Uber announced on Wednesday that it will move into a new office in Amsterdam by the end of this year and plans to increase the size of its international headquarters.
Uber says that it currently has 400 employees in Amsterdam, but it plans to expand to 1,000 staff members as part of a move to a new office space.
Uber launched its Amsterdam office in October 2012 and says it plans to expand to 1,000 staff members over the next 10 years.
The new office space is called “The Cloud,” a 20,000 square-metre office building in the centre of the city. Uber will occupy nearly half of the building, renting 8,300 square-metres.
Uber's Amsterdam office allows it to take revenue gained from rides in countries like England and process it in The Netherlands instead, where the corporate tax rate is lower. That policy has caused controversy in the past. The London Private Hire Car Association sent a letter to the chair of the European Parliament's tax committee in 2015 calling Uber's European tax structure "tax avoidance on an industrial scale." Uber has denied any wrongdoing.
In 2015, Dutch regulators twice raided Uber's Amsterdam office over its low-cost UberPOP taxi service. The Netherlands' national financial crimes prosecutor said at the time that it suspected Uber of operating without the proper licenses for the low-cost service. Uber eventually discontinued the service in The Netherlands in November 2015.
