Skip to footer

UK booksellers lash out at Amazon: 'We pay our taxes'

Booksellers across the UK have put up signs in their windows reading 'We pay our taxes' in response to a hearing by the Public Accounts Committee on Amazon's business practices.

|
Reuters TV
Director of public policy for Amazon in Brussels Andrew Cecil speaks during a hearing with the Public Accounts Committee.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

After Amazon came under fire for their financial practices in Europe, independent booksellers are leaving no doubt as to where they stand in the debate.

Signs reading “We Pay Our Taxes,” created by the Booksellers Association, have appeared in the windows of bookstores across the U.K.

During a hearing last week with the Public Accounts Committee, director of public policy for Amazon in Brussels Andrew Cecil was criticized for saying he’d have to get back to the committee with information on matters such as how the company was organized and its sales in individual European countries. Amazon channels its European sales through Luxembourg, where companies' profits are taxed at 11 percent, less than many other countries.

"It's just not acceptable," Margaret Hodge MP, the committee's chairman, said in an interview with Reuters about Cecil's failure to answer questions.  "It's outrageous.”

During the session, Cecil also stated that France is asking the company for $252 million in back taxes, an amount that also consists of interest and penalty charges.

Hodge told the BBC she thinks consumers should boycott Amazon and other companies – such as Starbucks – that were part of the hearing with the PAC. The British newspaper the Mirror is encouraging readers to avoid Amazon as well.

There are two different varieties of signs in booksellers’ windows – the first reads “Your Money, Your Bookshop, Your Community,” followed by “We Pay Our Taxes,” and the second states that the store “Can Pay Do Pay!,” with “We Pay Our Taxes” at the bottom.

“We're trying to promote ourselves,” Gerrards Cross Bookshop manager Janet Stewart told the Guardian. “We're honest, hardworking people who do pay our taxes – support your local bookshop is the message.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to UK booksellers lash out at Amazon: 'We pay our taxes'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/1120/UK-booksellers-lash-out-at-Amazon-We-pay-our-taxes
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe