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."
Re:unsubstantiated garbage (Score:4, Interesting)
That should be easy to verify, contact the SecState of Nevada
Why not make some politicians squirm? (Score:5, Interesting)
New Math (Score:5, Interesting)
"Every time Microsoft hires someone in Washington, it creates 3.5 new jobs here. According to the company, Microsoft created an estimated 117,620 new jobs in Washington between 1990 and 2001. But while Microsoft promotes the positive impact of success, all this growth has placed a heavy burden on our schools, roads, and overall livability."
Wow - How could Microsoft be so insensitive as to create jobs.
However, this also raises the BS meter. I always love when I hear "We create xx jobs for every one we hire". Sounds good... but it doesn't add up. To even out, there has to be a job somewhere that causes -1.5 people to be hired. Other than the 435 CongressPricks, and the one in the Oval Office, there aren't too many jobs like that.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:1, Interesting)
Oooh! Oooh! I've got an idea, howabout we make companies incorporate in their own state?
Just to be sure, we can define "their own state" too, by making it the state the majority of their employees are in. If they're too spread out to get a majority, make it the state with the most employees.
Re:Amazon Loves Nevada Taxes Too (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:unsubstantiated garbage (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW, if Microsoft didnt get tax breaks here, I'm sure some other state would gladly offer it. Corporations are already playing states against each other, really shows you how much power Corporations have.
So, while there are answers, nothing will change.
Business as usual. [pun intended]
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
So having a branch in Nevada would mean Microsoft had to pay Nevada taxes AND Washington taxes.
This isn't unusual, and is how many countries elsewhere work income tax. Those from Britain will remember the Ken Dodd trial, where the British Government successfully argued that overseas earnings - even those where he had paid tax overseas - were ALSO taxable in the UK.
Yeah, you could argue that this is unfair, but the problem is that a lot of big-name celebrities and corporations have moved to tax havens. As tax exiles, they get to keep all of their money. The consequence of that is that, in order to maintain any kind of level of service, everyone else has to pay more.
Eventually, what you end up with is the very rich being wholly and completely subsidized by the very poor. Welfare in reverse. Such a system is inherently unstable. The poor - by definition - don't have much in the way of resources, so the greater their burden, the greater the chances of the system collapsing.
Let's take an admittedly extreme example. Let's say that the economy rested virtually entirely on the shoulders of minimum wage workers. It is physically impossible to work more than 3 shifts in a day. Given all that, and given the State and Federal income taxes at that level of income, how many minimum wage workers would you need to cover the average State budget and a typical Federal budget?
If the answer exceeds the population of the US, then neither the States NOR the Federal Government can afford to support tax exiles.
(In an ironic twist, those who do live in tax exile are often the most influential in Government, inverting the age-old critisism that there should be no taxation without representation. Here, they have no taxation, but often all the representation.)
But there is, there is a loophole (Score:3, Interesting)
How to regulate (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:5, Interesting)
Poor Boy buys a $20,000 car pays $1000 or 5.0% of his income.
Rich Boy buys a $60,000 car pays $3000 or 1.0% of his income.
Conservatives love this, too. When the Republicans took over the Iowa Legislature 10 years ago (and things were good) they cut income tax by 10% across the board (giving a massive break, in terms of real dollars to the rich).
Years later, when things weren't so good, they raised the state sales tax 1%, which had the same affect: hurting the poor in terms of both real dollars and % of income.
Let's clean up our existing tax laws first--eliminate the subsidy on SUVs, make it harder to create tax shelters in the Caribbean.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess that whole "United STATES" thing just went over your head in high school history class, eh?
There are certain areas that make sense to be centralised;
And those areas are enumerated in the Constitution. Try actually reading the document to see what they are. Pay particular attention to the 9th and 10th Amendments.
not only would it make complying with the law easier
Since law for everyone, everywhere would be set at the federal level, and local concerns would never hold any weight or water. Might as well do away with the idea of statehood altogether.
but it would save the taxpayers a lot of $$$ in not having to employ fifty sets of state legislature and bureaucracy...
Clearly you've never worked for government. The larger the bureaucracy, the more inefficient it becomes. You'd still need approximately the same amount of government, only now it'd be under control of the feds and cost much, much more to operate. Worse, that government no longer answers to the locals who pay for it.
