Vox: You should be suspicious of benevolent big business

Amazon, like a lot of big companies, is good at keeping its tax bill low. In some recent years, it’s paid zero federal income tax; it’s managed to pay very little in other years, even as its profits soared. According to the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), Amazon’s effective federal tax rate has been just 4.7 percent over the past 10 years. By comparison, the average individual tax rate for all US taxpayers in 2018 was 13.3 percent, more than double that of Amazon.

“These are things that are allowed to take place because Congress loves them in a bipartisan way. This Congress, the last Congress, every Congress, and every president for the last 20 years has given their blessing to these tax breaks,” said Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at ITEP. Read more