Amazon spends more than the GDP of a small country on R&D each year.

But here's what this chart doesn't tell you... 👇

1) This R&D spend produces a significant amount of R&D tax credits under the US Internal Revenue Code.

👉 Amazon occasionally gets media heat for not paying "enough" in federal taxes. It makes for a great headline, but the issue is in the tax code, not what Amazon is, or isn't, paying.

2) Amazon's R&D costs include investments in infrastructure, and they are captured in a P&L line item called "Technology and Infrasrtucture."

👉 From the footnotes in Amzon's SEC filings: "Technology and infrastructure costs include payroll and related expenses for employees involved in the research and development of new and existing products and services, development, design, and maintenance of our stores, curation and display of products and services made available in our online stores, and infrastructure costs. Infrastructure costs include servers, networking equipment, and data center related depreciation and amortization, rent, utilities, and other expenses necessary to support AWS and other Amazon businesses."

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