Protesters Blockade Microsoft's Seattle Headquarters Over Tax Breaks 246
reifman (786887) writes "A thousand unionized healthcare workers protested outside Microsoft's Seattle offices over its Nevada tax dodge on Friday. Microsoft shareholders have pocketed more than $5.34 billion in tax savings as Washington State social services and schools have taken huge cuts. In a hearing Wednesday, the Supreme Court suggested it may hold the Legislature in contempt and order it to repeal all tax breaks to restore proper funding to K-12 schools and universities." I suspect Microsoft's lawyers are careful to engage in legal tax avoidance rather than illegal tax evasion. Geekwire notes "The South Lake Union satellite facility is not a major office for Microsoft, compared to its presence in Redmond. It’s not clear why the workers didn’t protest at Microsoft headquarters."
South Lake Union vs Redmond Headquarters (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect they protested at S. Lake Union because that is very close to downtown Seattle and an extremely visible location. Microsoft Campus in Redmond is in the in a much more suburban atmosphere, it would be much less of a visible protest there.
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Did they ride the trolley to get to the protest?
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Why? Why can't you like one part of capitalism and not others, why does it have to be an all or nothing choice? Because someone says so?
Re:South Lake Union vs Redmond Headquarters (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect they protested at S. Lake Union because that is very close to downtown Seattle and an extremely visible location. Microsoft Campus in Redmond is in the in a much more suburban atmosphere, it would be much less of a visible protest there.
There's also the fact that the campus is likely mostly private land, while downtown areas tend to have public ways near them.
Depending on the local PD, your right to peaceable assembly may or may not be treated as adorably fictitious and/or a good chance to break out the cool 1033 program toys and play soldier; but you don't even have a theoretical one if you can just be rounded up for trespassing before things even start.
Trying to protest on MS's campus would just make it a question for PR of whether the visibility is lower for ignoring you and keeping the cameras away, or having you hauled off for trespassing before you make too much noise.
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The campus is a bunch of buildings [binged.it] with mostly public streets running between them.
Are protestors all lazy or just hired goons? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect they protested at S. Lake Union because that is very close to downtown Seattle and an extremely visible location.
You have that right on the money.
This year at WWDC there were Apple tax protestors out front before the keynote with the classic protestor drum circle and some kind of chant.
Well the moment the cameras outside are gone? So are they. I had some respect for them before that for at least making a stand, even if I disagree with the position. But they weren't making a stand - they were making a TV show.
Given the behavior it's hard to believe they were not all actors of one form or another. It certainly didn't seem like anyone had the kind of protesting spirit that really meant anything when they couldn't be arsed to protest longer than a few hours. I have to wonder if the Microsoft protest is of the same spiritless form.
Re:Are protestors all lazy or just hired goons? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Well the moment the cameras outside are gone? So are they."
Why waste your time parading to an empty street? Why shouldn't protestors play the PR game just as much corporations? It's all about getting your message out. Just ask the Koch brothers and their hired goons.
What empty street? (Score:2)
Why waste your time parading to an empty street?
This is right in the middle of SF (4th & Howard). If nothing else there are a ton of cars going past all the time.
Then the whole week long there are thousands of Apple developers walking in and out and handing around outside enjoying the weather (yes, sometimes SF has nice weather in June and this was one of those years).
But basically if you are dedicated you are THERE. That's really the point. They were not there for anyone but the cameras, then it was
Re:What empty street? (Score:5, Insightful)
So? Apple developers don't care, customers may care. Protesting is about two things, PR and disruption.
Lots of disruption cases are illegal especially in a public setting so disruption is typically reserved for private cases but then how can you be disruptive if you don't have access to the private premises? Disruptive protests are normally done by employees internally but they aren't going to complain about the tax breaks their employer received.
In cases like this the protest is exclusively a PR campaign to raise awareness. Disruption will likely end them in jail, fined, or worse still as in the cases of the Google Buses people may not sympathise due to a misdirected attack.
What they did here was get their face on TV. It's about the best form of public protest you can have. Who cares about a few thousand developers when you have the evening news and media sites picking up the story? In some cases getting your face on TV is the end game and there really is no point it wasting your time beyond that.
