White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said the Trump administration feels Amazon is getting an unfair advantage in the marketplace and believes it’s time to “level the playing field.”
“Right now there is no internet sales tax. And as a result companies like Amazon can buy and sell good without having to pay basic retail taxes that your stores and your convenience stores and all the folks around, when you walk out of the studio over there and grab something, you have to pay,” Raj said. “And that puts brick-and-mortar retail stores at a disadvantage. It’s been there for years. Amazon is really competing against, in many ways, mom-and-pop shops and has this advantage. The president has talked about it for years.”
Raj thinks those who believe Trump is on a personal vendetta against Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos are mistaken and said the policies the White House is looking to enact are aimed at keeping Amazon under control.
“We’re not laying out specific policies,” Raj added. “But the president was talking about something that’s been in the news. A lot of people made this with respect to Amazon about personalities and the CEO at Amazon, or at, we’re talking about Jeff Bezos here. But this is really about policy. You have a huge company that’s done amazing things in Amazon, spring up in very short amount of time and really tax policy and other policy has to catch up to that. So that way, those who are competing with Amazon are on a level playing field.”
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 U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018
Via BizPAC
