"Google pays just £6m UK tax on profits of £395m
Anger over the amount of tax paid by Google in the UK could escalate after documents showed the web giant contributed just £6m to the exchequer in 2011 on UK profits of £395m.
The UK arm of the search giant will also report a loss after tax of £24.1million in accounts filed yesterday at Companies House. Much of this, however, is due to the £51.45 million cost of giving shares to employees. Excepting that, the firm reports a profit of just £27million.
Last year Google paid £935,000 tax on £2.39billion in revenue.
In the six years to the end of 2010, Google paid just £8million of Corporation Tax in the UK, but in the 2011 calendar year alone that rose to £6.09m.
Worldwide Google profit rose 11pc in the most recent quarter, ended June 30, as consolidated revenue climbed 35pc to $12.21bn compared with the same fiscal quarter a year earlier. Google reported a jump in quarterly worldwide profits to $2.8bn (£1.8bn) on rising online advertising revenue, beating Wall Street's expectations.
Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt claimed last year that Google was obliged to pay the legal minimum in UK taxation, implicitly attacking lax British laws. "We could pay more tax but we would have to do so voluntarily,” he said. “There are lots of benefits to [being in Britain]. It's very good for us, but to go back to shareholders and say 'We looked at 200 countries but felt sorry for those British people so we want to [pay them more]' . . . there is probably some law against doing that." The latest figures are likely to reignite the debate over how little tax global corporations, such as Google and Vodafone, pay in Britain."
I'm sure that Google is not alone. What about Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, et al Also, Google's original motto was "Don't do evil". I think its revised motto should be "Don't do evil, unless you can get away with it."
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