Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

Uber has been using a complex tax shelter involving around 50 Dutch shell companies to reduce its global tax bill, according to recent research from the Center for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research. In 2019, Uber claimed $4.5 billion in global operating losses for tax purposes - in reality, it brought in $5.8 billion in operating revenue, according to CICTAR, an Australia-based research group. Uber had previously disclosed details about its Dutch tax haven in 2019, when it moved its intellectual property from Bermuda to the Netherlands, but CICTAR's research sheds more light on how the company has structured its network of shell companies. Uber transfered its intellectual property through a $16 billion "Loan" from one of its subsidiaries in Singapore that in turn owns one of Uber's Dutch shell companies, a manuever that grants the company a $1 billion tax break every year for the next 20 years, the researchers found. "Uber has supercharged their tax avoidance approach," Ward told Insider, using an intellectual property tax break "To prevent future tax bills, turning it into a much more useful, viable tax structure in the Netherlands." "India is in desperate need of public revenue" to help it combat COVID-19, yet companies like Uber are able to avoid cointributing to that effort through tax avoidance schemes, Ward told Insider. In response, some lawmakers around the world, including the US President Joe Biden, have lobbied for a global minimum tax and other measures to reduce tax avoidance, which the Tax Justice Network estimates costs governments $427 billion annually.