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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

#61

Post by 300bps »

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.

They claim the story is factually incorrect, but provide no corrections.

There were two claims in the NY Times story:

1) FedEx paid $0 in tax

2) FedEx "has not made good on its promised investment surge"

In response, FedEx wrote in their statement:

1) our billions of dollars of tax payments whereby they dispute paying $0 in taxes

2) $6 billion of capital that FedEx invested in the U.S. economy

This directly contradicts what the NY Times wrote. And then they further point that the NY Times is actually guilty of what the NY Times is accusing FedEx of. How is their statement a farce?

Further, the problem is that the tax code, especially for corporations, is so complex that anyone's tax payments can be spun any way you want them.

For example, I contributed the maximum allowed to my employer's 401k this year. Someone could spin a news story saying, "300bps is avoiding taxes!" because I legally did not pay tax on $19,000 of income I otherwise would've had to.

I don't know the particulars of FedEx's tax situation and honestly it would probably take me days of studying it before I could scratch the surface of understanding it. If FedEx did something illegal, there is a nice tax bounty the NY Times could get for reporting them - https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-informant-award

The NY Times is obviously not aware of anything FedEx did that is illegal so instead they put out a piece accusing them of paying $0 tax and not investing enough.

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

#63

Post by partiallypro »

panarky wrote: post #49
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 FedEx statement seems like a classic example of corporate deception. It seems very carefully worded, probably by a team of attorneys, to be technically true but grossly misleading. The tell is that FedEx calls the NYT article "factually incorrect" but never states exactly what assertions they dispute. It's as if they want the reader and the media to infer that FedEx actually did pay taxes on billions in profit, o…

> The FedEx statement seems like a classic example of corporate deception.

This coincidentally also describes the NYTs piece which was also misleading, bordering on activism.

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

#64

Post by mepiethree »

blhack wrote: post #48
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.

Disable javascript and your time on the internet will improve substantially.

As someone who writes JavaScript for a living, :(

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

#65

Post by lstroud »

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…

Sounds like they just want equal footing for responding to accusations. I hope it happens. It would be entertaining.

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

#66

Post by snarf21 »

jobu wrote: post #32
rahimnathwani wrote: post #4

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

From the NYTimes article: > In the 2017 fiscal year, FedEx owed more than $1.5 billion in taxes. The next year, it owed nothing. > Its financial filings show it owed no taxes in the 2018 fiscal year overall. Company officials said FedEx paid $2 billion in total federal income taxes over the past 10 years. So in the last 10 years FedEx paid $2B in taxes, of which $1.5B was paid in 2017. That seems really weird. Does a…

I didn't read all of this but "taxes" is a loaded question.

I'm assuming the $2B is about payroll taxes, their share of federal income tax for W2 employees. All companies with these type of employees pay some of these (along with SS and workman's comp, etc.)

There is another question of corporate taxes. Corporate taxes work different than individual taxes. For individuals we: EARN > PAY TAKES > SPEND. However, for corporations they: EARN > SPEND > PAY TAXES. This means that all companies can choose to pay no corporate taxes ever. This is purposeful and the intent of the tax code is to encourage reinvestment and expansion and capital expenditures like new equipment because this keeps more people employed long term. This is always why people don't understand when company X paid $0 in corporate taxes. It is a choice. It should be expected from someone like Amazon who re-invests so heavily.

Now if a company wants to have cash on hand or do stock buybacks, they they must realize this money and pay taxes on it. The new tax laws made this a much much more attractive proposition. The "promise" was that this would be spent on expansion however most was spent on stock buybacks which is a large driver of the stock market up in the last year despite interest rates around zero and rapidly slowing growth. It seems to me that this is the jist of the NYT article. The $0 is just to grab headlines. Lots of companies lobbied for these cuts for "expansion" but none of them did. They took the opportunity to leverage it against stock price which makes sense for the C suite since that is a major part of their compensation. This is another reason that board members, C suite and VPs of public companies should not be paid in stocks or options or RSUs.

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

#67

Post by jmull »

dabernathy89 wrote: post #56

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…

The information you're using to show the article doesn't tell the full story is in the article.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by adamrezich »

wang_li wrote: post #57
Miner49er wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is this even up for debate? Why would anyone think that the NYT is more useful to the economy than FedEx? Why do people continue to put ""journalism"" on such a high pedestal? Like, what actual value did the NYT article produce? At worst it could have potentially negatively affected the FedEx stock price and overall popular perception, for no good reason other than to generate clicks/ad views.

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

#70

Post by lstroud »

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.

More legitimate discourse in the public square is a good thing.

Maybe we’ll finally get out of the one sided shouting matches that modern journalism seems to encourage.

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