Amazon UK pays corporation tax for first time since 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/26/amazon-uk-pays-corporation-tax-for-first-time-since-2020

by PaulHoule • 2 years ago

47 31 2 years ago

NickC25• 2 years ago

Good! Amazon is a multi-trillion dollar organization - they should pay tax.

Spivak2• 2 years ago

Yep, we need to start taxing cash flow (at a lower rate than profit) to finally close the loophole of companies "making zero profit" and therefore owing no taxes.

Profit is just a proxy for business activity, it's not handed down from the gods as the correct way to assess tax. Doing billions of dollars of business a year is a pretty good sign you're doing business and can not only afford but ought to be paying tax.

All the HN bros who started businesses selling dollars for 90c clearly hate this take. Businesses right now pay CC companies 1-3% on every transaction to Visa, a small tax on revenue clearly hasn't killed all businesses. I know in your mind "taxes" means "Uncle Sam takes 30%" but when you're taxing a much much bigger number the percent can be lower, and flat.

stuartleigh• 2 years ago

How is taxing revenue different to VAT?

kachapopopow2• 2 years ago

do you want to kill every company that is an intermediary? do you want to kill every single super market?

cause that's how you kill 50% of the businesses.

johngladtj• 2 years ago

So you want to kill all low margin businesses?

INTPenis4• 2 years ago

This type of headline is not ok. This needs to be treated like a crime. It's eventually a crime against all tax payers of that country.

taeric4• 2 years ago

It sounds like it was a deduction introduced by the government? I would be interested in seeing what the proposed benefits of the deduction were and if it seems to have worked.

Also curious how many other companies it impacted. I really don't get the scapegoating of Amazon on many stories where they are sometimes not even the largest company involved in the story.

INTPenis4• 2 years ago

Then it's a crime committed by the government. I personally don't understand people making excuses for this type of behavior.

It doesn't matter if it's Amazon, Google, or the UK government, it is hypocrisy.

swarnie• 2 years ago

Aiding/encouraging business investment is a crime?

We should probably round up every government ever if that's the case.

tharmas3• 2 years ago

The Devil is in the details. This appears to be Amazon Warehouse. They don't really create jobs. In fact they destroy more jobs than they create. They killed "the high street shops". Those "high street shops" employed a lot of local services like accountants, lawyers, financial planners etc. spin off jobs. What spin off jobs does Amazon Warehouse create? They don't use local services described above. Robots? Were those Robots made or designed in the UK? If yes, then that's investment. If no, they are just Canibals.

charles_f• 2 years ago

It's amoral but not directly illegal though.

sor1nmarkov• 2 years ago

Ridiculous that a company like this is given credits for automation that actually means less employees needed.

Iulioh• 2 years ago

Honestly it's a little...complicated

On one end more employees are good for the economy because people have to work and have jobs.

On the other end having less people is good because it means the productivity rised, that's out objective.

The future scares me

kypro2• 2 years ago

I don't fully agree with it, but the argument is that automation increases productivity and creates new higher paid jobs allowing human labour to be used for more useful things than just moving boxes around warehouses.

tharmas3• 2 years ago

Agreed. And it would help if that automation/designed was made in the UK.

But they have cannibalized local businesses on the high street.

kypro2• 2 years ago

Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe the reason Amazon doesn't pay tax, and even now is only paying very little corporation tax is because corporation tax is a tax on profits which is something Amazon avoids like the plague. In fact, I believe in the UK Amazon's ecommerce operations operate at a loss and have done for years...

I thought that the UK introduced a digital revenue tax in 2020 to tackle this issue which should tax all revenues of large multinational companies like Amazon at 2%. So Amazon did £27b in sales then I'm surprised to see they're only paying £18.7m in tax...

So am I right in thinking that in addition to this corporation tax bil Amazon is also paying hundreds of millions in digital revenues taxes, and that the The Guardian is just spinning a narrative around the corporation tax Amazon pays? Or is Amazon not paying the new digital revenue tax somehow?

Amazon UK pays corporation tax for first time since 2020

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