6 ms·

This statement is a farce. They claim the story is factually incorrect, but provide no corrections. They point out the NYT does the same thing, but that does no

This statement is a farce. They claim the story is factually incorrect, but provide no corrections. They point out the NYT does the same thing, but that does not contradict anything in the NYT article, and has no bearing on what they did. Finally, they yell "debate me!" but rather than proposing a debate on the facts in dispute, instead want to debate federal tax policy which neither controls.

appleiigs 7y ago
I think it's a great statement. They aren't disputing the facts. Fedex is disputing that cutting taxes is a bad thing and is saying lets talk about it. EDIT: and as you pointed out Fedex is just following fed tax policy that it doesn't control.
- burkaman 7y ago
  > They aren't disputing the facts. > The New York Times published a distorted and factually incorrect story [...] this outrageous distortion of the truth [...]
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    They don't actually list the facts they dispute, they just make that generic statement and then list some unrelated facts that paint them in a flattering light and hope that you assume those were the facts the NYT got wrong.
    - scott_s 7y ago
      To be clear, I believe burkaman agrees with you. The post they responded to said that FedEx "is not disputing the facts." burkaman pointed out the part of FedEx's statement where they do just that - except, as you correctly point out, FedEx never says which facts.
- slg 7y ago
  >They aren't disputing the facts. I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. The first sentence says the story is "distorted and factually incorrect" and they later call it an "outrageous distortion of the truth". This statement is screaming "fake news" and "debate me" like some Twitter troll. It is crazy to see this as an official statement from a Fortune 100 company.
  - adamrezich 7y ago
    >It is crazy to see this as an official statement from a Fortune 100 company. No it's not—the era of "journalists" being de facto arbiters of truth is most definitely over.
    - wavefunction 7y ago
      There was never an era like that, it's more nonsense and outright propaganda from schemers who want to claim that their own free-style lies are just as valid as formal journalism.
      - adamrezich 7y ago
        What are you talking about? Few have ever had access to printing presses or television studios. Until everyone had a smartphone in their pocket at all times, global information dissemination was controlled by a wealthy few. Now these people have to compete for the same attention as Random Guy On YouTube #337917402. The playing field has been leveled—these behemoth "journalistic" establishments have to compete for the same attention-scraps as everyone else. "Journalists" are not special anymore, they're just the same as everyone else with a smartphone (so, everyone else), yet it seems many struggle to accept this, judging by many comments here and elsewhere.
      - zepto 7y ago
        What is this ‘formal journalism’ you are talking about, and how does it differ from for-profit publishing?
- CelestialTeapot 7y ago
  >as you pointed out Fedex is just following fed tax policy that it doesn't control. That is incorrect. According to the article FedEx is referencing [1], the NY Times wrote that FedEx (along with UPS) met regularly with Congressional committee staff who were writing the tax policy and pushed hard for their own agenda. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/business/how-fedex-cut-its-tax-bill-to-0.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/business/how-fedex-cut-it... FedEx spent $10 million on lobbying in 2017, in line with previous spending, with much of it focused on tax issues, according to federal records. Its team pushed hard to shape the bill behind the scenes, meeting regularly with House and Senate committee staff who were writing the provisions. Mr. Smith met with Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in February 2017, and on May 26 he spoke on the phone with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, according to Mr. Mnuchin’s public calendar. EDIT: correcting formatting issues.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- lstroud 7y ago
