I’ll consider ‘Amazon tax’, says Finance Secretary
FINANCE Secretary Kate Forbes has said she is open to a windfall tax on companies such as Amazon to aid Scotland’s recovery from the economic effects of coronavirus.
Appearing before the finance and constitution committee at Holyrood yesterday, she said she would like to see firms that are benefiting from the pandemic using some of their extra revenue to help the recovery.
The comments came after the Office for National Statistics announced that UK GDP fell by 20.4 per cent in April, the highest drop on record. In response to a question from Nationalist MSP George Adam – who suggested online shopping companies could be a prime target for such a tax – Miss Forbes said: ‘There are some very large organisations that have benefited significantly from the pandemic and I think we should be looking to them in order to fund some of our needs going forward.’
The Finance Secretary added that the Scottish Government supported the UK Government’s digital services levy, which was introduced on April 1 and imposes a 2 per cent tax on search engines, social media firms and online marketplaces.
But Miss Forbes said the Scottish Government does not have the powers to institute such a tax, and would need to rely on Westminster proposing it.
She also repeated her calls for more powers to be handed to the Scottish Government, warning she will otherwise have ‘one hand tied behind my back’ as the economy emerges from the pandemic.
The Scottish Government has claimed there is a £500million hole between the extra cost of the Covid-19 crisis and the funding given to Scotland from Westminster. The
Finance Secretary said the UK Government should either provide the funding to fill the gap or allow the Scottish Government to borrow money to supplement the budget.
Last month, Amazon said it could record its first loss in five years because of a £3.2billion bill to respond to the pandemic.
The online retailing giant recruited an extra 175,000 workers to cope with a surge in orders during the outbreak.
Despite seeing a huge rise in revenue, the company said it will have huge extra costs from employing additional staff, overtime, buying protective equipment and disinfecting its warehouses.