By Carlos Winston | January 29, 2020

Amazon’s donation to the recent bushfire destruction in Australia is so small that it brings more negative attention than good.

In a post on Instagram, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stated that his company would be donating $1 million AUD, which is the equivalent of $690,000 USD.

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I see the main issue as Amazon is a company with a massive market capitalization. As a matter of fact, the company is pretty much valued at a trillion dollars, and that isn’t an exaggeration. Business insider tools more in-depth look into the matter and noted that he donated less than what he made every five minutes in 2018.

Here’s a passage to shed more light on how small the donation actually was.

To put this number in perspective, Bezos is worth $116,000,000,000; the figure is equal to .00059 percent of his net worth. It is the equivalent of someone worth $50,000 donating 29 cents. Of course, it’s not even Bezos’s money. It’s Amazon’s money. Amazon’s current market cap is $933,670,000,000. $690,000 is .000073 percent of $933.67 billion, which means that the donation hurts Amazon’s bottom line as much as it would hurt a person worth $50,000 to donate three cents.

This is to say that Amazon’s donation is insulting. It’s a paltry donation from a tech company that has one of the worst records on environmental and climate issues, and it’s a tiny fraction of the money that Amazon should be paying in taxes but has avoided thanks to creative accounting (in 2018, Amazon paid just $20 million in taxes on $1 billion in revenue in Australia.) Yes, the donation is $690,000 that can be used for relief efforts, but Amazon’s donation isn’t happening in a vacuum. [Vice]

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Typically after a natural disaster or other devastating events, large companies will generally contribute to relief efforts with generous donations. It’s a good way to get into the positive light of the press and buff PR status. While I am sure that was the intention of Amazon’s donation, it did not play out as planned. In this case, the public’s attention was directed to the small amounts of taxes that amazon pays on a regular basis. They use legal loopholes in order to pay absolutely nothing at times.

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In all honesty, the loopholes being used to evade tax payment should have been closed a long time ago. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. The problem here is that there are others who are much less wealthy comparatively speaking, and they donated more. I feel like if you have the power to do more, you should. That’s just out of good conscience, in my personal opinion.

In all honesty, Bezos likely won’t feel inclined to give more because he knows that he has one of the most loyal customers on the planet. Amazon is able to offer some of the lowest prices on the retail market, which is why most people will always order products from them.

In the disaster, 28 people tragically lost their lives, and more than one billion animals were killed.

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This piece originally appeared on WayneDupree.com and is used by permission.

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