The internet giant Amazon is being investigated amid fears it is not paying its full taxes in Britain.

Amazon.co.uk, the British division of the firm, is under scrutiny by UK tax authorities for its affairs over a six-year period, beginning in 2004.

The admission by its American parent Amazon.com is a major embarrassment for a company that has come to dominate many Britons’ spending habits since it was launched in 1998.

Giant American internet companies such as Amazon and Google have made huge inroads into the UK, claiming to be forces for good that give customers access to music, books and information more easily and cheaply.

The truth is rather less wholesome. Just like the American robber barons of the Edwardian era – Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt – they have embarked on a land-grab; not for steel, oil or real estate, but for intellectual and cultural property.

They are ruthless would-be monopolists – and avoidance of tax is part and parcel of the plunder.

Today’s revelation that the UK tax authorities are investigating Amazon is bad enough, but the situation at Google is arguably even more egregious as it has its hooks deep into the highest echelons of the Government.
David Cameron’s former adviser Steve Hilton is married to Rachel Whetstone, a former head of communications at Google, who was also godmother to the Prime Minister’s late son Ivan.

And only a few days ago, Chancellor George Osborne was hobnobbing with Google bigwigs at the opening of the ‘Google Campus’ in east London, a new centre meant to serve as a hub for fledgling high-tech firms, giving it the glow of his official approval.

For all his talk of a clampdown on ‘morally repugnant’ tax avoidance, Mr Osborne is behaving like an impotent bystander as Amazon and Google trample over the crumbling British high street and raze our creative industries to the ground.

Amazon.co.uk’s latest accounts reveal that it did not pay a single penny of British corporation tax in either 2010 or 2011.