Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Is Lost to Tax Loopholes

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.

“It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.”

The U.S. corporate income-tax rate is 35 percent. In the U.K., Google’s second-biggest market by revenue, it’s 28 percent.

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aujAc626t9WY&pos=3

And the IRS is complaining about UBS tax evasion...Ha, ha, ha...

 

Reaching out for that *Like*-button, but cannot find it!

 

So if Google opens a trading account, it will pay only 2.4% on trading profits?
EDIT: dumb question, the Bermuda IBC opens the account and then pays zero percent tax.

 

Look up transfer pricing as well... similar tactics are used by S&P and large trading houses to avoid taxes on commodity products...

 

Google on average pays 20% (not 2.4%) in taxes, as stated in their earnings.
http://slashdot.org/story/10/10/21/1627220/How-Google-Avoided-Paying-60-Billion-In-Taxes

 

Google = the U2 of search engines.

 

$60 Billion LOST? $60 Billion saved is more like it... Google does fantastic things, money lost to the horribly mismanaged public sector is just a good thing...

 

S T R O N G SELL after news about pressure from EU on Ireland to higher corporate tax.