Amazing Amazon Made $11.2 Billion In Profits Last Year But Paid $0 In Federal Income Taxes. All Thanks To Trump 

Amazon, the global retail behemoth, almost doubled its profits to $11.2 billion in 2018 from $5.6 billion the previous year and, once again, didn’t pay a single cent of federal income taxes, according to a report published by Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), an organization that is focussed on analysing the tax-paying habits by corporations for nearly 40 years.

Analysing Amazon’s newest corporate filing, the report revealed that, far from paying the statutory 21 percent income tax rate on its US income in 2018, Amazon reported a federal income tax rebate of $129 million.

While President Donald Trump has often been at loggerheads with the company including accusing it of unfair tax practices and antitrust violation, it was the Trump administration’s massive tax bonanza in 2017 (statutory corporate tax rate was reduced from 35 percent to 21 percent) that has provided Amazon loopholes to help escape from paying tax.

The supporters of the tax cut had advocated that it would incentivise better corporate citizenship. But according to the ITEP report, the new tax law has failed to broaden the tax base or close a slew of tax loopholes that enable profitable companies to routinely avoid paying federal and state income taxes on almost half of their profits.

As part of the proposal, the Trump administration and its congressional allies provided lavish new giveaways such as immediate expensing of capital investments. The ITEP report pointed out that several tax analysts had highlighted that the tax law was a huge revenue loser that was giving away far more to big corporations in rate cuts than it takes in loophole-closers.

The report criticised Trump for passing the tax proposal. While acknowledging that the president himself has criticised Amazon for its tax avoidance in the past, it said that his administration has so far displayed no awareness that its own tax package appears to have made the company’s corporate tax avoidance even more rampant than before.

ITEP report pointed out that Amazon is no stranger to tax controversies.

ITEP report highlighted the possibility that Trump’s tax cuts have potentially opened the floodgates for tax avoidance.