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'How About Paying Your Taxes?': Walmart Responds To Amazon's Challenge Over Pay (nbcnews.com)
Amazon and Walmart are in war over worker pay -- and now corporate taxes. After Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos on Thursday issued a challenge to other retailers, not naming which ones specifically, to match Amazon's pay and benefits, Walmart snapped right back. From a report: "Today I challenge our top retail competitors (you know who you are!) to match our employee benefits and our $15 minimum wage. Do it! Better yet, go to $16 and throw the gauntlet back at us. It's a kind of competition that will benefit everyone," Bezos wrote in his annual letter to shareholders. "Hey retail competitors out there (you know who you are) how about paying your taxes?" tweeted Walmart's Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs Dan Bartlett on Thursday morning, sharing an article about Amazon paying $0 in federal taxes on more than $11 billion in profits last year.
Go Walmart! Can't believe they're on higher ground...
Whataboutttt! Whatsboutism!!!!!!!!
Mommy!!!!!!!!!!!
and if you buy from either, you should SHTF because your opinion is irrelevant.
Better to pay wages than pay taxes.
Isn't it funny how corporate America is joking with each other about how they screw the American people. What a great country that they feel free to do this publicly!
When it comes to the benefit of the economy ( local and federal ), isn't worker wage a better way to spend that money?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
You know how companies declare their profit in their investor meetings? That's a public declaration.
Tax based on that. Or whatever they fill in their tax forms - whichever is greater. No having your cake and eating it too - no more Hollywood accounting and still claiming record income.
Ryan Fenton
If a company makes loses 70 million and makes 100 million, they pay taxes on making 30 million dollars.
Similarly, if a company loses 70 million its first year and earns 100 million money the next year, they still pay taxes on making 30 million dollars. It's only fair.
All that Amazon is doing is counting their current earning against the great number of years where they were losing money.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
> "Hey retail competitors out there (you know who you are) how about paying your taxes?" tweeted Walmart's Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs Dan Bartlett on Thursday morning, sharing an article about Amazon paying $0 in federal taxes on more than $11 billion in profits last year.
Wherein Mr. Bartlett shortly followed that tweet with another that contained a picture of large erect penis side by side with a picture of what is to believed to be one of Jeff Bezos' leaked penis pictures with the tweet caption, "Alexa, who has the big swinging dick? Alexa:It's you, Dan"
The fact that they apparently properly owe $0 in taxes despite $11b in profits might be a failing in the taxation system, but it doesn't mean they aren't paying what they are legally required to. They are clearly using loopholes and the like to dodge what would otherwise be a considerable tax bill, but just because they are doing that does not mean it is actually illegal.
Instead of appealing to Amazon to pay their taxes, they should instead be appealing to Washington to get the taxation laws changed so that this sort of thing can't continue happen.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
How about contributing to society by both paying your employees decent wages AND participating in the social compact by paying taxes instead of say, using the most ruthless and unethical practices to increase the $-peen of your ruling class?
Usually the only number investors care about is EBITDA, which is earnings before taxes, adjustments, amortizations, etc... It's, basically, how much the company made minus operating expenses, because all the other stuff can be used to fudge the numbers.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Both need to die in a corporate dumpster fire..they aren't actually fighting bezos doesn't even care about his own business why would he poke at another? Fake just like most of the junk Mart that doesn't sell walls and the store that stole the Amazon.
-arron
Talk is cheap
Democracy is created for the cattle, keep back stabbing each other for 4 years and screwing each other. Will never let a nation grow and screw your people. While the sheep shout at the top of their lungs, one person one vote!
"But Walmart has said its average worker earns $17.55 an hour with wages and benefits."
From the people I know that work at Walmart, I suspect their "average worker" statement has to include management and executives because the people on the floor and running the cashier, and stocking, and cart collectors, etc, definitely do not reach $17.55, much less have that as an "average" pay.
Amazon shareholders pay taxes on their investment gains when they cash out. What is the problem?
Are thief's. If I created a tiny office in Ireland and used it to cut my US tax rate to 0% I'd be arrested for tax evasion and using a shell corporation. Yet they get to do this shit all the time. There was a story a while back about private luxury car owners making a corporation in states with 0% property tax and leasing their own cars back to themselves. They were promptly fined and charged with running a shell corporation for tax evasion. Why do we allow these mega corps to avoid taxes?
