Amazon UK tax payment falls to £1.7m

Amazon UK tax payment falls to £1.7m

Despite watching the jump in profit, online retail giant Amazon paid very little in the UK last year in the UK.

Amazon Services UK paid $ 1.7m below £ 7.4m in 2016, but operating profit increased from £ 48m to £ 80m.

One reason for low tax bills was the increase in share-based payments for employees. This bill was £ 4.6m, but he has postponed the payment of the remaining £ 2.9m.

An Amazon UK spokesman said that he paid all the taxes required for "in the UK and every country where we work".

"The corporation tax is based on profit, not revenue, and our profits are low, retail is a very competitive, low-margin business and we are constantly investing heavily."

The spokesman said that in the last five years, full-time employees get full shares of more than £ 1,000 per annum at completion centres.

Since Amazon's stock price has risen so fast, it is often more valuable when they are sold in open stock markets. That sales price is the tax bill based on both the company and the person.

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Amazon Services UK is the division that runs the completion centre which processes process, package and delivery to UK customers.

It employed more than two-thirds of 27,000 strong British employees. It does not include Amazon businesses engaged in cloud computing services, which provide remote data storage and Amazon Marketplace.

Businesses for the UK UK services jumped from £ 1.43bn to about £ 1.98bn.

Analysis

Dominic O'Connell, Business Presenter Today

While the numbers are large, this set of accounts only gives a glimpse of Amazon's true status of tax cases. Amazon Services UK runs customer service and warehouse in the UK - Real retail sales pass through a different company.

Turnover was less than £ 2 billion, operating profit was less than £ 80 million, but the company was able to reduce its tax liability by reducing part of the payments made to the employees in the form of shares of the company. Any company can do this - it's not an Amazon-specific strategy. After this, he deferred some tax and ended the payment of only £ 1.7m.

For high street retailers, this will be a bitter bullet, who are struggling to survive under the escape of online shoppers, still unable to reduce their tax burden. They claim that their physical location means that they take an additional burden of higher trade rates.

This is also a tendency for the Treasury and HMRC, which has often worked hard on tax reform but is not able to lay the playing field between High Street and online players. Long-term talks about moving away from corporation tax - Tax Company Profits - for an activity tax, which occupies tax on sales anywhere - does not seem to be so close.

major role

Earlier this week, Amazon reported quarterly profits of $ 2.53 billion (£ 1.9 billion) worldwide, from three months to 30 June.

During the same period of last year, the profit was 12 times higher than Jeff Bezos's company.

Amazon reports its revenue from UK sales through a different company located in Luxembourg.

Fidelity International's investment director Rebecca McVitti told the BBC's Today program that this is a sign of "how the tax policy has not increased".

"The world has developed very fast, technology giants have this very influential role and popular role with consumers and in many cases, what we see in the headings today, I think there should be more reflection on the need for digital taxation. "