Press Amazon on corporate tax | Letters
by Letters from on (#3W9HK)
Guardian readers respond to reports of tech giant Amazon's halved corporation tax bill
Amazon's implication that its corporate tax payments in the UK are very low partly because of its high investments in this country is both misleading and disingenuous (Amazon halves UK corporation tax bill to 4.5m as profits treble, 3 August). Investments in, for example, buildings and machinery are financed by a combination of loans, shareholders' funds and net earnings - crucially - after tax.
In other words, investments do not reduce a company's tax liability except by very minor amounts of later depreciation. For the bewildered public, this disingenuousness is compounded by the failure of media commentators to press Amazon accordingly to justify its explanation.
Peter Cruttwell
Rockbourne, Herefordshire