Posts by Nominally 3 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Aug 2017
Sounds about right. Why would any self-respecting govt dept want to pay £300p.d. for people when they can pay £1000p.d. and not have to worry about any chance of an under-spend? Especially as your £1000p.d. big brand contractor will be forced to spend most of his/her time doing sales instead of delivery.
Apologies, the word "evasion" has a specific legal meaning and, yes, I'm sure Amazon are legally compliant and so I should have used the word "avoidance".
I also appreciate your lovely optimism that Amazon are just building infrastructure and investment in the UK and eventually, when they 'start' to make a profit, they will start to pay their fair share of tax, that would be great.
In the meantime, I think a campaign to encourage debate about where people spend their money would only be a good thing. It might even help to reduce inequality - see recent report from Oxfam: https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2016-12-12/worlds-worst-corporate-tax-havens-exposed-oxfam-report-reveals
Legislation and boycotts seem unlikely to change massive corporate tax evasion just because not enough people actually understand and care about how damaging this behaviour is to the UK and other exploited countries.
To make a difference we need government and some socially responsible companies to start using initiatives such as #FairTaxMark and #BuySmart to brag about the fact that they pay tax and are proud of it e.g. "we need our UK people, roads, security, schools, health to run our business AND we actually help to pay for it".
Eventually, when faced with an easy choice, for instance, between Starbucks and Costa, more people might start to think twice before handing their cash to the greedy corporates who do so much hidden damage to the societies that support them.
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