Amazon, taxes and toll roads
Amazon tax
Regarding “Trump rips a favorite target — Amazon — again” (Page A15, Saturday), Associated Press reporter Joseph Pisani states that President Trump “has accused (Amazon) of failing to pay ‘internet taxes,’ though it’s never been made clear by the White House what the president means by that.”
I’m not sure why Pisani is confused about Trump’s meaning. The president has been complaining for years about Amazon and other online retailers failing to collect local and state sales taxes — as all other retailers are required to do — thus giving Amazon a huge competitive advantage. Amazon claims it started to do so in 2012, and states that it now collects these taxes for all 45 states that have a sales tax. But this is simply not true. I reviewed my 24 Amazon purchases in 2017 and found sales taxes on only four transactions, and only two of those were for the full Texas state sales tax of 8.25 percent.
Amazon doesn’t collect sales taxes on behalf of third party vendors, but they represent less than 20 percent of Amazon’s sales, so that hardly explains the discrepancy.
Pisani could have relieved his own confusion and shed light on the subject with a cursory web search, but he didn’t. Was this due to laziness, a bias against Trump, or both? Pete Smith, Cypress
Amazon attacked
As an Amazon stock holder I believe it is an abuse of power for the sitting president of the United State to make derogatory personal statements about individual companies or people. The true abuse of power will be if Trump converts his personal political grievances into public policy targeting a specific company. One historical factoid he does not seem to know is that one of the reasons the post office is struggling is that Republicans made a requirement for the post office to fund 75 years of retiree health care benefits over just 10 years.
The only thing for certain is until Trump accepts more stewardship over the words that come from his mouth or tweets as the president of the United States, he will get what I believe is his desired result: Keep his actions, good or bad, in front of the American public. Ron Curtis , Houston
Failing infrastructure
Regarding “toll road pushback worries area leaders” (Page A3, Tuesday), I am as opposed to toll roads as most Texans are, but unless the state is going to collect more taxes to cover the cost of building and maintaining roads, what’s the alternative? This constant cry of “tax cuts, tax cuts,” doesn’t recognize our failing infrastructure, growing population, poor educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, inability to enforce regulations intended to preserve our health and safety, and so on. Now we have the federal government piling trillions more onto the deficit to give corporations and wealthy Americans tax relief, so don’t be looking to Washington for money for these or any future needs — like Harvey recovery. Jeanne Calkins, Fulshear