Trump critical of Amazon: 'They pay little or no taxes'

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Trump slams Amazon: 'They pay little or no taxes to state & local governments'
President Donald Trump went after Amazon in a tweet, a day after a report saying he was "obsessed" with the company tanked the online retailer's shares.

"Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

Amazon shares were up as much as 1.6 percent in premarket before the president's tweet; the stock was trading down 0.4 percent afterward.

Several states say Amazon and other online retailers should have to collect sales tax, even in states where the companies don't have a physical presence. The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that states couldn't collect sales taxes gathered by mail-order catalog companies unless the firms had a physical presence in a state. South Dakota and several other states argue that things have changed in the era of Amazon.

An Axios report Wednesday said Trump wants to "go after" the e-commerce giant, citing five sources who have talked about Amazon with the president.

That report also noted Trump's view of the post office is one which "has been explained to him in multiple meetings" as "inaccurate." In 2013, the Postal Service added Sunday deliveries as demand for packages continued to grow. The U.S. Postal Service teamed up with Amazon to roll out the service to New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix, making it possible for the retailer's customers to receive packages seven days a week.

Trump has blasted Amazon on social media in the past, saying the e-commerce company is hurting the retail industry and causing U.S. job losses.

Trump also repeatedly bashed the "Amazon Washington Post" on Twitter. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin hinted in July the administration may soon take "a position" on Amazon's tax collection policy.

Amazon's stock dropped over 4 percent in Wednesday trading, closing down at $1,431.42 per share.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...ocal-governments/ar-AAveWEY?OCID=ansmsnnews11​

 

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Trump's Retail Website Only Pays Sales Taxes In 2 States. Amazon Pays Taxes In 45.
Is TrumpStore.com the real "no tax" company?

President Donald Trump has railed against Amazon, falsely claiming the company fails to pay state and local sales taxes on online shipments. But it turns out the Trump Organization retail website collects sales taxes only on goods shipped to two states — while Amazon collects sales taxes in 45 states.

The TrumpStore.com website sells Trump-labeled glassware, baseball caps, luggage tags, spa slippers and key chains, among several other items. It collects sales tax only on orders shipped to buyers in Florida and Louisiana, according to the company’s own website, The Wall Street Journal was the first to point out on Friday.

TrumpStore.com, which touts itself as the “official retail website of the The Trump Organization,” doesn’t even pay sales taxes on its online shipments in New York, according to the information on its site. Its physical store and headquarters are located in the Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Trump, who maintains his ownership of the Trump Organization even while president, has been slamming Amazon on Twitter for dodging sales taxes. He has called it a “no-tax” company and has blasted Amazon for paying “little or no taxes to state & local governments.”

According to regulatory filings, Amazon paid a combined total of $412 million in federal, state, local and foreign taxes last year. In 2015, it paid $273 million. Amazon currently charges consumers sales taxes in all 45 states where such taxes exist, plus Washington, D.C. All states except Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon collect sales tax.

Amazon doesn’t have to pay all those taxes. A 1992 Supreme Court ruling effectively restricts states from forcing online retailers to pay state and local sales taxes if the company has no physical presence or employees in the state.

Amazon reportedly also supports legislation that would require all online retail operations — such as TrumpStore.com — to pay local taxes so companies operate on a level competitive playing field.

It’s impossible to know what state and local taxes the TrumpStore has paid because it’s a private company and Trump has not released any tax information.

“Trumpstore.com has always, and will continue to collect, report, and remit sales taxes in jurisdictions where it has an obligation to do so,” a spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal.

A “terms and conditions” section of Trump’s online store informs consumers that they’re responsible for paying any applicable tax on merchandise they purchase.

TrumpStore.com could soon be forced to catch up to Amazon on state sales taxes, thanks to the president. The Trump administration last month filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging it to allow states to require that online retailers collect and pay sales taxes even where they have no physical presence.

Trump's Retail Website Only Pays Sales Taxes In 2 States. Amazon Pays Taxes In 45. - HuffPost https://apple.news/A20vvuiaERZ6_eGXMsBIpmg

 

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How Trump vs. Amazon Explains His Entire Presidency
Petty personal grievance takes precedence over ideology, while Republicans look the other way.

