Amazon Responds To Joe Biden’s Criticism Of Company’s Tax Rate: ‘You Spent 3 Decades In The Senate’
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden recently criticized Amazon for paying a low effective tax rate and pointed to the billions of dollars in profit the company generates. In response, the company took to Twitter to push back against Biden’s accusation using his Senate record, Breitbart reported.
“We pay every cent owed,” the company tweeted. “You spent 3 decades in the Senate & know that Congress wrote these tax laws to encourage companies to invest in the US economy. We have. 500k jobs w/ a min wage of $15/hr across 40 states. Assume your complaint is w/ the tax code, not Amazon.”
Biden spoke to CNBC on Squawk Box on Friday and raised concerns about Amazon’s behavior.
“The whole notion of this is: Are you playing the game fairly?” he asked.
Biden claimed the “capitalist system” is about “dealing fairly” and being “straight up” with both the American people and their employees.
In June 2019, Biden attacked Amazon on Twitter and claimed no company that is earning billions in profits should pay a lower tax rate than teachers and firefighters. In response, Amazon claimed it had paid $2.6 billion in corporate taxes since 2016.
As reported by CNBC, Amazon paid $0 in U.S. federal income tax in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, the company owed money to the American government for the first time in two years — an SEC filing from February said the company owed $162 million. Although the company allegedly paid over $1 billion in federal income tax expenses, which includes the $162 million, $914 million was reportedly moved to a later date.
Matthew Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, claimed that Amazon has been exploiting state sales tax loopholes to achieve its low tax rate. The company has allegedly been taking advantage of such exploits for decades.
Amazon is a target not just for Biden but for many who push for tax reform and accountability for larger companies. Before Biden, former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders noted that an annual Amazon Prime member pays more for the program than the company paid in federal taxes in both 2017 and 2018.
“Our job: Repeal all of the Trump tax breaks for the top 1% and large corporations and demand that they pay their fair share in taxes,” he tweeted in February.
Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, who has a net worth of approximately $124 billion, has also been the target of many critics. As The Inquisitr reported, Bezos is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire in the next few years.
