Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt speaking on BBC Radio 4 said that he was puzzled by company's tax position criticism expressed by the UK's authorities and policymakers.
According to Schmidt, what Google does is legal. The chairman highlighted that it is a political decision for the democracy that is the UK to make companies pay more.
“If the British system changes the tax laws, then we will comply. If the taxes go up, we will pay more, if they go down, we will pay less,'- explained the executive.
In 2012 Google and other corporations such as Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks faced tax claims. They were accused not of law violation, but of the attempts to minimize tax payments, which, according to the government, is against the law and immoral.
The mass media investigated that in 2006-2011 Google paid only 10 million pounds in the UK while the revenue yielded almost 12 billion pounds. Last year, Google's head of operations in northern Europe Matt Brittin claimed that the fact that the company does not sell in the UK ultimately minimizes Google's UK tax liability. This year the discussions of internet giant tax affairs renewed as former Google's employee decided to share evidence of tax avoidance.
On May 22, the Labour Party’s leader Ed Miliband blogged that Google used various tricks to lower the taxes. At the end of the last week, head of the Public accounts committee Margaret Hodge suggested that the companies should bring evidence in secret. In this case they could not hide their tax affairs behind the confidentiality rules, she added.
According to Bloomberg, Google saves up to 2 billion dollars annually using its daughter company in Ireland where the corporate tax totals 12.5% (twice less than in Great Britain). It is hard to specify which country should the company pay taxes to, as the deals are closed in Ireland, although money is transferred from the British structures.
