Yemisi Izuora
Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, has revealed the payment of $10 billion in corporate tax global in 2018.
In Nigeria, the Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCo), disclosed the payment of N366 billion in 2018 as revenue to the federal government from its exploration activities.
The company also made another N2.1 billion as statutory payment to the Niger Delta Development Commission, SNEPCo’s Managing Director, Bayo Ojulari, has said.
Ojulari spoke to journalists in Lagos at the media launch of the 2019 edition of the Shell in Nigeria Briefing Notes, an annual publication detailing the activities of the business interests of the global energy giant in Nigeria covering SNEPCo;
The company also revealed on Tuesday that in 2018 only its gas subsidiary NAM paid corporate tax in the Netherlands, where it is headquartered, following Dutch parliamentary demands that it attend a hearing on tax avoidance.
“By giving openness before the round table, hopefully room will be created for the conversation to be about the substance,” Shell said, adding that it paid $10 billion in corporate tax globally in 2018 and had an effective tax rate of 33 percent.
Shell’s NAM subsidiary paid 500 million euros ($557 million) in corporate tax, the Anglo-Dutch company said in a statement.
Shell said it pays relatively little of its overall tax in the country where it is registered, because it incurs costs elsewhere in the world that can be deducted from taxes.
Those costs are large “in comparison with operating profits in a small home country like the Netherlands,” it said, adding that multinationals contribute to the Dutch economy in other ways, such as by creating jobs, companies and via “other taxes”.
“Shell is given the same treatment as other Dutch companies with foreign activities in this regard,” it said.
The parliamentary hearing, originally scheduled for April 18, was postponed and has now been set for May 29.
Shell had said the CEO of its operations in the Netherlands would attend on April 18. On Tuesday, it said Shell’s vice president for taxation Alan McLean would be there on May 29.