Tax Shelters Don’t Always Work. Just Ask Amazon
This article is for subscribers only.
If Tim Cook really wanted to explain to Congress how screwed up the U.S. tax code is, he could have brought up another tech giant: Amazon.
Like Apple, Amazon stashes a lot of cash overseas (particularly in Luxembourg), far from the hands of Uncle Sam. And last year, that strategy didn’t work. The company’s tax bill grew from $291 million to $428 million, dragging Amazon to a loss for the year, in spite of massive gains in both revenue and profit.