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."
Bananas (Score:2, Funny)
Lots and lots of bananas.
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.
Now that's a monkey business!
Re:Bananas (Score:5, Funny)
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: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:Bananas (Score:2, Funny)
No way (Score:4, Funny)
The Article. (Score:3, Informative)
September 29 - October 5, 2004
Citizen Microsoft
It's time we stopped acquiescing to the behemoth in Redmond, because what's good for big business isn't necessarily good for Washington.
by Jeff Reifman
By any measure, Microsoft is capitalism's greatest success. In July, the company announced plans to distribute $75 billion in dividends to shareholders over the next four years. One executive, in a morale-boosting internal e-mail, recently called Windows the most successful product in history. Even Googling "corporation" returns Microsoft at the top of the search results. But what has been best for Microsoft's shareholders has not always been best for Washington taxpayers and our community.
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.
Recently, Forbes ranked Seattle as the most overpriced city in the country. Our school class sizes are the fourth largest in the nation. Washington's percentage of residents enrolled in college ranks 46th out of 50 states. Seattle teacher salaries rank 97th out of 100 major cities. Our traffic is the 17th worst in the country. And let's not forget more than 167,000 Washington children without health care and the growing ranks of homeless citizens staking out highway off-ramps in search of handouts.
Most of us accept on faith that what's good for business is good for our state. Our Legislature spends much of its time trying to make Washington a competitive choice for businesses. But it's about time we started asking hard questions about where our competitiveness is taking us and who is pushing the agenda. How is it that with one of the richest corporations in the world in our backyard, our state has become less livable?
Tax exemptions are the mantra of Washington's Legislature. As Seattle Weekly reported earlier (see "$64 Billion Falls Through the Tax Cracks," Feb. 18), the state has amassed 503 business tax breaks valued at $64 billion per biennium budget. Cheered on by corporate lobbyists, including Microsoft's, Gov. Gary Locke and lawmakers implemented $20 billion of those exemptions in just the past four years. Last year, the state granted an additional $3.2 billion in breaks over the next 20 years to entice Boeing to locate the 7E7 assembly plant in Everett instead of some other state. Meanwhile, Forbes reports, Seattle ranks in the bottom fifth of major cities in job growth, income growth, cost of living, and housing affordability. And the state is predicting a $3 billion deficit by the end of the decade. As Microsoft's shareholders begin to reap their $75 billion dividend, they leave a growing infrastructure deficit in Washington.
That's the result of good times. Until now, Microsoft has enjoyed tremendous financial success. But it's entering a new era of software competition. It won't be able to rely on the dominance of the Windows operating system to be profitable. In fact, Microsoft's dependence on revenue from Windows and its other flagship product, the Office suite of applications, makes it vulnerable to new and increasingly popular alternatives to those now-ubiquitous programs. The free market is responding to the monopoly in Redmond. It's going to get tough. Meantime, last week the company said it plans to become far more active in Washington politics than in the past, citing the business climate, education funding, and transportation as areas where the state can do better. These aren't improvements with which Microsoft wishes to help. These are areas of concern the company wants remedied at taxpayer expense. If you want to anticipate how Microsoft might approach these and other local issues as the software business becomes more challenging, you need to study the company's track record with competitors
Re:The Article. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Article. (Score:5, Informative)
Or...
Maybe this is the same kind of analyzing that gets done on Apple every six months saying that it will go under. Let's just be honest for a second. Microsoft isn't going to go away. They may not be THE market share holder forever, but they aren't going to go away. The beauty of software is that people have a choice. Just like you can choose to use linux (or BSD,OSX,Netware,BE, whatever floats your boat), people can, and will, choose Windows. As great as Linux is, it has quite a few shortcomings, as does Windows, as does OS X. Everybody is basically equal.
So while their desktop market share will probably go down (at 90% it's hard for it not to), this doesn't mean that Linux will automagically become world leader supreme. Let's not kid ourselves.
