France Seeking $1.76 Billion In Back Taxes From Google (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader writes: According to a Reuters insider, France is seeking 1.6 billion euros in back taxes from Google, dwarfing what the United Kingdom recently agreed to pay. France apparently has no interest in striking the same 'sweetheart tax' deal that put the UK into a critical light when it revealed that the search giant would pay only 130 million pounds of tax, a $181.18 million settlement, for over 10 years in multi-billion dollar trade in the UK.

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American's future entrepreneurs are watching

[davidwr]

2025, boardroom of a start-up company looking on where to invest, where to find customers, and where to set up offices:

Chris: Hey Jo, I've been looking at our European customer base. We haven't really been targeting them but there seems to be a lot of interest. You think we should look into setting up offices there?

Jo: It's worth a look, but we need to play this conservative. Remember how France and the UK squeezed huge tax settlements out of Google and other tech companies back when we were in high school?

Chris: Yeah, we'll have to go really slow on this and hire a tax advisor before we ever set foot in Europe. In the meantime, let's not target European customers and make sure that if we allow any third-party advertisements on our products that they are clearly NOT aimed at European customers.

Jo: *sigh* Well, hopefully we can work out something with the governments over there so we know ahead of time what the tax bill will be. We should pay our fair share of taxes, but there's no way we should set ourselves up for being blind-sided.

Chris: Well, you know, the nominal tax rate over there is pretty high. If we can't get some kind of up-front discount, we may just have to forgo that market entirely.

Jo: Agreed.