The company was under intense pressure from the media and politicians who were angered that New York City's local government was giving away too many tax incentives, purportedly worth around $1.5 billion.

(Including the state government, the total tax break was around $2.8 billion.)

People had some ridiculous idea that NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio was going to hand a check for $1.5 billion over to Jeff Bezos, already the richest man in the world.

That's complete nonsense.

The biggest part of the package was a tax credit that would vary based on how much Amazon paid its employees; it was capped at $1.2 billion over ten years.

Let's assume it's the maximum level– that works out to be $120 million per year.

Now, in exchange for that incentive, how much tax would Amazon pay?

There's been a lot of media attention about the fact that Amazon has hardly paid a dime in federal income tax over the past few years.