In an interview with the Irish state radio broadcaster RTE, Cook said the company expected to repatriate billions of dollars of global profits to the United States next year.

Questions about what Apple will do with its massive pile of cash, estimated to be more than US$200 billion, which is stashed outside the US, have arisen in the wake of the EU order that the company pay €13 billion (A$19.73 billion) in back taxes to Ireland.

"We provisioned several billion dollars for the US for payment as soon as we repatriate it, and right now I would forecast that repatriation to occur next year," Cook told RTE.

But when asked by the Wall Street Journal about this, an Apple spokeswoman said this reflected Cook's optimism that the US would make changes to its tax rate next year in order to make it attractive for the company to take the cash back to the US.

The spokeswoman added that his comments didn't represent any change to Apple’s position on the question.

That position was apparently the one which Cook stated in an earlier interview with the Washington Post, before the EU acted.

Asked about a statement by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, that Apple's profit reporting in Ireland amounted to fraud, Cook replied that he hadn't heard it, adding in part: "And when we bring it (the pile of cash) back, we will pay 35% federal tax and then a weighted average across the states that we’re in, which is about 5%, so think of it as 40%.

"We've said at 40%, we're not going to bring it back until there's a fair rate. There’s no debate about it. Is that legal to do or not legal to do? It is legal to do. It is the current tax law."

There has been talk by both US presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, that they will facilitate the return of money stashed abroad by American multinationals. The total has been estimated to be US$2.1 billion.