Some highly profitable companies, like Amazon - and many other companies - pay little or no federal income taxes in the current year because of a tax law called "loss carry-forward". You can write off your losses for years after they occur when you've become profitable. GM and Ford did it, and many start-ups use it as a strategy for growth. Lose money in the near-term by spending to build scale and marketshare, and then write of the losses in the future against profits is a very popular strategy for getting tax payers to finance growth. Lyft, Uber, Beyond Meat, numerous high-tech start-ups, and many other companies are using this strategy as I type this. Funny how politicians never want to discuss loss carry-foward, because it is a difficult concept to explain to most of the electorate. IMO, it should be eliminated, and it would stop the madness. As I've noted before, the Amazon board of directors would probably open themselves to a shareholder class action suit if Amazon didn't write off losses as they legally can, because the directors have a fiduciary responsibility to govern in the best interest of the shareholders. The tax laws are the problem here, not the companies.