New York Observer: Amazon Paid $0 in Federal Taxes Despite Making $11 Billion in 2018—And No One Knows Why
media mentionYou may feel like a champion financial planner after filing last year’s income taxes, even though you did pay a hefty fee to an accountant or some tax software. But don’t even think about beating Amazon, which paid a whopping $0 in federal taxes last year—despite earning $11.2 billion in U.S. profits—according to a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) last week.
“It’s hard to know exactly what they’re doing,” Steve Wamhoff, ITEP’s director of federal tax policy, told Yahoo Finance. “In their public documents, they don’t lay out their tax strategy. So it’s unclear exactly which breaks [they are taking advantage of]. They vaguely say tax credits… The thing we would need to know is would they have had positive corporate income tax liability were it not for TCJA? Maybe. It’s hard to tell.”