Amazon Corporation Tax

[OwlHoot]

I'm as guilty as anyone in using Amazon for almost everything, due to the ocnvenience.
But I don't like that they're becoming a monopoly, especially on books.
Platypus mentioned price rises, believe me these are coming when Amazon achieves complete dominance in the market, always happens with a monopoly.

WHS, and I like even less that fact that whatever one searches on in Google, even if it is obviously preposterously non-existent, a string of Amazon results pop up but it turns out that "This item is currently unavailable". So in other words, they're obviously just fielding every search regardless.

[Spacecadet]

UK Sales 4.3 Bn
Corporation Tax 2.5 million
but they got government grants of 2.5 million.

I need the number of their accountant!

CORPORATION TAX IS NOT BASED ON SALES!!!!

Sorry, it gets annoying hearing this same lie repeated again and again and again on the TV, in the newspapers and even on forums like this where as Ltd. company owners people really ought to know what corporation tax is.

Where do I say it is? Learn how to comprehend simple sentences before ranting.

[fullyautomatix]

No you don't...its simple! All you need is a subsidiary in another country where the corp tax is a nominal amount, or where you can strike a deal with the government so that it's a nominal amount and then get that part of your business to provide a service at an extortionate cost to the main business. You'll wipe out your profits in the country or countries where you make the profit and its gets transferred to the country where you have the cheap corp tax deal. Starbucks do this in Switzerland. They source their coffee beans through the Swiss part of their company and it flogs them, at a hugely inflated price to the rest of the business, ensuring that they make no profit in each country except for Switzerland

So they are exploiting a loophole then.

If the UK government wants to, it can easily crack down on this sort of thing.

Easy thing to sort out, if you have UK sales of a billion quid and you pay a nominal amount in corp tax, examine the records and impose a heavy fine on them which is equivalent to the tax they avoided plus a big interest.

[DimPrawn]

The point is, if 100's of global large corporations operate in the UK and pay little or no tax, where do you think HMR&C will fill the shortfall?

That's right, the much easier to bully and tax SME segment.

And anyone who thinks tax dodging leads to lower prices is fooling themselves. The lower tax means higher profits and bigger management bonus payments.

[proggy]

Ah so I used the word sales then in another sentence corporation tax, I can see how an idiot would read that as me saying corp tax is on sales.

My point was they got grants covering their corporation tax so effectively paid 0.

Also although corp tax is not calculated from sales with a profitable company you would expect there would be relationship between them. i.e you wouldn't expect a company with sales of 200k to have a corp tax bill of 500k. Or a company with sales of 4bn to have corp tax of £10 without some tax avoidance measures.

[Spacecadet]

Ah so I used the word sales then in another sentence corporation tax, I can see how an idiot would read that as me saying corp tax is on sales.

My point was they got grants covering their corporation tax so effectively paid 0.

Also although corp tax is not calculated from sales with a profitable company you would expect there would be relationship between them. i.e you wouldn't expect a company with sales of 200k to have a corp tax bill of 500k. Or a company with sales of 4bn to have corp tax of £10 without some tax avoidance measures.

I know what you meant and you're still equating sales with tax

Tax is only on profit. It's perfectly within reason for a company to have £4bn in sales and still be making a loss, how do you think the likes of HMV end up in liquidation?

[DimPrawn]

I know what you meant and you're still equating sales with tax

Tax is only on profit. It's perfectly within reason for a company to have £4bn in sales and still be making a loss, how do you think the likes of HMV end up in liquidation?

Paid their tax bills?

[proggy]

I know what you meant and you're still equating sales with tax

Tax is only on profit. It's perfectly within reason for a company to have £4bn in sales and still be making a loss, how do you think the likes of HMV end up in liquidation?

The reason I said PROFITABLE company. Oh my god, it's like talking to a retard and having to explain the meaning of each word.

[Spacecadet]

The reason I said PROFITABLE company. Oh my god, it's like talking to a retard and having to explain the meaning of each word.

You used the word profitable in a different sentence so it doesn't count

Ah so I used the word sales then in another sentence corporation tax, I can see how an idiot would read that as me saying corp tax is on sales.

Seriously. Don't go equating corp tax with sales then blame everyone else for "misunderstanding" you

[Brussels Slumdog]

How can the UK Govt stop this ?

So they are exploiting a loophole then.

If the UK government wants to, it can easily crack down on this sort of thing.

Easy thing to sort out, if you have UK sales of a billion quid and you pay a nominal amount in corp tax, examine the records and impose a heavy fine on them which is equivalent to the tax they avoided plus a big interest.

This is how it works based on a previous IT configurations

The Principle or holding company owns the stock ie coffee beans
The principle has a contract or controls the source of supply ie in Latin America. The selling company ie UK company orders the beans from the principle and the Latin American company delivers the coffee beans directly to the UK company

The Latin American company sells the beans to the Principle at 25p. The Principle sells the beans to UK company at 225p paying tax on 200p. The UK company Sells at 300p and pays tax on 75p less admin which equals 0. Therefore pays no UK corporation tax