'Shameful': Elizabeth Warren slams $7.8 billion tax drop for Amazon under OBBBA

Massive tax cuts received by Jeff Bezos' Amazon have reignited criticism of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Amazon reported paying a $1.2 billion tax bill last year, down from $9 billion the year before— a $7.8 billion deduction—even as its profits surged 45% to nearly $90 billion. In a post on X, Senator Elizabeth Warren called the Republican tax break "shameful", stating, "Some billionaire companies will pay a lower tax rate than a public school teacher."

In an earlier post, Warren said the tax relief Amazon enjoyed in 2025 is equivalent to what it would take the average household around 100,000 years to make. In a video she shared along with the post, Warren exemplified her statement with a series of comparisons. "Taylor Swift's Eras tour was the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, making over $2 billion. Does that seem like a lot of money to you? Oh, it is. But not compared to the tax handout that Donald Trump gave to Jeff Bezos and Amazon last year," Warren said. 

Amazon's tax cut comes primarily from two high-value corporate incentives offered under OBBBA: 100% "bonus depreciation" and the immediate expensing of research and development (R&D) costs. Before OBBBA, companies like Amazon were required to spread out or amortize the cost of their massive investments in data centers and robotics over several years. However, the new law allows Amazon to write off the total value of these domestic capital expenditures in the same year they occurred. In 2025, the company claims to have poured an estimated $340 billion into U.S. infrastructure and AI buildouts, creating a massive paper deduction.

Amid the mounting criticism over its tax filing, Amazon said that it has invested over $1.8 trillion in the U.S. economy and "has created more jobs in the U.S. than any other company over the past decade, and in 2025, we invested over $1 billion to raise pay and lower the cost of healthcare for our front-line employees." "U.S. policymakers have been clear on their intent when writing new tax laws. They developed tax policies to encourage corporate investments in the U.S. with the explicit goal of growing the economy, creating jobs, and improving U.S. competitiveness. Amazon's investments align with these goals," the company stated. 

Senator Warren, a long-time critic of extensive tax breaks for large corporations, advocates for a policy that would provide financial protection to the common American citizen by appropriately taxing billionaires. In a separate post on X, she questioned the Trump administration's cuts to healthcare, claiming it was being used to fund I.C.E. "Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress ripped $170 billion of taxpayer dollars away from your healthcare and instead gave it to ICE and DHS for mass deportation force," she said.