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My understanding is because the tax-free 'HQ' , oops, I meant the Operations Center in question is located in Nevada [google.com] of course, and that would obviously present a financial hardship on these common Washingtonians whose means to earn a living have been diminished.
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It's more visible, and culturally, trying to get someone from Seattle proper to go to the eastside has always been a bit of an uphill battle, even moreso with the general cuts to public transportation.* I moved from Wallingford to Woodinville while I worked at Microsoft**, and was always impressed by the extent to which eastsiders think little of going across the lake for a show of a class, but westsiders (at least, those who don't already work on the eastside) are loathe to head in the other direction with
That's Odd (Score:2)
I though Microsoft was an Irish [windowsitpro.com] corporation.
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well... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Washington already collects payroll tax from Microsoft's employees, and property tax from Microsoft's buildings. There is no logical reason that they should be able to collect billions for income earned worldwide. If they try to enforce extraterritorial taxes on corporations, those corporations are going to leave. Their biggest employer before Microsoft was Boeing. Today Boeing is headquartered in Chicago, and they are building their new factories in the South.
Re:well... (Score:5, Informative)
Boeing took Washington State for all they were worth and were the beneficiaries of the 1st & 3rd largest incentives in US history.
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Boeing took Washington State for all they were worth and were the beneficiaries of the 1st & 3rd largest incentives in US history.
Is that before, or after, the $1.2 billion that Nevada is giving Tesla for the Gigifactory?
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After - Boeing received tax breaks equivalent to over $8Billion for siting the 787 production in Washington State.
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See pg 18 on the PDF below for a list of "Megadeals" in the US up to the end of 2012.
Boeing got $3 billion in breaks from Washington state back in 2003. And then there's the almost $9 Billion over 20+ yrs that they were just awarded for production of the 777x.
http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/s... [goodjobsfirst.org]
Nevada's governor thinks the return on the Tesla deal will be 80-to-1 which seems VERY optimistic given that Tesla will need a decade to reach the 1/2 milllion cars per year threshold for which they're building the Gig
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Washington State has no personal income tax. So the only tax that it sees from Microsoft employees is the sales tax on their purchases, and the property tax on their houses.
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The products are produnced in Washington State
What about all the Microsoft programmers world-wide that work on them?
Are you going to give Microsoft an offset tax credit for all the managers that work in Washington State and produce nothing but burn-down charts and disgruntled employees?
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Are you just an idiot, or what?! Payroll taxes are PAID BY EmPLoYErs and the employees never even see them.
Re: well... (Score:3)
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Just like the "employer" share of Social Security....
Re:well... (Score:5, Informative)
MS just donate to politicians to reduce the amount of taxes they pay
Kinda sort of but not really. What most posters here seem not to understand is that it is 100% normal for companies who employ lots of people in area X to negotiate with that city/county/state's government to say in effect "because of us you have many thousands more people paying property/school/sales taxes and supporting the local economy. Other places would be willing to offer us a break on our corporate taxes if we moved there instead and benefitted their economy. So why don't you?"
On some level this sounds like playing dirty pool but it's really not... it's the exact same thing you would do if you had your employer behind the eight ball in salary negotiations: "Other companies are willing to pay me X for my skills, so why don't you match it or I will leave?"
So long story short, every company with the clout of Microsoft (which IIRC employs >40K employees in Washington State/Seattle Metro area) gets local or state tax breaks that Joe Schmoe's auto garage does not. Apple gets tax breaks in Cupertino, Google gets them in Mountain View, Sprint gets them in Kansas City, Verizon gets them in Basking Ridge NJ. In the greater Seattle area, Microsoft, Costco, Starbucks and other businesses with HQs there get them... Seattle felt the sting years ago of not offering enough tax breaks to Boeing and seeing their corporate HQ relocated to Chicago. (If you're interested to see who's probably getting big tax breaks where, look at the map of Fortune 500 headquarters by city [fortune.com].
So it's rational to give large companies tax breaks to keep them in your city as a way to keep your economy strong. It may seem unfair, but all these cities and states have done enough research to conclude that doing tax favors for these big companies is worth more than taxing them at regular rates and losing the employment. So it's neither illegal or irrational on the part of the government or the corporations.
