system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why the hell does Amazon not pay taxes?
gpt
This is a large oversimplification. What they mean when they say that is that Amazon did not pay any federal corporate income taxes. 

They still paid payroll taxes on all their employees, Sales taxes in states they operate in that have them, state franchise taxes, property taxes. 

In Federal taxation there is a concept called the Net Operating Loss or the NOL. As a corporation you file your taxes every year even if you did not make money. If you lost money that year you generate a NOL. Those NOL's can roll forward until you do make money. 

If you make a Corporation in year 0. Year 1, you lose 1,000 and year 2 you lose 500, in year 3 you make 1,500, you will pay 0 income taxes in year 3. Then some journalist says, "Amazon doesn't pay taxes." You click on his website and he gets that sweet sweet advertising money. 

I don't know if Amazon does this but a lot of countries use overseas subsidiaries to avoid tax. Basically you make a corporation in a beneficial tax environment, like Ireland. (They are typically small island nations that don't have much in the way of resources, Bahamas, Cyprus, Malta, Ireland) Then you license the right to do business from your U.S. Corporation to that corporation and move all the profits onto it. The problem is, you can't get the money back into the U.S. without paying tax on it but you can stash it in an overseas bank account and avoid tax until you need it.