1. Amazon's tax avoidance
We estimated that Amazon's tax avoidance could have cost the UK economy around £575m in 2024.
Ethical Consumer has calculated that over half a billion pounds (£575,000,000) could have been lost to the UK public purse from the corporation tax avoidance of Amazon alone, just in 2024. This amount could have paid for:
- 1,916,667 additional winter fuel payments to help with rising fuel bills, or
- 23,504 additional nurses, or
- 17,012 new teachers.
Amazon is paying a fraction of the tax it owes
Amazon publishes limited information about its finances. Estimating the total amount of tax the company should have paid is therefore a difficult task.
However our figures suggest that Amazon should have paid around £575m in 2024. According to the most recent figures, because of its aggressive tax avoidance strategies, Amazon is likely to pay around £18m, a tiny fraction of the amount that might be expected.
Amazon has previously stated that it raises public money through other taxes like VAT and National Insurance for the UK economy. Yet, in reality, any shop would have to pay these amounts: by replacing other independent stores (remember the high street?) Amazon is not increasing the overall amount paid to the public purse. It is instead taking business away from companies that would have paid some corporation tax on their profits as well.
Amazon is helping to build an economy where not everyone contributes to vital public services. Instead excess profits fund the vanity projects of its billionaire owner in a time of crisis such as space rocket rides for celebrities…
How does Amazon avoid paying so much tax?
Amazon has shunted much of its UK income to its subsidiary in Luxembourg, a known tax-haven, where it has had a ‘loss-making’ subsidiary and can therefore accrue tax credits.
The company has also in the past shunted its remaining profits through time: Amazon has invested in dominating the market, thereby monopolising industries while keeping its profits low. This way, it can defer paying taxes until another time.
However, the lack of transparency from Amazon on their profits in the UK makes it extremely difficult to document their tax avoiding tactics. In 2025, the company announced that it had paid £1 billion to the public purse, but experts accused the company of cherry-picking and hiding the bigger picture.
“After three years of paying little or no corporation tax, it's good to see Amazon UK Services make a substantive contribution for the first time - albeit this equates to less than one per cent of revenue,” said Paul Monaghan, chief executive of the Fair Tax Foundation.
“But we still don't know how much corporation tax Amazon pays across all of their UK businesses, because they refuse to disclose this,” he said. “One can only surmise that the lack of transparency is connected to the sizeable chunk of UK revenue that is still shunted to the historically “loss-making” subsidiary in Luxembourg."
