Rubbish Check
Guardian Business · 5 August 2026 source

“Palantir paid just £2m corporation tax in UK in 2024 despite lucrative public sector contracts”

R3/ 10
Lightly altered
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates the Guardian's claim that Palantir "paid just £2m corporation tax in UK in 2024 despite lucrative public sector contracts" a 3/10 because both figures, the £2.1m UK tax bill and the hundreds of millions in public contracts, are independently verifiable in Companies House filings and corroborated by a second outlet's separate reporting.
The Verdict
Lightly altered. The core numbers check out and are corroborated independently, but the headline compresses a report commissioned by a trade union (Unison) into neutral-sounding fact, and omits Palantir's on-record rebuttal that it paid $148m in UK employment taxes, without which "just £2m" reads starker than the fuller picture warrants.

What actually happened

Palantir's UK subsidiary reported pre-tax profits of £25.3m in 2024 but paid roughly £2.1m in corporation tax, an effective rate of about 8%, against a headline UK rate of 25%. The figures come from a Cictar report commissioned by Unison, which attributes the gap largely to transfer pricing: Palantir disclosed £159m of revenues in its UK company filings for 2024, but disclosed £247m of UK revenues in its stock market filings, with the difference booked to the US parent.

Key facts

  • UK corporation tax paid in 2024: Palantir paid just £2.1m in UK corporation tax, despite declaring profits of over £25m, giving an effective tax rate of just over 8%, against a statutory rate of 25% that year and remains at that level.
  • Global effective tax rate: just 1.4% globally, according to a report published on Wednesday by the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (Cictar) (independent reporting puts the pre-tax profit base at $489m, yielding a 4% figure by a different calculation method).
  • UK public contracts: As of 2026, Palantir holds an estimated £670m in government contracts, including a three-year, £240m deal with the MoD… awarded last December without a competitive tender.
  • Revenue-booking gap: only 4% of revenue is booked abroad despite 26% of all Palantir revenue is sourced from customers outside the US.
  • Company rebuttal: Palantir said it paid $148m in UK employment taxes last year, including employer NICs and some income tax paid on staff's behalf, and called its transfer pricing practice standard for large multinationals.

What to watch for

  • Whether HMRC or the Treasury opens any formal review of Palantir's transfer pricing given the MoD's no-tender £240m contract, which raises the political stakes beyond the tax question alone.
  • Palantir's 2025 UK filings, due at Companies House, will show whether the effective rate rises or falls as revenue and share-option grants scale with the forecast doubling of global revenue.
  • Watch whether follow-up coverage engages with Palantir's employment-tax rebuttal or continues to lead solely with the corporation-tax figure.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
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