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Comment by devin | Hacker News Reader

What you say is openly contradictory. They receive certain exemptions due to their size, but their tax bill has nothing to do with their size. ???

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No, I said quite clearly there are no exemptions due to their size. There's a difference between an exemption for companies with N+ employees and tax credits/exemptions you can capitalize on because you are a company that makes billions of dollars and can afford to take on different behaviors to take advantage of them. That's not the same thing at all.

I see what you are saying, but I think that if things exist in the tax code that can only be taken advantage of by large companies, it is -effectively- the same thing as a big company exemption.

He’s not talking about effectively what happens. He’s saying textually there is no “large company tax break” and if you tell legislators to repeal “large company tax breaks” they’d all give you confused looks. Textual precision is important if you want to start fixing the problem. What exactly are the test breaks that work for big companies and not small ones? Why do they exist? What was the original intent? What are the side effects?

Nobody said that there is a tax exemption for companies over N+ employees. The OP said that amazon doesn't have to pay taxes.

Can we please stop arguing like influencing is only true if it is done in the most direct way (similar to the quid pro quo debate). Obviously if big company lobbyists try to get tax law in their favour they are not pushing for "please write a law which exempts companies over N employees from taxes." They push for laws that sound innocent but only they will be able to take advantage of, just like it is at the moment. The outcome is still the same they pay less or zero taxes.

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