Google pays €28m in Irish tax

Google paid €28.6m in Irish corporation tax on international sales of €18.3bn last year, new figures show.

The internet services giant has its Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters in Dublin.

The latest figures for Google Ireland Ltd show turnover rose nearly 8% last year to €18.3bn; mainly driven by a rise in advertising revenues, generated by Google websites and Google Network Members’ websites.

The amount of tax paid here by the company last year was up from €27.7m in the previous year.

The latest accounts also show a rise in after-tax profits of €13.3m to €167.9m; while employment here grew 17% to 2,763 direct employees, cementing the company’s status as one of the largest multinational employers in Ireland.

“Our Dublin office is the largest Google office outside the US with more than 5,000 direct and contracted employees.

"Our ability to find people with the skills and talents we need to be able to build a strong business is hugely important and we’re continuing to recruit great talent in Dublin to support our customers across Europe, from sales and marketing, to developer support and user operations,” said Google Ireland chief Ronan Harris.

Google Ireland also invested just shy of €74m in research development and engineering last year.

“We continued to invest in Ireland during 2014 and this investment continues in 2015 with the construction of a second €150m data centre in west Dublin.

"This further strengthens Google’s commitment to Ireland and ensures we can meet our future growth requirements in the Dublin Docklands area,” Mr Harris added.