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FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

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Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#51

Post by mmazing »

callmeal wrote: post #41
sarcasmatwork wrote: post #2

Expected behavior coming from New York Times. Good on Fedex for pushing back.

Lets look at the facts as reported by the NYT: 1. Fedex owed 1.5 Billion in taxes in 2017. 2. They owe 0 in taxes after the bill. 3. As for capital investments, the company spent less in the 2018 fiscal year than it had projected in December 2017, before the tax law passed. It spent even less in 2019. Much of its savings have gone to reward shareholders: FedEx spent more than $2 billion on stock buybacks and dividend…

More of the "but what about them" logic, or "they did it too so it's fine".

NYT should put out an article criticizing themselves AND FedEx, maybe they're both shitty but doesn't excuse one or the other.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#52

Post by sxyuan »

From the article this statement is responding to:

> Companies that make up the S&P 500 index had an average effective tax rate of 18.1 percent in 2018, down from 25.9 percent in 2016, according to an analysis of securities filings. More than 200 of those companies saw their effective tax rates fall by 10 points or more. Nearly three dozen, including FedEx, saw their tax rates fall to zero or reported that tax authorities owed them money.

> From the first quarter of 2018, when the law fully took effect, companies have spent nearly three times as much on additional dividends and stock buybacks, which boost a company’s stock price and market value, than on increased investment.

This is concrete, relevant data (unlike the argument made by the FedEx CEO, as others have already mentioned). I'm curious if anyone in the pro-Fedex crowd can provide evidence to the contrary.

The increasing share of wealth that is moving from the bottom 90% into the hands of the top 1% in the US is a real concern to me. And I suspect a big part of that has to do with the recent trend of stock buybacks and dividend increases, which benefits shareholders and not workers. How many people in the bottom 50% (or even 90%) actually own a significant amount of stock, do you think?

The first source I found on this topic states: [1]

In 2016, American households headed by someone aged 32-61 averaged $120,809.40 in retirement savings, or $264,453.30 using an expansive calculation. Using the same calculations and definitions, American households have a median of $7,800 and $17,000 saved, respectively.

[1] https://dqydj.com/retirement-savings-average-median-percenti...

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#53

Post by what-do-I-know »

mcguire wrote: post #36
atonse wrote: post #6

I love this idea – of an actual, genuine debate on this topic where an actual corporate executive can make some points (I know they will be Tim-Cook-like spin but debate is better than asynchronous speeches where people talk at each other) Update: I realized I didn't write the second half of my sentence... which makes me sound like a corporate shill. The second half is... AND someone on the other side can immediately…

In my opinion, debates are all about spin. They're too short to allow proper analysis of the responses, and mostly concern the personalities of the people. Two examples: T.H. Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, and a round-table I once attended with Dijkstra and Larry Loucks of IBM, along with a couple of other professors who were completely outclassed by those two. EWD was slow and very precise, it was clear that he was…

I agree that typical debates are far from perfect, but NY Times and many other media outlets are reporting a very biased slant on this topic. There’s effectively only one voice on the debate stage.

We’ve seen this many times before. A cartoon character of a complex issue is created, and the media pump out clickbait stories based on that.

What’s the most effective way to motivate a more accurate discussion of this topic?

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#54

Post by js2 »

pitaj wrote: post #40

Corporate taxes shouldn't exist, especially in their current form. Corporate taxes are just reflected to consumers as higher prices or to workers as lower wages. In the current structure, corporate taxes benefit large businesses more with large legal departments because they can afford to take advantage of deductions etc. Corporate taxes should be replaced by an increase in capital gains tax.

> Corporate taxes are just reflected to consumers as higher prices or to workers as lower wages.

The United States has had a corporate income tax since 1909, but in all the years since there is a major question about it that economists haven’t been able to answer satisfactorily: who pays it? [...] Probably most people assume that the corporate income tax is largely paid by consumers of its products or services. That is, they assume that although the tax is nominally levied on the corporation as a whole, in fact the burden of the tax is shifted onto customers in the form of higher prices.

All economists reject that idea. [...] That leaves two remaining groups that may bear the burden of the corporate tax: workers and shareholders. [...] Most economists now agree that the burden of the corporate income tax falls on labor to some extent, but there is disagreement over the degree. [...] People should be aware that even the best academic economists disagree on the basics of who actually pays the corporate tax.

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/who-pays-the-c...

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#55

Post by remarkEon »

Miner49er wrote: post #15
fooqux wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad it's impossible to read because of multiple overlays. I guess I'll take FedEx's word for it.

