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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

#61

Post by potlee »

valuearb wrote: post #47
potlee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth taxes are supposed to be paid in cash not stock so he would have to liquidate of the stock

What's your point? You are still taking part of the founder's control away, and giving it to some third party. Bezo's has paid a huge amount of taxes on shares of stock he's actually sold. He shouldn't have to pay taxes on money he hasn't received or is even able to spend yet. What's best for Society is that both he and his capital remains in Amazon as long as possible as investment, not being turned into consumption…

> He shouldn't have to pay taxes on money he hasn't received

No one should have to pay taxes ideally, but the government needs money to provide basic services, keep us safe, etc. I don't think it is better to tax salaried people some of who can barely make ends meet before taxing someone who is sitting on $70 on unrealized capital gains just because he chooses not to sell.

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

#62

Post by tim333 »

d_theorist wrote: post #40

Corporations are not taxed on revenue, so I can only assume that the headline is designed to be inflammatory.

I wouldn't have thought it was just designed to be inflammatory. It is rather striking they pay so little in relation to turnover. Presumably their reported earnings are low but given they have been increasing in market value at about $40bn/year it might indicate the accounting methods are not accurately reflecting reality. Time to modify the tax / accounting rules I think.

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

#63

Post by heavenlyblue »

rukittenme wrote: post #48
runesoerensen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No company on earth spends $100 so they can save $40 on their tax bill. It is nonsensical. How is that nonsensical? Seems like lots of companies expend/transfer/invest rather than being taxed on their profits? Edit: Replaced "to avoid" with "rather than".

Yes but they're not spending $100 to "dodge taxes". They're spending the money on positive NPV projects. You're mistaking an effect for a cause. Companies invest and expand and they pay less taxes as an effect. But in the future, they'll have to pay taxes on those revenue generating facilities they invested in. And if those investments go belly up then the company will LOSE more money than it ever gained by "dodging…

I don't see why Amazon is the only company privileged to grow. The only reason they are capable of operating right now (as in - on their low margins) is the sheer size they had reached by this time - and they are going nowhere but towards becoming the sole monopoly in the sector.

That is - all of the power and a relatively low amount of taxes; given to their investors.

Here's another bummer: why are citizens forced to pay for the social security that is provided by the government to Amazon? For example police, roads and the airports that are the key parts of the infrastructure that are making Amazon work?

You could make a point that they are not making cash for the investors today. But the investors are making a fortune by having enough power to affect our living. I don't see why this should be in private hands and not a part of governmental institution in this case as they do not pay taxes for the same reasons.

On the other hand - it would be interesting to see Amazon becoming that hugely low-margin business that is only allowed to stay afloat by keeping their monopoly on the market but also keeping the prices low because otherwise there would be another competitor soon enough.

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

#65

Post by rukittenme »

potlee wrote: post #60
rukittenme wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bezos doesn't have to pay anything on the 10s of billions worth of unrealized gains in AMZN stock either. It bugs me that you understand the gains are "unrealized" but still use it as an argument to tax him. What part of "unrealized" do you not get? I value your HN username at $10 billion. Pay a tax of $4 billion you greedy jerk.

> What part of "unrealized" do you not get? I don't think you understand any part of what "unrealized" means. "unrealized" as it relates to taxation simply means that the asset has not beed sold. > I value your HN username at $10 billion What you might personally value my username and what the market values AMZN stock at bear no similarity Besides 40% percent is a insane amount, most wealth tax systems are well under…

> I don't think you understand any part of what "unrealized" means. "unrealized" as it relates to taxation simply means that the asset has not beed sold.

No shit... At what point did I allude to it being otherwise?

> What you might personally value my username and what the market values AMZN stock at bear no similarity

Most people don't value Amazon at its current price. The majority of people value it lower or higher. A thin margin of people trade within their sliver of acceptable prices setting the current day trading price. To tax someone at the value a small third party ascribes is so insanely stupid it beggars belief.

The "market cap" of a company has NO BASIS in reality. That's why stock prices fluctuate like crazy for all but the biggest and most well known companies.

> Besides 40% percent is a insane amount, most wealth tax systems are well under 2%.

When do you pay this 2% tax? Every year? Say you own a $500,000 home -- not unreasonable in California. They're going to have to pay $10,000 every year for that home, even if they have no income. Even if they're living off their savings or they're retired and on fixed income.

