\n<\/p>\n
The Chinese online marketplace Temu\u2019s EU operations more than doubled pre-tax profits last year to just below $120m (\u00a390m) despite employing just eight people, accounts show.<\/p>\n
They rose 171% in the 12 months to December 2024 compared with the $44.1m the year before, as shoppers snapped up its low-cost goods, which are widely promoted on social media.<\/p>\n
However, the company paid just $18m in corporation tax, almost $3m of which was a mandatory top-up tax brought in at the end of 2023 after the EU signed up to a global minimum tax rate for large companies.<\/p>\n
The accounts filed for the group\u2019s Ireland-based EU parent group, Whaleco Technology, also showed revenues rose to $1.7bn, compared with $758m the previous year, before new controls on the super-budget retailer.<\/p>\n
Separate documents show Temu now has more than 115 million customers across the EU \u2013 equivalent to more than a quarter of the population.<\/p>\n
The figures emerged after separate accounts showed almost doubling profits and revenues at the online marketplace\u2019s UK operations.<\/p>\n
The rise in sales comes before moves by the EU to close a loophole that allows packages worth less than \u20ac150 (\u00a3130) to avoid customs duty and some border checks.<\/p>\n
Last year, 4.6bn low-value parcels entered the EU, equivalent to 12m a day, three times more than in 2022. More than 91% of parcels valued at less than \u20ac150 came from China, where Temu and its fellow low-cost seller Shein make and dispatch most of their goods.<\/p>\n
However, controls began to be tightened in July this year, and customs duty is expected to be applied from 2028.<\/p>\n
The US this summer abolished its \u201cde minimis\u201d exemption, which allowed goods worth less than $800 to skip import duty, to limit the rise of Temu and Shein, while the UK chancellor has said she is reviewing a similar loophole.<\/p>\n
Paul Monaghan, the chief executive of the Fair Tax Foundation, estimates that Temu\u2019s Irish entity facilitated consumer sales of $10bn in the EU \u2013 as its revenue figure only accounts for the company\u2019s commission and fees from independent sellers on its marketplace.<\/p>\n
If Temu\u2019s estimated $2bn in sales via its sellers are included in the UK, that would make the marketplace bigger than the UK retailer Next and about the same size as Primark.<\/p>\n
\u201cSerious questions need to be asked as to why Temu has such a negligible economic and tax footprint in the UK and across Europe despite its enormous sales,\u201d Monaghan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we have here is a chain of companies in a series of tax havens, that have been structured so as to leave little or no tax benefit in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UK and other European governments need to move much more quickly to not only protect their tax base, but allow existing retailers to compete on a level playing field with these Chinese e-commerce giants that have overseas tax avoidance hard-wired into their structures.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cStanding strong on the global minimum tax and digital services tax, reviewing customs duty exemptions and bolstering requirements for multinationals to publish a country-by-country breakdown of the taxes they pay would be a great place for politicians to start.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Temu said its operations in Ireland were \u201creal operating companies employing real people\u201d and the employee numbers had since changed, although they declined to say how. They also said employee numbers in any part of the business did not reflect the full scale of its operational presence.<\/p>\n \u201cTemu categorically rejects any suggestion that our structure or operations are designed to avoid taxes or minimise our economic footprint in Europe. Despite being a young and fast-growing company still in the investment phase, we have already paid billions of euros in taxes across European jurisdictions, and that figure will continue to rise as our operations mature.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tax figure cited refers only to the tax paid by a single legal entity and does not include customs duties, VAT, and other taxes.<\/p>\n \u201cTemu entered the European market just two years ago and has invested heavily in building its platform to connect sellers and consumers more efficiently, passing those efficiencies back to consumers in the form of lower prices on quality goods. At the same time, we have been creating new growth opportunities for local sellers across Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cOur focus is on the long term: building a sustainable, compliant, and trusted platform that helps consumers access quality products at affordable prices while enabling local sellers across Europe to grow their businesses and reach new markets.\u201d<\/p>\n This article was amended on 14 October 2025 to update Temu\u2019s statement on staff numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Chinese online marketplace Temu\u2019s EU operations more than doubled pre-tax profits last year to just below $120m (\u00a390m) despite employing just eight people, accounts show. They rose 171% in the 12 months to December 2024 compared with the $44.1m the year before, as shoppers snapped up its low-cost goods, which are widely promoted on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[16740,2474,4214,1545,3016,2226,2161,5035],"class_list":{"0":"post-28147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-120m","9":"tag-chinas","10":"tag-doubles","11":"tag-industry","12":"tag-profits","13":"tag-retail","14":"tag-staff","15":"tag-temu"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}