WATCH John McDonnell: £50m Google tax bill is an insult
2 min read
John McDonnell has branded the £50m tax bill for web giant Google an “insult”.
The Shadow Chancellor said the Conservatives had “turned a blind eye to tax avoidance by an elite few” and local services were footing the bill through cuts.
The tech behemoth will pay corporation tax of £49.3m on profits of £202.4m in the UK, according to its latest annual accounts.
The figure is slightly higher than the £36.4m Google paid last year, but is tiny compared to its sales in Britain amount to about £5.7bn a year.
An outraged Mr McDonnell said: “Frankly, it’s an insult.”
“Under the Tory tax system there is one rule for the super rich and another for the rest of us,” he said in a new video made by Labour.
“For eight years the Tories have turned a blind eye to tax avoidance by an elite few while they have ben cutting the services our communities rely on.”
He said the result of global firms avoiding tax included schools facing their first real terms cuts since the 1980s and the NHS being “deprived of the funding it needs”.
And he added: “The next Labour government will crack down on tax evasion and avoidance so that everyone pays their fair share.”
Labour issued a 17-point plan to tackle the issue ahead of the general election last year, including forcing those earning more than £1m to make their tax returns public.
It also proposed a ‘Robin Hood Tax’ on financial transactions - which the party argued would raise some £26bn.
Former Chancellor George Osborne was ridiculed in 2016 when he lauded a one-off tax deal for Google to pay £130m in backdated tax as a “major success”.
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