Google has created a giant tax credit with HMRC by handing share bonuses worth £145m to its London-based workers.
The internet search giant paid £541m to staff at its British subsidiary in salaries and bonuses last year. That equated to average payouts of £183,000 for its 2,943 UK-based employees.
The haul included £145m in shares in Google’s owner Alphabet, generating a £45m tax credit for the world’s second most valuable company.
The Silicon Valley giant will be able to use the credit to reduce tax liabilities in the years ahead, according to accounts for its main UK subsidiary.
Google’s opaque tax arrangements came under renewed attack last week when it revealed that it paid just £25m in corporation tax in the 12 months to the end of June — despite generating $7.8bn (£6.2bn) in revenues from UK-based clients.
They lowered their company tax bill by paying the staff!
And Google staff pay no income tax? I must get my application form in!
The internet search giant paid £541m to staff at its British subsidiary in salaries and bonuses last year.
Staff who will be paying great chunks of income tax. Well done Google!
“Staff who will be paying great chunks of income tax”
Considerably more income tax (and NI contributions) than Google would pay if it didn’t pay the money out as wages and just paid 20% corporation tax on the additional profits.
These people are either so mindnumbingly dense they have to be reminded to breathe, or are actively malevolent, or possibly both of course………..
Someone on a salary of 183k in 15/16 would have paid £75,424 in tax and employee NICs, an overall rate of 41%. This isn’t taking into account any pension contribution tax credits, but nor is it counting employer NICs. Given corporation tax is 20%, this appears to be a move to maximise HMRC’s trake…
Lefties refuse to understand what everyone is pointing out. That the tax take is bigger and the company is treating its employees better than any other company I can think of.
Exploitation and tax avoidance all in one 🙂
Exploit me too, please!!!
Once a lie is told by enough people it just cannot be killed. These same people are screaming about “Fake news”.
Our media is unbelievably cynical and corrupt.
It’s not exactly Marx’s workers own the means of production, but the effect is the same. You’d think these socialists would be happy about it…
TomJ,
As this is extra money its likely to be spent on goods that carry 20% VAT.
“It’s not exactly Marx’s workers own the means of production, but the effect is the same. You’d think these socialists would be happy about it…”
If all the Google workers upped sticks and left, what would be left of Google? Not much, while a factory owner still has the factory and all the stock, and just needs to find new sets of muscles to get it all going again.
So Google workers have far greater collective bargaining power than a factory workforce, as you say you’d think the Left would be pleased…………….its almost as if the Left don’t give a damn for the workers at all…………………
@BiND
Nah. It’s likely to be spent on land/housing, which does not attract VAT.
Jim,
“Not much, while a factory owner still has the factory and all the stock, and just needs to find new sets of muscles to get it all going again.”
What do you think a modern factory is like? OK, the ones in China might be different, but I’m working for a manufacturing company right now, and there’s almost no “muscle” involved. There’s maybe 15 production staff, people touching the things we produce. And that isn’t “muscle”. That’s people who’ve been trained to assemble the rather unusual thing we put together. OK, they’re not as highly trained as the people who program the electronics in them, but I’d actually say you could replace an actor doing Hamlet more easily.
UK-based clients like what Google is doing so much that they give Google £6.2bn a year to do it.
That is less important to Ritchie than how much tax they pay. It’s the economy, stupid.
Soapy Jo got very worked up about this issue last year, I recall. If it annoys Soapy and the Prof, it must be a good thing
As I recall, lots of people told Soapy that it would generate more income tax than if the options had not been granted and the profits were charged at corporation tax rates. He did not accept that argument. He wanted Google to pay more corporation tax rather than their staff to pay more income tax. His stupidity was laid bare. Perhaps that is why his practice seems to have died and he has to crowdfund his work now
Apologies, Soapy Jo was opining on the similar case of Facebook. The fool said,
Snidely continuing to claim that Facebook were abusing corporation tax rules, and refusing to admit that the arrangements resulted in a higher tax take overall. The word cvnt seems to be Soapy’s middle name
These people are either so mindnumbingly dense they have to be reminded to breathe, or are actively malevolent, or possibly both of course………..
Never underestimate the power of envy: The unarticulated belief that someone, somewhere, who doesn’t quite measure up to you in overall wonderfulness and worth, is getting more for their efforts than you are getting for yours.
“What do you think a modern factory is like? OK, the ones in China might be different, but I’m working for a manufacturing company right now, and there’s almost no “muscle” involved. There’s maybe 15 production staff, people touching the things we produce. And that isn’t “muscle”. That’s people who’ve been trained to assemble the rather unusual thing we put together. OK, they’re not as highly trained as the people who program the electronics in them, but I’d actually say you could replace an actor doing Hamlet more easily.”
Well precisely, but you won’t find the Left pleased about the fact that manufacturing is now a far more skilled (and better remunerated) job than it used to be. They want there to be massed ranks of men hitting things with hammers, knocking off at 5pm to a big whistle, all in a union paying dues to the Labour Party.
Sorry, why are Google staff different from a manufacturing plant staff? They leave you still have the computers, servers, buildings etc – just get new staff in and away you go.
We have this example and Premiership footballers – areas where it seems the ‘workers’ are getting more of the fruits of their labours than any other industry – and are arguably the two groups most hated by the Left.
It’s almost as if they prefer their workers to be poor and downtrodden, and not getting above their ‘betters’, or something.
@Rob
I remember the venom oozing from Murphy and the usual crowd over footballer ‘rentiers’ on a Murphybollocks blog a while back.
I think it was that odious twat ‘Pilgrim Slight Return’ who condescendingly dismissed all footballers as only capable of earning at best average wage if they weren’t footballers and so anything above that pay level was ‘rent’. What a cunt. Typical elitist lefty sneering at the working class.
Maybe below average wage if not footballers. However those who do have a rare skill that is in demand do tend to get paid a lot when using that skill.
Lots of money in football. Lots of money in other high demand rare skill work.
A friend of mine is a back street abortionist. That’s what he calls himself.
Makes a few thousand a day for an hour or two’s work. Providing services that are in demand by those willing to pay for it.
Outside the official channels. Far as I know he’s the only one operating in so many countries using his own setup. A rare skill and sufficient demand from those not interested in using state involved services.
@martin. Sounds a bit bollocksy to me. Being able to perform an abortion is not such a rare skill that there would be only one person in ‘so many countries’. As for those not interested in using ‘state involved services’. You mean private practice? Hardly difficult to find. So is your friend making up this anecdote or are you?