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Hmm.. the chart at the bottom puts things in an interesting perspective. Amazon has been paying federal taxes fairly regularly. It's just the last two years t

Hmm.. the chart at the bottom puts things in an interesting perspective. Amazon has been paying federal taxes fairly regularly. It's just the last two years that it has had negative effective tax rate. There's probably a bunch to dig in to there to understand why, exactly. The way that article reads, it seems like at least for the last year it's entirely due to the tax cut legislation congress passed last year. Essentially the legislation did exactly what it was designed to do. Amazon hasn't really done anything dodgy there. This article really just emphasises the need to hold congress accountable for their actions.

adhambadr 8y ago
given the corp tax rate in 2011 was 35% id say hitting 600M in profit and somehow paying only 30M instead of 210M does not really count as "fair" nor regular.
- eloff 8y ago
  Accounting is a little more complex than your math would suggest. I'm sure Amazon followed the law here. Blame the laws, not the company. You wouldn't voluntarily pay more taxes than you're required to either.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    >Blame the laws, not the company. Why not both? If I move to a country that legally allows me to do something horrible, people will rightfully call me a bad person regardless of the legality of the action.
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      So what are you suggesting; Amazon should voluntarily send a bonus check to the fed? That's just ridiculous. I'm also not convinced that following the current tax law is "something horrible".
      - anth_anm 8y ago
        They could just announce a new HQ in NYC instead of faking competition to try and bleed communities for money.
        EpicEng 8y ago
        What does that have to do with anything?
      - auiya 8y ago
        The least they could do is pay out a stock dividend from all the tax money they've managed to avoid paying.
    - Verdex 8y ago
      Sure, but not paying any taxes isn't obviously a horrible thing. The government says, through its tax laws, that it wants amazon to not pay taxes (probably because they had a loss). The logic behind this is that because amazon provides jobs, the government doesn't want the company firing people and/or not hiring people because of an unrelated occurrence. If you want what amazon is doing to be horrible you have to show that what they're doing is actually horrible. Perhaps talk about how they're making use of the resources of the united states while not paying back for the maintenance of those resources. Like, delivery trucks damage roads and without delivery trucks amazon can't exist, and therefore they are externalizing their costs to the tax payer by not paying taxes. Additionally, you'll need to explain why the jobs argument is not sufficient to excuse their lack of taxes. And you might also need to talk about how amazon R&D also isn't a good excuse. For example, if amazon perfects drone delivery of goods then they won't damage the goods. So we should let amazon not pay taxes so that they can perfect drone delivery because it will be a good to the entire nation. You need an argument for why this sort of idea is wrong.
      - notahacker 8y ago
        > The government says, through its tax laws, that it wants amazon to not pay taxes This kind of statement that assumes big companies passively take their tax bill from the government is either exceptionally naïve or wilfully disingenuous. We're talking about a company whose executives sat down with representatives the Luxembourg government to negotiate a special sweetheart deal (subsequently ruled to be unlawful state aid) and then moved its European HQ to Luxembourg
    - chiefalchemist 8y ago
      What's most troubling is that these are the same companies who say things like "We need more educated workers" as if tax dollars don't help to do that. They also use it was a rationalization / justification for paying less and less taxes (i.e., "We're not getting any benefit from what we're already playing.) To the bottom we go...
      - auiya 8y ago
        Especially egregious when they refuse to offer tuition incentives or at bare minimum competitive pay rates.
    - eloff 8y ago
      I disagree that it's horrible to try to minimize your tax burden. On the contrary, it seems like logical self-interest. If you want to do something selfless, paying more taxes is pretty low return for your buck.
  - tdb7893 8y ago
    I think a lot of people do blame the laws, that's why they want to change the tax laws to make this sorry of dodging harder.
    - briandear 8y ago
      If you start a business. Should you be able to deduct eligible expenses? I don’t know any sane person that would suggest not. If you make $100 and spent $100, then you have no profit. But you’re suggesting that this is a tax “dodge.” So that means that you’d tax the $100 of revenue even though there wasn’t any actual gain. If you applied that to all businesses, you’d destroy economic activity. How much extra did you pay on your taxes this year above the required amount? I would bet you paid exactly what was owed. Under your logic, you are dodging taxes.
