Google pays pittance for avoiding Ł2bn tax

Google HQ, California, United States, photo by Robbie Shade (Creative Commons)

Google hasn't coughed up for a decade - and one estimate suggests it should be paying Ł200 million a year. Photo by Robbie Shade (Creative Commons) (Click to enlarge)

Andrew Carss

State benefits and tax cuts for rich corporations - pay cuts and job losses for the rest of us.

Search engine and advertising giant Google has agreed to pay Ł130 million in ten years of back taxes. This is a derisory sum considering Google recorded sales in Britain for 2014 alone of Ł4.5 billion.

The Tax Justice Network estimates it should be paying Ł200 million every year!

This comes after tax officials proposed in December laughably 'tough' fines of Ł300 for companies which submit their tax records late. For big firms, Ł300 will promptly be ignored. They will plough on regardless, hoarding vast profits to stow in offshore tax havens.

And who pays for the taxes they do not pay? We, the working class, in the form of relentless service cuts and pay theft. We didn't create the financial crisis, but we are certainly paying for it.

Meanwhile, the healthcare wing of US mega-corporation GE has taken root in the NHS. It makes hundreds of millions of pounds in sales of equipment and testing services - and apparently pays negative corporation tax!

Through tax benefits, GE Healthcare has actually made a net tax profit of Ł1.6 million, according to research by the Independent. This will come as an outrage to the hundreds of thousands of NHS staff, living on the edge of a knife, enduring pay freezes and job losses for years.

We cannot trust the Tories' tokenistic efforts to clamp down on tax avoidance. Much can be done to improve tax collection, but closing the loopholes will always be an uphill battle under capitalism.

We demand that all tax avoiding companies be taken into public ownership under democratic working class control.

Nationalise the banking industry too - it is complicit in this extortion, providing safe havens for the bosses' ill-gotten gains.

Take it all off them - and pay no compensation to leeching, fat-cat capitalists!

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