THE AMAZON METHOD HOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STATE SYSTEM TO AVOID PAYING TAX Richard Phillips - Jenaline Pyle - Ronen Palan The Amazon method: How to take advantage of the international state system to avoid paying tax Study for The Left in the European Parliament B-1047 Brussels, Belgium +32 (0)2 283 23 01 [email protected] www.left.eu About the Authors: Richard Phillips CEO and chief Investigator, Iconomist Ltd and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, CITYPERC, City, University of London Jenaline Pyle PhD Candidate, Department of International Politics, City, University of London Ronen Palan Professor of International Political Economy, City, University of London and holder of an ERC Advanced Grant 2 | The Amazon Method: How to take advantage of the international state system to avoid paying tax PREFACE To this end, the strategists of aggressive tax planning exploit the loopholes that originate from the differences between jurisdiction and their various inadequate tax regulations. In other words, they create a kind of arbitrage profit through the planned interaction of the multinational group of companies in the international sate system. With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in the The damage to society is huge. Every year, spring of 2020, the international association of multinational corporations shift over US$ 1.38 trillion Amazon workers called for all warehouses to be in profits to tax havens. Worldwide, US$ 245 billion closed, so that they would not have to continue in direct tax revenues are lost in this way. However, risking their health for the company. But their call fell it is difficult to make precise statements about the on deaf ears. Despite continued protests over the tax dodges of individual companies like Amazon. lack of health protections, operations continued and The lack of information and the opacity in reporting Amazon’s coffers rang like never before. In 2020, by these companies makes it almost impossible for Amazon’s revenues increased by a record US$ 106 the public to see how much tax they ultimately pay. billion to a whopping US$ 386 billion. Amazon’s Yet, multinationals benefit hugely from the public founder Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world, infrastructure provided by taxpaying citizens and reportedly pocketed over US$ 70 billion in additional businesses. The logical conclusion is that this wealth. obfuscation is intentional. In the following, this is referred to as reporting arbitrage: a deliberate The Amazon case shows the downside of globalization. method of concealing aggressive tax planning Through the market power of multinational strategies. corporations, social wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. This, however, is at the expense of This study on the “Amazon method” sheds light on the public. We know the stories of unfair competitive the obscure international tax planning of the Amazon practices and exploitative working conditions: group. Its originality lies in the newly developed through predatory pricing, Amazon is driving research technique, called Equity Mapping (EM). competitors like Diapers.com out of business. While existing studies are limited to the domestic Warehouse workers report feeling “like robots”, only dimension of Amazon’s financial activities, the authors lucky to have escaped the multitude of accidents, use the EM technique to examine the international or struggling with Orwellian surveillance practices interrelationships. The tax planning strategy of the and union busting. global player is thus examined in detail and comprehensively. Multinationals like Amazon now control about 50% of world trade. The Fortunes Global 500, the 500 Amazon’s method is referred to by the authors as a largest corporations in the world, collect over US$ Tax Credit Arbitrage Scheme (TCA scheme). The 30 trillion in revenues annually - almost twice the coordinating centre is the tax haven Luxembourg. gross domestic product of the entire European Union. In the small European Grand Duchy, Amazon However, a substantial part of global trade is intra- subsidiaries book massive operating losses from company trading. These transactions and financial international business, i.e., the business outside the flows between affiliates of the same corporation are USA. The generation of these losses is systematic the building blocks of the tax avoidance schemes and largely takes place in the global south, especially that enable the immense concentration of wealth in in India. In this manner, Amazon collects loss the hands of owners like Jeff Bezos. carryforwards, which are then turned into tax credits The Amazon Method: How to take advantage of the international state system to avoid paying tax | 3 in the USA. Consequently, Amazon is most likely The creation of a fair tax system is long overdue, and paying little or no tax at all and will not do so in the in view of skyrocketing public debts in the wake of near future. the Covid-19 crisis, we can no longer afford