Ok, so let's talk about this for a second.
First, I apologize for not being more clear in the original question. I did try to clarify in following tweets. I was asking about United States Federal Income Taxes. And it was a bit of a trick question.
(Thread)
First, I apologize for not being more clear in the original question. I did try to clarify in following tweets. I was asking about United States Federal Income Taxes. And it was a bit of a trick question.
(Thread)
Before getting into it, I just want to make it clear that I'm not demonizing Amazon for how many taxes they pay. They do pay all the taxes they're legally required to pay. The problem does not lie in Amazon (or all the other big companies this applies to), but in the US tax code.
Oh, and yes, I acknowledge that these companies are doing stuff with the money they're not giving to the government, but the fact remains that Amazon (and similar companies) are closing other tax-paying businesses which results in overall less tax revenue for the US.
Ok, so this was kind of a trick question. Technically, the correct answer to this was "None of the above" and the reason for that is Amazon actually paid nothing in Federal Income Taxes and actually received a rebate of $129 million dollars in 2018.
You can read (and watch) more about this here: cnbc.com/2019/04/03/why…
The TL;DR of it is that it's mostly a result of the current administration's recent tax cuts, previous year's losses that were carried over, R&D tax credits, and stock-based employee compensation.
The TL;DR of it is that it's mostly a result of the current administration's recent tax cuts, previous year's losses that were carried over, R&D tax credits, and stock-based employee compensation.
We could go deep on each of these, and I'm not going to do that right now. I just want to make the point that it's unfortunate that Amazon is sucking up 20 billion in sales from other companies (resulting in 30% of stores closing across the US) all while paying 0 in income taxes.
As a consumer, I love Amazon. I often receive multiple packages per week from them. But I'm concerned that they (and many other companies) are taking tax-paying businesses out of the picture without paying federal income taxes themselves and making up for that difference.
The solution that @AndrewYang proposes is to apply what every other developed country in the word has which is a Value Added Tax: yang2020.com/policies/value…
(Please read that page before responding with all the regular FUD about this).
(Please read that page before responding with all the regular FUD about this).
I like a VAT because it's actually paying the government for what the government is facilitating. Businesses become the customer of the government by facilitating value transfer and the better job the government does of this, the more money it makes. This is value alignment.
A VAT also ensures that companies can't skip around taxes like they're doing today, which will enable Yang's flagship proposal of a #FederalDividend of $1k per month for every adult. This proposal has TONS of positive implications for US citizens: yang2020.com/policies/the-f…
The divide between the "winners" and the "losers" in this economy will only grow with time. We need to get ahead of this with policies that are proven to work (like the VAT and UBI) and not those that are proven to not work (like a wealth tax).
And this is why I'm #YangGang and why I think it's critical that we elect @AndrewYang to be president in 2020. If you don't think he has a chance then you're going to be really surprised in the next few weeks as Q4 donation numbers come in and primaries get started.
There are LOTs more reasons that I like @AndrewYang, and I'm not going to list them here. But let me just say that he's the first person running for president that I actually *want* to be president. For the first time, I'm not voting to keep someone else out of office.
If you're interested in learning more, feel free to respond to this thread and hopefully the #YangGang will politely answer genuine questions.
Or, even better, do your own research. A good place to start is: whoisandrewyang.com 🧢
Or, even better, do your own research. A good place to start is: whoisandrewyang.com 🧢
And I'll add one last thing here. If this convinced you that maybe it wouldn't be so bad for Andrew Yang to be a part of the conversation, then please donate something to his campaign. I'll match your donation (or double if it's your first one):
Peace!
Peace!
