We fume at Amazon’s tax trickery as we marvel at its one-click convenience

‘There has to be a level playing field so that… Amazon cannot undercut domestic booksellers by using the tax advantage of booking in Luxembourg a sale to a UK customer that is fulfilled from a UK warehouse.’ I wrote that five years ago: since then, no government anywhere has effectively addressed the issue of global tax minimisation by online giants and multinational consumer brands. As Amazon’s merchandise range has expanded, it has gone on undercutting not just our last surviving bookshops but every other business-rate-burdened local retailer. Meanwhile, as its market capitalisation soars towards $900 billion, its founder Jeff Bezos has become the richest man ever, with a $150 billion hoard.

And now we learn that Amazon paid just £1.7 million in UK corporation tax last year on profits of £72 million in its UK subsidiary; the tax take would have been £4.7 million before the effect of payments into a staff share scheme, but that’s still only a third of what a conventional corporate tax bill might have looked like, and no one seems to know how the trick is done.