Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Will Pay $0 in Federal Taxes on $11.2 Billion Profits (fortune.com)
Those wondering how many zeros Amazon, which is valued at nearly $800 billion, has to pay in federal taxes might be surprised to learn that its check to the IRS will read exactly $0.00. From a report: According to a report published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic (ITEP) policy Wednesday, the e-tail/retail/tech/entertainment/everything giant won't have to pay a cent in federal taxes for the second year in a row. This tax-free break comes even though Amazon almost doubled its U.S. profits from $5.6 billion to $11.2 billion between 2017 and 2018. To top it off, Amazon actually reported a $129 million 2018 federal income tax rebate -- making its tax rate -1%.
For more information on why this is on Congress. ITEP notes that its non-existent federal tax payment is a result of the Trump Administrationâ(TM)s corporation-friendly tax cuts. The think tank writes that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act not only decreased corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%, but it also didnâ(TM)t close âoea slew of tax loopholes that allow profitable companies to routinely avoid paying federal and state income taxes on almost half of their profits.â According to The Week, Amazon ended up paying an 11.4% federal income tax rate between 2011 and 2016, which is a contrast to the -1% rate this year. http://fortune.com/2019/02/14/...
love the taste, hate the texture
No, the chart at the bottom of TFA shows they've made profits for several years and except last year and this year, used to pay (very small) taxes on those profits. they've just been getting better at playing the system as their profits are rising.
"I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018
Perhaps, but if they were "paying" taxes to the government, they'd just raise the price on their products and services by an appropriate amount until their profit margins were once again where they wanted them to be. Not all companies may be able to do that, but Amazon certainly can.
Taxes are expense items. Companies generally keep income >= expense or eventually they go under. Lots of that going around for what it's worth.
That's completely wrong. Taxes have no bearing on Amazon's prices or most other companies. It's all about market share and what the market will bear. Tax planning comes after.
And there is no way that taxes can make a company go under because the tax rate is less than 100%.
Well, it's not average, but maybe close enough? 44% of the people pay $0.00 in federal income taxes:
https://www.marketwatch.com/st...
Yet...he did absolutely NOTHING to make them pay tax. If anything, the tax plan made sure they paid even less in taxes.
You must be a special kind of stupid if you believe anything that liar says. Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall; instead he's had to rob the treasure for it. TWO YEARS of a Republican controlled house and senate that would have given him whatever he wanted....but he had to wait until there was a conflict. He had to wait until it looked like he had a reason to start the transformation to dictator.
Sure...he complained about Amazon. Then he did nothing.
Seriously...you must be a real special kind of stupid if you actually believe anything that asshole says.
To be clear, the Trump administration and the former Congress closed a lot of loopholes and exemptions just not for corporations or high-income earners. For middle-income earners, congrats, Trump has fulfilled his promise of "closing loopholes" namely yours and yours only.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You are a liar. I've done my taxes, and paid more this year. Lots of people have been complaining about this.
The average return has dropped 8% this year... maybe you got a cut but perhaps you are also taking advantage of things that are not available to most people. I haven't done mine yet but a lot of people that I know personally that have ended up with a worse return than last year despite similar earnings and deductions.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I saw a $3000 reduction this year and I'm solidly a middle income earner. This idea that because your REFUND is less that means you've paid more is ridiculous. All a big refund means is that you have given more money to the government for a year than you needed to. That's YOU mismanaging your own taxes.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
IMO, I think that salt deduction is unfair and crap. There is no reason why I should pay more federal taxes than another person just because they decided to live in a high tax sate and I wanted to live in a low tax state.
You get to live in your "low tax" states because those high tax states are donor states for your leeching. High tax states get back far less from the feds than the put in, while the "low tax" states leech far more money from the fed than they put in, that way they can have those "low tax" rates.
.95, of what they put in back. Virtually every "low tax" state would have their state budgets decimated by that... which might teach them a little bit about responsibility. It might also teach all the people in those "low tax" states to have a little bit of gratitude towards all of the taxpayers in the rest of the states who've been subsidizing them for decades.
If you don't think so, then lets all push for a constitutional amendment that says no state can receive more than 1.05, nor less than
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The pundits conveniently leave out the fact that the withholding tables were changed and people had less taken out of each check, therefore lowering refunds.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
First, there are different accounting standards. Wall Street uses GAAP ("generally accepted accounting principles," I believe) and sometimes non-GAAP (ignoring some non-cash costs like stock options). The IRS uses its own rules.
In the GAAP and non-GAAP rules, profits are for the given year (or quarter) only. So a loss in a previous period isn't subtracted from profits before reporting, just as profits from a previous period aren't added to the current report. Likewise with IRS rules, you can generally carry forward losses. So if they had a loss in the previous year, until they've realized that much profit, they won't pay taxes.
Now what is probably really going on is that much of the profits are realized by overseas subsidiaries, so they pay taxes in places like Ireland, but until those profits are moved back to the US, they don't pay US taxes on them.
According to Politifact California gets $.99 for every dollar of taxes taken in. That other bastion of political fairness New York state gets $1.23 per dollar of taxes taken in. So no they are not donor states.
States that receive less than they take in are Utah, Wisconsin, Nevada, Texas, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana and Minnesota. All of those, with the exception of Illinois, are so-called Red States.
The fact is that about 40 of the 50 states receive as much or more than they contribute. If you take all of the contributions from all of the states you will find that the federal government pays out more than it receives. That's one of the reasons there is a deficit.
So let's stop promoting the fantasy that California, New York or any of the bastions of progressivism are donor states. They are not. (Illinois go ahead and claim it if you want. You've earned it.)
Wisconsin, Nevada, and Minnesota are not red states, though they may not be blue either, more or less purple.
I dispute your finding
http://www.governing.com/week-...
and
https://rockinst.org/wp-conten...
with the data to support it from
https://www.govinfo.gov/conten...
NY and NJ pay a lot of taxes and don't get it all back.
and Politifact California, can't find your reference, cite your source
if you see me, smile and say hello.