Amazon UK boss defends controversial tax arrangements
Amazon UK’s managing director Christopher North has defended the on-line retailer’s controversial tax arrangements, which saw the company pay just £3.15m UK tax in 2012, despite pulling in £4.3bn of sales from UK shoppers in 2013.
Amazon UK MD Christopher North
North said that having a single business, based in low-tax Luxembourg, is "the right structure for the business", according to reports from The Guardian.
He added that if Amazon was to re-structure its current tax arrangements, “millions” of products would have to been withdrawn from the UK website.
"I would defy anybody to find a way to have 120m products available to UK customers if they only did that from a single UK team,” North told The Guardian. “Sourcing products from the UK, with only warehouses in the UK. We just couldn't do that. And a single European business is going to need a single European headquarters.”
North shrugged off suggestions that Amazon is benefiting from an unfair advantage because of it’s lower tax payments, stating that the company pays all the taxes it is required to “in every jurisdiction around the world”.
Earlier this year, North found himself the butt of a joke when cosmetics firm Lush trade-marked his name and created a tongue-in-cheek product, the ‘rich, thick and full of it’ Christopher North shower smoothie, after Amazon used the word "lush" to sell its own lookalike toiletries.