Amazon sets up offshore

[Dover]

Amazon sets up offshore

Bloomberg News Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Jersey DVD distributor avoids U.K. sales tax

Amazon.com, the world's biggest Internet retailer, is using a unit based on a British island financial haven to avoid Britain's sales tax on DVDs.
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Amazon.com in October set up the wholly owned subsidiary on Jersey, an island in the channel between England and France with a population of 90,000, to exploit the British territory's tax status. Imports from the island that cost less than £18, or $35, are not subject to the British sales tax of 17.5 percent.
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"You're going to see a lot more of this," James Roper, the chief executive of Interactive Media in Retail Group, an industry lobby, said in London. "We've been predicting for about eight years that this will fundamentally become an international game, where countries will vie with each other to offer the best tax rates."
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Amazon.com is "generally not the cheapest" Web site to buy DVDs, Roper said. Low-price competitors include cd-wow.com, which distributes from Hong Kong, and Jersey-based Play.com....cont'd

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/14/business/amazon.html

[KingChicken]

1. Jersey is awesome! nt