this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Microsoft owes $29 billion in back taxes plus penalties and interest to IRS::The IRS sent a surprise bill to Microsoft, hitting the company with a $28.9 billion bill for back taxes and penalties spanning a decade, starting in 2003.

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[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 104 points 11 months ago

The IRS agent who worked up this case is either going to be up for a few days of extra vacation time or perhaps a job at Microsoft.

[–] iforgotmyinstance@lemmy.world 94 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Corporations are not people, fuck them up.

[–] bastion@feddit.nl 13 points 11 months ago

Even if we treat then like people, they easily deserve that (and some criminal charges) for circumventing tax law.

If organizations are treated like people, they must be accountable to the law in a proportional way.

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[–] jmd_akbar@aussie.zone 83 points 11 months ago (7 children)

Next week, Microsoft negotiates the pending tax figure to $0...

Week after that, Microsoft is raising Office plans by $5 per user per month across the board to cover their tax bills...

[–] Lemmyvisitor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 11 months ago

this is not very wholesome

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[–] Haha@lemmy.world 58 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wow I wish I could not pay taxes for 3 decades and like do something nice with all that money…

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 57 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Well, in fairness, they didn't do anything nice with the money either.

[–] Cheers@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Becoming a monopoly and tech giant is pretty nice..

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[–] blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 44 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

So where are all those fake democrats complaining that Biden's funding the IRS is just going to have them go after small businesses and the lower/middle classes?

How's that go? Gaslight, obstruct, project? lol

The IRS overwhelmingly go after poor people as they don’t have the means to defend themselves and end up settling out of desperation.

I’m sure after they get more money they’ll totally change though lol

Applejacks where you at buddy?

[–] PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

False dichotomy. They can go for a big, easy target as well as little peeps. Monitoring $600 transactions kind of shows they're not just interested in big guys.

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[–] nothing@lemm.ee 43 points 11 months ago

Great! Now do Apple!

[–] ram@bookwormstory.social 42 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] M500@lemmy.ml 48 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah but they eared more than double that in profit in their 2023 year. This is taxes over a 20 year period.

In this context it does not seem like it’s too much.

[–] Gaspar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 11 months ago

It's still way more than "none". Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I didn't believe you so I looked it up. You're wrong. Their gross profit is over 4x that amount in 2023.

[–] SadSadSatellite@sh.itjust.works 16 points 11 months ago

That's not wrong then. 4 times is more than double.

[–] M500@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago

I got my number from the article that was posted.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 38 points 11 months ago (1 children)

But they're a giant corporation so that's apparently fine.

[–] chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org 37 points 11 months ago (3 children)

To misquote J Paul Getty: "If you owe the IRS $29,000 that's your problem. If you owe the IRS $29,000,000,000 that's the IRS's problem"

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[–] ApeNo1@lemm.ee 38 points 11 months ago

Clippy pops up on Excel. “Hey, it looks like you are trying to funnel revenue through a shell organisation in the Caribbean.”

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 31 points 11 months ago

Next week's news: Microsoft negotiates tax bill down to $3.50. You still need to pay out the ass for healthcare, peasants.

[–] erranto@lemmy.world 30 points 11 months ago

Imagine any other citizen doing the same. they would be rotting in prison.

[–] ignism@lemmy.world 29 points 11 months ago (2 children)

With that money you could buy yourself a default search engine position at Apple.

[–] MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Or 2 international space stations built today with modern tech

[–] ours@lemmy.film 6 points 11 months ago

Or not quite half a Twitter (pre-Musk).

Space stations cost less than what some "send a short message" platform does... insanity.

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[–] chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 11 months ago

With that much money, you could effectively end homelessness in the U.S. for a full year [^1]

[^1]: According to a rough estimate by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, it would cost $20 billion in 2012 dollars to afford every homeless person in the U.S. with one year of housing via vouchers. Independent groups have more recently recalculated this amount as ~$30 billion in 2023 dollars using similar methodologies. This is an estimated annual cost, but advocates argue that the program pays for itself -- both in the sense that eliminating homelessness will reduce costs to other social programs & in the sense that many homeless will eventually return to self-sufficiency if given a fair opportunity.

[–] yoz@aussie.zone 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If Microsoft pays that I'll change my name to Microsoft.

[–] ItsMeForRealNow@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Lemmy name or real name? I want to see this happen. Win win.

[–] yoz@aussie.zone 8 points 11 months ago
[–] alienanimals@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago

Most of the major corporations in the US do not pay their fair share of taxes. Fuck the greedy pigs.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 11 months ago

Five years from now it'll be settled and Microsoft will pay ten billion.

[–] Desistance@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

They can afford 29 billion. I hope they lose the battle.

[–] MooseBoys@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The issues that generated this debt pertains to intercompany transfer pricing.

Can someone explain what this means in english?

Edit: I looked into it more and it seems the IRS objects to how Microsoft attributed cost and revenue between its international entities. I’ve heard of this practice being used to arbitrarily shift tax burden internationally. For example, let’s say a US company builds Widgets that cost $20 to make and sells them for $50. By normal accounting, that would result in a net of $30 taxable in the US. But if the company spins up a subsidiary in Ireland to hold its Widget production patents, they can charge the US branch $30 per unit in patent royalties. This results in net $0 taxable in the US and $30 taxable in Ireland. One limitation is that the money has to stay in Ireland. But if the company is already a multi-national one, there’s a good chance they have legitimate business expenses in Europe that the money could be later spent on. The end result is that talent and work from American workers, and revenue largely coming from American buyers, is being manipulated to avoid paying taxes back into the American economy, just because the business has international interests and there are many tax havens overseas.

[–] neptune@dmv.social 22 points 11 months ago

A company as big as Microsoft is not just one company. Just like movie studioes will famously make their film "lose money" to avoid royalty payments, I would bet Microsoft is trying to avoid taxes by selling services, products or profits "at a loss" between different corporate LLCs all owned by Microsoft.

Imagine if your time spent grocery shopping was an "import" corporation that overcharged your "works for a salary" corporation, all within your household.

But I'm sure someone can read the SEC filing and understand for sure.

[–] uis@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

29 billion? That's it? It is so tiny!

[–] plz1@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

I hope they pay up and we just send that to Ukraine as aid.

[–] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yea but the us military depends on them continuing to support xp just for them soooooo, why should they pay? They could literally cripple the world

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

At this point, the military should just switch to Linux!

[–] clanginator@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Problem is, there's a lot of really specialized, critical software, that is provided by vendors and throws an absolute fit with any change. You could maybe run Windows in a VM, but it may not work with the specialized hardware and networking gear being used, and now you're spending a bunch of extra time and money setting up a vm if windows inside Linux, which means you also have to train everyone on how to use the VM, adds another management/security issue, and adds another point of failure.

If they ever switch (the entire govt should, it would be so awesome to see the govt resources put into Linux development instead of M$ pockets) it'd have to be a very gradual process, and windows would still be around decades from now for legacy systems. (If the US hasn't imploded in civil war or the planet melted by then 🫠)

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I mean, the military literally has the guns. Microsoft will support them or it will be nationalized and then support them.

Not exactly a position Microsoft has much actual leverage in.

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[–] MagneticFusion@lemm.ee 7 points 11 months ago

The definition of too big to fail

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

the interest is going to hurt

[–] lemmeout@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I wish there was RemindMe bot on Lemmy

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