to wonder why people shop at Amazon?

[poppytripll]

Starbucks and the other well known tax dodging companies? If we need more money to pay teachers properly, fund the nhs etc then surely if we supported retailers that pay UK tax it may help? I don't buy coffee much but I use Costa if I do, as it's part of a British company that pays tax.

I also shop in Sainsbury or Waitrose because they pay UK tax as opposed to Aldi and Lidl. I'm probably over simplifying this so please tell me if iabu!

Maybe amazon is cheap because it pays little UK tax - to be fair to them thought they make very little worldwide profit, so little tax to pay even if based in the UK.

Amazon is cheap and convenient.
I shop at ALDI and LIDL because I can't afford Waitrose because I'm not loaded

Many companies will employ staff in their shops and/or contact centres who work long hours on minimum wage, but we can't avoid all of them.

After working in a contact centre in my student days, I can't help but think people working in one should get a pay rise too.

If you wanted to be truly ethical you'd have to grow your own food, knit your own lentil clothes and make rather than buy gifts.

It's the fault of politicians that multinationals can avoid tax but they don't chase outstanding tax from corporations like Vodafone and allow tax avoidance because they are in each other's pockets. I can not vote for a politician who will change those rules.

Starbucks are easy for me to avoid because there are excellent substitutes like Costa. Somebody mentioned Sainsburys and Waitrose being a more ethical choice than Lidl and Aldi despite the well known truth that supermarkets employ well known unethical practices like underpaying dairy farmers, not paying for mis shapened fruit and veg and having clothing ranges which use foreign factories so almost certainly exploited workers.

Amazon own The Book Depository twofingerstoGideon

Shit. Never shopping there again. Shows how careful you need to be.

Green Metropolis are good for books and donate to the Woodland Trust. It's mostly second-hand books, but they do have new ones, too.

several reasons, prob none of them good enough really

i want something like a charger for a phone, or a connector, or a lead. I wander around our local town. cant find it. come home and get it off amazon, free delivery for buttons. next time i need something, i check amazon first.
almost everything is cheaper.
i am time poor
shop at aldi cos it is cheap and i fecking hate tescos

Add Ebay & Google to list of companies to boycott, if you're being so principled.

I dont care if they dont pay tax. I have had lots of jobs in public sector and its not like 1000s isnt wasted on a load of crap

I can find things on Amazon that I can't find anywhere else and they are usually a lot cheaper.
A lot of things are in Marketplace so you could well be buying from a small company that DO pay 'proper' taxes.

They have almost everything you need/want. You can order with the click of one button. They deliver free of charge. They refund without a quibble. They deliver when they say they will (mostly).

The tax laws allow them to pay minimal tax here. I wouldn't pay a penny more than I had to.

They aren't doing anything illegal - morally maybe but unless the law is changed they are not doing anything wrong.

Where do you draw the line ?

Nestlé - a lot of people boycott and it doesn't seem to bother them.

Take that - still selling records/tour tickets when half of them were done for tax dodging.

The sun don't seem upset about no sales in merseyside.

Primark/tesco/gap etc - all using third world sweatshops.

I don't use waitrose as they treated my mum badly.

Amazon - well it's generally among the cheapest available so you dont need to spend hours searching. Convenient - 2 minutes online and it's at your door within days.

You can send anything all over the world - we use amazon Spain and amazon australia to send gifts to relatives. Zero postage costs and no hassle. I also know its good value.

Or I can send them a voucher safely in their local currency that I know they can use and not be ripped off.

Teachers are paid more than enough. If they disagree, they should try working in the private sector. Maybe set up their own private schools and charge what they think they are worth.

Oh, and that means avoiding gmail, google calendar, Android, Youtube, Picasa, etc. TOO.
Don't buy a kindle, either.

It's cheap, very convenient (I live at least an hour from anywhere with decent shopping facilities), free delivery, massive selection.

I can't get upset about a company that is acting within the law to pay taxes, why would anyone be surprised that a company which is run for profit would want to reduce their bills as much as possible?

Because having traipsed round shops, searched online Gap, H&M, Debenhams etc Amazon was the only place I could find a plain brown long-sleeved tshirt as required for the school play. It is good at what it does & it does provide jobs here.

There's an Amazon warehouse locally. The labour it uses is probably minimum wage but there are people who have a job due to demand from UK consumers. When they were hiring last year the contracts weren't zero hours either. I'd like that practice to be wiped out urgently.

I'm not sure avoiding Lidl etc is necessarily ethical either. Households are facing higher bills and wage freezes so lower food bills are surely a positive thing that stops households struggling?

DS is disabled and I'm on carers, ethical companies to buy from are not on my list of priorities, even more so when I can't afford them.

Because I have no problem with the sort of legal tax avoidance practised by Amazon, Starbucks etc.

We have a shit town centre.

Lots of charity shops, coffee shops and the world's shittest toy shop.

There's no where else to go.

The implication in the OP is that a company should, on legally paying enough (or not paying at all) tax, sit down and say 'hmm, now do we think that is enough. I mean, is that the morally appropriate amount of tax' as if tax should have some charitable element to it, and we can all be trusted to stump up the 'right amount' according to our principles.

The NHS, wellfare state, free schooling isn't that old FFS! Society tried relying on charity before and it resulted in workhouses and ppl dying in the streets! Going on about the moral obligation to pay tax actually SUPPORTS the ppl/corporations who are keen to drive down the amount of tax legally due - by implying that everyone should have a moral compass, so laws kinda aren't really needed, right?....

Our obligation is not to boycott the companies following the (distasteful) laws. It is to vote for politicians who will change those laws and be vocal in our desire for them to be changed. But tax law is too damn complicated to provide easy soundbytes to get upset by, so let's all just go around calling companies 'evil' instead, huh? Coz that'll really show them the consequences of their actions....

When even a member of the Bank of England's financial policy committee is accused of avoiding tax, you have to consider whether the tax laws in this country are actually fit for purpose. Amazon may have hit the headlines at the beginning of this tax avoidance clamp down, but I believe the onus is on the government to close the loopholes that make their kind of practices perfectly legal rather than for them to pay more tax than they need to. If you have seen Avatar, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel or the Life of Pi, or watched anything with Ant and Dec, Davina McCall or even glanced at an image of David Beckham then you are colluding in tax avoidance by that logic - unless you have nothing else to do, it simply isn't practical to boycott everyone and everything that has been accused of using loopholes to avoid tax.

I actively campaign for tax reform, which I believe is a much more practical way to bring about the kind of change you seem to want than boycotting a company who will never notice.

I have my own company and I don't pay a penny more tax than I have to by law.
I pay an accountant to make sure of this.
If Starbucks and Amazon so the same who am I to judge?
And I shop there because it's easy, cheap and the range is huge.

Amazed at how many people condone tax avoidance schemes. Don't they look at the bigger picture and consider the wider impact on a country's economy and the rights of its citizens? Presumably these people also support the principle of corporations being allowed to sue governments if they 'obstruct' profit-making because of, for example, detrimental environmental impact. Under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, for example, a mining company is trying to sue the Quebec government for refusing to allow fracking. They believe their 'right' to make a profit overrides any environmental impact or the rights of the general population. Corporations are too powerful and it's time governments stood up to them.

As far as I was aware these companies aren't doing anything illegal, correct? So what's the problem? And I use both amazon and starbucks on a regular basis