Google has no office, no staff and little more than a plain PO Box numbered 666 on the sunny Caribbean Island of Bermuda.
But it still sends £8billion in profits a year to the island – which happens to have a 0 per cent corporation tax rate.
Google’s communications chief Peter Barron today insisted the billions of pounds funnelled from the search engine’s global network of subsidiaries had no impact on the firm’s tax bill in Britain.
Staff working at the office officially home to Google’s ‘base’ in Bermuda claimed to have no knowledge of the search giant’s presence on the paradise island
But after a week dominated by criticism of an agreement between Google – which once had the slogan ‘Don’t be Evil’ – and HMRC to pay just £130million in back taxes for the past decade details of the company’s arrangement on Bermuda are set to shock.
Google’s tax bill in Britain is held down by the firm’s insistence it has no ‘permanent’ base here – on the basis all sales in Europe are made via Dublin.
But Google has five major offices in Britain and 5,000 staff working here.
