Boycott Amazon UK?

[mal4mac]

Amazon are raking in profits from their economic activity in Britain by using a range of devices to avoid paying their fair share of corporation tax. Should we boycott them?

Should teachers in the UK use Kindles when our taxes pay their wages?

Of course it is up to government to act, but will they? Shouldn't consumers use their power too? Online and high street sellers like W.H. Smiths & John Lewis pay tax, shouldn't we shop there?

[cacian]

Well I am a teacher and I won't be using either to be honest if I want something I will go and buy it from the shops.
I like the feeling of money exchange in my hand and I also like face to face dealing when it comes to shopping.
My partner gets stuff from amazon sometimes and a couple of times they send him two of the same order. They are not very good at keeping track of what they are sending either.

[Emil Miller]

I don't think that boycotts work, for the simple reason that people usually take the line of least resistance and still find Amazon and other online outlets useful.
I don't use Amazon or any online retailer unless it's for something that I can't get elsewhere. I usually buy books from a bookstore because I like to browse with the book in my hands rather than using a website. I do agree that, if companies are evading their tax liability they should be penalised, but it's up to the government to work out a way to do it.

[SFG75]

Interesting brouha on your side of the pond over this.

Daily Mail article; have yourself an Amazon-free Christmas (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2235982/Have-Amazon-free-Christmas-year.html)

The U.K.'s missing billions (http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/the-uks-missing-billions-true-cost-of-corporate-tax-avoidance-16240973.html)

In the U.S., many states are red hot about amazon not paying state sales taxes. The brick and mortar stores have to pay it and inevitably, they are undercut by online stores. A good read on the fight can be found here (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/california-wants-amazon-to-tax-californians/), though it takes a more laissez-faire economic approach. :piggy:

[stlukesguild]

I frequent a local chain of discount and used books. Most of the small independent book stores are gone... and even Borders went under... unable to compete with online dealers such as Amazon. I have found any number of books that I have sought (without any success) in real "bricks n mortar" stores for years. I purchase almost all of my music (CDs) through Amazon and Amazon Marketplace dealers... and occasionally Barnes and Noble. The reality is that I have been able to find recordings there that I cannot find elsewhere... or cannot find at a comparable price. As for cacian's experience with them not being very good at tracking orders, I can only think that cacian, as usual, is an exception. I have purchased literally a couple thousand books and CDs through Amazon and Amazon secondary dealers and have had perhaps two or three problems which were rapidly rectified.

I certainly agree that any corporation should be paying it's fair share of taxes, but that is the responsibility of the government to enforce this. I am always suspicious of these anti-Amazon stories that come out every holiday season just as certainly as annoying holiday commercials. I always suspect such stories are started by envious competitors. It seems likely to me that if a legal loophole exists, any corporation with a staff of accountants and lawyers worth their salaries would be jumping on it.

Should teachers in the UK use Kindles when our taxes pay their wages?

I don't know how often I come across this sort of BS... as if teachers and any public workers are indentured servants. Public workers are paid for the services they render... for doing their job. Teachers and public workers are taxed as well as anyone else. The public has absolutely no say over how they should be allowed to spend their money any more than they do over anyone working in the private sector. And who is not a beneficiary of public tax dollars? Public money pays for the roads, trains, subways, sewers and sanitation, water supply, police and fire departments, public education, and too much more to even begin to count. Are we to assume that anyone who has ever benefited from any such service is forever to be indebted to the whims of the public and must first check with them before spending any of their money?

[Calidore]

Is Amazon using size and clout to ignore the law, or are they simply taking advantage of loopholes that anyone can use (and others probably are). If the latter, rather than attack a business for acting like a business, shouldn't people be lobbying to close the loopholes?

[Sreenan]

Lmao, you can try all you want but it won't work. What about Starbucks? Or Google? This is what happens when Toffs get voted in time and time again!

[Volya]

I use Amazon for pretty much everything I buy, apart from the few things they don't sell on there. I see no more reason to boycott Amazon than there is for any other large corporation (although that's not to say I'm ok with them exploiting the system). You could probably dig up dirt on pretty much any big company out there, and not enough people will ever boycott them to make a difference.

