Twitter Fined For Late Accounts – Report

Twitter has become the latest tech company to come under scrutiny for its financial arrangements after it was fined for not filing its UK corporate accounts with the business registrar on time.

Sky News reports that the microblogging site was due to file the accounts no later than 30 September but it has still not done so. As a result, Twitter UK Ltd and TweetDeck Ltd have been hit with automatic financial penalties.

The returns are used as the basis for tax filings with HM Revenues and Customs (HMRC), but there is no suggestion that the companies have avoided any tax liability.

Twitter accounts delay

Twitter UK and TweetDeck, which was acquired by Twitter in a £25 million takeover last year, are wholly-owned subsidiaries of California-based Twitter inc. The responsibility to file the accounts rests with company secretary Alexander Macgillivray, who is registered in San Francisco.

Cardiff-based Companies House has confirmed it has still not received the accounts and has no idea when it will do so. The financial penalties are set to rise if these filings are not submitted in the near future. The authority is quoted as saying that the ultimate penalty for continual delay is being struck off, although it says that this is a long way off.

Twitter had not responded to TechWeekEurope’s request for comment at the time of writing.

Multinational companies are coming under increasing pressure in the UK over their tax arrangements, including several tech firms. Google, Facebook, Amazon and eBay have all seen their practices come under scrutiny, with some of them being labelled as “immoral” by MPs.

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