  - adhambadr 8y ago
    never implied they did anything illegal. im pretty sure their numbers this year is 100% legal as well. Nor im implying they did anything wrong, they're doing whats best for them which you and I would have done. I just refute the notion its "fair" that the tax structure is quite harsh on private individuals (id go as far as claiming is dependant on private individuals) but creates the situation for corps that using clever accounting to pay a fraction of the supposed sum is considered graciously courteous.
  - anth_anm 8y ago
    The companies lobbied for the laws. The companies aggressively pursue every break they can get. Amazon is in the middle of taking a fortune in tax breaks from NY. They killed a tax on large employers in Seattle. They fought against cross state sales tax until they were so big it only hurt their competitors. Bezos owns the Washington Post, and media overall is controlled mostly be a handful of oligarchs. I absolutely blame Amazon.
- rukittenme 8y ago
  It's "fair" in the sense that they had losses prior to 2011 that the IRS allowed them to deduct.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    Exactly. Nothing wrong going on here.
- SilasX 8y ago
  As I said in my comment on the Netflix tax thread [1], not necessarily. Highly simplified example: if you spend $100 million over five years on inputs, all while receiving no revenue, and then sell your gargantuan output product (say, a mega-robot) in the sixth year for $100 million, then you haven't yet made a profit -- even though your books show a $100 million profit in the sixth year. Paying no taxes in that year would be reasonable. If anything, my understanding is that corporate tax law is unusually harsh about such long-term projects, limiting how many years you can carry forward losses. The specifics of how they got to $0 taxes matter, and not all reasons are shady. Some are, of course, like deducting arbitrarily high IP licensing fees to your foreign sockpuppet subsidiary. In that case, sure, hit 'em with both barrels. But please, attack them for the right reason. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19097415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19097415
  - adhambadr 8y ago
    didn't know that info actually, as it's different here in Europe. I also see they had 91% in 2014 which is also interesting. Anyways wasn't really attacking them at all and also think the reason behind the 0$ is quite relevant in the discussion, yet I do strongly oppose the idea the original commenter made that amazon had been doing its fair share and square. They are doing whats best for them under what the law permits, including lobbying btw which uncertainly bends the laws to their favour. And the real debate in my opinion is, should it be possible this way ?
  - doctorpangloss 8y ago
    In my opinion, the philosophy of "specifics of how" has already been co-opted by tax dodgers. There is no way to have both enumerative, mathematical thinking and a sense of justice when it comes to taxes, because rich entities can always think of a tax dodge you didn't enumerate! The reality is, no regular person is ever going to be on the wrong side of corporate taxes. You'll never be a huge corporation, you'll never be a huge corporate board, and since indexing, you'll never be a particularly aggrieved proxy shareholder. Nobody really cares how "giant corporation pays the maximum tax it can bear" is arrived to, but that's what people want. It's different if it were small business owners or landlords. People also sometimes hate SBOs and landlords, but sometimes normal people are landlords and small business owners, so they can imagine being on the wrong side of justice there. So like so many things technocratic thinking gets into, it's possible to be right and wrong at the same time. Right in the general case, in this imaginary case, where you just enumerate all the things, then you think hard about the things, and then you get the right answer. Wrong in the case that people in the real world actually inhabit, because you're both a likable person and you're not a giant corporation, so your philosophy is great to co-opt for what is basically a public-theft agenda.
bilbo0s 8y ago
>This article really just emphasises the need to hold congress accountable for their actions... That's hard though, because ideology gets in the way. Everyone has this, almost "quasi-religious", devotion to their politicians. So it becomes a lot easier to say, "Hey, look at all these rich banks and wealthy companies taking advantage of all their tailor made tax laws!", than it is to say, "OK guys, we have to sit down and get a list of everyone who voted for these advantageous tax laws that these rich companies are using." The one is more "sound bite"-y. It's easier to get people behind such a twitter storm. The other requires a performance review of each of our political leaders, which is just not the way we as Americans have typically operated. Not to mention the fact that it requires further action. You have a list, now what do you do with it? For instance, game theoretically speaking, it may be better to hold it over the current politician's head, than it would be to get rid of him/her immediately? Or maybe we just want to send a message, and get rid of all these men and women as soon as the law permits? I mean, it just opens up a lot of questions about how best to proceed. The other option, you know how to proceed. You just join in on the twitter storm so to speak.
