Amazon again paid no taxes in Europe in 2021 – despite record sales

René Resch

Amazon reported losses of €1.16 billion in its European retail business in 2021, allowing the company to pay zero income tax. Amazon Europa has even received €1 billion in tax credits that will be applied against future profits, Bloomberg reports.

Amazon gets tax credits again

At the same time, “Amazon EU Sàrl”, which is based in Luxembourg, generated sales of 51.3 billion euros last year, an increase of 17 percent compared to 2020. This includes income from the company’s e-commerce activities UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands.

According to internal documents, expenses of 37 billion euros for “raw materials and supplies” and 15 billion euros for “external expenses” are responsible for the loss.

Already in 2020 Amazon paid no taxes in Europe, at that time The Guardian reported on the process. At that time, too, the group reported record sales of 44 billion euros, but was granted tax credits of around 56 million euros for the future.

The shipping giant was able to benefit massively from the corona pandemic in particular, as we reported last year:

Amazon invests in Europe

“We are investing massively in creating jobs and infrastructure across Europe – more than 100 billion euros since 2010”,

said an Amazon representative.

“Corporate tax is based on profits, not revenue, and over the last year Amazon EU Sarl has made a loss despite opening more than 50 new locations across Europe and creating more than 65,000 decent paying jobs, bringing the number of our permanent employees in Europe has increased to over 200,000”,

added the speaker.

Amazon is actually expanding its infrastructure. A new logistics center was opened in Kaiserslautern in autumn 2021, which will create 1,000 jobs – by the end of the year, a total of around 6,000 jobs are to be created in Germany.

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