Do Amazon pay tax in the UK?

[Psycho Sonny]

Oh no sorry, we don't. Just wack in a couple of SAM sites around major cities.

great explanation?

i'd like to see an explanation of why we "need" the RAF?

anybody care to offer such an explanation?

 

[Burnsy2023]

just ask America for siphon of their pipe?

They're too greedy.

 

[Gimpymoo]

I do not care, Amazon offer a service which hardly anyone else can match, apart from OcUK

I spend my money where I get the best service and at the moment, Amazon are miles ahead.

Their Prime service is just AMAZING.

 

[Cold_And_Miserable]

Would save next to no money and end changing the face of parliament significantly as only those that were independantly wealthy would be MPs.

It costs £2-3 billion per year just to run Westminister.
Over 600 MPs and an even greater number of lords all costing roughly £200k+ per year is hardly "no money". It's probably a lot more than that. Many of those lords don't even turn up.

As for "changing the face of parliament significantly" I doubt they could be any more corrupt. At least wealthy MPs won't need to make false expense claims and will be more likely to be well educated in relevant fields.

 

[londonbairn]

Just because they don't pay UK Corporation tax does not make it a bad thing. Think of all the people they employ in the UK, the contracts provided to UK courier/post companies etc, the exposure/market they give to smaller companies through amazon market place etc.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Reverting to a pure defence force is certainly something worthy of discussion but your figures are fundamentally wrong - the only things you could hack at to save 50% of spending would be the benefits system and the NHS, nothing else would cover even a fraction of your required cuts.

So which is it to be - poor dying of easily curable diseases/ trauma or the poor dying of starvation or exposure due to no benefit safety net?

Perhaps you could cut all benefits and reduce the NHS to medicare levels of spending but it wouldn't stimulate spending one jot - you'd save every penny you had because you never know when you may need to rely on those savings.

the benefit system is currently being worked on, the NHS is never ever going to be cut down unless it is privatized, whenever i have used the NHS, i think to myself why bother, google offers me much more in depth and correct knowledge. specialists these days are incompetent, but GP's even more so.

so i would prefer if it was privatized to be honest, BUPA only costs like £30 a month does it not? or you could get health insurance from any number of insurance companies.

defence force is the way forward, im sure that would save Billions every year, im sure that can be used on the NHS or Education, etc.

 

[steve-h]

a lot of UK companies are going bankrupt because of this, HMV, Virgin, Game, Gamestation, Woolworths, etc are all in trouble or have vanished

er - is that not because of conevnience? Who in their right mind would buy a game from HMV when they can buy it from home and download it faster than it would take them to drive to the store and back? Or buy a CD when they only want a single track... which they put on their electical device, not an old fashion cd player.

These stores failed because of new technology, the less overhead and sometimes cost to the customer is just a bonus.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

It costs £2-3 billion per year just to run Westminister.
Over 600 MPs and an even greater number of lords all costing roughly £200k+ per year is hardly "no money". It's probably a lot more than that. Many of those lords don't even turn up.

As for "changing the face of parliament significantly" I doubt they could be any more corrupt. At least wealthy MPs won't need to make false expense claims and will be more likely to be well educated in relevant fields.

lol

nice to see some figures, so i was right, MP's need to be cut down and wage capped, as well as cut's on the Army, Navy and RAF to defence only.

im pretty sure the UK would have a spare billion or two every year if it did so.

 

[londonbairn]

I do not care, Amazon offer a service which hardly anyone else can match, apart from OcUK

I spend my money where I get the best service and at the moment, Amazon are miles ahead.

Same, for me Amazon are the best online e-tailer, the rare occassion I have a problem they will always sort it out super fast, and give you more back. I had a DAB radio I ordered a while ago get lost in the post, they sent another same day evening delivery, the other one turned up 2 weeks later and they told me to keep it.

Think I have spent £1000s there this year ...

 

[Dave M]

so i would prefer if it was privatized to be honest, BUPA only costs like £30 a month does it not? or you could get health insurance from any number of insurance companies.

defence force is the way forward, im sure that would save Billions every year, im sure that can be used on the NHS or Education, etc.

BUPA only costs £30 a month because the vast majority of your care is handled by the NHS, a total care package would like cost you 4-5 times that, assuming you were healthy, god help if you if you're diabetic or have some other chronic ailment..

And again you are comparing the defence budget to the NHS - you could scrap defence entirely, pour it all into the NHS and you wouldn't even notice.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

do you know why the NHS costs so much?

because of dodgy pharmaceutical companies giving bungs to MP's as donations to their party, then when said MP's get into power they give said pharmaceutical companies the contracts, instead of much cheaper alternative companies.

some sort of internal organisation needs to be setup, where these things are policed, and making sure that the public sector always buys the cheapest or best value for money option, rather than it's current corrupt state. where it overpays for medicine and equipment by trillions of pounds.

 

[KNiVES]

£19,367? wow...

Surely if the Goverment are serious about reducing the deficit they should look into closing loopholes like this.

And tank the economy even harder by stifling businesses? Think about what you're saying.

 

[Vonhelmet]

According to Companies House filings, the last time Amazon paid corporation tax in the UK was 2007, when it paid....£19,367.

I can't readily imagine how Amazon could avoid paying tax in the UK. Dividends are non-deductible, so they can't dividend the profits out to Luxembourg. Transfer pricing rules would also prevent them diverting the profits to Luxembourg through "service charges" or anything like that. If they make profits in the UK then they will be taxed in the UK, one way or another.

I'd hazard that the reason they haven't paid CT here in years is that they are awash with losses - remember that Amazon as a whole only became profitable relatively recently.

 

[daz]

do you know why the NHS costs so much?

"So" much? You realise the cost per person for government provided healthcare (i.e. the NHS) is middle of the road for European countries, and less than half that per person of what the US spend on government provided healthcare?

 

[Dave M]

do you know why the NHS costs so much?

because of dodgy pharmaceutical companies giving bungs to MP's as donations to their party, then when said MP's get into power they give said pharmaceutical companies the contracts, instead of much cheaper alternative companies.

some sort of internal organisation needs to be setup, where these things are policed, and making sure that the public sector always buys the cheapest or best value for money option, rather than it's current corrupt state. where it overpays for medicine and equipment by trillions of pounds.

What, like NICE?

I don't know a great deal about government spending, frankly it bores me but your knowledge of the sums involved and the reasons behind them swings from the ignorant to the ludicrous.

Medical treatment costs a lot because some of the treatments are frankly amazing. These treatments are created by private companies with patents - you cannot buy cheaper.

Do you suggest we just carry on letting people die or suffer horrible side effects until the patent on a better drug runs out?

We do pretty well at securing good prices on the latest drugs due to our immense buying power AND because sometimes NICE just says no thanks, not good enough value.

That's right, it says no, we'd rather a few people die because we could spend that money saving more lives.

I'm not sure you know how the NHS runs, or what public spending consists of or why we spend it. I'd dearly love to see public spending and taxation reduced by 50% but soap box politics isn't the answer. Unfortunately it's complicated and hard and won't be popular with anybody.

 

[Hatter The Mad]

do you know why the NHS costs so much?

because of dodgy pharmaceutical companies giving bungs to MP's as donations to their party, then when said MP's get into power they give said pharmaceutical companies the contracts, instead of much cheaper alternative companies.

some sort of internal organisation needs to be setup, where these things are policed, and making sure that the public sector always buys the cheapest or best value for money option, rather than it's current corrupt state. where it overpays for medicine and equipment by trillions of pounds.

Prove it

 

[Vonhelmet]

VAT isn't really paid by a company though is it? The company simply collects it from the customer, then passes it on the the tax man.

They pay tax on the value that they add. They collect VAT from us, from which they deduct the VAT that they pay their suppliers. At each step along the chain, you pay the tax on the value that you add.

So yes, they do pay VAT.

 

[lookitsjonno]

Think I have spent £1000s there this year ...

which is exactly the point, the tresury would be subject to 26% of the profit made in the sale of those goods if Amazon was subject to UK corporation tax. So you purchasing your goods from Amazon and not a UK retailer has in effect shrunk the UK ecomomy and made that of Luxembourg bigger.

 

[ubersonic]

a lot of UK companies are going bankrupt because of this, HMV, Virgin, Game, Gamestation, Woolworths, etc are all in trouble or have vanished

I thought they went because they were charging stupidly over the top prices for everything because they knew people had no alternatives but to buy from them and then when the web hit people chose to either pirate it or to buy it online more conveniently and for less money.

This might actually be the stupidest thing I have ever read.

I was going to agree then I remembered that guys posts about how space travel was all faked and humans had never left the atmosphere...

sure some people may not like it when i decide to sell off the RAF, but do we honestly need them when we could just install SAM sites on the coast of every major city?

Because the SAM sites would only be in range to shoot down incoming planes after they had released their payload, personally I would prefer the ability to intercept incoming bombers with fighters.

You do however make a good argument as to why defence decisions should never be left to people who know nothing about the subject ^^

Reverting to a pure defence force is certainly something worthy of discussion

Yeah, the French implemented this after WW1 and it worked out great... for... them...

Well their country didn't end up occupied for too many years at least

 

[Dave M]

which is exactly the point, the tresury would be subject to 26% of the profit made in the sale of those goods if Amazon was subject to UK corporation tax. So you purchasing your goods from Amazon and not a UK retailer has in effect shrunk the UK ecomomy and made that of Luxembourg bigger.

If the profit is 0.01% it doesn't really matter that much - the taxes paid on staff, fuel, 3rd party contracts (couriers, cleaning, security and so on) of which some or all *will* be owned by uk registered companies.

To be honest guessing how lousy Amazon's profit margins probably are I'd look more towards energy and technology companies. How much UK CP does BP pay, how about Google and Microsoft? They make a goodly amount of money in this area, so what was the tax bill? Telecoms are another good one - Vodafone was in the news recently for their tax affairs, how about BT?