the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Mar 4, 2019
Tax time for most working people means there are wages every one or two weeks, with taxes already taken out. We give the government an advance on what taxes are owed all through the year. Then the IRS gives us a little of our money back in tax season.
But if you’re a really big corporation, like Amazon, with the third greatest value in the world, the tax code is made for you. Sure there are federal, state, local and sales tax, BUT there are lovely tax breaks. Corporations get breaks on the cost of equipment; they get breaks on the cost of research; they get breaks on top of breaks, all written into the tax code.
So Amazon had a record 10-billion-dollar profit last year but will pay NO taxes. Why? Because the tax code is also written so that corporations can string out years of losses to offset years in which they have gains, that is, profits.
Not only does Amazon pay nothing this year, like it did last year, it has more than a billion dollars left in tax credits. So if there are profits next year, Amazon will have tax credits to prevent their paying taxes again.
It’s not that the tax code was written by Amazon–it was made to be passed by their friends in Congress, i.e., a majority of Democrats and Republicans.