Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Don't buy gifts from tax-dodging Amazon, say UK MPs...

Shoppers looking for bargains this Christmas should give Amazon a miss because it doesn't pay its fair share of taxes, say a group of eight MPs led by the head of the public accounts committee, Margaret Hodge.

"Amazon is one of the global companies that aggressively avoids paying tax on the profits that they earn from the business they undertake in the UK," Hodge told Ethical Consumer magazine, which is running a campaign to boycott Amazon. "Not only is this morally wrong but it disadvantages every business from the local community-based bookshop to bigger, British-based companies like John Lewis and therefore endangers British businesses and British jobs."

Hodge famously called UK representatives of Amazon and Google before her committee earlier this year to give them a thorough telling-off for not paying their taxes. The retailer paid just £2.4m in UK tax last year, on sales of £4.3bn, thanks to being registered as a company in low-tax Luxembourg. It even received a grant of £2.5m to expand in Scotland, because it was creating jobs.

The other MPs who have joined the Ethical Consumer campaign are Natascha Engel, Meg Hillier, John McDonnell, Michael Meacher, Austin Mitchell, Grahame Morris and Dennis Skinner. All, like Hodge, are members of the Labour party. Full story...

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