Trump Attacks Amazon, Saying It Does Not Pay Enough Taxes | Hacker News Reader

Trump Attacks Amazon, Saying It Does Not Pay Enough Taxes

nytimes.com

29 pointszonotope26 comments

In his own words that makes them smart, right?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-taxes-smart/

Nobody has ever accused the man of consistency.

Bad people are often smart.

Yes, which makes the Gov dumb for letting them get away with it. That's why he became president, to fix dumb things (in his opinion) in government.

So he's combatting the wealthy paying too little in taxes by giving major tax breaks to the wealthy?

As long as they play within the rules, fair game. If Trump doesn't like the rules, don't single out a company, change the game.

Seriously, what are they supposed to do? Calculate the tax owed and then add a random amount?

What rules though?

If they’re not turning a profit there’s no income tax owed.

Just because he lacks the ability to understand slightly complex concepts doesn’t make them “unfair”.

I’m most impressed by his accusation of Amazon using the USPS as their “delivery boy”.

Seriously, this guy could have had a great career in standup. It’s a great loss for the country.

Made even funnier by the fact that parcels are one of the few places USPS actually makes money and has growing revenue.

I've been hearing this argument (Amazon is abusing the USPS) from a ton of my far-right family / acquaintances and I'm sure these claims will just amplify it.

With that said, if USPS really isn't making money on the parcels from Amazon they can and should raise their rates. And if doing that makes them no longer competitive with UPS and Fedex than so be it. That's how markets work. In the private sector it is usually illegal to sell for less than your cost to undercut competitors.

An interesting analysis: https://www.vox.com/2017/12/29/16830128/amazon-trump-twitter...

Another interesting article that says the post office loses money on Amazon because of the capital expenditure required to ship packages. But it strikes me that eventually that cost will be paid for:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/for-every-amazon-package-...

After literally just cutting their fucking tax rate.

Those two aren't mutually exclusive - if your aim would be to target that company specifically, changing the federal corporate tax rate would be a poor way of achieving it.

What is more pertinent is how much tax they pay on overseas income and how much they repatriate.

Wrong country and maybe wrong company.

Apple pays so few taxes in Germany – approximated 2,8% taxes on their earnings – that the public is totally pissed (but it is for incomprehensible reasons legal). World wide Apple made ~62 billion dollar last year, but paid only ~25 million tax in Germany (0,2% of the total). At the same time they sell a lot of products here, this is so wrong. I guess Amazon is not better, but the real sinner is Apple.

Most resources say they make ~25-30 billion a year in revenue in Europe, and the idea that Germany makes up the majority of said revenue is a bit silly.

Did they pay taxes on the revenue they made in Germany? If so, I'm not sure what your problem is with them? Are you saying that they, a company that owes nothing to Germany, given it wasn't helped by the country at all really in terms of benefits, talent or monetarily, should have to subsidize a country based on the fact that they're successful in other markets?

If every country had that kind of a notion towards taxing, Apple would have less than 1M in profit after paying everyone taxes based on global earnings.

> Did they pay taxes on the products they sold in Germany?

VAT is a tax paid by the consumer, not vendor or manufacturer.

Corporate tax exists in Germany,which is what I was inferring to - although I did use unfortunate wording. I'll edit that a bit.

> Did they pay taxes on the products they sold in Germany?

Almost not.

> If so, I'm not sure what your problem is with them?

Apple is probably the company paying fewest taxes of all companies in Germany. Normal mortals pay much much more taxes.

There is a difference between paying almost no taxes, and paying the same tax as everyone else. In the end small businesses can't move their money to Cayman islands or wherever and factually circumvent the law. We have a lot of old infrastructure which needs some money, like schools: http://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/schule/lehrerverband-fo... -> such buildings are not uncommon in certain areas.

One of the biggest newspapers and one of the most prestigious in Germany (Zeit) estimated that Europe lost alone over iPhone sales in the last five years 8 billion euro taxes.

My understanding was that Amazon, until recently, intentionally hasn’t turned any profit. You don’t have to pay taxes if you don’t make any money...

Which is one reason why the high-revenue/low-profit growth strategy is so good. It feels similar to me how in chess you sacrifice pieces to capture control of the center of the board.

You could argue that part of Amazon's success has been due to its helping customers evade state sales taxes. However, Trump has often talked about loosening libel laws because he thinks he is unfairly attacked by the press, and he dislikes the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos. I don't trust Trump's objectivity on this issue, to put it mildly.

This is all about the Washington Post. If it starts publishing a pro-Trump narrative he will back off.

The fastest way to make a person publicly change their opinion about something is to have Trump state that opinion.

That just makes Amazon “smart”.

Checkout financials

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN/financials?p=AMZN

Please look at profitability. Who says Amazon doesn't make a profit?

Fair game.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com