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Google Agrees To Pay 130M UK Pounds (~ $185M) In Back Taxes (telegraph.co.uk)

Posted by timothy on from the cutting-their-losses dept.

whoever57 writes: Google UK has come to an agreement with HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) under which it will recognize a larger share of its UK sales in the UK, instead of funnelling them through the Republic of Ireland. In addition, Google will pay 130M UK Pounds in back taxes representing tax on sales since 2005.

9 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Can they afford it? by Greyfox · · Score: 2

    Heh no kidding. Google might have to resort to scrounging in the employee break room couches for that much money! They're either not doing a particularly good job of evading taxes, or they're doing a really good job of evading taxes.

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  2. Re:And obviously, Ireland will rebate on the taxes by Bert64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well the phrasing "come to an agreement" says it all..
    For any normal person you don't come to an agreement with the government, they state how much tax you owe and you have to pay it or you go to jail, there's no negotiation.

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  3. Re:Can they afford it? by Malc · · Score: 2

    They can afford to build a billion quid campus in King's Cross. 130MM doesn't sound like they're paying enough taxes to me.

    http://uk.businessinsider.com/...

  4. What's in a statement? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google has come to an agreement.
    vs
    Google has agreed to a settlement.
    vs
    Google has been found guilty and are forced...

    What is the point of this? It seems very clear that this is some kind of feel good measure, a public gesture of good will. I wonder if this is part of reducing the heat on governments to close the taxation loopholes that allow this kind of activity to be legal in the first place.

    1. Re:What's in a statement? by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How about google executives responding from their prison cells via their lawyers. Now that is the proper headline for multi-million dollar tax cheats. Keep in mind, mass cheating in taxes, results in austerity, where the poorest pay for the richest cheating by suffering and dying as a result of reduced social services and all those involved know this, their greed is killing people.

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    2. Re:What's in a statement? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is how tax works for large corporations in the UK:

      1. Pay accountant to obfuscate your tax liability

      2. Take head of HMRC out to an expensive restaurant and have the following conversion:

      CFO: How much tax do we owe?
      HMRC: I dunno, LOL.
      CFO: Our PR department says we need to pay at least a few mill or people might start to overcome their apathy. Alternatively you could spend years taking us to court and we would win anyway, cos our lawyers are top notch. Then we can do it again every single year.
      HMRC: A few mill sounds fine. I'm ordering dessert.
      CFO: No you aren't.

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    3. Re:What's in a statement? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

      No, in April Google will pay taxes in the UK because the UK changed the law for the start of the 2015/2016 tax year as part of the Finance Bill 2015.

      No one should pay more tax than required by law, and until now its been possible to have the law require you to pay no taxes. The UK did the proper thing and changed the law to eliminate loopholes - until they did that, I was fine with Google et al paying no taxes.

  5. Re: Can they afford it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Google took $66 billion in revenue last year alone. 9% of that was from the UK. Given that their net is reported as about 10% of that (which may also be "creatively" reported), thats 660M profit last year alone from the UK. This is meant to be 11 years back taxes, so this seems far too low. Sounds like nothing more than a face saving token gesture in an attempt to keep the proles from grumbling about US corporations leeching money out of the UK, while at the same time allowing them to continue with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

  6. If that were the actual spirit of the tax laws... by tlambert · · Score: 2

    Other than Apple in one country all of these bastards are actually obeying the letter (but not the spirit) of the taxation laws.

    If that were the actual spirit of the tax laws... the letter would be different.

    Because the letter of the law is what it is, one has to expect that the letter is an accurate embodiment of the *actual* "spirit", as opposed to the "spirit" that everyone pays lip service to.

    If this were not the case, the people making the laws would have to be pretty critically stupid.

    And if that were the case... what does this say about the intelligence of the people who elected them? They don't even have the disadvantage of an electoral college causing a two party system as an emergent property to blame in the U.K., only the intelligence of the electorate.