There is no such thing as “Internet taxes.”
Hours after The Washington Post published a story revealing that a Time magazine cover featuring Donald Trump, which hangs in several of his golf clubs, is actually fake, the president lashed out at the Post and its owner, Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos, in a bizarre, borderline incoherent tweet. “The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!” Trump wrote.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon
not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!
8:06 AM - 28 Jun 2017
It’s hard to say which is the most puzzling aspect of the president’s sudden exclamation. For one, Bezos visited the White House just last week to talk to Trump about, among other things, giving tech companies big tax breaks. Now, because Trump appears to be mad at The Washington Post—whether because of the Time story or some other article—he is threatening to impose or enforce some kind of major new tax on Amazon, which has little relationship with the Post beyond their shared connection with Bezos. While it is hard to decipher, it would seem that Trump could be endorsing a bill to let states levy additional taxes on sales on e-commerce. He may be unaware that Amazon customers currently pay sales taxes in all applicable U.S. states, though there is no federal “Internet tax.”
Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that the president of the United States is openly calling for the owner of a news organization that is critical of his administration to be punished, via government policy, apparently for publishing stories that he dislikes. And while Trump may very well be a paper tiger, it is not necessarily an idle threat. The Trump administration will have the opportunity to derail Amazon’s $13.7 billion deal to acquire Whole Foods, which could be challenged by the Justice Department, although such a move seems unlikely. Trump’s nominee for assistant attorney general for antitrust, Makan Delrahim, has indicated in the past that he would not move to block similar corporate mergers.
