We learned last night that CBS is set to air a tour inside Jony Ive’s “secret” design lab on the 60 Minutes program this Sunday evening, and now the network has shared a clip of Tim Cook being interviewed by Charlie Rose as a separate segment due to air in the same episode.
While Apple’s design chief will likely discuss lighter topics, the legendary CBS interviewer is seen pushing the Apple CEO on claims that the company keeps profit overseas in order to avoid paying the United States government fair taxes.
Cook is also expected to address questions on Apple’s strong privacy position and encryption, which law enforcement officials say prevent proper investigations into criminal activity even when a warrant is issued.
In the released clip, Cook reduces the long-running claim that Apple improperly holds funds in international accounts in order to avoid paying their fair share of taxes to the federal government to “political crap” while adding that Apple pays more taxes in the US than anyone.
Cook acknowledges that the company also has more money overseas than anyone, while two-thirds of the company is located out of the United States. While he says he’d love to repatriate the funds, Cook says it would cost 40% to bring the money home and that Apple pays every cent it owes. Back in 2013, the Apple CEO voluntarily testified before a Senate committee investigating the tax issue.
While the clip shared above (Flash/Chrome required on desktop) teases the “political crap” portion of the conversation, CBS News says that Cook will also address new pressure to stop encrypting iPhones and iPads, iMessage, FaceTime, and their iCloud services. Apple has been under added pressure to accommodate law enforcement officials and national security agencies, which argue Apple’s marketing a platform that creates a safe haven for criminals and terrorists to communicate under the radar.
These groups have called for Apple to provide a back door for officials at least when a warrant is provided, but Apple has maintained its position that a backdoor for government officials would create a backdoor for criminals as well and put all customer privacy in jeopardy.
While the privacy versus security debate continues, the interview will also see the Apple CEO address the issue of the United States company making most of its products in China.
60 Minutes airs on CBS on Sunday, December 20th at 7:30 pm ET and 7 pm PT.
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Are you serious? Flash??
Just wait for the full clip to air on the show. If you don’t have flash installed and don’t want to install Chrome, both of which I understand, then don’t. It isn’t worth it, It is just Tim Cook saying basically what the title of the article says.
macrumors has the clip in an html5 player.
I have NEITHER. No f***ed up Chrome nonsense, nor Flash BS, and it plays fine. Go figger.
It’s “figure”.
You do realize it’s not their video and they probably are not allowed to re-encode it due to “intellectual property rights” (aka bullshit) right?
I know, Flash, as bad as WordPress. I hate both equally. The WordPress system is the worst. Buggy as hell and inability to edit comments. Disqus + anything besides WordPress FTW.
Right? Also, why would ppl believe Tim and his bullshit about avoiding taxes when they downgraded the hard drive in the new iMac just to grab more money. So many examples exist that makes it obvious that apple will do any shit when it comes to grab more money to the investors’ pockets. Apple used not to be like this because NO one used to be able to say no to Steve Jobs. Now after he is gone, its obvious what is happening inside apple.
I have to agree with him.
We all know politics will do anything to get more money.
Its how Society works.
Big government is too greedy to fix the tax code and lower the rate to something more reasonable that 40% and unwilling to look like the bad guy and close the loop polls that allow the LEGAL tax practices that Apple follows to happen in the first place, which could then push Apple away from the US even further.
It’s now politics works. Politicians are power and money-hungry. It defines ‘The Donald’ and all cronies like him. It’s hilarious that tax is paid on every item Apple sells ‘overseas’ and they pay their corporate taxes in those countries and then the US government wants 40% of that money? A fair tax for that money is 0%. Where does the US will think Apple will spend a lot of that money??? The US of course, and then they’ll pay taxes and fees. If there has to be incoming tax at all costs then it should be around 10% of something. It’s just not sensible for your government to want to shy companies away from bringing home cash. It makes no financial sense at all.
*how (FU WordPress)
The tax thing is just what TC says: Political crap. Political types posture but in the end they get their campaign money from the same companies that benefit from the code the way it is.
More important than that , I hope he lays out why encryption and security is essential, critical even, to the industry and our economy. Allowing government a back door to devices will do nothing to stop the bad guys (there’s always TOR, Burner Phones, and Anonymous browsing/messaging they can use). It will however be cracked by these same bad guys within days and lead to ID theft, and money theft on a massive scale. The US/EU requiring a government controlled back door to all of our devices is a 21st century criminals wet dream.
I’m not doing to disagree with you here — but I would love to ask you the question, as seen from the other side..What makes it right for the government to give Apple tax breaks and have them pay super low taxes, but in the mean time, other businesses have to pay a much higher percentage and don’t get anything? I don’t know the exact numbers and details here — so you will have to forgive me — but let’s just take it to hypotheticals…
If anything, IMHO, since I am, well I guess I would consider myself to be a liberal — if the business makes *more* money, they should pay more of a percentage in taxes compared to one that does not make that much. The effective tax rates in the USA are ridiculously low…Some corporations here pay 0% or worse, they even get a return…And they make millions of dollars in profit. The USA needs to do something about this…A household of four people should not pay higher % of taxes than a cooperation making millions of dollars.
