Facebook pays just £28m in UK corporation tax in 2018 after sales worth almost £800m
Facebook paid just £28m in UK corporation tax in 2018 according to its latest filing at Companies House.
This is despite it having recognised sales worth £797m with a gross profit of £763.4m for the year.
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It is the latest example of US multi-national groups using loopholes to avoid paying UK tax.
Facebook’s UK operation claimed £666.8m in administrative expenses to reduce its pre-tax profit to just £96.6m.
That was up from £62.8m in 2017, when the group paid just £17m in tax to HMRC, but still meant only £28m was paid in 2018.
The social media giant is worth around £514bn on the New York Stock Exchange and recently opened new head offices in Kings Cross, central London. It’s European head office is in Dublin.
In its accounts Facebook said: “The company has continued to grow during the year, resulting in an increased headcount of 52 per cent, from 1,290 in 2017 to 1,965 in 2018.”
The full accounts also revealed Facebook UK’s gross revenue from “advertisers and others” had risen to £1.6bn from £1.3bn a year ago.
This was a key reason for the growth in recognised revenue to £797m last year, from £530m in 2017.
It also noted its new Kings Cross base would “enable the company to expand in the future”.
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“We continue to grow and invest heavily in the UK and by the end of the year we’ll employ 3,000 people here,” said Steve Hatch, Facebook’s vice president for northern Europe. “These high-skilled jobs are not only working on products like WhatsApp and Workplace but also help develop technology to proactively detect and remove malicious content from our platforms.
“Businesses across the country use our platforms to grow and revenue from customers supported by our UK teams is now recorded here so that any taxable profit is subject to UK corporation tax.”