Amtrak will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the start of its operations in May. There’s not much to celebrate, however, as an audited financial statement recently posted on the company’s web site reveals that it lost $1.7 billion in 2020, up from $0.9 billion in 2019. Even that is deceptive, however, as the auditors bought into Amtrak’s claim that subsidies from the states are “revenues” and don’t distinguish such subsidies from ticket sales and food and beverage income.
Amtrak’s unaudited year-end results indicate that the company received $342 million from the states in fiscal year 2020 (which ended September 30). If these are counted as subsidies from the states, rather than passenger revenues, then the real losses were almost $2.3 billion in 2020, up from $1.1 billion in 2019.
Actually, the audited statement reveals in notes on page 10, most of that $342 million didn’t come from the states but was funded by Congress “to support the Company’s state partners in making their State Supported route subsidy payments due to Amtrak.” This means even the auditors admit that it is a subsidy, but they don’t disclose even in the notes that this subsidy was included in the revenues in the statement of operations on page 5. Continue reading
