Seattle Times: Amazon touts 2019 federal taxes, but the picture is complicated

So was Amazon’s 2019 U.S. federal income tax bill $1 billion or $162 million? The discrepancy stems from different financial statements companies prepare for tax authorities and investors, which recognize revenues and expenses at different times.

Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and a longtime watcher of corporate tax policy and avoidance, argued that the sensible way to measure taxation is what an individual or business pays in a given year, “not what they promised to pay at some future date.”

In either case, Amazon’s federal taxes, like those of many major corporations, are well below the 21% statutory corporate tax rate, lowered by the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cuts from 35%. At the statutory rate, Amazon would have owed $2.9 billion last year. Read more

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