I’d like to comment on Jim Hightower’s column in the Tuesday Times-Republican, “We need to talk about Jeff Bezos’s boat.”

It might be entertaining to poke fun at the very wealthy, but that is still no excuse to make derogatory statements that are proving untrue. Hightower states in his last paragraph “Not coincidentally, Amazon paid no federal taxes in 2019. . . .”

Every publicly held corporation in the U. S. is required by law to publish its financial statements, not only for investors, but for anyone else, including radio talk show hosts and journalists, to examine.

Amazon’s 2020 Annual Report is easily found on-line. I found my copy on NASDAQ’s site. On page 68, the corporation’s income taxes, by quarter for calendar year 2019, are clearly disclosed. They total $2.373 million.