Google accused of UK tax dodge
20th April 2009
2 years ago by Adam | 6 comments
I just read an interesting article on The Register website. They are reporting on an article Richard Murphy did for the Sunday Times:
“Search giant Google has been accused of avoiding UK tax by routing most of its earnings through Ireland. This means it saves about £100m a year by paying Irish corporation tax at 12.5 per cent rather than the 28 per cent it would face in the UK.
British advertisers send their money to Google’s Irish subsidiary, an arrangement that has been described as unfair and unacceptable.
This means that even though Google UK turned over £1.25bn in the UK it paid only £600,000 in UK corporation tax – 90 per cent of its earnings were channeled through Ireland.”
You can read the full article at The Register
Do you think this is unfair or just good tax planning?
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6 comments so far to - Google accused of UK tax dodge -
They have a presence in the UK and should pay UK taxes. I think the UK tax man could do with the extra cash at the moment!
Blame HMRC for letting it happen in the first place. The loophole’s there to be exploited!
There is a law that has recently been put in place that means when an organisation finds a loop hole in tax payments, they must alert the government of their find, or face legal action. I suspect that HMRC have been aware of this for a while and are looking for a viable way to plug the hole.
If there is a loophole, big business will find it. This is not an unethical practice. What is unethical is the fact that governments like Ireland would allow such things so that they can ‘steal’ the tax revenue from the UK.
They have a presence in the UK and should pay UK taxes.
It’s always the bigger companies which do this. smaller companies rarely have the resources to set this up.