Google Pays Britain $185 Million to Settle Back Taxes
By CONOR DOUGHERTY

SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Friday agreed to pay 130 million pounds, or about $185 million in back taxes to Britain, making it the latest United States technology company to settle claims that it does not pay its fair share of taxes in Europe.

The sum covers taxes from 2005 to 2015 and Google said it would change how it calculates its tax payments in Britain so they are based on a percentage of local sales derived from the country.

“We will now pay tax based on revenue from U.K.-based advertisers, which reflects the size and scope of our U.K. business,” a Google spokesman wrote in an email. “The way multinational companies are taxed has been debated for many years and the international tax system is changing as a result.”

Last April, Britain adopted a so-called Google tax that would impose a levy on any international company that did not fairly pay taxes on profits generated from its British operations.

Google, which is now owned by a holding company called Alphabet and has its European headquarters in Ireland, is hardly the only technology company with European tax problems.

Various countries, including Germany and France, have criticized the complicated tax structures tech companies use to reduce their local taxes. Many of them route sales through lower-tax countries like Ireland, even if the sales are made in other nations.

In May, Amazon, which had been funneling most of its sales taxes through Luxembourg, a low-tax haven, said it would start paying taxes in European countries where it has large operations. Apple reached a deal to pay local Italian tax authorities in December after authorities there looked into whether the company tried to lower its taxes by moving more than $1 billion in revenue from its Italian operations through an Irish subsidiary.

The executive arm of the European Union, the European Commission, is also investigating whether Apple and Amazon receive unfair state support through low-tax agreements in Ireland and Luxembourg.

與英簽協議 Google在英補稅63.2億

網路搜尋巨擘Google在22日表示，已經與英國稅務當局達成協議，以解決兩者之間的一項稅賦爭執，同時增加未來在英國繳交的稅額。

根據協議，Google將向英國政府補繳大約1.3億英鎊（台幣63.2億元）的稅與利息，涵蓋2005至15年，同時承諾根據英國廣告客戶為它帶來的收入繳稅。

Google將歐洲總部設在稅率較低的愛爾蘭，英國稅務單位調查該公司節稅措施已六年。

英國是僅次於美國的Google第二大市場，去年前9個月，Google在英國的收入約51.5億美元。Google的一名發言人說：「跨國企業繳稅的方式已經爭議多年，國際稅賦體系也為之改變。協議反映這種改變。」英國稅務及海關總署說，協議是「重要的結果」，「跨國企業必須實額繳稅，一分都不能少」。

歐洲各國政府正設法向大型科技公司徵收更多的稅，英國政府鎖定Google是嘗試之一。雙方達成協議顯示，各國修改稅法之際，大企業也準備改變繳稅的方式，而這項協議更可能成為其他企業與國家參考的實例。Google發言人說，該公司正在法國及其他國家磋商相關問題。

經濟合作暨發展組織（OECD）去年對部分國家提出建議，以阻止許多產業領域的大型企業利用複雜卻合法的法律漏洞避稅。英國同時修法，規定如果稅務官員認為大企業不當轉移可觀的利潤，得向對方祭出更高的懲罰性稅率。

部分科技公司的高階主管說，他們正考慮不再過度仰賴海外的某些避稅天堂。它們同時主動申報法國、德國、英國等地的更多收入。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/technology/google-pays-britain-185-million-to-settle-back-taxes.html

2016-01-23．聯合晚報．B3．國際財經．編譯陳世欽