Jobless in Seattle: 60 couriers lose jobs as Amazon axes deliveries by bike

ooldbaker wrote:

The figures are from their audited  annual report . Page 39.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-reportsannual

They discuss the tax charge in the introduction. 

They pay very little tax in the UK but worldwide it is a totally different matter. Tax on the UK sale of amazon goods is taxed mainly in Luxemburg part going to the UK for "fulfillment". 

As I said above  60% is a bit of a freakish charge but still the usual rate of 30% is still far higher than the 20% we charge companies. This hardly gives them an advantage over local booksellers who pay much lower rate.

Thats right - Amazon made £5 billion of sales in the UK, but because all of their UK sales are dealt with by their Luxembourg company then they only paid £11 million in corporation tax in the UK. So that's alright then.

(They used to import and export via Jersey and Guernsey for the same sort of reasons).

brooksby wrote:

ooldbaker wrote:

The figures are from their audited  annual report . Page 39.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-reportsannual

They discuss the tax charge in the introduction. 

They pay very little tax in the UK but worldwide it is a totally different matter. Tax on the UK sale of amazon goods is taxed mainly in Luxemburg part going to the UK for "fulfillment". 

As I said above  60% is a bit of a freakish charge but still the usual rate of 30% is still far higher than the 20% we charge companies. This hardly gives them an advantage over local booksellers who pay much lower rate.

Thats right - Amazon made £5 billion of sales in the UK, but because all of their UK sales are dealt with by their Luxembourg company then they only paid £11 million in corporation tax in the UK. So that's alright then.

(They used to import and export via Jersey and Guernsey for the same sort of reasons).

This wasn't a story about Amazon UK but their US company which does pay very high taxes. Personally I think that a company with the sense to put their European base in a country with 1% tax rather than one with 20% tax to be able to give their customers a better deal is not all bad.

In the EU a Luxemburg company is just as entitled to sell it's books in the UK as one paying taxes here.

I am not defending Amazon particularly in the way they treat employees but as an accountant I get totally exasperated in the way the media and politicians treat tax avoidance by dismissing law abiding companies as tax dodgers when the politicians make the rules that they  follow and the media are amongst the worst tax dodgers themselves.

ooldbaker wrote:

brooksby wrote:

ooldbaker wrote:

The figures are from their audited  annual report . Page 39.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-reportsannual

They discuss the tax charge in the introduction. 

They pay very little tax in the UK but worldwide it is a totally different matter. Tax on the UK sale of amazon goods is taxed mainly in Luxemburg part going to the UK for "fulfillment". 

As I said above  60% is a bit of a freakish charge but still the usual rate of 30% is still far higher than the 20% we charge companies. This hardly gives them an advantage over local booksellers who pay much lower rate.

Thats right - Amazon made £5 billion of sales in the UK, but because all of their UK sales are dealt with by their Luxembourg company then they only paid £11 million in corporation tax in the UK. So that's alright then.

(They used to import and export via Jersey and Guernsey for the same sort of reasons).

This wasn't a story about Amazon UK but their US company which does pay very high taxes. Personally I think that a company with the sense to put their European base in a country with 1% tax rather than one with 20% tax to be able to give their customers a better deal is not all bad.

In the EU a Luxemburg company is just as entitled to sell it's books in the UK as one paying taxes here.

I am not defending Amazon particularly in the way they treat employees but as an accountant I get totally exasperated in the way the media and politicians treat tax avoidance by dismissing law abiding companies as tax dodgers when the politicians make the rules that they  follow and the media are amongst the worst tax dodgers themselves.

Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's moral at all, the politicians pander to corporations too much which is why we have this tax avoidence mess. And I was reading just in the last couple of days that Amazon have also been avoiding US taxes

<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/18/revealed-project-gold...">Revealed: how Project Goldcrest helped Amazon avoid huge sums in tax | Technology | The Guardian</a>

Batchy wrote:

That's Capitalism for ya !

Capitalism isn't all bad, this is much more like corporate greed. Not as if Amazon are short of money, we all know they don't pay taxes. Perhaps the CEO needs to top up his bonus?

grumpyoldcyclist wrote:

 

we all know they don't pay taxes. 

Do we?  

Worldwide Amazon paid $950M on profits of $1,568M in 2015 a rate of over 60%. a bit of a bad year, overall they tend to pay about 30% as most of their profits are made in the US with rates of well over 30% balanced by low rates overseas.

A lot of other multinationals do manage to make profits disappear but amazon selling physical items actually don't.

For the volume of sales that they make their profits are very small. We benefit from their low prices.

I can understand criticism of their labour policies but if you think they "don't pay taxes" then you have listened to too many politicians who do not understand the tax laws they make.