said its refusal to tap foreign reserves was wholly due to taxes . So it stands to reason that a tax break could spur investment immediately, right? Corporate America has had lobbyists working around the clock on this idea, and you can be sure it will come up again in 2013 amid discussions about how to further stimulate the economy. Unfortunately... If we agree these are the main reasons tech stocks aren't spending, then the sad reality is that there's little hope of anything changing. Amid the current focus on deficits, it remains highly unlikely that the tax burden is going away. Critics of a tax holiday contend that kind of shell game simply rewards companies for doing something they should do anyway -- use their profits to invest in their own businesses -- and comes at a huge cost of tax revenue. Consider that total corporate tax revenue in 2011 was $181 billion , according to the Heritage Foundation. If Apple were to avoid paying taxes on its foreign cash, it would result in $25.9 billion in lost tax revenue -- or roughly 14% of the U.S. corporate tax revenue from an entire year! And as far as investment opportunities go? Well, unless some tiny start-up comes out of nowhere, we have seen just about all that Silicon Valley has to offer. And frankly, Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN ) and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB ) are nothing to brag about. Blue-chips could, of course, reward shareholders with a plump special dividends