What MS will do to seattle... (Score:4, Informative)
the article is saying seattle has been screwed over already...what happens when MS actually has to COMPETE to make a profit?
Re:The Article. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think they realised that their monopoly on the desktop will no longer give them huge financial growth. There are a lot of windows95 machines out there - they are reaching the point where they are running out of new people to sell an operating system and office programs to.
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 i
Re:The Article. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironic (Score:4, Funny)
As opposed to Steve Balmer who just jumps and dances around [ntk.net] like one.
Microsoft is evil... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Microsoft is evil... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:5, Informative)
There's no loophole (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There's no loophole (Score:2)
But there is, there is a loophole (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
Re:There's no loophole (Score:2)
Re:There's no loophole (Score:2)
Tourists that reside in a state that does not have a sales tax don't have to pay it while in other states. Seem to recall there's a ton of red tape to cut through though, you need some kind of special card that you present at the cash register.
As you might imagine it's a serious pain in the ass. But growing up, my parents used it whenever we went on vacation.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:2)
-- james
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,
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Informative)
You know.. although many of us realize the US is a federation of states.. it presents itself to the world, and generally acts as any other country would. The outside world sees "THE USA", one of may countries. The internal stuff about states and their respective powers is just that, internal.
Though I realize the distinction is very important to Americans, and very real, it's not significiant to outsiders
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:5, Informative)
You generally incorporate in a different state to take advantage of their chancery courts, anonymity laws and corporate stucture statutes (allowing more flexible or customized corporate structures, like the Delaware Series LLC for example). And you want to have your corporate entities in a state that doesn't add a substantial amount of tax on top of what you'll already owe to the states where you do business and generate income (Delaware, for instance, charges only a nominal amount of tax every year based on the number of shares outstanding - but like I said, this doesn't mean I don't pay excise or corporate taxes, I still pay them in MA since that's where I do business!). Additionally Massachusetts has a foreign corporation registration fee which makes up for any money you save by registering your corporation in another state - so you literally save nothing (and we're talking about differences here of a few hundred dollars a year, not something Microsoft cares about).
If Microsoft is doing business in Nevada and attributing income to that state, then that's not really a loophole at all. If they are mis-attributing income, that's just fraud. There are tax loopholes out there, but this article doesn't really make clear what loopholes Microsoft is actually using, or if Microsoft just uses Nevada corporations for business entities and groups subsumed within Microsoft Inc. because of their flexible corporate law. Maybe Washington just isn't as anal as Massachusetts about collecting their taxes from all businesses, or just are failing to enforce the appropriate attribution of income to Washington state? This stuff is always confusing in the software world, since it's not always so clear cut to say where the work was performed and where the income came from.
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:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:5, 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, 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
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: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 a
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.
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wake up... Your example is flawed. (Score:3)
The percentage of their income that 'Rich Boy' and 'Poor Boy' pay for their cars.
In your example, 'Rich Boy' pays $60k for the car and $3k for tax, which you say is 1%. That means that he earns $300k/yr, and just spent 20% of his annual income on a vehicle. So he pays 20% on the vehicle and 1% in taxes.
For 'Poor Boy', he's paying $20k on his car and $1k in taxes, which you say is 5% of his income. That means he earns $20k/yr, and just spent 100% of his annu
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.
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 st
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wake up and join the Real World... (Score:3, 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.)
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)
So having a branch in Nevada would mean Microsoft had to pay Nevada taxes AND Washington taxes.
You effectively do. You have to pay corporation registration and filing fees in the jurisdiction your corporation is registered in, in exchange for taking advantage of their general corporate organizational laws and chancery courts. You pay corporate excise or income taxes in the state where you actually conduct business, and if you conduct business in multiple states, you essentially are supposed to divide up that income and attribute it appropriately to each state. At least, this is the way the states that I'm familiar with deal with the issue. Delaware doesn't want to charge you full excise taxes for doing business there, they make good money out of having the best, most flexible, and well tested corporate structure statutes.
