The U.S. Republican tax overhaul passed by Congress today will allow Apple Inc to bring back its $252.3 billion foreign cash pile without a major tax hit - a long-standing company goal. Other provisions of the bill, namely the cut in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, are also a big boon for Apple.

A tax break for patents held in the United States will lower the tax on licensing income from the standard corporate rate of 21 percent to 13.1 percent - about the same as if the patents were held abroad.

On the flip side, there are still unknowns regarding foreign patents. The treatment of foreign patent profits is important to Apple because shifting those profits overseas was a cornerstone of its tax practices for decades. In effect, the company attributes a large portion of the value of its products to patents and other intellectual property such as trademarks. Apple then parks that IP in countries with low tax rates and assesses substantial patent royalties on all of its sales, which then flow back to the low-tax locations like Ireland. The bill has a pair of provisions designed to make that maneuver less alluring. For more on this, read the full Reuters report here.

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