Or you can disclose economic development early. (Score:2)
Now what would happen if nobody could hide economic development decisions, such as the relocation of companies between states? That is, that any decision to move, no matter how small or early, had to be publicly disclosed - and that all existing records had to be made public? That would anger thieving states like Georgia, who have no qualms about removing history from Northern states, while providing a chance for states to make an agreement.
Or, you can have the status quo, which encourages blood-feud betw
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's rational to give large companies tax breaks to keep them in your city as a way to keep your economy strong. It may seem unfair, but all these cities and states have done enough research to conclude that doing tax favors for these big companies is worth more than taxing them at regular rates and losing the employment. So it's neither illegal or irrational on the part of the government or the corporations.
It doesn't seem unfair, it is unfair.
The big companies get tax breaks. The politicians get kickbacks, lobbying, and stay in office. The regular citizens pay higher taxes to make up for the company and the politician screwing them.
Microsoft employs >40K employees in the Seattle Metro area, while the other 3.6M residents (literally the 99%) get screwed.
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How is it unfair? The state gets additional jobs, higher tax revenues (if applicable), and most likely an economic boost from people spending money.
In several financial and political philosophies, companies provide a net benefit and therefore should pay zero taxes. Therefore, it is your position that is unfair.
If a state imposed higher than average taxes, and never negotiated, it would lose employment. If it gave in once, there would be a race to the bottom, which logically is zero taxes. Because busine
Re:well... (Score:5, Interesting)
How is it unfair? The state gets additional jobs, higher tax revenues (if applicable), and most likely an economic boost from people spending money.
At the expense of likely quid-pro-quo types of arrangements with politicians. I'm not naive, and I realize that these sorts of things happen in the real world. But every time we rationalize private deals made between big corporations (or rich people) and politicians, we're asking for more corruption.
In several financial and political philosophies, companies provide a net benefit and therefore should pay zero taxes. Therefore, it is your position that is unfair.
Umm, NO. Sure, you're right that some people argue for zero corporate tax. I'm not saying that's an invalid argument. But what's unfair is that if you REALLY want "zero corporate tax," you give it to ALL corporations. That's fair.
What you're talking about is an anticompetitive practice that gives large corporations an unfair market advantage. Say I give a major tax break to a company that employs 10,000 employees. You know who gets screwed? 200 other local companies that each have 50 employees or whatever. Because they're forced to pay the normal tax rates, while your giant corporation is exempt. Sure, most of those companies may not be competing directly against the big company, but some of them might be.
If a state imposed higher than average taxes, and never negotiated, it would lose employment.
And if the state's corporate tax rates are uncompetitive, the FAIR way to fix that is to lower them for ALL corporations, not give an unfair advantage to large corporations that already have many advantages in the marketplace.
Or is your goal to drive local small businesses out of business?
By artificially lowering the tax rates for a few select corporations, you are also allowing the state to continue ignoring a potential problem of too high corporate tax rates for anyone else. Anyone with the clout to negotiate gets the lower rate, while other local small businesses get screwed. That's the exact OPPOSITE behavior of something that will drive tax rates to zero -- because the local tax rates are artificially propped up by the people who can't fight them.
What is fair? You need to define words before you use them. I suppose I should ask, fair to whom? Because that seems to be the crux of your argument.
"Fair" in terms of the law means that we all get to play by the same rules. No one should get to "negotiate" out of abiding by the law. If corporate tax is too high in a state or local area to draw these large businesses, the correct way to fix this is by lowering corporate taxes FOR EVERYBODY. If enough big businesses refuse to move to a state because of its tax structure, it puts pressure on the state legislature to move toward your ideal world of zero corporate tax. If, on the other hand, companies get arbitrary individual tax rates, there's no such pressure, and the only benefits accrue to the biggest companies with the best lobbyists and connections... which is a recipe for corruption and unfair to actual local smaller businesses.
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It is unfair because other companies ARE required to pay taxes. It is unfair because groups of people are treated differently than individuals.
Why do we have different taxes for corporations and individuals? Just have every person (legal or physical) pay income taxes. And just like current income taxes, have them pay income taxes for any income earned abroad that has not yet been taxes at the same level as at home. And do the same for the person owning the company - have them pay income taxes if the taxes p
Re:well... (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft employs >40K employees in the Seattle Metro area, while the other 3.6M residents (literally the 99%) get screwed.
So tell me, if Microsoft left and took the 40k jobs with them, they would then NOT get tax breaks in Seattle.
How would the other 99% of the Seattle residents be better off?
Would they somehow be less screwed?
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Microsoft employs >40K employees in the Seattle Metro area, while the other 3.6M residents (literally the 99%) get screwed.
So tell me, if Microsoft left and took the 40k jobs with them, they would then NOT get tax breaks in Seattle.
How would the other 99% of the Seattle residents be better off?
Would they somehow be less screwed?
How dare you attempt Logic on Slashdot?
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Microsoft can't go anywhere. 40,000 employees aren't going to happily relocate to Pittsburg or wherever. Can you imagine the cost of building a new campus for 40,000? Can you imagine where they'd ever find a buyer to pay a fair price for the existing campus?
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Sure they can...
Boeing left after all...
I live in the Dallas, TX area, Toyota is moving a big chunk of their headquarters here, several thousand employees. The local real estate market is already humming. They got big tax breaks to move here, but what has business owners excited is the creation of thousands of well paid jobs, those people become customers in local businesses, they buy homes, spend money, pay taxes.
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Yes, that could work, expect that getting all states to agree would be a challenge. :)
Many states don't get along all that well and have very different political viewpoints.
Look at Tesla, they were going to be offered a big package to build their gigabattey factory in CA, but the state legislature didn't act on it before recess, so they took Nevada up on their offer.
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Yes. This whole business of corporate welfare needs to stop. What we have now is an arms race of tax breaks, with states like Texas giving up 50% of their tax revenues to large, well-established corporations. It's one thing to help a business get a leg up, but quite another when states constantly fight to underbid one another just to entice business to their states.
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Fair is for 5-year olds.
The 40k MS employees likely keep another 400k in the area in work providing good and services to them, as they're paid quite well by WA standards, and most people spend all the money that comes to them.
There's no need for politicians to get kickbacks: there's nothing more powerful at the state level then bringing jobs to the state or keeping jobs in the state.
Plus WA and local governments get the property taxes not just from the buildings on the MS campus, but the 40k houses owned by
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Fair is for 5-year olds.
Why?
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..Because 5 year-olds haven't been influenced by conservative rhetoric. And believe me, I'm fairly conservative. But I hear this 'fairness isn't a real thing', and see this as a dark side of conservatism to deny fairness as a basic trait of civil behavior. To a 5 year-old, fairness is getting an equal slice of pie. To an adult, fairness is equal consideration under the law. Not really a hard concept to define. That, of course, isn't trying to argue that the world has to be made equal by redistribution
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Fair is for 5-year olds.
Why?
Heh, I can't tell if you're really asking, or simply impersonating a typical 5-year old. Just in case it's the former:
Asking for fairness is asking that the world be so simple that the rules make sense to a young child. But fairness is a poor goal. A court system in which innocence or guilt is decided by the toss of a fair coin would be perfectly simple and unbiased, discriminating against no one (not even the guilty). Justice is better that fairness, and righteousness is better than justice (the princi
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ONLY Businesses can get away with this. The average citizen couldn't.
It doesn't work for average businesses any more than it works for average citizens (and for the same reasons). It might work if you were a billionaire, though.
actually it is quite clear, but who RTFAs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Itâ(TM)s not clear why the workers didnâ(TM)t protest at Microsoft headquarters."
- this is not the question, and really, the answer is in TFA:
But Jeff Reifman, a technology consultant and writer who used to work for Microsoft, is pointing the finger at his former employer, saying that Microsoft has used a subsidiary in Nevada to avoid paying Washington taxes. Heâ(TM)s written numerous articles about this over the years, and now published a recent commentary on Crosscut.com linking Microsoftâ(TM)s tax policy with the stateâ(TM)s school funding shortfall
There you go, that's why they are in Nevada.
By the way, this is again compared to Burger King for all the wrong reasons:
In response, Hunter said that he and many other legislators tried for years to figure out whether they could tax the money Microsoft sends to Nevada. He said the answer from the stateâ(TM)s lawyers was always, âoeNo.â And he said itâ(TM)s similar to the recent move by Burger King to buy a Canadian company as a way to lower its U.S. tax bill.
