Social media giant Facebook pays £15 million tax on £1.2 billion UK revenues

Facebook is in trouble over its taxes
AP
Mark Shapland8 October 2018

FACEBOOK faced fresh criticism today after revealing it paid £15.7 million in tax on UK revenues of £1.2 billion.

The social media giant has more than tripled the amount it hands to the exchequer from £5.1 million in 2016, with profits up from £58.5 million to £62 million as revenues increased by a third.

But the company’s corporate tax bill has caused outrage among politicians and industry experts. Russ Shaw at Tech London Advocates said: “This is a massive problem and it’s time the Chancellor and the Prime Minister sorted it. Action needs to take place on a global level so that companies can no longer take advantage of loopholes in the system.”

Chancellor Philip Hammond has raised the prospect of a new digital services tax to prevent Silicon Valley companies — also including Google and Twitter — from moving sales figures through other countries to cut their UK tax bills.

Mr Hammond is expected to lay out the proposals in his budget on October 29, with an expected tax on advertising revenue.

However, some politicians fear that pushing too hard on tax could chase the social media giants away.

Last year Facebook’s staff headcount in the UK grew to 1,290, from 960, and company spending on research and development rose to £264 million.

Steve Hatch, Facebook’s head of Northern Europe, said: “The UK is home to our largest engineering base outside the US and we continue to invest heavily here.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in