Google pays £183m in back taxes to the Irish government | google browser

Irish subsidiary Google has agreed to pay €218m (£183m) in back taxes to the Irish government, According to the company’s deposits.

The American tech company, which has been accused of avoiding hundreds of millions of taxes across Europe Through loopholes known as the « Irish Double, Dutch Sandwich, » it said it had « agreed to resolve some tax issues relating to previous years ».

google browser Ireland It said it would pay 622 million euros in corporate tax for 2020, including 218 million euros in retroactive settlement and interest charges. The previous year, Google Ireland paid €263 million in taxes.

In line with a 2015 law, the company, which is part of parent company Alphabet, Last year, it promised that it would abandon the loophole strategy, which allowed it to effectively switch revenue earned across Europe offshore to places like Bermuda, where the tax rate was zero. Bloomberg investigation The chart showed Google allowed to reduce the external tax rate to only 2.4%.

Google did not explain why the overdue tax was paid in its accounts and did not respond to a request for comment. In the filing she only said: “After the end of the year, the company agreed to resolve some tax issues related to previous years. This tax liability and associated interest are recognized in the current fiscal year.”

Paul Monaghan, CEO of the Fair Tax Foundation, said: “There is indeed a disgraceful lack of transparency around Alphabet’s tax behavior, particularly at the Irish subsidiaries level. Stakeholders have a right to know what this Irish corporate tax settlement relates to.

“Investors should be particularly concerned given that Alphabet’s filings in the United States show it has billions more in dispute with tax authorities around the world in circumstances where, by its own definition, it has less than a 50% chance of winning.”

Ireland, which has provided low-tax European headquarters for many of the world’s largest multinational corporations, initially refused to register with OECD Convention for the global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% by 2023, but Drop his resistance to the plan After changing the text.

The agreement, joined by most of the 140 countries involved in the negotiations, aims to end decades of states undermining their neighbors by introducing lower corporate taxes.

Calculations show that Google Ireland Limited generated pre-tax profits of €2.85 billion in 2020, up from €1.94 billion in 2019. Turnover increased by €2.7 billion to €48.4 billion.