âoeTo move that big chunk of revenue to Nevada â" itâ(TM)s legal,â Hunter said. âoeSo this is just like the Burger King thing. Itâ(TM)s frustrating, and youâ(TM)ve got lots of people in Congress who are frustrated about it, but itâ(TM)s legal.â
Burger King is a BRAZILIAN COMPANY, not American. Hasn't been American since about 1989. 70% of its stock is held by a Brazilian conglomerate. Fucking Americans are idiots, crying about a Brazilian company merging with a Canadian one, but what else is new?
However the point is that Microsoft is a victim of unconstitutional, ill
Re:actually it is quite clear, but who RTFAs? (Score:5, Interesting)
However the point is that Microsoft is a victim of unconstitutional, illegal government system that usurped power and is stealing people's money. Income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally for a wide range of reasons.
The state of Washington is not held to the constitutional taxation restrictions of the US federal government. Collecting income tax is quite legal for them.
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However the point is that Microsoft is a victim of unconstitutional, illegal government system that usurped power and is stealing people's money. Income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally for a wide range of reasons.
The state of Washington is not held to the constitutional taxation restrictions of the US federal government. Collecting income tax is quite legal for them.
What is more, Washinton State [wa.gov] has no income tax.
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However the point is that Microsoft is a victim of unconstitutional, illegal government system that usurped power and is stealing people's money. Income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally for a wide range of reasons. [slashdot.org]
I love when people make these long concise arguments about the constitutionality of income tax and declare the matter settled, conveniently forgetting the part of the constitution that empowers and tasks only the Supreme Court with judging a laws validity under the constitution. Until such day as the Supreme Court decides that your arguments have merit and the law invalid under the constitution, it shall remain enforceable law.
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They probably missed the parts about "only" and "tasks" because they're not there.
Marbury v. Madison found that the power is there, but it's not in the text. (And as a practical matter, a judge that takes an oath to defend a constitution must necessarily have the ability to determine if a law he's asked to apply complies with that constitution; issuing an order applying an unconstitutional law would both violate the oath and be beyond his authority derived from the constitution . . .)
Furthermore, in US pr
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However the point is that Microsoft is a victim of unconstitutional, illegal government system that usurped power and is stealing people's money. Income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally for a wide range of reasons.
Yeah, I read some of the post you linked.
So you seem to think that the 16th amendment only defines income in an incredibly narrow manner, granting the government very limited power to tax the income of corporations and none to tax individuals. You base this on your... creative interpretation of a 1921 supreme court ruling.
You're not alone in this interpretation, amazingly tax protesters have gone to the courts to make this argument many times, not so amazingly they have lost every single time.
Which begs the
Voliunteer workers for the IRS? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get this at all?
If a business has avoided paying some taxes *legally* and citizens are angry about it? The proper channel to go through is protesting the government that allowed it.
Any "for profit" business has the responsibility to maximize profits for the sake of its continued existence and growth, and as a duty to its stockholders if it was publicly held. Therefore, it would be irresponsible of it NOT to take advantage of legal tax loopholes or tactics to minimize costs.
It sounds like some people have the idea that they can "shame" businesses into volunteering to pay more tax than they're legally required to pay. I'm not saying that might not have a small measure of success in some situations -- but you'd probably achieve similar results by just randomly picketing ANY profitable business and demanding they give more to charity, or pay more of their profits to improve the local area, or ??
The crux of the problem here is the way the laws are written, so only your legislators can correct it.
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Exactly...
Legal tax-loopholes generally come into being because lawmakers decide that they want to use taxation to do something other than raise the funds they require. Countries/states with very simple tax-systems generally tend to have fewer such loopholes. But when lawmakers decide that they want to use the tax system to encourage X type of business or discourage Y behavior, they add complexity. Over time, that complexity reaches the point where companies can design themselves so as to maximize the disco
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Any "for profit" business has the responsibility to maximize profits for the sake of its continued existence and growth, and as a duty to its stockholders if it was publicly held. Therefore, it would be irresponsible of it NOT to take advantage of legal tax loopholes or tactics to minimize costs.
There's lots of unethical practices that corporations avoid as a matter of good PR.