Let's say some couple bought their home in the 50's for $30k. Today the value of the home is $500k. They're on a fixed income and can't afford to pay $10k in taxes. Are you going to evict them for being "wealthy"? Just because the market values their house at $500k as of this moment?

Boy, I can't wait for people to pump and dump stocks on tax day. It's going to be great... Or I can't wait for people to trash their homes to decrease the value and lower their tax burden.

---

Let's take a step back. I just made an offer on your username for $10 billion. Because no one else made an offer the current market value is $10 billion. It will remain $10 billion until someone else makes an offer. At which point, how you calculate the tax burden is up to you. Average? Weighted average? Moving weighted average? Ascending triangle? Support and resistance? Any of the other batshit technical analysis methods? What about the time period? Are you taxing the wealth of the past day, month, year, decade?

"But!", you'll say, "You're just one guy, you don't get to determine the market value of my username". And sadly for you, that's exactly what I get to do. Houses have market values even though a single digit number of people actually bid on them within a 20 year time period. Small cap stocks may only trade a few shares a day.

Your username has had more offers in the past 10 years than my parents house has. Their house has a market value, and now, so does your username. Pay your taxes.

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

#66

Post by aussieguy123 »

When it comes to corporate tax avoidance, the only headlines to take seriously are "Company x paid x amount of tax on x profits". If it says "Company x made x amount of revenue" or "Company x had x income last year" its not worth reading, companies are taxed on profit, not revenue.

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

#67

Post by valuearb »

potlee wrote: post #61
valuearb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? You are still taking part of the founder's control away, and giving it to some third party. Bezo's has paid a huge amount of taxes on shares of stock he's actually sold. He shouldn't have to pay taxes on money he hasn't received or is even able to spend yet. What's best for Society is that both he and his capital remains in Amazon as long as possible as investment, not being turned into consumption…

> He shouldn't have to pay taxes on money he hasn't received No one should have to pay taxes ideally, but the government needs money to provide basic services, keep us safe, etc. I don't think it is better to tax salaried people some of who can barely make ends meet before taxing someone who is sitting on $70 on unrealized capital gains just because he chooses not to sell.

That $70B in unrealized gains is funding higher paying jobs for hundreds of thousands of people.

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

#68

Post by pas »

developer2 wrote: post #50
adventured wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that have to do with Amazon? Their financials are public information, show me where they're hiding the massive cash production, because they must be hiding it from shareholders as well. Amazon is still primarily a retailer, one with historically horrific margins. The segment has notoriously bad margins in general (Costco & Walmart: typical ~2% net income margins, with very high income tax rates). Then there…

Saying that Walmart has "notoriously bad margins" makes it sound like they're working at a disadvantage. Walmart's margins aren't low out of necessity. Their entire business is purposely built around low margins, and refusing to hire full time employees with benefits, etc. It's intentional on their part - there is no sob story about margins there. Same goes for Amazon et al. The business strategy is to crush every sm…

> The business strategy is to crush every small retailer by operating at slim to no margins, purely to make it impossible for anyone else to compete.

Large retailers compete against each other. Small retailers can't do much anyhow. (Especially in heavily car based areas, if you have to go just a few more minutes and you can find more and cheaper products, why would you stop at a small shop?)

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

#69

Post by pas »

aussieguy123 wrote: post #66

When it comes to corporate tax avoidance, the only headlines to take seriously are "Company x paid x amount of tax on x profits". If it says "Company x made x amount of revenue" or "Company x had x income last year" its not worth reading, companies are taxed on profit, not revenue.

There are some revenue based taxes. (For example municipal corporate taxes in Hungary, about 1% of annual revenue.)

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

#70

Post by pas »

jamhan wrote: post #13

Relevant?: http://evonomics.com/amazon-accounting-corporate-profits-ric...

Relevant if you are talking about clickbait titles.

Capital gains are taxed at 20% at realization.

Tha articles (the site) makes the claim (by linking to an article on the same site) that capital gains are not counted as income. Yes, duh, because it counts as income when you close the position, sell the bond/stock/derivative/instrument/company/asset/capital and so on.

Surprise, surprise, dividends, (bond) coupon payments, interest and other yearly direct monetary (cash) payments do count as income.

And "some" economists don't ignore it: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51361 (neither did Piketty as far as I can tell)

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