French tax department to ask €1BN from Google ?

Pascale Paoli-Lebailly | 05-11-2012

According to weekly newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné, the French Tax department is to ask €1 billion from Google to cover four financial years.

The search engine is said to have earned between €1.25-€1.4 billion, mostly transfered to its Irish offices, but only declared €138 million in France. This means it would have only paid around €5 million as part of the corporation tax.

This comes at a time when Google is in negotiations with French press editors over revenue sharing from content posted online.

The tax demand follows the German Government’s approval of draft legislation in August that would force search engines to pay commission to German media websites. Google has warned it would exclude French newspapers from its search engine if France implemented such a law.