In the second quarter of 2015, Google spent a whopping $4.62 million on lobbying efforts. That's just slightly less than the $5.47 million they spent in the first quarter, but it still makes the search giant the third largest corporate lobbyist. Facebook increased its spend from $2.44 million to $2.69 million in the second quarter, while Amazon's budget grew from $1.91 million to $2.15 million. Meanwhile, Apple spent just $1.23 million of its huge mountain of cash.
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Immigration issues also topped the list as the companies lobbied the government to create more pathways for high-skilled foreign workers. It's a topic about which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been particularly outspoken, going so far as to launch an advocacy group called Fwd.us back in 2013 with the explicit mission of fixing the immigration system.
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The companies also prioritized taxation and trade policies. Facebook lobbied for the extension of the R&D tax credit. Amazon lobbyists, meanwhile, pursued the issue of the Remote Transactions Parity Act of 2015, an internet sales tax Amazon has endorsed that would require online stores to pay taxes in each state in which they sell goods.
Sigh. None of them lobbied for Robanukah.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Friday July 24 2015, @03:33AM
Apple spent just $1.23 million of its huge mountain of cash.
And the few millions more Google and rest spent is significant relative to their own huge mountain of cash?
These amounts are chump change to their CEO much less the company...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by captain normal on Friday July 24 2015, @05:25AM
Likewise in relation to what they lobbied for. Google and other tech companies mostly lobbied for net neutrality. And their contributions where a pittance compared to the money poured in by the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast against net neutrality.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday July 25 2015, @08:07AM
You know what they are lobbying hard for...a "tax holiday"