Keeping Microsoft Happy 395
Jeff writes "In Citizen Microsoft, I report on Microsoft's use of Nevada corporations to avoid approximately $327 million in Washington state taxes while telling voters they need to pay more to fund education. I also contrast Microsoft's attacks on the open source community with its in-state lobbying efforts and its recent promise to get more involved in local politics. The cover has Gates in a gorilla suit."
Of all the things to knock MS for... (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wouldn't? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is more an indictment of the various tax laws and the shenanigans of the legislative bodies that enact them than of any company or individual that might take "advantage" of them.
Legislators, state and federal, have no incentive to make straight-forward, logical, honest tax laws. They get too much gain from making the laws obstuse and full of holes, for special friends.
Oh, and if you look at any statistics, poor people don't pay enough taxes.
Re:The Article. (Score:3, Insightful)
New article (Score:2, Insightful)
Would this get posted to Slashdot? I highly doubt it. Seriously, who can blame MS for this one? Raise your hand if you enjoy paying taxes. Hell, the majority of you guys probably wouldn't support piracy if it wasn't a way to skive out of spending your hard earned cash.
Give the microsoft bashing a break already, it's beyond despicable.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they do. It's just that if you are incorporated in Nevada and are not paying WA taxes then maybe you ought to keep your mouth shut about how WA spends the taxes it collects from other people.
Re:The Article. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft: The Epitome of Corporate Pathology (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft takes standard coporate psychopathy, and amplifies it.
This situation is a perfect case in point. They ask for more from more from governments, pay less, and rationalize this greedy behaviour by arguing they "create jobs".
This is the same kind of arrogance demonstrated by companies that outsource IT jobs. Corporations are mere guests of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they no longer make their fair contribution to society, then they should be forced to pony up their share.
We have to pay our share of taxes, despite the skills and labour we offer society. Why shouldn't corporations be held to the same standards and given the same societal responsibilities as individuals?
Wake up and smell the capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, maybe that's why their software sucks so bad. They don't care about making good software, they only care about making good money.
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why AG's for the states get together in order to draft legislation that will create some consistency in the laws across the country. I would agree with the second statement. Many people choose to establish residency in Florida before declaring bankruptcy because of the laws put into place to protect the individual declaring bankruptcy.
Probably a more realistic system would be to require a corporation to state its "home turf" (much as a ship states its home nationality). The corporation would then have to obey the laws (including tax laws) of its home turf AS WELL AS the laws of wherever any outposts were.
Before putting forth this analogy go see where the majority of ships nationalities are registered. It isn't here in the US its actually Panama and the Bahamas because once again they are avoiding tax liability.
Unfortunately you are correct many companies are moving off-shore, Tyco and Dewalt come to mind off the top of my head as two recent examples, but the only way to prevent those things from happening (and retain our jobs here at home) is to become consistent and competitive.
Taking your argument to the extreme is very Kant'ish of you but in no way resolves the issue at hand. Not everyone can skip the country and if everyone did the laws would be changed. BTW, according to the Congressional Budget Office the top 20% of all taxpayers shoulder 82%~ of the tax burden of the country. The minimum wage worker does not even contribute to the tax burden because they receive payments back from the government.
Re:Of all the things to knock MS for... (Score:5, Insightful)
So I don't have to sign an EULA and a two-year service agreement to use a road to drive the store.
Why should the *government* hire teachers?
To keep everone else's kids out of trouble and off my lawn.
Why should the *government* hire firefighters?
So I don't have to find my credit card before I can get somebody to rescue my family from a burning building.
Why should the *government* give disabled people money?
So I don't have to trip over them on the sidewalk and in stairwells as if I was Charlton Heston in Soylent Green.
Since you're the one who doesn't seem to need anybody else, why don't you head for the border.
Cry Me a River of Millions. please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like those 'loopholes' worked out pretty well for them.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I would not sign on to a VAT until there was specific language in the law that declared an income tax and VAT could not exist at the same time.
Other corporations? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Apple Computer is incorporated in California, but owns subsidiaries, such as "Apple Computer Peripherals, Inc." that are incorporated in Delaware. Apple even owned "Apple Computer Domestic Subsidiary No. 4", incorporated in Delaware - I guess that ACDS No's 1-3 were too old to be on the Sec. of State's online records.
2. Sun Microsystems: Almost entirely Californian, but there was a Delaware corporation, Sun Microsystems, Inc. that was created in 1987.
3. HP? Well, there is a Hewlett Packard Retiree's Club incorporated in California. Agilent? Delaware. The old HP was in California. The new one? I couldn't find it.
