[barry-cotter]

> This is a company that pays almost no Federal taxes

Indeed, if you reinvest almost all your profits in the business instead of taking them as earnings you pay very little in taxes. Taxing investment would be a very stupid thing to do since it would discourage what makes society richer in the long run.

[matt_the_bass]

If the issue was that simple ans black&white then bezos would not have his fortune. Amazon has gamed the system.

[derision]

Do you think Bezos did not pay taxes on his earnings? His "fortune" is majority equity in Amazon, not cash sitting in a bank account. Any income he received was taxed

[lonelappde]

He paid a very small rate of long capital gains for everything he didn't funnel through a tax shelter.

[gimmeThaBeet]

I would argue the income tax issue is that simple. The bet Amazon made was that profits didn't define the valuation of the business. The part that wasn't black & white was that folks were split on whether he was a genius or a scam artist running a book retailer with a 400+ p/e ratio.

Gaming the system is what I'd call their sales tax treatment. They didn't collect it everywhere until they got so large that they're warehouses and datacenters were everywhere. And depending on jurisdiction I think its the 3rd party sellers' responsibility where possible.

[barry-cotter]

Please explain how Amazon has gamed the system, or how Bezos being rich is incompatible with Amazon paying little in tax because it reinvests almost all profits.

[veggieburglar]

Amazon was one of the original “disrupters”, taking out regular retail by not charging sales tax for the first decade of its existence. One might argue this gave them an unfair advantage over conventional retail, allowing them to gain a foothold faster than they might have otherwise.

Anecdotally, I absolutely and conscientiously used Amazon as a way to avoid paying sales tax when I was younger and less financially stable.