Today, bankers are rearranging their chess boards, trying to figure out which companies may want to make moves, and which ones might be ripe for the taking. That has kept the bankers in technology and health care busy. Some of the top companies on everyone’s watch list include Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amgen, Apple, Cisco, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.

Yet at the moment, the potential for tax reform in 2017 has led some companies to delay deal making, according to Marc Zenner, the co-head of J.P. Morgan’s corporate finance advisory team.

Image Lawrence J. Ellision, chief executive of Oracle, at a hearing over his company’s takeover bid for PeopleSoft in 2004. Oracle used repatriated funds to buy PeopleSoft and another software provider, and then eliminated thousands of jobs, a congressional study found. Credit Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

“What you’ve got right now is a fair bit of uncertainty about what the state of the world will be next year with taxes,” he said. “If you don’t have to do this deal right now, maybe you can wait until next year so you can finance optimally.”

Still, some boards appear to believe they may get a better price if they sign a desired deal sooner rather than later. If tax rates decrease, a company’s profitability increases, making it a more expensive acquisition target. And, if all of the repatriating companies go after the same targets, that could drive up the price as well.

“What people fear is that if everyone waits for clarity on timing and specific tax treatment, the markets could be a lot higher, purely as it relates to this influx of capital,” Peter A. Weinberg, founding partner at Perella Weinberg Partners, said. “Do you commit capital today with the risk of timing, or do you wait for certainty and risk paying more than you would today?”

Mr. Weinberg said that if there were a significant reduction of the tax rate, companies would bring at least $1 trillion back, an amount large enough to affect the prices of equities and debt.

Some companies may not be interested in deal making. Apple, which has the largest overseas cash load, is historically not a big acquirer; its largest purchase was its $3 billion deal for Beats Music and Beats Electronics in 2014. Microsoft, with the second-largest cash hoard, will most likely still be digesting its $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, announced in June.