Nothing in your link shows Amazon paying zero in federal income taxes, except the statement by the author.
I trust SEC filings more than this article without supporting evidence.
From the SEC filing, on page 22, they talk about US income taxes, and state over the three years covered that they paid out billions with exact amounts in the SEC filing.
Care to provide a well sourced link with the zero federal income taxes claim supported by something legally binding like SEC filings or shareholder filings? I've never seen one to date.
Sure, and I would point my source to be the very SEC filings you linked. Head to page 62. Look at “US Federal” under “Current Taxes” — you will see “(129)”. What the “()” means is that they believe the government owes them 129 Million in tax REFUND.
If you count deferred taxes they do owe money, but that’s money that hasn’t left their pockets in that tax year. Hence 0 federal taxes for tax year 2018. That is a hard fact.
Snopes gives a further summary of how to calculate it, albeit for the tax year 2017, though equally applicable as it’s the same format as the SEC filing you linked.
>What the “()” means is that they believe the government owes them 129 Million in tax REFUND.
If you look a few lines lower, you see that same (129) as being owed from foreign taxes. This means it is deferred since it was paid on foreign income to countries for which we likely have tax treaties. You'll also note the federal and international taxes match to under 1% as 563m and 565m, also waiting to be accounted for, to avoid double taxation on the income. It's the same thing as if you worked in one state while living in another, and had to file income taxes in both places: many states let you defer their payment and instead collect from the other state. In this case it's between countries.
>Hence 0 federal taxes for tax year 2018. That is a hard fact.
It's a very misleading fact since the deferment will likely result on them paying federal income tax for 2018. This lack of nuance spreads ignorance to people that don't understand such things are common and legal, and the companies do in fact pay substantial taxes over time.
And this "fact" ignores that this is likely the result, as explained above, of multi-country tax resolution which doesn't happen instantly on US tax time, since other countries have other tax schedules.
Again, he same link you posted showed they paid 1.1B in Federal income taxes the previous year. From year to year taxes vary due to how things roll over, so it's easy to cherry pick a year where they pay zero, but other years they pay quite a lot, sometimes too much, giving them a discount in future years.
This is clear from page 22 of the SEC filing where they state " The U.S. Tax Act enhanced and extended the option to claim accelerated depreciation deductions by allowing full expensing of qualified property, primarily equipment, through 2022. Cash taxes paid (net of refunds) were $412 million, $957 million, and $1.2 billion for 2016, 2017, and 2018. " regarding US federal income taxes.
If you want more details, p62 of [1] shows how the deductions were computed. The majority of the deduction was because of "excess tax benefits from stock-based compensation", which, if you google the phrase, means they overpaid taxes in previous years.
The income totals are also global. The US taxes are only on the US profits, not the global profits. These are broken out in another SEC document mentioned in the one I linked, which makes all the pieces more clear.
I agree that some years net federal income taxes are zero, but almost no company has this happen many years in a row without well deserved reason (such as massive tax loss some other year allowing them to carry forward those benefits).
In short, look at 2018 taxes in a few years, and I bet it won't still be zero. This annual rush to complain about company taxes is usually the same ignorance game, wholly ignoring the underlying reality or going back and offering retraction articles once the original is proven wrong.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/stephanied...