August 5, 2026
Tax me if you can
The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024
Palantir made millions from Britain — and commenters are absolutely losing it
TLDR: Palantir paid only £2.1 million in UK corporation tax while earning hundreds of millions from Britain, sparking a fierce comment war. Some readers called it outrageous, while others argued it’s just normal accounting rules doing exactly what they were built to do.
Palantir, the US software giant with huge UK government deals, paid just £2.1 million in UK corporation tax in 2024 despite reporting more than £25 million in profit and pulling in £247 million in UK revenue. That number alone sent the community into full popcorn mode. For critics, this was the perfect villain story: a company making money from the NHS and the Ministry of Defence while, as one union leader put it, public services are being "starved" of cash. Commenters quickly piled on with a mix of outrage, cynicism, and grim little jokes about how Palantir and the UK might actually deserve each other.
But the thread did not stay tidy for long. One camp argued this is just how the system works: Palantir spent years burning cash in the US, built valuable products there, and now charges its UK arm to use them. In other words, they say, this may look bad but it is standard big-company accounting, not some cartoon money heist. Another camp was having none of it, waving around a deep-dive link and accusing the company of moving profits around to keep the bill low. Then came the hottest accidental comedy: one commenter demanded companies should be taxed on revenue, not income, then edited to admit they had mixed the two up — which somehow only made the whole debate more relatable. The result? A classic internet pile-on: half furious, half resigned, and fully convinced the tax system is either broken or working exactly as designed.
Key Points
- •A Cictar report said Palantir paid about £2.1 million in UK corporation tax in 2024 on more than £25 million in UK profits, implying an effective UK tax rate of just over 8%.
- •The article says Palantir’s global effective tax rate was 1.4%, and that in the US it paid no federal taxes and just over $2.5 million in state taxes last year.
- •The UK was described as Palantir’s largest market outside the US, with £247 million in 2024 revenues and about 750 employees based in Britain.
- •Researchers said Palantir appears to book much of its non-US revenue in the US via transfer pricing; 26% of revenue came from outside the US, but only 4% was booked abroad.
- •Palantir said it complies with applicable tax rules, defended transfer pricing as standard multinational practice, and said accounting differences can explain varying revenue figures across filings.