Amazon doesn’t pay any tax schocker!
THE usual suspects have got all outraged at the fact that Amazon doesn’t seem to pay very much tax in the UK:
Amazon.co.uk, Britain’s biggest online retailer, generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the country last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits from that income – and is under investigation by the UK tax authorities.
Regulatory filings by parent company Amazon.com with the US securities and exchange commission (SEC) show the tax inquiry into the UK operation, which sells nearly one in four books sold in Britain, focuses on a period when ownership of the British business was transferred to a Luxembourg company.
Well, yes, the clue is in tat last part there, it’sd not a UK company so of course it doesn’t pay corporation tax in the UK. It’s a Luxembourg company and so it pays tax in Luxembourg. This is all part of the great EU project. You pays your corporation tax where your company is, where the head office is, and then you can sell anywahere in the EU. To change that you’d have to change the basic design of the EU.
But of course the stupidity of those protesting over this is greater than that. They fail to realise that we, the UK, do this as well. When BP buys oil in Angola and sells that oil in the US then the UK taxman takes a chunk of the profits. And if we’re going to insist on taxing the profits that Amazon makes selling in the UK then what is to stop every other country doing the same and then we lose that tax we get from BP. And Shell. And Rio Tinto. And BHP Billiton. And…..well, go through most of the list of the FTSE 100 on your own.
Posted: 5th, April 2012 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