the tax abuse of large corporations. Instead of austerity However, this is only the first strike. Paradoxically, policies, we need tax justice. The absurd concentration Amazon is not only accumulating losses but also of power and wealth must be combated with untaxed profits in Luxembourgish companies. These redistribution. In this way, we can cover the costs of are supposed to be taxed in the USA according to the crisis and pave the way for a social-ecological US regulations. However, at the end of the day, they and digital transition. are not repatriated and thus remain untaxed in foreign subsidiaries. Instead, these profits are to be Tax justice goes hand in hand with tax transparency permanently re-invested in international business. and therefore with mandatory public country-by- In other words, they provide a growth engine and country reporting for all large corporations, enabling an unfair competitive advantage for Amazon’s the public to hold them accountable. It requires an expansion. effective global corporate minimum tax of 25% to curb international tax competition. It means enforcing In short, the report illustrates that, by using the TCA the principle of unitary taxation for multinationals, scheme and opacity in reporting, Amazon’s aggressive so that no country is played off by networks of global tax planning aims to push its own tax burden subsidiaries and tax havens. It requires the definition as close to zero as possible. Amazon will certainly of a “significant digital presence” to be anchored in not be the only multinational to use these methods. tax law, so that tech companies with digital business The study therefore provides us with valuable insights models can be made to pay tax, even if they have into tax planning strategies of large corporations in no physical establishment in a jurisdiction. Today, general, and Big Tech in particular. Now, political the call for tax justice is moreover a call for an excess consequences must be drawn from these new profit tax in order to have crisis profiteers like Amazon insights. contribute to the resolution of the crisis. The European Commission had already launched an Tax Amazon Now! investigation into Amazon in 2015 on its illicit profit Martin Schirdewan shifting. However, as we can now see, the narrow focus on profit shifting is leading us down the wrong track. The secret of Amazon’s method is not to be found in the handling of profits but in the systematic production of losses. The demand that arises from this is clear. A renewed investigation of Amazon by MEP, Co-President of the European Commission and competent authorities The Left in the European Parliament must follow. 4 | The Amazon Method: How to take advantage of the international state system to avoid paying tax SUMMARY OF FINDINGS A small minority of businesses in the world are Existing studies reached the conclusion that Amazon multinational enterprises (MNEs). These organizations pays either very little tax or no tax at all in the US. have become key vehicles for innovation, wealth However, due to reporting opacity, the precise creation, but also wealth concentration in the modern numbers are disputed and Amazon’s activities outside world. Many countries have introduced systems of the US are neglected. We identify certain gaps in corporate taxation as instruments for the redistribu- the currently available data as presented by Amazon tion of power and wealth, ensuring that businesses that raise important questions about the role played contribute to the cost of maintaining the state-of- by Luxembourg and Amazon’s non-EU subsidiaries the-art infrastructure provided by the societies from in Amazon’s tax planning. Losses generated outside which they benefit. MNEs employ some of the of the EU appear to have been converted by Amazon sharpest legal and accounting brains to exploit the into tax credits in the U.S, thus ensuring that Amazon system of rules, regulations and taxation created by pays little or no taxation. Our analysis leads to the states, especially gaps and loopholes arising between conclusion that Amazon operates with a specifictax different jurisdictions, to avoid paying taxes. Cross- credit arbitrage scheme coordinated through subsidies is the direct impact of international corpo- subsidiaries located in Luxembourg. rate tax mitigation strategies; the less MNEs pay in taxation, the more someone else has to pay, typically Over the last decade, Amazon has generated greater sections in society that are unable to employ those untaxed profits than the total amount of taxes it has professional services. ever owed. Much of this has taken the form of “loss carryforwards”—an accounting term that describes In this report we look at the way Amazon has organ- qualifying net operating losses that are used to reduce ized its domestic and international business to future tax liabilities. Amazon’s net total operating minimize taxation worldwide. This study complements loss carryforwards reached US$ 13.4 billion by existing studies, which rely on information contained 2020.