It’s hard to know where to start in criticizing John Tamny’s most recent offering, this one in support of Amazon. It resembles nothing so much to me as one of those “how many things can you find wrong with this picture?” features that used to run in the newspapers.
I’ll just limit it to a question and a statement. Would Amazon.com exist at all if Internet commerce had not been exempted from state and local sales taxes?
Here’s the statement. Amazon does not pay enormous taxes. It pays zero in federal income taxes. Its customers pay sales taxes. How much does it pay in property taxes? Probably not as much as Mr. Tamny thinks since it has received sweetheart deals from various jurisdictions to avoid them. Let’s see some facts.
If Amazon and NYC was amusing, watch what happens if Amazon doesn’t win the JEDI contract; (a JSF-sized contest the DOD is running for Cloud Computing).
Amazon has long been tipped as the favorite, but the most prominent proponent of the contract design, Sec Mattis, is gone. There’s accusations of improper lobbying and conflicts of interest involving personnel who shuffled between the DOD and AWS, not unexpected for a such a prestigious contract.
I imagine the chattering classes in Northern Virginia are talking about it.
Amazon or something like would probably exist if they were taxed the same way as ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses, but it would look and act considerably different. The effective subsidies they received certainly helped its growth and may have contributed significantly to its current near monopoly, but the one stop shopping and on-line convenience is a big part of its business model, and that would have remained the same.