It has been revealed that Amazon paid just £14.95mn in tax on its European business last year, despite making huge profits of £19.57bn and capturing a major slice of the British retail trade.
The Luxenbourg-based company’s cross-border arrangements are likely to infuriate smaller and independent businesses which are currently beset from all sides by hikes in business rates, ever-increasing rents and unavoidable corporation tax.
The online giant managed to post a reported profit of just £54m last year, resulting in vastly reduced taxation. Revenue from Amazon’s UK retail sales are logged via a separate company, also based in the European haven of Luxembourg, but American reports indicate that its overall revenues in Britain reached around £7.3bn in 2016.
An Amazon spokesman said: “Amazon pays all the taxes that are required in every country where we operate. We’ve invested over €20bn in Europe since 2010, and expect to hire 15,000 new employees this year, bringing our total permanent European workforce to over 65,000 people.”
