What you pay versus what they pay

The short version: a profitable company pays its country's corporation tax, up to 25% in the UK. Several of the world's largest companies pay far less on their profits, legally. The difference is not effort or cleverness. It is access to a set of tools that only exist at a scale you will probably never operate at. Below are the verified comparisons, with the two caveats that keep them honest welded on from the start.

Before a single number, the two things we will not fudge. Read them first, because they are the difference between an honest comparison and a misleading one.

Caveat A, the measure. The small-business rate we quote is an all-in effective rate. It includes the personal income tax the owner pays and the social-security wedge on top, National Insurance in the UK, self-employment tax in the US, CPP in Canada, the Medicare Levy in Australia. The multinational rate is corporate income tax only. It does not include the payroll taxes the company also pays, and it does not include the second layer of tax that would fall on the owners when profits are paid out as dividends. So on every comparison below we also show the small firm's income-tax-only sub-rate. The gap survives even when you strip the wedge out, but it is smaller, and we say so.

Caveat B, the scope. The multinational rates are global blended rates, or in the US case a federal corporate rate. They are never matched to the small firm's single country. The online retailer's 13.5% is its worldwide effective rate, not its UK rate. The right sentence is always "a tradesperson in this country pays X%, while this global company reports a global rate of Y%." Never "they pay less tax in your country." We do not have their country-by-country figures, and neither does anyone else outside the tax authorities.

With both of those nailed down, here is the picture.

The anchor case

A self-employed electrician in England turning £75,000 of profit pays an all-in effective tax rate of 26.92% for 2025/26. One of the world's largest online retailers reported a global effective tax rate of 13.5% for 2024 in its own filed accounts. That is the giant paying roughly half the rate of the electrician.

Now apply Caveat A. Strip out the National Insurance and the electrician's income-tax-only rate is 23.24% (£17,432 of income tax on £75,000). Still well above the retailer's 13.5%, about 1.7 times as much, just not double. Both numbers are true. The "double" headline rests on the all-in rate; the "1.7 times" holds even on income tax alone. We show you both because an accountant would, and because the honest version is still damning enough.

And Caveat B: the retailer's 13.5% is a global rate. It is not a claim about what it pays in Britain. It is the blended worldwide figure from the company's own 10-K filing, income tax provision of $9,265 million on pre-tax income of $68,614 million.

Why the gap exists

It is not that the electrician is careless or the giant is clever. It is that the tools that drive a multinational's rate down, routing intellectual property through a low-tax jurisdiction, lending between group companies across borders, allocating profit by transfer pricing, only exist at a scale where you have subsidiaries in multiple countries to route things between. A sole trader has none of that. They have one set of books in one country. The system offers the giant a menu the small business cannot order from. None of it is illegal. It is the rules working exactly as written.

So the question is not who to be cross with among the companies. They are following the law. The question is about the law, and the governments that wrote it that way and keep it that way.

The verified league table

Six countries. In five of them the gap runs the same way, the small business pays more, and those are the five rows below. The sixth, India, runs the other way for most incomes, and we give it its own honest treatment straight after the table rather than bury it. All five gap countries now compare the small business against a global multinational rate, which is the site's core thesis; two of them, Canada and South Africa, also add a cleaner same-country structure comparison, set out in full on their pages. Every small-business rate is computed from the national statutory rates and reconciles to the decimal. Every multinational rate is taken from audited filings or a primary NGO dataset; the domestic structure rates are the published statutory ones. The full working for each is on its own page.

Canada and South Africa also have a cleaner same-country structure comparison, set out in full on their pages. In Canada the same C$100,000 inside a Canadian-controlled private corporation is taxed at 12.2%, so the sole trader pays 2.3 times that rate, the cleanest like-for-like on the site because there is no scope mismatch. In South Africa the same profit inside a small business corporation is taxed at 11.8% at R600,000, so the sole trader pays 1.9 times that rate; against the standard 27% company rate, though, the South African gap reverses below about R866,000 of profit, the one nuance the table cannot hold. Both pages set the structure comparisons out in full.

India: the exception we are not hiding

India is the sixth country, and it is the one place where this site's own thesis fully breaks. We computed it to the same standard as the four rows above, and the honest result is that for most small businesses the Indian system is lighter than the large-company rate, not heavier. So we show it, plainly, because a site that only published the cases that suited it would not deserve to be trusted on the ones that do.

Under the 2025/26 personal regime, the Section 87A rebate makes income up to 12 lakh entirely tax free, and the slabs stay light well beyond that. A large domestic company, by contrast, pays a flat 25.17% under the concessional regime. So the gap depends entirely on how much the sole trader earns:

The crossover sits somewhere between 24 lakh and 1 crore of profit. Two things make India genuinely different, and both are on the small business's side. First, India has no mandatory social-security charge on a self-employed person's own profit, no equivalent of National Insurance, self-employment tax, CPP or the Medicare Levy, so the all-in rate and the income-tax-only rate are the same number and the usual "you padded it with payroll tax" attack cannot even be made. Second, the personal regime is genuinely generous at low and middle incomes. The full working is on the India page.

The single most important thing on this page

Every multiple above can be attacked by a clever opponent in exactly two ways, and we have pre-empted both. They will say "you padded the small-business number with payroll tax." So we show the income-tax-only sub-rate every time. They will say "you compared a global rate to a domestic one." So we label the scope every time. Do both, and the comparison holds. The giants really do pay less, on the same basic measure, and the gap is built into law.

Key facts

• UK electrician, £75,000 profit: 26.9% all-in, 23.2% on income tax alone, versus a global online retailer's 13.5% global rate (2024).
• The all-in small-business rate includes the social-security wedge; the multinational rate is corporate income tax only. Both sub-rates are always shown.
• Multinational rates here are global or US-federal, never matched to the small firm's country.
• The retailer's 13.5% = $9,265m income tax provision ÷ $68,614m pre-tax income, from its 2024 10-K.
• India is the exception: a self-employed professional pays 0.0% at 12 lakh profit and 13.0% at 24 lakh, below the 25.17% large-company rate; the gap only appears near 1 crore (29.5%, about 1.2 times).