Rupert Murdoch slams “posh boys” in Downing Street over Google tax deal
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter today to blast politicians in the UK and the US for giving Google an easy way out of questions over its tax arrangements.
Google recently reached a £130m deal with HMRC over corporation tax claims covering a 10-year period.
However, Murdoch referred to the payment as a "token amount", handed over for "PR purposes".
In a series of tweets, the News Corp boss accused politicians of being "easily awed" by tech industry figures such as Google chairman Eric Schmidt, and said the tech giant had "planted dozens of their people" in governments around the world.
Google et al broke no tax laws. Now paying token amounts for p r purposes. Won't work. Need strong new laws to pay like the rest of us.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 27, 2016
Global tech companies making enormous profits most places, funnelling $$ thru tax havens. Unless stopped will ruin local businesses who pay.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 27, 2016
Tech tax breaks facilitated by politicians easily awed by Valley ambassadors like Google chairman Schmidt eg, posh boys in Downing St.@
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 27, 2016
Google has cleverly planted dozens of their people in White House, Downing St, other governments.
Most brilliant new lobbying effort yet.— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 27, 2016
Prime Minister David Cameron today laid the blame for the delay in collecting corporation tax from Google at Labour's door.
"We're talking about tax that should have been collected under a Labour government, raised by a Conservative government," he said at Prime Minister's Questions. "No government has done more than this one to crack down on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. No government, and certainly not the last Labour government."