The king says, didn't they give us a third of their corn crop this year? Yes, says the tax collector, but they've saved a huge amount of seed-corn in their barn for next years planting, we should take a third of that too!

"In 2004, the United States Congress enacted such a tax holiday for U.S. multinational companies in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA)) section 965, allowing them to repatriate foreign profits to the United States at a 5.25% tax rate"

5.25% is a long way from 35%.