Bernie Sanders KEEPS LYING about Amazon.com's Taxes

16 July 2019 [link youtube]


Torn from the pages of Accounting Today magazine: .

https://www.accountingtoday.com/articles/tax-law-didnt-help-amazon-pay-zero-taxes-in-2018-it-was-just-savvy

By contrast, I note, Forbes.com puts more emphasis in the taxes that Amazon does pay ("$1.18 billion, accounting for local, state and international taxes").

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2019/02/22/why-amazon-pays-no-corporate-taxes/#242b1c5654d5


Youtube Automatic Transcription

I would vote for Bernie Sanders
hypothetically but I ain't gonna live a lie I ain't gonna lie to you and when Bernie Sanders tells a lie I'm not gonna accept that lie and say like okay now I'm gonna live this lie I made up my mind of that a long time ago when I was a Buddhist when I was a part of the Buddhist faith I didn't live a lie I'm not gonna pretend that ghosts and demons exist or that when other people see ghosts and demons that they're not hallucinating no I'm not gonna lie about scientific research on meditation I'm not gonna lie about what it says about slavery in the ancient religious texts I ain't living a lie and today still a little bit involved with veganism as a political movement I don't lie about that either okay so I would vote for Bernie Sanders hypothetically not living a lie why is it today that both Bernie Sanders and Andrew yang lie about Amazon and Amazon paying corporate taxes when I first thought about putting a video together in this I first started doing the research I was like oh well it must be that the mainstream media really failed to address this this misconception about I start Koopaling around Wall Street journal/nbc Forbes magazine Bloomberg seemingly every major economic and news organization in the world already has debunked the propaganda claim made by Bernie Sanders about Amazon and Google it Bernie Sanders is still tone insane why I did a search for Bernie Sanders Amazon taxes and then I limited the results to this month times he's used this live within the last 30 days he's still saying he's still out there preparing it quote Amazon's less than zero tax rate is unacceptable America me to see amazon's tax returns okay and at andrew yang as you know he has been making use of the same false claims about amazon's tax returns in his proposals to switch to a v80 a value-added tax based system to fund his crazy idea of giving every man woman and child one thousand dollars a month and he claims he's not a libertarian now look um okay let's break it down real quick I'll give you a link below this video to an article from accounting today accounting today not it not a publication I normally read a little bit more objective approach than you got from Forbes magazine or Bloomberg or even NBC in my opinion they point out first and foremost when the federal government taxes a corporation it is not on the basis of their revenue it is on the basis of their profit so two hundred and thirty two billion dollars in revenue says about two hundred thirty two billion in one year that's the revenue however how much is the profit ninety two point four billion now if you present either one of those numbers in isolation it just sounds like a lot of money but guys the thought exercise here is not that hard let me let me walk you through this let's say you're ten years old and you get together with some friends and you decide you're gonna rake the leaves for all the elderly people in the neighborhood you're gonna go around and clear up their gardens and rake the leaves and this house pays twenty dollars in this post pays twenty dollars maybe one as a small yard and they pay ten dollars and all the money comes together and you do this you have a long day's work doing yard work say hey great news the total amount of revenue total amount of money we made was two hundred and thirty two dollars but I got bad news do you know how much profit we made only nine dollars only nine dollars and forty cents think about how disappoint you bees whoa gee we had all these costs with all these expenses we only we only get to keep but only made nine dollars in profit I had two or three fields okay so these numbers they're big but it's not that mystifying 232 billion in revenue but only nine point four billion in profit it's pretty dramatic difference okay now what many of the articles emphasize not the Accounting Today article is that there's also a huge amount of money being paid in payroll taxes by Amazon so we're not here talking about the employees paying income tax that's even more money but the the taxes that are paid state level and payroll taxes by the company that is apparently over 1 billion dollars a year so there are some taxes that Amazon is paying that adds up to a lot of money ok but more fundamentally why is it that Amazon is paying zero in the special category of federal corporate tax why is that a zero number it's because they're doing exactly what the US government wants to incentivize them to do okay for a long time there's been a critique of capitalism within the United States that companies do not put enough money into research and development companies do not put enough money into job training and companies do not put enough money into productivity increasing capital investments like robots like replacing Yumi's roads so one way or another because that's what the US government wants to encourage companies to do they give you tax breaks when you run your business in the kind of way that the federal government is encouraging so guess what Amazon spends a huge amount of money on research and development okay so that is 419 million US dollars in tax breaks they earned it they earned it the US government held up a hope and say if you jump through this hoop if you run your business the way we want you to we're gonna give you 419 million dollars in tax breaks because we the democratically elected government we believe it's in everyone's benefit in society if you put this money into research and development that ultimately indirectly won't just make your company more competitive it actually benefits society as well you're actually doing the sort of job that otherwise universities have to do or the government has to pay for research you know research and development to do what's normally called fundamental research right okay they said this is a good thing that benefits everyone to fight the new tool so you get a tax break okay um I know a lot of the time there are local laws it's a general crisis of having no upward mobility but a lot of the time you also see tax breaks and tax write-offs are doing job training so that people can go from being unskilled workers to more highly skilled workers why is that again it's because if if the company doesn't provide job training then that would have to happen at a university there'd be other costs for society so yeah Amazon is playing the game by the rules set down by the US government yes they are getting a deduction for stock based compensation which basically means giving people bonuses in the form of stock rather than cash that saves them 1.1 billion dollars they didn't invent the rule why does that rule exist why does the US government think that's advantageous to give bonuses in stock rather I don't know but again the government held up this loop Amazon jumped through it fair and square they're not cheating so you know if you support Bernie Sanders you probably support Bernie Sanders because he promises you a better future he promises you a future with lower cost of tuition with higher quality of health care he's promising you a future that's committed to dramatically reducing military spending and dramatically increasing the spending on you know things that will possibly or hopefully improve the quality of life for Americans right that's that's what you're signing up for okay don't live a lie when people lie to you when people expect you to participate in repeating these lies which I hear are left doing news services I hear this from the young turks day after day after day again and again this lie of an Amazon I heard it from Andrew yang at the Democrat presidential primary debates he's saying this on the news who saying this interviews again and again and again if you're promising people a better future you have to learn how to make that promise and how to propel that promise without having it rest on a lie