Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of tech giant Apple Inc alongside Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, has described recent criticism of the company's taxes practices as "extremely warranted" and have called for big corporations to be treated the same as the "little guy", during a business conference in Northern Ireland on Thursday.

Wozniak, who ended his full-time employment with the company in 1987 after twelve years of service, said it would be "fair and right" to tax large firms on their levels of income, like individuals, lamenting that Apple had originally been created to "empower the little guy".

The Apple co-founder, who set up the company with $300 of his personal money, however recognised that the company was in its legal right to move its cash offshore to maximise profits, but described the action as "ethically wrong".

"Criticism of Apple's tax policies is extremely warranted, in my mind, but my explanation is rather long and difficult," said Wozniak.

"For a corporation, there's no such thing as personal ethics. It's like you will do anything, any scheme you can, to maximise your profits.... Apple itself, you'd think, would say, 'My gosh, there's systems. We have to go for the way we can maximise our profits."

"That's ethically wrong. On a personal level we always know when it's wrong," he said.

Last week, Apple chief executive Tim Cook appeared before U.S. senators to answer questions on his company's tax arrangements. The tech giant is reportedly shielding at least $74 billion in profits from U.S. tax officials by setting up subsidiaries - which had no employees or physical offices - in Ireland.

"People are not taxed on profit, they are taxed on income, corporations should be taxed the same as people in my mind, that is how it should be, that would make things fair and right," he said, as cited by the BBC.

"That means corporations either pay taxes on all of their revenues or people only pay it on a tiny amount called profit and until we rectify that the whole problem is just with us forever.

"That is why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and I am always for the individual being much more important than their training, same reason I created the Apple computer at the start, it was to empower the little guy," he added.

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