THERE has been a lot said lately about Google and the amount of tax it pays.

It has now come to an agreement in a so called sweetheart deal to pay £130 million covering ten years.

While multi-nationals and large companies pay next to nothing, small companies who pay corporation tax of 20 per cent render themselves uncompetitive with big companies.

When a big company pays very little corporation tax, it can use its unpaid tax to pay its managers big salaries, its shareholders bigger dividends. It can also use its profits to undercut its rivals on price and squeeze them out of the market. That’s why small businesses like bookshops are disappearing.

With the government not having revenue from these companies because they are not paying their full corporation tax, they give the rest of us austerity.

While the poor of this country are having their tax credits taken away, the government are doing nothing to change the law so HMRC can easily collect tax from those companies not paying it.

Chris Mangham, Acomb, York