Airbnb paid HMRC £188,000 for last year’s UK tax return

Airbnb paid HMRC £188,000 for last year’s UK tax return

11:25 AM, 9th October 2017, About 7 years ago 1

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Although Airbnb collected more than £675 million in rental payments last year their total payment to HMRC for corporation tax was £188,000.

The commissions earned by Airbnb are booked through it’s subsidiary in Ireland, but they also have two British subsidiaries. It is one of these subsidiaries that made a pre-tax profit of £960,000, Airbnb Payments UK, that takes payments for non UK properties excluding the USA, India and China.

The corporation tax on this of £188,000 was down slightly on the amount paid the previous year 2015 by £5,000.

Airbnb UK, runs the marketing for the UK website and app and declared a pre-tax profit of £463,000, but gave tax deductable shares to staff wiping out the corporation tax liability.

Airbnb reported to the press: “Our UK office provides marketing services and pays all applicable taxes, including VAT. The Airbnb model is unique and boosted the UK economy by £3.46 billion last year alone.”

“The overwhelming amount of money generated by the Airbnb platform stays with local hosts and their communities, and is subject to local tax.”

Airbnb takes a 3% commission from bookings and also charges fees to travellers with nearly 170,000 listings alone in the UK.

This is unlikely to placate the European Union who have recently been taking legal action against member states and international companies for their tax affairs that break anti-competitive EU rules. These include Luxembourg with Amazon deals and Ireland with Apple.


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Comments

Southern Er

14:38 PM, 9th October 2017, About 7 years ago

The worst bit about this is its probably perfectly legal for them to do what they have done.

Meanwhile, we are paying tax on profit that does not exist.

Seems legit!

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