EU-DIGEST

According to a report by EY, pharmaceutical players in the e-commercespace in India are expected to reach a combined market size of $2.7billion by 2023. The report cited rising internet penetration, smartphone ownership, and increased healthcare spending as some of the reasons for the expansion.

The US online retailer's entry in e-pharmacy comes at a time when demand for buying medicines online has increased in India owing to the lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Read more at
Amazon launches online pharmacy in India | News | DW | 14.08.2020

Sen. Elizabeth Warren demanded that the U.S. Postal Service’s internal ethics watchdog investigate alleged “corruption by” Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for buying Amazon stock options after his appointment to his job
Read more at:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren Demands ‘Corruption’ Probe After Report of Amazon Options Purchase by Postal Service Chief Louis DeJoy – NBC 6 South Florida

While rival brick-and-mortar retailers have had to shut stores during government-imposed lockdowns, Amazon hired 175,000 people in recent months and saw demand for its services soar.

The company said revenue jumped 40% from a year earlier to $88.9 billion.
Amazon had forecast it might lose money in the just-ended second quarter because it expected to spend some $4 billion on protective equipment for staff and other expenses related to COVID-19. It did just that - and still earned $5.2 billion, double its net income from a year prior.

Read more at
Amazon posts biggest profit ever at height of pandemic in U.S - Reuters

eff Bezos once again breaks the ultimate prosperity record: the strong man behind Amazon is worth 171.6 billion dollars (151.5 billion euros). Not only does he remain the leader of the list of richest people in the world according to Bloomberg, he also catches up with himself after a temporary dip due to his wife's divorce last year. Bezos would now be worth more than the gross national product of Hungary or Algeria, according to The Sunday Times.

In September 2018, his fortune was valued at 167.7 billion dollars, but a few months later, he transferred about a quarter of their combined Amazon shares to his then-wife in what was to become the most expensive divorce in history. Mackenzie Bezos, who married the entrepreneur a year before he founded Amazon, thus gained 4% of the company's shares and became 38 billion dollars richer. She is now the second richest woman in the world after Françoise Bettencourt, the granddaughter of the founder of L'Oréal.

Read more at: 
Jeff Bezos (Amazon) is richer than Hungary | RetailDetail

Amazon on Monday became the latest tech company to face criticism for sharing public-facing statements supporting police reform and the Black Lives Matter movement while continuing internal policies and business practices that perpetuate the status quo.

Read  more at:
Amazon says 'Black Lives Matter'. But the company has deep ties to policing | Amazon | The Guardian

Wildfires are ravaging California and Australia – and local fire departments are alarmingly underfunded and underprepared

Read more at:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/09/jeff-bezos-climate-crisis-taxes-california?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Add_to_Firefox

Amazon reported third-quarter earnings Thursday that disappointed investors and sent Amazon stock spiraling down. For Bezos, that means an on-paper loss of around $7 billion, putting his status as richest person in the world at risk.

Read more at: Jeff Bezos lost about $7 billion on Thursday

Read more at: Brazil does U-turn on Amazon fire aid

Stocks fell sharply on the first trading day of the month and the quarter as a decline in Amazon shares put pressure on the broader tech sector Monday.

The Dow ended nearly 458 points lower after sinking more than 700 points, with Intel as the worst-performing stock in the index. The S&P 500 pulled back 2.2 percent and entered correction territory, with tech falling more than 3 percent. The index also dropped below its 200-day moving average, a key technical level. The Nasdaq dropped 2.7 percent, also entering a correction, as Amazon declined 5.2 percent.

"The market leaders are under pressure," said Marc Chaikin, the CEO of Chaikin Analytics. "It's a situation where the proven winners for the past few years are faltering." When that happens, "there is a negative psychological sense in the market."

Read more: Dow closes down 450 points as Trump's ire rocks Amazon

Large digital companies with significant revenues in the European Union such as Google and Facebook could face a 3% tax on their turnover under a draft proposal by the European Commission.

The proposal, expected to be adopted next week and still subject to changes, updates an earlier draft which envisaged a tax rate of between 1 and 5%.

The tax, if backed by EU states and lawmakers, would only apply to large firms with annual worldwide revenues above €750 million ($924 million) and annual “taxable” revenues above €50 million in the EU.

The threshold for EU revenues has been raised from €10 million initially foreseen to exempt smaller companies and emerging start-ups from the tax.

Large US firms such as Uber, Airbnb and Amazon could also be hit by the new levy, which would apply across the 28 EU countries.

Read more: EU ready to hit big US tech firms with 3% turnover tax – EURACTIV.com

 After hours of searching, I pulled onto a dirt track here in the rolling hills of Cambridgeshire and spotted a small dot whirring across the blue sky, gently swaying in the breeze as it steadily flew about 200 feet above the ground.

Jackpot: It was an Amazon drone.

Barely visible to the naked eye, the unmarked aircraft, about the size of a large model plane, floated across a field about 1,000 yards in the distance, the lights on its four-pronged sensors flashing brightly against the afternoon sun.

