America Needs To See Amazon's Tax Returns (theverge.com) 307
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon's taxes have become a campaign issue. In last week's Democratic debates, two different candidates (Cory Booker and Andrew Yang) called out Amazon for paying $0 in federal income taxes last year, even after listing $4 billion in profits. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and President Trump himself have brought up the same point at various points on the campaign trail, always directed at Amazon. In a CNN interview after the second debate, Bernie Sanders singled the company out as an example of a broken tax code, saying simply, "I'm going to tax them."
"We pay every penny we owe in corporate taxes including $2.6 billion over the past three years," Amazon said when reached for comment. "We've invested $270 billion in the US since 2010 and created more than 275,000 jobs." But there's an awkward truth behind the political back-and-forth: we don't know what Amazon's tax bill really is. Like every other company in America, Amazon's tax returns are private, legally considered to be a trade secret. We don't know which tax breaks they're taking, or how they've structured their finances to avoid various taxes in favor of others. If Amazon says its tax bill was lower because of investments, we simply have to take the company at its word.
"We pay every penny we owe in corporate taxes including $2.6 billion over the past three years," Amazon said when reached for comment. "We've invested $270 billion in the US since 2010 and created more than 275,000 jobs." But there's an awkward truth behind the political back-and-forth: we don't know what Amazon's tax bill really is. Like every other company in America, Amazon's tax returns are private, legally considered to be a trade secret. We don't know which tax breaks they're taking, or how they've structured their finances to avoid various taxes in favor of others. If Amazon says its tax bill was lower because of investments, we simply have to take the company at its word.
Taxes are for the middle class (Score:5, Insightful)
The poor have no money, and the middle class have no lobbyists.
It's like taking candy from a baby.
Re: Taxes are for the middle class (Score:2)
Taxes are for those who have made profits in excess of costs. Since we encourage long term investments, we allow you to "carry over" losses because of R&D investment to subsequent years when those investments will provide returns.... Amazon is a campaign soundbite. Nothing more. They are taxes at high rates, but their prior year losses have offset their tax bill. Once they pay that off, they will be paying taxes again.
Re: Taxes are for the middle class (Score:3)
It's not accounting trickery. If you build a nuclear power station, at the cost of $10b in one year, your profit is -$10B. If you are an operating utility with profit of $10b outside of the new station's construction cost, your profit becomes $0. That's because you spent the cash on expansion or research and development. That encourages investment rather than shareholder returns (which are taxed). If the same power station takes 5 years to build, you can "carry over" the losses to the next year. There's no
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Erm. Your $10bn isn't a loss, because you add the power station to the balance sheet as a capital item. Your cash flow just took a serious hit but you haven't made a loss.
As you depreciate it over the course of its life you recognise the depreciation as an expense, and offset that against any revenues to determine profit/loss.
Open the books... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Open the books... (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of calling for Amazon to "open the books," politicians should talk about how they will close those loopholes. Right now it sounds like they won't close them.
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It's kind of pointless here, though. We know how much tax they payed, we know how much they earned, we know what loopholes they used. We aren't going to learn much from "opening the books" here because they are already open enough....
Didn't even read the summary, eh?
But there's an awkward truth behind the political back-and-forth: we don't know what Amazon's tax bill really is. Like every other company in America, Amazon's tax returns are private, legally considered to be a trade secret. We don't know which tax breaks they're taking, or how they've structured their finances to avoid various taxes in favor of others.
Re:Open the books... (Score:5, Informative)
But there's an awkward truth behind the political back-and-forth: we don't know what Amazon's tax bill really is
Yeah, the summary is wrong. It's not a 401k, but the information is available [aboutamazon.com]. If you want a more human-readable version of the specific tax breaks they use, this one is good [forbes.com].
Again, what information are you looking for that isn't already available? I'm happy to join the call for information to be free, but right now people are a bunch of lemmings asking for information that is already available. We already know what tax loopholes they are using, it's not secret.
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Instead of calling for Amazon to "open the books," politicians should talk about how they will close those loopholes.
If that $1 trillion dollar tax cut that was given to the rich last year is any indication, the plan is probably to close the loopholes by removing their tax burden in its entirety.
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Reminds me of the idiotic woman (whose name I know but wont share) on the BBC interviewing a support of one of the candidates to be the next UK PM. The candidate promised to raise thresholds for higher rate tax earners (taking people likes nurses out of the higher tax bracket).
BBC presenter: "Why is he promising a windfall for wealthy people?"
Apparently taking less of someone's money is now giving them a windfall.
BBC presenter: "Why aren't people with no or low incomes going to benefit?"
Apparently the Gover
Political Investment? (Score:2)
How much have they invested in politicians who bend the tax code for their benefit? That's something that should be openly discussed as well.
How about businesses be denied certain deductions as they grow larger, until the larger corporations have no deductions at all? For instance, a 1 shop operation that only does business locally gets to deduct it's furnishings but Microsoft & Amazon don't. This way small local businesses get the benefit of a helping hand but a successful multi-national corporation
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Isn't it ironic? (Score:4, Funny)
Trump wanting to see tax returns of someone who makes a lot of money.
Wonder who it reminds me of.
Trump's tax returms - too! (Score:3, Informative)
I think the reason that Trump doesn't want his tax returns released is because he is committing Tax Fraud.
Sure, he submits them to the IRS, but they are understaffed (thanks Republicans) and underfunded (thanks Republicans). Meaning, people with resources can rip off the IRS. Like Trump.
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"I think the reason that Trump doesn't want his tax returns released is because he is committing Tax Fraud."
Do you honestly believe Trump is the sort of person that does his own taxes ?
I don't think Trump is the sort of person that does ANYTHING by himself.
He has people who do it for him.
It's not Amazon's fault (Score:2)
Amazon's taxes have become a campaign issue. In last week's Democratic debates, two different candidates (Cory Booker and Andrew Yang) called out Amazon for paying $0 in federal income taxes last year, even after listing $4 billion in profits.
Amazon paid what they were obligated by law to pay.
Don't hate the player. Hate the game and rules.
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Don't hate the player. Hate the game and rules.
Bullshit. Plenty of people choose to not play by those rules because they're not sociapaths. You probably haven't ever heard of them because they're not super rich.
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Don't hate the player. Hate the game and rules.
These are politicians we're talking about. It's easier for them to hate on the player because they made the rules.
Easy, external observation (Score:5, Informative)
How do you know they paid what they were obligated to pay without seeing the tax returns?
Because the people who are actually qualified to evaluate them, unlike armchair chucklehead accountants like yourself, DO see and evaluate them.
Simply put, we know Amazon is paying what they are obligated to pay, because Amazon execs are not in jail, and it's not paying huge IRS fines.
I am quite sure that if Amazon tax returns were public YOU would have no idea what they were actually supposed to be paying or what was right.
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Yes you can - if the legal process is on trial, then the justification is 100% "thats the rules you want us to follow, so we follow them".
I'm curious, if not the legal process, which set of rules would you like Amazon to follow? Some airy fairy "well, this is what we *feel* you should be paying, based on arbitrary and often changing personal considerations on the matter" pseudo rules? The "spirit" of the rules? How do you quantify those?
If you think the rules suck or are inadequate, change them. Attacki
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You say that but I remember this thing called the Credit Crunch where lots of audited companies turned out to be financially untenable and the ratings agencies - people who were supposed to be qualified to evaluate these things - turned out to simply be lying about their ratings in order to get commission. I also vaguely remember when Arthur Andersen was one of the "big five" with KPMG, PWC, EY, and Deliotte until one day it turned out that they had been neck-deep in the Enron affair and were caught shreddi
Damn Straight (Score:2)
you wouldn't know either
Of course not.
The difference between you and me is, I am a man who knows his limitations.
Carrying billions of $ of loss (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon has operated at a loss for many years, and only recently became profitable. They surely have carryover losses to offset several years of profits. They also invest heavily in R&D, with things like Alexa, AWS, etc. and they get credits and deductions for that. It's not cheating, even if they end up having to pay $0 in US federal income taxes for a few profitable years.
Nor are they exempt from paying all kinds of other taxes, especially local property taxes on facilities and UI, worker's comp, and FICA taxes on their employees.
You can look at their 10k and see how much they paid in taxes overall, but not broken down.
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They got really, really, really big for constantly operating at a loss.
I think the term "loss" should be used more carefully.
Stock Options (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why Amazon can pay zero income tax is that they permit the exercise of stock options. This is where executives and other employees can buy stock at a rate far below market value, which results in the corporation taking the difference as a business expense, and lowering its tax liability. However, that same value counts as ordinary income (not capital gains) to the person exercising the option and is taxable for them. Note that corporate tax rates are lower than individual rates by about 20 percentage points, so the IRS actually ends up collecting far more money than if Amazon paid the tax directly, it's just paid by the execs who exercise the options instead of the corporation.
Not just that (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine if you could "average" your earnings from when you had a shit job in your teens to now? Or if you just happened to land a good paying job after decades of low pay? That is how the Amazon do.
Also there's offshore tax havens, and we'd be fools to think they're not being used by Amazon. The "Dutch Sandwich" and the like.
And all this is before we talk about the much, much lower interest rates large corporations and billionaires get to borrow money at. Most billionaires in America are broke, because they're borrowing money at or below effective interest rates and going into "debt" as a way to avoid paying taxes. Again, something you and I can't do.
Re:Stock Options (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason why Amazon can pay zero income tax is that they permit the exercise of stock options. This is where executives and other employees can buy stock at a rate far below market value
Sorry, no, that's waaaaay too simplistic. Stock options as a benefit are when an employee can purchase up to a certain amount of company stock for a preset price (strike price) within a certain time frame. The strike price may frequently be very slightly under market price when first offered but the idea, especially for executive level employees, is that by the end of the time frame the value of the company has improved so that the strike price is well below market price by the end of the time frame. If the executives do a crappy job then, no, the strike price is not automatically well below market price.
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Okay but what Amazon actually offers isn't stock options. It's ESPP, and RSUs.
ESPP works exactly as the GP described. However I'm very doubtful that takes most of the bite out of the tax burden, since it's something like 10% of 15% of an employee's salary max, if they opt in. I might have those numbers wrong, I don't work at Amazon, but it's fairly typical.
RSUs are stock given as compensation. There's no strike price, no fair market value, it's not optional -- you just get stock and it is treated as inc
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For example, let's say taxes for large companies (by revenue) are set to 35% of revenue regardless of profit.
How incredibly stupid.
So, for example, when I buy a hot dog at a local gas station for $1.50, about 50 cents of that price goes right to the government? Every item sold needs to be marked up at least 35% over cost just to cover the taxes?
Explain to me how grocery prices will not necessarily sky rocket? Grocery stores sell goods on average 3-5% over cost, making their profit on volume. every food item in the grocery store would suddenly cost 35% more to cover your taxes on revenue. Sure the windfall to gover
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No they don't (Score:5, Insightful)
You have access to the tax code already. The only reason to see Amazon's returns is to unfairly single them out by closing loopholes they are using. If you don't want tax avoidance, get rid of all loopholes, not just the fashionable ones.
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Or to determine which loopholes cost taxpayers the most and prioritize those to take a closer look at. This doesn't have to be about Amazon.
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This doesn't have to be about Amazon.
When you're demanding to see Amazon's tax returns because you think Amazon is cheating on their taxes and should be paying more, yes, it is about Amazon.
Any law which singles out Amazon for special treatment would be called a Bill of Attainder and is unconstitutional.
If you want to see if Amazon is paying correctly, the IRS is the agency to figure that out. You can bet they have access to the tax return data you think you deserve to see. And the House has the power to request the IRS look into it via the
Re: No they don't (Score:2)
But I'm sure the IRS is already tracking all this in aggregate. There's not a compelling enough reason to ignore the privacy implications.
Shows how dumb congress people are (Score:2)
...because THEY'RE THE ONES THAT WRITE THE TAX LAWS.
If they hold up Amazon as "look at this guy exploiting the system" the simple reply is:
- who made the system as it is, and
- how much did you pay more than you needed to, last year?
Trump just hates Bezos because it's personal, like everything with Trump.
And if Bernie Sanders promises "I'm going to tax them"...then Mr Sanders needs a refresher course on how the three branches of government work.
My God the candidates (and current officials) for president in 2
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Who made the game?
Keep 'em Private (Score:3)
I think company tax returns should stay private, otherwise many medium size companies could easily become targets for extortion, or politicians can get an unrealistic idea in their head how much they can confiscate from private companies to pay for government pork.
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Not just Amazon (Score:2)
People have been picking companies that line up with their ideologies to make a point, when in reality it's the whole underlying system at fault. Amazon doesn't spring up in a vacuum, nor are the only issues with them.
Take your pick; Walmart keeping people under FTE to avoid paying bennies & taking advantage of incentives to come into town, only to abandon the area and leave a service desert behind after driving out competition.. gas/oil companies getting huge subsidies even when making record profits
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My guess is we'll see these tax returns when we see the POTUS's - never.
He might release his tax returns this campaign cycle, but only for the last four years, to show that he made zero dollars as president of the United States (his corporation, on the other hand, of course made quite a lot).
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You have no right to inspect Trump's (or Amazon's) tax returns. By law, tax returns are private, and if any government agency outside the IRS wants to see them, it requires either a court order or a "very good legislative reason".
It is a wash (Score:3)
Profits, business expenses, employee compensation, taxes and such usually cancel each other out. Amazon or any other large corporation might be paying $0 in income taxes, due to one or more of:
- They might be investing the money (future corporate tax)
- They might be giving employees and management higher compensation (personal income tax)
- They might be paying dividends (capital gains tax)
- They might have purchased real estate (property taxes)
- They might be writing off a loss (past "negative" tax)
- They might be paying taxes in another jurisdiction (corporate tax, but somewhere else)
or a similar action.
A profit is "eventually" taxed, however where, when and who pays the tax differs.
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- They might be paying dividends (capital gains tax)
A pedantic nit. If the corporation is paying dividends, that's ordinary income to the shareholders. It will also tend to boost the stock price and thus generate future capital gains taxes.
Difference between Legal and Fair (Score:3)
There are many things that are legal.
But just because they're legal, doesn't mean that they're fair.
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Me: Alexa, show me Amazon's tax returns (Score:2)
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Why the obsession with seeing Trump's tax returns?
Because you think he committed crimes and documented them in his tax returns?
You can't believe he's that stupid.
Because he's the leader of our nation?
well then maybe we should examine the returns of the first few people in the line of succession - President, Vice President, and Speaker of the House - and since we want to make sure they aren't hiding anything in their spouse's return, their spouses return should also be shared.
Because he cheat on his taxes an
Corporate taxes are not paid by the company! (Score:2)
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We're talking about corporations that benefit from being in USA but pay zero in taxes. It's not about "paying more", it's about paying at all.
And you might want to check on the few that own huge chunks of big corporations such as Amazon.... amazing how much the common man *doesn't* own of Amazon. Bezos owned over 15% last I checked.
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And you might want to check on the few that own huge chunks of big corporations such as Amazon.... amazing how much the common man *doesn't* own of Amazon. Bezos owned over 15% last I checked.
Want to bet that CalPers is invested in Amazon stock, so by extension, California state employees and retirees are shareholders. For example, "CalPERS also holds 1,565,467 shares of Amazon" [bizjournals.com]
Why stop there (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not just make ALL tax returns public information? I am sure half of the public, you know, the half that do not actually pay any income taxes, would be all over that.
No company (or President) should be required to make tax returns public. Enforcement is the role of the IRS, not the public at large.
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In Finland, Sweden, and Norway, all tax returns are public information. In Norway it's been that way since the 1800s.
If the IRS is so great at enforcement, how was Mueller able to obtain multiple tax fr
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In Norway, only your income and the amount of taxes paid is public [theguardian.com], not the details of your personal filing.
Robert Mueller chose to prosecute tax fraud indictments the IRS opted not to - they had the information, but choose not to prosecute. Mueller dragged out these charges in an effort to squeeze Manafort and get him to flip on Trump.
Re: Why stop there (Score:2)
Well so the fuck what? Those countries do a lot of things that are different from how America does things. What do they matter, in the slightest?
We are going at this wrong (Score:2)
It is high time to re-do our taxes, only simplier and not able to be screwed:
1) drop all tax breaks, deductions, exemptions, etc. These are RIP-OFFs to everybody else. Just wrong. This is where CONgress gets to screw over all of us in a hidden fashion. So, lets drop them all and not allow anymore of them.
2) change Corporate tax to either 20% or 0%. If the company is based in America/dividends paid here, and 40% of labor/labor costs is done here,
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1) drop all tax breaks, deductions, exemptions, etc. These are RIP-OFFs to everybody else. Just wrong. This is where CONgress gets to screw over all of us in a hidden fashion. So, lets drop them all and not allow anymore of them.
Republicans tried to do this, but it didn't work, because no one wants to get rid of the tax break for mortgages.
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because no one wants to get rid of the tax break for mortgages.
People complain because it "isn't fair" that Amazon pays as little as it does, but then want to get rid of all deductions, including the mortgage deduction.
How fair is it to promise a breadwinner that he can deduct the mortgage interest on the home loan he takes out to provide a home for his family, and then take away that deduction because "we hates Amazon" and have to do something?
The mortgage deduction is a part of the long-term planning when someone buys a home. How much home can they afford? The dif
Re: Politicals is about pushing your view (Score:2)
How fair is it to promise a breadwinner that he can deduct the mortgage interest on the home loan he takes out to provide a home for his family, and then take away that deduction because "we hates Amazon" and have to do something?
It's not really about 'fair'
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Then as to Corporate taxes, these have become a joke. We are actually taxing companies that create jobs here, while allowing those that offshore to pay less all the way to 0. That is just insane. By taxing the dividends of those that ar
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The elimination of the home mortgage deduction would drive DOWN the value of homes, impacting current home owners, and wreaking havoc with things like local property taxes.
The cap on SALT deductions is a good idea - it forces California residents to shoulder the costs of their local policies and decisions, rather than deducting their local taxes from their federal income taxes.
You want to get rid of the mortgage deduction, go ahead - but you're going to have to deal with a lot of angry property owners who w
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The GOP never really did.
That is exactly what I said. You ignored the second half of my sentence.
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Fourty-seven percent of tax filers pay no net federal income taxes. [theatlantic.com] When Trump cut taxes on those folks that actually pay taxes, the lowest 47% of tax filers felt cheated - they wanted their tax refunds to grow.
You want the poor to start paying "their fair share"? Awesome, but they aren't going to like it...
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Wrong, private citizens tax records need to be private. Their income sources and finances are none of your business. The IRS has the job of dealing with any problems.
As for big corporations, would be interesting to see tax records but Amazon and many others legally avoids paying taxes.
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All taxes should be public record,
Rescind the fourth amendment. Good idea. There is no problem when the government demands that citizens tell them exactly how much money they earned, how much alimony they paid, what medical costs they incurred, how many blind or old people they support, what they paid in local and state tax and local property taxes, and a thousand other things that really are nobody else's business. Turn all that data over to anyone who wants to see it. Public record. Last year your neighbor won big at the casino, this yea
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what people do with their money affects the economy which affects everybody which means everyone should be accountable to everybody
Seems to me you are also of a mindset that people should share their Credit Card statements and bank account records, since "what people do with their money affects the economy which affects everybody which means everyone should be accountable to everybody".
How about it - ready to share your credit card statements? I have a few questions about some interesting items on your credit card, and I'd love to hear why you withdrew $300 at 11:30 PM on a business trip in Chicago? Whats the matter, don't you want to
All perfectly legal (Score:2)
The folks complaining that Amazon "paid no taxes" are simply demonstrating they have no idea how the US Tax Code works. Amazon filed their return, I assume their return was audited by the IRS ($4BN in profit, no taxes do? Let me take a little look-see how we got here...")
People act like the tax code has a secret section that says something like "If you earn more than $1BN you owe no taxes". I seem to recall GE paying almost no corporate income taxes [factcheck.org] for years, mainly because they had a building full of tax
Personally (Score:2)
Since the Supreme Court decision that decided " Corporations are people too ", it's my opinion they should share in the pain that is the higher tax brackets we the people have to endure year after year vs the much lower corporate tax brackets.
I mean, if you want all the rewards and benefits of being a person, you should also share in our pain.
If you want to bribe . . . .er donate mega-money to your chosen candidates to influence elections, then your tax brackets should reflect that of the individual, not a
"America" = power hungry pols (Score:2)
No matter how much or how little Amazon pays in taxes, those seeking further control over civil society would use the figures as a weapon of invasion, and use it as a precedent to attack privacy on both for-profit and non-profit organizations that can be useful tools, or are seen as political enemies.
I invested in a new car (Score:2)
Can I have tax breaks too? Oh, and we bought a house recently; that cost a fortune. I guess I can "carry the loss" for the rest of my life.
We don't have to take Amazon's word on it. (Score:2)
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You tax a company you are taxing people twice. Actually three times because you tax the corp then tax the money they give to people and then tax food/housing/etc that people buy!
You say that like it's a bad thing - Bernie Sanders
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Wish I had mod points. Who do you think foots the bill for business taxes? The consumers.
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Welcome to America. Where taxation without representation has become the new in thing lovely people who flamebaited me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You tax businesses you tax people just in a non transparent method. Meanwhile slowing the growth and employment of said people which would actually increase tax profits because more people would have more jobs to pay taxes. USA was built on the foundation of anti taxes. Everything just gets more expensive and government keeps growing which needs more tax
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One, you do not understand what the phrase "Taxation without representation" means. Every American is represented through their elected officials who write the tax codes, thus taxation WITH representation.
Two, the lawyers aren't winning. The corporations are, some of us would like to change that so we're all winning.
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Every American is represented through their elected officials who write the tax codes, thus taxation WITH representation.
Unless you happen to live in the District of Columbia...
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100% of tax money comes from businesses because they employ people who pay taxes.
Congratulations. You understood how the economy was supposed to run. In the 1950s.
Back then, growth was indeed tied to the number of employees.
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Don't forget the offshore corporations and shell companies.
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That's how movie stars/entertainers do it. Do you think an actor making $30M for a picture pays $7M in income taxes?
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Check IR35 in the UK; the tax authorities are doing their best here to assure that people pay appropriate taxes.
(They're fucking it up but that's a separate issue)
Wrong (Score:2)
Wrong. LLC's are passthrough entities in the US. Whatever profit an LLC makes is taxed as regular income for the owners of that LLC.
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Re: Why don't all Democrats publish their tax retu (Score:2)
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And this applies to _everybody_! The only possible exception I can think of is the royal family. But all politicians have their tax papers read by journalists, in case there is something i
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As for me personally: if you get to know enough about Swedish names, you will easily be able to guess what my real name is, and then you can ask the tax office how much money I make.
Is that you, Björn Borg . . . ?
I always learn plenty about Swedish names when I visit IKEA.
Although, I turned up my nose . . . literally . . . at the "Sofa Surströmming".
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I'm not sure what you're getting at. The only ones they're wanting to see tax returns from are US presidential candidates, where it has generally been a non-issue until very recently (Sanders and Trump both haven't disclosed their tax returns).
Not sure what the appeal is generally, but sometimes people are highly suspicious (have to see Bill Clinton's returns because my neighbor Cletus says he stole it all; need to see Trump's because for a self-proclaimed billionaire he could afford a better tailor and ha
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No, it isn't. As a publicly traded company, they publish a 10-K, which you're free to read.
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The Q1-2019 SEC form 10-Q says that in 12 months ending March 31 2019 $840,000,000 cash was paid in taxes and $1,224,000,000 for 2018. I would call that non-zero.
The exact lines for those are “Cash paid for income taxes, net of refunds.” It is a measure of cash flow and does not represent final annual income tax. It does not mean that Amazon paid that amount in the end. For example, I pay an amount of income tax every paycheck; however, that doesn’t mean when I file my annual taxes that I don’t owe more or that I don’t get a refund. The point is that last year Amazon got essentially all of the taxes they paid back and thus US government
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The point is that last year Amazon got essentially all of the taxes they paid back and thus US government got net of $0.
Just like nearly half of all income tax filers every year.
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Bucket of crabs [wikipedia.org] mentality.
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Well, we know they won't be going to Brooklyn, AOC saw to that - glad she put her economics degree to good use!
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Remember when it was fashionable to try and tax private airplanes out of existence? It took Warren Buffet to talk the Democrats down off that ledge [youtube.com].