Apple CEO Tim Cook has rejected accusations that the world's richest company is sidestepping US taxes by keeping cash overseas, suggesting that the claim was politically motivated.

World leaders last month approved a crackdown on tax avoidance by multinationals such as Apple, Google and McDonald's, major companies whose rock-bottom tax bills have provoked outrage in the US and beyond.

Cook argued that Apple pays the biggest tax bill in the US and keeps more money overseas than other company because two-thirds of its business is outside the US.

Cook's defense of the California-based company came during an interview aired on Sunday on the US network CBS.

"That's total political crap, there is no truth behind it," Cook responded when pressed about the issue in a short preview of the interview. "We pay every tax dollar we owe."

Cook laid the blame on an outdated US tax code, calling for it to be revamped for modern times.

The controversy comes a year after the "LuxLeaks" revelations that some of the world's biggest companies had lowered their tax rates to as little as 1 percent in secret pacts with tax authorities in Luxembourg.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development calculates that national governments lose $100 billion to $240 billion, or 4 to 10 percent of global tax revenues, every year because of the tax-minimizing arrangements of multinationals.

AFP