  More legitimate discourse in the public square is a good thing. Maybe we’ll finally get out of the one sided shouting matches that modern journalism seems to encourage.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  > Fedex is just following fed tax policy that it doesn't control. Perhaps not individually, but a thrust of the article is that these large corporations pay huge amounts to lobbyists to bend tax policy in their favor.
  - dominotw 7y ago
    wondering why they singled out some companies though? > ese large corporations pay huge amounts to lobbyists to bend tax policy in their favor. Do we have a way to know if fedex did this?
    - sigmar 7y ago
      >Do we have a way to know if fedex did this? This is answered in the first paragraph of the nytimes article: "In the 2017 fiscal year, FedEx owed more than $1.5 billion in taxes. The next year, it owed nothing. What changed was the Trump administration’s tax cut — for which the company had lobbied hard."
      - dominotw 7y ago
        thank you
  - undersuit 7y ago
    The NYT article has an anecdote about how the CEO of Fedex met with Donald Trump two weeks after his election. Were they just having a good time?
300bps 7y ago
They claim the story is factually incorrect, but provide no corrections. There were two claims in the NY Times story: 1) FedEx paid $0 in tax 2) FedEx "has not made good on its promised investment surge" In response, FedEx wrote in their statement: 1) our billions of dollars of tax payments whereby they dispute paying $0 in taxes 2) $6 billion of capital that FedEx invested in the U.S. economy This directly contradicts what the NY Times wrote. And then they further point that the NY Times is actually guilty of what the NY Times is accusing FedEx of. How is their statement a farce? Further, the problem is that the tax code, especially for corporations, is so complex that anyone's tax payments can be spun any way you want them. For example, I contributed the maximum allowed to my employer's 401k this year. Someone could spin a news story saying, "300bps is avoiding taxes!" because I legally did not pay tax on $19,000 of income I otherwise would've had to. I don't know the particulars of FedEx's tax situation and honestly it would probably take me days of studying it before I could scratch the surface of understanding it. If FedEx did something illegal, there is a nice tax bounty the NY Times could get for reporting them - https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-informant-award https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-informant-award The NY Times is obviously not aware of anything FedEx did that is illegal so instead they put out a piece accusing them of paying $0 tax and not investing enough.
- whakim 7y ago
  1) They aren't disputing the "$0 paid in taxes in 2018," which is the main point of the NYTimes article (an article about how companies were responding to the Tax Cuts/Jobs Act). "Billions of dollars in tax payments" is factually correct, but doesn't address the core allegation. 2) $6 billion compared to what (prior to previous years)? No point of reference here. The response is great theater, but it is carefully worded to not refute the allegations.
  - larnmar 7y ago
    On the other hand the allegations themselves are carefully selected in order to create a false narrative.
    - 7y ago
dwild 7y ago
> They point out the NYT does the same thing, but that does not contradict anything in the NYT article, and has no bearing on what they did. Finally, they yell "debate me!" but rather than proposing a debate on the facts in dispute, instead want to debate federal tax policy which neither controls. Doesn't the whole NYT article is based on the fact that Fedex influenced the federal tax policy to avoid to pay theses taxes? Doesn't the goal of NYT by publishing this article is to show how Fedex gained from the new federal tax policies and thus trying to make that change toward something less generous toward Fedex? Thus NYT believe that Fedex and themselves can influence the federal tax policies which makes a debate the right kind of platform.

