@kravietz Nothing wrong with this once you understand why. They got tax credit for significantly overpaying in the past, In fact in all likelyhood it is credit that they were finally able to get for their overcharge in 2014 (which was an absurd 91%).

/their tax rate is quite reasonable once you average it out over the last 5 years

@freemo Based on the data in the article the average over the last eight years is 16%. You may find this reasonable, I don't. Basic infrastructure in the US is falling apart because of the unwillingness to pay taxes.

businessinsider.nl/asce-gives-

@kravietz

@ericbuijs

Basic infrastrusture in the united states is falling apart because america wastes 80% of its extrodinarily high taxes on military so it can start wars.

I live in the netherlanda and we have a similar tax rate here and our infrastucture is top notch. Dont fall for that scam.

Also how did you calculate the average, you know you cant just add up the numbers and divide if you want honest answers right? Thats not how you qoukd calculate it.

@kravietz

@freemo I calculated the average effective tax rate over eight years. If I calculate the total taxes paid divided by the total profit over eight years it gets even worse (not for Amazon ;-)). In that case it is a whopping 2.8% (0.701 billion/25.1billion).

BTW: I'm from the Netherlands too. Nice to meet you.

@kravietz

Follow

@ericbuijs
Is that the profit before or after expendeture btw? Not saying its wrong just want to check your numbers. And why did you pick 8 years? Why not 5 for example which woukd produce a much larger number, perhaos 10 would even be larger. I dont know would have yo check the numbers, but why 8 (which appears to be the most favorable number for your point at first glance)
@kravietz

· · Fedilab · 1 · 0 · 0

@freemo I simply took the longest period available in the table that's available in the article and took the US pretax profit (after substracting state) and I took yearly federal tax of the company.

In most cases a longer period of data provides a better sample because it reduces the effect of extremes. There was no intend to choose a more favorable period.

@kravietz

@ericbuijs
Generally thata not a bad strategy. But you have to be careful in thia case because of the nature of company taxing. Usually youll see patterns where one year taxes are insanely high then 3 or 4 yeara ita very low then it keeps repeating in cycles.

So if we assume it is exactly a 5 year cycle for simplicity you can probably wee the problem of a 8 year cycle. In such a case a 8 or 9 year cycle would give an unfair view compared to a 5 year view or even a 10 year view.

Im not saying this is the caee here im not home ao i dont have access to the raw data to check. But we should be mindful of the time periods we select for thia stuff.

Btw im a data scientist by profression.

@kravietz

@freemo @ericbuijs

This post has received plenty of boosts/likes which indicates a very strong sentiment here and I personally feel the message "Amazon paid no income tax of huge income" extremely unfair. As it emerges, it may not be the whole picture so your insight - especially based on any actual available data for this case - would be extremely useful here.

@kravietz @ericbuijs

Agreed. I did try to take a quick glance but it seemed akll the sources talking about the issue are ones known to be heavily biased (propaganda). Seems most sources that take a more objective view on these things are largely silent.

That means I'm going to need to find raw data if i really want to get some answers. I'm a bit busy though.

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.