Amazon will not be moving to New York after all. After months of public debate, the plans for the technology and e-commerce company to establish a second headquarters in Long Island City were ultimately scuppered last week.
Cities across the US have been attempting to lure Amazon by offering public subsidies in the hopes that the company would bring jobs. And New York was no exception, offering Amazon nearly $3bn in tax incentives. Researchers, activists and union leaders claimed that money could have been better spent.
Amazon is already getting plenty of benefits from the federal government. The company nearly doubled its profits to $11.2bn in 2018 from $5.6bn the year before and, for the second year running didn’t pay a single cent of federal income tax. In fact, Amazon reported a federal income tax rebate for the past two years totalling almost $270m according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Netflix also paid no federal or income tax on profits of $845m last year.
In a statement issued to the Guardian, Amazon said: “Corporate tax is based on profits, not revenues, and our profits remain modest given retail is a highly competitive, low-margin business and our continued heavy investment.”
The use of the word “modest” in this statement was, it seems, not sarcastic.
