Under the title "Bezos and Taxes Again: Agreed to Biden's Plan and Evaded It!" the Arabic website Al Arabiya reported that the repercussions of Jeff Bezos's resignation as the CEO of Amazon are ongoing. An American report indicated that the world's richest man called for an increase in taxes on other U.S. companies according to President Joe Biden's plan, while the company pressured relevant parties to keep its tax amounts low.
In detail, a report published by Politico on Thursday stated that Amazon publicly embraced Biden's plan to raise corporate tax rates across the board; however, it still pressured Congress to maintain a significant tax exemption that helped reduce its tax liabilities.
Behind the scenes, the founder of the giant company, Jeff Bezos, received praise earlier this year when he announced that Amazon would support "an increase in the corporate tax rate" to help cover the costs of Biden's infrastructure package, contrary to the positions of most remaining American companies that opposed the President's plan. While Biden himself criticized the tax rate imposed on Amazon as part of his plan, the report indicated that behind the scenes, Amazon and other companies took steps to help prevent tax increases.
It is noteworthy that an American investigation into the tax evasion of some of the world's wealthiest individuals sparked a scandal last month in the United States, revealing information and numbers that had long been kept secret, leading the Treasury Department to intervene. The nonprofit news site ProPublica published details of income payments and tax records for some "big players" in finance, including the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, as well as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, entrepreneur Elon Musk, and businessman Bill Gates.
The investigation highlighted the years during which Bezos and others paid relatively little or no federal income tax at all. It also revealed that Bezos's wealth grew by $99 billion from 2014 to 2018, while his reported income to the tax authorities amounted to $4.22 billion, from which he paid $973 million in taxes, equating to less than 1%. Notably, the Internal Revenue Service has systems that track employees' access to taxpayer information and had previously terminated employees for unauthorized access to this information.
Additionally, Jeff Bezos no longer serves as the CEO of Amazon; he has been succeeded by Andy Jassy, who previously established Amazon's web services focused on cloud computing. However, he will continue to have a significant influence as he remains the largest shareholder, owning 10% of the company's stock. According to reports, Bezos is still the richest businessman in the world, with a fortune exceeding $203 billion.
