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The Almighty Buck Businesses Technology

Italian Police Say Amazon Has Evaded $142 Million of Taxes (reuters.com) 92

Posted by BeauHD from the I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about-officer dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Milan tax police have told Amazon they believe the world's largest online retailer has evaded around 130 million euros ($142 million) of taxes in Italy, a source close to the matter said on Friday. The allegedly unpaid taxes refer to the period between 2011 and 2015, when Amazon made revenues of around 2.5 billion euros in Italy, the source said. The tax police's findings have been handed to Milan prosecutors, the source added. Amazon issued a statement denying it had evaded any taxes, and said its profits in Italy, on which taxes are paid, had been low due to its considerable investments in the country.
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Italian Police Say Amazon Has Evaded $142 Million of Taxes More

Italian Police Say Amazon Has Evaded $142 Million of Taxes

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  • No way! (Score:3)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Saturday April 29, 2017 @08:04AM (#54324711) Journal

    A huge multinational corporation like Amazon is dodging taxes? SAY IT ISN'T SO!

    • Yup, Italy would be better off without them.

      • Re:No way! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hud ... minus physicist> on Saturday April 29, 2017 @08:29AM (#54324777) Journal

        If they're not paying taxes, then yes, Italy is better off without them. Let other businesses that are willing to pay taxes fill the void. Otherwise, taxpayers (individual and business) are indirectly subsidizing Amazon because they have to make up the tax revenue shortfall.

        • I see you've though it through.

          • I see you've though it through.

            Looks like she thought it through better than you did with your original pat comment.

            Also looks like your response of would-be smug condescension was an attempt to obscure the fact that (contrary to the implication) you had nothing to come back with.

            • So you can't possibly imagine how a company can provide economic benefits (and others) beyond simply paying taxes either?
              • And you can't possibly imagine that an environment where some companies get away with not paying taxes and other ones don't is deleterious?

                • The whole thing would be easily solved by not requiring companies to pay taxes on top of sales and income taxes. Right now, a lot of money is wasted by businesses on finding complicated tax loopholes, and by governments to uncover them.

                  • So companies wouldn't have to pay property tax? If that's the case then all property will be owned by companies which then lease it to people and no property tax will be paid. Why would I pay tax if I could easily create a corporation which buys the property and leases it to me at cost? There would be no tax owed by my corporation, since it makes no money and there would be no tax owed by me since I don't own property.

                    I'm just trying to point out that in the quest to simplify and remove loopholes you can

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by r1348 ( 2567295 )

                I used to live 10km from the Amazon warehouse that serves the whole Italy (there's another one being built near Rome now). I talked to many locals who initially thought of it as a great benefit for the zone's unemployment, only to find out that they pay wages lower than what a waiter makes, constantly cheat on extra-time while imposing draconian rules on its workers (counted toilet visits, coffee machines activate only at certain hours...). Of course they actively prevent unionization through sheer mobbing.

                • Good points. Thanks. Glad someone at least takes time to think a bit deeper. They do pay wages, and I"m sure taxes are raised on that. How about property taxes? How many of those employees out of work if it weren't for Amazon? How many jobs does Amazon's business displace? All good things to consider. Unfortunately some here just spout stuff without any indication they even thought beyond a reaction. How about access to lower cost products and more choice by the Italian consumer?

                  Of course, the structure

              • So you can't possibly imagine how a company can provide economic benefits (and others) beyond simply paying taxes either?

                You seem to think the onus is on us to guess- and make- your point for you.

                Yes, I suspected that's what you might have been getting at. I had also suspected you might do the usual low-taxation fans' trick of parlaying this into an excuse to argue against taxation in general, using the line that- rather than X having to pay their fair share of taxes, it would- of course- be far more reasonable for their competitors to pay less.

                I've no interest in living in a country like the US, which- relative to the am

                • You seem to 'suspect' quite a lot. That's what one does when lacking the necessary information.

                  • You seem to 'suspect' quite a lot. That's what one does when lacking the necessary information.

                    Another smug, vaguely insinuating non-response.

                    The hypocrisy is brilliant. You respond to someone's post with a snide comment that vaguely wants to suggest that you know better while actually saying nothing [slashdot.org]. When you get called out on that, you seemed to have expected me to join the dots that didn't even exist and respond to a point that you hadn't made in the first place.

                    When I point out what I suspected what you might have been trying to get at, you come back with the comment above.

                    Yep. If you want

                    • The only thing I'm 'getting at' is generalized, thoughtless responses. That you've brought completely off topic items about the US and Obamacare into the discussion shows that you can't provide one either.

                    • The only thing I'm 'getting at' is generalized, thoughtless responses.

                      By providing the most content-free, pat answers yourself? Man, you are a satirical genius...

                    • The shallowness of the comments I was responding to allowed for a simple and obvious analysis.

                    • Well, you can't expect anything more form Mr. D [wikipedia.org]

                      Mr. D is a Canadian television series starring comedian Gerry Dee. The series follows the misadventures of an underqualified schoolteacher named Gerry Duncan, nicknamed Mr. D.

                      "Under-qualified" is putting it mildly. The guy is a real jerk, always trying to do the least possible, take credit for others work, and is generally a jerk. He's a slacker who aspires to mediocrity. Seems this guy picked the perfect user name. :-)

                    • I guess he *is* a satirical genius then. ;-)

          • I see you've though it through.

            Yes, I'd say she did. Unlike you.

        • Let other businesses that are willing to pay taxes fill the void.

          If they are required to pay taxes, someone just needs to collect them. What businesses are willing isn't relevant.

      • Yup, Italy would be better off without them.

