An analysis released Monday shows that Amazon utilized several perfectly legal mechanisms to avoid paying $5.2 billion in federal corporate income taxes in 2021, a year in which the online retail behemoth saw its profits and sales skyrocket.
Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), estimated that given Amazon’s record-breaking $35 billion in U.S. pretax income for fiscal year 2021, the Seattle-based corporate giant paid an “effective federal income tax rate of 6%”—far lower than the statutory corporate tax rate of 21%.
Had Amazon paid the latter rate on its 2021 U.S. income, Gardner noted, the company’s federal tax bill would have amounted to more than $7.3 billion.
“Instead, the company reports a current federal income tax expense of $2.1 billion,” Gardner wrote Tuesday. “Amazon’s 2021 federal income tax payment is comparatively significant
— source commondreams.org | Jake Johnson | Feb 8, 2022