{"id":202184,"date":"2020-02-09T08:26:53","date_gmt":"2020-02-09T08:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202184"},"modified":"2020-02-13T07:32:12","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T07:32:12","slug":"amazon-only-paid-1-2-taxes-in-2019-despite-13-billion-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202184","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Only Paid 1.2% Taxes In 2019 Despite $13 Billion Profit"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Arthur Villasanta \u2013 International Business Times Jan 6, 2020<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Amazon paid only $162 million in federal income tax in 2019<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>It paid $0 in federal taxes in 2018<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>It received a $137 million refund from the federal government in 2017<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Jeff-Bezos-Amazon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-196630\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Jeff-Bezos-Amazon-768x432.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"304\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Jeff-Bezos-Amazon-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Jeff-Bezos-Amazon-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Jeff-Bezos-Amazon.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Amazon, whose CEO Jeff Bezos is the world&#8217;s richest person, is the world&#8217;s largest Internet company by revenue and the world&#8217;s largest internet marketplace. It has\u00a0also avoided paying its fair share of taxes to the federal government by\u00a0ruthlessly exploiting loopholes in the tax code. Amazon had a market cap of $1.02 trillion as of Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In 2018, Amazon reported income of more than $11 billion, but <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/ibtimes.com\/amazon-will-pay-zero-tax-2018-trumps-tax-cuts-act-blame-2765011\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>paid $0 in federal taxe<\/strong><\/span>s<\/a>. Thanks to tax credits and deductions, Amazon actually received a federal tax refund of $129 million. In 2017, Amazon received a $137 million refund from the federal government.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The year 2019 looks to be different &#8212; on paper. Amazon patted itself on the back for announcing it allegedly paid \u201cbillions\u201d in taxes. In reality, it only paid $162 million in federal income tax. This amounts to an effective tax rate of 1.2 percent on over $13 billion in profits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Amazon&#8217;s claim to have paid &#8220;billions&#8221; in taxes in 2019 is an outright falsehood, say financial analysts. In an <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.aboutamazon.com\/job-creation-and-investment\/amazons-economic-impact-in-the-u-s\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>announcement<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, Amazon claims to have paid more than $1 billion in \u201cfederal income tax expense,\u201d \u201cmore than $2.4 billion in other federal taxes, including payroll taxes and customs duties,\u201d and \u201cmore than $1.6 billion in state and local taxes, including payroll taxes, property taxes, state income taxes, and gross receipts taxes.\u201d It also said it collected and sent close to \u201c$9 billion in sales and use taxes to states and localities throughout the U.S.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/amazon-paid-a-12-tax-rate-on-13285000000-in-profit-for-2019-210847927.html\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Yahoo Finance<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, however,\u00a0pointed that with the exception of the federal income tax, the listed amounts aren\u2019t actually taxes Amazon paid to the federal government. There\u2019s \u201cno meaningful\u201d connection between Amazon and many of the taxes it listed in its announcement, said Matthew Gardner, senior fellow for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) that analyzes corporations and their tax avoidance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Gardner said Amazon wrongfully listed as taxes it paid, those taxes it collects on behalf of the U.S. government like payroll taxes and sales taxes from third-party vendors. He said \u201ceconomists agree that payroll taxes are ultimately paid by employees in the form of reduced compensation. Like the sales tax, the payroll tax is one that the company really just collects and sends to the government, as required by law.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">\u201cCongratulating an employer for collecting the payroll tax is like congratulating yourself for breathing,\u201d said Gardner, notes Yahoo.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibtimes.com\/amazon-only-paid-12-taxes-2019-despite-13-billion-profit-2916806\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite huge profits Amazon pays minimal federal income tax, and in 2017 it actually received a $136 million refund from the government<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Economics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202184"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202186,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202184\/revisions\/202186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}