        Well if they're profiting from doing business in Italy but failing to pay their taxes, then YES, I'd say Italy would be better off without this parasitic company who is taking, but not giving back. Why the hell should Amazon get a free ride to use their infrastructure to make money but not pay something back??

  • My respect for Bezos continues to grow.
  • If you're going to steal tax money, you have to have the word "police" somewhere in the name of your business.

  • here in the usa we have a separate government branch that handles taxes and enforcement, the IRS. (Internal Revenue Service) And that name is usually spoken with a bit of a grind of teeth of course.

    But in Italy... do they really have their police enforcing tax codes?

    What does Amazon have in the way of a "local presence" in Italy to justify taxing them? And what sort of taxes are we talking about here? (do they have like a warehouse or distribution center there? guessing they do, but just confirming) S

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      here in the usa we have a separate government branch that handles taxes and enforcement, the IRS. (Internal Revenue Service) And that name is usually spoken with a bit of a grind of teeth of course.

      But in Italy... do they really have their police enforcing tax codes?

      It is a dedicated branch, but yes. We have multiple branches that we sum up as "police" for outsiders because we don't want to bother with the details.

      What does Amazon have in the way of a "local presence" in Italy to justify taxing them? And what sort of taxes are we talking about here? (do they have like a warehouse or distribution center there? guessing they do, but just confirming) Sales? Income? Property? Capital Gains?

      The have multiple distribution centers at the least. In Europe you usually pay the VAT on the state where the service or goods are received. So if you sell in Italy to private people you have to pay the Italian VAT.
      If you have a business there are regional and national taxes, and it gets more complicated with online stores, so there are a ton of things they m

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by v1 ( 525388 )

        this follows the suit for both google and apple. Apple paid 300M, was asked 900M at the beginning. Google is still in trial, will probably have to pay around 100M out of the 300M originally asked. Both were just the regional tax, probably amazon has the same problem?

        Seems to be yet another case of "We made these tax loopholes to attract foreign business. Now look at all this growth in business that's resulted! Hey wait a minute, you're not paying as much tax, that's cheating!"

        No, you wrote the law that wa

    • It may depend. In my country, there's the tax department under the Ministry of Finance that administers taxes and their collection and also detects irregularities, asks for corrections and optionally fines you, which I guess is similar to your IRS. But there's also a special police department whose purpose is fighting organized tax crime, since the Ministry of Finance officials are no trained crime fighters.

  • Avoidance vs. Evasion (Score:5, Informative)

    by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Saturday April 29, 2017 @08:45AM (#54324819)
    Just so that everyone knows: "Tax avoidance" is anything that allows you to pay less taxes that is _legal_. "Tax evasion" is anything that allows you to pay less taxes that is _illegal_.

    With tax avoidance, the worst that can happen is that the tax office changes what you have to pay. You cannot be prosecuted for tax avoidance. With tax evasion, you can go to jail. Here the claim is "tax evasion".

    Well, that is assuming that whoever translated it from Italian got it right. There have been plenty of cases where things just get reported wrong.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bsolar ( 1176767 )

      With tax avoidance, the worst that can happen is that the tax office changes what you have to pay. You cannot be prosecuted for tax avoidance. With tax evasion, you can go to jail.

      In Italy you cannot have a penal prosecution for tax avoidance, but you can incur in administrative sanctions on top of having to pay back the "avoided" taxes.

      The accusation is of tax evasion, not avoidance.

      Well, that is assuming that whoever translated it from Italian got it right. There have been plenty of cases where things just get reported wrong.

      Reports are correct. Note that in Italy in the recent past there has been a crack down on big companies allegedly evading taxes, with similar accusations to Google and Apple. The accusation is basically to having omitted to report revenues to the tax authority.

      Not sure about the case against Google, but Apple was on the hook for about 800 millions and

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      The problem is that the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion is fuzzy and often takes a court ruling to decide along with appeals etc. It becomes easier and safer for both the government and business to compromise with the business, for example, just paying a third.

  • Credibility flag (Score:3, Insightful)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Saturday April 29, 2017 @09:36AM (#54324973)
    Any story which begins "The Italian Police say..." is off to a bad start.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Said somebody from the very country whose LEAs are universally considered a laughing stock worldwide (e.g., the OJ Simpson case, no bankers jailed after Lehman, etc...).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bongey ( 974911 )

      Yep there was that whole Amanda Knox case that turned out just to be wanting to get the evil American.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bsolar ( 1176767 )
        Amanda Knox was only one of the suspects, together with Raffaele Sollecito (Italian, acquitted) and Rudy Guede (Ivorian, convicted). A judicial mess might have been, but it doesn't seem "wanting to get the evil American" to me.

    • Yes but a story ending with "a corporation dodged taxes" is instantly a credible conclusion. Really I don't know what to believe right now. I'm so conflicted.

  • What the Italian police actually meant to say is, "Amazon have evaded $142m of taxes and failed to pay the necessary sweeteners, backhanders and protection money that is traditional in Italy."

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Somebody from the US tries to lecture other countries on ethics. You're probably too stupid to realize that this, by itself, without (further) punchlines, would be a successful joke in any stand-up comedy show outside the US.

  • If Italy was smart, it would have gotten a percentage of the shipping and handling charges.

  • Seriously. The Government is whining again that it doesn't get enough taxes through tariffs, income, sales taxes, property taxes, death taxes... any money you've ever made has already been taxed a dozen times over, and they'll tax you again when you try to spend it.

    Fuck the government and the airhead assholes who support this bullshit. Fuck them with a corkscrew. Never say "we". "We" are not a people, not a country, and "we" don't appreciate having our wages stolen for random bullshit. Fuck off.

    Don't fuck T

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