Amazon Shifted UK Tax Cost to 200,000 Sellers, Not Shareholders

When the UK imposed a 2% Digital Services Tax on digital platforms in 2020, Amazon passed the entire cost to marketplace sellers through a matching fee increase within weeks. The roughly 200,000 UK businesses selling through Amazon now absorb a margin hit that the platform could have absorbed itself. These sellers already pay standard corporation tax on their profits. The DST, designed to tax digital giants, instead became a tax on the ecosystem around them—a structural asymmetry of market power.