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Comment by dabeeeenster | Hacker News Reader

Ed Sheeran pays more tax in the UK than Amazon.

Is this true?

Edit: holy moly it is! https://metro.co.uk/2018/10/12/ed-sheeran-may-be-the-worlds-...

That article seems to be confusing revenue with profit. The $2 billion Amazon made in the UK is revenue; I suspect its profit is actually smaller.

Yeah, that confusion is made clear by the earlier statement that he made `1/5` the profit.... he did not make $400 million, which is 1/5th of 2 billion. It says he made $37 million.

It’s easy to keep profits small when you pay a large “license fee” to your offshore parent company.

For so many years this was no problem for the western countrys, when this way came much money to us from africa and other poor places. The "license fee" thing is super old, it's propably the oldest way to "optimise" tax.

So does the policy. Deliberately. This is 2% off the top.

You aren't buying from a UK company when you visit Amazon.co.uk, rather Amazon EU S.a.r.L (based in Luxembourg). This would take back 2% that is coming out of the pockets of UK consumers and being taxed (at a much lower rate) in Luxembourg.

The Amazon UK tax liability is barely anything. They put a handful of professional services through their books here, and most of that is wiped out by warehousing costs. As somebody else pointed out, Ed Sheeran pays more tax in the UK. It's madness.

Most multinationals do stuff like this... Because why wouldn't you? Some have argued it's their fiduciary duty to their shareholders to optimise their tax liabilities like this... But that doesn't mean we have to put up with it.

This.

And then you have ethically dubious practices like Starbucks getting a super sweetheart deal in the Netherlands, and then "charging" the UK arm a "licensing fee" for the brand name. Despite being the same bloody company, just to exfiltrate the tax from where it should have been paid, to where they will have to pay less.

Legal? Yes. Ethical? No. Should it be stamped out? Yes. Will that require all countries to act? Sadly, yes.

Highly unlikely. People like to look only at corporation tax, and ignore everything else.

Ed Sheeran is a person and is taxed differently than a company. That article is manipulative clickbait.

UK Amazon executives pay more taxes than Ed Sheeran.

The article is talking specifically about his company, Ed Sheeran Ltd, not his personal taxes.

Not really. Sure it's different taxes but for the revenue Amazing should be paying a much higher share of its profits and it does.

I doubt that and I'd like to see a source to back that asertion up.

Here's one for Ed paying more than Amazon

https://www.fastcompany.com/90251523/ed-sheeran-paid-more-uk...

"Ed Sheeran" isn't a person. There is a person by that name, but when you high "Ed Sheeran" you don't address the check to him. It goes to a production company who then deducts associated expenses, from his personal trainer to his airfare. That company then pays the flesh-and-blood Sheeran a salary for services rendered. If he is anything like the other 99% of celebs, he keeps money in his production company and pays himself a salary low enough to meet his immediate needs, thereby avoiding or at least delaying income tax. This company will continue to pay him this salary long after he disappears from public life and, theoretically, could be making payments to his estate long after his death. Should he want more money for something like a house, as the only shareholder, he can issue to himself a dividend and pay income tax on that amount when it hits his personal account. Or he can take the money as a loan, and delay those taxes until later. Or his production company can "invest in real estate" by buying the house and renting it to him for dollar a year.

Celebs are not people. They are businesses.

The people who really get shafted on taxes are the like of professional athletes. The services they render their employers occur at very fixed times. They don't get to spread their income over decades as entertainers do.

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