President Donald Trump’s dislike for Amazon’s business model and the company’s owner is well known. However, there are rumors that the president will now take action against the company that could result in Amazon facing an anti-trust case in court, having to charge taxes for its goods, or even both.
An anonymous source who recently spoke with Trump stated that the president was concerned about Amazon for a number of reasons. As the president accurately noted, the online giant is putting mom and pop retailers out of business all across the nation. It’s also wreaking havoc on shopping malls, resulting in empty buildings that cannot be easily used for other purposes.
Furthermore, the president is displeased with the fact that Amazon’s tax rate is far lower than other, non-tech related companies. Naturally, on a personal level the president does not like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos very much. Bezos not only criticized Trump extensively when he was running for president in 2016, but has since used his purchase of The Washington Post to regularly attack the president on various fronts.
Amazon’s effect on America’s economy is hard to ignore. The company has nearly 341,500 full and part-time employees; however, this is a paltry amount considering Amazon’s size and status. What is more, there are widespread allegations that Amazon mistreats many of its part-time employees. Some have claimed harsh working conditions, especially in Amazon’s order fulfillment warehouses. Others have charged Amazon with paying less than the minimum wage. At the same time, the number of jobs Amazon has created is far fewer than the number of jobs the company has eliminated.
It has been estimated that Amazon has caused a net loss of up to 222,000 jobs in the United States. Unfortunately, this is a problem that will only get worse if Bezos has his way, and is able to fully automate jobs such as order fulfillment and package delivery. While these jobs offer little in the way of pay and benefits, Amazon could very well put those who depend on them out of work in the foreseeable future.
How President Trump would hit back at Amazon has yet to be revealed. The anonymous source who first leaked the story to the press said that the president has wondered if there is a way to go after Amazon using antitrust and/or competition law. However, the United States government has in fact already made a move against Amazon.
A recent South Dakota law to tax internet sales wound up in court and the Supreme Court is set to hear the case in April and then rule on it in June. South Dakota, along with other states, are arguing that the earlier Supreme court ruling that states could not collect sales tax on mail order items should no longer apply as it was issued long before Amazon and other large e-retailers came into existence. The Trump administration has backed South Dakota in the case, lending weight to the state’s claims that it can in fact make people pay taxes on online purchases.
If the Supreme Court takes South Dakota’s side, it could lead to the generation of millions of dollars in state revenue while cutting into a significant portion of Amazon’s profits. At the same time, some members of Congress are calling for laws to be passed allowing taxes on online sales; these calls have not generated much action, but the president could get behind them, putting pressure on Republican lawmakers to create a law that would increase Amazon’s prices and make it far less competitive than it has been up to this point.
While it is not known if or when President Trump will take action against Amazon, it is clear that Amazon is vulnerable. The rumors of presidential action alone have caused Amazon’s stock to lose almost 11% of their value in just two days. Measures such as legal action and/or an internet sales tax law would cause company profits to slide, putting the brakes on Jeff Bezos’ desire to dominate the retail sector and become the first trillion-dollar company by market cap.
~ Conservative Zone
Before Amazon bought out Whole Foods, Whole Foods had a farmers markets outside many of their stores around South Florida. When Amazon took over they shutdown all those farmer’s markets, depriving small businesses & their loyal customers.
When people purchase on-line and do not pay sales tax it means state and local taxes which are used for info structure etc. are reduced. Why should the on-line merchants be exempt from collecting sales tax? Answer: THEY SHOULD NOT BE EXEMPT.
Primarily because there are over 17,000 taxing authorities in the U.S., each with different rates. Trying to collect tax for each, is a physical impossibility. There needs to be ONE federal sales tax, not every city in the country.
Great Control Amazon and tax them before they take over all retail.
It is not just Amazon, it is all the on-line ordering which includes foreign transactions who are not conducting legal business in the USA. One example was toxic/death street drugs shipped from China and an associate in Poland collecting the money. What is the problem with Amazon or any other on-line seller being held responsible for collecting sales tax. Some years back office catalog sellers violated state regulations by not collecting sales tax and the state taxation department collected from the buyers who were businesses. Example: Nevada
Looks who talking. Trump has never produced his tax returns. I am a life long republican. Trump has spent more time as a Democrat rather than a republican. There are many of us republicans that have had our fill of Trump. I have voted as a Republican for over 50 years but next Presidential election will vote for Democrat for President. Get the opinion of those who regularly use Amazon. Leave it alone. Fix other problems.
First of all, there’s no law that requires the President to release his tax returns…Period. Secondly, I am a Republican and have been for as long as you and I will stick with the party. To do otherwise, IMO, is to become a communist. Lastly, Bezos has driven Amazon to the point of ruination for small business but of course that is what the Democrats want – power over all. So, unless you are a mighty wealthy man you had better count your blessings that we have a President in office who cares.
Well JL the RHINO, you just go on over to the Democrats (Socialist, Progressive party) in the upcoming election. Your actions just prove you really were never a Republican. I suspect you probably voted for Obama and Clinton anyway.
