491–500 of 581 posts
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Kinda off topic but why do grade school kids need a MacBook air?
Good question. My elementary school/middle school had Macs. Even as a young child, I thought the appropriation of funds for that seemed wrong. I can’t think of a legitimate reason a school district needs luxury computers for children that are likely to spill stuff or otherwise ruin them.
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I don't think the sins of Amazon are any worse than most other major U.S. retailers.
There warehouses are significantly worse than average in terms of injuries per hour. They also frequently sell fraudulent items directly harming consumers. I can’t think of a metric where they aren’t worse than the average retailer.
This seems incredibly poorly done from a PR perspective and there's no way to make this headline read well for them. Why not create and announce they're moving to something like "Amazon GiveBack" that gives some sliders to users to vote on the allocation? Sure, people could still call them out on how it's a reduction of what they're donating, but there's a much higher chance the headline reads well for them. As it is…
A lot of charities tend to side with one political affiliation or the other. When people see %not their political affiliations% charity, they take it personally, and try to boycott the service. So this might do more harm than good.
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It’s hard to imagine the average small business successfully evading taxes as well as Amazon. In 2019 Amazon paid zero taxes receiving a net $129 million refund from the federal government, in 2018 they received a $137 million refund after paying 0$ on a net income of 11.2 billion dollars. In 2020 they paid a net tax of $162 million on $13.9 billion of pre-tax income a net tax rate of 1.2%.
I was just listening to a small business owner yesterday. She paid a $120K down payment on a property, and has set everything up so that the tax benefit of that property is $180K. That's not $180K deduction, but a $180K credit. She'll rent the place out for a meager profit, so doesn't have to pay the rest of the mortgage. Essentially, the taxpayers bought her the house - she got a house + cash out of the deal. Small…
Write off practically the entire vehicle (sometimes the entire vehicle) in the first year... making it nearly or completely free.
There's a lot of credits and deductions available to those who seek them out, or are in a position to best use them. They are not loopholes - these provisions were explicitly laid out by Congress.
I've twice done tech work for charities (the second being my current contract) and this is going to affect some charities, particularly the ones that rely on donors, over others that rely on grant money.
Though the sums were tiny, weren't they? I mean, it was $400m in 9 years, spread over a million charities in the end. To get a significant amount of money through that program, you'd need to be a big name that a lot of people would choose to donate to ... at which point you're a big name that probably gets a lot more money through regular donations.
Yes, but for small, grass-roots organizations even small sums can be meaningful. For example, my chosen donation was to Last Hope Animal Rescue, a small outfit based on Long Island.
>This is the quarterly notification to inform you that AmazonSmile has made a charitable donation to the charity you’ve selected, Last Hope Inc, in the amount of $854.65 as a result of qualifying purchases made by you and other customers between July 1st - September 30th.
How much does $854 per quarter mean to this small organization? Even if it only helped rescue a few animals, it was meaningful. Now that meager funding stream will, unfortunately, be gone.
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So wait, you lied about providing prior metrics. It's important to be looking at the same numbers when having a discussion about those numbers.
No, facts like more than average are statistics. You seemingly misunderstood the term and then tried to derail an argument which I find hilarious.
As a board member of an organization that was benefiting from Amazon Smile, this is just the lamest set of excuses I've ever seen. Amazon should have said: "We're cutting this because we don't want to maintain it, it hasn't been staffed, and isn't focused in our core business (making money)" I would have believed that.
People can make donations in their own name and get tax deductions for it, unlike with Smile where Amazon claims the deductions for itself. And why should a giant multinational corporation decide for us a list of eligible donation receivers? Some of those "charities" are very questionable and I doubt the average customer looks much into if what they do with the money even aligns with their own vision of a better world.
But the continuity of funding is usually better when its from tax not charity. So here we are, amazon withdraws, whats the replacement income stream for the projects being funded?
Amazon did a "good" thing, in the narrow context of spending money for public good. The situation this happens in is not good, and depending on charity rather than having governments fix systemic problems through tax based spending really doesn't solve the problem.
I like the idea behind Amazon Smile but the execution is a bit underwhelming. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars at Amazon since joining Amazon Prime, but I've only generated $98.66 in donations -- a fraction of a percent. That's worse than just rounding up the price to the nearest dollar. What's the point? I get that Amazon's retail profit margins are terrible, but if they're only going to donate a totally insi…
As a board member of an organization that was benefiting from Amazon Smile, this is just the lamest set of excuses I've ever seen. Amazon should have said: "We're cutting this because we don't want to maintain it, it hasn't been staffed, and isn't focused in our core business (making money)" I would have believed that.
You may see it differently having profited but I think good riddance. Shoppers shouldn't get the false sense they're doing something good by buying at Amazon. We spend $100 and they donate 50 cents but the remaining 99.5% of the money is spent in ways that do not benefit us common folk, often to the contrary. Better to be mindful what and where you buy, shopping at Amazon and then letting them do a small donation see…
Finally the last part of your comment is so disturbing.
"I doubt the average customer looks much into if what they do with the money even aligns with their own vision of a better world."