Please ask me to investigate Google’s tax affairs — EU Commissioner

Italian tax authorities have estimated that Google evaded 227 million euros ($247.5 million) in taxes between 2009 and 2013, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.

As this graphic shows, the company only paid £9m.

“The truth is it’s a move in the right direction”, he said. “There is more for them to pay and I want them to pay more in future”, he said.

Mr Anderson told The Times that Google and other global companies accused of failing to pay their fair share of tax would earn respect if they agreed voluntarily to contribute “much more”.

“But I am absolutely clear that no (British) government has done more than this one to crack down on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance”. “It is absurd to blame the company for “not paying their taxes”.

The Cabinet minister said he expected the NAO to come under pressure to examine the deal. The EU has filed formal charges against the United States tech giant for skewing its search results to favor its own comparison-shopping service and is probing the company’s behavior in other markets including its position as the maker of the smartphone software operating system Android. “General Motors would do it if they could, but it’s hard to categorize the income from selling cars as intellectual property”.

He added: “If the NAO made a decision to do it, it wouldn’t be something George could stop”.

Writing to the Financial Times, Google said it is acting in accordance with the law.

“If we find there is something to be concerned about, if someone writes to us and says, “This is maybe not as it should be”, then we will take a look”, said Vetager in a report by the Standard.

Some analysts, and Google itself, have argued that most of the company’s costs are spent on the coders and designers based in the United States, not on the marketing and sales teams who sell ads in the UK.

Executives from Google and HMRC bosses are to be grilled on the deal by the PAC on February 11 in the latest of a series of hearings by the influential spending watchdog into multinationals’ tax affairs.

An online petition calling for the European Union to investigate a secret tax deal between Google and the British government has received 30,000 signatures so far.

The European Commission has announced a new drive to align tax laws in all 28 member states, to help in the fight against aggressive tax practices by large companies.

The measure was dubbed a “Google Tax” when unveiled by the Treasury in 2014, as it was specifically created to tackle tax-avoiding corporations.

And today we revealed the measly £130million clawed back from Google by HMRC has already been spent on bonuses for tax office staff over the past decade.

A senior HMRC official insisted that it was collecting the “full tax due in law”. Companies are now subject to a 25 percent tax on artificially diverted profits.

The stage is set for Europe to investigate Google over its tax arrangements.

Commenters have rubbished Osborne’s initial claims that the United Kingdom tax deal was a “major success”.