After President Trump accused Amazon on Wednesday morning of hurting local retailers and jobs by not paying taxes, the company’s shares dipped in premarket trading.
“Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt — many jobs being lost!” he tweeted Wednesday morning, echoing his earlier characterizations of the company as a “no-tax monopoly” that does not pay “internet taxes.”
Mr. Trump’s suggestion that Amazon does not pay taxes is false. The company, in its latest annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, said that it paid $177 million in income taxes in 2014, $273 million in 2015 and $412 million last year.
S&P Global Market Intelligence found that Amazon paid an average tax rate covering federal, state, local and foreign taxes of 13 percent from 2007 to 2015, according to analysis provided to The New York Times. That is a smaller share than the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock average of 26.9 percent, and the federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent, but on par with Mr. Trump’s proposed 15 percent rate.
