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Comment by ghobs91 | Hacker News Reader

A big part of it is that they reinvest a large portion of revenue back into the company in the form of growth. So while they're not paying income tax because of lack of profit, they're building fulfillment centers and hiring like crazy. This means income tax for all those new employees and property tax on all the centers they're building.

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A big part of it is people who don't understand accounting and taxation are chiming in on stuff that is way beyond their understanding.

Everyone's free to remain a layman, but just remember nobody cares what the layman thinks. Taxes are complicated.

What an awful opinion! Instead of having a transparent tax code that the public understand and can judge, we have an obfuscated tax system that only a few people can understand, so everyone should just ignore the fact that Jeff Bozo-head is the richest man in the world and yet Amazon pays almost nothing in taxes

> Instead of having a transparent tax code that the public understand and can judge

Patches welcome. You'll just need to be an expert in taxes first. Or do you expect the public to also contribute to discussions on the Linux Kernel Mailing List?

I'd argue that a lot of folks care about the opinions of non-experts.

Sure, insofar as those opinions matter to get them elected. But they're maximizing for votes, not for genuinely trying to find a solution to the problem

profit, by definition, is money left over after expenses and capital (re-)investment, so it's already been accounted for. profit goes in the shareholder's pockets (if they so choose rather than shield it from taxes by leaving it in the corporation).

Except that every municipality is trying so hard to recruit them that they're getting more in tax breaks and other incentives than they and their employees would be paying in taxes in the first place.

We're talking about federal taxes exclusively

Are we? Since when does the federal government collect property tax?

Is there any way of proving this? My skeptical mind says they're stockpiling a large portion of that money in banks/stocks and getting massive returns with interest/dividends.

If they stockpiled revenue in banks, it would be counted as profit and taxed, which is clearly not the case.

Read their 10-K

Well then what are the companies they're buying stocks in doing with the money?

I help construct the fulfilment centers. Believe me, this is for real.

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