-Update 04-26-2016- As if to prove my point, Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders just named Verizon one of America’s Top Ten Tax Avoiders. VZ has a corporate tax rate of -2% for the last 6 years according to the post. Verizon has the #4 lobbying spender.
Just in time for the U.S. tax deadline, the Business Insider has a report which details the amount of money the tech titans spent on bribing lobbying the politicians in DC. Thanks to one of the small bits of transparency in the gooberment, the U.S. House of Representatives requires companies to file government lobbying records. You can search their disclosures here at the Office of the Clerk of the House. (rb- Use this while you can, it’s likely to be shut down at any time by politicians with things to hide.)
The most aggressive tech spender on lobbying in 2015 was Amazon (AMZN) according to research by Consumer Watchdog. The company spent $9.07 million (a company record) on lobbying in 2015, an incredible 91.4% surge from its 2014 spend dedicated to influencing federal regulations last year according to BI.
Amazon lobbied Washington about
- Unmanned aerial vehicles – likely in support of their drone delivery plans,
- Surface transportation, likely related to its recent efforts to take more control of its fulfillment process,
- Cloud computing, which likely helps them grab a $600 million contract to host the CIA cloud,
- Copyright reform, and music licensing (probably relating to its Prime music service),
- High-skilled immigration – corporate America’s H1-B’s plan to cut the buying power of their own customers.
- Patent reform,
- Corporate tax reform and the taxation of remote sales,
- Net neutrality,
- Cyber-security regulation,
- Postal reform, and
- Online wine sales.
Despite Amazon’s aggressive lobbying, Google (GOOG) topped the list of tech companies for the second year in a row. Google spent $16.6 million in 2015 vs $16.83 million in 2014. The biggest spending tech firms spent over $122M lobbying Washington politicians.
How the tech titans spent their money
- Google: $16.6 million in 2015 vs $16.83M in 2014.
- Comcast (CMCSA): $15.63 million vs $16.8M in 2014
- AT&T (T): $14.86 million, up from $14.56M in 2014
- Verizon (VZ): $11.43 million, up 1.9% from $11.22M in 2014.
- Facebook (FB): $9.85 million from $9.34M in 2014, a company record.
- Amazon (AMZB): $9.07 million up 91.4% from 2014 .
- Microsoft (MSFT): $8.49 million vs $8.33M in 2014.
- Time Warner Cable (TWC): $6.8 million in 2015, down 13.2% from 2014.
- T-Mobile (TMUS) $6.14 million, up 1.7% from 2014.
- Apple (AAPL): $4.48 million in 2015 compared to $4.11M in 2014.
- IBM (IBM): $4.63 million, a 6.5% decrease from $4.9M in 2014.
- Intel (INTC): $4.55 million in 2015, up 19.7% from $3.80M in 2014.
- Oracle (ORCL): $4.46 million in 2015, down 23.5% from $5.83M in 2014.
- Cisco (CSCO): $2.69 million compared to $2.35M in 2014.
- Yahoo (YHOO): $2.84 million in 2015 vs $2.94M in 2014.
BI reminds us that these may seem like big numbers, they’re a tiny part of these companies’ overall expenditures — in the third quarter of 2015, Google spent $3.47 billion on traffic acquisition costs (such as the price of its deal to stay the default search on Apple’s iPhone), and another $6.93 billion on other operating expenses.
rb-
I haven’t written about the tech’s industry lobbying efforts since 2010. Many of the names have remained the same, ATT, Verizon, Google, IBM, Yahoo, and Intel have been bribing lobbying the gooberment for a very long time.
However, just 5 years ago, Apple and Facebook were barely in the lobbying racket. In 2015, they both ranked at the top in lobbying spending.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.