The Anonymous Widower

MPs Don’t Like Google’s Tax Affairs

According to this article in the Daily Telegraph, Google only paid £6m tax on revenues of £395m.

Obviously, it is not in the interest of the UK, that major international companies pay so little tax.  It’s also not in the interest of small UK companies, who perhaps pay high rates of tax and see their foreign competitors in the UK, paying very little.

Years ago, I was involved in monitoring the perception in the press of major companies. After a couple of quarters bumping along at the bottom, companies quickly picked their ideas up.

So perhaps a publicly available table on the Internet, showing the turnover, tax and a few other figures of companies, might not be a bad idea.

Suppose say it was obvious that a well known restaurant chain, was paying a very low rate of tax.  Would it mean that customers went elsewhere? Possibly, but it might mean they did other things to justify the low rate, that were of benefit to the UK.

August 13, 2012 - Posted by AnonW | Computing, News | Google, Tax