“A former Google executive has blown the whistle on a massive and ‘immoral’ tax avoidance scheme that has ‘cheated’ British taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of pounds over the past decade,” Simon Duke and Jon Ungoed-Thomas report for The Sunday Times. “Barney Jones, 34, who worked for the internet search giant between 2002 and 2006, has lifted the lid on an elaborate structure which diverts British profits through Ireland to the Bermuda tax haven.”
“Although Google’s London sales staff would negotiate and sign contracts with British customers, and cash was paid into a UK bank account, deals were technically booked through its Dublin office to minimise its liabilities here,” Duke and Ungoed-Thomas report. “Jones, a devout Christian and father of four, is ready to hand over a cache of more than 100,000 emails and documents to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), detailing the ‘concocted scheme.'”
Read more in the full article here.
In a related article, Ungoed-Thomas and Duke report, “Jones, 34, a team manager, helped enlist some of Britain’s biggest companies to buy Google advertising.”
“During his four years at the firm, he sat in on numerous sales pitches in which companies agreed to join the Google bandwagon,” Ungoed-Thomas and Duke report. “Amazon, Lloyds TSB, Argos, British Airways and Sony were among the firms who agreed to buy advertising from Google UK sales teams.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tommy” for the heads up.]
Related article:
UK lawmakers challenge Google’s ‘smoke and mirrors’ on tax – May 16, 2013