Twitter’s New Dublin Office Will Cut 16% Off Its EU Tax – Maybe More


Twitter’s New Dublin Office Will Cut 16% Off Its EU Tax – Maybe More

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Following the long- tradition of US companies in Europe (joining Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, PayPal, LinkedIn, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Apple, HP and Zynga) Ireland’s 12% corporation


tax, and 45 minute flight from London (where corporation tax is 28%) is just too tempting not to take advantage of. One annual board meeting later and you can be back at you Mayfair pad in


one day.


Facebook employs around 250 people in Ireland and Google, according to Silicon Republic, employs almost 2,000 people at its European headquarters there. However, generally speaking the


engineering centres remain in the US.


Twitter’s London operation is an advertisng sales office located in London’s West End, home of the media.


The Dublin operation will be Twitter’s third location outside of the United States.


Note that Twitter recently won a tax fight with the San Francisco city.


According to Bloomberg, Google managed to cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years by moving most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.


This strategy is known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich”. You move money through Amsterdam and Dublin. Thus Google reduced its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the


lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization.


Apart from London Twitter also has an office in Japan, where it’s enjoyed a lot of success.


It would be interesting to see if Twitter ends up following such a path following the Dublin move.


Mike Butcher (M.B.E.), formerly Editor-at-large of TechCrunch, has written for UK national newspapers and magazines and been named one of the most influential people in European technology


by Wired UK. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, Web Summit, and DLD. He has interviewed Tony Blair, Dmitry Medvedev, Kevin Spacey, Lily Cole, Pavel Durov, Jimmy Wales, and many other


tech leaders and celebrities. Mike is a regular broadcaster, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera and Bloomberg. He has also advised UK Prime Ministers and the Mayor


of London on tech startup policy, as well as being a judge on The Apprentice UK. GQ magazine named him one of the 100 Most Connected Men in the UK. He is the co-founder of TheEuropas.com


(Top 100 listing of European startups); and the non-profits Techfugees.com, TechVets.co, and Startup Coalition. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2016 for


services to the UK technology industry and journalism.