“Tax reform is sorely needed and should have been done years ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook told NBC News’ Lester Holt,” Anita Balakrishnan reports for CNBC.
“Apple has a deep understanding of the effects of taxes on business, Cook said, telling NBC that companies don’t bring cash back to the U.S. because of taxes,” Balakrishnan reports. “‘[T]his isn’t good for the U.S. There’s no tax receipts there,’ Cook said. ‘And it’s not good for investment in the U.S. And so this needs to be fixed. In my view, it should have been fixed years ago. But let’s get it done now.'”
Apple CEO Tim Cook and U.S. President Donald Trump at tech summit in June 2017“House Republicans are putting the ‘finishing touches’ on a tax reform bill, as President Donald Trump pushes for ‘massive tax cuts,'” Balakrishnan reports. “Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said in an August conference call that Apple ended last quarter with $261.5 billion in cash plus marketable securities, and $246 billion of that cash, 94 percent of the total, was outside the U.S… ‘If you sell globally, you earn money globally. If you earn money globally you can’t bring it back into the United States unless you pay 35% plus your state tax,’ Cook told CNBC in May. ‘And you look at this and you go, ‘this is kind of bizarre.’ You want people to use this money in the United States to invest more.'”