- atemerev 8y ago
  OK, put me on your list, I generally vote in favor of lower taxes for corporations and individuals.
  - zelon88 8y ago
    > I generally vote in favor of lower taxes for corporations and individuals. So like to have your cake and eat it too?
    - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
      The implication is a smaller government and fewer public services. We could theoretically eliminate social security / medicare and immediately put extra money in people's pockets, but that would be disastrous for a number of reasons.
    - civilian 8y ago
xwvvvvwx 8y ago
Congress is pretty much controlled by entities like Amazon.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  [Citation needed]
  - sschueller 8y ago
    Not current but still interesting: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/congress-corporate-sponsors/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/congress-corpor...
  - antris 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ddebernardy 8y ago
> This article really just emphasises the need to hold congress accountable for their actions. You've a bit more work to do to get that done than merely pinging or voting out your Representative: https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC On a more positive note, there seems to be some people in the US who want to (try to) make a difference. For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq3QXIVR0bs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq3QXIVR0bs Only time will tell if they will. But I'm not holding my breath, TBH.
- module0000 8y ago
  Holding politicians accountable for their actions is very difficult in practice. Occasionally someone pulls it off though, from a book depository window.
hinkley 8y ago
This is business 101 stuff. As in I literally remember talking about this in Business 101. You sink a bunch of dollars into development of a new product. You sell it at a premium when it's new to start to pay back those costs (and marketing attaches cachet to the product during this time). The idea is to be making net profit off of the product before you hit the middle of the adoption bell curve. Boost efficiency to improve margins and ride the curve down. Middle and late adopters are pure profit. From a tax perspective, things are going to look pretty dire until you hit the first inflection point in the adoption curve, and probably for a while after. I mean, I am starting to loathe Amazon, cancelled my Prime membership a couple years ago and have been giving my family non-Amazon wish lists for at least that long. They don't treat people well (even in the bad old days of Monopoly Microsoft, they took much better care of their people). It's a shit place to work, which makes me wonder how it is to work for one of their suppliers. Zero love lost here. But this whole line of inquiry just seems like a red herring or sour grapes even to me.
curun1r 8y ago
It’s not a mystery when you see what their stock has done in the past couple of years. When the stock more than doubled, the company gets to deduct the difference between exercise and strike price. But employees then have to pay that difference. So most of this is a non-story around Amazon transferring it’s tax burden to its employees by awarding them lots of stock. The bigger issue here is the fiction that stock option compensation should be taxed as investment rather than employment compensation. Bill Gates even brought it up whe Colbert asked him about a 70% marginal tax rate and said something to the effect of, “The vast majority of these billion dollar fortunes weren’t built with ordinary income.” We need the tax code to separate profits made from buying stock for money only from profits made from buying stock that one is only offered at that price because of one’s employment status. Until we do that, those 70% marginal tax rates will only hit entertainers and others not able to structure their compensation using stock and leave open the huge loophole that the richest use to pay themselves in a way that allows them to pay an overall lower percentage of income than most of us commenting here.
allworknoplay 8y ago
"Amazon has been paying federal taxes fairly regularly." Dude, the chart gives you the 5- and 10-year effectives rates, they're 2.2% and 3.0% respectively.
- ChrisLomont 8y ago
  Amazon’s SEC filings claim much larger taxes than this blog post. I’ll trust the SEC filing over this article. Here’s one if you care to look. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872417000011/amzn-20161231x10k.htm#s6C433DC3D1E0558A8CD150214D436E6D https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872417...
jacquesm 8y ago
They did hold congress accountable, that is why you now have a different congress. But I don't see this one roll back the tax cuts so far, and even then it would have to pass in the senate.

