The reason, according to ITEP senior fellow Matthew Gardner, lies mainly in Zoom's "lavish use of executive stock options," a common tactic of big corporations looking to skirt their federal tax obligations.
"Zoom's success in using stock options to avoid taxes is neither surprising nor (currently) illegal."
—Matthew Gardner, ITEP
"Companies that compensate their leadership with stock options can write off, for tax purposes, huge expenses that far exceed their actual cost," Gardner explained. "This is a strategy that has been leveraged effectively by virtually every tech giant in the last decade, from Apple to Facebook to Microsoft. Zoom's success in using stock options to avoid taxes is neither surprising nor (currently) illegal."
Zoom reported $660 million in pre-tax profits in 2020, a massive leap from its 2019 pre-tax profits of $16 million. Eric Yuan, Zoom's founder and CEO, accurately described 2020 an as "unprecedented year" for the nine-year-old company in its latest earnings report.
2019 pre-tax profits: $16 million
— Good Jobs First (@GoodJobsFirst) March 19, 2021
2020 pre-tax profits: $660 million
2020 federal corporate income taxes: 0.
We've seen this corporate tax avoidance strategy before. https://t.co/C0J38NznwA