Google to Pay UK $180m in Back Taxes

The US tech giant Google has revealed to the BBC that it's agreed to pay $180m dollars in back taxes, after an audit of its accounts by British authorities. The move comes after years of criticism of Google and other multinational firms over their tax arrangements in the UK and across Europe. The online search firm said it had agreed a deal with the UK's HM Revenue and Customs covering taxes since 2005. We hear from Richard Murphy, a political economist and tax expert who is critical of the deal.

A ferocious blizzard has reached the east coast of the United States with forecasters predicting the heaviest snowfall in 100 years. The BBC's Laura Bicker gives us an update from snowy Washington DC.

Stark warnings were made on Friday that time is running out to solve Europe's refugee crisis. 42 refugees died on Thursday night in two separate shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea. Last year 700 people died crossing from Turkey to Greece. William Lacy Swing is executive director of the International Organization for Migration. He spoke to us from the World Economic Forum in Davos.

One man trying to change the perception of refugees is billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. He's said that the US in particular should be much more welcoming to those fleeing conflict. The BBC's Joe Miller caught up with him.

We like to think we have our finger on the pulse here at Business Matters and it seems the United Nations does too - if we're talking about chickpeas and lentils. It's designated 2016 as the year of the pulses. But is this just a PR scoop by large growers around the globe? Chef and food writer Jenny Chandler tells us about the campaign.

The declining popularity of the nightclub scene has become a real trend right across Europe. In the UK, the number of venues has halved since 2005; in the Netherlands it's fallen by a third. It's blamed on the fact that people are drinking less, and that's having a major effect on the night time economy. We hear a report from the BBC's Joshua Thorpe.

Presenter Susannah Streeter will be joined throughout the programme by Robert Milliken, Australia correspondent for The Economist.

(Picture: A Google office building. Credit: Getty)