Imagine if exploiting tax loopholes was so socially unacceptable that corporations lost more money than they'd make through lost sales.
The crux of the problem here is the way the laws are written, so only your legislators can correct it.
Partly, but there's also a possibility that the legislation is fairly well written and closing these loopholes would cause even more serious problems.
There's also the possibility that the legislation is terribly written, and by choosing a well defined high profile target (Microsoft) they can c
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Therefore, it would be irresponsible of it NOT to take advantage of legal tax loopholes or tactics to minimize costs.
That is in one sentence what's wrong with our western society. Maximise profit at all costs, dodge responsibilities to the world around you, and then justify it all as being the proper way to do things.
The crux of the problem here is the way the laws are written, so only your legislators can correct it.
The crux of the problem is the assumption that your responsibilities to society begin and end with the laws, interpreted to your advantage as much as possible.
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The difference? (Score:2)
Legal tax avoidance is just illegal tax evasion after you bought the relevant laws.
Laughable (Score:2)
It seems like everyone here thinks Microsoft has some obligation to give our government money. Have you seen what our government does with that money? Do you want them to have more tanks, guns bombs? More spying equipment? To continue the war on drugs? To imprison more than 1% of the population?
Thank you Microsoft.
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Besides, it indirectly does give a shitload of money to the government. Software engineers that work at MS in the US aren't exactly paid peanuts. And they have a LOT of employees. The income tax on that is massive.
Tax breaks for Unions too? (Score:3)
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While we're at it let's eliminate the deduction for mortgage payments. Why are we preferring homeowners over renters? Homeowners tend to be the ones with kids who use more resources. That makes as much sense as disallowing payments required to hold a job.
easy way to get Micro$oft, Boeing attention (Score:2)
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:5, Informative)
The state chose not to pursue over a billion in unpaid taxes. That would put a nice dent in the amount the State owes to schools. The state just gave Boeing NINE BILLION in tax giveaways. It's disgusting. These corporations should pay their taxes.
What about your own debts (Score:2)
The state chose not to pursue over a billion in unpaid taxes.
Until now I have chosen not to pursue billions in unpaid money you owe me that I've done absolutely nothing for.
The state just gave Boeing NINE BILLION in tax giveaways.
Until now you have enjoyed a free ride as I've chosen not to tax any of your earnings.
When you have paid this legally shaky debt then you will regain the right to complain about Microsoft.
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't bootstrap their earning potential or marketable skills from nothing, nor could they continue to prosper without social cooperation made possible by tax-supported infrastructure and institutions. If you want to be a completely unencumbered individual, find a deserted island.
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Sigh.. It is only made possible by tax-supported infrastructure and institutions because the government injected itself. Before the governments injected themselves, it was sustained by private industry or the people themselves. Those costs were either passed on to the consumers of simple born by the people involved.
You act as if no one could ever function without the government hand holding people through life. Some of the more prosperous years in our history were when the government was not in schools, lim
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Why would I need to go back to those living standards? Society would have progressed anyways. Some things may be a little different but many would be exactly the same.
You mean like it does now? Nothing has changed except technology has
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Technology would NOT have happened anyways. In 1934 an engineer at Bell Labs named Clarence Hickman created a machine that would answer phone calls and record a message on a magnetic tape. The first answering machine! It was large and clunky, but of course AT&T immediately saw the value of this device and started to work to put this highly profitable device in everyone's homes! Err... not. AT&T killed it because they saw no profit in the device. Worst of all perhaps, was the their suppressio
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AT&T immediately saw the value of this device and started to work to put this highly profitable device in everyone's homes! Err... not. AT&T killed it because they saw no profit in the device.
it appears that you think that if something is profitable at time T, then it must also have been profitable at time T - X.
What a simplistic idiot you are.
There is no chance in hell that when the technology was first developed to do it that it could have been profitable product. Just like when the technology for smart phones was developed it wasnt profitable. It took *decades* for all the technologies involved to mature enough to make multi-touch pocket computers profitable. Nobody was going to buy a da
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Nice to know what a slackjawed lackwit you are sir, in that you can't compose a reply without resorting to a base slanderous personal remark. Perhaps you need to sit down away from the internets and stop taking it so seriously, you low brow pustule.
