Amazon pays just £12m tax bill on £5.3bn UK sales

Online retail giant Amazon has sparked renewed anger after it emerged that the group’s UK business paid just £11.9 million in tax last year on UK sales of £5.3billion.

The firm, which employs more than 7,700 people in the UK and has two major Scottish distribution hubs at Dunfermline and Gourock, saw sales in this country rise 14 per cent last year, according to filings in Companies House. But its Amazon.co.uk subsidiary recorded a profit of just £34.4million, and so paid tax of £11.9million.

Amazon’s UK sales, which represent 9.4 per cent of its global turnover, are taken through the group’s Luxembourg arm, called Amazon EU Sarl.

Sales from many countries in Europe are booked at its Luxembourg business, and are not taxed in the country where the shopper carried out the transaction.

Under mounting pressure, Amazon said last month it had begun booking UK sales in this country, which may see it pay more taxes.

Details of its 2014 tax bill in the UK attracted criticism from the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the alliance, said: “You can understand people’s anger at organisations like Amazon perceived not to be paying their fair share, but our frustration should be focused at the politicians and bureaucrats who have created our ludicrously complicated tax code.”

In April Chancellor George Osborne said firms that move profits overseas to avoid tax will be subject to a “diverted profits tax”.