Amazon paid less tax in last 20 years than M&S paid in one year
Amazon has paid less corporation tax in the UK over the last two decades than major retailers such as Marks and Spencer paid in one year alone, it has been reported.
An investigation by the Mirror found that Amazon UK Services had paid just £61.7 million corporation tax in the UK in the last 20 years.
It also found the company had turned over £6.86 billion in the UK since 1998, but made £213 million profit – including five years of losses. Marks and Spencer paid £65.4 million corporation tax last year, and £3.3 billion in the last two decades, the newspaper found.
It said Debenhams had paid £303 million since 2005 while Tesco’s corporation tax bill last year was £176 million.
Tax campaigner Richard Murphy told the newspaper: “Amazon is taking advantage of the international tax system to exploit the UK. The UK and other countries let them.”
Meanwhile Shadow chancellor John McDonnell accused the Conservatives of allowing multinational companies to “exploit” communities.
He said: “With our high streets struggling to survive and public services on their knees, it’s sickening that companies are still getting away with what appears to be aggressive tax dodging.
“The Tories have continued to allow multinational companies to exploit our communities by refusing to pay their fair share, denying towns and cities the investment they desperately need.
“Labour will clamp down on tax avoidance and evasion, and implement our Tax Transparency and Enforcement Programme to build an economy that works for the many, not the few.”
The Mirror’s investigation comes after the tech giant reported a rise in revenue and profits for the last three months of 2018 in its latest set of financial results.
For the three months up to December 31, the e-commerce firm said net sales were up by 20% on this time last year, rising from 60.5 billion US dollars (£46.1 billion) to 72.4 billion dollars (£55.2 billion).
The company’s profits for the quarter were also up, reaching three billion dollars (£2.2 billion), compared to 1.9 billion dollars (£1.5 billion) this time last year.
Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos – also the world’s richest man – singled out virtual assistant Alexa as a key performer.
He said: “Alexa was very busy during her holiday season. Echo Dot was the best-selling item across all products on Amazon globally, and customers purchased millions more devices from the Echo family compared to last year.
“The number of research scientists working on Alexa has more than doubled in the past year, and the results of the team’s hard work are clear.
“In 2018, we improved Alexa’s ability to understand requests and answer questions by more than 20% through advances in machine learning, we added billions of facts making Alexa more knowledgeable than ever, developers doubled the number of Alexa skills to over 80,000, and customers spoke to Alexa tens of billions more times in 2018 compared to 2017.
“We’re energised by and grateful for the response, and you can count on us to keep working hard to bring even more invention to customers.”
