[HN Gopher] Amazon Europe Unit Paid No Taxes on $55B Sales in 2021
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       Amazon Europe Unit Paid No Taxes on $55B Sales in 2021
        
       Author : doener
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2022-04-21 20:56 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
        
       | legitster wrote:
       | > "Across Europe, we pay corporate tax amounting to hundreds of
       | millions of euros," an Amazon spokesperson said. In the filings,
       | a note states that the $1 billion net tax benefit is "mainly due
       | to the use of net losses carried forward in accordance with the
       | tax consolidation system."
       | 
       | So, buried in all this, the VAT tax is doing it's thing. They are
       | paying taxes where fulfillment is happening - their European HQ
       | is going to be a loss center.
       | 
       | > "We are investing heavily in creating jobs and infrastructure
       | across Europe -- more than 100 billion euros since 2010", an
       | Amazon representative said. "Corporation tax is based on profits,
       | not revenues, and last year Amazon EU Sarl made a loss as we
       | opened more than 50 new sites across Europe and created over
       | 65,000 well-paid jobs, taking our total European permanent
       | workforce to over 200,000", the spokesperson added.
       | 
       | This is the same thing they did in the US: avoid posting a profit
       | if they can help it; spend every dollar they make in growing the
       | company; get free money by skipping taxes.
       | 
       | It's hard to be _too_ mad at it - the point of tax codes being
       | written this way is to encourage companies to spend their money
       | hiring people and growing. But still, Amazon being able to grow
       | rapidly because their investors don 't care about negative
       | cashflows does seem like an unfair advantage against all of the
       | companies that do actually have to pay for things
        
       | throwawaymanbot wrote:
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-21 23:02 UTC)