It’s about time we the people deflate these egotistical Maniacs Who look at people as just dollar signs! They are only sowing the seeds to their own failures! We the people do need to take down these people that think they are above the law, and either seize their assets, or send them to prison! An assault against one person in this country is an assault against every person in this country! If you haven’t already seen the writing on the wall, then you need to open your eyes! This problem isn’t going to go away by itself! We need to stand up and take our country back! One of the best ways to strike back is to start boycotting those who take advantage of us!
Before I say anything else, I’m all for Trump’s mission to ‘drain the swamp’ etc, but it still strikes me as one style of communism attacking another when people criticize Amazon’s prosperity and demand it be taxed more heavily. Just the above comment ‘seize their assets’ encapsulates the problem. If a Democrat-inclined administration came out and said exactly that, it would be rightly derided as government seeking to control / damage private enterprise. The issue of Amazon is purely about Trump vs Bezos – Trump (theoretically) has the Executive at his disposal and Bezos has the media, so Trump will want to see legislation to attack Bezos’ revenues while Bezos will use his media to oppose such moves. Come 2020, it is by no means certain that Trump will land a second term (will he even WANT one by the age of 74-plus?), but it is almost guaranteed that Amazon will still be massive and Bezos will still own the Washington Post. The media and the government are both complicit in the creeping communism that has been going on for decades – both seek to control the message and control the people via the message. This applies in the USA, in Russia, in the UK and everywhere else.
Finally, a well thought out comment that makes a perfect point. Thank you.
I am in Iowa. We have no Amazon stores in Iowa, however we have been paying sales tax for 2 years. Many other states are paying sales tax although they have no stores in their state. It pays to know what you are talking about. Trump does not like to be a small fry in the battle of billionaires. Is he going top fix the tax system for those under his new Tax plan ? He fixed it for his Cronies in the corporate world. If you have no children you get very little under the new Tax law.
????? You probably get a lower Tax Rate and a much higher Standard Deduction. Only if your Itemized Deductions are higher than the new Standard Deduction and your Tax Rate doesn’t change will you pay more on the same income. If you have a lot of State and Local Taxes, you”ll have to turn to them about your High Taxes! There is no reason why those of us who have jurisdictions that charge Lower Rates, have to subsidize your States and Cities!!
PS …and if you lose some of those deductions….will you have to pay pay more.
Well I guess a cornfield is going to be your new safe space right RHINO JL? Just because you do not have an Amazon store in Iowa does not mean you still can’t go online and order you some soil-resistant Obama/Clinton jammies.
Postage for Amazon should be the same as anyone else sending packages through the Postal Service.
Talk about Idiots. What person in there right mind would make the person mad that could make your business follow the law. O well the left at it again.
This an excerpt from the book: “Economics in one lesson.”
Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Whenever there is continued mass unemployment, machines get the blame anew. This fallacy is still the basis of many labor union practices. Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat.
Bob Lipori: I am a retired Medical Technologist. I worked in Medical (mostly hospital) Laboratories for 40 years. (No Unions involved) During that time technology exploded in my field. Each Technologist performs hundreds more tests per day now, than we did in 1970. The only reason we didn’t have to lose our jobs, was because hundreds of new tests came along that needed to be done for patients. (No one person ever gets close to needing them all!) All this new technology made each of us hugely more efficient. It is also one of the reasons that medical care is legitimately so much more expensive!!! Let’s face it, medical care in Florence Nightingale’s era was little more than a cold cloth on the brow of a patient. That doesn’t cost much. It didn’t help much either. 40 years ago we could do a lot, but nowhere near what we can do, and know, today. Patients live longer, take longer to heal, and use oodles more resources. We can save lives that a few years ago would have been lost.
Some jobs are lost (typists? blacksmiths?) because of technology, but so many new ones are formed. Unemployment is a function of demand for services and resources. Businesses need profits to employ people and buy more supplies; employed people make money and use that money to buy those things and services; that produces the demand for businesses to make and and sell more and more. It is much more complicated than that, of course, and there are a lot of places for things to go wrong, but that is basically it! We just have to keep everything in sync and let it work!!!
The owner of Amazon also owns the Washington Post newspaper which is part of the Clinton/Obama/Democrat socialist which has plagued Washington DC creating the need to DRAIN THE SWAMP. We the people need to support the USA countries needs and be positive, we have to work together as people to create good future history and learn from the past history.
Well, after all, it was an anonymous source, one that can be believed and trusted because of something someone may have said.
RUSSIAN BOTS HAVE RETURNED GO TO IT KGB IS WATCHING AND YOUR BOSS PUTIN
Easy solution is to break them up into about 10 pieces. It worked with AT&T and it would work with Amazon.
Michigan does require tax on internet purchases. Amazon doesn’t collect it though. On State Income Tax forms we are generally required to pay 6% on everything bought from outside the State. (Except stuff bought while physically out of Michigan and subject to tax at time of purchase.) We have to keep our own records (or use a chart based on income and “expected purchase amounts”.) (Yeah, there is a LOT of room for “error”.) Making little businesses have to figure each State’s tax would be a nightmare for them to keep up with, but one special “Internet Tax” could be added. It could be the median % of the 50 different State’s current taxes. Foreign purchases could be digitally noted for each buyer. Surely every State could set up an app to capture the prices paid and then the State could access them, generate a form, and send it to the taxpayer. Michigan sends the MI 1040 and Instructions to everyone. This would be just one more Form.