Quote Originally Posted by RyeSloan View Post
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Yeah maybe true but there is also a danger that people only focus on one specific tax or ignore the wider benefits of a company doing business.


Amazon for example says it paid £293m in direct taxes last year. They also suggest they invested nearly £700m in their UK operations and were planning to create 10,000 jobs in the UK.


So headlines of Amazon only paying £14m in Corp Tax, normally then immediately compared to their unrelated turnover numbers, could be seen as misleading and in no way reflecting their actual contribution to the UK economy and tax revenues.
Yep. You also have to consider the spending power of its employees, which might not be the same had Amazon not been in the UK.

That's moving into the debate around tax-sweetheart deals, and the extent to which they are beneficial to an economy. There's a moral debate around them, of course, but there is also a compelling economic argument in their favour. The EU don't like them (Apple/Ireland), but one can see a situation where the UK might embrace them.