The UK companies behind the James Bond films have minimised tax for decades whilst receiving tens of millions of pounds in subsidy from the UK taxpayer.
TaxWatch’s latest report – No Time to Pay Tax? – delves into the accounts of EON Productions Limited and its associated companies (EON). We found that despite Skyfall and SPECTRE grossing just shy of $2bn at the box office, EON generated small profits and smaller tax bills in most years whilst profits in the hundreds of millions are declared overseas.
In recent years, the UK group of companies headed by EON Productions Limited has declared a pre-tax loss, while simultaneously receiving tens of millions of pounds in tax credits via the UK’s creative industry tax relief scheme.
International tax rules state that profits should be allocated based on where value is created, with tech companies often using this argument to explain why they only pay taxes in the US. If this is the case, why isn’t a significant amount of tax paid on the profits of Bond films in the UK?
Find out more in our latest report here.
A PDF version of our report is available here (printer-friendly version here)
This research was featured in The Observer and the Mail on Sunday among others.
Image by Glen Ratcliffe
