[darawk]

They shouldn't. They have deferred tax assets from years of losing money. This is perfectly reasonable. If you want to be mad about something, be mad about Google and Apple domiciling their IP in Ireland and siphoning all their profits there.

[benologist]

The article refers to $11 billion in net profit. They haven't known what to do with all their money ever since convincing the tech industry AWS was cheap, this month AWS will net around $700 million in profit.

It is simply their desire now to not pay taxes, not pay their workers well, to clone 3rd party vendor's products under their own brands, to copy the occasional SaaS hosted on AWS etc.

The article actually says they received $129 million instead of paying taxes on $11 billion profit!

https://www.zdnet.com/article/in-2018-aws-delivered-most-of-...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-amazon-com-antitrust/e...

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/amazon_copies_partn...

[darawk]

>It is simply their desire now to not pay taxes, not pay their workers well, to clone 3rd party vendor's products under their own brands, to copy the occasional SaaS hosted on AWS etc.

It's "simply their desire" not to pay taxes? You think the IRS accepts that? Do you think they just write in "sry guys, we'd rather not pay"?

No, they aren't paying taxes on this money because it's offsetting prior losses. This is a perfectly reasonable way to structure the tax code, and it only seems like malfeasance to you because you haven't bothered to understand it.

[benologist]

I think they invest massively in accounting and legal and corrupt arrangements to avoid taxes, so it must simply be their desire. Their tax paperwork didn't accidentally end up $129m up instead of $3b down.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/03/eu-to-fine-amazon-millions-i...

It's a while since they didn't make a profit, in large part because of AWS growing to currently north of a million an hour net profit on margins their retail side can't replicate.

https://www.recode.net/2017/4/27/15451726/amazon-q1-2017-ear...

Suggests Q3 2015 was the last time they lost money... and lost can mean anything with enough accounting.

[jakelazaroff]

Years of losing money on what? If I buy an expensive house, I can't write that off even if my net income is negative for years when you include that purchase. Why should they be able to write off e.g. an expensive office?

[isoskeles]

Is that how it works? Do they get to write off debts to assets of which they are still in possession, as if these are losses? Or are they writing off expenses for things they are not in possession of in any sense (e.g. employee salaries, goods sold)?

I am not an accountant, so I can't claim to fully understand what qualifies as a gain or loss, but my assumption has always been that the accounting rules are supposed to be sane and reflect the difference between these concepts (a real loss vs. going into debt).

[darawk]

They are probably depreciating the offices on a standard depreciation schedule. They are also writing off things like interest on their debt, etc..

Depreciating capital assets though is an extremely important part of the tax code. If you don't allow that businesses won't really be able to operate effectively.

[darawk]

Because they're a business. That's how business taxes work. You write off the expenses of operating your business, because low margin businesses wouldn't make sense otherwise.