Facebook’s United Kingdom operations paid only £4,327 in taxes past year, less than the average worker.
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To do so, it handed out £35.4million worth of shares onto its British staff, making their employees’ average remuneration package worth approximately £200,000.
Its widening losses allowed Facebook to minimise its corporation tax bill in Britain, the newspaper reported.
It paid the taxman just £4,327 over the period – substantially less than HM Revenue and Customs collects from the typical British worker.
Many of its other profits from the United Kingdom are sent to its global headquarters in Ireland, which then puts them in the low-tax Cayman Islands, reports the Sunday Times.
The amount is less than the tax paid by a single person earning the average United Kingdom wage of £26,500, which generates £3,180 in income tax and £2,213 in National Insurance.
Margaret Hodge, former chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, told the Daily Mail Facebook was “still refusing to listen to the voice of public opinion” adding that the company was “using elaborate corporate structures and artificial devices for no objective other than to avoid tax”.
‘We have to take tough to crack down on this behaviour, and the United Kingdom should be leading the way on this issue.”.
The tax bill is up from last year – when it paid no corporation tax at all, for the second year running.
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The revelation is set to fuel more controversy over the £169billion firm’s complex tax arrangements.