In any case, a state can't really tax a corporation or individual on income that is already getting taxed at a state level elsewhere, at least not without chasing everybody out. For a national corporation, anyway, this is all particularly confusing. If you employ all your people in state A and develop your software there, then you should probably pay taxes there. But it's possible to transfer ownership of that software to a corporation in another state, for example, and have it's income attributable to a totally separate entity in that other state, making it look like operations in state A are not that profitable while the corporation as a whole is raking in lots of profits (this may be what Microsoft is doing, but it's not clear from the article at all).
Anyway, the only way to make the kind of uniform changes you describe would be to do so at the federal level and impose them on the states (not likely). What if you have a branch in Nevada, Washington and Florida? How about in every state? Well, you already have to pay taxes in all these states, but you can't expect a company to pay taxes on all their income in ALL the states they do business in, they'd owe more taxes than they have income! So you come back to the problem of attributing and assigning income - it's a sticky problem, and ultimately you have to rely on a certain degree of honesty and tools like Sarbannes-Oxley to force that honesty. Beyond that, states need to deal with corporations that are abusing tax laws when they occur - if all your employees are in Washington and the company is making 10 billion dollars a year, but only attributing a billion dollars of it to work done in Washington, they are probably abusing the definitions provided for by law and they need to be cracked down on.
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:Unfortunately... (Score:2)
You don't even have a uniform voting system, and the world is poised to shake it's heads in disbelief at the next Florida voting debacle.
Any company the size of MS is going to have a few people focused on getting advantages out of things like incorporating in Nevada, so it should come as a surprise that they shop around.
As an example, I was reading a newspaper this morning owned by a former Australian that has become a citizen of the USA to get around m
not as simple as that (Score:5, Informative)
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:New Math (Score:3, Informative)
Wow - How could Microsoft be so insensitive as to create jobs.
So, because Ms creates jobs, they shouldn't have to pay income tax? On what planet does that make sense?
Re:New Math (Score:3)
The planet where that sort of tax dodge is allowed?
Your beef's with the gov't, not MS.
Re:New Math (Score:2)
However, what kind of jobs are they creating: jobs from true expansion of the economy, or just jobs from bloat? Most any job (R&D being a major exception) that creates more than -1.0 jobs is inefficiency.
There has to be a better way to employ everyone than to create jobs arbitrarily.
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.
Since the submitter forgot... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Since the submitter forgot... (Score:2)
This is not new or news (Score:2, Informative)
Amazon Loves Nevada Taxes Too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Amazon Loves Nevada Taxes Too (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
It's an interesting point (Score:5, Informative)
Tax law isn't something that is consistent and fair. It's a hodgepodge of well meaning laws all intended to do various things which will provide the goverment funding while not trying to destroy the economy at the same time.
That means a person may legally owe (depending on how he files) a whole range of taxes. If you choose to pay more, you're not a single bit more "legal" than if you pay the minimum. Add a few states into the mix, and some off-shore holdings, and I can mentally visualize the complexity of the problem growing.
As for the poor not paying enough taxes, well that's an opinion. But the lower taxing of the poor is a philosophical argument encoded in tax law. The argument is something along the lines of, well, if we tax them, then they'll never make it to middle class which is where we really make our money. Other arguements like, "big business is really what drives the economy, so they should get a tax break so they can do more business" are also philosophical in nature, but people tend to forget this.
As a result, you've got a lot of conflicting ideas on what is taxable, what is not, and how much. Just look at the relatively simple tax laws for food. There's literally cases where you can't know if an item is taxable until you lay down some sort of priority on which way you're going to interpert the laws.
Food is not taxable. Some snacks and candies are. Prepackaged food being consumed on the premises is. Beef jerky is a snack, yet it has a history of being a real food staple. Chewbacca lives on Endor. That means if the stop-and-go has a food court, then the beef jerky should be taxed, but if it lacks one, then no. It's not confusing because of political kick-backs, but because of political do-gooders who really tried to fix it on a case-by-case basis over the last 200 years.
