eBay.....another Tax avoider, £50 million

eBay avoids paying £50m tax in UK


The world’s largest online marketplace eBay has avoided paying £50m corporate tax in Britain through legal tax-avoidance schemes.








The American online auction site has avoided paying £50m in legal tax avpidance schemes, according to a report by the Sunday Times. Photo: Alamy





10:36AM BST 21 Oct 2012

243 Comments




The American company legally channels payments through Luxembourg and Switzerland, resulting in it paying barely more than £1m in corporation tax, despite generating sales of almost £800m in the UK in a year, according to a Sunday Times investigation.


The paper reported that accounts filed in America by eBay Inc, the parent company, indicate that its British subsidiaries generated £789m in sales during 2010. The company’s UK shopping portal has 17m unique visitors a month.


Using a group-wide profit margin of 23pc, UK profits would have been £181m in 2010, the latest year for which accounts are available. At the time this would have produced a corporation tax bill of £51m. However, the amount of tax paid in total by eBay’s four main UK-based subsidiaries for that year was £1.2m.


The Sunday Times said the amount of tax paid can be explained in part by the fact that the fees paid by sellers using the auction site in Britain are handed over to a related company in Luxembourg called PayPal (Europe) Sarl, meaning that most sales are routed through a tax haven.


Accounts also show that eBay (UK), the main British subsidiary, merely provides “services” to a company in Switzerland called eBay International AG.



Related Articles

• 
  Iwoca's capital way to assist eBay traders
  11 Sep 2012
  
• 
  eBay bans magic spells
  17 Aug 2012
  
• 
  Tuscan village put on eBay
  27 Jun 2012
  
• 
  PayPal helps eBay profits more than double
  18 Jul 2012
  
• 
  UK tax crackdown to suffer as investigators retire
  19 Oct 2012
  

A spokesman for eBay told The Sunday Times: “EBay Inc in Europe works with tax authorities and complies fully with all applicable tax laws and regimes — including national and internationally recognised rules.”

In recent weeks MPs have become enraged as other big-name companies results revealed that have also used complex, legal systems to avoid paying corporation tax in Britain.

In recent weeks, Starbucks has faced a barrage of criticism over it negligible tax contribution in the UK. Despite racking up £3bn in sales in over a decade, the Seattle based firm has paid only £8.5m in corporation tax and nothing since 2009.

MPs have called for HM Revenue & Customs to investigate how Starbucks avoided paying corporation tax on UK sales of £398m last year.

It also recently emerged that Facebook UK generated revenues of just £20.4m last year and paid just £238,000 in tax to the Revenue. Experts said the social networking giant was not breaking any rules but paid less tax because its European headquarters is not in the UK but in Ireland

+++++++++++++++++

Yet still the Government refuses to plug these Tax Avoidance loopholes.!!!!!

THERE ARE LOTS OF FIRMS DOING IT;GOOGLE,DIAGEO,HMV

SLIGHLY OFF TOPIC,EBAY ARE BEING SUED IN USA BECAUSE AUCTION ENTRIES ARE NOT APPEARING IMMEDIATELY AS PROMISED BY EBAY BUT POSSIBLY SOMETIMES SEVERAL WEEKS LATER.
SOURCE;EBAY CONFIDENTIAL.

Badboy wrote:SLIGHLY OFF TOPIC,EBAY ARE BEING  SUED IN USA BECAUSE AUCTION ENTRIES ARE NOT APPEARING IMMEDIATELY AS PROMISED BY EBAY BUT POSSIBLY SOMETIMES SEVERAL WEEKS LATER.
SOURCE;EBAY CONFIDENTIAL.

I shop sometimes on ebay and never had any trouble Badboy, except for my last order which was too small. The Seller lives in China, you cannot e-mail him/her or contact via Ebay and since returning at my own expense would cost more than the item I will have to keep it, luckily it was not expensive. This could be a big problem if ebay uses China as a cheap source, I will e-mail Ebay and complain.

OFFICIALS ARE LOOKING INTO VAT AVOIDANCE BY SOME OF ITS EBAY SELLERS,EBAY MIGHT HAVE TO PAY THE VAT DUE.
PERHAPS A CHANGE IN THE LAW NEEDED.