Caterpillar's 15-year tax saga ends with $740M IRS settlement

Caterpillar Inc., one of the world's largest machinery producers, has struck a deal with U.S. tax authorities to end a dispute that stretches back to 2007.

"The company reached a settlement with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that resolves all issues for tax years 2007 through 2016, without any penalties," Caterpillar said Thursday in its earnings statement. "The settlement was within the total amount of gross unrecognized tax benefits for uncertain tax positions and enables us to avoid the costs and burdens of further disputes with the IRS."

The U.S. machinery maker said it's $490 million in taxes for those years and $250 million in interest, according to its earnings statement released Thursday. The $740 million sum is far less than the $2.3 billion the company had been disputing for years.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

The announcement closes a chapter more than five years after agents from the IRS, U.S. Commerce Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. raided the company's then-headquarters in Peoria, Illinois. They removed documents, computers, encryption devices and other evidence that might have been related to "false and misleading financial reports and statements," according to search warrants.

In a 2009 whistleblower lawsuit, a former Caterpillar executive accused the company of using offshore subsidiaries in Switzerland and Bermuda to avoid U.S. taxes from 2000 to 2009. The company sold and shipped spare parts globally from Illinois while improperly attributing at least $5.6 billion of profit from those sales to a unit in Geneva, according to claims made in that lawsuit, which was settled in 2012.