Source: Good Jobs First
Founded in 1994, Amazon’s status as the world’s largest online retailer is not unknown. With the current valuation of $1.6 billion, it stands as one of world’s wealthiest companies, in every field.
However, companies of sorts are seen to be somewhat involved in activities which are not often condoned by the people, Despite its popularity, Amazon was exposed to have received minimum $4.7 billion globally, in tax breaks. This was reported to be for the purpose of call and data centres, warehouses. offices and film production projects.
The report was first released on February 9th by ‘Good Jobs First’, a non-profit, subsidy watchdog group. They were also the first to reveal Amazon’s subsidy being more than $3.5 billion in 2020.
The report included the information that Amazon had been receiving as much as 20 subsidy packages a year, in the name of economic development. It had initiated in the year 2012 and had crossed $4 billion mark in early 2021 itself. Out of the collective $4.7 billion, most of it ($4.1 billion) were for United States’ projects.
Additionally, Amazon had received subsidies from beyond the borders where Amazon prime and data centre networks were in full-fledged function. This had been common in the past couple of years since Amazon had expanded.
Beyond the borders of the United States, an estimate of $600 million was received as tax breaks. It expanded to far distances from the European countries to the South Americas. However, this figure was just half the truth as opposed to the actual happenings. More than 400 Amazon facilities are suspected to have received public ‘monetary aid’ for its undisclosed projects.
Owing to the “poor disclosure practices in these countries”, most of the costs of these unknown deals were concealed. Assuming the total amount to be significantly higher, researchers attempted to dig deeper. They came across enough evidence to believe that Amazon had got subsidies from South American countries such as Brazil and Argentina, India and China in Asia, France and Spain in Europe, and many more.
An Amazon Spokesperson defended the claims made in the report labelling it as “an intentionally misleading report from a self-interested organisation.” They emphasised on how Amazon had contributed towards creating jobs and investment, and how these tax acted as a part of these investments.
It was revealed that Amazon was involved in even receiving small subsidies in the European Union which could be considered insignificant to its earnings. However, with all the tax breaks its receives, Amazon does not put these into good use i.e. welfare of the public despite having billions of dollars in its pockets.
Although the subsidies received by Amazon cannot be fully be controlled, but it can be kept in check. Reports indicate that governments should seize giving aid to Amazon, and put it towards something Amazon would not. This would act as a wake up call to Amazon and urge utilities to disclose the details of these tax breaks.
Check out tweets related to Amazon’s current tax breaks:
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>NEW: Amazon has received at least $4.7 billion (!!) in tax breaks for its warehouses, data centers & offices from governments in six continents, according to a new report. <br><br>I wrote about how Amazon does this so secretively and why it hurts tax payers. <a href=”https://t.co/G8A5N9m6Ug”>https://t.co/G8A5N9m6Ug</a></p>— Lauren Kaori Gurley (@LaurenKGurley) <a href=”https://twitter.com/LaurenKGurley/status/1491450054917246978?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>February 9, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
