Google, Facebook and tax: the search for conscience

Google, Facebook and tax: the search for conscience
For multi-national companies, will paying tax ever be much more than a matter of choice?
Pattrick Smellie
It’s a fair bet that neither Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg nor anyone at Google HQ in Mountain View, California, wakes up in a sweat worrying about their social licence to operate in New Zealand.Both globe-wrapping digital behemoths do business here in the same sort of split-screen world as banks and electricity companies.On one hand, nobody really likes them much.On the other, almost everybody with access to the internet uses one or both platforms most days of the week without a second thought.Unlike banks and power companies, however,...

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