4. Novell? Incorporated in Delaware.
5. eMachines? Delaware.
6. IBM? Seems to be in Delaware, but there's a "IBM Global Services India Private Limited" in India. Wonder how much IBM phone support comes from there? (Seriously - I don't know).
I'm tired and I'm going to sleep, so I leave additional research as an exercise for the interested. The point here is that most of the big corporations seem to be incorporated in "friendly" states like Delaware, or at least have subsidiaries in Delaware the way Apple Computer seems to have, apparently for the purpose of minimizing tax liability and taking advantage of other laws benefiting corporations.
So is MS ripping off the good people of the State of Washington? Sure. But it's only par for the course, and it's what the other corporations are doing and will keep doing until we amend the constitution, repeal dual soverignty, and eliminate the states as entities with the power to legislate (ie, it ain't going to happen). It's the same thing as "forum shopping" (filing lawsuits in the jurisdiction with the most favorable law, if you can), or even some advanced estate planning techinques (some states have completely repealed the Rule Against Perpetutities, which allows people to create trusts domiciled in those states that can, literally, last forever).
Hell, want to know the biggest corporate scam?
1. Buy an asset owned by a municipality - a bus, subway car, sewer system, for an example.
2. Lease it back to the municipality for an amount roughly equivalent for what you paid for it amortized over a few years.
3. Depreciate the hell out of it and pay little or no corporate taxes, ever.
4. Once you've milked the depreciation, sell the asset back to the municipality for a nominal value.
5. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
6. ??? (couldn't resist)
7. Profit.
The loopholes exist, and corporations (and people) take advantage of them. And when they don't exist, lobbyists convince legislatures to create them. Are we doomed? Not really. Washington may be whining over a few hundred million bucks, but it's not as if the state government has collapsed. Yet...
Since when...? (Score:3, Insightful)
common sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bananas (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at it this way. If it wasn't him, it would be someone else in his spot. The market wanted personal computers, with an operating system that was readily available and ran on commodity hardware. He provided half of that equation. Meanwhile, niche computing and heavyweight stuff was reserved for Unix, Irix, Sun and other players. His real genius was releasing bug ridden software that ran just well enough to let you get some work done, but not well enough to convince you that you didn't need the latest upgrade release.
Ask any Windows 95 user why they would want 98. Is there a long list of features that are new? Not really. Instead, it promised what every other Microsoft upgrade promised and continue to promise: greater stability, speed, performance, and compatibility. For those of you that refuse to get on the upgrade conveyor belt, you'll be left ass-out in the cold when MS declares end-of-life for your OS and stops releasing patches for it. Upgrade or get owned.
There are those of us that prefer choice and we generally use MacOS or Linux. So what if we don't have 1000 crap games and 3 good ones. So what if we can't download heaps of junk freeware. So what if we don't need virus protection software and commercial firewalls. We get along just fine without MS.
Actually I can't throw too many stones, because every call I get from an end user that has 215 pieces of spyware and adware clogging up their pc is money in the bank for me. The sad thing is, they think what they use is all that can be used without taking out a second mortgage to buy a G5 tower. One customer actually asked me about Linux, especially after he saw how beautiful it was running on my Dell laptop. Converted.
Re:Wake up and smell the capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never used a piece of MS software without knowing there is something better out there - even using Microsofts Applesoft BASIC I wanted to use integer BASIC instead, since it had a compiler that came with it. After the teacher threw out my pirate copy of integer BASIC, I was reduced to using the built in Microsoft version, since it was good enough (peek and poke could do the job) and within my financial resources (ie. sitting on the school computer).
M$ Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not ONLY with M$ avoiding taxes, but their HYPOCRISY, since at the same time they are spouting out of their backend about how the residents are not paying enough and trying to get the people to pay even MORE taxes.
What a bunch of BS! If I were a resident of WA, I'd want to kick them out.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Insightful)
Rich Boy buys a $60,000 car pays $3000 or 1.0% of his income.
I don't see the problem here. It's fair. The word fair means that everyone plays by the same rules.
If they both buy a $20,000 car, then they both pay $21,000 total. If Poor Boy thinks that $21,000 is too much, then he shouldn't buy the car.
Is Poor Boy at a disadvantage compared to Rich Boy, who can afford $21,000 for a car? Yes, he is. That's because he's poor. If you want to remedy that, the proper solution is to give him money, rather than make the laws unfair.
I am having trouble understanding the moral framework here...
