Amazon is the latest tech firm to have question marks hanging over the extent of its business activities that are carried out in the UK.
The e-commerce firm, which also owns TV and film streaming service LoveFilm and cloud platform Amazon Web Services, is facing questions about the level of business activity that it conducts out of its headquarters in Patriot Court, Slough.
A whistleblower has contacted the Guardian, stating that he and his sales team regularly travel to Slough to go through details of contracts with Amazon's head of entertainment and music category manager.
Further reading
Amazon workers in Germany go on strike today Amazon announces global certification scheme for AWS Amazon shares drop after it forecasts significant loss in second quarter
The whistleblower is a music publishing executive who asked to remain anonymous, and his company is a supplier of CDs to Amazon in the UK for sale to customers in Britain.
"We talked about price, discounts, payment terms, marketing contributions, return rights, everything. There was no other person in the equation. It was entirely done in Slough," he told the Guardian.
"Once we agreed the terms and conditions they would get their legal department to frame it into a contract that would be with Luxembourg," he added.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the allegations, simply reiterating that "Amazon pays all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operates within".
The supplier came forward following an investigation into a publisher's claims that certain contracts to supply books were handled by Amazon's buying staff in Slough.
Margaret Hodge, chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, has suggested that Amazon is likely to be recalled to give fresh evidence of its tax arrangements following the investigation.
Hodge had earlier this week been focusing on accusations from MPs that Google minimises the amount of tax paid in Britain, with Google claiming that all sales staff operate out of Dublin rather than being based in the UK.
"It was quite clear from all that documentation that the entire trading process and sales process took place in the UK," she said.
"We will continue to have whistleblowers until we get to the bottom of the truth about all this," she added.
Matt Brittin, Google's European boss, had said that "any customer that spends with [Google], has to buy from Ireland, because that's where the intellectual property sits".
But Hodge told Brittin that she'd seen evidence suggesting that UK staff were in fact closing deals.
The prime minister, David Cameron, is to put forward the issue of taxation of multinational internet businesses at the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland next month.