[kev67]

I read a good book about this sort of thing: Anthony Shaxson's Treasure Islands. He said many international corporations barely pay a penny of tax in any country in which they operate. They declare their losses in high tax countries, and their profits in low tax countries, usually in tax havens. Bricks and mortar companies based in one country have a hard time competing because they do have to pay corporation tax. One large chain of department stores over here, John Lewis, recently wrote a letter to The Times complaining that they would be driven out of business due this unfair competition. One of Anthony Shaxson's main points was that quite often the governments of rich countries are often more able to amend corporate law to close down these abuses, but that leaves the developing countries that cannot respond as fast. Shaxson argued, basically, that these tax havens should be closed down because they actually have very little economic benefit to the world economy. They mainly enable powerful corporations to avoid paying tax, allow criminals to stash their money, and corrupt national leaders to spirit the money out of their countries. He said for every dollar that goes to a developing country in aid, ten dollars are spirited straight out into an offshore bank account. Shaxson said one of the worse countries in the world for enabling tax havens was the UK, which has a number of small, semi-independent islands that are overseen at arm's length. These include Jersey and the Cayman Islands, two of the worst offenders. Even the City of London, which is the name given to the financial district of London shares many attributes of an offshore, secrecy jurisdiction, as Shaxson terms them. The US has its own tax haven in Delaware.

[Alexander III]

Amazon are raking in profits from their economic activity in Britain by using a range of devices to avoid paying their fair share of corporation tax. Should we boycott them?

Should teachers in the UK use Kindles when our taxes pay their wages?

Of course it is up to government to act, but will they? Shouldn't consumers use their power too? Online and high street sellers like W.H. Smiths & John Lewis pay tax, shouldn't we shop there?

A Range of devices? If I recall correctly they are a corporation registered in Luxenbourg and thus only have to pay taxes to the Luxenbourg government, which rather conveniently are rather minimal compared to britain.

It's all perfectly legal and to be honest Amazon would be idiots to pay taxes in England.

[mal4mac]

Well I am a teacher and I won't be using either to be honest if I want something I will go and buy it from the shops. I like the feeling of money exchange in my hand and I also like face to face dealing when it comes to shopping.

Good points, but what about the tax issue? There is no sales tax on books in the UK. As Amazon UK also pay no corporation tax, do they pay any tax at all?

Careful about Waterstones and Book Depository, both of those are now owned by Amazon.

So, besides the tax issue, we really need to give others a chance to get competition going.


I don't think that boycotts work, for the simple reason that people usually take the line of least resistance and still find Amazon and other online outlets useful.

Tell that to the suffragettes who boycotted the washing up, and other female aids to male dominance. If you make enough noise, boycotts work.

[TheFifthElement]

Careful about Waterstones and Book Depository, both of those are now owned by Amazon.
Waterstones isn't owned by Amazon, it's owned by A&NN Group which Russian owned.

[Jackson Richardson]

Careful about Waterstones and Book Depository, both of those are now owned by Amazon.


Bother. I use Book Depository, Blackwells online http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/welcome.jsp or Abe http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SignOffPL?ph=2 books for second hand.

[Delta40]

Tell that to the suffragettes who boycotted the washing up, and other female aids to male dominance. If you make enough noise, boycotts work.

Yes but when you mess up a man's castle and deprive him of physical pleasure, you're bound to get a result.

On the other hand white South Africa lived quite happily with apartheid and the international boycotts imposed without batting an eyelid.

[Emil Miller]

Tell that to the suffragettes who boycotted the washing up, and other female aids to male dominance. If you make enough noise, boycotts work.

I wasn't aware that suffragettes boycotted the washing up, they were principally about getting the vote. In any case the two aren't comparable because, while some women might have refused to do certain tasks, I doubt that many of those I see regularly using a Kindle would go back to buying hard copies, just as the great numbers of them that pack Starbucks coffee shops would be unlikely to forgo their usual chatter in that tax dodging company's establishments.

[Jackson Richardson]

Ghandi?

[stlukesguild]

Bread and Circuses?

[Delta40]

Ghandi?

No thanks I prefer beer without lemonade

[TheFifthElement]

For 24 hours from midnight, Penguin Books UK are offering 50% off orders direct from their website using code 'PenguinTreat50'.

Also, Daunt Books are good. And there's always The Book People. They have a nice W Somerset Maugham set that might even tempt Mr Miller :D

[Emil Miller]

Interesting, but you do know that Penguin have been taken over by Random House, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, the giant German media conglomerate.
And Mr Miller has already read all of W. S. Maugham; in some cases several times over, but thanks for the info.

[Lokasenna]

I use Amazon a lot - it's the least expensive method of feeding my book addiction. And I'm far too poor to be ethically picky about where I do my shopping.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I use Amazon UK a lot for a whole host of things on a weekly basis. Of course I am not keen that they employ clever accountants to reduce their expenditure (or that they have a 'no union policy' for workers) but boycotting it is just not workable. Besides, if we were to boycott big companies who have clever accountants then we we would have to boycott half the high street.

