At “The Conference” hosted by Punchbowl News, Business Roundtable Chair Chuck Robbins, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Cisco, underscored how the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) helped drive U.S. investment, innovation and economic growth. During a fireside chat with Punchbowl CEO Anna Palmer, Robbins highlighted how 2017 tax reform helped companies like Cisco invest in American innovation while increasing corporate tax contributions.
ICYMI: Cisco CEO & Business Roundtable Chair Chuck Robbins Highlights How TCJA Is Driving Domestic Investment
March 18, 2025
Here’s what Robbins said about the benefits of TCJA and a U.S. competitive tax system:
TCJA is driving domestic business investment.
“Having a competitive tax rate globally is so important. … We want to also make sure that our tax policy leads us to investments in the United States. … The 2017 tax policies did that — encourage research and development in the U.S. … and encourage the relocation of our intellectual property to the U.S. so that we pay more taxes in the U.S. than we did before.”
TCJA is helping return intellectual property and tax revenue back to the U.S.
“It was $2.5 trillion of trapped earnings that were brought back and invested in the United States. … We brought all of our intellectual property back to the United States, which means 90% of the taxes that Cisco pays on a global basis today — 90% of those taxes are now paid in the U.S. If you go back to pre-2017, it was 45%. … So, we now invest more. … I think we spend $5 or $6 billion here every year in R&D.”
TCJA has led to record high corporate tax receipts.
“We paid record taxes to the United States since the 2017 tax reform. … In fiscal ‘17, we paid $1 billion to the United States in federal tax. In fiscal ‘23, after the big tax cut, we paid $2.7 billion to the United States.”