Amazon paid no corporation tax in the UK in 2021. At the same time its employees’ real wages are dropping despite record revenues and Amazon’s global carbon emissions are increasing. We need to act.

Using the UK government’s ‘super deduction’ scheme, Amazon offset expenses against profits in 2021, which resulted in the company paying no tax in the UK. The situation is no better in Europe.

In the US, the company has been accused of using union busting tactics.

That’s why we’re supporting the Make Amazon Pay day of action on Friday 25 November. 

Make Amazon pay on Friday

On Friday campaign groups and trade unions will join forces to demand Amazon pay its taxes, pay its workers and tackle its carbon emissions.

You can help by retweeting the video on Twitter and you can share it on Facebook. 

If you don’t use social media, you can share this email with friends and family: it’s on our blog here [add link once uploaded].

Together we can make Amazon pay its fair share, and take responsibility for its workers and the planet.

A historic win at the UN

We had some good news this week. The UN passed a historic resolution making international tax cooperation more inclusive and effective. The move will help tackle global tax dodging.
 
The resolution, which was passed unanimously, starts to move rule-making on global tax to the UN, away from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which is dominated by rich countries. Developing countries will now have a greater say on global tax. 
 
As our friend, Dereje Alemayehu, from the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, said “This is a historic win for … tax justice”. ​

The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has just delivered his long anticipated autumn statement.

This was his chance to use higher taxes on the super-rich to invest in our public services. Instead he announced plans for billions of pounds of spending cuts in the coming years.

This return to the failed austerity policies of the past will put the UK in a doom loop of longer hospital waiting lists, collapsing social care and an ever more frustrated public.

And this is all amidst the biggest drop in disposable household incomes on record and a recession.

There were some silver linings to the statement. The existing windfall tax on oil and gas giants was beefed up, even though loopholes still remain. However, the tax incentives given to oil and gas have not been extended to renewables.

Taxes on income from wealth, such as investments and dividends, were increased slightly. The top band for income tax now kicks in at £125,000, rather than £150,000.

But this misses the scale of what was needed to protect public services. A few weeks ago we showed how the Chancellor could have raised £37 billion from wealth taxes.

Instead, the current plans mean that we will be hit by another round of cuts to public services from 2025.

We still have time to stop the worst of the planned cuts from happening. Spending cuts are a political choice, a Guardian article quoting our research argued this week. They are unnecessary and reversible.

Hunt’s capital gains tweak shows we’ve clearly got our foot in the door on wealth taxes. It wouldn’t have happened without our campaigning.

​That’s why we’ll keep pushing for the super rich to be taxed more – and for this money to go straight into our public services and to help struggling households.