Pretax profit at Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited rose last year, new accounts have revealed.

In the year to June 30th 2014, the Irish arm of the tech giant recorded pretax profit of $1.4 billion (€1.23 billion), up from just under $1.3 billion a year earlier.

Turnover increased by almost 15 per cent to $22.2 billion, driven by momentum in the company’s cloud and devices units. Among Microsoft’s cloud offerings are Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM. Ireland accounted for almost $212 million of that figure, with $16 billion attributed to the rest of Europe and $3.1 billion from the UK.

Operating profit rose to $1.4 billion, a rise of more than 10 per cent year on year.

Costs also rose, with distribution expenses up.

Tax rate

The company paid an effective corporate tax rate of about 14.4 per cent, with a tax bill of around €204 million. That compared with the previous year’s total of €127.3 million.

Staff numbers rose to 735 at the end of the financial year, compared with 703 a year earlier. The firm announced in October that it planned to recruit 100 graduates for a variety of roles in its intern and graduate programme.