Tax Holiday Backers Emphasize Big Picture in $1 Trillion Quest

Faced with criticism that companies didn’t use proceeds of a 2004 tax holiday to create jobs directly, advocates for repeating the policy are emphasizing the indirect economic effects of repatriating more than $1 trillion.

Whether the money is used for hiring or stock buybacks, “I would much rather have their foreign earnings here rather than in, say, France,” said Kenneth Kies, a tax lobbyist at the Federal Policy Group in Washington whose clients include Microsoft Corp. and Pfizer Inc.