Google UK Taxes Just £6 million

It has emerged that Google is set to pay just £6 million in UK tax this year, despite generating £395 million in this country.

Google told TechWeekEurope it complies with all the tax rules in the UK and makes a significant contribution to the UK economy.

But last year, the search giant paid £935,000 on its £2.39 billion revenue and in the six years leading up to 2010, it paid just £8 million in corporation tax.

Google UK Taxes

“We comply with all the tax rules in the UK,” said a Google spokesperson. “We make a big contribution to the UK economy by employing over a thousand people, helping hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow online and investing millions supporting new tech businesses in East London.”

Chairman Eric Schmidt has previously criticised British tax laws, saying it was obliged to pay just the legal minimum in UK taxation. He added that although it could pay more in tax, it would have to do so voluntarily.

In April, it was reported that Amazon was under investigation by HM Revenue and Customs following the revelation that it paid no corporation tax on its £3.3 billion UK sales in 2011.

Google is set to report a loss of £24.1 million after tax in accounts filed last year, although much of this is due to the £51.45 million cost of issuing shares to its employees. Without that cost, it would have posted a £27 million profit. Worldwide profit increased by 11 percent in the most recent quarter to $2.8 billion (£1.8bn) due to rising online advertising revenue.

HMRC, which has been using web robots to find tax cheats, recently launched an app to help people understand their taxes and where their money is spent, but it crashed just one day after its launch.

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