How to Tax Corporate Cash
My suggestion is to tax corporate cash at a rate of 5%, but levy that tax quarterly.
Under that regime, Amazon could pay around $1 billion a quarter or around $4 billion a year. Specifically, Amazon reported $27.05 billion in cash and short-term investments on June 30, 2018. Therefore at a 5% tax rate Amazon could pay $1.3525 billion on that cash.
Moreover, I suggest charging a tax of 10% on corporate cash hoards over $100 billion. For instance, JPMorgan Chase could pay $35.51 billion in taxes on its $405.1 billion cash hoard. I arrived at this number by multiplying $305.1 times 10% and adding $5 billion for the first $100 billion in cash.
Under this system, companies will keep the vast of their cash but they will have a strong incentive to spend it. Obviously, the spending will act as an economic stimulus.