Apple Blames TurboTax Software for $44 Billion Tax Avoidance

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple CEO Tim Cook today responded to a Senate investigation that found that the multinational tech giant used offshore accounts and “tax gimmicks” to shelter $44 billion in taxable income between 2009 and 2012. In a press release, Cook placed much of the blame on the TurboTax software, with which the corporation filed its returns—a “shoddy, piece of crap” program “that’s not nearly as intuitive, reliable or sleek as Apple’s fine products,” according to Cook.

Cook — who initially denied that Apple had avoided paying taxes — said that the corporation had filed its returns via TurboTax from about 2005 to 2012. “It was a bad decision,” he admitted. “I mean, even the name should have given us pause. TurboTax? It doesn’t even have the letter ‘I’ in it.” Cook said that a program glitch had “somehow transferred the $44 billion to overseas tax havens, which Apple would never consciously use to protect revenue from taxation.”

“Honestly you guys—we really meant to pay our fair share,” the press release continues. “It’s just that TurboTax, having not been conceived and designed by the brilliant minds here at Apple—by far the greatest, most innovative company in world history—is a lesser, pedestrian piece of software, one that robbed the American people of billions of dollars in tax revenue. Shame on you, TurboTax—shame on you.”

TurboTax executives declined to defend themselves against Apple’s accusations, saying that Apple “has a lot of extra money lying around right now, which might be used to put out contracts on our heads.”

Cook said that although Apple will not transfer funds currently stored in overseas banks back to the United States — which would leave them vulnerable to taxation — he can promise that TurboTax “will never cheat the American people this way again.”

“Right now,” Cook said, “our R&D team is working on software that will make TurboTax—that dog turd of a program—unnecessary. By tax day next year, every new Apple product will come preloaded with iTaxes, Apple’s new tax-filing program, the only tax software to automatically make deductions for your CEO’s Lear Jet.”