The Busted Myth of Tax Repatriation

President Donald Trump really wants U.S. companies to bring home the trillions of dollars they're keeping overseas to avoid a big tax bill. He seems to buy into the idea that these corporations would provide a huge economic boost if they brought money back to the country under a much lighter tax burden.

It's unclear whether this is true. In fact, a great deal of evidence points to this being a flawed belief. But that hasn't stopped current U.S. leaders from calling for a reduction in taxes to help repatriate this money.

"We're going to have a big, one-time incentive rate," Gary Cohn, President Trump's chief economic adviser, said in a television interview on Friday. "There's trillions of dollars offshore. We want to get that back into America. ... We want the companies to bring the money back and put it back into the economy. We want them to create jobs."