It was recently reported that Amazon paid no federal taxes in 2017. Currently Amazon is the 12th largest company in America, so the fact that they don’t pay taxes is a problem just on it’s face. But it points to a larger issue because of what Amazon has done to so many other businesses, which presumably did pay taxes.
It’s not exactly news to say that Amazon has built it’s business by cannibalizing other businesses and absorbing their customers. But the businesses that Amazon has put out of business almost certainly paid some degree of taxes, whether be federally as well as at the state and local levels. But the problem with those companies is that they were not large enough to conduct all of the accounting book-cooking that allows Amazon to skirt paying even a penny back to the government.
So we end up with a company that is slowly putting other companies out of business, and not paying any taxes. But then, Amazon shows up in different cities and makes the towns beg for Amazon to build a new warehouse there. But after putting so many businesses out of business, Amazon replaces them with giant warehouses where workers earn barely above $10/hour, and there is almost no room for advancement. So not only does Amazon replace countless businesses, it then replaces them with giant warehouses that pay barely above fast food rates. And after all of this gutting, it doesn’t even pay a penny in taxes.
But then, in an almost dystopian twist, employees at Amazon are forced to ship one of the main Amazon products, a microphone that secretly listens in on any homeowner that is silly enough to purchase one. So you have people who have been displaced by Amazon’s business practices packing boxes for the company’s Orwellian spy device.
But Amazon isn’t done yet. It was recently accounced that they would be accpeting food stamps for some of their food items. But becaues of their low pay, a third of their employees are on food stamps. So after paying now taxes, they will be getting additional taxpayer money in the form of food stamps when employees use them to purchase via Amazon.
When you look at it this way, it doesn’t really paint a great picture of Amazon as a corporate leader in America. Instead, it looks like a cannabilistic entity that is slowly enriching itself at the expense of everyone else and not even paying a penny in taxes
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