Amazon, the giant e-commerce company, began secretly testing unmanned aircraft this summer at an undisclosed location in Britain (its largest outdoor test site, according to an Amazon executive). I set out to find the top secret site, wanting to see how we all may one day receive online deliveries.

In retrospect, signs of Amazon’s secret tests were hidden in plain sight.

There was the warning to pilots that unmanned aircraft would be flying in the area, about an hour north of London, until early October; the uncharacteristically fast cellphone reception in such a remote area — a must when processing drone data; and the growing list of jobs and openings at Amazon’s research and development site in Cambridge related to Prime Air, the company’s ambitious plan to use drones for everyday deliveries.

Read more: A Peek at the Secret English Farm Where Amazon Tests Its Drones - The New York Times

Is Apple cutting corners when paying taxes?

The US government has threatened the European Commission (EC) with retaliation if the body decides to proceed with its plan to demand millions of dollars in unpaid taxes from technology giant Apple.

The US Treasury Department issued a rare warning on Wednesday, August 24, accusing the Brussels-based body of becoming a “supranational tax authority” that poses a threat to international agreements concerning tax reform.

“The US Treasury Department continues to consider potential responses should the Commission continue its present course,” the Treasury said in its strongest language to date.

“A strongly preferred and mutually beneficial outcome would be a return to the system and practice of international tax cooperation that has long fostered cross-border investment between the United States and EU member states,” the warning added.

The European Union (EU) has been investigating a series of tax deals between Apple and Ireland which allow the iPhone maker to pay little or no tax on income earned across Europe.

The EC is expected to rule on the case next month. This is the biggest corporate tax avoidance investigation ever undertaken by the commission.

The EC is the executive body of the EU, responsible for implementing decisions, proposing legislation, upholding the EU treaties and managing the day-to-day business of the bloc.

According to investment bank JP Morgan, if Apple is forced to retroactively pay the Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent on its pre-tax profits, the company might need to cash out as much as $19 billion.

A 2013 report by US Senate confirmed that Apple has paid little to no taxes on at least $74 billion of the profit it earned by exploiting Irish and American tax laws.

Tim Cook, who became Apple’s CEO after the death of its founder Steve Jobs five years ago, has denounced the case as “political crap.”

“There is no truth behind it,” he said. “Apple pays every tax dollar we owe.”

The EU estimates that tax avoidance by multinational corporations costs member states anywhere between $50 million to $78 billion a year in lost taxes.

In addition to Apple, other American companies like Amazon and Starbucks are also suspected of tax evasion.

Note EU-Digest: Hopefully the EU Commission does not cave-in for these US misguided threats and intimidations and tells the US Treasury Department where to shove this warning, which is protective of US corporate tax evaders.   

Read more: PressTV-US warns EU over Apple’s tax case

Governments that offer multi-national firms sweetheart tax deals should not be allowed to benefit if the European Union orders them to claw back the aid, according to a new report by the European Parliament’s special committee on tax rulings.

Instead, the proceeds should be “returned to the member states which have suffered from an erosion of their tax bases or to the EU budget, and not to the member state which granted the illegal tax-related aid, as is currently the case,” the report contends.

The European Commission is still investigating whether so-called ‘sweetheart’ tax agreements in Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, involving companies such a Apple, Starbucks and Fiat, constitute illegal state aid. The probe could lead to hundreds of millions of euros in new taxes being paid to the governments in question, despite the fact that they were responsible for offering special tax treatment.

The cross-party inquiry committee was set up in February in the wake of the “LuxLeaks” scandal, in which reporters disclosed the extent of tax-avoidance structures in Luxembourg allowing companies to benefit from significant reductions to their tax rate on income earned from intellectual property.

Also included in the 40-page draft report by Michael Theurer, a German liberal, and Elisa Ferreira, the Socialist group spokesperson on economic affairs, are recommendations that firms which refused to assist the committee investigation should be banned from the EU’s Transparency Register allowing them to access the EU institutions.

The MEPs also call for comprehensive exchange of tax information between European countries alongside a common consolidated corporate tax base.

Read more: Luxleaks committee demands overhaul of EU tax rules

Amazon workers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig have walked off the job for two days of strikes. Their union Verdi asserts that the company should treat them as being mail order and retail sector employees, and accept a collective bargaining agreement which would pay them accordingly.

But Amazon insists the staff are logistics workers, which are paid less, and that they are paid above the average to what they are entitled.

The protracted pay dispute has been running for about a year, with semi-regular industrial action. However, some Amazon employees earlier this year distanced themselves from Verdi's demands, saying what the union had said about their working conditions did not reflect reality.

Friday's walkout in the dispatch centers will last until late on Saturday. Amazon has around 9,000 full-time workers in Germany.

Read more: Amazon workers in Germany strike again | News | DW.DE | 30.05.2014

Read more: Alibaba Entering To US Stock Market | MK Observer

Read more: Amazon Tests Drones for Same-Day Parcel Delivery, Bezos Says - Bloomberg