Apple Chief Executive Officer Timothy Cook defends the company's tax record at a Senate hearing where lawmakers say the maker of iPads, iPods and Mac computers avoid paying U.S. taxes by keeping billions of dollars in profits in Irish subsidiaries.
"Apple has become the largest corporate income tax payer in America. Last year our U.S. federal cash effective tax rate was 30.5% and we paid nearly 6 billion dollars in cash to the U.S. Treasury. That's more than 16 million dollars each day. And we expect to pay even more this year. I would like to explain to the subcommittee very clearly how we view our responsibility with respect to taxes. Apple has real operations in real places with Apple employees selling real products to real customers. We pay all the taxes we owe, every single dollar. We not only comply with the laws but we comply with the spirit of the laws. We don't depend on tax gimmicks. We don't move intellectual property offshore and use it to sell our products back to the United States to avoid taxes. We don't stash money on some Caribbean island."
"The worldwide popularity of our products has soared and our international revenues are now twice as large as our domestic revenues. As a result, I am often asked if Apple still considers itself an American company. My answer has always been an emphatic yes. We are proud to be an American company and equally proud of our contributions to the U.S. economy," he said.
