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If I'm honest, it's not really the behaviour of Amazon, Starbucks & Google et al that surprising - it's the fact that the the UK public didn't realise that most multi-national companies structure their tax affairs in favour of shareholders that's most suprising ...
This mostly
The moral outrage that presents itself when somebody follows the systems laid out to pay the correct legal amount of tax.
Morality is another argument, it's just a bigger version of C2W buying bikes for people who don't ride to work and many other schemes.
As for leaving the EU to set our own tax policy whats wrong with aligning EU Tax policy on this one?
As they used to say Tax need not be taxing - if the HMRC would pull it's finger out and simplify things!!
The moral outrage that presents itself when somebody follows the systems laid out to pay the correct legal amount of tax.
I think the thing is it that it is also trickery , albeit legal, to pay less that they would without the trickery.
Are we really meant to believe they have made no profit in the UK or just that they have made no profit on paper?
They probably can't stop anyone moving money around within the EU completely, but they potentially can stop them selling things to other parts of themselves for vastly inflated prices (the coffee and the charges for it, plus the charges for the brand). Cos that is actually naughty stuff for which they probably should get done. If the tax haven companies selling the coffee were selling it at actual market rate, then they'd not be able to stop it, but that would only be the same as anyone buying their coffee from a foreign country, which at some point everyone buying coffee in the EU does (I think - I can't think of any EU coffee producers).
It is odd that we allow tax havens in the EU mind.
and in the UK.
The UK plays a major role in helping companies dodge the tax they owe. Many of the world's tax havens are British, whether overseas territories such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and British Virgin Islands or Crown Dependencies such as Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. The City of London itself acts as the nerve centre for these tax havens and supports an army of lawyers and accountants devoted to helping companies dodge tax.