According to documents filed at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, Google moved USD 22.7 billion through a Dutch shell company to Bermuda in 2017 in order to reduce its foreign tax bill, the Guardian reports.
Google’s Netherlands subsidiary is used to shift revenues from outside the US to Google Ireland Holdings, an affiliate based in Bermuda, where companies pay no income tax.
The strategy is legal, but under pressure from the EU and US, Ireland decided in 2014 to phase out the arrangement and end Google’s tax advantages in 2020.
The 2017 amount was about EUR 4 billion higher than in 2016. For more than ten years, the arrangement has allowed Google’s parent company Alphabet to reach a single-digit effective tax rate on its non-US profits – about a quarter of the average tax rate in its overseas markets.