Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell paid more than £9billion in tax to the UK Exchequer last year, a report has shown.
Of this, £2billion was paid on behalf of its upstream activities in the North Sea.
The group, which is headquartered in London and the Netherlands, paid a further £7billion in downstream retail and corporate taxes for the year.
In 2012-13 the UK collected £4.4billion in offshore corporation tax, according to the government’s Office for Budget Responsibility, which expects this to fall to £3.6billion in 2013-14 – giving an average figure of £4billion for 2013.
Shell’s tax figures are contained in the third edition of its “payments to governments” report.
The UK’s tax take was second only to Germany last year. The German tax office collected almost £13billion in levies from the group. Worldwide, Shell paid £63billion in taxes on revenues of £251billion last year. Of this it forked out £12billion in corporate tax and £2.5billion for royalties.
The report noted that the firm also collected £48.3billion in excise duties and sales taxes on fuel and other products on behalf of governments.
Shell said publication of the figures was voluntary.
“We believe major companies like ours should be open on how much we pay to governments, and that governments should be transparent in how they use these funds,” it said in a statement. “We believe that such transparency promotes good government, helping to ensure that the billions of dollars the energy industry pays in tax benefits society as a whole.”
Chief executive Ben van Beurden said: “We have experienced a challenging year in a difficult business environment. We will continue to focus on operational performance while embedding sustainability within Shell. Running a safe and efficient business is at the core of good operational performance.”
Shell is a founder and board member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a UK Government initiative launched in 2002 to increase the transparency of revenues governments receive from oil and mineral activities.