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Lets look at the facts as reported by the NYT: 1. Fedex owed 1.5 Billion in taxes in 2017. 2. They owe 0 in taxes after the bill. 3. As for capital investments,

Lets look at the facts as reported by the NYT: 1. Fedex owed 1.5 Billion in taxes in 2017. 2. They owe 0 in taxes after the bill. 3. As for capital investments, the company spent less in the 2018 fiscal year than it had projected in December 2017, before the tax law passed. It spent even less in 2019. Much of its savings have gone to reward shareholders: FedEx spent more than $2 billion on stock buybacks and dividend increases in the 2019 fiscal year, up from $1.6 billion in 2018, and more than double the amount the company spent on buybacks and dividends in fiscal year 2017. They are not disputing those numbers at all. What they want to do is "The focus of the debate should be federal tax policy and the relative societal benefits of business investments and the enormous intended benefits to the United States economy, especially lower and middle class wage earners." Bet seeing those numbers (2017 Tax bill: $1,500,000,000, 2018 tax bill: $0) must have stung and Fedex is frantically trying to change the topic of conversation.

mmazing 7y ago
More of the "but what about them" logic, or "they did it too so it's fine". NYT should put out an article criticizing themselves AND FedEx, maybe they're both shitty but doesn't excuse one or the other.
- mthoms 7y ago
  If the NYT made the same B.S. arguments in favor of the tax cut then sure. But they did no such thing.
tathougies 7y ago
It is indeed odd to single out a particular company for paying zero in tax (fedex in this case) as the result of a temporary tax reform bill which it seems the newspaper also took part in. While perhaps the NYT's story was 'correct', it neglected to point out that other companies also took advantage of this fact and that indeed this was the purpose of the tax reform. Instead, it sounds like the NYT made Fedex into some kind of bogeyman attempting to avoid taxes, instead of telling the full story, which is that, by American government policy, the government of the United States of America decided to offer businesses a way to significantly reduce their federal tax bill by investing their money into capital assets. This is a much less sinister sounding headline, which is likely why the NYT neglected to publish it. It's like if the government passed a bill to reward families that have children in the next five years with 10k USD each, and, instead of reporting on this bill in general, the new york times decided to only report on why bob and sally had four kids in those five years to milk the government of money. It's dishonest reporting, which is unsurprising coming from the new york times.

mmazing 7y ago

More of the "but what about them" logic, or "they did it too so it's fine". NYT should put out an article criticizing themselves AND FedEx, maybe they're both shitty but doesn't excuse one or the other.

mthoms 7y ago
If the NYT made the same B.S. arguments in favor of the tax cut then sure. But they did no such thing.

tathougies 7y ago

It is indeed odd to single out a particular company for paying zero in tax (fedex in this case) as the result of a temporary tax reform bill which it seems the newspaper also took part in. While perhaps the NYT's story was 'correct', it neglected to point out that other companies also took advantage of this fact and that indeed this was the purpose of the tax reform. Instead, it sounds like the NYT made Fedex into some kind of bogeyman attempting to avoid taxes, instead of telling the full story, which is that, by American government policy, the government of the United States of America decided to offer businesses a way to significantly reduce their federal tax bill by investing their money into capital assets. This is a much less sinister sounding headline, which is likely why the NYT neglected to publish it. It's like if the government passed a bill to reward families that have children in the next five years with 10k USD each, and, instead of reporting on this bill in general, the new york times decided to only report on why bob and sally had four kids in those five years to milk the government of money. It's dishonest reporting, which is unsurprising coming from the new york times.