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I'm not suprised. This is what they do. When you think about it a lot of Amazon's business is partially subsidized by the tax payer. They pay less for the roads

• themagician 8y ago
  Not just tax dollars but investment dollars as well. Amazon is the big winner for almost every web based startup, whether they succeed or fail, because Amazon still gets paid. It’s pretty hard to have a business of any size and not touch Amazon in anyway. Amazon, in many ways, has becoming embedded the as GE once was.
• usaphp 8y ago
  > They don't pay for the roads They do pay taxes...
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • vuln 8y ago
    Which taxes? https://itep.org/amazon-inc-paid-zero-in-federal-taxes-in-2017-gets-789-million-windfall-from-new-tax-law/ https://itep.org/amazon-inc-paid-zero-in-federal-taxes-in-20...
    • gruez 8y ago
      state taxes?
      • vuln 8y ago
        Amazon doesn't even collect the correct amount of sales tax. So yet again it is ripping off the states in which is does business. "According to an analysis from the ITEP, the gap between the tax rate that some local tax jurisdictions impose and what Amazon collects can be as much as 7.5 percentage points in Homer, AK., for example." http://fortune.com/2018/03/29/amazon-tax-rate-president-donald-trump/ http://fortune.com/2018/03/29/amazon-tax-rate-president-dona...
        • artursapek 8y ago
          Is Amazon breaking a law?
          • d3ad1ysp0rk 8y ago
            Laws aren't morals
            • artursapek 8y ago
              Do you pay more taxes than you legally have to because you have better morals?
        • Rebelgecko 8y ago
          Alaska doesn't have a state sales tax, so presumably that's all city or county taxes. Does Amazon have the same obligation to collect those that they do for state taxes?
    • cycrutchfield 8y ago
      Presumably gas taxes, which in most states go towards funding road maintenance
      • vuln 8y ago
        Amazon pays for it's 3rd party (1099) workers gas? That's news to me... Amazon does not own any semi trucks. 'To be clear, Amazon purchased only the trailers and will use third-party companies for the actual truck cabs and drivers. The original source report did not make clear there was a distinction.' https://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/12/04/amazon-prime-now-has-its-own-fleet-of-semi-trucks/ https://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/12/04/amazon-prime-now-ha...
        • whafro 8y ago
          I think the point was that Amazon pays salaries/wages, the recipients buy gas for their personal vehicles, and that gas is taxed to pay for the roads. Presumably Amazon funds paid to delivery services are also used to pay for gas, which therefore indirectly pays for the roads.
        • Johnny555 8y ago
          They do, that's part of the pay. You could make a (good) argument that they are underpaying their contract drivers, but nontheless -- everytime they pay a contract driver to drop a package off at your house, Amazon is paying for that gas in their pay to the delivery driver. The same is true when they use a commercial delivery service at all -- the cost of fuel tax is bundled into the delivery price. Whether Amazon owns any trucks of their own is immaterial, if they are contracting with Amazom, Amazon is ultimately paying for the fuel (including taxes).
      • notatoad 8y ago
        "user fees" like gas taxes pay for less than half the cost of road maintenance. If you use the roads and the only taxes you're paying are gas taxes, you aren't paying your fair share. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/05/debunking-the-myth-that-only-drivers-pay-for-roads/393134/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/05/debunking-the...
    • adventured 8y ago
      Amazon paid $361 million in income taxes in the last two quarters. They're now a profitable corporation and will pay taxes as every other profitable corporation does. And given the rate of increase in that profitability, they're going to start paying billions in taxes annually.
  • johnchristopher 8y ago
    As much as any citizen or much less ?
  • deleted 8y ago
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• Reedx 8y ago
  Amazon, and Walmart before it, is far from alone. Entire industries are subsidized by the tax payer, with larger externalities (e.g., fossil fuels or sugar).
  • toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Whatboutism. It does not make it right, nor should we support it.
