Blue v. Blue Struggle Session: Elizabeth Warren Clashes with Amazon
Senator Elizabeth Warren clashed publicly with Amazon on Twitter Thursday night after she accused the company of not paying its “fair share” of taxes.
The battle is the latest example of rifts in the coalition of the left that brought the Democrats to power in the most recent elections. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post, the primary left-leaning newspaper of the nation’s capital. Its vice president of global corporate affairs is Jay Carney, who served as White House spokesperson in the Obama era and prior to that was director of communications to Joe Biden.
On Thursday, Warren uploaded a video to Twitter from a Senate Finance Committee hearing in which she accused companies of “manipulating the tax code to avoid paying their fair share.” She singled out Amazon as one of the companies that “exploit loopholes and tax havens to pay close to nothing in taxes.”
Giant corporations like Amazon report huge profits to their shareholders – but they exploit loopholes and tax havens to pay close to nothing in taxes. That’s just not right – and it’s why I’ll be introducing a bill to make the most profitable companies pay a fair share. pic.twitter.com/vPrmGbjUKW
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 25, 2021
Warren has proposed a new corporate tax that would impose a charge on the accounting income of corporations. The aim is to force companies to pay a tax based on the income they disclose to shareholders rather than the income calculated according to ordinary corporate tax rules.
Amazon then fired back. As it has in the past, Amazon said that it simply pays as much taxes as the U.S. law requires.
1/3 You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them. If you don’t like the laws you’ve created, by all means, change them. Here are the facts: Amazon has paid billions of dollars in corporate taxes over the past few years alone.
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 26, 2021
3/3 So what have we done about that? $350B in investments since 2010 & 400K new US jobs last year alone. And while you’re working on changing the tax code, can we please raise the federal minimum wage to $15?
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 26, 2021
It is likely that Carney, the former Obama administration official, controls this Twitter account. One person familiar with the operations of Amazon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it is likely that Carney himself wrote these tweets. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
Warrn lashed out, claiming that Amazon’s lawyers and lobbyists were responsible for the loopholes in the tax code.
I didn’t write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did. But you bet I’ll fight to make you pay your fair share. And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets. https://t.co/3vCAI93MST
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 26, 2021
Her line about breaking up Big Tech so they are not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets has become a lightning rod for criticism.
Yes , of course, senators definitely should be threatening to cut companies down to size so they are too weak and scared to mouth off to their eminence. Good plan.
Sometimes the veil slips… https://t.co/FVMRP1zqsm
— Clifford Asness (@CliffordAsness) March 26, 2021
Pretty explicit: Democrats use the threat of governmental power in order to make sure nobody engages of speech that criticizes them. https://t.co/bas5t3LWiu
— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) March 26, 2021
Robby Soave at Reason Magazine wrote:
This is a classic example of saying the quiet part out loud. Warren inadvertently revealed that her crusade to hurt major tech companies is partly driven by personal animus: She wants to reduce the power of corporations so that they are no longer “powerful enough to heckle senators.”
In fact, everyone enjoys the right to “heckle senators,” if by “heckle,” we mean engage in constitutionally-protected political expression. Senators are elected representatives: They are supposed to be accountable to their constituents and the public more broadly. It is not “cancel culture” when people criticize Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) for her previous enthusiasm for QAnon; similarly, there’s nothing sinister or harassing about Amazon clapping back at Warren.
The income reported by business for financial accounting purposes can differ from income reported for tax purposes because different accounting rules apply. For example, under current law a business that invests in equipment with a useful life of 20 years or less can immediately deduct the cost of that machinery from its income for tax purposes—just as it could expense like employee wages and interest expenses. But for the purposes of so-called “book income,” it would only be permitted to subtract a fraction of the expense each year, so that the total expense is stretched out over the useful life of the equipment. As a result, taxable income would be lower than book income.
Another example, companies using accrual accounting report revenues when earned in the reporting period even though customers have not paid actually paid for the revenue-related sales. For instance, a company providing webservices under contract would report the revenue for each period it provided the services even if the customer has not yet sent in a check. For tax accounting, however, the company could delay reporting those revenues until they actually get collected. That would, again, make book income higher than tax income.
It’s not really clear that one is the “real” measure of profits. In fact, some analysts think that taxable income may be a better measure of a company’s financial health because the current costs of running the business are clearer and not hidden behind depreciation or inflated by expected revenue that may never materialize.
The Intercept: Internal Amazon Documents Show Company Knows Employees Are Forced to Pee in Bottles
A recent report from the Intercept reveals that internal documents show that Amazon is aware that many of its workers have been forced to urinate in bottles despite recent public denials by the company that such events ever took place.
Breitbart News reported yesterday that e-commerce giant Amazon has begun a new tactic in its PR battle against stories of its extreme workplace conditions, now just outright denying many previously documented issues.
In a reply to a tweet from Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) who complained about the firm’s union-busting tactics and that some of its workers were forced to “urinate in water bottles,” Amazon’s Twitter account responded: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.”
Many were quick to point out that the situation has been well documented in the past:
Peeing at Amazon – or not being able to – is an actual thing. Here's what workers told me. https://t.co/D0lp4pdQ5D https://t.co/eqFiS8WZbG pic.twitter.com/RVLOYezGvE
— Will Evans (@willCIR) March 25, 2021
Now, the Intercept reports that internal documents show that Amazon executives are well aware of the issue and have acknowledged it internally.
The Intercept writes:
One document from January, marked “Amazon Confidential,” details various infractions by Amazon employees, including “public urination” and “public defecation.” The document was provided to The Intercept by an Amazon employee in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who, like most of the employees I talked to, was granted anonymity to avoid professional reprisal
The employee also provided an email sent by an Amazon logistics area manager last May that chastised employees for defecating into bags. “This evening, an associate discovered human feces in an Amazon bag that was returned to station by a driver. This is the 3rd occasion in the last 2 months when bags have been returned to station with poop inside. We understand that DA’s [driver associates] may have emergencies while on-road, and especially during Covid, DAs have struggled to find bathrooms while delivering.”
“We’ve noticed an uptick recently of all kinds of unsanitary garbage being left inside bags: used masks, gloves, bottles of urine,” the email continues. “By scanning the QR code on the bag, we can easily identify the DA who was in possession of the bag last. These behaviors are unacceptable, and will result in Tier 1 Infractions going forward. Please communicate this message to your drivers. I know if may seem obvious, or like something you shouldn’t need to coach, but please be explicit when communicating the message that they CANNOT poop, or leave bottles of urine inside bags.”
One former Amazon delivery driver, Halie Marie Brown, told The Intercept that the practice “happens because we are literally implicitly forced to do so, otherwise we will end up losing our jobs for too many ‘undelivered packages.’”
An email that Brown previously received from her former manager in August stated: “In the morning, you must check your van thoroughly for garbage and urine bottle. If you find urine bottle (s) please report to your lead, supporting staff or me. Vans will be inspected by Amazon during debrief, if urine bottle (s) are found, you will be issue an infraction tier 1 for immediate offboarding.”
Amazon does prohibit the practice and refers to it as a “Tier 1″ infraction, which employees have stated can lead to termination but delivery drivers state that this is disingenuous as they are unable to meet their quotes otherwise. One Amazon delivery employee based in Massachusetts stated: “They give us 30 minutes of paid breaks, but you will not finish your work if you take it, no matter how fast you are.”
When asked if managed had been more lenient on quotas after discovering that employees were being forced to urinate and defecate in their delivery vans, Brown responded: “Not at all. In fact, over the course of my time there, our package and stop counts actually increased substantially.”
Read more at the Intercept here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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