They're following the code, it's written in law. If they didn't take advantage of it, their stockholders would be pissed.

thatsthepoint.jpg

The problem is that our tax laws allow immense, profitable corporations to pay nothing in federal taxes despite using massive amount of federally funded infrastructure in their course of doing business. How much burden do all those delivery trucks put on our federally funded roadways, bridges, and environment? And that's just the start of it...

Which specific sections of the tax code do you think should be repealed or amended?

The entirety of the tax code that allows them to pay under 20% of their profit in taxes.

Can you cite any specific sections? Just one example!

The deductibility of employee stock compensation would be the obvious answer here.

Actually I am being serious, not trolling.

To make my point more clearly -- I think accounting is too complicated to reduce to simple populist sound-bytes like "companies with X income should pay Y tax". I also think it's plausible that there are good reasons for some or all of the deductions Amazon is taking advantage of. That might not turn out to be the case, but it's impossible to know in advance without knowing what those deductions are.

Corporate income tax accounts for a whopping 9% of federal taxes for 2017. It's projected at 7% for 2019. Pathetic. Historically, this tax as a percentage of GDP is pretty low: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/corporate-income-....

Those "good reasons" appear to be "because our representatives like to keep their paychecks coming and fashion the tax code in a way favorable to corporations". You can complain about "populist sound-bytes" all you'd like, but it's absurd for a company to use so many public resources and pay nothing.

I think the very fact that it is complicated is unfair.

I want one of the following

1. An education system so absurdly stellar that our 18 year old high school graduates have the legal and fiscal expertise to navigate the tax code as expertly as a HSBC financial advisor, or

2. A tax code so simple it can be read and understood, verbatim, by every US citizen.

> 2. A tax code so simple it can be read and understood, verbatim, by every US citizen.

Not possible considering one-fifth of adults don't understand percentages.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/07/a-fifth-of...

Yeah, the article refers to adults in the UK, but considering how terrible the education system is in the USA, do you think it'd be any better?

Asking for an example isn't trolling, and claiming otherwise is uncivil.

If I knew the answer to that, I would also be paying 0 in tax.

I'm allowed to be upset at the fact that it's possible, without knowing how they do it.

So, given that you admit to not understanding the details of Amazon's accounting practices, how can you be so sure that what they're doing is wrong or bad?

We're in the thread I started, where I lauded them for taking advantage of tax loopholes to not pay any tax. So, I'd be interested in why you believe I think what Amazon is doing is wrong.

What I don't like is that companies are allowed to do this at all - I support more government sponsored measures such as universal healthcare and education, far greater investment in sciences, etc, and I believe corporations paying higher tax rates is a fantastic way to pay for these things.

Well approximately 45% of Americans pay no federal income tax.

The 45% that are disabled, retired, unemployed, or who make barely enough to live? Who cares that they pay nothing. How many citizens have $10B in annual income and pay nothing in taxes? The effective tax rate for the top 1% of citizens is about 30%... what do you think it is for the top 1% of corporations?