It's now almost commonplace to point out that Apple has more cash in its reserves – $76bn (£46.5bn) – than the US government. But it's not just Apple that is stuffed with cash. Corporates across the world are hoarding more money than they know what to do with.

General Electric has nearly $80bn in cash and short-term reserves; Toyota has nearly $50bn; Google $33bn; EDF, which owns Britain's nuclear plants and is the main supplier of electricity for Londoners, has around $22bn in its coffers. The top 50 global corporates are sitting on a cool $1.1tn. Those are estimates published by the Wall Street Journal in January this year; today the figures are likely to be even higher.

It should hardly be a surprise that corporate cash reserves are at record levels; multinationals have been operating in the most benign laissez-faire conditions known. Organised labour is weak, wage rises virtually non-existent, interest rates low, and companies free to switch production to low-cost bases overseas. Meanwhile, there has been a race to the bottom (shamelessly led by Ireland) to tax corporates as little as possible. In the EU, corporate taxation rates are now in many places at their lowest ever.

Yet corporates continue to behave ruthlessly in the pursuit of ever higher mountains of cash, or as they might say, "optimising shareholder value". Wider society pays the price. This week HSBC said it would axe 30,000 jobs globally, while reporting better than expected first half profits up 3% at $11.5bn. Its bosses want to improve "returns on equity" for shareholders. Yes, HSBC never took bailout cash during the crisis, but without question would have crashed like the others if taxpayers in the US and Europe did not come to the rescue. And the thanks we get …

Indeed, shareholders are salivating over what they can do with these vast piles of cash. In the past, when cash reserves have approached today's levels, it has been the catalyst for an increase in capital expenditure – replacing outdated IT kit, building new research facilities, etc. But today's shareholders don't want that. Instead they are demanding money is paid to them in higher dividends, or more cleverly, through share buy-backs which achieve the same thing but in a more "tax efficient" way. Some cash-rich corporates are being told by shareholders to borrow at ultra-low rates then pay the money out the other side as special, "tax-shielded" dividends. Meanwhile, shareholders want the likes of BP to shrink in size and pay out cash instead. It's like watching capitalism eat itself.

When governments around the world are teetering into bankruptcy, and households are more indebted than ever, you don't have to be a Marxist to acknowledge that the share of the national pie taken by profits is unsustainably high.

The City knows it. I was at a Mayfair asset management group this week, where fund managers were chewing over the risks of a steep rise in corporate tax rates. But they also expect corporates to indulge in as much profit-hiding as they possibly can. Expect more fake domiciling in Ireland and elsewhere.

We don't need personal tax rises, we need to raise corporate tax and tackle the dodgers. But with the likes of the Tea Party and the Tories at the helm, the corporate ship will remain docked permanently off the Cayman Islands.