Amazon tax petition hits 100,000 signatures

More than 100,000 people have signed a petition launched by an independent bookseller calling on Amazon "to pay their fair share of tax in the UK" and warning the online retail giant that "the unfair advantage that your tax dodge gives you is endangering many UK high street businesses".

Booksellers Frances and Keith Smith, who count the MP Margaret Hodge and the author Charlie Higson among their supporters, are now planning to deliver their appeal to 10 Downing Street, accompanied by a large crowd of authors and other allies.

Hodge, chair of the public accounts committee, was one of the MPs to lay into Amazon over its tax affairs last year, when the online bookseller – alongside Starbucks and Google – was accused of diverting hundreds of millions of pounds in profits to tax havens.

"We never expected this, [but] when we've reached 100,000 we will present the petition to Number 10," said Frances Smith. "We've got to keep the pressure up so the government realises this is an issue close to people's hearts. We have to keep banging on about it so the government knows it is important to people, and that there are votes in it."

The Smiths, who run independent bookshops in Warwick and Kenilworth, launched their petition on Change.org on learning of the accusations against Amazon in November, and support has now hit a level they never foresaw. Calling on people to support their stance, the Smiths write in their petition that businesses like theirs have already been pushed "to the brink" by the huge discounts offered by online retailers, but that "what's even worse is that Amazon, despite making sales of £2.9bn in the UK last year, does not pay any UK corporation tax on the profits from those sales".

"It's not a level playing field and leaves independent retailers like us struggling to compete just because we do the right thing," say the Smiths. "As independent booksellers, we are happy with competition in the market but it must be on level terms and by dodging corporation tax in this way, Amazon start with an unfair advantage. As they grow bigger it's inevitable that shops like ours will be under even more pressure. That's bad for customers, bad for the high street and bad for the UK.

"Amazon may be obeying the letter of the law – but they're certainly not being fair. Last year Starbucks announced that they had caved to public pressure and would look at their tax affairs in the UK."

The online retailer defended their tax arrangements in a statement which declared: "Amazon pays all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operates within." The company serves "tens of millions of customers and sellers throughout Europe from multiple consumer websites in a number of languages dispatching products to all 27 countries in the EU," the statement continued. "We have a single European Headquarters in Luxembourg with hundreds of employees to manage this complex operation."

Already 100,989 people have signed up to the notion that these arrangements are unfair. Higson, author of the Young Bond series of novels, is one of them. "My position is that Amazon is convenient and cheap, but at the expense of traditional bookshops that have to pay the full tax rate. How can anyone else possibly hope to compete?" he said. "There has to be a level playing field. I would be bereft if we lost all our bookshops and all book sales were in the hands of one single retailer that sells books for next to nothing. For a company to barge in, hoover up all sales of everything online and not pay UK tax appears to be bordering on the criminal. And for the government to have let them set up in this way is also bordering on the criminal, it's certainly very stupid, but then what do I know about EU tax laws?"