[Delta40]

And of course we're all drinking fair trade coffee while we read...

[SFG75]

In reading this thread, I have Keynes on one shoulder and Hayek on another. The latter continues to whisper.......

*What is your duty to support inefficient, higher cost businesses?

*Does anyone here purposely spurn Amazon U.K. and buy higher prices at brick and mortar out of some moral duty?

*If government is "cheated" out of billions, should they likewise have their budgets cut? Would that be a bad thing?

* Today, horse & buggy businesses are not around, do you view this as a bad thing and that government should support businesses that should likewise be destroyed through the "creative destruction" of capitalism?

[mal4mac]

I frequent a local chain of discount and used books. Most of the small independent book stores are gone... and even Borders went under... unable to compete with online dealers such as Amazon. I have found any number of books that I have sought (without any success) in real "bricks n mortar" stores for years. I purchase almost all of my music (CDs) through Amazon and Amazon Marketplace dealers... and occasionally Barnes and Noble. The reality is that I have been able to find recordings there that I cannot find elsewhere... or cannot find at a comparable price. As for cacian's experience with them not being very good at tracking orders, I can only think that cacian, as usual, is an exception. I have purchased literally a couple thousand books and CDs through Amazon and Amazon secondary dealers and have had perhaps two or three problems which were rapidly rectified.


Amazon Marketplace UK dealers often have their own website and selling portal, so, with a bit of searching, you can often avoid giving Amazon their cut. This means you can often find the products cheaper elsewhere. Before this tax avoidance scandal I would have though that immoral, that Amazon deserved a cut for providing advertising and a mechanism for price competition. But as Amazon have no qualms about tax dodging, why should we have any qualms about applying any schemes to avoid paying them their cut.




I certainly agree that any corporation should be paying it's fair share of taxes, but that is the responsibility of the government to enforce this. I am always suspicious of these anti-Amazon stories that come out every holiday season just as certainly as annoying holiday commercials. I always suspect such stories are started by envious competitors. It seems likely to me that if a legal loophole exists, any corporation with a staff of accountants and lawyers worth their salaries would be jumping on it.


The little independent stores that you enjoyed so much didn't have teams of highly paid corporate lawyers making every effort to find tax loop holes. Such dedicated teams of sharks can run rings around cash-strapped governments unable to afford such high paid legal teams. To have a viable society, companies should help the government to "do the right thing". If they don't, the only force that can act against the corporate sharks are people themselves, through mass boycotts. Wasn't the banking crisis of 2008 enough to get people to get up, take notice, and act.

The UK's top broadsheets, tabloid rags, and many politicians, are up in arms about this tax dodging, it's not just W.H. Smith spreading rumours.



Should teachers in the UK use Kindles when our taxes pay their wages?

I don't know how often I come across this sort of BS... as if teachers and any public workers are indentured servants. Public workers are paid for the services they render... for doing their job. Teachers and public workers are taxed as well as anyone else. The public has absolutely no say over how they should be allowed to spend their money any more than they do over anyone working in the private sector.

I didn't say that the public should be able to force teachers to spend their money in certain ways. But, like all of us, teachers have a moral responsibility to help in the running of a good society. And, being teachers, we might hope they would take the lead. (That's probably hoping too much...)

P.S. I've just searched for "WH Smith/Tesco tax avoidance" and it wasn't pretty! It's not just American firms at fault...


Waterstones isn't owned by Amazon, it's owned by A&NN Group which Russian owned.

The tangled webs these companies weave; you have to be a corporate lawyer to keep up with their machinations...

Wikipedia says 'the booksellers' online operation... was franchised to Amazon.com...' So I think I somehow got it into my head that Amazon owned the whole caboodle.

WH Smith has a similar set up. I use online WH Smith on occasion, and last time they delivered a bumped book to my local store. When I asked the store to replace it, they said the online operation was completely different and they couldn't replace the book. I remonstrated; "An outfit calling themselves WH Smith, with exactly the same logo, is surely the same outfit!" They said "No!"

At the risk of sounding like a corporate lawyer :), I'd question the "Russian owned" designation of A&NN Group, which makes it sound like it's run by Kremlin; it's owned by a Russian - Alexander Leonidovich Mamut (who?) Wikipedia says he was previously an advisor to the former Russian government of Boris Yeltsin. He looks bookish. Well as long as he's paying his taxes (?)