adhambadr 8y ago

given the corp tax rate in 2011 was 35% id say hitting 600M in profit and somehow paying only 30M instead of 210M does not really count as "fair" nor regular.

eloff 8y ago
Accounting is a little more complex than your math would suggest. I'm sure Amazon followed the law here. Blame the laws, not the company. You wouldn't voluntarily pay more taxes than you're required to either.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  >Blame the laws, not the company. Why not both? If I move to a country that legally allows me to do something horrible, people will rightfully call me a bad person regardless of the legality of the action.
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    So what are you suggesting; Amazon should voluntarily send a bonus check to the fed? That's just ridiculous. I'm also not convinced that following the current tax law is "something horrible".
    - anth_anm 8y ago
      They could just announce a new HQ in NYC instead of faking competition to try and bleed communities for money.
      - EpicEng 8y ago
        What does that have to do with anything?
    - auiya 8y ago
      The least they could do is pay out a stock dividend from all the tax money they've managed to avoid paying.
  - Verdex 8y ago
    Sure, but not paying any taxes isn't obviously a horrible thing. The government says, through its tax laws, that it wants amazon to not pay taxes (probably because they had a loss). The logic behind this is that because amazon provides jobs, the government doesn't want the company firing people and/or not hiring people because of an unrelated occurrence. If you want what amazon is doing to be horrible you have to show that what they're doing is actually horrible. Perhaps talk about how they're making use of the resources of the united states while not paying back for the maintenance of those resources. Like, delivery trucks damage roads and without delivery trucks amazon can't exist, and therefore they are externalizing their costs to the tax payer by not paying taxes. Additionally, you'll need to explain why the jobs argument is not sufficient to excuse their lack of taxes. And you might also need to talk about how amazon R&D also isn't a good excuse. For example, if amazon perfects drone delivery of goods then they won't damage the goods. So we should let amazon not pay taxes so that they can perfect drone delivery because it will be a good to the entire nation. You need an argument for why this sort of idea is wrong.
    - notahacker 8y ago
      > The government says, through its tax laws, that it wants amazon to not pay taxes This kind of statement that assumes big companies passively take their tax bill from the government is either exceptionally naïve or wilfully disingenuous. We're talking about a company whose executives sat down with representatives the Luxembourg government to negotiate a special sweetheart deal (subsequently ruled to be unlawful state aid) and then moved its European HQ to Luxembourg
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    What's most troubling is that these are the same companies who say things like "We need more educated workers" as if tax dollars don't help to do that. They also use it was a rationalization / justification for paying less and less taxes (i.e., "We're not getting any benefit from what we're already playing.) To the bottom we go...
    - auiya 8y ago
      Especially egregious when they refuse to offer tuition incentives or at bare minimum competitive pay rates.
  - eloff 8y ago
    I disagree that it's horrible to try to minimize your tax burden. On the contrary, it seems like logical self-interest. If you want to do something selfless, paying more taxes is pretty low return for your buck.
- tdb7893 8y ago
  I think a lot of people do blame the laws, that's why they want to change the tax laws to make this sorry of dodging harder.
  - briandear 8y ago
    If you start a business. Should you be able to deduct eligible expenses? I don’t know any sane person that would suggest not. If you make $100 and spent $100, then you have no profit. But you’re suggesting that this is a tax “dodge.” So that means that you’d tax the $100 of revenue even though there wasn’t any actual gain. If you applied that to all businesses, you’d destroy economic activity. How much extra did you pay on your taxes this year above the required amount? I would bet you paid exactly what was owed. Under your logic, you are dodging taxes.
