Breaking Down What Lower Corporate Taxes Would Mean For Apple

What impact, if any, will tax reform have on Apple Inc. AAPL? Simply put, a good impact, according to analysts at Bank of America. The firm's Wamsi Mohan maintains a Buy rating on Apple's stock with an unchanged $180 price target.

While there remains "significant uncertainty" around the timing of any tax reform and what it will ultimately look like, there are several safe assumptions that can be made, Mohan explained. First, a tax reduction on repatriation of foreign cash back to the U.S. could fall from 35 percent to 8.75 percent. Second, lowering the U.S. statutory tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent combined with the removal of interest deductibility.

In terms of cash repatriation, Apple holds $223 billion of cash outside of the U.S. while roughly two-thirds of its total annual earnings are also foreign, Mohan continued. Each year Apple provisions for U.S. taxes on around 70 percent of its global earnings so a reduction in the repatriation tax implies the company could "substantially repatriate all of its offshore cash by paying the taxes already provisioned." On top of that, a reduction to 20 percent will generate an incremental earnings per share of 80–90 cents in 2018 and 2019.

Bottom line, changes to the tax code, while far from guaranteed at this point, "would provide a significant arsenal of cash for incremental capital return and M&A," the analyst stated.

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