It has been revealed that the four American “big tech” companies — Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Meta — collectively garnered around 9 trillion won in sales and about 600 billion won in operating profit in South Korea over the past year.

According to the audit reports disclosed in the Financial Supervisory Service’s electronic disclosure system (DART) on April 21, the sales and operating profit of Apple Korea, which has a fiscal year ending in September, recorded 7.52 trillion won (US$5.44 billion) and 559.9 billion won, respectively, from October 2022 to September last year. These figures represent increases of 2.6 percent and 550 percent, respectively, compared to the previous year. This performance is attributed to the unprecedented record sales driven by the preference for iPhones among South Korean individuals in their teens and 20s.

For the fiscal year ending in June, Microsoft Korea reported sales of 1.37 trillion won and operating profit of 63.9 billion won from July 2022 to June last year.

For the fiscal year ending in December, Google Korea and Facebook Korea recorded sales of 365.3 billion won and 65.1 billion won, respectively, for the last year.

Combining the figures for the four companies, the total sales over the last year amounted to 9.32 trillion won with an operating profit of 662.1 billion won.

According to mobile index data from the mobile big data company IGAWorks, YouTube, which is operated by Google, had a monthly active user (MAU) count of 45.52 million users who used the service at least once last month. It has maintained the top position for four consecutive months since December last year. Google Chrome browser and Google portal also ranked 4th and 7th, with 36.02 million and 29.92 million users, respectively. Combining the three apps surpasses 111 million users.

The figure is 2.5 times higher than the MAU of KakaoTalk, which ranks second with 44.97 million users. Even combining the third-ranked Naver with 43.02 million users and the ninth-ranked Naver Maps with 24.85 million users, both Naver-related apps in the top 10, the MAU of Google-related apps is significantly higher.

However, many argue that the corporate tax expenses of American big tech companies are minimal. According to the audit report of Google Korea, the corporate tax expenses of Google Korea last year were approximately 15.5 billion won, which was only 3 percent of Naver’s 496.4 billion won expenses. There may be differences between the tax expenses reported in the audit report and the actual tax paid due to differences in tax accounting methods, but this is also the case for domestic companies. Consequently, it is analyzed that the actual corporate tax rate of Google Korea compared to Naver will also remain in the single digits. Even when combining the corporate tax expenses of Google Korea, Google Cloud Korea, and Google Payment Korea, which amounts to approximately 20.4 billion won, it still only reaches around 4 percent of Naver’s expenses.

Facebook Korea, the domestic corporation of Meta, which gets 30,994,500 MAU through Facebook and Instagram, reported corporate tax expenses of 5.08 billion won last year, which was only 1 percent compared to Naver. This also stands in stark contrast to Apple Korea, another foreign limited liability company, with corporate tax expenses that surged fourfold to 200.64 billion won compared to the previous year. The industry interprets that Apple Korea, which is conscious of tax avoidance controversies, has somewhat realized corporate tax expenses by reducing the cost of sales, thereby increasing domestic sales revenue and operating profit margins.

The reason for the low corporate tax expenses of Google Korea and Facebook Korea is that revenue generated by domestic users’ purchases is calculated as overseas revenue or transferred to the U.S. headquarters. Most of domestic revenue, such as app market commissions, is accounted as revenue for Google Asia Pacific, excluding it from Google Korea’s revenue. Therefore, experts have pointed out that the South Korean government needs to improve the calculation methods of revenue for companies like Google and Meta and strengthen investigations into tax avoidance.