Taxpayers' £4.7m delivery for net giant that pays zero taxes

Fury after Scottish Government gives Amazon public money for web services

- John Ferguson

The Scottish Government handed Amazon £4.7million last year despite the firm paying no corporation tax on £38billion of European sales.

The internet giant’s web services division was paid the public money and has also recently signed a 10-year NHS deal worth £15million.

But accounts for Amazon’s Luxembourg unit – the firm through which it sells products to millions of Scottish and other European households – claim a £1billion paper loss and therefore zero tax was paid last year.

Documents released through Freedom of Information show that in 2020-21 the Scottish Government paid £4.7million for the firm’s web services, £45,272 the year before and £2.5million in 2018-19.

The £7.2million total was only for Scot t ish Government “core” departments and didn’t include other agencies.

The NHS deal, meanwhile, is to provide web hosting for an IT system able to deploy “data in real-time at the point of care” for patients north of the Border.