In line with backing changes to global rules that are currently under consideration, Apple (AAPL.O) Chief Executive Tim Cook said that everyone knows the global corporate tax system needs to be overhauled.
This consideration of change in the global corporate tax system has been pushed by the growth of internet giants like Apple, influencing the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to pursue global reforms over where multinational firms should be taxed.
The reforms being examined center around the booking of profits by multinational firms in low-tax countries such as Ireland where they have bases - and where Cook was speaking on Monday - rather than where most of their customers are.
He also said that he is hopeful that the OECD will find something.
“It’s very complex to know how to tax a multinational... We desperately want it to be fair,” the Apple CEO added after receiving an inaugural award from the Irish state agency responsible for attracting foreign companies recognizing the contribution of multinationals in the country.
Apple is one of the largest multinational employers of Ireland with 6,000 workers. Both Apple and the Irish government have moved to court to fight a European Union order that Apple must pay 13 billion euros ($14.41 billion) 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 retrofitted” was at the heart of the case and that the company had great faith in the justice system.
He 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.
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