Dell has a large debt load (not quite as much as some of the news outlets are reporting because they have something like $15bn+ in cash).

The change in tax code makes debt more expensive because you can't offset all of the interest. However most private equity executives believe that with the drop in corporate income tax, the effect is roughly net neutral. Not quite sure what the situation is for Dell.

I imagine a big motivator for Dell to buy VMware is to unlock the cashflow. They can then use the cash to pay down the debt. Including VMware, the debt load on as a multiple of EBITDA is roughly 3.5-4.0x net debt/EBITDA which isn't that high.... for PE

At the moment they own ~80% of the company but can't access the cash even though they book the profits on a look through basis.