Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has come out in favor of President Joe Biden’s plan to raise the corporate tax rate in order to pay for a $2 trillion spending package.
Bezos announced Amazon’s support for the proposed 7-percentage-point hike on Tuesday as Biden works to consolidate support for the plan, which includes updating the country’s infrastructure.
“We support the Biden Administration’s focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure,” Bezos said in a statement. “Both Democrats and Republicans have supported infrastructure in the past, and it’s the right time to work together to make this happen.”
“We recognize this investment will require concessions from all sides—both on the specifics of what’s included as well as how it gets paid for (we’re supportive of a rise in the corporate tax rate),” the billionaire continued. “We look forward to Congress and the Administration coming together to find the right, balanced solution that maintains or enhances U.S. competitiveness.”
The American Jobs Plan would raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% and increase the global minimum tax applied to U.S. corporations to 21% from between 10.5% and 13%. It also hopes to grow revenue by cracking down on tax avoidance by companies with foreign investments. The domestic corporate rate was previously lowered from 35% as part of former President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Biden has said that the eight-year spending package, which includes some $620 billion targeting the country’s transportation infrastructure, will be fully funded by the new corporate taxes and will add about 0.5% of GDP per year in corporate revenue over the next 15 years.
Bezos is a member of Business Roundtable, which was among the first business groups to oppose the Biden tax plan.
“Business Roundtable strongly opposes corporate tax increases as a pay-for for infrastructure investment,” said the group’s President and CEO Joshua Bolten the evening before the plan was even released. “Policymakers should avoid creating new barriers to job creation and economic growth, particularly during the recovery.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is the largest business organization in the world, called the proposed legislation “dangerously misguided” and asserted that it would endanger U.S. recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bezos’s support for the plan comes as Amazon faces pressure from both the Right and the Left. An Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, seized national attention for its historic vote to unionize. The preliminary results of that effort are expected sometime this week, and the company worries an affirmative vote could portend a surge of union interest at its other facilities.
The National Labor Relations Board also concluded this week that Amazon illegally fired two of its employees. The labor board found that two user experience designers were fired last week because of their activism speaking out against the company’s policies on climate change and its labor practices at warehouses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon claims the employees were terminated for violating internal policies.
Bezos, who is worth $182 billion, was recently invited to attend an income inequality hearing by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, though he declined, drawing condemnation from Sanders and other liberal figures.
