China Business Blog - Aggregated China Business Blogs
Aggregated China Business Blogs
UK lawmaker berates 'evil' Google
Aggregated Source: Shanghai Daily: Business

A UK parliamentary committee chairwoman said yesterday that Google Inc was "evil" because of the way it sought to minimize its UK tax bills.

In an often-heated exchange with a Google executive, Margaret Hodge, a Labour Party lawmaker who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, said the company was exploiting the rules and acting unethically.

"Your company says you don't do evil; you do do evil, you use smoke and mirrors," Hodge told Matt Brittin, California-based Google's vice president for sales and operations in northern and central Europe. Hodge said Google practiced "devious, calculated and, in my view, unethical behavior."

At stake is an attempt by lawmakers to get Google to pay more tax in the UK by establishing whether the company is selling its services in the country. Google says that its UK-based employees aren't closing sales as that is done by employees in Ireland, and sometimes by the software itself, which has its non-US international intellectual property rights based in Bermuda.

Brittin said he hadn't misled Parliament at a November hearing, saying the company pays tax where it creates "economic value."

"Nobody in the UK has had an opportunity to close a transaction with a customer," Brittin told the cross-party panel in London.

"I stand by what I have said."

Yesterday's investigation follows a wider international effort to get companies to pay more tax as governments reduce spending programs to curb deficits.


Original URL: Click here to visit original article
Copyright Shanghai Daily: Business