Amazon paid more than 600 million pounds in taxes a year and received a "small" tax relief

Amazon's profits surged 60% to £204 million (€240 million) thanks to a £1 million ( € 1.17 million ) tax break from HM Revenue and Customs, according to foreign media reports.

The tax break is part of 1 billion euros in tax breaks given to Amazon by European governments , on top of about 56 million euros in tax breaks it received last year , according to accounts filed by the U.S. company’s Luxembourg unit .

While Amazon’s European sales grew by nearly 16% to 51 billion euros, its losses across Europe surged 90% to 2.1 billion euros before tax breaks .

At its annual shareholders' meeting in May, Amazon announced its performance in the UK, with revenue from its logistics and warehousing business growing by more than 25% to 6.09 billion pounds (about 7.1 billion euros) .

As a surge in demand for online retail has led to an increase in sales , Amazon 's total revenue in the UK grew 12.6 % in 2021 , including revenue from all businesses from retail to cloud computing services , to 23.2 billion pounds , making its business larger than Asda, the third largest supermarket in the UK, and more than twice that of Marks & Spencer .

It is understood that the tax exemption plan that Amazon benefits from this time allows companies to use profits to offset 130% of factory and machinery investment expenditures within two years starting from April 2021, so Amazon does not need to pay taxes in 2021.

Amazon said that the government uses the tax system to actively encourage companies to invest in infrastructure and create jobs. In 2021 alone, Amazon invested more than 11.4 billion pounds ( 13.4 billion euros ) in the UK . Since 2010 , Amazon 's investment in Europe has exceeded 100 billion euros , and its corporate tax has reached hundreds of millions of euros .

In 2021 , Amazon's revenue in the UK soared, and taxes also increased accordingly. It is reported that Amazon paid 648 million pounds ( 760 million euros ) to the UK tax authorities last year , including employers' national insurance contributions, business taxes, corporate taxes, import tariffs, stamp duties , land taxes and digital service taxes , an increase of nearly one-third from 492 million pounds ( 578 million euros ) in 2020 .

As Amazon opens new warehouses and expands its grocery store business, the company's real estate content has also increased taxes.

In addition, Amazon said that most of the tax increase in 2021 was driven by the increase in the size of the UK workforce. As of the end of 2021, Amazon's UK employee headcount had grown to approximately 70,000, and is expected to reach nearly 75,000 employees by the end of this year .

Recently, Amazon announced that it will hold a conference call on July 28, 2022 to discuss its second quarter financial results this year .

The market downturn does not seem to hinder Amazon's ability to make money. Previously, Amazon expected that its net sales in the second quarter of fiscal year 2022 would reach 113.8 billion euros to 118.7 billion euros , a year-on-year increase of 3% to 7% , due to the impact of exchange rate fluctuations . It can be seen that Amazon's growth momentum is still strong.

Amazon

tax