To make my point more clearly -- I think accounting is too complicated to reduce to simple populist sound-bytes like "companies with X income should pay Y tax". I also think it's plausible that there are good reasons for some or all of the deductions Amazon is taking advantage of. That might not turn out to be the case, but it's impossible to know in advance without knowing what those deductions are.
Those "good reasons" appear to be "because our representatives like to keep their paychecks coming and fashion the tax code in a way favorable to corporations". You can complain about "populist sound-bytes" all you'd like, but it's absurd for a company to use so many public resources and pay nothing.
I think the very fact that it is complicated is unfair.
I want one of the following
1. An education system so absurdly stellar that our 18 year old high school graduates have the legal and fiscal expertise to navigate the tax code as expertly as a HSBC financial advisor, or
2. A tax code so simple it can be read and understood, verbatim, by every US citizen.
To make my point more clearly -- I think accounting is too complicated to reduce to simple populist sound-bytes like "companies with X income should pay Y tax". I also think it's plausible that there are good reasons for some or all of the deductions Amazon is taking advantage of. That might not turn out to be the case, but it's impossible to know in advance without knowing what those deductions are.