I’ll handle parts of this… most companies that “pay no tax” actually do pay a lot of tax, but they just get a refund. The other common scenario is that the company had net losses in previous years that it is carrying forward. Suffice to say, there isn’t a single company that got more money from the IRS than they paid. That doesn’t happen. The government giving grants, etc. is a whole different story.
As for just giving Apple a break, I am confident that Tim Cook is arguing that the tax code needs to change for all companies. Not just them. With the model you proposed, where the more a company makes, the more it needs to pay the government (and this approaches 30%, 40%, even more), you’ll see EXACTLY what is happening here. Apple won’t bring the money back home. Apple isn’t the only company doing this, any sane CEO will do this, Their obligation is to their shareholders, not the US government. There is nothing patriotic about giving your profits to a government.
Can’t reply to your other comment (wordpress, UGH!) — yeah, that is what I meant, the effective tax rate.
Again I don’t know the details of this, but I would hope T.C. is advocating for a change for everyone.
I agree, 30-40% is ridiculous. I think this one of the reasons why some corporations hire tons of lawyers and jump through a million hoops just to move their money off shore…BUT; I also am under no illusions…I think even if the tax rate was lower, some scumbag corporations would still do this, just because they can. I am kind of liberal in this aspect, but I also do agree it should be fair and somewhat equal across the board, for everyone…And when you start making loopholes / credits that only some can take advantage of, that is not fair.
As best as my understanding of the cash issue goes, Apple doesn’t owe the government one red cent of that money, as it is *entirely* generated by foreign sales, and whatever rate Apple pays for it is the rate the law allows in those regions. As a capitalistic US corporation, Apple in fact has a *legally-mandated fiduciary duty to shareholders* to seek out tax loopholes and avoid paying as much tax as possible. It pays a normal 25-30 percent tax on its US profits, but has no reason to “patriate” (not “re-patriate”) the foreign funds here if they are going to be taxed for a second time. As a US citizen living outside the US, I understand exactly what Cook’s talking about here — the US is the *only* country I’m aware of that demands information on how much my non-US income is *and* that I pay taxes on it *as well as* my US income, and that US tax I pay on my foreign income is *on top of* the tax rate charged by the country in which I earned that income. This is ridiculous.
Except that the claims are that no corporate taxes in any amount have been paid on billions of profit. The associated companies logging the revenue have creatively avoided tax residency in any country on the planet. At the end of the day the worldwide tax rate for Apple has been trending at around 14% for years because of foreign held profits. (not actually since most of it is in US banks anyway, just controlled by a foreign subsidiary)
The topic of encryption came up at the last debate…I was horrified by what I was hearing. It sounds like they want government backdoors built into encryption standards…That is a recipe for disasters that will be 100x worse than 9/11…Because when the bad guys figure out how to get in through those backdoors, and they get the keys to the kingdom…Yeah…I don’t even want to think about that. It seems they do not like the value \ idea of everyone being equal when it comes to encryption and the internet. They want to install their regime in the digital world as well…I for one will not stand by and let that happen. I realize I am yammering on like a nut, but this is serious…They want to make it EASIER for cyber terrorists to destroy not only our country but the companies we work for as well (private businesses get hacked all the time).
It’s not you that’s the nut; it’s everybody licking the boots of the people who want to have access to every portion of your life “for your protection”. Apple softening on this = all my Apple stuff going on eBay.
In the UK, I would rate the tax issue as being far from ‘political crap’
I’m not in favour of high taxes, but ordinary guys running small businesses have to pay tax and it’s about time huge corporations like Apple did the same – at (proportionately) the same sort of levels.
Personally I’d be in favour of the UK government doing a bit of quid-pro-quo here. Example: Apple pays some tax or UK government starts looking at rules and regulations to make apple-pay a bit more difficult for apple to roll out.
Make Apple Pay more difficult to roll out because of a tax dispute? Government is not supposed to be used like this. Why not tie Apple up in courts or put a few injunctions on some Apple products to twist their arm?
A Flash video? That’s real progressive and modern. I won’t even bother watching it.
If it weren’t for Apple our economy would be worse off than it is today. Apple doesn’t owe the American government or people squat. Quite the opposite, America should be returning favors to Apple for innovation, innovation which is responsible for making America great.
Apple’s IP is protected by the US government’s IP laws, both at home and abroad, and enforced through international trade agreements, for which we have leverage due in part to the US economy but mostly due to the US military. The US government, supported by all of us taxpayers, makes it possible for Apple to make their profits, manufacture and ship their goods worldwide, etc., without risk of sabotage, theft, piracy, etc. And they don’t owe us or our government squat, huh? How about you don’t get to drive on the roads my taxes pay for, if that’s your attitude.
Apple pays their part in taxes. And their contribution is far greater than taxes can fund. Keep feeding your entitlement syndrome, genius.