How Corporations and the Wealthy Avoid Taxes (and How to Stop Them)<br />Google Ireland Holdings then created another Irish subsidiary, Google Ireland Limited,<br />and granted it a license to use the technology now owned by the Irish parent company.<br />In 2015, $15.5 billion in profits made their way to Google Ireland Holdings in Bermuda even though Google employs only a handful of people there.<br />Say Google’s parent company Alphabet makes $100 billion in profits globally,<br />and 50 percent of its sales in the United States (a relatively similar scenario to the first quarter of this year, in which that figure was 48 percent).<br />According to the latest available figures, 63 percent of all the profits made outside of the United States by American multinationals<br />are now reported in six low- or zero-tax countries: the Netherlands, Bermuda, Luxembourg, Ireland, Singapore and Switzerland.<br />By GABRIEL ZUCMAN<br />The United States loses, according to my estimates, close to $70 billion a year in tax revenue due to the shifting of corporate profits to tax havens.<br />By paying for fictitious consulting, Michael fraudulently reduces the taxable profits<br />of Michael & Company, and thus the amount of corporate income tax he pays.<br />Finally, Michael & Company buys fictitious services from the Cayman shell company (“consulting,” for example) ...<br />… and, to pay for these services, wires money to the shell company’s Cyprus account.
