Transcript of @marthakearney's interview with Eric Schmidt about Google's tax bill on #wato. Listen here: http://bit.ly/11x1S2z

MARTHA KEARNEY
Another area you’re facing criticism – and this is particularly in the UK – is about tax. And the fact that, the UK is a very big market for you, but in the end it’s reported that you paid only £6m in corporation tax.

ERIC SCHMIDT
Of course that omits the fact that we also hire more than 2,000 employees and are investing heavily in Britain. Britain has been a very good market for us. We empower literally billions of pounds of start-ups through our advertising network and so forth. And we’re a key part of the electronic commerce expansion of Britain which is driving a lot of economic growth for the country. So from our perspective I think, um, you have to look at it in totality. You’re describing the way taxes work globally. And the fact of the matter is these are the way taxes are done globally. The same is true for British firms operating in the US, for example.

MARTHA KEARNEY
But you certainly do employ a large number of people in the UK. But something that was brought up by MPs who were looking at your tax position was that a lot of those employees – their services are being paid for through Ireland.

ERIC SCHMIDT
Well again, the people, first place, the people we employ in Britain are certainly paying British taxes and more importantly they’re British citizens are they’re driving a lot of GDP. I think the most important thing to say about our taxes is that we fully comply with the law and we’ll obviously, should the law change, we’ll comply with that as well.

MARTHA KEARNEY
The Committee of MPs here concluded that, talking about you, “we weren’t convinced that their actions in using the letter of tax laws both nationally and internationally to immorally minimise their tax obligations are defensible.” That’s a strong piece of criticism.

ERIC SCHMIDT
Erm, same answer.

MARTHA KEARNEY
Same answer that you’re happy with your position? It’s almost what you’re saying is a call for tougher tax regulation?

ERIC SCHMIDT
Again, I’m not saying anything other than what I just said, which is that Google is very strongly committed to Britain. We’re hiring lots of people. It’s a very, very good business environment for us. People are very creative, there’s a lot of start-ups, we enable a lot of creativity. We’ve done a series of things – for example I did a significant donation of something called a Raspberry Pi when I was in Cambridge, you know, on and on and on. And we’re fully complying with the laws.

MARTHA KEARNEY
I suppose the issue for many people in Britain is that here we are facing austerity measures - and so that's why business taxes are very important.

ERIC SCHMIDT
Well I would argue that the strongest thing can happen for all of the countries that Google operates in is economic growth. And the economic growth that Google enables by virtue of the investment, the platform, the e-commerce and so forth is by far the best answer to all of these questions in my view.

MARTHA KEARNEY
Do you worry at all about consumer pressure? There’s an online petition going on. And that kind of consumer pressure certainly put Starbucks and Amazon in difficult positions.

ERIC SCHMIDT
Erm, well, we worry about everything at Google. But the fact of the matter is I think our answer remains what I said which is that our enablement of the growth of Britain by virtue of the investments, the partnerships, the technology, which is fantastic in Britain, you know is a really net strong statement about our support for Britain. And we continue to believe that.

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