Amazon Will Pay a Whopping $0 in Federal Taxes on $11.2B Profits

fortune.com

9 pointsLisaDziuba4 comments

I can't help but feel like these sorts of stories need to be reoriented as "Federal Government Fails to Tax Amazon on $11.2B Profits". If the law continues to enable it, companies will avoid taxation to the greatest possible extent in the name of duty to shareholders.

How about "Congress does not believe Amazon should pay taxes on $11.2B in profits"?

People are mad at the Amazon, IRS or accountants. They need to be calling their Congresspeople.

How much of the $11.2B profit comes from US operations? I'd expect Amazon Spain to pay taxes in Spain (or use an equivalent Spanish/European tax-optimized method to not pay).

Amazon typically only runs "logistics" in each country and that turns out to barely make any money. The actual sales are made by their Luxembourg subsidiary ("Amazon Europe Core S.à r.l. (Société à responsabilité limitée, 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855 Luxemburgo)"), so they don't pay taxes in Spain, Italy, Germany etc.

LU is an obvious choice if you want to pay as little taxes as possible, so I doubt they pay a lot there. Still a good deal for LU - they get some taxes at the expense of their larger neighbors. A parasitic business model, but a successful one nonetheless.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com