Jeff Bezos endorsed higher corporate tax rates. But it won't cost him much

A year ago, Joe Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was picking a fight with Amazon over how little it paid Uncle Sam. Now Biden is president, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is on a lonely island supporting the White House's plan -- to raise corporate taxes.

Hardly any other company leaders have come out in support of Biden's plan. But it's a relatively easy plan for Bezos to get behind: His company pays nowhere close to the current 21% corporate tax rate, let alone the 28% rate Biden is pitching. According to company filings, Amazon's federal income tax bill came to $1.7 billion in 2020. That doesn't mean that its actual payments came to that much -- but that $1.7 billion tax figure nevertheless came to only about 7% of the pretax income of the $24.2 billion it reported to investors. Thus Amazon only paid about a third of the 21% rate.