    • rndmize 8y ago
      It's not really whatboutism. The point to be made is this is not an Amazon problem, it's a systemic problem. Amazon seems to be getting more attention in recent years because of their size, but to me that just feels like picking on them because they play the game better than everyone else.
      • toomuchtodo 8y ago
        > Amazon seems to be getting more attention in recent years because of their size, but to me that just feels like picking on them because they play the game better than everyone else. Yes, they're getting picked on because they are the most exploitive (extreme tax avoidance, worker abuse, etc). It seems that would be the first org you would pick on: the one causing the most damage. Why would we pursue or focus on the orgs doing the least amount of damage first?
        • Reedx 8y ago
          Right, maybe we should take a look at fossil fuels, corn, sugar, etc...
          • deleted 8y ago
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        • WilliamEdward 8y ago
          Yeah because telling amazon to fix their problems will surely result in every other business fixing their problems, right? Give me a break, you need to attack holes in legislation and government.
• hjnilsson 8y ago
  Also the proliferation of the internet has been heavily tax subsidized to give access to the masses. Even more benefit is gained from being based in states without sales tax. Something brick and mortar stores can’t do to compete.
• 0xmohit 8y ago
  They kill competition which enables them to exploit their own workers. Meanwhile, we help them by giving them more business. https://apnews.com/1d62290004b340feac5c359d59b86823 https://apnews.com/1d62290004b340feac5c359d59b86823
  • wmfiv 8y ago
    Are you suggesting that by winning in ecommerce and cloud computing they're gaining a monopoloy on jobs? Seems like a stretch. There have always been and probably always will be unpleasant jobs. I watched 6 guys replace the roof of my neightbor's house yesterday in Houston. It was 100 degrees on the ground so I'd imagine it was intensely unpleasant working 8 hours on the ashphalt shingle roof. Does that make the roofing business exploitive? Should we all abandon our roofs?
    • 0xmohit 8y ago
      When I worked at Amazon we had to run around the warehouse, bc if our pick rate fell below a certain number we stopped getting paid. There were bottles & bins full of piss at odd points, bc you were penalised for toilet breaks. A co-worker attempted suicide on-site bc of the stress Source: https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 https://twitter.com/OwennnThomas/status/1007957414577090560 If this isn't exploitation, I'm not sure what it would be.
      • some_account 8y ago
        So why do people work there? There are other jobs I'm sure. Why support this treatment?
        • 0xmohit 8y ago
          Don't question a monopoly that is exploiting. Instead question those being exploited. Slow claps.
          • 8y ago
• knuththetruth 8y ago
  I think one of few good outcomes of monopolistic tech companies, like Amazon, is the degree to which they expose the lie that is American free market Capitalist ideology. There’s never been anything other than highly-subsidized State Capitalism and it’s outcome is massive, private command economies in the form of corporate dictatorships. These dictatorships then seek to assume the power of the state so as to achieve a monopoly on subsidization, while at the same starving the ability of the state to subsidize others and provide a challenge to their control.
  • some_account 8y ago
    And if you become the American Dream (lol), you get to work in a high place inside the pyramid of greed and corruption. I think I prefer a smaller, less insane, country.
    • dang 8y ago
      Nationalistic flamebait will get you banned here, same as the religious flamebait I just warned you about elsewhere. If you need to post like this on the internet, please do it somewhere where they don't mind if you set the place on fire. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • mattnewton 8y ago
    I think most of these state sponsored companies are unintentionally so, at least in the beginning. Amazon was built on state taxes not being applicable to internet purchases in the beginning, which was an unintended subsidy.
  • Apocryphon 8y ago
    Maybe this backlash will lead to a class consciousness forming in the startup community, at least in a weird Frankenstein left-libertarian-ish message of "the big guys are too big, they're harming free market competition"? While Silicon Valley skews 'socially liberal, fiscally conservative', that doesn't mean they are on the side of the monopolies by default.
  • 8y ago
• ronnier 8y ago
  Amazon also gave many of us good paying jobs and opportunities to grow and get even better paying jobs.
  • s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Which is completely and utterly irrelevant.