Big Tech avoided $278 billion in corporate tax over the past decade

Fair Tax Foundation: “This report, The Silicon Six and their enduring global tax gap, analyses the long- run effective tax rate of the Silicon Six (Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft and Netflix) over the past decade. It is a variation of analysis we last undertook in 2019 and 2021. These businesses dominate digital infrastructure and services across many parts of the world. Together, they have a combined market capitalisation of $12.9tn and are worth more than the entire FTSE 100 and Euro Stoxx 50 combined. Their revenue was $1.8tn last year, which is greater than the annual GDP of all but eleven nations. They exert enormous political influence as well as economic power: spending $115mn directly lobbying government in the United States and European Union in 2024. Once again, we find a significant difference between the corporate income cash taxes paid and both the expected headline rates of tax and the reported current tax provisions. Over the past ten years, the Silicon Six have generated $11tn of revenue and $2.5tn of profits, which has been subject to just 18.8% corporate income tax across the globe at a time when the combined corporate income rate averaged 29.7% in the United States and 27.0% worldwide. If one-off repatriation tax payments connected to historical tax avoidance are excluded, the Silicon Six’s corporate income tax contribution falls to 16.1% over the past decade. Over the period 2015 to 2024: • the gap between the headline rates of tax and the corporate income cash taxes actually paid was $277.8bn • the gap between the current tax provisions and the corporate income cash taxes actually paid was $82.1bn Despite nearly half of their revenue (49%) being derived overseas, just 36% of profits are booked outside the United States and just 30% of current tax provisions are reported as being ‘foreign’ over the past ten years – with the corporate income cash taxes paid overseas being likely lower still. Overseas revenue would seem to be generally subject to much lower rates of income tax than US-booked domestic revenue – due to a combination of lower booked margins and profit-shifting to low-tax jurisdictions. There is evidence that aggressive tax practices are still firmly embedded among the Silicon Six. Their reported uncertain tax positions have more than tripled over the decade, and now collectively total $82.5bn. In other words, the Silicon Six have claimed $82.5bn of tax benefits that they believe they will likely lose upon tax authority audit. Furthermore, the persistent growth in these tax contingencies is likely to be substantially inflating the reported tax charges of the Silicon Six and presenting a false impression as to the size of their tax contributions. Much of the Silicon Six’s overseas revenue is subject to ‘tax haven’ level rates of corporate income tax in the United States via a tax break for foreign-derived intangible income. This is especially so at Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google) and Netflix, where the Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII) deduction reduced their effective tax rate by a substantial five percentage points each in 2024. The FDII has been worth $30bn to the Silicon Six over the past three years alone. Our ranking of 2025 once again matches that of 2019 and 2021: with our ranking of worst tax conduct as follows: • 1st Amazon • 2nd Meta (Facebook) • 3rd Alphabet (Google) • 4th Netflix • 5th Apple • 6th Microsoft..”