Cash They Can't Spend

Companies seem to have a lot of cash on hand recently. For example, Google has about $44 billion in cash and short-term investments and Apple has about $28 billion on its balance sheet. But the tech giant with perhaps the biggest cash horde is Microsoft, with about $63 billion in cash on its balance sheet. So why doesn't Microsoft spend some of this cash? One reason is that of the $63 billion in cash, $54 billion is held by the company's overseas subsidiaries. In order to spend this cash, Microsoft would need to repatriate it, resulting in taxes being paid on the overseas profits.