Ten Reasons Tim Cook Dominated Congress

“I think it’s important that we tell our story,” Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook told the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday. “I’d like people to hear it from me.” That seemed a daunting task, since the story the senators wanted to hear was why Apple avoided paying U.S. taxes on at least $74 billion in sales between 2009 and 2012 by shifting its intellectual property rights overseas. Yet over the next three hours, Cook spun a tale worthy of Mark Twain and emerged not only intact but unscathed. No one laid a glove on him.

The facts, as they were framed in a report from the subcommittee, were hardly flattering. Apple didn’t just avoid paying U.S. taxes, didn’t just stash its IP in Europe, but actually took advantage of international tax laws to create what are in effect stateless entities that are not required to file tax returns anywhere in the world—an achievement subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) characterized as “the Holy Grail of tax avoidance.” Nevertheless, besides a few tense exchanges with Levin toward the hearing’s end—exchanges that Cook mostly ducked—Apple’s representatives emerged in far better shape than they had any right to expect. Cook, in particular, shone. I counted 10 reasons why he fared so well: