Accounting is a little more complex than your math would suggest. I'm sure Amazon followed the law here. Blame the laws, not the company. You wouldn't voluntarily pay more taxes than you're required to either.
Why not both? If I move to a country that legally allows me to do something horrible, people will rightfully call me a bad person regardless of the legality of the action.
Sure, but not paying any taxes isn't obviously a horrible thing.
The government says, through its tax laws, that it wants amazon to not pay taxes (probably because they had a loss). The logic behind this is that because amazon provides jobs, the government doesn't want the company firing people and/or not hiring people because of an unrelated occurrence.
If you want what amazon is doing to be horrible you have to show that what they're doing is actually horrible.
Perhaps talk about how they're making use of the resources of the united states while not paying back for the maintenance of those resources. Like, delivery trucks damage roads and without delivery trucks amazon can't exist, and therefore they are externalizing their costs to the tax payer by not paying taxes.
Additionally, you'll need to explain why the jobs argument is not sufficient to excuse their lack of taxes.
And you might also need to talk about how amazon R&D also isn't a good excuse. For example, if amazon perfects drone delivery of goods then they won't damage the goods. So we should let amazon not pay taxes so that they can perfect drone delivery because it will be a good to the entire nation. You need an argument for why this sort of idea is wrong.
> The government says, through its tax laws, that it wants amazon to not pay taxes
This kind of statement that assumes big companies passively take their tax bill from the government is either exceptionally naïve or wilfully disingenuous. We're talking about a company whose executives sat down with representatives the Luxembourg government to negotiate a special sweetheart deal (subsequently ruled to be unlawful state aid) and then moved its European HQ to Luxembourg
So what are you suggesting; Amazon should voluntarily send a bonus check to the fed? That's just ridiculous. I'm also not convinced that following the current tax law is "something horrible".
What's most troubling is that these are the same companies who say things like "We need more educated workers" as if tax dollars don't help to do that. They also use it was a rationalization / justification for paying less and less taxes (i.e., "We're not getting any benefit from what we're already playing.) To the bottom we go...
The companies lobbied for the laws. The companies aggressively pursue every break they can get.
Amazon is in the middle of taking a fortune in tax breaks from NY. They killed a tax on large employers in Seattle. They fought against cross state sales tax until they were so big it only hurt their competitors. Bezos owns the Washington Post, and media overall is controlled mostly be a handful of oligarchs.
If you start a business. Should you be able to deduct eligible expenses? I don’t know any sane person that would suggest not. If you make $100 and spent $100, then you have no profit. But you’re suggesting that this is a tax “dodge.” So that means that you’d tax the $100 of revenue even though there wasn’t any actual gain. If you applied that to all businesses, you’d destroy economic activity.
How much extra did you pay on your taxes this year above the required amount? I would bet you paid exactly what was owed. Under your logic, you are dodging taxes.
never implied they did anything illegal. im pretty sure their numbers this year is 100% legal as well. Nor im implying they did anything wrong, they're doing whats best for them which you and I would have done. I just refute the notion its "fair" that the tax structure is quite harsh on private individuals (id go as far as claiming is dependant on private individuals) but creates the situation for corps that using clever accounting to pay a fraction of the supposed sum is considered graciously courteous.
Why not both? If I move to a country that legally allows me to do something horrible, people will rightfully call me a bad person regardless of the legality of the action.