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Tax

Facebook paid only £28m tax on record £1.6bn UK revenues in 2018

Facebook’s UK operations paid only £28m in corporation tax last year, despite achieving a record £1.6bn in British sales.

The social media platform’s latest UK accounts also show that pretax profits increased by 54% from £63m to £97m.

Margaret Hodge former chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee called the figure “outrageous” and  tweeted: “One year later and a little has changed. This year Facebook paid £28m of tax on UK income of £1.6bn. 

“These big corporations simply must pay more tax. They rely on our infrastructure, our expertise, and our sales so they must pay their fair share into society. Still outrageous.”

Steve Hatch, Facebook vice-president for Northern Europe, said: “The UK is now one of Facebook’s most important hubs of global innovation. We continue to grow and invest heavily in the UK and by the end of the year we’ll employ 3,000 people here. 

Business across the country use our platforms to grow and revenue from customers supported by our UK teams is now recorded here so that any tax profit is subjected to UK corporation tax.”

According to the BBC, Facebook said it “complies with tax laws in all jurisdictions and pays what is legally due”.

The news comes as the Organisation for Economic and Development (OECD) announced a consultation on its proposal to advance international negotiations on a new approach to defining nexus and travel pricing, that would see governments given “more power” to tax big technology companies such as Facebook, Google and Apple.

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