PAC gives Amazon 20 November deadline

The Commons' Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has ordered Amazon to produce all the details of its Luxembourg holding company before 20 November.

Amazon - the UK's biggest online retailer - which amassed sales of over £3.3bn in the UK last year, but paid no corporation tax on any profits must also give a clear breakdown of its UK earnings and what percentage of its EU sales originate in Britain.

Its director of public policy, Andrew Cecil, provoked the ire of committee chair Margaret Hodge when she accused him of not being a 'serious player' after he repeatedly said he would have to revert back at a later date with the information requested by the MPs.

She has now ensured that he provides those elusive details by Tuesday.

Search engine giant, Google and global coffee chain, Starbucks were also at the PAC hearing and have also been tasked with furnishing MPs with more information.

Starbucks must reveal what the terms of its highly favourable secret tax deal with the Dutch authorities are and prove that Holland demanded it keep the details under wraps, as claimed by its global CFO Troy Alstead.

All three senior managers from the trio of multi-nationals were taken to task over their respective companies' complex arrangements which saw them pay little or no tax in the UK, even when the economic activity within the country was substantial and in line with that of their peers.

Search engine giant, Google paid just £6m of corporation tax in the UK last year on a UK turnover of £395m.

Its chief executive of Google northern Europe, Matt Brittin, was quick to admit that its European HQ was based in Ireland because of its 12.5% corporation tax rate - almost half that of the UK's 24%.

He added that until very recently, the Irish company was paying a fee to a Dutch-registered company within Google in a bid to slash its tax burden.

It was revealed that in the past three years Starbucks has paid no UK tax at all despite amassing sales of £1.2bn.

In 2011, the company reported a £33m UK loss on sales of £398m and subsequently paid no corporation tax. It has reported similar losses over several years.

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