Apple expects to repatriate billions of dollars of global profits to the United States next year, Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a radio interview on Sept. 1, but did not specify exactly how much would be returned.
Apple was found to be holding over $181 billion in accumulated profits offshore, more than any U.S. company, in a study published last year by two left-leaning nonprofit groups, a policy critics say is designed to avoid paying U.S taxes.
Asked about the level of tax paid by Apple on profits in 2014, Cook told Irish broadcaster RTE that $800 million had been paid and that billions of dollars more had been provisioned and would likely be returned to the United States next year.
“We paid 400 (million dollars) to Ireland, we paid 400 to the U.S. and we provisioned several billion dollars for the U.S. for payment as soon as we repatriate it and right now I forecast that repatriation to occur next year,” Cook said in comments broadcast by RTE.
On Aug. 30, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager questioned how anyone might think an arrangement that allowed Apple to pay a tax rate of 0.005 percent, as Apple’s main Irish unit did in 2014, was fair.
“They just picked a number from I don’t know where,” Cook told in another interview to the Irish Independent, estimating Apple’s average annual tax on its profits at 26 percent.
Cook said he would fight closely with Ireland to overturn the ruling, which he said had “no basis in law or in fact”. It is by far the largest anti-competition penalty imposed on a company by the EU.
“No one did anything wrong here and we need to stand together. Ireland is being picked on and this is unacceptable,” Cook told the newspaper, adding that bias against multinationals from the United States may have been a factor in the decision to impose the bill.