{"id":614663,"date":"2026-08-01T05:38:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T05:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/614663\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T05:38:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T05:38:29","slug":"microsoft-paid-6-5bn-tax-in-ireland-more-than-anywhere-else-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/614663\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft paid $6.5bn tax in Ireland \u2013 more than anywhere else \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft<\/a> paid more tax in Ireland than to the US<\/a> federal government in its latest financial year, its latest annual report has disclosed.<\/p>\n

New fiscal reporting standards adopted by Microsoft have resulted in the company disclosing, for the first time, a breakdown of taxes paid in the US, Ireland and other foreign jurisdictions in its annual report.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the company said it paid $21.1 billion (\u20ac18.31 billion) in taxes globally in the financial year that ended June 2026.<\/p>\n

Of that, $6.5 billion (\u20ac5.64 billion) was paid in Irish corporation tax \u2013 30 per cent of its total \u2013 compared to $6.25 billion of US federal taxes. It also paid $2.92 billion in state and local taxes in the US and $5.53 billion in other foreign jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

Based on figures in a separate disclosure by Microsoft in recent weeks, the company\u2019s Irish corporation tax paid grew by more than 16 per cent year-on-year.<\/p>\n

Microsoft said earlier this month that its Irish operation paid $5.6 billion of tax in the year to the end of June 2025. That was almost a fifth of total global taxes it paid in that year.<\/p>\n

At $6.5 billion, Microsoft\u2019s tax expense for the year came close to eclipsing the amount paid by Ireland\u2019s top corporate taxpayer, weight loss drug giant Eli Lilly, which paid a $6.6 billion Irish corporation tax bill<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n

Microsoft made the disclosure about its taxes for the year to June 2025 as part of the European Union\u2019s new country-by-country reporting directive. These measures mandate multinationals with global revenues of more than \u20ac750 million to disclose specific financial data, including how much tax was paid in EU states and their pretax profits.<\/p>\n

That filing also showed Microsoft\u2019s Irish operation booked $47 billion<\/a> in pretax profits, which accounted for 38 per cent of the group\u2019s profits globally.<\/p>\n

No direct equivalent figure was included in Microsoft\u2019s latest annual report, but a note in the accounts said \u201cour foreign regional operating center in Ireland, which is taxed at a rate lower than the US rate, generated 81 per cent\u201d of foreign income before tax.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s foreign income before tax was $62.34 billion, which means the Irish operation booked $50.5 billion of pretax profits in the year to June 2026.<\/p>\n

The new accounting standards, which require Microsoft to disclose taxes paid by jurisdiction in its annual report, were developed by the US-based independent body, the Financial Accounting Standards Board. <\/p>\n

It issued the new standards in late 2023 to \u201cenhance the transparency and decision usefulness of income tax disclosures\u201d.<\/p>\n

The new reporting guidelines have also resulted in a disclosure by Microsoft about the \u201cforeign tax effect\u201d on its earnings.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Lioncor sell apartment block to housing body for \u20ac82mOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The company said its decision to book income in Ireland helped reduce its worldwide tax rate by 2.6 percentage points last year, which saved $4.3 billion that would otherwise have been paid in taxes. Microsoft said the saving came about because its Irish profits were taxed at a lower rate than the US rate of 21 per cent corporate tax rate.<\/p>\n

Microsoft, alongside Apple and Eli Lilly, is understood to be among the largest taxpayers in Ireland, with their collective contributions comprising almost half of the Republic\u2019s corporation tax returns.<\/p>\n

These US companies have previously been criticised by US president Donald Trump for paying large tax bills abroad. His administration has committed through his \u201cAmerica first\u201d policy to push companies to pay these taxes domestically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft paid more tax in Ireland than to the US federal government in its latest financial year, its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[311,79,8452,356,18,1465,19,17,305],"class_list":["post-614663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-apple","tag-business","tag-corporation-tax","tag-donald-trump","tag-eire","tag-eli-lilly","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-microsoft"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117018643847792484","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}