Newly filed Google Ireland Holdings accounts show $75B+ in profits moved through the subsidiary in 2019, the last year Google used the “double Irish” tax scheme
This filing closes the books on a decade-long structure. Bloomberg's earlier reporting showed Googlemoved $19.2B to a Bermuda shell company in 2016, routed through Irish and Dutch entities with no staff — the same pipeline whose 2019 throughput is now quantified at more than $75B.
Google's Irish entities booked their largest documented year of the scheme — over $75B routed through Google Ireland Holdings in 2019 alone, far above the $19.2B Bloomberg reported moving to Bermuda two years earlier — just before the arrangement ended.
Second-order effects
Irish authorities converted the wind-down into recoveries: filings later that year recorded a €218M backdated corporation tax payment and a €345.2M total settlement from Google Ireland, whose local revenue had grown to €48.4B in 2020.
Google follows the path Facebook set when it shut its Irish subsidiary under IRS pressure, suggesting US tax exposure rather than European rulings alone is what ends these structures — Google's earlier win against France's $1.3B bill did not stop the retreat.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, profit-shifting through staffless offshore shells gives way to onshoring with higher taxes paid at the operating-entity level, eroding the arbitrage that made Dublin a routing hub for US tech profits.
The trend: US tech giants are unwinding Irish offshore tax structures and repatriating profit recognition, trading aggressive avoidance for larger domestic and Irish tax bills.
@ballyhea14 @ciananbrennan What is obscene? A company in Ireland uses technology developed elsewhere and pays for the right to use that technology. Is the principle of paying for something someone else developed obscene? Or is the scale obscene given its such a massive company?
@ballyhea14 @ciananbrennan Google as a whole made a massive pre-tax profit of almost $40 billion in 2019. Maybe that's obscene. The overall accounts also show that it paid $8.2 billion of corporate income tax in 2019. This corresponds so the 20% rate quoted in the piece. https://…
@ballyhea14 @ciananbrennan And for what it's worth the company in Bermuda didn't get the technology for free. In 2019, it paid $14.1bn to the US parent (out of revenues of $26.5bn) as part of the licensing arrangement to get the rights to Google's technology. And the residual pro…
Google laundered $75 billion in profits through Ireland, using a system that allowed them to pay $0 in tax and robbing not just Irish taxpayers, but taxpayers all over the world. This is truly, madly, deeply wrong and it has to stop.
“Companies exploiting the double Irish put their intellectual property into an Irish-registered company that is controlled from a tax haven such as Bermuda” That way, “Google shifted more than $75.4 billion ... in profits out of the Republic ... in 2019”: https://www.irishtimes.c…
“Although the [Google] company was registered in #Ireland, for the purposes of [NOT] paying tax it was based in Bermuda.” Seventy-five billion euro in completely untaxed profits, gifted by FFFG, without any moderation by the Green Party. https://www.rte.ie/...
The double Irish was “abolished” in 2015. But companies already using it could continue to do so until 2020. In 2019, Google used it to shift €63 billion in profits. Absolutely ridiculous Ireland let companies exploit a known tax loophole for so long. https://www.irishtimes.com/.…
I'm grateful to Google for helping me search for things online, but that gratitude does not extend to them fixing it so they keep 100% of their income, while I and every other individual Irish resident pays income tax at a bonkers rate. https://www.irishtimes.com/...
Total revenue of the Irish state from all tax and levies: €56.2 billion. Total profits shifted out of the country to avoid tax by ONE COMPANY: €63 billion. https://twitter.com/...
Honestly, this just blows my mind. Imagine if it was discovered someone was gaming Ireland's welfare system. Would they be given 5 years to “phase out” the arrangement? https://twitter.com/...
That's $18.75m of profit moved for each one of its 4,000 employees in Ireland - not a bad little return on their investment not to mention the profits from the output of those 4,000! RTE news : Google subsidiary moved $75bn profits through Ireland https://www.rte.ie/...
#loadsamoney That's a lot of #taxfree dosh and it's just a subsidiary..... Google subsidiary moved $75bn profits through Ireland via @RTENews https://www.rte.ie/...
Google used ‘double-Irish’ to shift $75.4bn in profits out of Ireland in 2019, escaping corporation tax both in the Republic and in the United States, @ChasTaylor reports https://www.irishtimes.com/...
Google shifted more than $75.4 billion (€63 billion) in profits out of the Republic using the controversial “double-Irish” tax arrangement in 2019, the last year in which it used the loophole https://www.irishtimes.com/...
Multinationals pay over 80% of all corporation tax revenue in #Ireland. Corporation tax receipts were up 9% last year, €950 million up on the previous year. https://twitter.com/...
Pay your tax poor people - Billionaires do not have to pay even one miserable cent Google holding company reported a $13 billion pretax profit for 2019, effectively tax-free #wtpBLUE https://www.irishtimes.com/...
Generations to come will ask why did successive FFG governments whore Ireland out to MNCs for so little Google: $75 billion in profits in 2019. $0 paid in tax Going this low was only ever in the interests of MNCs + domestic Irish elites, NOT Irish people https://www.irishtimes.co…
This is obscene and exactly what FG had in mind when they allowed a four-year phase-out for the double-Irish. Shameful stuff. https://www.irishtimes.com/...