Technology companies should have "a sense of responsibility" for paying taxes, as the amount of tax paid by them is very small compared to the returns, the Bank of England governor Mark Carney told on Friday.
This is the story:
Wading into the global tax row, Mark Carney told an audience in Davos, Switzerland, that there should be a “sense of responsibility” among technology firms that were making bumper profits and paying relatively little tax.
“We should recognise that the firms that take advantage of international tax rules are technology companies. The amount of tax that’s paid by technology companies is very small relative to the returns,” he told a BBC debate on Friday.
Or as others have reported:
"Carney did not name any tech companies by name, but his remarks will add to the pressure on firms such as Google, which uses offshore arrangements to reduce its tax bill in the UK. Latest accounts for Google UK show sales of just £642m in 2013 and corporation tax of £21.6m. The wider group, however, makes clear the scale of its business with UK customers was far larger — sales of £3.6bn ($5.6bn) in fact — the lion’s share of which was diverted through Ireland. This helped Google reach an effective tax rate of 15.7% for 2013 — well below the headline tax rate in the UK and all its major markets. Carney’s comments fuel a controversy already raging in the UK, and last month George Osborne announced plans to impose a 25% levy on profits generated in Britain but shifted abroad."
