Online marketplace Etsy paid just £128,000 in UK Corporation Tax in 2020, whilst booking huge amounts of UK revenue in Ireland, new research from TaxWatch has found.
As traditional bricks and mortar shops were hit by successive lockdowns as a result of the pandemic, Etsy saw a huge increase in turnover, with the value of goods sold via Etsy increasing exponentially. The UK accounts for over 10% of the company’s takings, making it the most important market outside of the US, where the company is headquartered.
This importance isn’t however reflected in Etsy’s UK company accounts. Etsy’s UK company, Etsy UK Limited, declared revenues of just £12.5m in 2020, a profit of £7.5m, with a tax bill of just £128,000 – after deductions for share-based compensation.
Instead, Etsy’s UK sales, which run in to hundreds of millions of pounds, are booked with an Irish Unlimited Company, where profits were subject to a tax rate of 3%.
The full report is available here.
This story was featured in The Guardian and City AM, amongst others.
