Amazon paid £3m tax on £4bn UK sales (opens in new tab)

I'm not an accountant (about as far as could be from it) but in a discussion with an accountant friend of mine he suggested that there really is nothing that can be done about these avoidance schemes. He posited that the only real way to ensure all tax is paid for is to have no 'income tax' and then add a steep tax (30-40%) on everything that people buy. It seems like a hell of a large percentage to add on to everything, but then at least all money spent in a country would stay in the country.

If you include grants from the government, Amazon actually received money overall. They paid negative tax.

Here's my off the cuff reaction: Announce the cessation of all police, fire, etc. support for them, and see what happens. Oh, and be sure to publish the warehouse locations, while you're at it.

In many European countries you pay taxes based on the remaining profit. So if you have small profit, you pay a very small tax on that. Companies tend to re-invest the money as much as possible, so they avoid paying a lot of taxes (which I think is a good thing in general).

The only problem appears when they do make a lot of profit, but manage to transfer it to other subsidiaries in other countries, so they pay much less profit there. I don't know if that's what Amazon did, but I'd keep in mind that while Amazon's revenues are high, their profits are usually very small.