No one can say Sen. Carl Levin has gone after small fry in investigating U.S. companies' overseas tax policies. The Michigan Democrat has held a series of hearings focusing on Apple, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard and now has turned his attention to heavy-equipment giant Caterpillar Inc.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee's permanent subcommittee on investigations, which Levin chairs, issued a report on March 31 stating that, from 2000 through 2012, Caterpillar allocated more than $8 billion in non-U.S. profits to a Swiss unit and deferred paying $2.4 billion in U.S. taxes on those earnings.