TECH NEWS – Google has to pay an incredible amount of money to the French authorities. (In our currency, it’s sounding even more!)

The French authorities initiated a fiscal fraud probe against Google more than four years ago, and it has been concluded. The company has to pay more than 1.1 billion dollars. The settlement comprises of a 500 million euro fine, as well as 465 million euros of additional taxes. However, this amount is less than what the authorities hoped to receive (1.6 billion euros!) when they raided Google’s offices in Paris in 2016. But, Google can pay this fine with nearly three days of revenue, especially how their share’s price has jumped by more than 1.2%.

The crux of this issue lies within an international tax loophole, allowing major US companies, such as Google or Apple, to report almost the entirety of their European sales in Ireland’s financial jurisdiction. Let’s add the fact that Ireland has ultra-low corporate tax rates, so while the companies pay negligible taxes in other European countries, they save a lot of money by paying most of their tax via Ireland.

France has been leading an active crusade against this practice by promoting the adoption of a unified digital tax uniformly applicable on all EU members, but four countries (Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland) oppose it as they benefit from the current system. The end of this probe means that the French authorities might start to look into other major companies’ financial system. We understand that the French want the proper tax they should receive after the companies’ revenue earned in their financial jurisdiction. (And, in the United States, the companies that tax via off-shore countries, are also potentially under fire. We wrote about Activision Blizzard’s situation.)

So Google paid a lot of money, and we can’t even imagine the amount in banknote stacks…

Source: WCCFTech

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