Google channeled 128 billion euros through a Dutch subsidiary to the Bermuda tax haven in eight years. The tech company in the Netherlands paid more than 25 million euros in taxes on this, according to the latest published annual report of that Dutch subsidiary.
Google says the money has since been returned to the US. It’s unclear how much tax the company paid for it. Tax evasion is not illegal, but in recent years the pressure has increased on multinational companies to quit smoking.
The tax scheme, which has since been discontinued, was all about paying Google’s intellectual property rights fees. These royalties ended up in the Netherlands through subsidiaries in Ireland and Singapore and the Dutch subsidiary sent the money to Bermuda where taxes are not levied.
Larger quantity
The amount may be greater than 128 billion, because the construction has been around since 2004. However, only annual reports from 2012 can be found in the Chamber of Commerce.
In 2019, the tech giant put nearly 1 billion euros on the table in a case related to tax evasion in France. The case was settled for € 500 million. In addition, the US company paid another 465 million euros in back taxes.
The case covered the years from 2011 to 2016, when Google transferred a lot of revenue to its Irish subsidiary, causing the French branch to not pay the tax it should have paid based on the results. French justice has previously raided the Paris office of Google’s parent company Alphabet.
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