That being said, we will never know how profitable a phone answering machine, or the additional technology of the magnet tape medium would have been in 1934, or how much profit such technologies could have generated before other companies developed their own ver
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Magnetic tape recording wouldn't return to America until WWII, with German equipment.
That wasn't the only technology AT&T suppressed that could have changed our world, simply because the managers involved either couldn't see a profit in it, or felt it was directly competing with their own telephone service. Since AT&T had a monopoly on phone service, they kept anyone else from utilizing these inventions as well. Fiber optics, mobile telephones, digital subscriber lines (DSL), fax machines, speakerphones.. all developed or envisioned much earlier than you assume, and all suppressed as being dangers to AT&T's business model.
AT&T's monopoly was imposed by the federal government. Government using a lighter touch in telecom regulation in the 1930s would have allowed all those products to market under somebody else's banner. AT&T being an abusive monopoly until they were broken up in the '80s is NOT an example of "We need government because the free market is horrible."
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That's just not true. AT&T's monopoly already existed when the government agreed to let them be a monopoly. The government was investigating them for antitrust violations, and then agreed to stop their investigation in exchange for them doing a few specific things, like requiring them to allow independent networks to connect to theirs in relatively limited circumstances.
Also, it was 1913, not the 30's, when this happened. Over the subsequent decades, the federal government basically gave AT&T everyt
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And even to the schools issues, the feds were hands off it when we put man on the moon.
Oh deary me! Let's not even consider that Eisenhower sent the Army into Little Rock before Sputnik went up.
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I would like to point out to you that during those wonderful years without government intrusion, that the economy suffered regular cyclical booms and busts that devastated lives.
You could say that it was the effects of one of the greatest busts in history, the Great Depression, that kickstarted the government into creating the PWA, an organization that has done more public good than any Wal-Mart or Microsoft. Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, Fort Peck Dam, LaGuardia
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Some of the more prosperous years in our history were when the government was not in schools, limited themselves on the roads, did not deliver water and so on.
You conveniently ignore the fact that in those years, that infrastructure was owned and/or maintained by communities, not by multinational corporations with a fanatical profit-maximizing agenda.
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No, they are saying that the more you earn in this country, the more you have benefited from all of the things the taxes pay for: military, infrastructure, education, etc.
It is a flawed system, and there are better ones (I prefer everyone paying a flat income tax with no dedications), but saying that there should be only sales or use-based taxes is wrong.
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How about what VAT was originally intended for - to replace tax on income with tax on expenditure? Only, someone forgot to repeal income tax. Double whammy.
Tax on expenditure is fair because it does not discriminate. A flat 20% on everything *at the point of sale* would pay for ALL public services with no need for any other levies. Period.
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That's a regressive tax. Poor people spend more of their income on "stuff", so end up paying more tax (proportionally) than the rich, who use tier money in other ways (stock, shares etc).
You say "regressive tax" as though that is somehow morally wrong and shocks the conscience of the Universe. You might choose a cutoff that income tax starts on all income above a basic subsistence rate, but there is no absolute moral authority stating "regressive tax bad, progressive tax good." Besides, many low income people currently pay no income taxes at all. Even if they paid a pittance and had some skin in the game they might start taking a much greater interest in how their tax monies were being spen
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And the parent says "fair" as though there's only one way to evaluate that declaration. As with most things it's a more subtle question than simply declaring that some other position is morally wrong and therefore your position must by default be the only acceptable option. If you want to support a regressive tax feel free, but simply declaring that a progressive tax isn't clearly morally superior is not the same as providing rational in support of a regressive tax.
Moreover anyone who excludes payroll taxes
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A flat income tax with no deductions? Seriously? You know that'd benefit the rich. Right now, a lot of poor people pay no income tax. I pay no income tax. I just have to worry about self-employment tax (equivalent to FICA taxes for employed persons) and that's it. I don't earn enough to pay income tax, and I don't think I ever have. Came close while in college given my grants.
A flat tax that somehow benefits the rich? Wow, how did you arrive at that?
Let me see here. Under a flat tax I make X dollars and pay Y tax on them where Y = some% of X.
Another person makes 2X dollars and pays 2Y in taxes.
Uncle Money Bags makes 100X dollars (I hope I'm in his will) and pays 100Y in taxes.
