Reply to post: Tax paid by employees are employees' money, not employer's one.

'Ridiculous, rubbish, outrageous, complete bollocks': Just some reviews for Amazon's corporate contribution to Blighty's coffers

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Tax paid by employees are employees' money, not employer's one.

It's always funny how some PRs always try to throw dust in the eyes with misleading arguments. Income taxes are paid by employees with their money.

The fact a company may be required to pay taxes on behalf of employees - usually a design to reduce evasion - doesn't mean that those are company money - they are still full part of the employee salary he or she earned. For example, if income tax rates become lower, an employee will automatically bring home more net money because it will he or she who will pay lower taxes, not the company - it has no right to cash the difference. Vice versa, if the tax rates becomes higher, the company will give the employee less net money, they won't be paid with company money.

And being an employee salary, they are included in the company costs that are deducted from the employer gross revenues.

If any company is willingly to pay my taxes, while paying me the full gross salary, I will work for them happily (albeit I guess it won't be possible, because the revenue service will probably object that if someone pays my taxes, it's actually giving me more money I should pay taxes on...)

The same is true for VAT. It's fully paid by the end customer only. If they don't buy at Amazon, they will still pay VAT if they buy somewhere else. From a pure VAT perspective, the lower Amazon prices also mean a lower VAT income.

Sure, Amazon employs people, but it does that because it needs them, not out of good will only, and each employee allows Amazon to earn n time the salary paid - or Amazon would have fired them already.

So it's not a charity that should be exempt from taxes just because it gives people a job - all businesses do that out of sheer need.

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