Re:Microsoft is evil... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nevada makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
This needs to be carried further. In this example if MS is setting up shop in Arizona because they want to pay less taxes and shirk more responsibility then the state of WA should not do business with them.
The same concept just one little step further.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is one of the major problems with the US today. People that are uneducated on our form of goverenment. The Federal Goverenment IS NOT supposed to have even the amount of control it currently enjoys. Our forefathers founded this country with the vision of a very minimalistic Federal government. Over the course of history States rights have gradually been eroded to the point that the very concept of States rights is laughable.
More over the current income tax we are forced to pay at gunpoint was rule unconstitutional by the Supream Court in 1895. So the Congress passed the 16th amendment, and income tax was here to stay.
Regardless of political affiliation, I think both Dems and GOPs will both agree that the last thing the Fed needs is more power and influence over us.
Re:Since when...? (Score:4, Insightful)
I call shenannigans. Too many people no longer even CARE what's right, just what they can get away with, legally, or sometimes in the grey area. As long as you don't get caught, it's ok, right? I mean, if it was legal to kill someone (to take this to it's absurd extreme. Or not so absurd, if you take into account side-effects of unemployment, outsourcing and loss of resources), I may as well do it, right?
This malaise has transferred to our corporations as well. Not all of them, as mentioned in the article, corps like DuPont try to be good citizens. But they're unfortunately a minority. Don't you ever question why America has by orders of magnitude the largest per capita population of lawyers? Because we want to squeak through any crack we can, and take what we can by threading the needle through complicated legalese. Not because it's right, but because we want to outwit the system and get something. Whether it'll hurt others or not.
Gah. Anyway, I'm tired, and slightly tipsy. I hope this rant made sense.
Re:New article (Score:1, Insightful)
You're right. No one likes paying *excess* taxes. But one of the points I think the author was making was MS wants the state to raise taxes to support higher education (which MS could benefit from-- ie skilled labour) yet MS channels tax money out of the state thus passing that burdon on the rest of the tax payers. In short, if MS maybe paid more of its share of taxes, maybe the citizens of WA would'nt have to pay as much.
Zero-sum thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong! Wrong! WRONG!
That's zero-sum thinking, and life isn't really a zero-sum game. If Bill Gates gets richer, that doesn't actually mean that poor people get poorer. If you are well-fed, that doesn't actually mean that someone else has to be hungry.
Microsoft is claiming that for each person they hire in Washington state, the state gets extra jobs. This is because that extra MS employee gets paid, and spends money in the state (at Starbucks, for example, as some other posters said). The money can come from all over.
And guess what -- we are all richer than anyone was 50 years ago. What do I mean? For $200 I can buy a cool pocket computer on eBay, with colour display and everything. How much would that cost 50 years ago? Oh, they didn't have colour pocket computers, or eBay for that matter. Our health care is better, so our life expectancy is higher. And while pop music sucks now, the cool music from then is still available now, and we can buy cool TV shows on DVD.
What is the point of the above ramble? It's just this: when someone discovers something cool or invents something cool, the whole world gets a bit richer (at least if that person shares the discovery or the world at least finds out). There is no part of the world that has to get poorer when the rest of the world gets richer. We use money to keep score, sort of, but don't forget that even a billionaire 50 years ago couldn't buy an iPod, or modern health care.
People think there is a finite amount of good stuff, and the rich people hoard it somehow. That's not how it works.
If you are writing new tax laws, write them to maximize the benefit to society, not to punish the richest guys. If cutting the tax rate would encourage more spending and make more tax revenues, then do that. But some people will cry that it's unfair because it lets the rich keep more of their money. Because they are using zero-sum thinking to look at the world.
I really HATE zero-sum thinking.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Insightful)
gross profits = total sales
Actually, gross profits doesn't exist. It's referred to as gross sales, gross revenue, or just revenue. Profit is always and only income-expenses. I'm being pedantic, I realize.
you would actually wind up pushing a lot of businesses right out of the country
You have no evidence of that.
You also have no evidence your hare-brained scheme will actually work. Sue me for thinking critically and analyzing your proposal, and also considering how many companies have moved from state to state or chosen to setup in specific states or other countries entirely because of tax laws involved. It's a historic and economic fact that overtaxing a group of people will drive them out of the area. A revolution was conducted in this country over that exact issue. Evidence I don't need. Not when all you need to understand what I said is a basic history lesson, a leven of education I achieved in the third grade. Don't know about you, though.
and generally do a lot more harm than good.
Nor of that.
