We are taxed for road repairs. It's a common tax on gasoline here in the United States; and, yes, there is a known issue around this with electric cars and some efforts in place to try and rectify it.
Many states recapture those lost taxes via vehicle registration surcharges for EVs. (For example, Texas charges $200, which is consistent with what a truck or SUV would pay driving around 12k mi/yr)
Amazon employing people creates a lot of taxes. Don't forget everything's taxed, not just corporation tax. Every employee generates income tax, employee tax, if they invest their money the interest is taxed, almost everything they buy from a shop has VAT, fuel they purchase is taxed, everything they buy has a higher price because that business has to pay tax and so do its employees, ad infinitum. There's tax everywhere, and the roads will still be there if none of those people had jobs and weren't paying any tax.
There is no such thing as "employee tax". Usually, what exists is a scheme for some of the employee's salary to be paid in the form of retirement schemes, health care, etc. It's not a tax to subsidize unrelated things. Likewise, the income tax is not there to pay for the company's use of collective amenities, it's there to pay for the citizen's use.
In the end, if your company doesn't pay all the stuff that other companies do, it's freeloading, and the society would most likely be better off with another company getting the business.
> There is no such thing as "employee tax". Usually, what exists is a scheme for some of the employee's salary to be paid in the form of retirement schemes, health care, etc. It's not a tax to subsidize unrelated things.
I didn't say it was to subsidize unrelated things; in fact it's more the other way round, where state pensions, and state employee pensions, public healthcare etc are just paid for, and the money comes from whence it comes.
I don't understand the dichotomy. Local stores can exist and their taxes can pay for things, but the Amazon HQ also exists and can pay for things. And its employees likely pay the higher taxation bands as well, although I could be wrong.
The local stores still support those higher-paying roles, though again probably more locally — the local accountant, the local lawyer when they need one, the local IT company.
The Amazon HQ is great for Seattle and Luxembourg, but money spent there is gone from my local (or even national) community.
This is mostly the case from imports, though, isn't it? Anything you import rather than buy locally is money leaving the country. That seems to be by far the bigger effect if that's what you're concerned about. Ireland's situation, if I understand it correctly, is still to pull corporation tax from Amazon sales in Europe, just at a lower rate. So Ireland is going to be a massive net beneficiary, even if you only take into account the corporation tax paid by Amazon and not the larger effects (other taxes; infrastructure investment; etc).
