The US corporate tax pace is 35 % . Google , partly founded with taxpayer money and trading at $ 607 a share , pays 22 % . How is this possible ? Through an arsenal of offshore tax put-on with names like the “ Dutch Sandwich . ”
Google ’s startlingly low charge per unit — how much do you pay every year?—goes back to a deal brokered with the IRS itself . The feds allow Google licence its hunting and advertising tech to a foot soldier in Ireland — Google Ireland Holdings — which beginsa long , international cash siphonthat stop in Bermuda . Licensing tech from Google racks up expense , which allow Google ’s dummy caller to fudge Irish tax law . The money generated in Ireland is shuttled to the Netherlands , which , because of EU law , further keep politics hand out of Google ’s earnings . From here , revenue is paid to another subsidiary in Bermuda , where it becomes almost unseeable — under Irish law , this tropical tail oddment of this money Hydra is n’t expect to disclose any financial document .
Using Ireland as go - between is a vulgar recitation — Microsoft does it , and Facebook is depend to do it . So why does it weigh ? Should we just clap them for being as bright as we ’d await them to be , and save a big bucks of cash ?
No .
Speaking to Bloomberg intelligence , Abraham J. Briloff , a professor emeritus of accounting at Baruch College , sum it up : Google is “ flying a banner of doing no evil , and then they ’re commit immorality under our nose . Who is it that paid for the underlying conception on which they built these billions of dollar sign of revenue ? It was paid for by the United States citizenry . ”
And he ’s veracious .
The National Science Foundation — run with your revenue enhancement money — funded the Stanford University research that turned Google into what it is . Google wander on its taxes , even if technically legal , is a gross hypocrisy . Besides presenting a giant middle finger to its tax paying users , who do n’t make over $ 2 billion a quarter , it presents a 2nd , big middle finger’s breadth to the very organisation that put it on its feet . Nobody likes pay tax — and yes , you might have some legitimate beef with the way your tax money is spend . But the fact persist that some of it goes to things like , well , indirectly creating Google , and who knows what else in the future ? We might not evrer know , if mega technical school firm keep eating Dutch Sandwiches . [ Bloomberg ]
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