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Amazon Overcharging Publishers For Tax
00_NOP writes "Amazon is taking fire in the UK for insisting that publishers pay them for 20% VAT (sales tax) when in fact the online retailer is only paying 3% VAT. 'The firm is able to wield such power over publishers because it has a near monopoly of the UK digital book publishing market. According to reliable estimates, it sells nine out of 10 ebooks in the UK, while using its Luxembourg tax status to wring more profitable terms from publishers. ... In private, British authors and publishers express fears that Amazon's dominance will send the industry into further decline.' Given that the Kindle is rubbish at displaying maths and science and that Amazon is as dangerous a monopoly as Microsoft ever was, is it not time that regulators and consumers stood up to them?"
Amazon is also facing criticism right now for allegedly shutting down a woman's account and remotely wiping her Kindle, then refusing to provide information about why it did so.
that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Overcharging, potentially illegal actions? Pfft, who cares.
Whats that, you say its bad at displaying maths and science? Someone get the firing squad.
Seriously, what on earth do its shortcomings have to do with whether the government needs to take action?
Surely this is merely a matter of tax laws that lawyers and judges are perfectly well equiped to solve?
If Amazon is a Luxembourg company, than this should be no different from any other Luxembourg company buying and selling products outside Luxembourg borders. Europe has tax laws in place regarding intra-community trade; neither Amazon nor the publisher's opinions matter.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
What does the kindle's failure to display math and science symbols correctly have to do with Amazon potentially being a monopoly?
The better question is why are ebooks subjected to VAT in the first place when printed books are not.
I am almost-buyer of Kindle and practically all I need from it is science and math... Thanks for tips, and I hope this is read widely. Maybe next year, or decade... But not before all devices are updated to normal-math, acceptable-tables and acceptable-pdf.
There is another problem I was already aware of - PDF display is, by default, _awful_. I understand why's but I think it is not acceptable at all.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
* http://www.defectivebydesign.org/amazon-kindle-swindle
* http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/the-danger-of-ebooks.html
"Amazon is doing something shady and it'll get worked out in court now that it's know.
In the meantime, can we get a lynch mob started? Please guys. I don't like them because of [generic complain 1] and [generic complain 2] so let's try and get a mob started, ok?"
Having been this close to buying a Kindle, I'm glad I saw this warning first.
Can anyone suggest a device with better PDF support?
And I thought I was just being paranoid about this sort of thing.
When Amazon first went around deleting books off of people's Kindles I vowed I'd never buy one. Now it appears my apprehension was all too justified.
I hear the Nexus 7 does a better job with pdfs than the Kindle. It appears to me that's the way I am headed.
"Amazon is also facing criticism right now for allegedly shutting down a woman's account and remotely wiping her Kindle, then refusing to provide information about why it did so."
This is the exact reason why I strip the DRM from every Kindle book I buy and then store them in my own offline repository. Should Amazon ever decide to wipe my account I'll still have the books I purchased. The other advantage is I can use any e-reader I want w/o being locked to a Kindle.
So if this story is true as stated, and she has bought lots of e-books from Amazon, will Amazon refund her all the money she's spent on them? Or does Amazon just 'absorb' that $$$? I'd sue Amazon for actual damages, court and lawyer fees and damages. I can see the future of e-commerce, and this a bad trend starting here.
relax. its the internet, no website can ever have a monopoly, because visiting and using a website such as amazon or google is always a choice.
comparing amazon to microsoft is ludicrous.
Having been totally baffled by the summery. Which is incredibly confusing. Nothing has changed, VAT works like it always does the final customer pays it ALL thats the books buyer paying 20% http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=502578.
This is purely about dodgy maths. Amazon make deals on percentage of Gross Price with the publishers the UK full retail price of the book [net price+20%vat], not on the net price + [Vat in Luxenbourg] 3%. where publishers would get a slightly larger piece of pie . Neither Amazon or the Publishers pay a penny in tax so I fail to see why this is an issue. A better argument would be to standardise of Amazon taking a percentage of the net price as opposed to gross price, but all this should not matter, its really whatever they have negotiated between themselves.
