Sundar Pichai: Google CEO gets $199m payday - more than company paid in UK taxes

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The CEO of Google has been issued around $199 million in stocks for the search engine giant’s new parent company Alphabet, reportedly making him the best-paid boss in the US.

Sundar Pichai’s pay-out was declared in a company filing, and at around £138 million is worth more than the £130 million Google agreed to pay the UK Treasury in back taxes since 2005.

Mr Pichai only assumed the role of CEO in October, having previously worked as the company’s product chief. He is still some way off the fortunes of former CEO Eric Schmidt, who is now executive chairman of Alphabet and has shares worth $3 billion.

The grant was the first given to Mr Pichai since it was announced he would be made CEO in August 2015, Bloomberg reported. His annual salary is not known, but could be revealed in Google’s Proxy Statement in April.

The news comes amid growing anger at the low rates of tax paid by many large companies.

Last month, Google agreed with the HM Revenue and Customs that it would pay £130m in tax for the last 10 years – a deal Chancellor George Osborne championed as a “major success”.

Labour's shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has dismissed the amount as “mates rates”, adding “rumour has it that similar deals could be offered to Facebook and Amazon”.

On Monday, it emerged that the EU could force Google, Facebook and other major multinational companies could be forced to disclose how much money they make and how much they pay in tax in Europe.

A source said that EU officials “are currently finalising the impact assessment work. It’s likely there will be some form of legislative initiative announced for the beginning of April … for public country-by-country reporting”.to Facebook and Amazon”.