Aha, lack of reading comprehension. I stated how it would cause more harm than good in my first post, but it appears you may not have read it. Since you managed to quote my post, that's solid evidence you did read it, so lack of reading comprehension is the obvious conclusion.
See? that's called "power of reason". Analytical reasoning and problem solving our the purposes of studying math in school. Both of those are usually skills that are established pretty early in school at least to a minimum level to understand what I said.
Aha, so I attacked you. Why would I do that? I provided a thoughtful response to your statement and received curt baseless responses. I expected meaningful dialog, and I got, well, double-standard. You ask me for evidence to criticize your proposal, but you don't provide evidence to back it up. That brings the assumption that your proposal is good. So let's pursue every single proposal anybody dreams up under the assumption it's good, without thinking about it.
Keywords: without thinking about it.
My $.02: I hate MS's products, too, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here are some excerpts from the piece:
How can anyone call those things "facts"? Their opinion. Now, I don't mind op/ed pieces. But this is reported under the title of "News". If you want to express your opinions, that's fine. Just don't tell me you're trying to express fact when you're expressing opinions.
If we in the OSS world, want to beat Microsoft, we can't accuse them of FUD at the same time that we're practicing it.
$.02
Re:A note on avoiding state taxes (Score:3, Insightful)
I can always eventually find a job. Times might suck for a while, but I'll get through it. But I cannot get through it without knowledge. I would be disgusted if I saw someone screw over my kid's education just to get some money.
At the end of the day knowledge is the most important thing. If you have a good education, you can go out and do just about anything you want.
Ultimatly that is why I'm not concerned about my job. If I lose it for whatever reason, I know that I won't be too hard pressed to find a new one. Yes, I might be unemployed for a while. Yes times might get a little tough. But I know that it will only be temperary.
Knowledge IS indeed power. And with that power, you can lift yourself above and accomplish anything...assuming you have the determination to do so. And to a point, I think those two things go hand in hand.
We'd be happy yo have Microsoft move here. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Insightful)
You pointed out that you're a hard worker...well good for you, we need more like you!!! BUT...that thinking also makes you a shmuck! If you want real equality of taxes, realize that "income tax" taxes the over all money you make, while sales tax taxes what you MUST buy to a certian extent. The percentage of your income you MUST spend being poor is drastically higher than the rich guy... to put it another way how many hours did you have to work to pay the sales tax on the same $20 shirt...a minimum wage guy would have to work 4 hours just to pay for the shirt plus another hour for the sales tax...the rich guy might work 1 hour for the whole $100 trip to the mall... see the difference? oh, and the rich guy doesn't pay "medical bills" because somebody else [insurance] pays them...so while you work to pay debt, they get compound interest...basically from you!!
When you start talking about the "top 20%" there's a large spread there as well...after all, 10 families at $100k pay far more real taxes than 1 family with $1m! After all, that's 10 pairs of soccer shoes, 10 Xboxes, 10 pairs of braces...versus only 1 for the guy making a $1m. While the income tax would be close to the same, the "extras" like sales, telcom, etc could be 10x higher part of income for the 'poorer' folk.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Insightful)
Errr, what part of "1.0% is different from 5.0%" is hard to understand? Phrasing the "same rules" in flat dollar values is "unfair". Using a percentage automatically scales to every situation, and is therefore the completely fair way.
Now _should_ things be fair in this way? I'll leave that for someone else.
Re:Bananas (Score:4, Insightful)
If given a choice, I would take Bill Gates over Steve Jobs anyday. Ever watch that TV special with those two in the 80s. Gates was a complete geek, but Jobs was a geek with serious attitude problems toward his own engineers.
They portrayed him as this abusive chief with absolutely zero respect toward everyone who worked for him. Ego trip every day and made his engineers pushed to an unhealthy limit.
Bill Gates made bad software acceptable in the market. Steve Jobs would have made bad corporate culture acceptable.
I'm not sure which is worse: the fact that you base your opinion of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on a made-for-TV movie, or the fact that people were dumb enough to rate your post +4, Interesting.
Next time, try to base your opinions of people on something a little more substantial, will you please?
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Insightful)
No wonder you're having trouble understanding your moral framework.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Insightful)
Incidentally, the fact that one Boy is Poor and the other Rich implies that they aren't playing the same game, so the parent post's definition of "fair" doesn't apply.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, and fair means at the same cost, or burden to everyone, not the same relative dollar value. Ten percent of a lower middle class income is a huge burden which directly affects their quality of life. Ten percent on an upper middle class income, while more dollars, is hardly any burden. Progressive tax systems allow for a fair burden on everyone, regardless of class.