Google was sued in February by the French government, which is of the opinion that the Americans have to pay an important amount in the form of taxes for the profit of the past years. According to the lawsuit filed by the French government, the Google company would have owed 1.12 billion dollars in taxes to the country's tax authorities, and this is due to the fact that it registers its income in Ireland.
Google was accused by the French government of breaking the law by not declaring its income in the country, and for that it should retroactively pay taxes for undeclared income. Although the French government wanted to extract a large amount of money from Google, a local court ruled in favor of the American company and exempted it from paying 1.12 billion euros for the revenues from 2005 to 2010.
Google was constantly monitored by the French authorities until the moment they raided their offices in Paris. Based on the documents taken from there, the French government prepared its case and sued the Google company, hoping to obtain the 1.6 billion euros from it, but it seems that their actions were not quite legal.
Google avoids paying a colossal tax in France
Google has already paid 185 million dollars to the UK in a similar case from January, plus another 334 million dollars in May, for exactly the same reasons. France refused to reach an agreement with Google and wanted to get more money than Great Britain, but now it won't get anything, unless the decision is changed by the judges on appeal.
Google managed to prove in court that it did not violate French tax legislation by establishing its headquarters in Ireland and declaring all its income there. Google does this, just like Apple, Microsoft, and many other American companies, in order to pay very low taxes for the receipts and profits registered in Europe, and many countries are trying to destroy the Irish tax haven.
"Google won its fight against a 1.12 billion-euro ($1.3 billion) French tax bill after a court rejected claims the search-engine giant abused loopholes to avoid paying its fair share."
Google has won an important victory, but it still has many battles to fight in Europe, the European Union has already fined it 2.3 billion euros because of Google Search. Another much larger fine could be applied to Google because of the Android operating system, and another could be applied because of Google Adsense, so the European problems are far from over.
Google is fighting on all fronts in Europe and will spend a lot of money to achieve its goals.
