In an interview with The Guardian, published online today, Matthew Freud said: "We are proud to be a growing UK creative business.
"Our success means that we paid £3m in tax last year, 684 times more than Facebook. Many of our competitors, like Facebook, avail themselves of perfectly legal mechanisms for reducing their tax bill. We don’t, but would urge the Government to consider what it can do to level the playing field so that British businesses paying their fair share of tax in the UK are not disadvantaged."
The article is entitled 'I paid 684 times more tax than Facebook' – a reference to Facebook having paid £4,327 in corporation tax in 2014, as was revealed by The Sunday Times.
By contrast, The Guardian reports that Freuds paid £2.96m in UK corporation tax, and that Freud himself "took home £11.2m last year, a third more than he did in 2013".
While a Facebook statement distributed to media after the Times' story broke said that the firm was "compliant with UK tax law", it has faced substantial criticism over its accounting arrangements.