What's the mystery?!?!? Amazon has a YUGE loss carryforward from their years of unprofitability -- remember all those years they lost money and stayed afloat from venture capital and then their IPO? Once they eat all that up [and it's close I think] they'll be paying taxes. And paying at a new lower yet competitive rate (worldwide) thanks to DT's tax reform.
Regardless of who has 'the high ground' in this pissing match, it's clear Bezos is being snarky, probably without realizing his own hypocrisy here.
Like how he threaten to move jobs out of Seattle because the local council wanted to add a head tax to fund housing, etc. and then made himself look noble by promising to donate several $million, if not more, to charities to help out with poverty and housing.... which, oh by the way, would net him a nice charitable tax deduction too - double win for him: no new head tax, and gets to claim a charitable deduction!
AC comments get piped to
That tweet rings a little hollow seeing as Walmart are the undisputed kings of "legal" tax evasion. Walmart frequently pitts communities against each other with the promise of jobs to whittle down their local taxes to zero (just like Amazon)...only to close up shop and move to the next town over when their 10 year tax break ends. Where is the Trump tweet congratulating Amazon on not paying any taxes? They must be "very smart, went to the best schools...you know, like very, very smart...good genes...very successful businessman."
If I say it is about whataboutism, it IS about whataboutism. Capiche?
Fuck off.
or is the bloom coming off the rose for Amazon? Remember when they were this cute little outfit that just sold books? Now they are just another huge money grubbing multi-national. Bezos, if it is not completely obvious by now, is a complete and utter prick. Sometimes Amazon makes Microsoft look like choir boys in comparison.
They both suck, and so do the skillless workers who demand more than the market offers for their services, while voting for politicians that will bring in more skillless workers. Better yourself and avoid these globalist megacorps.
"Go Walmart! Can't believe they're on higher ground..."
They are? Amazon is playing by the rules in regards to what taxes they pay just like every single other company I've ever heard of. Otherwise the IRS would be after them big time. The problem with Amazon not paying taxes isn't Amazon, it's our broken tax system.
Meanwhile, for the type of unskilled labor both Walmart and Amazon employ a lot of people for, a $15 minimum wage and decent benefits is extremely generous in the context of what you often see in this sector of our economy. All Walmart does is give their employees a stack of pamphlets explaining how to take advantage of federal and state welfare programs because they know their employees need them.
To put it differently, sure, you can say that Walmart is just playing by the minimum wage rules but they also probably pay as little in taxes as they possibly can as well.
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I keep noticing that articles are leaving out the fact that Walmart only pays about 10% tax on profits.
Nope it is higher than that. Learn to read a financial statement instead of reading some blog or twitter account of someone else who lies for a living.
I wish some of you, once you put down your pitchforks, would realize the government is basically taking 100% by taxing companies and what they pay employees and then turns around and taxes everything employees pay other people for their services. When is enough enough? People are crazy. I am glad Amazon can function and pay less. Heck I wouldn't be sad if they got paid by the government for creating jobs. Why are you all so backwards and hating companies? Is it because it's the in thing to do? They put the frigging food on the table and the table and the roof over the table. Stop hating them so much. Hate the government for writing a few laws yet taking all this damn money and still allowing our roads to crumble and us to kill broke people in countries with no money while spending trillions.
Two dirty pieces of shit throwing mud at each other. Both companies behave abysmally towards workers and there obligations.
Where should this "wage" and "tax" payment get created from?
From profit? How much should a brand have left to reinvest in their company after tax and wages?
Find a nation with lower costs than China and pass the saved money back as a "wage" and "tax" in the USA?
A company has to be a going concern and can't just support any "social compact", more "tax" and more "wages".
That money from selling products and services is needed for investment in a brands new products, ways of selling, workers, locations, ads....
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
they actively lobby for those State laws using bribery in the form of campaign contributions. When you say State Law makes it legal it's a bit like saying what Stalin did was legal since, well, he was doing it in the name of the state.
This isn't just a matter of "If you don't like it, change the law". This is a complete subversion of the mechanism of Democracy. We've got Voter Suppression, consolidation of media into propaganda arms (e.g. Sinclair Media), outright voter fraud (e.g. North Carolina's voter fraud, plus when happened in Georgia) and that's before we talk about how the American Senate was a reaction to populist uprisings from the cities done to give rural areas where the landed genrtry lived disproportionate power (remember, if you didn't own land back then you couldn't vote, so no, the Senate wasn't created to keep cities from overwhelming poor rural voters) and the god damned Electoral College.
