Posted on 10/28/2007 3:13:39 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Big Paychecks for U2 Millionaires
Oct. 26, 2007
The Associated Press
U2 Ltd., the Irish band's music publishing company, raked in $30 million-plus last year — and $25.8 million of it went to five unidentified "employees," according to documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
Those "employees" are suspected to be the band members and their longtime manager, Paul McGuinness. But U2's public relations firms in Dublin and London refused to confirm that.
While Bono has won accolades worldwide for raising awareness of Third World poverty, he has been criticized for moving U2's corporate offices out of Ireland to avoid paying taxes. The U2 Ltd. documents show the band moved its corporate base last year from Ireland to the Netherlands, where royalties on music incur virtually no tax.
The move, while perfectly legal, strikes a raw nerve in Ireland, whose wealthiest citizens often live as tax exiles in other European countries to avoid tax.
It's not known whether the globe-trotting Bono — who owns a mansion overlooking Dublin Bay — pays personal taxes in Ireland.
U2 Ltd.'s move to the Netherlands coincided with the appearance on its accounts, for the first time, of five "employees."
The documents, filed this week at the Irish Companies Registration Office in Dublin, record that the four band members — Paul "Bono" Hewson, Dave "The Edge" Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen — quit the U2 Ltd. board when the company relocated to Amsterdam in June 2006.
The documents offered no breakdown of pay to the five. Previous years' U2 Ltd. accounts, produced when the U2 members were still company directors, listed employee salaries as zero.
U2 Ltd. said it paid nearly $1.1 million in 2006 tax to Ireland, compared to just $46,500 in 2005.
(Excerpt) Read more at music.msn.com ...
Just like John Lennon “Imagined No Taxes” when he moved from Britain to the US.
This is rich and so is he. :)
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