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Apple didn't pay any corporation tax in the UK last year, according to its latest filings in the country, adding to controversy at home about its imaginative tax planning.

The fruity firm's main British subsidiaries Apple (UK), Apple Europe and Apple Retail UK reported pre-tax profits between them of £68m in the year to September 2012 and made tax deductions related to share schemes alone of £27.7m, more than wiping out its liabilities. The firm paid £11.4m in corporate tax in 2011, on £60.4m operating profit.

The iDevice-pusher is already in trouble in the US, where a Senate committee said that it had "created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars while claiming to be tax resident nowhere". The committee added that the firm seemed to have an effective overseas tax rate of less than two per cent from shifting profits around.

Senators accused Apple of avoiding $10bn of US tax every year by holding the intellectual property rights for its products in Ireland. In 2011, 84 per cent of the firm's non-American operating income was pushed through Apple Sales International, a division that turns out not to be tax resident anywhere.

Apple joins fellow internet firms Amazon and Google among the unfortunate poster-companies of corporations refusing to pay their "fair share" while regular folks suffer under the weight of grimmer and grimmer austerity measures.

In Blighty, the Public Accounts Committee has called on the government to revamp tax rules to close the loopholes that allow for "highly contrived" tax arrangements.

Apple had not returned a request for comment at the time of publication. ®

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