Donald Trump bring the clash with Amazon at a higher level: the fiscal one. The President of the United States has never loved the e-commerce giant, so much so that several times during the election campaign he attacked the group and its president, Jeff Bezos, arguing that if he had won the election he would have proposed much more restrictive. Here we are now.
According to reports from the online newspaper Axios, The Donald wants to force Amazon to pay more taxes. Trump would even be "obsessed" with the issue, because several of his friends would have told him that their businesses have been destroyed by the online commerce giant.
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 US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
- Donald J. Trump (@ realDonaldTrump) 29 March 2018
Trump's harsh words immediately attracted the interest of investors who showered the stock on Wall Street with a shower of sell-offs. After yesterday's collapse, which destroyed 30 billion dollars of capitalization, Amazon is still going down and less than an hour after the opening of the lists it lost 3,5% 1.380 dollars.
On several occasions, via Twitter, the US president attacked Amazon accusing it of having hit the retail sales sector with lots of job losses.
And in Italy? As Federico Fubini points out today in the Corriere della Sera, the numbers of the budget made by Amazon in Italy are shrouded in mystery. The turnover, which probably amounts to several billion euros, is not known, nor if the accounts are in the black or at a loss (a red desired, of course, with the aim of gaining market share).
We only know that in December, after a criminal investigation, Amazon made a one-off payment of 100 million to the Revenue Agency to comply with taxes for the 2011-2015 period.
Not only. Last December Agcom had sent the group a formal notice, asking it to "regularize its position". The problem has to do with its nature as a postal service company, given the volumes of parcels it sorts.
In theory, Amazon should submit to the obligations on contracts and contributions indicated by national and European laws for postal services. But he doesn't seem willing to do so, so it's probable that within a month he will receive a fine from the Authority.
Last update: 15.56 on 29 March.
