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Comment by t0mas88 | Hacker News Reader

Google is not just an American company. As a big "fuck you" to Google: the majority of revenue runs through Ireland and the Netherlands. Nice tax plan, but it means they can't easily evade the European Commission.

I actually really applaud this step. Don't get me wrong, this should not be considered anti-American, but if you run a global company getting revenue from a lot of countries you should be prepared to follow their laws and pay taxes. It is that way for physical goods, and it's pure stupid arrogance to think that delivering online products exempts you from all of it.

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Can you break out exactly how much revenue goes through Ireland and the Netherlands?

Everything that does not originate in the US is run through the tax construction they have setup going through a po-box firm in Amsterdam and Ireland. The same construction is used by many others, including Facebook, Apple and even U2.

Not sure whether they specify this number in their quarterly reports, but given that it's "the world" vs the US revenue it is definitely a majority.

Edit: 17 billion out of 40 billion (both in euros and 2013 figures) global revenue runs through Google Ireland Ltd alone and that's reported as ad sales from Europe only. I did not find a report for the Netherlands, but there is more revenue from outside Europe taking this route as well since it's the cheapest route for anything that is not coming from the US.

It looks like it's very unlikely that Europe is the majority of Google's revenue, and I doubt all revenue globally outside the US runs through Ireland & Co (can you back that up with data?).

For the latest quarter: "Our revenues from outside of the United States totaled $9.55 billion, representing 58% of total revenues in the third quarter of 2014, compared to 58% in the second quarter of 2014 and 56% in the third quarter of 2013."

Unless the rest of the world outside of Europe only has ~8%, and or all global revenue actually does go through Ireland & Co (again, I'm skeptical it's 100%). That's possible, but it's seems unlikely.

There is a simple reason all revenue outside the US goes through Ireland and the Netherlands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

From the Wikipedia page: "The offshore company continues to receive all of the profits from exploitation of the rights outside the US, but without paying US tax on the profits unless and until they are remitted to the US.[5]"

So yes: all of it goes through Europe.

That is a separate issue.

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