Facebook’s Cayman Islands tax shelter revealed in company filings

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/05/facebooks-cayman-islands-tax-shelter-revealed-in-company-filings/



Irish government collected £4.4m last year from world’s largest social media company that earned estimated £645m in UK

Facebook’s Cayman Islands tax shelter revealed in company filings
By Juliette Garside, The Guardian
Thursday, December 5, 2013 21:41 EST

Facebook is facing a fresh controversy over its tax contributions after company filings revealed the social network exported an estimated £645m earned in the UK and other overseas markets to the Cayman Islands tax haven last year.

Facebook uses a subsidiary in Ireland to collect advertising revenue from around the world. Accounts filed in Dublin this week show that business is booming, with international earnings rising to £1.5bn in 2012, up from £840m in 2011. But the Irish government collected just £4.4m in tax from the world’s largest social media company last year.

Using a complex web of subsidiaries in a tax structure known as the “double Irish”, employed by a number of American multinationals, Facebook shelters much of the money it earns outside its home market from governments around the world.

Facebook and Google account for around half of the £6bn expected to have been spent on advertising on the internet in Britain this year, according to eMarketer. But Facebook has put most of this income out of reach of the taxman.