The company has been under fire for its tax practices. | REUTERS Apple targeted over offshore funds

Tech firm Apple is the target of a Senate hearing next week investigating offshore tax practices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is expected to testify at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation's hearing Tuesday, POLITICO has learned.


Apple has been under fire for its tax practices. The company recently avoided paying as much as $9.2 billion in taxes by buying back stock with debt instead of offshore cash, Bloomberg reported. Apple has a reported $100 billion in offshore funds.

The hearing is part of the panel's continued examination of how companies shift profits offshore and how that impacts the tax code. Representatives from Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard testified in September 2012 in a hearing on the same topic.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the subcommittee, declined to comment.

Representatives from the Treasury Department, IRS and other tax experts are also expected to testify. The committee will make the witness list available Friday, according to its website.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told POLITICO that the company has been working with the subcommittee and welcomes any further questions it might have.

"Apple is one of the largest taxpayers in the United States, having paid $6 billion in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012," Dowling said in a statement. "We also help create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. by keeping our R&D in California and creating category-defining products like the iPhone, iPad and the app store, which has generated billions of dollars in sales for software developers."

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 4:58 p.m. on May 15, 2013.