Paris (AFP)
The American giant of online distribution Amazon, regularly accused of not paying enough taxes in France, decided Wednesday evening to make public the amount, by announcing that it had contributed to the tax revenues of France 250 million euros last year.
In 2018, "the compulsory deductions linked to Amazon's activities in France amounted to more than 250 million euros, of which more than 150 million euros correspond to direct deductions (corporate tax, employer contributions, taxes premises, etc.), "the company said in a statement.
The rest consists of taxes that "we collect on behalf of the State", told AFP the general manager of Amazon France, Frédéric Duval: social security contributions and wages, VAT, CSG, etc.
However, "Amazon is growing on French territory and as this growth increases, the contribution to public services, to the French social model, increases", insisted Mr. Duval, without however specifying what was the amount of its profits.
As for its turnover in France, it amounted last year to 4.5 billion euros, revealed Amazon which, worldwide, had achieved more than 10 billion dollars in net profit for a turnover of 233 billion.
The company, like other American multinationals like Google, Apple and Facebook (the "Gafa"), is regularly accused of undermining the income it receives in France in order to reduce its taxes.
Asked why the company had decided to make this information public, Mr. Duval simply replied that it was because the question had been "often asked".
This announcement comes nevertheless when the French government, to put an end to controversial tax practices of multinational digital companies, voted at the end of 2018 a so-called "Gafa" tax which came into force this year and which tax these companies up to 3% of the figure. business carried out in France.
- Context of the digital tax -
According to former Secretary of State for Digital Mounir Mahjoubi, the American digital giants ("Gafa" plus Microsoft) declared last year in France a turnover four times lower than that actually achieved, generating a shortfall in earn a billion euros for the taxman.
"In recent years, there have been questions about our economic impact and the amount of taxes paid in France: I am attentive to these criticisms and I wanted to shed light on our share in growth, in employment but also to the funding of public services and the social model in France ", underlined Mr. Duval.
Since 2010, "we have redone our calculations and it turns out that we have invested 6.8 billion euros in France", in particular in infrastructure, Amazon now has 20 logistics sites in France, he called back.
Then, Amazon is a "big contributor of jobs in France and we arrive at the figure of 30,000 since its creation", including 9,300 CDI, he added.
A figure that had contradicted Mr. Mahjoubi, now a LREM MP, estimating at the end of November in a report that Amazon "destroyed 7,900 jobs in France".
Wednesday evening, the ex-minister however estimated that this effort of transparency constituted a "not important because for the first time we finally have a real turnover which corresponds to our estimates (in his report, Editor's note) or that Attac. "
"On the other hand, they are not transparent on the activities which correspond to this turnover and the distribution of the taxes which they pay. It is as if they wanted to minimize the importance of the corporate tax, insisting on contributions, "said Mahjoubi to AFP.
"I am afraid that the taxation they are talking about only concerns their physical activity and not their virtual services like + Market Place + (an online platform for third-party sellers) and Amazon Web Services", a hosting service and cloud computing, he said.
Questioned by AFP Wednesday evening, the Ministry of Economy did not wish to react to the announcement of Amazon.
In early December, Minister Bruno Le Maire said that "never" France would renounce the digital tax, despite American threats to overtax certain emblematic French products, such as champagne or leather goods. Paris, he then recalled, favors an "international solution" to the digital file, within the framework of the OECD.
© 2019 AFP