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Amazon paid just £15m in tax on European revenues of £19.5bn

theguardian.com

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Re: Amazon paid just £15m in tax on European revenues of £19.5bn

#11

Post by DanBC »

adventured wrote: post #6

I'm all for giving Amazon flack where it's deserved. This tax witch-hunt isn't one of those cases. 2016 pre-tax income: $3.89 billion 2016 income tax: $1.43 billion 2016 income tax rate: 36.7% That's one of the highest rates on earth. 2015: $1.57b pre-tax income. $950m income taxes. That's a 60% rate. They don't generate much taxable income. What exactly are they supposed to be paying substantial taxes on other than…

Isn't income tax paid by the employees, and not Amazon? What's the employer's contribution?

What you're missing is that the UK has been going through years of austerity. The UK public know some large companies have weird dodgy tax arrangements, and while there's some acceptance that no-one pays the real tax rate there's growing unrest about the very low rates paid by eg Starbucks or Google or Amazon.

These companies can chose to pay a bit more tax, or face tighter regulation.

The current EU VAT laws are proof the EU is happy to make onerous laws about tax

Re: Amazon paid just £15m in tax on European revenues of £19.5bn

#14

Post by cestith »

The TL;DR of this article is the author dislikes the taxing basis put in place by the legislature and is blaming Amazon for paying taxes legally based on that.

Never mind the 65,000 employees in Europe who presumably do pay income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and more based on the fact that they have their income from their employer.

If someone wants to argue for a 1% or 2% revenue tax rather than a much higher rate but only on profits, that's the argument to make. Don't blame the players for playing by broken rules.

Re: Amazon paid just £15m in tax on European revenues of £19.5bn

#15

Post by rukittenme »

wonder_bread wrote: post #8
zsgoldberg wrote: post #3

taxes aren't determined by revenue, i haven't even opened the article (yet) and it's already stunted its own impact

I don't like being rude in comments sections but that's a pretty dumb comment to make, to be honest. I don't think the writer needs any help understanding how tax bills are formulated, it's just meant to state a point. (Which you would understand if you read the article before commenting)

What point is the author trying to state? "I don't understand tax bills"? It's meant to be deceptive and garner clicks. The author presents the full and complete story in the body of the text: "pre-tax profit of €59.6m last year" and "a tax of €16.5m". That's "only" a 30% tax rate. And not a story worth reading.

Re: Amazon paid just £15m in tax on European revenues of £19.5bn

#17

Post by potlee »

Bezos doesn't have to pay anything on the 10s of billions worth of unrealized gains in AMZN stock either. Income taxes discourage generation of income and sales taxes discourage consumption. Wealth taxes are harder to dodge this way and should make up more of the tax revenues.

Re: Amazon paid just £15m in tax on European revenues of £19.5bn

#18

Post by soperj »

denysonique wrote: post #16

Companies are greedy, taxes are ultimately paid by consumers - should a tax become higher for amazon or any other company, they will immediately raise the prices of their products to compensate the profit losses.

every other company that does pay taxes loses to amazon on this though.

Re: Amazon paid just £15m in tax on European revenues of £19.5bn

#19

Post by cs702 »

Amazon has never paid income taxes commensurate with its size to any government, because it has never produced earnings commensurate with its size for shareholders.

Amazon has always operated almost like a non-profit, non-taxable organization.

That's old news.

Re: Amazon paid just £15m in tax on European revenues of £19.5bn

#20

Post by abawany »

denysonique wrote: post #16

Companies are greedy, taxes are ultimately paid by consumers - should a tax become higher for amazon or any other company, they will immediately raise the prices of their products to compensate the profit losses.

One difference is that when taxes are fairly paid by companies and they raise prices, then the company that can offer the lower price due to operational efficiency will win. Right now, the burden of taxation falls on other persons in society without such tax avoidance expertise and muddies the waters.
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