4 ms·

Corporations are not taxed on revenue, so I can only assume that the headline is designed to be inflammatory.

sololipsist 9y ago
Jesus, I just found this place while looking for a reddit alternative, and seeing comments like these are making me soooooooooooo happy. This is going to sound pretentious as fuck, but I'm gonna say it anyway: I'm so tired of the hoards of people passively accepting whatever headlines reinforce their extremely simple, uniform bias / value set. Maybe this is just a reflection of the bias / value set of the crowd here, but at least it's a different one. I hope it's an indication of a higher level of general critical thinking, though.
- johngarrison 9y ago
  I'm happy to say I think you'll be pleased with the level of critical thinking here. I have also despaired at the state of Reddit. Though, depending on your interests, some days there may not be much on HR that tickles your attention.
  - sololipsist 9y ago
    I'm noticing that, which is a little bit of a bummer. One of the other things I disliked about reddit is "science" or "technology" articles about things that are theoretically pretty cool if they exist, but don't, and likely never will. Like the article here about the gears for space - I just can't bring myself to give any fucks about a prototype. Put it in space and then tell me about it. That's fairly nit-picky, though. I'll take it.
carterehsmith 9y ago
"Corporations are not taxed on revenue" True. Now, perhaps offtopic: why are individuals taxed on revenue (ie salary, benefits ect), but corporations are not?
tim333 9y ago
I wouldn't have thought it was just designed to be inflammatory. It is rather striking they pay so little in relation to turnover. Presumably their reported earnings are low but given they have been increasing in market value at about $40bn/year it might indicate the accounting methods are not accurately reflecting reality. Time to modify the tax / accounting rules I think.
ivcha 9y ago
Why would you make such an assumption? Did the headline suggest that the (relatively small) tax was based on revenue? No, it did not. Please stop making such hasty, strong, and destructive comments. As we all already know, we have issues with weak (and disinformative) headlines; at least we can strive to have better comments and discussions.
- lucozade 9y ago
  > Why would you make such an assumption? Because it would be wholly disingenuous to presume the opposite. The article in general and the headline in particular is juxtaposing tax against revenue explicitly in order to elicit the response that there's something fishy. The article even goes so far as to have a quote about tax avoidance whilst carefully avoiding accusing Amazon of tax avoidance. It would have been a much more informative article if they had said, say, that Amazon expect to make a small loss on 20bn revenue and then go on to explain Amazon's business model. This would, of course, have shed a different light on their share scheme as it's clearly very beneficial for their workforce. But no, it's a large American corporation that doesn't pay much UK tax so let's bang out a low quality article that insinuates heavily but says not a lot. Full disclosure: I'm British, have no relationship to Amazon (other than as a customer) and am no relation to Mr Bezos though we do rock similar hairstyles.

Jesus, I just found this place while looking for a reddit alternative, and seeing comments like these are making me soooooooooooo happy. This is going to sound pretentious as fuck, but I'm gonna say it anyway: I'm so tired of the hoards of people passively accepting whatever headlines reinforce their extremely simple, uniform bias / value set. Maybe this is just a reflection of the bias / value set of the crowd here, but at least it's a different one. I hope it's an indication of a higher level of general critical thinking, though.

johngarrison 9y ago
I'm happy to say I think you'll be pleased with the level of critical thinking here. I have also despaired at the state of Reddit. Though, depending on your interests, some days there may not be much on HR that tickles your attention.
- sololipsist 9y ago
  I'm noticing that, which is a little bit of a bummer. One of the other things I disliked about reddit is "science" or "technology" articles about things that are theoretically pretty cool if they exist, but don't, and likely never will. Like the article here about the gears for space - I just can't bring myself to give any fucks about a prototype. Put it in space and then tell me about it. That's fairly nit-picky, though. I'll take it.

carterehsmith 9y ago

"Corporations are not taxed on revenue" True. Now, perhaps offtopic: why are individuals taxed on revenue (ie salary, benefits ect), but corporations are not?

tim333 9y ago

I wouldn't have thought it was just designed to be inflammatory. It is rather striking they pay so little in relation to turnover. Presumably their reported earnings are low but given they have been increasing in market value at about $40bn/year it might indicate the accounting methods are not accurately reflecting reality. Time to modify the tax / accounting rules I think.

ivcha 9y ago

Why would you make such an assumption? Did the headline suggest that the (relatively small) tax was based on revenue? No, it did not. Please stop making such hasty, strong, and destructive comments. As we all already know, we have issues with weak (and disinformative) headlines; at least we can strive to have better comments and discussions.

lucozade 9y ago
> Why would you make such an assumption? Because it would be wholly disingenuous to presume the opposite. The article in general and the headline in particular is juxtaposing tax against revenue explicitly in order to elicit the response that there's something fishy. The article even goes so far as to have a quote about tax avoidance whilst carefully avoiding accusing Amazon of tax avoidance. It would have been a much more informative article if they had said, say, that Amazon expect to make a small loss on 20bn revenue and then go on to explain Amazon's business model. This would, of course, have shed a different light on their share scheme as it's clearly very beneficial for their workforce. But no, it's a large American corporation that doesn't pay much UK tax so let's bang out a low quality article that insinuates heavily but says not a lot. Full disclosure: I'm British, have no relationship to Amazon (other than as a customer) and am no relation to Mr Bezos though we do rock similar hairstyles.