I wasn't aware that suffragettes boycotted the washing up, they were principally about getting the vote. In any case the two aren't comparable because, while some women might have refused to do certain tasks, I doubt that many of those I see regularly using a Kindle would go back to buying hard copies, just as the great numbers of them that pack Starbucks coffee shops would be unlikely to forgo their usual chatter in that tax dodging company's establishments.

Some boycotted the washing up to get the vote.

The "washing up" comment was injected to lighten the mood for a moment. It comes form a vaguely remembered TV programme where an aristocratic suffragette was giving an account of how she got "Bertie" to back "votes for women" by refusing to supervise the housekeeping.

You can use Nook, or whatever, instead of a Kindle.

Some people said that women would be unlikely to get around to voting, and used that argument to not bother supporting "votes for women".

"‎Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." - Edmund Burke

[Minnesänger]

taxation is theft. you have no right to the wealth Amazon created.

[mal4mac]

Xmas sing-song time, all together now, with Obama, with strong irony, "Are you going to the party, going to the Boston tea party-y-y..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWF3S9OgQho

[Minnesänger]

'Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.'
- Mahatma Gandhi

[mal4mac]

'Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.'
- Mahatma Gandhi

Are you trying to argue that Gandhi was completely against tax? I've never seen that argued before. His famous campaign of civil disobedience against the salt tax is a special case. Salt taxation had occurred in India since the earliest times. However, this tax was greatly increased when the British East India Company began to establish its rule over provinces in India. You can't seriously be comparing Bezos to Gandhi can you? Bezos and other tech moguls are no better than robber barons:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jul/01/new-tech-moguls-robber-barons

They are blind to the anxieties of lesser beings. They are technocrats who cleave to a worldview that holds that if something is technically possible then it should be done. How about digitising all the books in the world? No problem: you just throw resources and technology at the task. And if publishers protest about infringement of copyright and authors moan about their moral rights, well, that just shows how antediluvian they are.

The technocrats don't do values. They just do rationality. They love good design, efficiency, elegance – and profits. Jonathan Ive designs beautiful kit in California for Apple which is then assembled in Chinese factories. And when the execrable working conditions prevalent in such places are exposed, the company's senior executives profess themselves surprised and appalled and resolve to do everything they can to ameliorate things. And we believe them – and continue eagerly to purchase the gizmos manufactured in such oppressive plants.

Why are we so credulous, so forgiving? It's partly because wealth – like political power – is a powerful aphrodisiac. But it's mainly because we accept these people at their own valuation. We've bought into their narrative. They see themselves as progressives. We're charmed by their corporate mantras – "Don't be evil" (Google) - in their black turtlenecks and faded jeans they don't seem to have anything in common with Rupert Murdoch or the capitalist bosses of old.

What gets lost in the reality distortion field that surrounds these technology moguls is that, in the end, they are fanatically ambitious, competitive capitalists. They may look cool and have soothing bedside manners, but in the end these guys are in business not just to make money, but to establish sprawling, quasi-monopolistic commercial empires. And they will do whatever it takes to achieve those ambitions.

Many years after their deaths we still recognise the names of John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Will Bezos enjoy the same level of name-recognition among our great-great-grandchildren? The answer may well depend not on how much money he makes, but how much he gives away, via mechanisms like the Rockefeller Foundation and and the Carnegie Corporation. But he can start by paying his taxes like the rest of us!

[stlukesguild]

Amazon Marketplace UK dealers often have their own website and selling portal, so, with a bit of searching, you can often avoid giving Amazon their cut. This means you can often find the products cheaper elsewhere. Before this tax avoidance scandal I would have though that immoral, that Amazon deserved a cut for providing advertising and a mechanism for price competition. But as Amazon have no qualms about tax dodging, why should we have any qualms about applying any schemes to avoid paying them their cut.

I don't deal with Amazon.UK often, but rather the US parent firm, Amazon.com. Somehow I doubt that Amazon is employing legal tax-loopholes that all their competitors don't employ out of some high moral standards. I have checked into the various home sites of marketplace dealers... but honestly, finding the best price means shopping around and buying from dozens of different sellers. This means trusting my credit card information with dozens of different sellers and hoping that they all are as secure as Amazon... and as quick to rectify any problems.

The little independent stores that you enjoyed so much didn't have teams of highly paid corporate lawyers making every effort to find tax loop holes. Such dedicated teams of sharks can run rings around cash-strapped governments unable to afford such high paid legal teams. To have a viable society, companies should help the government to "do the right thing". If they don't, the only force that can act against the corporate sharks are people themselves, through mass boycotts. Wasn't the banking crisis of 2008 enough to get people to get up, take notice, and act.

