The search giant previously had to pay €306m in back taxes to the country for the period between 2002 and 2015.
Search giant Google has agreed to pay €326m to settle a tax claim brought against them by Italian authorities.
According to Reuters, the Milan prosecutors said the agreement covers sanctions, penalties and interest for the period between 2015 and 2019.
Italy had previously demanded that Google owed the country €1bn in unpaid taxes and penalties, alleging that the company did not file and pay taxes on revenue generated in Italy.
The latest settlement comes almost eight years after the tech giant settled a separate case in Italy, where the company agreed to pay back taxes of €306m for its Italian operations between 2002 and 2015.
This is not the first time Google has been in the spotlight for tax issues. In 2019, the company agreed to pay authorities in France almost €1bn to end a long-running investigation into its taxes.
However, its Irish operation did manage to avoid a similarly large tax bill two years earlier in relation to its French operations.
Tech’s tax troubles
Italian authorities have been targeting several tech companies in relation to tax over the years.
In 2017, the same year Google settled its first case with the European nation, Amazon settled its own tax dispute there with the sum of €100m. A year later, Facebook, now Meta, agreed to pay the country €100m to end a fiscal fraud dispute.
In 2022, streaming giant Netflix agreed to pay almost €56m to settle a dispute with the country. When the case was first launched, prosecutors said that while there was no office there, “cables and computer servers used by Netflix amount to a physical presence in Italy”.
While that case has now been settled, Netflix is not out of the woods yet. In November 2024, authorities searched the streaming giant’s offices in France and the Netherlands as part of a preliminary investigation into tax fraud laundering.
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