It's a good headline but in this case, HMRC made somewhere between two and five times as much money through Facebook's accounting choice here than had they kept the money as corporate profit.
That's because the Facebook paid out those profits to employees as bonuses. That wiped out the corporate profit but the employees have paid income taxes which are much, much higher than corporation tax.
This is significantly different from the corporate tax dodging companies like Amazon EU do by bribing EU states into letting them have a super-low corporate rate if they put all the EU books through that country. Not saying that Facebook aren't also doing that, that's just not what this is about.
I wonder what the response would have been had it turned out Facebook were going to pay their employees less, because they'd be making more profit that way ;)
That's because the Facebook paid out those profits to employees as bonuses. That wiped out the corporate profit but the employees have paid income taxes which are much, much higher than corporation tax.
This is significantly different from the corporate tax dodging companies like Amazon EU do by bribing EU states into letting them have a super-low corporate rate if they put all the EU books through that country. Not saying that Facebook aren't also doing that, that's just not what this is about.