I posted an audio blog this morning explaining why and how Amazon, amongst other companies, avoid tax, making quite clear what the processes involved are and that despite avoiding they might still on occasion pay tax, which is blatantly obviously true.
In response Tim Worstall has published a blog on Forbes under the title
Britain's Leading Tax Expert Insists That Amazon Is Not Avoiding UK Tax
In it he says:
After many years of insisting exactly the opposite Britain's leading tax expert, Richard Murphy, today announced that Amazon does not in fact avoid (and most certainly does not evade) UK corporation tax. He now actually agrees with me, that in the most recent year we have the numbers for Amazon overpaid UK corporation tax.
Now I have never said Amazon has evaded tax, so that is not news. As for the rest, it's just straightforwardly untrue and a total misrepresentation of anything I have said both today and previously, all of which I stand by. Forbes really should take care when publishing blatant misrepresentations of the truth, including (but not limited to) the suggestion that I am the UK's leading tax expert, which I simply do not and never would remotely agree with.
I can assure you that Tim Worstall will never appear anywhere on this blog again. Not only is he a lousy economist he simply cannot tell the truth. In combination that is enough to resolve the issue for good.
Addition at 7am on 15 July:
The following exchange in the comments section may elaborate this issue:
In your audio blog, you did indeed say that they are paying the right amount of tax at the moment — indeed, more than one might expect. The issue you mentioned there was that you consider that they have set up structures such that they will pay too little in the future.
I can see how you get to that conclusion, but to say that a company is a tax avoider when it is not actually avoiding tax as yet — in essence, conflating “in my view there will be” with “there is now” — does seem to be a little bit premature.
Oh come on — that is a comment taken wholly out of context.
I suggested that because of what might be considered the fixed margin tax planning arrangement they are using for the long run they might, because of their current decision to reduce profit in a race for global domination in which tax avoidance plays a key part, have temporarily paid more pro rata tax in the UK than might be expected but that this did not in any way mean that they were not a tax avoider.
They have underpaid in the past.
It is likely they will again.
Saying they're not now is as absurd as claiming that a person engaged in another form of abuse is not guilty of it because by chance they did not do it today.
For heaven's sake; if your analytical abilities are as weak as this then you really are in trouble, desperate or just hopelessly inept.
The comment does not just apply to Andrew but all others who have apparently made similar comments elsewhere on the net.
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In your audio blog, you did indeed say that they are paying the right amount of tax at the moment – indeed, more than one might expect. The issue you mentioned there was that you consider that they have set up structures such that they will pay too little in the future.
I can see how you get to that conclusion, but to say that a company is a tax avoider when it is not actually avoiding tax as yet – in essence, conflating “in my view there will be” with “there is now” – does seem to be a little bit premature.
Oh come on – that is a comment taken wholly out of context.
I suggested that because of what might be considered the fixed margin tax planning arrangement they are using for the long run they might, because of their current decision to reduce profit in a race for global domination in which tax avoidance plays a key part, have temporarily paid more pro rata tax in the UK than might be expected but that this did not in any way mean that they were not a tax avoider.
They have underpaid in the past.
It is likely they will again.
Saying they’re not now is as absurd as claiming that a person engaged in another form of abuse is not guilty of it because by chance they did not do it today.
For heaven’s sake; if your analytical abilities are as weak as this then you really are in trouble, desperate or just hopelessly inept.
You must have been rushed this morning – you forgot to put your normal “With respect” before “…you really are in trouble, desperate or just hopelessly inept” 🙂
I think you are rather over-stretching the argument by saying that the low-margin policy Amazon adopt is a tax planning device. No-one avoids tax by making less profit, except in jokes. You can avoid it by making profit in one jurisdiction rather than another, and possibly by being judicious use of provisions and so on (but both these are well-known issues which have safeguards against them); but to suggest that anyone would take £1 less in the till simply in order to avoid 20p of tax is absurd.
Now they might be cutting margin to gain market share, but that is not per se a tax avoidance technique, any more than an employee going part-time to get under the higher-rate threshold is tax avoidance.
Andrew
It is very difficult to take you seriously
I did not once suggest that the current Amazon pricing regime was a tax avoidance scheme. It takes a mind of the sort I described to reach such a conclusion. The tax avoidance structure is well known and publicised – and the subject of international enquiries and were very obviously the subject of what I was discussing and yet you apparently feign ignorance of them, deliberately misinterpret what I wrote or, worryingly, apparently cannot read in context
Please do not waste my time again – it will save you a lot of embarrassment
Richard
“…their current decision to reduce profit in a race for global domination in which tax avoidance plays a key part…”
That kind of looks as though you’re saying that their margin policy is closely tied to tax avoidance. It came across more strongly in your spoken blog.
Some advice: when in a hole stop digging
Admitting an error is just fine
I do when I have made one as I have proved today
You have given Worstall a lot of time and space on this blog -I can understand why you have had enough.
Worstall still denies that banks create the money supply and is clearly an economic ‘flat-earther.’
Richard you are been too generous to this man, you should have slapped him down a long time ago.
Good riddance to Worstall.
“They have underpaid in the past.”
Which year(s)?
Just go and read the past reports
Which reports?
The constant making of bald assertions and, when challenged to explain, the direction to other documents (which, once located, invariably do NOT back up your original claim) is becoming ridiculous.
If you really cannot use Google I am not your personal search engine
As you yourself pointed out recently (on the subject of criticising GMG’s tax affairs), your output is prodigious, and your site not especially Google-friendly. Indeed a search on “amazon report site:taxresearch.org.uk” yielded hundreds of results. Could you maybe narrow it down a bit, perhaps tell us the report title?
No, because I am well aware that you are familiar with this issue and are wasting my time