Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Microsoft & Yahoo paid a combined total of 1.251.608 euros in tax last year in Spain.
Not news, after the UK fuss, but it seems to have shocked Spain.
They follow the usual protocol of just having a local subsidary to look after advertising, merchants, etc in the country, but booking all revenue offshore.
What’s worse, is that they have a very small combined staff in Spain. Meaning that, unlike the UK, they sell a lot here and, apart from advertising, don´t leave much behind at all.
Hacienda launched, with a great fanfare, a large technology corporate investigation last year. They started with a large investigation into Google. After analysing their accounts, they finally signed off on them, deciding that yes, they were legal. This seems to dampened their ardour.
Despite having a large turnover in Spain, these companies are able to offset their profits against losses and investments. For example:
El Pais reckons that combined, these companies turned over a total of 577.8 million euros in Spain last year, but had a combined loss of 15.8 million euros.