Thread: Google avoids $2 BILLION in global taxes with Bermuda shelter

Google avoids $2B in global taxes with Bermuda shelter

Michael Winter, USA TODAY


Using a Bermuda tax haven, Google avoided paying about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011, Bloomberg News reports.(Photo: Mark Lennihan, AP)

8:44PM EST December 10. 2012 -

By funneling nearly $10 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company last year, Goggle dodged about $2 billion in income taxes worldwide, Bloomberg News reports, citing financial records.

The off-shore tax shelter -- legal in the United States and elsewhere -- cut Google's tax rate nearly in half, Bloomberg says. Bermuda has no corporate income tax. Bloomberg says the amount saved was about 80% of the company's pre-tax profit.

In a statement from corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Google said that it complies with all tax rules. The company also said its European investments helps those countries' economies and businesses, and provides thousands of jobs.

Last week, Reuters reported how Amazon has avoided income taxes -- $1.5 billion, the IRS claims -- by channeling sales through Luxembourg. In the course of accumulating $2 billion to finance expansion, the Seattle-based retailing behemoth has also evaded paying hundreds of millions of dollars to European countries.

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, estimates the EU loses around one trillion euros -- about $1.3 trillion -- each year to tax evasion and avoidance.

Last week, the commission announced an "action plan" that advised member states to "protect their tax bases and recapture billions of euros legitimately due." Recommended measures included drawing up black lists of tax havens and legislation curbing tax abuses.

In November, angry British lawmakers accused Google, Amazon, Starbucks and other multinationals of engaging in "aggressive" tax avoidance and called for a worldwide crackdown.

Two years ago, Bloomberg reported that Google used two overseas shelters to avoid billions in income taxes. The company did so by transferring royalty payments from its Irish and Dutch subsidiaries to a Bermuda unit, which was simply headquartered in a local law firm.

Bloomberg writes that last year Google "reported a tax rate of just 3.2% on the profit it said was earned overseas, even as most of its foreign sales were in European countries with corporate income tax rates ranging from 26% to 34%."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/12/10/google-bermuda-shell-company-2-billion-tax-dodge/1759833/

http://www.alipac.us/f9/75-percent-o...ending-268613/

Excerpt from Show This To Anyone That Believes That Taxes Are Too Low

By Michael, on December 6th, 2012

23. In a previous article, I discussed how many of our largest corporations make huge profits and yet pay less than nothing in taxes....

What U.S. corporations are able to get away with is absolutely amazing.
The following figures come directly out of a report by Citizens for Tax Justice. These are combined figures for the tax years 2008, 2009 and 2010.

During those three years, all of the corporations below made a lot of money. Yet all of them paid net taxes that were below zero for those three years combined.

How is that possible? Well, it turns out that instead of paying in taxes to the federal government, they were actually getting money back.

So for these corporations, their rate of taxation was actually below zero.

If you have not seen these before, you are going to have a hard time believing some of these statistics.....

*Honeywell*
Profits: $4.9 billion
Taxes: -$34 million

*Fed Ex*
Profits: $3 billion
Taxes: -$23 million

*Wells Fargo*
Profits: $49.37 billion
Taxes: -$681 million

*Boeing*
Profits: $9.7 billion
Taxes: -$178 million

*Verizon*
Profits: $32.5 billion
Taxes: -$951 million

*Dupont*
Profits: $2.1 billion
Taxes -$72 million

*American Electric Power*
Profits: $5.89 billion
Taxes -$545 million

*General Electric*
Profits: $7.7 billion
Taxes: -$4.7 billion

Are you starting to get the picture?
http://www.alipac.us/f19/show-anyone-believes-taxes-too-low-268347/