As the Guardian and many others have noted:
Amazon's main UK subsidiary paid just £3.2m in tax last year, according to accounts filed on Wednesday, despite overall UK sales of £4.2bn.
Amazon's taxes for last year are only marginally higher than the £2.5m the company received in government grants during the year, according to the annual accounts published at Companies House.
The online retailer's tax charge brings to £6m the total corporation tax raised from Amazon.co.uk Limited in a decade. The company's tax bill was £1.9m in 2011, but these sums may not actually be paid to HM Revenue and Customs because of cumulative losses across the Amazon group.
I explained how Amazon achieve this in 'Over here and Under Taxed'. Available here.
And for all the cynics: I know Amazon is not taxed on its sales, but then it can't be, as they're not here. That's the whole issue, so the comparison in this case is a lot more relevant than is usually true. Barring Google of course. And that's tomorrow morning's fun and games.
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Such a “wonderful” employer too:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/amazon-staff-in-germany-stage-strike-over-pay-8616504.html
Even “wiki” has something interesting to say….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com_controversies
Hmmm. Isn’t the Guardian newspaper doing exactly the same thing (paying little to no Corporation tax and having lots of offshore subsidiaries in tax havens)? Pot meet kettle.
You need to get many of your facts right
But yes – the GMG has used a tax haven – and I have condemned them for it
Nice article here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2013/may/15/hmrc-questions-amazon-google-tax-bills
Agreed
Not to be too much of a pendant, but:
the GMG has used a tax haven
“has” or “does”?
and I have condemned them for it
“condemned” or “mentioned”?
I seem to recall one Richard Murphy giving GMG a clean-bill of health/whitewash it relates to their morally questionable tax arrangements…..
The issue is stamp duty – and I have said they got it wrong
My reviews was of corporation tax – which is not impacted
addendum:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/tax-gap-blog/2009/feb/02/tax-gap-guardian
Out of interest, have you looked at how much profit your Unitary Taxation system would ascribe to Amazon UK?
No
Yes
In the Guardian earlier this year
Which? No or yes? And if yes, what was the answer?
Five months’ worth of on-line and offline content is a bit of a vague reference.
Go use Google…
And you’ve exceeded your daily trolling quota