You know, that really sounds very fair to me -- although truly fair would be that everybody pays the same amount of tax each year because everybody benefits the same from roads, schools and other provided s
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Because 10% is very different for someone who makes minimum wage than it is for someone who makes millions. We may use the same roads, but we don't use them at the same level. Someone in a city who can't afford a car will be riding a bus with others, which will result in one less vehicle on the road. Flat tax only works in a case where everyone is on an equal starting point.
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Corporations are legally separate entities. They are to pay taxes. Then when they dividend their earnings, the shareholders pay taxes. Yes, the government may incentivize corporations to do all manner of social good through tax breaks but it has gone too far.
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The companies *are* paying taxes. Through you. They hire thousands of people and those people, by law, have to pay x% of their wages in taxes. Government makes it as painless as possible (low corporate tax) to operate any business that employs large numbers of tax-paying worker bees. "Government", in this case, being people that you elected to look after these things for you.
In Washington State [wa.gov], not so much. You're talking out of your ass, and it smells like it too.
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They produced the software in Washington, that's where they're supposed to pay taxes on it. This is settled case law. It's just that the state chose not to enforce the law and throw executives in prison for tax evasion. Which IMHO sets a bad precedent that you can just not pay your tax bill if you're rich enough.
They claim to sell the software from theri branch in Nevada. But, since the items were produced in WA, they're liable for tax there as well.
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This is settled case law.
Heh, apparently not that settled.
It's just that the state chose not to enforce the law and throw executives in prison for tax evasion.
If it's not illegal, which is the case here, then it's not tax evasion (which is illegal by definition) and we wouldn't have cause to throw anyone in prison for tax evasion.
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If corporations continue to do this, then the government should erect severe tariffs, exit fees, etc to discourage such behavior.
Not moving assets, keeping them remote. (Score:2)
Companies are not "moving assets to another country" (by which you obviously mean earnings). They are earning money in other countries, on which BTW they pay tax in those countries, and then the profit they have opted not to move back to the U.S. because they face a monstrous tax (40%!!!!) on the amount the would bring back, which remember THEY HAVE ALREADY PAID TAXES ON WHERE INCOME WAS MADE.
Look at the chart of corporate tax rates [kpmg.com] around the world, the US rate is way higher than any other country.
Would
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It's fun when you read the footnotes:
The corporate income tax rate is approximately 40%. The marginal federal corporate income tax rate on the highest income bracket of corporations (currently above USD 18,333,333) is 35%. State and local governments may also impose income taxes ranging from 0% to 12%, the top marginal rates averaging approximately 7.5%. A corporation may deduct its state and local income tax expense when computing its federal taxable income, generally resulting in a net effective rate of a
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That rate is the highest possible rate, not what corporations actually pay.
You seem to be justifying having the highest corporate tax rates in the world because some corporations do not pay that much, and go so far as to make a long post that not once considers those corporations that do actually pay that much.
The reality is that these tax breaks and incentives are essential precisely because otherwise American corporations are completely fucked
The real downside of the high base with an incentive system is that it allows the government to pick winners and losers. Microsoft ge
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...Look at FL TX and TN no state Income tax. TX none on Corps either. Why? Because its easy to game and hard to Admin. Sales/Use and property taxes.
Yep. Just like Washington State [wa.gov]. Sigh.
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greedy fucks all of them.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."
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You can rationalize it all you want, but tax "avoidance" really is the same concept as tax evasion.
One is illegal, one is not.
If you think there is some sort of moral obligation to give the government your money, then you're the one with the strange point of view, not Microsoft.
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If you think there is some sort of moral obligation to give the government your money, then you're the one with the strange point of view, not Microsoft.
Well, uh, call me "strange" if you must, but I actually am not an anarchist. I'll join the various libertarian appeals here on occasions to complain that our government is too big -- but I think we need SOME government. And funding for that government has to come from SOMEWHERE.
Our elected representatives have set up a system to fund that government through taxation, and I absolutely agree that at least SOME of that revenue needs to be collected to serve fundamental government services (e.g., police and
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You can rationalize it all you want, but tax "avoidance" really is the same concept as tax evasion.
The key difference being that one is legal and the other is not.