appleiigs 7y ago

I think it's a great statement. They aren't disputing the facts. Fedex is disputing that cutting taxes is a bad thing and is saying lets talk about it. EDIT: and as you pointed out Fedex is just following fed tax policy that it doesn't control.

burkaman 7y ago
> They aren't disputing the facts. > The New York Times published a distorted and factually incorrect story [...] this outrageous distortion of the truth [...]
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  They don't actually list the facts they dispute, they just make that generic statement and then list some unrelated facts that paint them in a flattering light and hope that you assume those were the facts the NYT got wrong.
  - scott_s 7y ago
    To be clear, I believe burkaman agrees with you. The post they responded to said that FedEx "is not disputing the facts." burkaman pointed out the part of FedEx's statement where they do just that - except, as you correctly point out, FedEx never says which facts.
slg 7y ago
>They aren't disputing the facts. I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. The first sentence says the story is "distorted and factually incorrect" and they later call it an "outrageous distortion of the truth". This statement is screaming "fake news" and "debate me" like some Twitter troll. It is crazy to see this as an official statement from a Fortune 100 company.
- adamrezich 7y ago
  >It is crazy to see this as an official statement from a Fortune 100 company. No it's not—the era of "journalists" being de facto arbiters of truth is most definitely over.
  - wavefunction 7y ago
    There was never an era like that, it's more nonsense and outright propaganda from schemers who want to claim that their own free-style lies are just as valid as formal journalism.
    - adamrezich 7y ago
      What are you talking about? Few have ever had access to printing presses or television studios. Until everyone had a smartphone in their pocket at all times, global information dissemination was controlled by a wealthy few. Now these people have to compete for the same attention as Random Guy On YouTube #337917402. The playing field has been leveled—these behemoth "journalistic" establishments have to compete for the same attention-scraps as everyone else. "Journalists" are not special anymore, they're just the same as everyone else with a smartphone (so, everyone else), yet it seems many struggle to accept this, judging by many comments here and elsewhere.
    - zepto 7y ago
      What is this ‘formal journalism’ you are talking about, and how does it differ from for-profit publishing?
CelestialTeapot 7y ago
>as you pointed out Fedex is just following fed tax policy that it doesn't control. That is incorrect. According to the article FedEx is referencing [1], the NY Times wrote that FedEx (along with UPS) met regularly with Congressional committee staff who were writing the tax policy and pushed hard for their own agenda. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/business/how-fedex-cut-its-tax-bill-to-0.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/business/how-fedex-cut-it... FedEx spent $10 million on lobbying in 2017, in line with previous spending, with much of it focused on tax issues, according to federal records. Its team pushed hard to shape the bill behind the scenes, meeting regularly with House and Senate committee staff who were writing the provisions. Mr. Smith met with Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in February 2017, and on May 26 he spoke on the phone with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, according to Mr. Mnuchin’s public calendar. EDIT: correcting formatting issues.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
lstroud 7y ago
More legitimate discourse in the public square is a good thing. Maybe we’ll finally get out of the one sided shouting matches that modern journalism seems to encourage.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
> Fedex is just following fed tax policy that it doesn't control. Perhaps not individually, but a thrust of the article is that these large corporations pay huge amounts to lobbyists to bend tax policy in their favor.
- dominotw 7y ago
  wondering why they singled out some companies though? > ese large corporations pay huge amounts to lobbyists to bend tax policy in their favor. Do we have a way to know if fedex did this?
  - sigmar 7y ago
    >Do we have a way to know if fedex did this? This is answered in the first paragraph of the nytimes article: "In the 2017 fiscal year, FedEx owed more than $1.5 billion in taxes. The next year, it owed nothing. What changed was the Trump administration’s tax cut — for which the company had lobbied hard."
    - dominotw 7y ago
      thank you
- undersuit 7y ago
  The NYT article has an anecdote about how the CEO of Fedex met with Donald Trump two weeks after his election. Were they just having a good time?

300bps 7y ago

They claim the story is factually incorrect, but provide no corrections. There were two claims in the NY Times story: 1) FedEx paid $0 in tax 2) FedEx "has not made good on its promised investment surge" In response, FedEx wrote in their statement: 1) our billions of dollars of tax payments whereby they dispute paying $0 in taxes 2) $6 billion of capital that FedEx invested in the U.S. economy This directly contradicts what the NY Times wrote. And then they further point that the NY Times is actually guilty of what the NY Times is accusing FedEx of. How is their statement a farce? Further, the problem is that the tax code, especially for corporations, is so complex that anyone's tax payments can be spun any way you want them. For example, I contributed the maximum allowed to my employer's 401k this year. Someone could spin a news story saying, "300bps is avoiding taxes!" because I legally did not pay tax on $19,000 of income I otherwise would've had to. I don't know the particulars of FedEx's tax situation and honestly it would probably take me days of studying it before I could scratch the surface of understanding it. If FedEx did something illegal, there is a nice tax bounty the NY Times could get for reporting them - https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-informant-award https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-informant-award The NY Times is obviously not aware of anything FedEx did that is illegal so instead they put out a piece accusing them of paying $0 tax and not investing enough.

whakim 7y ago
1) They aren't disputing the "$0 paid in taxes in 2018," which is the main point of the NYTimes article (an article about how companies were responding to the Tax Cuts/Jobs Act). "Billions of dollars in tax payments" is factually correct, but doesn't address the core allegation. 2) $6 billion compared to what (prior to previous years)? No point of reference here. The response is great theater, but it is carefully worded to not refute the allegations.
- larnmar 7y ago
  On the other hand the allegations themselves are carefully selected in order to create a false narrative.
  - 7y ago

dwild 7y ago

> They point out the NYT does the same thing, but that does not contradict anything in the NYT article, and has no bearing on what they did. Finally, they yell "debate me!" but rather than proposing a debate on the facts in dispute, instead want to debate federal tax policy which neither controls. Doesn't the whole NYT article is based on the fact that Fedex influenced the federal tax policy to avoid to pay theses taxes? Doesn't the goal of NYT by publishing this article is to show how Fedex gained from the new federal tax policies and thus trying to make that change toward something less generous toward Fedex? Thus NYT believe that Fedex and themselves can influence the federal tax policies which makes a debate the right kind of platform.