U.S. corporations brought back offshore profits in recordnumbers last year, with nearly half of the repatriated funds comingfrom low- or no-tax countries where companies had stashed cashprior to the 2017 tax law.

Nearly half of the cash U.S. multinationals brought back onshoreduring 2018 came from Bermuda (at $231 billion) and the Netherlands($138.8 billion), according to figures released bythe Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) today.Ireland was the third largest source of repatriated cash, but thevalue is suppressed because of confidentiality rules in thecountry, according to the report.

The data give one of the first indications at how U.S. companiesare deploying cash globally following an overhaul of the U.S. taxsystem, which cut the corporate tax rate to 21 percent, from 35percent, and changed how the IRS taxes overseas corporateprofits.