According to LeFigaro, Twitter has officially created a subsidiary, Twitter France SAS. It was announced early this year that Twitter was interviewing for a Head of France position, and then this summer the Mayor of Paris tweeted from Twitter HQ that he was looking forward to welcoming Twitter to Paris in Spring of 2013, and that the company planned thire up to 10 employees for the office.
The company created is shown as a subsidiary of an Irish company, “Twitter International Company,” which suggests that Twitter has followed in the great footsteps of Facebook, Google, Amazon & Microsoft, and will be minimizing its taxes by using a tax strategy known as the double Irish. This may be tough, as French tax authorities (as well as European) have been cracking down on what they consider to be tax evasion in the past 12 months.
After it was announced that Google would be hit with 1.7 billion euros in taxes after an investigation by the tax authorities, Amazon too was hit with a bill for $252M in back taxes over the last five years. Then came the news that France had launched an investigation into Facebook’s Paris office this summer. With all this going on, it will be tough for Twitter, who counts Paris as one of its top cities, and who has been boasting the success of its initial advertising campaigns, to manage to run its French revenue through its Ireland-based European HQ.
Nonetheless, it’s pretty clear that this is their intention – the directors of the French subsidiary are listed as the VP of Finance Luca Barata (@lucait) & VP of Growth and Internatinal Othman Laraki (@othman). The French HQ is said to be at 10 Rue de la Paix, 75002 PARIS, which turns up a domiciliation company (a PO Box, essentially) in Google. The company injected just 37,000 euros of capital into the SAS, far lower than Facebook France’s 1.5M€, but well above the minimum required amount of 1€.
You can see the official paperwork on Societe.com, which tracks all businesses created in France.The same address turns up 738 different companies on Societe.com.
Here are the details on Twitter's newly formed French subsidiary
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