Google Ireland staffers who administer and manage advertising for Google in the United Kingdom are paid less than half of what their UK support staff are paid. That’s according to a new report from The Guardian which says Google workers in the UK, who actually support the work of the workers in Ireland, are paid a yearly average wage of £160,000 while the Irish workers bring in an average of £72,783. Google Ireland raked in a whopping £5 billion in advertising revenue from UK ad sales but paid zero taxes on that revenue.
Google bosses will be grilled by parliament’s public accounts committee this week over how they have managed to continue with their controversial Irish tax structures in the face of repeated promises from politicians to close these arrangements down.
The relationship between Google sales teams in London and Dublin is likely to be at the heart of MPs’ questioning.
Four years ago, Matt Brittin, Google’s European sales boss, told MPs that staff in the UK only encourage British advertisers to buy from the search group, but the advertisers ultimately buy “from our expert team in Dublin”.
He stressed: “Anybody who buys advertising from us in Europe buys from Google in Ireland from our expert team.”
Google has been in hot water with the European Union over their “sweetheart tax deal” with the UK which many have condemned and the EU is investigating. Not only have Google Ireland regular staffers been paid less than their UK support staff, The Guardian reports even Google Ireland directors were only compensated £1,265,000 despite sales of £14 billion.
The dispute between Google and the EU isn’t going away anytime soon as investigators continue to chip away at a very complex corporate infrastructure that’s designed to take advantage of the ins and outs of tax codes.
What do you think of Google Ireland staffers getting much less than their UK support staff? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
[button link=”http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/07/google-ireland-staff-paid-less-than-half-their-london-colleagues” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: The Guardian[/button]Last Updated on January 23, 2017.
