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Facebook is free to stop operating in the UK if it wants. If wants to continue operating in the UK, and retain ownership of Giphy, then any UK based assets they have (such as revenue from UK business) will probably end up being forfeited via fines from the regulator.

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Cmon. They have a huge engineering office there bringing in massive amounts of tax revenue already. UkGov doesn’t want to chase off 1000x employees bringing in £100M of income tax revenue. FB’s VAT on ad sales in the UK is probably only £500m.

Facebook paid just £28.5m in UK corporation tax in 2018, despite record £1bn in UK Sales.

Once again, cmon.

Facebook has a significant and legitimate cost centre in Menlo Park, CA.

As in, sure, FBUK sell ads, but the value is backed by a 4billion eyeball set of social networks that didn’t just build themselves.

> FB’s VAT on ad sales in the UK is probably only £500m.

It is probably closer to £0. VAT is only chargeable on non-business ad sales. Where a Facebook does pay VAT for a sale to a business, that cost is passed on to the buyer, which can claim it back from HMRC. The exception being very small businesses that are below the VAT registration threshold.

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