Turkey whacks Google with £28.7m fine, claims tax dodging

Google has run afoul of Turkish tax laws to the tune of 71m Turkish Lira ($47m, £28.7m). That's the amount of a fine levied by the Turkish government against the Mountain View ad broker cum search giant, as reported by Turkish-language news sites here and here, reporting on Google's vergi cezası, or tax fine. According to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely that headline should be...

TURKEY *SLAPS* Google with £28.7m fine....

[Anonymous Coward]

good thinking

After all if they aren't carrying out business in Turkey, why would they have a Turkish subsidiary.

Looks like they've seen straight through that resident for tax purposes type dodge.

After all avoiding paying your fair share of income to benefit the country you earn that income in wouldn't be an evil deed would it?

(Actually my first reaction was "hahahahaha! that'll learn em.")

[asiaseen]

Google is praying

for Christmas (or, since they are American, Thanksgiving) to come soon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Swings and roundabouts

Turkey may win, but if it's an anomalous win then it will do yet more harm to their ambitions to join the European Union.

Which, frankly, suits most of the EU.

[Chewy]

@Roger Pearse

Because Google earn a lot of money from advertising in Turkey. Now go back to the bridge you've been hiding under.

[Grease Monkey]

@Roger Pearse

The "fine" will have no doubt been calculated based upon the amount of tax Google have apparently dodged in Turkey. As such this demonstrates that Google make one hell of a lot of money in Turkey. So why would they want to block Turkish access to Google?

Nose. Face.

Dickhead.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Roger Pearse

"...They'll get the message fairly quickly once no Turk can find anything online..."

You mean beyond paid for shit, dynamically generated ads and Wikipedia entries?

Will22 - A happy Bing user

[Dr Patrick J R Harkin]

I wonder what you get...

...if you type "GOOD TURKISH TAX LAWYER" into Google.

Or Bing. (which goes the internet, apparently)

[Frank Bitterlich]

So, what are they gonna do?

... how about blocking YouTube in Turkey tuntil Google pays the fine? Oh, wait... dang.

[christian graffeuille]

It actually makes sense

User lives in country xx and uses service provider in country xx.

Service provider makes profit from said user, some sourced from country xx advertisers, but pays no taxes to country xx. Tax money all goes to the US govt's coffers.

The service being immaterial is no justification for the tax loss to country xx, is it?

Would this work for say an online bank?

And what about free webmail providers?

This could be a Pandora box. I reckon an Out-Law article is required.

Paris because she looks confused too.