How Much Tax Does Google Pay Anywhere?

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google says that tax is a complicated matter for multinational companies. However, it is only complicated if there is aggressive tax avoidance, which is how Google and numerous other multinational companies operate.

At a hearing of the House of Commons public accounts committee last year, it was established that Google does not sell in the UK as all sales are booked from Ireland, where corporation tax is only 12.5% as against 23% in the UK. It is not only UK sales that go through Ireland but sales from other countries, both in and outside of the EU.

In 2011 Google in Ireland had revenues of 12.4 billion Euro and paid a total of 22.2 million Euro Irish tax of which the princely sum of 3.04 million Euro was corporation tax!!

Google in Ireland is Google Ireland Holdings, which is a company of unlimited liability meaning they do not have to publically publish their accounts!! Google Ireland Holdings is, in turn, controlled by another Google company, Motorola Mobility International in Bermuda where there is no corporation tax!!

To ensure that there is no real tax liability in Ireland the Bermuda company owns the intellectual property rights to the technology that makes Google work. It then charges Google Ireland Holdings royalties for using it, so that in 2011Google’s administrative expenses in Ireland, including royalties, came to 9 billion Euro!!

The icing on the cake for Google, and various other US multinationals, is that if the untaxed profits in Bermuda are not repatriated to the US then they do not pay US corporation tax of 35%!!

If you want to give up using Google try www.blekko.com  and it does not spy on you!!

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us