The war between Walmart and Amazon is heating up as Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs takes a shot at the latter by sharing an article on Twitter  about Amazon paying US$0 in federal taxes on more than US$11 billion in profits last year.

Bartlett wrote: “Hey retail competitors out there (you know who you are) how about paying your taxes?” and proceeded to tag Amazon chief Jeff Bezos.

The move comes after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued a challenge to other retailers without naming them,about matching Amazon’s pay and benefits. Bezos in a letter said “Do it! Better yet, go to US$16 and throw the gauntlet back at us. It’s a kind of competition that will benefit everyone.”

Lukewarm response from employees

According to Amazon, the company has raised our minimum wage to US$15-an-hour for all full-time, part-time, temporary, and seasonal employees across the United States. The increase has benefitted more than 250,000 Amazon employees, as well as over 100,000 seasonal employees who worked at Amazon sites across the country last holiday.

However, the ride hasn’t always been the smoothest for Amazon. According to an article published last October by The New York Times, employee are fuming over the shrink in total compensation, as Amazon will “no longer give out new stock grants and monthly bonuses.” Linking to the news report, Walmart’s Bartlett said in another tweet,

It is not the first time the two companies have been at loggerheads with each other. In May 2018, Walmart announced that it will buy a majority stake in India’s Flipkart e-commerce company, after it was rumoured that Amazon had wanted to buy into Flipkart too. Experts said the deal would have given an international extension to the US-centric retail war between Amazon and Walmart. While the deal gives a direct-to-consumer platform to Walmart, it brings with itself more than 100 million active users, 100,000 sellers and a logistics arm that has the capability to deliver to any part of India.

Marketing Interactive