Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) said during an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes that the accusations made by lawmakers about the tech giant avoiding taxes overseas were “a total political crap”.
In the interview Tim Cook and Charlie Rose talked about other controversial issues including encryption technology and manufacturing products in China. The Apple story will be broadcast on “60 Minutes,” Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT.
On a preview shared by one of the most successful television broadcast we can see how Cook shared his opinions about the idea that Apple has created elaborate schemes to pay little or even no U.S. corporate taxes on its overseas income.
In the interview shared by cook and journalist Charlie Rose, Cook tried to explain Apple’s position on the billions of dollars that it holds overseas and has no intention of bringing home.
Rose asked cook why the company didn’t bring all the money the company holds overseas, which is probably more than any other American company to which he replied
“It would cost me 40% to bring it home, and I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to do. This is a tax code that was made for the industrial age, not the digital age. It’s backwards. It’s awful for America. It should have been fixed many years ago. It’s past time to get it done.”
Cook prompted to answer back when Rose brought up that many in Congress believe Apple is engaged in a scheme to pay little or no taxes on $74 billion in overseas revenue. “That is total political crap. There is no truth behind it. Apple pays every tax dollar we owe,” he says. “We pay more taxes in this country than anyone,” Cook said.
Encrypted messaging was another controversial topic hold by Cook and Rose. The Journalist interview the apple CEO before last month’s attacks in Paris. The attackers used encrypted messages to communicate with each other in the middle of the attacks but Cook said to “60 Minutes” that his posture on letting the government have a window into its customers’ private communications has not changed since those attacks.
This is not the first time Cook has to defense apple from this kind of accusation. Two years ago, Cook went before a Senate panel to defend its tax strategies. Former Senator Carl Levin, who ran the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations at the moment, alleged Apple ran a highly developed tax avoidance system. Cook defended the company by saying it doesn’t lean on tax tricks or hide money on some Caribbean island.
Source: CBS News