I'll pass on your test-bed version of one-world government, thanks.
Max
Nevada makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
In our case, taxes were not the intent at all. We still pay local state taxes as well, so the savings are not that significant. There is some tax savings since some of the taxes are paid to Nevada instead, but nothing significant.
Now what I do feel bad about is how some companies set up their offices offshore in places like the Caymen islands to avoid federal income taxes or other federal laws. If a US based company does this, then they should not get the benefits of being a US company. I also feel that the federal government should not be allowed to sign contracts with companies that do this. I.e. why should my tax dollars go to Haliburton when the company sets up offices (usually just a mail stop) in places like the Caymen islands or elsewhere to not only avoid paying US taxes, but to also circumvent US laws and do business in places like Iran.
Re:The Article. (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux also fills the niche of a half decent operating system on the cheapest hardware, which may cut the margins but I think those saying it is a threat just want to see themselves as being important and part of some movement bringing MS down. MS will bring itself down if it happens, and I don't care one way or another so long as I can use a good *nix clone on cheap, relatively powerful hardware. Linux could be better, and is becoming so - and I still see features being added to the latest breed of WinNT that were present in the version of linux I was using eight years ago.
We have to keep in mind that we use computers to run applications, so we have to run an OS that runs the applications we use. With a lot of new things being cross-platform (even compiling on a Mac) Microsoft may end up being the odd man out instead of their old role of being the only game at the cheap end of town (or think of it as T-Fords vs Bentleys). Most decent new commercial software that needs to run on a server has a web front end now anyway, so the client is cross-platform.
seattle a shit hole not becouse of MS (Score:2, Interesting)
this new article by the seattle weekly is just another atempt by the inept local media to blame the city's problems on outside forces instead of its inept government.
Seattle's problems are becouse of its government who choose to focus on dams, baseball stadiums, and MS rather then cutting waste and taxes, fixing pot holes and implementing sane land planning that encurages development rather then scares it away.
I left seattle 4 years ago becouse it was unlivable...and i see no reason to move back.
stendec@gmail.com
Re:New article (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll tell YOU what's despicable. Having the audacity to tell the State of Washington how to spend tax dollars, knowing full well that every state in the Union is strapped for cash. The audacity part comes in when you realize that Microsoft doesn't even PAY any taxes.
Want the situation to get better? Start destroying these megalith corporations that flaunt the law. Put commerce back in the hands of the people that really run this country's economy: Small businesses.
Re: Why?? The Demise of Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
In the long saga of the battle between the world and its detested adversary,
the Microsoft corporation, everybody is dying to see how the movie end.
Everybody also knows that in the movie the antagonist always dies at the end,
but the question is how? To most who detest Microsoft vehemently they would
like to see a quick and horrid death and those who detest even more so would
only find a sadistic pleasure in seeing nothing less than having Microsoft being
slowly skinned alive on a burning stake.
An IT Fairy Tale
Once upon the time, there was a computer software company named Microsoft,
whose craftiness in marketing made it become one of the most popular software company
on the planet. However, once that company attained its dominant position
in the marketplace, greed and fear filled the unsettled soul of Microsoft.
The company then aggressively pursued and eliminated almost all of its contenders,
names that once were legends one by one fell to Microsoft's sword, WordPerfect,
Borland, Novell, Netscape, Corel and more. Soon, people saw Microsoft for what
it was, a cunning roguish company that had no conscience to stop itself doing whatever
it needs to achieve its ambitions. All the other software companies
realized that there will be no end to Microsoft's unquenchable thirst for power but
none dared to challenge Microsoft until one day a young knight developed an operating
system called Linux. Linux came with a license called Open Source, which represented
to all the other companies a platform from which they can rally together in a
silent treaty to overthrow the software tyrant. One day, Microsoft woke up
and saw a huge army amassed upon the hills, companies that once were shot, wounded,
cheated and humiliated now all carry the same banner, the flag of Linux. Amongst
the valiant warriors, were IBM, Novell, Sun, Oracle, Sony, Fujitsu, Red Hat and CA and
amongst the catapults and shields they used were forged from the power of Open Source,
Apache, OpenOffice, Mozilla, PosgreSQL, MySql, Python, PHP, Samba and much
more. What Microsoft saw shook its heart, however its power to control the market
is still immense and with 56 billion dollars in the vault, its going to put up a very
good fight. This is the year 2004 and the battle has just begun.