- adhambadr 8y ago
  never implied they did anything illegal. im pretty sure their numbers this year is 100% legal as well. Nor im implying they did anything wrong, they're doing whats best for them which you and I would have done. I just refute the notion its "fair" that the tax structure is quite harsh on private individuals (id go as far as claiming is dependant on private individuals) but creates the situation for corps that using clever accounting to pay a fraction of the supposed sum is considered graciously courteous.
- anth_anm 8y ago
  The companies lobbied for the laws. The companies aggressively pursue every break they can get. Amazon is in the middle of taking a fortune in tax breaks from NY. They killed a tax on large employers in Seattle. They fought against cross state sales tax until they were so big it only hurt their competitors. Bezos owns the Washington Post, and media overall is controlled mostly be a handful of oligarchs. I absolutely blame Amazon.
rukittenme 8y ago
It's "fair" in the sense that they had losses prior to 2011 that the IRS allowed them to deduct.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  Exactly. Nothing wrong going on here.
SilasX 8y ago
As I said in my comment on the Netflix tax thread [1], not necessarily. Highly simplified example: if you spend $100 million over five years on inputs, all while receiving no revenue, and then sell your gargantuan output product (say, a mega-robot) in the sixth year for $100 million, then you haven't yet made a profit -- even though your books show a $100 million profit in the sixth year. Paying no taxes in that year would be reasonable. If anything, my understanding is that corporate tax law is unusually harsh about such long-term projects, limiting how many years you can carry forward losses. The specifics of how they got to $0 taxes matter, and not all reasons are shady. Some are, of course, like deducting arbitrarily high IP licensing fees to your foreign sockpuppet subsidiary. In that case, sure, hit 'em with both barrels. But please, attack them for the right reason. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19097415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19097415
- adhambadr 8y ago
  didn't know that info actually, as it's different here in Europe. I also see they had 91% in 2014 which is also interesting. Anyways wasn't really attacking them at all and also think the reason behind the 0$ is quite relevant in the discussion, yet I do strongly oppose the idea the original commenter made that amazon had been doing its fair share and square. They are doing whats best for them under what the law permits, including lobbying btw which uncertainly bends the laws to their favour. And the real debate in my opinion is, should it be possible this way ?
- doctorpangloss 8y ago
  In my opinion, the philosophy of "specifics of how" has already been co-opted by tax dodgers. There is no way to have both enumerative, mathematical thinking and a sense of justice when it comes to taxes, because rich entities can always think of a tax dodge you didn't enumerate! The reality is, no regular person is ever going to be on the wrong side of corporate taxes. You'll never be a huge corporation, you'll never be a huge corporate board, and since indexing, you'll never be a particularly aggrieved proxy shareholder. Nobody really cares how "giant corporation pays the maximum tax it can bear" is arrived to, but that's what people want. It's different if it were small business owners or landlords. People also sometimes hate SBOs and landlords, but sometimes normal people are landlords and small business owners, so they can imagine being on the wrong side of justice there. So like so many things technocratic thinking gets into, it's possible to be right and wrong at the same time. Right in the general case, in this imaginary case, where you just enumerate all the things, then you think hard about the things, and then you get the right answer. Wrong in the case that people in the real world actually inhabit, because you're both a likable person and you're not a giant corporation, so your philosophy is great to co-opt for what is basically a public-theft agenda.

