By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO (AA) – Apple announced Wednesday that it planned several investments that will contribute more than $350 billion to the United States economy over the next five years.
The company said it will make about $38 billion in tax payments for repatriating cash kept overseas as prescribed by the recent bill overhauling the U.S. tax code that was signed into law last month by President Donald Trump. In the announcement, Apple noted that it was the largest U.S. taxpayer and that the one-time tax payment is likely the largest of its kind in U.S. history.
As part of its five-year investment plan, Apple said it will build another headquarters and hire some 20,000 people. The company said the estimated $350 billion boost to the American economy does not even account for ongoing tax payments, income tax from employees or the sale of its products.
“Apple is a success story that could only have happened in America, and we are proud to build on our long history of support for the U.S. economy,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.
“We believe deeply in the power of American ingenuity, and we are focusing our investments in areas where we can have a direct impact on job creation and job preparedness. We have a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country and the people who help make our success possible.”
The company said it will not only build another campus similar to its headquarters in Cupertino, California, but that it will start manufacturing some of its products in the U.S. in various states.
Apple currently keeps some of its estimated $256 billion cash hoard abroad, but it did not say how much is stored overseas or how much it was repatriating to the U.S.
Apple’s stock price grew 1.65 percent Wednesday to close at $179.10.
The announcement is by far the largest in a string of commitments by companies following the passage of the Republican tax bill, although some of the wage growth promises from corporations like Walmart were paired with layoffs. The tax bill cut the highest corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.
While announcements of wage hikes and hiring sprees from Apple, Walmart, AT&T, Comcast, Wells Fargo and other companies in the wake of the tax bill’s passage have captured attention, a new CNBC survey released Wednesday finds that they appear to be the exception, not the rule.
The survey of 100 of the biggest American companies found that very few had specific plans to use tax savings to give out bonuses or boost wages. Companies with massive valuations like Facebook, Microsoft and Exxon Mobil did not reveal any plans to pass savings on to workers.
Many of the companies that said the tax bill is directly benefiting their employees announced one-time bonuses with no details on if the bonuses would be repeated. Walmart, for instance, said it was giving bonuses up to $1,000, but the highest bonuses only went to employees who worked with the company for 20 years or more. The flurry of announcements has led the tax bill’s critics to say they amount to public relations stunts.
Roughly half of Americans work at businesses with fewer than 500 employees, and it is not clear how the tax bill will impact these small businesses because the savings outlined in the tax bill are much smaller.