The Crystal Ball
So my young seer, you wish to see how this battle unfold? First, you have to understand
how unlike previous battles where the companies were easily and ruthlessly cut down
by Microsoft, this time the catapults and shields that the Allies formed from Open Source
were impenetrable, in fact, the more Microsoft attacked the slowly advancing catapults and
shields,
the stronger the catapults and shields became. How can that be? The magic of Open Source.
All artifacts created from Open Source do not obey the laws of the jungle, first of all
artifacts are immortalized by having the source code freely distributed across the
earth, as Microsoft attacks one point more heads would sprout from different places.
Another power of Open Source is leverage, in the old times when a developer was to
write a software, he practically has to write most of the libraries himself/herself or
purchase or license expensive code sets from other companies like Microsoft. Nowadays,
these libraries are all available freely from Open Source, graphics libraries,
network libraries, XML libraries, parsers, compilers, were all there for all to share.
This is the leverage that hasn't been available to developers before, now all the
Davids have slingshots.
Rebellion of the Serfs
Back to that same once ancient period, almost all developers lived under the direction and
command of Microsoft. Their blind obedience contributed immensely to
the growth of Microsoft. They created applications of all sorts of shapes
and sizes which made the Microsoft platform very popular. All these t
Re:Bananas (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Wake up and smell the capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But there is, there is a loophole (Score:3, Interesting)
It's enforced on businesses by a draconian policy of auditing every business regularly. When I had a business in WA, my accountant told me you always pay use tax because they will audit you.
For individuals, the only item I am aware of that they can enforce it on is a car. When you register your car you have to demonstrate that you paid sales tax on it wherever you bought it. If you can't, you pay use tax in WA. You are still required to pay use tax on everything else, but it's difficult to enforce, so there's naturally lots of sales tax revenue the state isn't getting. Expect them to cry RIAA-style about it, it'll happen.
As far as I know, though, WA is the only weird state with that sort of law. I wouldn't be surprised if several other states around Oregon have similar laws, though, just because of Oregon. In all the years I've lived in various states in this country, WA is the only state where I encountered "use tax". So I conclude that the GP (or whoever was talking about use tax) lives in WA, and like all people who live in WA, thinks that the way it is in WA is the way it is everywhere.
Gawd I can't stand that place, I'm so happy I don't lvie there anymore.
Re:Wake up and smell the capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does that fucking surprise you? This part:
I see that as the whole plan from day one. MS software appears to be designed to be just good enough to do the job and run on machines just good enough to keep ticking over while running the software.
How many companies whose entire focus is on making good software survive? NaN is gone. Um, let's see. SCO (the old one) is gone. Hmmmm, so many, I don't even know where to begin. Loki? Who else.....
The fact is, if you want to make money, you have to focus on making money. The other things you do need to be consistent with the goal of making money. Anything not consistent with that goal is going to be an expenditure of resources that will hurt your ability to make money.
Microsoft has many faults, and the fact that they've built such a shitty product is one of them, but the fact that they've focused on making money is *not* one of them. There are many ways to accomplish the goal of making money, some of them are "good" and some of them are "bad" and some are pure unadulterated evil.
As people who spend money in this economy and who theoretically elect our government we should be focused on guiding companies to making money by doing "good" things and punishing or obliterating them for doing "bad" things. But we should never, ever try to stop them from making money, because making money is critical to our economy. It's what defines capitalism.
You don't want capitalism? I'm willing to entertain alternatives that aren't totalitarian in nature.
Re:Bananas (Score:2, Interesting)
"Bill Gates made bad software acceptable in the market. Steve Jobs would have made bad corporate culture acceptable."
Does "Bad corporate culture" include illegal abuse of a monopoly position? Does it perhaps include falsifying evidence in a court of law? How about astroturfing? How about all the other crap that Microsoft pulled off?
Plus, bad software thrown into the bargin!
Sorry, HOW exactly would Steve Jobs be better?