- By Lindsey Millen

You may have seen the headlines about the minimal amounts of UK tax paid by Facebook, but the social networking giant aren’t the only ones avoiding tax.

Amazon, the UK’s most popular shopping site, generated £3.2 million in UK profits last year yet managed to pay zero corporation tax as its European headquarters are registered in the tax haven of Luxembourg. That’s ZERO PERCENT TAX. Amazon is also well known for its questionable employment practises.

Google made £2.53 billion in the UK last year yet paid just £6 million in corporation tax. That’s 0.2 PERCENT TAX.

Figures for 2010 show that Apple, the biggest company in the world, payed £10 million on £1.3 billion UK revenue – that’s 0.7 PERCENT TAX – and eBay paid £3.4 million on £180 million UK revenue – that’s 1.9 PERCENT TAX.

Interesting that none of the methods used by these companies for avoiding corporation tax are illegal.

The HMRC have said “So long as these companies are paying the full amount of tax on their revenues in the country that they are based they are doing nothing wrong.”

Surely questions have to be raised as to whether or not they should be paying their fair share of tax in the countries that generate their profits, especially at a time of austerity and cutbacks.

We need more campaigns like this brilliant stunt to highlight the problem of tax avoidance: