Over the past 24 years, with the support of our customers, we have been able to invest and grow our presence in the UK. That’s why we’re continuing to share a snapshot of our economic impact to provide a better understanding of our business and how we’re supporting economic growth across the UK, including more than £12bn investment and total tax contributions totalling more than £3.6bn in the last year.
Our investment in the UK
Since 2010, we’ve made direct investments in our UK operations of more than £56bn. This includes both capital expenditure (such as the infrastructure we build, including our fulfilment centres, corporate offices and data centres), and operating expenditures (such as the jobs we create in the UK). These direct investments raise the economic activity in a given region, and creates a ripple effect through the economy as the firms that supply goods and services to Amazon expand and associated household spending increases.
Our total permanent workforce of around 75,000 employees makes us one of the top 10 private sector employers in the UK. Our employees are spread across the UK in a variety of corporate and technology functions in Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS), including software development, product management, and engineering, as well as jobs in the operations teams in our fulfilment centres, sort centres and delivery stations. We recently made a further £3.5m commitment to our apprenticeship fund to create career opportunities for people across England, bringing the total funding investment to £8m since launching in 2021.
We have over 100 sites across the UK, including more than 25 UK fulfilment centres and corporate offices in six cities. In 2022, we invested more than £1.6bn in infrastructure as we continued to fit out our fulfilment centres with the latest robotics technology, and we opened our first development centre in Swansea in Wales, the new home to Veeqo which provides software for sellers on Amazon. This is in addition to our existing development centres in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London working on projects such as Prime Video, Alexa and the shopping experience on our online store. In addition, our investment indirectly supports a network of over 100,000 UK-based small and medium-sized enterprises sellers who sell their products in Amazon’s stores across the world.
Our tax contributions in the UK
As we continue to make investments in our UK operations and our growing workforce, we help fund public services and infrastructure throughout the country. This is why we don’t just focus on one aspect of taxation such as Corporation Tax, we also look at the taxes that we administer and collect on behalf of the Exchequer as a result of our activities in the UK. Those taxes fall into two categories:
- Taxes borne: the taxes that are directly incurred and payable by Amazon, including Employer National Insurance, Business Rates, Corporation Tax, Import Duties, Stamp Duty Land Tax and Digital Services Tax; and
- Taxes collected: the taxes we collect and remit from our customers, employees, and other third parties because of our business activities in the UK. Some of these include VAT, Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions.
PwC’s annual total tax contribution report is an independent study which analyses UK tax contributions from the 100 Group. The 100 Group represents members of the FTSE 100 along with several large UK private companies. When comparing our 2021 data to the most recent PwC Total Tax Contribution survey of the 100 Group, Amazon continues to rank in the top 15 largest UK taxpayers for taxes borne and collected, as well as for the overall total tax contribution. For the second consecutive year, Amazon ranked in the top five for total capital investment.
Most governments, including the UK Government, use the taxation system to actively encourage companies to make investments in infrastructure and job creation. Capital allowances are an example of this, and are designed to encourage businesses to make productivity enhancing investments and promote economic growth. Whilst some businesses may see a tax reduction as a result of these capital allowances, this is expected to more than make up for the economic growth stimulated by these investments.
This is the fifth year we have published our UK investments including taxes borne and taxes collected. Below we have outlined our contribution for the full year to 31 December 2022:
- In 2022, the total revenues of Amazon’s activities in the UK were £24bn (2021: £23bn);
- We also invested more than £12bn in the UK last year (2021: £11bn), that’s a total investment of more than £56bn since 2010;
- Our total tax contribution (combining taxes borne and taxes collected) was more than £3.6bn (2021: more than £2.7bn);
- Our total taxes borne was £781m (2021: £648m);
- The taxes we collected and administered for the government were more than an additional £2.8bn (2021: £2.1bn) as a result of our business activities in the UK.
- Amazon ranks in the top 15 taxpayers when compared to PwC’s annual total tax contribution report of the 100 Group published in December 2022 (based on data covering financial years to March 2022).
We believe that corporate tax codes in any country should incentivise investment in the economy and job creation and we support the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and its work with global governments to review the international tax system and secure consensus on the taxation of the digital economy. We are proud of the significant economic contribution we are making to the UK economy. Read more about Amazon’s Economic Impact and Tax Contributions UK here.