The UK's top broadsheets, tabloid rags, and many politicians, are up in arms about this tax dodging, it's not just W.H. Smith spreading rumours.

I enjoyed browsing in the little book and music stores... but let's face it... I wasn't able to find a hell of a lot of the less mainstream stuff that I was looking for. These little stores were undercut by big chains such as Borders and Barnes and Noble. They, in turn, were undercut by Amazon... or at least so was the case with Borders. Barnes and Noble is holding strong.

As for companies helping the government "do the right thing"... :rofl: surely, you are kidding? Have you ever voluntarily paid more taxes than you had to because you felt it was the right thing to do?

Should people sit up and take action? How effective do you imagine a boycott of Amazon would be? You're asking people to spend more money for a product out of some misguided moral outrage. The problem isn't with the corporations... they will always seek to lower their overhead and finding all the legal tax loopholes is but one means of doing so. The problem is with a lack of governmental oversight. I live in what was the epicenter of the banking collapse wrought by bad loans and foreclosures. We had banks loaning nurses aides... who make around $10 or $15 per hour... loans on 3 or 4 homes priced at $300,000+ each. The auditors weren't doing their job... and government oversight had been stripped back under a Neo-Con administration. As a result, the postal region (zip code) where I work... not all that far from my home... had the largest percentage of foreclosures in North America for a good period of time. With cash one can easily purchase a house here for half... even a quarter of what it was "worth" before the crash. Combine this with a huge tax cut at the same time that we are waging two overseas wars, and our continued outsourcing of jobs to China, India, etc... and it seems to me that we have far greater concerns than Amazon.

I didn't say that the public should be able to force teachers to spend their money in certain ways. But, like all of us, teachers have a moral responsibility to help in the running of a good society. And, being teachers, we might hope they would take the lead. (That's probably hoping too much...)

Teachers, first and foremost, have a responsibility to themselves and their families. Like anyone in any other profession... outside of the very wealthy... they seek out the best bargains. Somehow I doubt that you avoid all clothes, food, electronics, automobiles, etc... made outside of the UK or by non-union workers.

[Minnesänger]

Are you trying to argue that Gandhi was completely against tax? I've never seen that argued before. His famous campaign of civil disobedience against the salt tax is a special case. Salt taxation had occurred in India since the earliest times. However, this tax was greatly increased when the British East India Company began to establish its rule over provinces in India. You can't seriously be comparing Bezos to Gandhi can you? Bezos and other tech moguls are no better than robber barons:

whether Gandhi personally concerned himself with this question enough to vow himself anti-tax is immaterial; an ideology of non-violence is by definition irreconcilable with State power, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion.

[SFG75]

Update of sorts

Daily Mail:What Amazon pays (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2239524/Tax-scrimping-exposed-Immoral-Amazon-paid-just-1-8m-Treasury-despite-making-3-35-BILLION-sales-UK.html)


The full extent of Amazon’s tax avoidance was laid bare last night after the online giant was forced to reveal it paid just £1.8m to HMRC despite making £3.35 billion in sales in Britain.

The official figures amounted to a miserly 2.4 per cent tax rate which the company paid on its UK profits - details which it had been pleading to keep secret.

[mal4mac]

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is misleading on the tax regime in Britain: “... most of where we do business – Europe, Japan, some of the states here in the United States – we collect sales tax. More than half our business... We do collect sales taxes, the European equivalent of value-added tax (VAT)...”

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/05/18/167226/amazon-ceo-loophole-unconstitutional/?mobile=nc

In the UK there is no VAT on books. This makes Bezos worse than the Robber Barrons in clothing retail, as at least they pay VAT on clothing sales! Does that make him the Robber King? Given that he supports the Democrat party, I think Obama should be asking him serious questions about the damage he is doing to the 'special relationship', and ask him how he feels about being told off for tax evasion by one of the UK's most right wing newspapers.

[Phocion]

And how does this make them any different to pretty much every other major corporation?

[LitNetIsGreat]

And how does this make them any different to pretty much every other major corporation?

This was my point earlier. It doesn't just come down to avoidance of tax. What about the impracticalities of boycotting on other moral grounds, like child labour/exploitation of the workforce? I'm not criticising Mac or anyone else, they have a right to be angry or to point out such things, but if you attempted to boycott on moral grounds you would end up walking around naked and/or starving to death. This is just the reality of the situation.

[stlukesguild]

My question exactly. One almost suspects that this same anti-Amazon tirade is raised every year at the instigation (if not with the financial incentives) of Amazon's big competitors.