Google chief recalled for fresh grilling by MPs over tax dodges
Google is facing the prospect of a fresh grilling from irate MPs after they elected to recall the digital giant to answer fresh questions about its tax affairs.
Specifically the search giant will be asked to support its claims that London based employees do not make advertising sales to British clients, but instead provide sales and marketing services to customers in Ireland.
Google is keen for this distinction to stick so that it can maintain a complicated corporate tax dodge that sees money earned in Britain siphoned to off shore accounts in Bermuda.
This arrangement saw Google pay just £10m in tax on revenues totalling £11.5bn between 2006 and 2011 but if it can be proven that British Google employees do sell to British customers then it would be considered to have tax residency – exposing it to far higher liabilities to the taxman.
Google’s own website states that sales teams are based in London, where it has around 720 employees, with duties described as ‘negotiating deals’ and ‘negotiating quarterly sales quotas’.
Various LinkedIn profiles for these employees also let the cat out of the bag in their job descriptions and some British clients have also confirmed that the business sold to them from London.
Simon Andrews, founder of advertising agency Addictive, noted: “All the people you tend to deal with are in London. You would never know about the Dublin thing apart from if you looked closely at the address on the invoices."
Matt Brittin, head of Google’s northern European operations, previously told MPs last November that London staff were engaged solely in promoting Google as an advertising medium, with actual sales conducted by staff in Dublin.