The Bookseller – News – Amazon’s main UK division paid no corporation tax in 2021 as profits soared 60%

Amazon’s main UK division paid no corporation tax in 2021, despite a 60% rise in profits to £204million.

The online retailer has used former chancellor and now Tory leadership candidate Rishi Sunak’s ‘super deduction’ scheme for businesses that invest in infrastructure, opening four new fulfillment centres.

The relief, which allows companies to offset 130% of capital expenditure on plants and machinery against profits for two years from April 2021, allowed Amazon to get a discount on its payment of previous year’s tax of £18.3 million in 2020, with nothing to pay in 2021.

Accounts to be filed at Companies House will show revenue from Amazon UK Services, which is the retailer’s warehouse, which jumped over £1bn last year from £4.9bn sterling to nearly £6.1 billion. Turnover for the entire UK business was £23.19 billion.

In a blog post on its UK economic impact for 2021, the retailer said: ‘The stated aim of this capital cost allowance was to encourage businesses to make productivity-enhancing investments and promote economic growth . Any tax reduction resulting from these capital cost allowances is more than offset by the thousands of additional jobs created and economic growth stimulated by these investments.

An Amazon spokesperson said The bookstore“The government is using the tax system to actively encourage businesses to invest in infrastructure and job creation. Last year we invested over £11.4 billion in the UK, building four new distribution centers and creating more than 25,000 jobs.Our total tax contribution was £2.77 billion – £648 million in direct taxes and £2.13 billion in indirect taxes.

Direct taxes include employers’ social security contributions, business taxes, corporation tax, import duties, stamp duty, property tax and digital services tax.

Amazon does not detail how much it pays in corporation tax for the UK business as a whole and says focusing on one aspect of taxation such as corporation tax “doesn’t tell the whole story. “.