Since taking office last year, Donald Trump has carried out sustained attacks on a number of American corporations ― Boeing, Ford and Nordstrom, to name a few. But none have quite endured the president’s focused attention like Amazon.

Last week, Trump escalated his war, launching a series of tweets that falsely claimed Amazon receives billions in subsidies from the U.S. Postal Service and avoids paying sales taxes. On Monday, Amazon’s stock plummeted 5 percent, destroying more than $36 billion of the company’s market value and causing the Dow to drop 459 points.

Attacking an American corporation as innovative and successful as Amazon seems a strange move for the so-called businessman president. But it’s perfectly in keeping with a presidency driven not by a coherent ideology ― or even a clear economic agenda, for that matter ― but rather by the incoherent ravings of a petty tyrant who is all too willing to jeopardize the nation’s economic strength for his own political gain.

Trump’s squabble with Amazon has nothing to do with the e-commerce powerhouse, of course. Instead, it’s all part of the president’s attempt to get at Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO and owner who also owns The Washington Post. Trump is obsessed with that newspaper’s coverage of his presidency.

In Trump’s twisted reasoning, a plan to impose higher shipping costs on Amazon, kill the company’s multibillion-dollar contract with the Pentagon and encourage certain state attorneys general to investigate its business practices ― just some of the retributive options Trump is reportedly considering ― is perfectly justifiable if it weakens someone he perceives as a personal enemy. Second-wave feminists in the 1960s may have argued that the personal is political, but it took the Trump presidency to see that those words could be a warning as much as a rallying cry.

Like everything the president does, it is fueled by his sense of personal grievance and vindictiveness.

Certainly, prior presidents have felt free to criticize American industries or the nation’s economic system. But usually they avoided targeting individual companies. Teddy Roosevelt made his mark as the “trustbuster” president, yet he achieved the bulk of his regulatory reforms in cooperation with many large trusts. His distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt levied heavy regulations on corporate America, all the while making sure he never spoke ill of individual companies or business executives in public.

Other presidents like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama offered broader critiques of American capitalism that were rooted in their larger political beliefs about how the economy should operate most fairly for all Americans. The one time President Obama did single out a specific company, he quickly learned his lesson. After he called out Staples for supposedly reducing its employees’ hours so that the office superstore could avoid health care costs associated with Obamacare, Staples responded that the “president appears not to have all the facts.” Obama never fingered Staples again.

Facts don’t matter for Trump, however. Despite ― or perhaps even because ― advisers have repeatedly told him that shipping packages for Amazon is a financial boon for the Postal Service, Trump has continued to make his false claims about the company. Corporations often have to push back against misrepresentations of their business practices ― that’s why they have large public relations offices, after all ― but an ongoing misinformation campaign led by the president of the United States is a chilling prospect for the future of all American business.

Trump’s beef with Amazon and the other individual companies he has attacked departs from the historical examples and has no basis in political philosophy, whatever that might be for him. Instead, like everything the president does, it is fueled by his sense of personal grievance and vindictiveness, by his unending desire to use the power of the presidency not to advance the nation’s interests but to assuage his own fragile ego.

It also marks a departure from yet another supposed orthodoxy of the Republican Party ― in this case, the GOP’s longstanding devotion to free-market absolutism. Had any prior president made just one of these attacks on an American business, he would have faced non-stop wrath from congressional Republicans and Fox News pundits alike. Yet those voices have remained remarkably silent as Trump has carried out his assault.

The president has been able to get away with it all because, just like his attacks on American democracy, the named targets are individual and personal, thus obscuring the actual systemic damage his abuse is wreaking. Republicans can rationalize Trump’s war on Amazon as merely a justifiable counterpunch against a liberal media outlet rather than acknowledging it for what it is: an outrageous intervention in the market.

Trump’s campaign against Amazon isn’t a harmless political flap, as his supporters would like to believe. It’s a full-fledged strike against the capitalist system they supposedly revere. If Republicans truly believe in the invisible hand of the market, they should do something about the tiny orange hands that are trying to strangle some of its most vibrant actors.

How Trump vs. Amazon Explains His Entire Presidency - HuffPost https://apple.news/ALRw63QnfTI2Jij8bFu0w0g