{"id":18618,"date":"2012-12-13T09:44:41","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T09:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=18618"},"modified":"2012-12-13T09:44:41","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T09:44:41","slug":"google-tax-avoider-par-excellence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/12\/13\/google-tax-avoider-par-excellence\/","title":{"rendered":"Google: tax avoider par excellence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bloomberg <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2012-12-10\/google-revenues-sheltered-in-no-tax-bermuda-soar-to-10-billion.html\" target=\"_blank\">has reported in a story that I assisted with<\/a>\u00a0which has not received as much attention in the UK as I expected:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Google Inc.\u00a0avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenues into a\u00a0Bermuda\u00a0shell company, almost double the total from three years before, filings show.<\/p>\n<p>By legally funneling profits from overseas subsidiaries into Bermuda, which doesn\u2019t have a corporate income tax, Google cut its overall tax rate almost in half. The amount moved to Bermuda is equivalent to about 80 percent of Google\u2019s total pretax profit in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>The increase in Google\u2019s revenues routed to Bermuda, disclosed in a Nov. 21 filing by a subsidiary in the Netherlands, could fuel the outrage spreading across Europe and in the U.S. over corporate tax dodging. Governments in France, the U.K., Italy and Australia are probing Google\u2019s tax avoidance as they seek to boost revenue during economic doldrums.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, the European Union\u2019s executive body, the European Commission, advised member states to create blacklists of tax havens and adopt anti-abuse rules. Tax evasion and avoidance, which cost the EU 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) a year, are \u201cscandalous\u201d and \u201can attack on the fundamental principle of fairness,\u201d Algirdas Semeta, the EC\u2019s commissioner for taxation, said at a press conference in Brussels.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe tax strategy of Google and other multinationals is a deep embarrassment to governments around\u00a0Europe,\u201d said Richard Murphy, an accountant and director of\u00a0Tax Research LLP\u00a0in Norfolk,\u00a0England. \u201cThe political awareness now being created in the U.K., and to a lesser degree elsewhere in Europe, is: It\u2019s us or them. People understand that if Google doesn\u2019t pay, somebody else has to pay or services get cut.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I'm not sure I can add much to that comment: this is now literally a case of \"us or them\". And right now they're winning at cost to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bloomberg has reported in a story that I assisted with\u00a0which has not received as much attention in the UK as I expected: Google Inc.\u00a0avoided about<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/12\/13\/google-tax-avoider-par-excellence\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-avoidance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}