Satire by Jack Peat
Tech-giant Apple has announced it is to build a tax-free haven off the coast of America out of bags of its excess cash.
The company has been confronted with a surplus cash headache of late and now finds itself in the compromising position of making more money than it can spend. But CEO and ‘money making monster’ Tim Cook has devised a devilish plan to create a new tax-free haven built from bags of cash that would solve the overabundance of money and fend off the authorities in one fell swoop.
“We were at wit’s end trying to figure out what to do with all the dough we have accumulated and had almost conceded we might have to pay some tax when I came up with this corker of an idea,” Cook said. “By my estimation half of our cash reserves would give us a nice little landmass which we could prop an iMac and a router on and run our accounts from there.”
In total Apple is thought to have around $178 billion stored in cash, 89 per cent of which lies offshore out of the hands of the Internal Revenue Service. But the cash is currently sitting idle at the moment which has caused animosity amongst its shareholders.
Under pressure Cook said he had explored a number of options, but an island was certainly the most viable option.
“We were told that we could buy Lithuania three times over with our abundance of money, but then there’s the problem of migrating birds,” he said.
A site has been plotted 1,000 nautical miles off the coast of the US near Richard Branson’s Necker Island which is also thought to be a man-made paradise built on old cassettes and gold bullions.
