Facebook Paid £2.9 Million Tax on £840 Million Profits Made Outside U.S.
December 29th, 2012Via: Guardian:
Facebook has become the latest multinational to come under the spotlight for its tax affairs after figures revealed it paid just £2.9m in tax on profits of more than more than £800m.
Filings for Facebook Ireland, through which all of the social network’s profits outside the US are channelled, show it paid the Irish tax authority €3.2m (£2.9m) last year.
Facebook is structured so that companies buying advertisements on the website in the UK, or anywhere outside of the US, have to pay Facebook Ireland.
This allowed Facebook Ireland to make gross 2011 profits of £840m – or £3.1m per each of its 287 staff. Despite the high gross profit, Facebook Ireland was able to cut its tax bill to just €3.2m by using an accounting technique called the “Double Irish”.
The manoeuvre allows multinationals to move large amounts of money to other subsidiaries in the form of royalty payments. Facebook moved nearly £750m to the Cayman Islands and its Californian parent in licensing and royalty payments.
After the transfers, Facebook Ireland reported a £15m annual loss, despite it accounting for 44% of the social network’s $3.15bn (£1.95bn) revenues.
Like Apple and Google, Facebook uses its Irish subsidiary to reduce its liabilities to HM Revenue & Customs and other European tax regimes. Amazon and Starbucks also cut their British tax bills by using the same technique via other European countries. Last year Facebook paid just £238,000 in UK corporation tax – less than the average pay and bonus of its UK-based staff. Its estimated UK revenues amounted to £175m last year.
