Facebook has sparked outrage after it was revealed the company – which shelled out an average of £210,000 in pay and bonuses to British staff last year – paid just £4,327 in corporation tax.
According to the firm’s latest accounts, the business made an accounting loss of £28.5m in Britain in 2014, after paying out more than £35m to its 362 staff in a share bonus scheme.
The share scheme was worth about £96,000 for each member of staff, and once salaries were taken into account, British staff received more than £210,000 on average each.
However, as if to rub salt in the wounds of HMRC, Facebook made a profit on its worldwide operations of $2.9bn (£1.9bn), on revenue of $12.5bn. UK revenues were £105m last year.
John Christensen, the director of campaign group the Tax Justice Network, said: “It’s very likely they’re using all the usual techniques to shift profits around.”
A spokeswoman for Facebook defended the move, saying: “We are compliant with UK tax law, and in fact in all countries where we have operations and offices. We continue to grow our business activities in the UK”. She added that all the firm’s employees paid UK income tax on their payouts.
Related stories
New ruling halts US data transfer
US firms hit by data transfer ruling
ECJ wrecks US tech giants data plans
Facebook hit by illegal data use claim
Facebook chief bigs up data privacy
Facebook defends record on data
