Apple CEO Tim Cook dismissed as “total political crap” the notion that the tech giant was avoiding taxes.
Cook’s remarks, made on CBS’s 60 Minutes, come amid a debate in the U.S. over corporations avoiding taxes through techniques such as so-called inversion deals, where a company re-domiciles its tax base to another country.
“Apple pays every tax dollar we owe,” Cook told 60 Minutes’ Charlie Rose in an interview. (http://cbsn.ws/1NtLSHA)
Cook said bringing profits back to the U.S. would cost him 40%. “I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to do,” he said.
Apple (AAPL) saves billions of dollars in taxes through subsidiaries in Ireland, where it declares much of its overseas profit.
The company holds $181.1 billion in offshore profits, more than any other U.S. company, and would owe an estimated $59.2 billion in taxes if it tried to bring the money back to the U.S., a recent study based on SEC filings showed.
The current tax code was made for the industrial age, and not the “digital age,” Cook said.
“It’s backwards. It’s awful for America. It should have been fixed many years ago.”