This is a ridiculous Anti-Amazon article, I suspect to distract from the disgusting behaviour that Apple and 5 Publishers are involved in
This is not only a problem for publishers (which pay 20% instead of 3%) but also for the equivalents of the IRS. Amazon is paying a lot less taxes than it should in other countries by leveraging that extra 17% in two ways: benefits, and gaming the input/output VAT.
As another comment linked to an article: Vat by EU law is 20% for ebooks. It's only certain EU countries that have decided to do a reduced rate (against EU law) which % depends on the country (3% for Luxembourg and France at 5.5%). EU may consider changing the law but not until 2015. This statement is most telling: "The French government has told publishers that it will pay fines imposed by the EU as a result of its decision." Meaning the situation is something Amazon may not be able to deal with yet.
That said, the point about the account invalidation is valid though. Ability to delete books remotely = death-sentence when abused.
dont the publishers mostly have them selves to blame. they demanded DRM, which inherently results in lock in. now there customers have a bunch of kindle books that they would have to buy again if they wanted to move to different hardware.
Isn't it fraud to charge somebody for a tax then not pay the money to the government? This is true whether they really owe 20% and pay 3% or owe 3% and lie to customers they need to collect 20%.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It is also possible to minimise documents while doing calculations, for instance, and switch quickly between spreadsheets, calculator and documents. And there is a micro-HDMI output socket as standard. More solid than a Nexus 7, usable camera, and an eventual upgrade to BB 10 is promised. Mine is over a year old and there is still nothing to touch it at the price (just don't buy from Amazon). It is a product whose owners know about it, but negative publicity has kept buyers away. This means you can buy one in the UK for under $200 with our 20% VAT, and the same in the US.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
How do we know that this story is actually true, and not just some BS made up by someone who has an axe to grind with Amazon?
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
"If it's a choice between paving the way for tyranny and risking the loss of your digital life at the press of a button by some deceived customer service rep, and having to remember a password, I think the password is the way to go. The former works better, but the latter fails better. A note to anyone from Amazon PR contemplating sending me a comment regarding this: I expect that any comment from Amazon regarding this story will disclose whether and when Amazon can delete files (including files loaded by users) from Kindles, and whether DRM-free files can still be deleted. Also: as a policy, I do not quote anonymous spokespeople for firms unless they are telling me something that could cost them their jobs."
I bought a kindle about a month ago, and use it exclusively to read math and science. I'm a third year physics student, so most of the content is full of greek letters, mathematical notation, and stuff like hats and bars on letters. Of the 30-40 documents I've tried to read on it so far, I've only stumbled on a single document with a rendering error (where e^(-E) has the exponent pushed into the base number)...
A VERY timely post as I was just in a meeting concerning Amazon and tax in the US. My company is selling items on Amazon. Some states don't just have a state tax, but also charge on a zip code level basis. Surprising enough, Amazon's system is unable to correctly charge sales tax in this case. Our old internal system can handle it. It's very very odd that a billion dollar company can't calculate the tax fee right.
Don't forget Class A Federal Violations of your Constitutional Shit and Junk.
TFA notes that the broad lives in Norway, got her Kindle from Amazon UK and agreed to their T&C, and and was paying her kroner to Amazon US. So, sue who, where, and for what?
Sometimes the answer is not "Ready-Aim-Lawsuit". A bit of pressure applied via the anger of a million neckbeards might be more effective.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
And winner for most one-sided Slashdot submission goes to...
I have to say, at least with price fixing, it would be possible for something to attempt to compete with Amazon. Now they can't and there is no reason for Amazon to improve their tactics. Price fixing isn't ideal but rather than just fixing that, they should have got rid of the price fixing while at the same time enforcing open formats so people can leave kindle whenever they want or buy books anywhere without worrying about compatibility.