What I'm saying is that when Democracy is as weak compared to moneyed powers as it is in the United States then you lose the right to appeal to "But what they did was legal".
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Simply put a top line revenue tax in the jurisdiction where the product is sold or delivered to.
No more shifting earnings from the USA to Ireland or other only for tax reduction purposes operations.
No more escaping federal taxes by accounting tricks to make profits disappear.
Worked for a public listed company that needed $1,000,000 more revenue in a quarter to go from a bad earnings report to a good one. If they did not have the onerous cost associated with mangling the expenses to minimize taxes, they'd made the good earnings number.
Company would do better just to plan expenses based on expected revenue and not plan expenses just for how it affects taxes. A top line revenue tax, no exemptions no deductions no amortization, would do just that. Simplify the regulatory load on a company simplify the finances drop the allure of jurisdiction shopping would do wonders for improving our GDP.
Yes, yes a VAT tax elsewhere is similar. Suggest here is no special treatment for income source, using the income, or types of products.
No special rates for different types of businesses only a graduated rate based on total sales amount per week. Tax paid monthly to the federal government. When revenue is recognized, merchandise returns are already handled today and can be handled as a prior period adjustment in the current period.
Remember when Walmart were the bad guys!?!
Now Amazon are the bad guys!!
Wow, what a switcheroo.
Still, I'm boycotting both
Is now the Walmart corporation... paying its own taxes? like full taxes like all people that do not own businesses?
Its the oldest jealously is calling out people and businesses who do not pay taxes. Might make you upset, but if its taking advantage of the tax code then its perfectly legal. Pretty sure most people and businesses don't pay any more taxes then they have to. Or at least if their smart they don't.
It's kinda sick that merely because one avoids taxpaying and the other one avoids paying their people (which requires social security handouts, which inflates the SS budget without adding to the unemployment numbers, which is why it APPEARS that it's getting more expensive: more claimants, more payments, but fewer people counted as "per head" for the statistics bandied about), and because one whines about the other, suddenly it's all "well they#re CLEARLY on a higher ground than the other!!!!".
No, they're both fucking over taxpayers. One by not paying taxes and the other by getting the government to pay their workers.
Calling out hypocrisy looks like whataboutism but is done for different reasons. Those who are hypocrites, however, always will call their detractors out with "Whatboutism!" because using it is ALSO a whataboutism fallacious argument. When someone comes back with a "What about....?" you need to admit that they are right and argue that they are no equal, though they are equivalent, admitting to whatever hypocrisy you have, but defending it with "You're complaining about jaywalking while I'm complaining about manslaughter", OR you argue that there isn't an equivalence either, arguing with something like "You're complaining I'm stupid while people are dying in gunfire".
If Walmart cannot afford to pay full wages then they should close and the market will be supplied by someone who CAN afford to pay full wages.
If you think Amazon needs to pay more taxes, then you need to fix the tax code. The Orangeutan in the office claimed on the campaign trail he would fix it but instead just gave the wealthy people (which may or may not include him) a massive tax cut instead and left the loopholes, apart from the one homeowners can get, which are mostly by number the middle class.
And there are loopholes allowing you to remove revenue from taxation and Walmart use them all.
The highest employment figures are small and propriator-run businesses, and they close down when a Walmart opens up and sells for less than the costs the smaller places can manage. And local producers will be put into national bidding wars to sell to Walmart, since they have enough cash to run their own deliveries of local ones are "too expensive", meaning that it impoverishes if not closes down farming too, leaving only corporation run farming communes to play.
So Amazon is using it's mastery of the tax code to give raises? What's the problem?
I don't understand the fuss.
This country is all about capitalism, making money.
Every cent paid to taxes or employees is a cent out of the capitalist's pocket.
If you don't like it, move to some socialist country.
it's bizarre to hear stories about how many jobs these companies have created. they run small businesses out of businesss, eliminating good jobs. but it's also a government problem: favoring larger companies with legal teams, like with IP law, lobbyists, tax incentives for moving in (amazon)... i mean... owning your own business used to be common.