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Re:Amazon warehouse workers are walking out and Whole Foods ... by matt_the_bass on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @09:24AM (#22737258)
If the issue was that simple ans black&white then bezos would not have his fortune. Amazon has gamed the system.
Re:Amazon warehouse workers are walking out and Whole Foods ... by derision on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @10:02AM (#22737599)
Do you think Bezos did not pay taxes on his earnings? His "fortune" is majority equity in Amazon, not cash sitting in a bank account. Any income he received was taxed
Re:Amazon warehouse workers are walking out and Whole Foods ... by lonelappde on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @10:32AM (#22737862)
He paid a very small rate of long capital gains for everything he didn't funnel through a tax shelter.
Re:Amazon warehouse workers are walking out and Whole Foods ... by gimmeThaBeet on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @09:53AM (#22737523)
I would argue the income tax issue is that simple. The bet Amazon made was that profits didn't define the valuation of the business. The part that wasn't black & white was that folks were split on whether he was a genius or a scam artist running a book retailer with a 400+ p/e ratio.

Gaming the system is what I'd call their sales tax treatment. They didn't collect it everywhere until they got so large that they're warehouses and datacenters were everywhere. And depending on jurisdiction I think its the 3rd party sellers' responsibility where possible.

Re:Amazon warehouse workers are walking out and Whole Foods ... by barry-cotter on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @09:35AM (#22737373)
Please explain how Amazon has gamed the system, or how Bezos being rich is incompatible with Amazon paying little in tax because it reinvests almost all profits.
Re:Amazon warehouse workers are walking out and Whole Foods ... by veggieburglar on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @10:22AM (#22737767)
Amazon was one of the original “disrupters”, taking out regular retail by not charging sales tax for the first decade of its existence. One might argue this gave them an unfair advantage over conventional retail, allowing them to gain a foothold faster than they might have otherwise.

Anecdotally, I absolutely and conscientiously used Amazon as a way to avoid paying sales tax when I was younger and less financially stable.