On Wednesday, a Paris administrative court ruled in favor of Google, which was charged with paying €1.1 billion ($1.3 billion USD) in back taxes, by French authorities. The court ruled that Google Ireland Limited, from 2005 to 2010, was not subject to corporate and value-added taxes. And struck down the tax administration’s demands for the search giant to pay back taxes for those years. This case had been ongoing for quite some time, considering the time frame is almost a decade ago. This ruling was followed by a court advisor’s recommendation that part of Google did not have a “permanent establishment” or sufficient taxable presence to justify such a bill.
This is just the latest for Google and its tax cases. Google, like a number of other companies (this includes other large tech companies, most notably Apple), are always looking for ways to get out of paying huge tax bills, as that means that the company will have less to pay its employees and invest in itself to become larger and offer better products. Google has been embroiled in a few different tax cases in the European Union, as well as anti-competitive suits. And those aren’t going away anytime soon. Google has been facing lawsuits over the way shopping results are shown in Google search results, as well as how they handle Android with the number of apps that are forced to be pre-installed on smartphones that are Google Mobile Services (or GMS) certified.
Currently, it’s unclear what the next step will be for Google and the French authorities, but this case is likely far from over. Seeing as that is a pretty large tax bill, the French are going to want that money, especially if they feel that Google does owe it. Even though Google is now part of Alphabet, it’s Google that owes the money and not Alphabet. Since Google is the only one with offices in multiple countries around the world. Taxes are something that many people hate to pay, but it’s a necessary evil. The authorities likely aren’t through with Google just yet, so its lawyers will be keeping pretty busy as this case continues.