Google avoided about $2 billion in global income taxes last year by shifting $9.8 billion in revenue into a Bermuda shell company, Bloomberg reported.

That level is almost double the total from three years ago, Bloomberg said, citing a Nov. 21 regulatory filing by a Google subsidiary in the Netherlands. And it allowed Google to cut its overall tax rate almost in half.

Google's action -- moving about 80 percent of its total pretax profit from 2011 to tax-free Bermuda -- isn't illegal. On the contrary, many companies have taken similar steps in recent years to avoid paying steep taxes.

Some, like Cisco and Qualcomm, have pushed for tax holidays that would allow them to bring foreign-held cash back to the U.S. at much lower tax rates. They have argued that such holidays would allow them to create more jobs and help the economy, but critics say that's often not true. Instead, companies often institute dividends and other policies to reward investors and executives.

So Eric Schmidt is right there with John Kerry and Tim Geitner and Warren Buffet in professing their for increasing taxes yet assiduosly working to avoid paying them themselves. I guess Leona Helmsley was correct after all.

Google pays taxes here in the US. This article is about how they avoid paying taxes on their overseas earnings, primarily in Europe, which is why it says the UK, France, Italy, etc., are investigating.

The original Bloomberg article (which your’s links to) had a lot more info in it. Even had fun terms in it like “Double Irish” and “Dutch Sandwich”. Those are tax-avoidance strategies, regardless of how they sound...

The hypocrisy is in the CEO being one of those people loudly demanding taxes increase on the rich on corporations WHILE his company hides money from taxes. If he thinks companies should be paying more taxes then the first thing he should do is have his company pay more taxes.

14
posted on 12/10/2012 12:18:05 PM PST
by discostu
(Not a part of anyone's well oiled machine.)

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