Here we go with Trump publicly attacking Amazon again, accusing them of not paying sales taxes and abusing the post office…or something.
I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018
But as one reporter explains, Trump’s sales tax claim is not accurate:
The first claim is false. Amazon now pays sales taxes in every state where there is a sales tax. (There are still complaints about its tax practices, but it pays.) It has also lobbied for a federal law that would make other online sellers do so. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/nLeNSjxycE
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 29, 2018
That sounds right to me. When I purchase something from Amazon in my state, sales tax is applied.
CNN also backs this up with an article from exactly one year ago, where they start out by saying:
On Saturday Amazon (AMZN) will start collecting sales taxes on purchases in the last four states where it wasn’t doing so: Hawaii, Idaho, Maine and New Mexico. Four other states — Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon — have no sales tax, while a fifth, Alaska, doesn’t have a statewide tax, but it does have municipal sales taxes.
We also pointed out the last time that Trump unfairly attacked Amazon that their agreement with the Post Office has nothing to do with their losses. In fact their package delivery service is profitable enough that it helps subsidize their letter and rural delivery service.
So yes, once again it sounds like Trump is lying again to smear a private company. Ugh.
Why all the hate for Amazon? Here’s why:
Almost too obvious to say, but Trump's Amazon-bashing has always been inseparable from his media-bashing. The president is going after the owner of a newspaper that aggressively investigates him. pic.twitter.com/5dsRIXHBMO
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 29, 2018
Yep. That makes perfect sense.
Here’s the bottom line for me. If Amazon is doing something illegal then the DOJ needs to investigate and prosecute them.
But if they aren’t, then Trump needs to STOP smearing a private company. Period. It’s ridiculous that we would even have to say such a thing because it’s absolutely not how a president should behave. He sounds more like a Thug-in-Chief when he does this.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. It’s days like this that I wouldn’t mind seeing a President Mike Pence happen.