bilbo0s 8y ago

>This article really just emphasises the need to hold congress accountable for their actions... That's hard though, because ideology gets in the way. Everyone has this, almost "quasi-religious", devotion to their politicians. So it becomes a lot easier to say, "Hey, look at all these rich banks and wealthy companies taking advantage of all their tailor made tax laws!", than it is to say, "OK guys, we have to sit down and get a list of everyone who voted for these advantageous tax laws that these rich companies are using." The one is more "sound bite"-y. It's easier to get people behind such a twitter storm. The other requires a performance review of each of our political leaders, which is just not the way we as Americans have typically operated. Not to mention the fact that it requires further action. You have a list, now what do you do with it? For instance, game theoretically speaking, it may be better to hold it over the current politician's head, than it would be to get rid of him/her immediately? Or maybe we just want to send a message, and get rid of all these men and women as soon as the law permits? I mean, it just opens up a lot of questions about how best to proceed. The other option, you know how to proceed. You just join in on the twitter storm so to speak.

atemerev 8y ago
OK, put me on your list, I generally vote in favor of lower taxes for corporations and individuals.
- zelon88 8y ago
  > I generally vote in favor of lower taxes for corporations and individuals. So like to have your cake and eat it too?
  - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
    The implication is a smaller government and fewer public services. We could theoretically eliminate social security / medicare and immediately put extra money in people's pockets, but that would be disastrous for a number of reasons.
  - civilian 8y ago

xwvvvvwx 8y ago

Congress is pretty much controlled by entities like Amazon.

craftyguy 8y ago
[Citation needed]
- sschueller 8y ago
  Not current but still interesting: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/congress-corporate-sponsors/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/congress-corpor...
- antris 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ddebernardy 8y ago

> This article really just emphasises the need to hold congress accountable for their actions. You've a bit more work to do to get that done than merely pinging or voting out your Representative: https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC On a more positive note, there seems to be some people in the US who want to (try to) make a difference. For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq3QXIVR0bs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq3QXIVR0bs Only time will tell if they will. But I'm not holding my breath, TBH.

module0000 8y ago
Holding politicians accountable for their actions is very difficult in practice. Occasionally someone pulls it off though, from a book depository window.

hinkley 8y ago

This is business 101 stuff. As in I literally remember talking about this in Business 101. You sink a bunch of dollars into development of a new product. You sell it at a premium when it's new to start to pay back those costs (and marketing attaches cachet to the product during this time). The idea is to be making net profit off of the product before you hit the middle of the adoption bell curve. Boost efficiency to improve margins and ride the curve down. Middle and late adopters are pure profit. From a tax perspective, things are going to look pretty dire until you hit the first inflection point in the adoption curve, and probably for a while after. I mean, I am starting to loathe Amazon, cancelled my Prime membership a couple years ago and have been giving my family non-Amazon wish lists for at least that long. They don't treat people well (even in the bad old days of Monopoly Microsoft, they took much better care of their people). It's a shit place to work, which makes me wonder how it is to work for one of their suppliers. Zero love lost here. But this whole line of inquiry just seems like a red herring or sour grapes even to me.

curun1r 8y ago

It’s not a mystery when you see what their stock has done in the past couple of years. When the stock more than doubled, the company gets to deduct the difference between exercise and strike price. But employees then have to pay that difference. So most of this is a non-story around Amazon transferring it’s tax burden to its employees by awarding them lots of stock. The bigger issue here is the fiction that stock option compensation should be taxed as investment rather than employment compensation. Bill Gates even brought it up whe Colbert asked him about a 70% marginal tax rate and said something to the effect of, “The vast majority of these billion dollar fortunes weren’t built with ordinary income.” We need the tax code to separate profits made from buying stock for money only from profits made from buying stock that one is only offered at that price because of one’s employment status. Until we do that, those 70% marginal tax rates will only hit entertainers and others not able to structure their compensation using stock and leave open the huge loophole that the richest use to pay themselves in a way that allows them to pay an overall lower percentage of income than most of us commenting here.

allworknoplay 8y ago

"Amazon has been paying federal taxes fairly regularly." Dude, the chart gives you the 5- and 10-year effectives rates, they're 2.2% and 3.0% respectively.

ChrisLomont 8y ago
Amazon’s SEC filings claim much larger taxes than this blog post. I’ll trust the SEC filing over this article. Here’s one if you care to look. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872417000011/amzn-20161231x10k.htm#s6C433DC3D1E0558A8CD150214D436E6D https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872417...

jacquesm 8y ago

They did hold congress accountable, that is why you now have a different congress. But I don't see this one roll back the tax cuts so far, and even then it would have to pass in the senate.