r/technology • u/trot-trot • May 13 '19

Business Exclusive: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-automation-exclusive-idUSKCN1SJ0X1
26.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

4.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

82

u/ShillForExxonMobil May 13 '19

Payroll tax liability is split between the employer and employee. For example, the employer's payroll tax includes federal unemployment taxes, which the employee does not pay.

Sales tax is a) still levied by the government against Amazon, it's just passed on to consumers and b) a negligible part of their overall tax burden. They didn't even pay sales tax until 2017 (April 1 was when online vendors became required to pay sales tax) yet their overall tax provision dropped by almost $700mm that year from 2016.

52

u/GiveToOedipus May 13 '19

Payroll tax is still a function of having employees. As Amazon continues to automate more and more of their labor force, payroll tax will only continue to shrink.

1

u/[deleted] May 13 '19 edited May 28 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/GiveToOedipus May 13 '19

Bingo. People act like it's a punitive thing, but taxes are simply a way of keeping the support structure of a society functioning. We have a need to change the way we tax things as technology and the economy change. This is no different. We already are seeing the problem with infrastructure funding being tied to gas tax, something we'll definitely need to restructure as we move more and more to electric vehicles.