Amazon paid no taxes and got hundreds of millions of dollars in rebates in the last two years.

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

Amazon, the ubiquitous purveyor of two-day delivery of just about everything, nearly doubled its profits to $11.2 billion in 2018 from $5.6 billion the previous year and, once again, didn’t pay a single cent of federal income taxes.
The company’s newest corporate filing reveals that, far from paying the statutory 21 percent income tax rate on its U.S. income in 2018, Amazon reported a federal income tax rebate of $129 million. For those who don’t have a pocket calculator handy, that works out to a tax rate of negative 1 percent. 

The fine print of Amazon’s income tax disclosure shows that this achievement is partly due to various unspecified “tax credits” as well as a tax break for executive stock options.
This isn’t the first year that the cyber-retailing giant has avoided federal taxes. Last year, the company paid no federal corporate income taxes on $5.6 billion in U.S. income.
ITEP has examined the tax-paying habits of corporations for nearly 40 years and has long advocated for closing loopholes and special breaks that allow many profitable corporations to pay zero or single-digit effective tax rates. When Congress in 2017 enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and substantially cut the statutory corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, proponents claimed the rate cut would incentivize better corporate citizenship. However, the tax law failed to broaden the tax base or close a slew of tax loopholes that allow profitable companies to routinely avoid paying federal and state income taxes on almost half of their profits.

 In fact, the Trump Administration and its congressional allies included lavish new giveaways such as immediate expensing of capital investments. Multiple analysts scored the tax law as a huge revenue loser, giving away far more to big corporations in rate cuts than it takes in loophole-closers.

 Amazon is no stranger to tax controversies. Last year the company, in a staggering act of hubris, engaged in a year-long aggressive push for huge new relocation subsidies for its “HQ2” headquarters. A year later, Amazon appears to have won its two-front battle against fair taxes by continuing to altogether avoid federal taxes and obtaining lucrative packages of local tax breaks for not one but two new HQ2 locations, in New York and Virginia as well breaks for an operations center in Nashville, Tenn.

And #PoorBezos has the unmitigated gall to demand subsidies from this state and city and to go after Trump with the national/his personal newspaper that he owns. What a insecure and sad greedy little miser.

Senior seeking reimbursement from landlord

From DNA Info:

Ronald Peters has not seen his wife since Dec. 7, the day the elevator in his 6-story building on Austin Street, near 84th Road, in Kew Gardens was shut down for a major repair.

The 82-year old Korean War veteran, who needs a walker to move around and is unable to climb stairs, was forced to temporarily relocate to a Holiday Inn near the Veterans Hospital in Brooklyn where he had a number of appointments scheduled for December and January, he said.

His wife Virginia, 80, who also can't climb stairs, stayed in their apartment on the top floor.

Peters, who said he has been unable to get in touch with his landlord, PSRS Realty Group, since early December, already paid more than $7,000 for his stay at the hotel, according to the bills he shared with DNAinfo New York.

Now, he wants the landlord to pay him back, he said.

“They should reimburse me because what do they want me to do? Go up these steps?" said Peters, who has a pacemaker and suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, among other illnesses. "I can’t go up six flights.”

“It’s so aggravating," he said, adding that if the landlord does not reimburse him, he will consider legal action.

PSRS Realty Group did not return multiple phone calls from DNAinfo seeking comment.

Irish traveler issues refund to scammed victim

"The articles in the Post and News scared him so he called her and got a messenger to bring a certified check to her house. We checked it out and it's real. He purchased the check in a TD Bank branch in Elmhurst.

It's obviously very lucrative over here for him so he doesn't want to be hassled. Capt. Manson (104th Pct) tracking him down too...

The Post did a good job, again the reporter saw it on QC... good job Crappie!" - Robert Holden

Why, thank you. :)

You can fight city hall...

From the Queens Courier:

A Fresh Meadows homeowner who said he was bilked by the city in 2009 for over $2,000 was reimbursed more than half the cost and was refunded a piece of his pilfered American Dream.

