Apple has more cash than the UK, Canada combined

Apple CEO Tim Cook. Photo/Getty Images

Apple is set to report its quarterly financial results on Tuesday, which are expected to reveal a cash stockpile greater than the foreign cash reserves of the UK and Canada combined.

The Cupertino company is likely to reveal it has topped a quarter of a trillion dollars - an amount that is double its cash pile from just four and a half years ago, according to Daily Mail.

The firm has been able to avoid US corporate taxes by keeping nearly 93 percent of its US$246.09 billion ($356 billion) total cash, cash equivalents and securities off shore - a route many major companies have taken.

Not only will Apple's results show a total of cash that is greater than two countries, but it is also said to exceed the market values of Wal-Mart Stores In and Procter & Gamble Co., Tripp Mickle reported with The Wall Street Journal, who also noted that the results exclude any and all Apple's debt.

Apple cash and cash equivalents are dispersed throughout both "short- and long-term securities, including corporate securities, U.S. Treasury securities and money-market funds," Mickle explained.

Apple, among many other major corporations, keep a majority of their funds in other countries in order to avoid paying the 35 percent US corporate-income-tax rate.

However, last week the Trump administration unveiled plans to dramatically cut taxes for US businesses and individuals, slashing the corporate rate to 15 percent, but the once-in-a-generation overhaul is headed for a tough fight in Congress.

And The Wall Street Journal noted that if the plan were to go through, it would allow Apple to use their money wisely "through acquisitions or by sending more to shareholders".

Apple CEO Tim Cook is not opposed to bringing more cash to the US if the changes allow it and CFO, Luca Maestri, also explained that the changes "would give Apple flexibility to do more capital returns".

"What we would do with it, let's wait and see exactly what it is, but as I've said before we are always looking at acquisitions," Cook told investors on the company's first-quarter earnings call in January.

Last year, the tech giant was named as the biggest corporate tax avoider in the United States after booking US$218.55 billion ($315 billion) of profit offshore last year.

The tech giant was able to save US$65.08 billion ($94 billion) that it should have paid in tax thanks to its convoluted arrangements.

The report revealed that last year three quarters of the Fortune 500 companies use subsidiaries in offshore tax havens where they sent a total of US$2.42 trillion ($3.50 trillion) of income.

In the US alone this amounted to US$715.62 billion ($1.03 trillion) in tax which they avoided paying.

The report said many of the biggest companies in the world use a foreign office to "disguise" their profits as coming from another country even if they are not.