Big Paychecks for U2 Millionaires.

Oct. 26, 2007, 5:03 PM EST
The Associated Press

U2 Ltd., the Irish band's music publishing company, raked in $30 million-plus last year — and $25.8 million of it went to five unidentified "employees," according to documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

Those "employees" are suspected to be the band members and their longtime manager, Paul McGuinness. But U2's public relations firms in Dublin and London refused to confirm that.

While Bono has won accolades worldwide for raising awareness of Third World poverty, he has been criticized for moving U2's corporate offices out of Ireland to avoid paying taxes. The U2 Ltd. documents show the band moved its corporate base last year from Ireland to the Netherlands, where royalties on music incur virtually no tax.

The move, while perfectly legal, strikes a raw nerve in Ireland, whose wealthiest citizens often live as tax exiles in other European countries to avoid tax.

It's not known whether the globe-trotting Bono — who owns a mansion overlooking Dublin Bay — pays personal taxes in Ireland.

U2 Ltd.'s move to the Netherlands coincided with the appearance on its accounts, for the first time, of five "employees."

The documents, filed this week at the Irish Companies Registration Office in Dublin, record that the four band members — Paul "Bono" Hewson, Dave "The Edge" Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen — quit the U2 Ltd. board when the company relocated to Amsterdam in June 2006.

The documents offered no breakdown of pay to the five. Previous years' U2 Ltd. accounts, produced when the U2 members were still company directors, listed employee salaries as zero.

U2 Ltd. said it paid nearly $1.1 million in 2006 tax to Ireland, compared to just $46,500 in 2005.

The increased tax bill in 2006 reflects U2's sudden exposure to taxes on royalty income in Ireland. Last year the government — stung by criticism that its traditional tax-free status for artists was not intended to support multimillionaires like U2 — capped the tax-free benefit at $360,000 annually.

Within months, U2 relocated its corporate base to Amsterdam.

The U2 Ltd. documents, reflecting the band's continuous collection of royalty payments for album and music-download sales as well as rebroadcast rights, are unrelated to the band's profits from its most recent worldwide tour. Billboard reported that the Vertigo tour grossed more than $260 million.

Bono and the other U2 members regularly make lists of Ireland's wealthiest people. One often published figure estimates their wealth at $860 million, but the figure has proved impossible to document given the band's myriad investment projects and companies.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

This article is courtesy of http://music.msn.com/music/

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