Facebook would appear to have been sued by the United States International Revenue Service. The cause? The company headed by Mark Zuckerberg must $ 9 billion in unpaid taxes to the United States government. To report the news is the same British news agency Reuters.
A new battle from a legal point of view between the taxman and the big social network. It should not be forgotten that large companies such as Facebook enjoy enormous tax advantages by transferring property and revenues to countries where the rates are enormously more advantageous than those in the United States: in this case, the rates would have in fact been transferred to Ireland. According to the IRS, it is the subsidiaries that have allowed the company to exploit the accusation tax advantages related to the transfer. However, Facebook is not the only one to have offices in Ireland, including Google and Apple.
The trial could therefore see senior executives, including chief hardware Andrew Bosworth and direct technician Mike Schroepfer, called to testify. A process that, according to what Facebook expects, could last from three to four weeks. The list of witnesses also includes the names of Naomi Gleit and Javier Olivan, and Chief Revenue Officer David Fischer.
According to Reuters, Facebook Ireland paid Facebook USA well over $ 14 billion in royalties and cost-sharing payments, in the period between 2010 and 2016.
The IRS therefore argues that Facebook underestimated the value of the intellectual property it sold to an Irish subsidiary in 2010 and that Irish tax rates, being significantly lower than in the United States, reduced the company's tax bill.
