List of online Amazon alternatives: an ethical book search tool

There's this thing that some people on HN do where they say "if it's not illegal it's totally fine and you can do it as much as you like". Clearly that's bollocks, isn't it? We don't want an over-bearing state that litigates all of our activity, so we limit the power of the state. This means there's a bunch of stuff that's not illegal, but people chose not to do that stuff because they're not horrible cunts.

Amazon doesn't pay employee taxes. Those taxes are paid, as the name suggests, by the employees.

People talk about "tax evasion" when they want to say a company or person is unlawfully not paying enough tax. People talk about "tax avoidance" when describing an activity that is supposedly lawful - Amazon thinks they're following the law, and they want to follow the law. People use "tax planning" when the law is being used in the normal expected way to reduce a tax burden.

Law is what's written in acts and statutes, but in many places it's also arrived at through case law.

A company can say "we're using this scheme, and we think it's legal", and a tax authority can say "we don't think it is", and we don't know who's right until it gets in front of the courts.

Since many tax authorities try a "right touch" regulatory approach that involves a lot of discussion and negotiation, and tries to avoid prosecution unless it's a clear cut case, we never get these schemes tested in court.

We just don't know if what Amazon is doing is fully legal (it probably is for most stuff), and we're unlikely to find out. Here's a case of Vodafone having £7 billion tax debt waived after negotiation. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/dec/06/hmrc-tax-deal-...

This shouldn't affect Amazon's behaviours though: they benefit from criminal justice, education, healthcare, transport infrastructure, and all of these things are provided by tax.

Amazon should stop being cunts and should start paying tax.