Morning Tax: The Latest in Wealth Taxes

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy noted recently that Netflix logged record profits in the U.S. in 2018, some $845 million, and ended up not owing any federal taxes. (Not only that: The video streamer got a $22 million rebate.) Over at The Guardian, Gene Marks uses an educated guess to predict that Netflix relied heavily on credits for taxes paid to foreign governments to zero out what it owed the U.S. Treasury. One interesting question there: Why would Netflix pay $131 million in taxes to other governments in 2018, and none here even after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cut the corporate rate down to 21 percent? “I don’t know, and that would make an interesting story,” Marks writes. Read more