Gizmodo: Amazon’s Tax Claims Are Riddled with BS

According to Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, these numbers are, at best, misleading.

“You look at the different types of taxes that they’re collecting here—and they don’t say ‘pay’, they say ‘collect’—and there’s a reason for that. The biggest number on this list is the sales and use tax,” Gardner told Gizmodo in a phone interview today, “it’s not a tax that Amazon meaningfully pays itself. The company collects the tax on behalf of purchasers, and it’s universally understood that it is the consumer who pays this tax.” For those who remember Amazon’s earlier days, sales tax was also something the company vehemently fought against having to pay, finally losing that significant competitive advantage in 2017. Read more

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