Margaret Hodge, chair of the parliament public accounts committee, is one of several MPs urging an Amazon boycott. We look at alternative places to shop

Margaret Hodge is one of several high-profile MPs who are today urging shoppers to boycott Amazon this Christmas because of the internet giant's "aggressive" tax avoidance.

Hodge, the Barking Labour MP who chairs parliament's public accounts committee, says she hasn't used Amazon for a year, "and I have found plenty of alternatives for buying goods online". She adds: "You have to take a stand. If there are enough of us who do it, we will damage their business."

She is one of at least eight MPs – all Labour so far – backing a campaign by Ethical Consumer, which describes itself as the UK's leading ethical and environmental magazine. It is calling on shoppers to turn their backs on Amazon and give their custom to high street and online retailers that appear to be paying their fair share of tax.

The other MPs are Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire), Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton), Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch), Austin Mitchell (Grimsby), Dennis Skinner (Bolsover), John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) and Grahame Morris (Easington).

Hodge said her boycott of Amazon was because it was "one of the global companies aggressively avoiding paying tax on the profits they earn from the business they undertake in the UK".

Its competitive prices and convenience can make it very hard to resist. So where can shoppers spend their money and be reasonably confident the company concerned isn't funnelling the cash offshore and paying virtually no corporation tax?

Ethical Consumer researches the social and environmental records of different retailers, and has rated some alternatives across different sectors.

• Big high street/online retail names: Four were singled out for praise: Debenhams, John Lewis, Next and Lush.

• Bookshops: Researchers rated 22. The two top-scoring names were online charity bookstore Green Metropolis, and Oxfam. Close behind was Better World Books, which works in partnership with literacy charities, followed by eBooks.com, Books etc, our very own Guardian Bookshop and The Book People. Foyles scores pretty well, as does WH Smith, Waterstones and Blackwell's.

• CDs: Some 22 companies were ranked. Oxfam is top, followed by two websites specialising in used and hard-to-find CDs and vinyl: Discogs and MusicStack. Six share third place: three classical music specialists, Crotchet, MDT and Presto Classical. Plus Propermusic.com, Recordstore.co.uk and Smart Choice Music. Most of the biggest names are in the bottom half. HMV is the highest-scoring of these. For more information go to tinyurl.com/n9qshfu.

We asked Amazon to respond. A spokesman told us: "Amazon pays all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operates within. Amazon EU serves tens of millions of customers and sellers throughout Europe from multiple consumer websites in a number of languages, despatching products to all 28 countries in the EU. We have a single European headquarters in Luxembourg, with hundreds of employees to manage this complex operation."