Not paying taxes????

Trump accuses Amazon of not paying fair share of taxes

By LOUIS NELSON

President Donald Trump renewed his criticism of online retail giant Amazon Thursday morning, accusing the company of paying less than its fair share in taxes and of abusing the U.S. Postal Service.

“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!” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday morning.

The president’s criticism comes days after an Axios report that Trump is “obsessed” with Amazon and wants to go after it. Trump’s Thursday morning criticism regarding Amazon’s impact on the Postal Service and other retailers are arguments he has taken online before, often alongside criticism of The Washington Post, which shares an owner – Jeff Bezos – with Amazon.

In an interview with Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning, deputy press secretary Raj Shah said the White House did not have specific policy proposals to lay out that would correspond with the position staked out Thursday morning by the president, but said Trump wants “tax parity” between online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores. Amazon has paid state sales taxes since last April, but Shah said the online retail giant still has an advantage because there is no internet sales tax.

A Postal Service spokesman declined to comment on whether or not the Postal Service loses money on its business with Amazon. A spokeswoman for Amazon also declined to comment.

Shah also said that the president’s criticism of Amazon is wholly separate from his distaste for the Post’s coverage of his administration, which he has decried often as unfair and “fake news.”

“A lot of people have made this, with respect to Amazon, about personalities and the CEO at Amazon – we’re talking about Jeff Bezos here. But this is really about policy,” he said. “You have a huge company that’s done amazing things, in Amazon, spring up in a very short amount of time and really tax policy and other policy has to catch up to that so that way, those who are competing with Amazon are on a level playing field.”