CNBC: Amazon had to pay federal income taxes for the first time since 2016 — here’s how much

However, paying something like payroll tax is hardly something to boast about, according to Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, or ITEP, a nonpartisan and nonprofit tax policy think tank. In a blog post responding to Amazon’s release of its 2019 tax bill, Gardner notes that “economists agree that payroll taxes are ultimately paid by employees in the form of reduced compensation.” Gardner also argues that, despite Amazon reporting its first positive federal income tax bill since 2016, the company was still on the hook for a small fraction of the corporate tax rate in 2019. “The clear fact remains that the federal income tax system still can hardly lay a glove on one of the biggest and most profitable corporations in the world,” Gardner writes in his blog post. Read more