FedEx didn't even dispute any of the article. They're just doing some whataboutism. Edit: Can someone downvoting point out where I'm wrong? They say the NYTimes distorted the truth, but give no indication of how.

The "whataboutism" is the crux of the issue though. Everyone does their best to minimize their tax burden every year - this is completely rational behavior. I don't know what point the NYT was trying to make, other than maybe showing that FedEx has some good accountants. The debate that we should be having, and the one that FedEx is perhaps crudely trying to edge us toward, is whether these tax policies actually "help". They are going to say it does, and that they invest that money in the broader economy. The NYT would probably say something similar with regard to the value of journalism.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#56

Post by dabernathy89 »

The NYT piece seems to be a great example of factual statements not telling the full story. I'm a NYT subscriber and value their reporting, but I think they fell short here. It's easy to get a sense from the article that tax reform simply saved FedEx about $1.5 billion (the amount they owed the previous year). But it's more complicated than that.

Yes, tax reform helped FedEx lower their tax bill. But a huge chunk of that was due to temporary behavior changes FedEx made in response to the bill - not a permanent reduction in how much they will owe each year. One of the ways they saved a lot of money was investing a lot into assets for which they could deduct 100% of future depreciation immediately. This is a temporary part of tax reform. They would have been able to deduct that value eventually anyway, just over a long period of time.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#57

Post by wang_li »

Miner49er wrote: post #15
fooqux wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad it's impossible to read because of multiple overlays. I guess I'll take FedEx's word for it.

FedEx didn't even dispute any of the article. They're just doing some whataboutism. Edit: Can someone downvoting point out where I'm wrong? They say the NYTimes distorted the truth, but give no indication of how.

Whataboutism is justifying one party's actions by pointing at another party and saying "they do it too."

This isn't that. Fedex is saying that they do a lot more for the national economy that the NYT. They pay more in taxes, they invest more in assets, etc.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#58

Post by wbronitsky »

atonse wrote: post #6

I love this idea – of an actual, genuine debate on this topic where an actual corporate executive can make some points (I know they will be Tim-Cook-like spin but debate is better than asynchronous speeches where people talk at each other) Update: I realized I didn't write the second half of my sentence... which makes me sound like a corporate shill. The second half is... AND someone on the other side can immediately…

Are you saying that every time the New York Times publishes an article, and a corporation disagrees with the vetted, researched facts published by the paper of record in the United States, that we should hear out the corporation in a pubic forum?

I vehemently disagree. Facts are not up for debate, no matter how much money is behind the people who would like to debate them.

Additionally, implying that corporate executives don't have a platform to push their side of whatever argument they are fighting is inane.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#59

Post by CelestialTeapot »

appleiigs wrote: post #31
scott_s wrote: post #20

This statement is a farce. They claim the story is factually incorrect, but provide no corrections. They point out the NYT does the same thing, but that does not contradict anything in the NYT article, and has no bearing on what they did. Finally, they yell "debate me!" but rather than proposing a debate on the facts in dispute, instead want to debate federal tax policy which neither controls.

I think it's a great statement. They aren't disputing the facts. Fedex is disputing that cutting taxes is a bad thing and is saying lets talk about it. EDIT: and as you pointed out Fedex is just following fed tax policy that it doesn't control.

>as you pointed out Fedex is just following fed tax policy that it doesn't control.

That is incorrect. According to the article FedEx is referencing [1], the NY Times wrote that FedEx (along with UPS) met regularly with Congressional committee staff who were writing the tax policy and pushed hard for their own agenda.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/business/how-fedex-cut-it...

FedEx spent $10 million on lobbying in 2017, in line with previous spending, with much of it focused on tax issues, according to federal records. Its team pushed hard to shape the bill behind the scenes, meeting regularly with House and Senate committee staff who were writing the provisions.

Mr. Smith met with Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in February 2017, and on May 26 he spoke on the phone with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, according to Mr. Mnuchin’s public calendar.

EDIT: correcting formatting issues.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#60

Post by Consultant32452 »

CPLX wrote: post #25

This is stupid. The NY Times, as a business, wasn't a subject of the article. It's not a competition between a media company and a shipping company. It's a piece of journalism. Either that journalism is accurate or it isn't. If it's wrong they should issue a correction, or review how it could be misleading or slanted and offer an alternate perspective. If it's correct they should stand by it. In no event does the wri…

The problem is it isn't journalism, it's activism. People say corporate media is biased, but I think that falls short. It's not simply biased, it has an agenda. "Company follows tax laws" is not news. Whatever any individual company pays in taxes is not news unless there's criminal fraud of some sort. So it's completely fair to call them out in this way.
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