The first domino in what likely could be a set of dominoes over tax avoidance in the UK and elsewhere may be about to fall - Google. (see Apple Dodges $44 Billion In Taxes)Barney Jones, 34, former executive with Google between 2002 and 2006 is in the UK spilling beans over how he says Google diverted it's British profits through Ireland to a Bermuda tax haven.
“The real victims are ordinary taxpayers in Britain who are being cheated by Google,” said Jones. “They don’t have the means to hire accountants to pretend they make their money in Ireland, Bermuda or the British Virgin Islands. What Google is doing is immoral.”
Imagine a corporate exec waking with night sweat in a morality crises - a first!
Jones says he has over 100,000 internal emails to backup his claims. If so he runs the risk of getting nailed himself for theft of corporate property. But that's just conjecture on the Angle's part since no one really knows what the guy has or, if anything how he got it.
Peter Barron, Google’s director of external relations, said: “...it is difficult to respond fully to documents we have not seen...None of the allegations put to us change the fact that Google pays the corporate tax due on its UK activities and complies fully with UK law.” See how the lawyers talk now? Sure they paid the tax on what they owed, but that doesn't dismiss the possible fact that they 'engineered' a way to lower the income upon which they would owe tax.
Stay tuned. Silicon valley companies don't do things like this in a vacuum, they learn from and copy each other. Google is just the biggest kid on the block is all.
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