Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
If you don't like it, campaign for the law to be changed. You can hardly blame Amazon for employing entirely legal methods to minimise their tax bill. That's what they employ accountants for. Heck, that's what I employ an accountant for!
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That's exactly what I thought when the stink started in the national papers. Companies just like individuals will do what they can to lower their taxable income. I see no problem with that as long as the actions they take are legal.
Also, afaik any "scheme" that is used to lower a companies taxable income has to be declared to HMRC (I believe it's them and I'm not certain of the specifics, just remember reading about it when there was a stink about a scheme a few years back). In which case they can adjust laws if they believe a currently legal avoidance scheme should be made illegal.
Laws just need to catch up to the digital way of doing things.
Now if Amazon were found to be evading tax, that's a different matter.
Is it really any more immoral than those of us who bought ebooks and other digital items from a country with a lower VAT rate than the UKs VAT rate to save ourselves some money? If the public or governments want to collect VAT on anything customers living in _their_ country buy, then the EU needs to change their laws accordingly (I believe something like that is in the works too).
I don't think morality really comes into this discussion (unlike a discussion of say fair trade where I can see morality playing a part).