Vodafone made a previously unreported multimillion-pound settlement with HM Revenue & Customs in the wake of a dispute over the tax paid by an Irish subsidiary created to collect royalty payments for using its brand.
The UK-based mobile phone group used an Irish subsidiary, which employed no staff between 2002 and 2007, to collect hundreds of millions of pounds a year in royalty payments from operating companies and joint ventures around the world. By 2007, Vodafone Ireland Marketing Ltd, a company registered to an industrial estate in the Dublin suburb of Leopardstown, was reporting a turnover of €380m (£320m) a year.
Vodafone in multimillion tax deal over Irish office (Juliette Garside, Guardian)