Google isn’t really evil, but our tax system is a muddle that breeds avoidance

‘You are a company that says you “do no evil”,’ Margaret Hodge told Google’s Matt Brittin a fortnight ago, ‘I think that you do do evil.’ It was a soundbite of the kind we’ve come to expect from grandstanding select committee chairmen. Since then — I won’t labour the point — we’ve seen an example in Woolwich of what evil really looks like. But Mrs Hodge’s no doubt scripted jibe was enough to set off an argument that has been rumbling incoherently around Westminster ever since.

Was it, as she also accused, ‘devious, calculated and… unethical’ of Google to book in low-tax Ireland the advertising deals sold to UK clients by UK-based sales reps? Or was the company just exercising what chairman Eric Schmidt calls its ‘fiduciary duty’ to minimise tax liabilities within the law for the benefit of shareholders?

Schmidt went on, disingenuously, to describe himself as ‘perplexed’ at the row and to claim that Google willingly pays its tax bills wherever they fall — but ducked the issue of the moral legitimacy of booking business offshore.