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Amazon is not only the biggest retailer in the world but can also beat its chest over ethering the IRS in court.
Leave it to Amazon to earn the first major victory against Donald Trump. While the country is zeroed in on the health care bill that is being voted on, Jeff Bezos and company have scored a huge win for business, specifically business that Trump has taken on with in his war of words.
The finer details are boring and mundane, but the outcome is rather significant. Essentially, the IRS has been investigated Amazon for not paying enough taxes on it’s income, something that Trump said was an example of the company getting away with financial murder.
That’s aggressive and, as we learned on Thursday, not legally correct.
According to CNBC, a federal judge has ruled the IRS abused its powers in trying to basically steal $1.5 billion from Amazon over something you probably don’t care about. The dispute arose over a data and software transfers, which Amazon claimed the IRS overestimated taxes for. From here we get into things about transcontinental tax laws but the long and short of it is that Amazon did something that the IRS didn’t like — avoiding mass taxes on mass profits — but did it legally.
“This is good for everybody, not just Amazon,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. “It reaffirms that the tax law permits wholly-owned subsidiaries can license intellectual property” as Amazon did. “Totally legal, totally legal.”
This specific dispute dates back a decade, so it’s not a direct victory against Trump. But the President took on Amazon and has landed on the wrong side of a ruling that would have backed up his claim that the company wasn’t paying enough taxes.
Amazon isn’t just the largest online retailer in the world but it appears not even governments can touch them.
