Books: Amazon claims to defend consumers and cultural diversity

Changing the law Lang will have "little impact" on the group, says Amazon France. For cons, the boss of Amazon France considers that penalize customers and culture.

In France, it is not good to destabilize the publishing industry. And Amazon knows something. The online bookstore that offered delivery charges apply in addition to the 5% reduction granted by the law Lang 1981, became sharply again by the National Assembly. For elected officials, it is to protect traditional bookstores face of what she considers to be dumping.

The Lang law was changed two sentences that undermine the economic model of the U.S. business. The addition is could not be more simple: "When the book is shipped to the buyer and is not removed in the retail trade of books, the sale price is set by the publisher or the importer. The retailer can use a discount up to 5% of the price on the price of the delivery service it provides. "This bill was adopted on 3 October unanimously by the House, and must be passed in the Senate.

"Consumers who do not have a nearby bookstore"

Amazon's French subsidiary has quickly responded to this measure. She is not afraid to sales and believes that if the text will be "a minor impact on sales. "In fact, the U.S. giant believes that it is the consumer who will be penalized.

This Thursday, October 10, Romain Voog, Amazon France leader reiterated this argument in an interview given to the Dauphine Libere. He believes that in addition to penalizing consumers, the text "reduce cultural diversity in France."

According to the officer, "consumers who do not have a nearby bookstore or have different literary choices will pay 5% more. "It adds to support his argument that" 25% of books sold in France are sold on the Internet. 25% of books sold, people will pay more. "

Finally, he rebels against the charges which the gravedigger Amazon booksellers neighborhood."What [the] penalizes the most rents are higher and higher, expenses increasingly large, bids new brands that sell cultural property. " And, he says, Amazon, which represents 70% of the market for online sales, mostly took market share "sellers correspondence and book clubs."

And tax optimization ...

The leader was also asked about the tax optimization system he established. Like other U.S. groups such as Google , eBay , Apple or Microsoft , the site of U.S. trade pays an income tax of 3.3 million euros in sales in France of € 1.6 billion .

Roman Voog replica that process is underway, and that the recovery should be 200 million euros. "Headquarters of our company is in Luxembourg, but Amazon pays VAT in France on all physical sales" . , He says, before adding that his company paid 150 million euros in tax last year.

Yesterday 9 October, the Ministry of Finance organized a seminar to prepare the European Council of digital to be held on 24 and 25 October and a strategy to counter tax optimsiation of web giants.