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by t0mas88 4230 days ago
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.

1 comments

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.