“I feel good that I won. I got into a good fight and I loved it,” said John Biagi, 62.

Biagi said when the city billed him for what he called unnecessary sidewalk repairs, he felt his right as a homeowner was violated.

In 2004, the retired mechanic was warned by the Department of Transportation (DOT) to replace approximately 68-square-feet of sidewalk on his Utopia Parkway property. While he said the slabs were defective from two trees the city recently removed, he said he had every plan to cooperate with the agency, but first requested more information.

He did not hear back from them until 2009 when he said city workers came out of the woodwork, replacing nearly the entire sidewalk surrounding Biagi’s corner home — including close to 800-square-feet of pavement instead of the originally estimated 68.

Total cost the city billed Biagi: $2,240.69.

Now, the homeowner has been given back $1,442.62 — a check from the city Biagi was happy to cash. He has also replaced his billboard with a smaller one that reads “Refunded $1,442.62. Thanks for your support.”

The former sign, which garnered much attention, still leans against the home Biagi has lived in for over 20 years, and he plans to let fellow frustrated neighbors borrow it.

“I think it was wrong that I should have been in the fight in the first place, but at least I got justice in the end,” Biagi said.

CityTime refund due

From the NY Post:

The company responsible for the fraud-ridden CityTime payroll system acknowledged yesterday it will have to pay back at least $232 million to the Big Apple, according to records filed with the feds.

Virginia-based Science Applications International Corp., which already has sacked three top execs because of the CityTime boondoggle, said that it might well have to pay even more to City Hall but that the preliminary reimbursement sum is already proving to be a drag on company revenues. SAIC yesterday announced a $17 million loss for the third quarter.

“It is possible that the figure could be larger,” according to an SAIC statement released as the stock market was closing for the day.

SAIC CEO Walt Havenstein, in a conference call with analysts, said the company made the loss calculation based on recent “developments,” but he refused to elaborate.
CityTime was supposed to prevent fraud and time padding by city workers but instead became the biggest financial scandal of Mayor Bloomberg’s 10-year reign.

The megabucks payment is about 30 percent of the total of some $760 million the city spent on the system.

Johnny thinks he's slick

From CBS New York:

A spokesman for the campaign of New York City Comptroller John Liu says about $20,000 in contributions have been returned after federal authorities began investigating the politician’s fundraising.

George Arzt tells The New York Times in Thursday editions that “refunds are a standard process of campaign committees.” And he says it has been the policy of Liu’s campaign to refund any contribution “when a question is raised.”

So, how does one return contributions to people who didn't donate them? Do you write a refund check to the bundler, thereby admitting guilt? Or do Mrs. Wang and Mr. Woo get some early Christmas bonuses?

From the International Business Times:

For one Flushing Democratic strategist who has known Liu for years, the future for Liu, a Democrat who served as Flushing's City Councilman from 2001 to 2009, can be boiled down to one sentence.

"He's either going to be the next mayor or he's going to go to jail," the Democratic strategist told the IBTimes Tuesday.

The Flushing Democratic strategist believes that Liu will run as long as he does not end up behind bars before Election Day.

Buyers get refunds from Sky View Parc

From the NY Post:

Sponsors of the massive, $1 billion Sky View Parc complex in Flushing will refund 75 percent of $5 million in down payments to buyers who backed out of contracts on $50 million worth of luxury apartments -- a settlement likely to send shivers through the ranks of the city's condo developers.

The agreement will recoup $3.69 million plus interest for 118 buyers represented by Adam Leitman Bailey, a lawyer who has filed suits for plaintiffs in numerous similar cases.

All the buyers sued under the once-obscure federal Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act, which requires condo sponsors to register their project with the Housing and Urban Development department and to provide buyers with "disclosure" reports. As at many other condo projects, that was not done at Sky View Parc, located on College Point Boulevard.

The suit also cited alleged failure by Onex Real Estate Partners to disclose "substantial problems" at the project to the buyers. Those issues, reported in The Post last August, included at the time a $160 million cost overrun and loan restructurings.