Apple to Pay $38bn in Foreign Cash Taxes and Create 20,000 US Jobs

Apple said on Wednesday it expected to pay a $38bn (€31 billion) tax bill – the largest of its kind ever – as it repatriates overseas cash, most of it once held by Irish subsidiaries, to the United States.
The iPhone maker, which has confronted international criticism for its tax evasion policies, also said it would spend $30bn in the US over the next five years, creating 20,000 new jobs.
While US tax reforms, signed into law by President Donald Trump last month, cut the country’s main corporate rate from 35 per cent to 21 per cent, it introduced a one-time cash repatriation tax of 15.5 per cent.
Commenting on the company’s plans, Cook said: “We have a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country and the people who help make our success possible.”
Apple has not clarified how much of its cash pile it intends to repatriate.
In 2013, a Senate committee accused Apple of using a “highly questionable” web of offshore vehicles to avoid paying taxes in the US. Senator John McCain said his constituents were “mad as hell” to learn that the world’s biggest company was paying tax rates that were sometimes lower than 1%.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.
According to the Paradise Papers, a leak of 13.4m files from offshore service providers and tax havens’ company registries in the wake of the US and EU’s criticisms Apple secretly shifted parts of its empire to Jersey as part of a complex rearrangement to keep its low tax rates.
The Irish Times has previously reported that the new US tax rules would mean there was little financial advantage for Apple in fighting the controversial European Commission ruling that it must pay up to €15 billion in back tax to the Republic.
> Shiuly Akter