Apple CEO Calls For Changes To Corporate Tax Rates - InvestingChannel

Apple CEO Calls For Changes To Corporate Tax Rates

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is taking a stand on global corporate tax rates.

Cook is backing changes to global tax rules that are currently under consideration. Specifically, he is supporting the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) proposed global reforms over where multinational firms should be taxed.

The reforms focus on the booking of profits by multinational firms in low-tax countries such as Ireland where they have bases rather than where most of their customers are.

“I think logically everybody knows it needs to be re-hauled, I would certainly be the last person to say that the current system or the past system was the perfect system. I’m hopeful and optimistic that they (the OECD) will find something,” Cook said during a speech given in Ireland.

Apple is one of Ireland’s largest multinational employers with 6,000 workers in the country, and both it and the Irish government have gone to court to fight a European Union (EU) order that Apple must pay 13 billion euros ($14.41 billion U.S.) in back taxes to Dublin.

The appeal to the EU’s second-highest court began in September and could run for years. Cook said Apple’s belief that “law should not be retrofitted” was at the heart of the case and that the company had great faith in the justice system.

The Apple CEO also said that more regulation was needed in the area of privacy and must go further than the 2018 European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy laws that handed regulators there significantly more powers.

“I think more regulation is needed in this area, it is probably strange for a business person to be talking about regulation but it has become apparent that companies will not self-police in this area,” he said during a question and answer session with media.