Google Blogoscoped

Forum

Google is accused of UK tax avoidance

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
15 years ago3,007 views

The Guardian article link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/20/google-uk-tax-avoidance

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

<< A review of Google's British operations suggests the web search engine could have faced taxes of more than £100m in this country, but that it avoided this by channelling revenues through Ireland. >>

Back in September when I purchased a Google Apps Premier, I queried something relating to this with Google.

Despite living in the UK and purchasing something from Google *UK* (their address being Google Apps, 76 Buckingham Palace Road, Belgrave House, London, SW1W 9TQ, UNITED KINGDOM) I was still being charged VAT at the Irish rate of 21% (i.e. £25 + £5.25 = £30.25).

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Google isn't doing anything different from every other large internet business.

For example, if you deal with PayPal UK, all of the transactions are channeled through PayPal Lichtenstein.

It's well-established in UK law that this is permitted.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Correct, Roger. I know of others that are doing the same thing.

However, my complaint above was that the company address and invoicing address were both in the UK, so they had no right to charge me 21% VAT instead of 17.5% VAT (as it was back then) since they weren't invoicing from Ireland.

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

More info at
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6122329.ece
too.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]Tony: More and more companies are doing it this way. The company is registered in Ireland or Lichtenstein, but has a branch in the UK (and therefore a UK address). Not only are they *allowed* to charge the VAT of their home country, I'm pretty sure they're *required* to charge this rate.

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

The best in this domain is still IKEA ;-)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3587/3305175977_5582d185fd.jpg

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> The company is registered in Ireland or Lichtenstein, but has a
> branch in the UK (and therefore a UK address). Not only are they
> *allowed* to charge the VAT of their home country, I'm pretty
> sure they're *required* to charge this rate.

But if they're charging the Irish VAT rate, I'm pretty sure that their address on the invoice should have legally been their Ireland address and the invoicing company should have been Google Ireland Limited rather than Google UK Ltd.

We went through a similar exercise in our company when we moved some services from the UK to Ireland and we had to ensure that the Ireland address was clearly stated in all service agreements and invoices.

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I know that ebay does the same thing (Ireland and Liechtenstein)when you pay your ebay fees, so this is presumably why PayPal is the same..

Forum home

Advertisement

 
Blog  |  Forum     more >> Archive | Feed | Google's blogs | About
Advertisement

 

This site unofficially covers Google™ and more with some rights reserved. Join our forum!