Re:Who wouldn't? (Score:2)
Modern systems of welfare is a reaction to the socialist project, not part of it. If you're rich, be happy it's there.
Re:Who wouldn't? (Score:2)
Property Tax (Directly or included in rent)
Telco Luxury Tax
Telco USF Tax
State Sales Tax.
County Sales Tax.
City Sales Tax.
Sales Tax.
Gas Tax.
And a host of other taxes are taxes that the poor do pay. Why is it that when people say the poor pay not tax they always leave those out?
Finally! (Score:2, Funny)
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 pirac
Re:New article (Score:3, Funny)
In other news, Jesus Christ is now a card-carrying member of the Church of Satan. When asked, he commented "Microsofties read slashdot, why can't I?"
It could happen, really, it could. ;)
Not Rocket Science (Score:4, Funny)
To keep Mircosoft happy, you give them a big blue button that says "SCREW SOMEONE OVER" in big bold letters. As long as they can keep pressing it, they'll never lose their errections.
Re:Not Rocket Science (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously though, I had to re-read your comment several times before I realised you weren't referring to IBM at all. It should be a "big red" button, not a "big blue" one.
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?
Re:Microsoft: The Epitome of Corporate Pathology (Score:3, Informative)
There are much worse companies out there.
A software company that plays comtemptuous games with the court system which does nasty takeovers and may or may not have stolen its flagship product from a dentist and bought him out afterwards doesn't rate on the scale of international corporate nastyness.
How to regulate (Score:4, Interesting)
Keeping the /. Crowd Happy (Score:2)
Tells a lot about their objective approach!
What's the big deal? Imagine - they're trying to make money.
They busted Oracle in California two years ago, others haven't been busted big time yet.
What the hell does the author expect - to see IBM's sales reps running around explaining customers how to buy white boxes, install Debian Linux and save the government a pretty penny?
Fucking nonsense.
As for me... (Score:2)
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:Wake up and smell the capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
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. Historically, if you wanted something good you would get something from IBM, Sun, SGI, Apple, DEC, Honeywell or a dozen others who are not around anymore. For years PCs have
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
Re:Wake up and smell the capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Cry Me a River of Millions. please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like those 'loopholes' worked out pretty well for them.
Re:Cry Me a River of Millions. please. (Score:3)
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)
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.
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: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.
common sense (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
PLUG! (Score:3, Funny)
2. Put picture of Gates in gorilla suit
3. Advertise to flamers on slashdot
4. Profit!
Obl. Star Trek quote (Score:3, Funny)
"The clown can stay, but the Ferengi in the gorilla suit has to leave!" :-)
zMy $.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
Gorilla logic flawed (Score:3, Informative)
IBM is creating almost 20,000 jobs this year and has a booming intellectual property business, fuelled by the record 3000 patents granted yearly to Bug Blue.Yet, IBM is developping a large number of open source projects.
So the gorilla's logic is flawed.
Re:My God! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, sorry, I was in a parallel universe for a second there. Won't happen.
On the contrary (Score:2)
Lets hope that they take the money and
use it to make Windows better instead of
using it to fund SCO.
I hope MS will use the money to make SCO even more crazier, and make Windows as clueless as SCO.
Re:unsubstantiated garbage (Score:4, Interesting)
That should be easy to verify, contact the SecState of Nevada
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:unsubstantiated garbage (Score:2)
But hell, if WashState gives MSFT too much trouble they are welcome to more to Texas.
Re:unsubstantiated garbage (Score:3, Funny)
Acutally, that looks suspiciously like RIAA's new math.
Oh my god! They didn't give me money, that means it costed me money!
Didn't read the summary did you? (Score:4, Informative)
Kettle, Meet Pot (Score:2, Funny)
Even if it was true, you can't state such things if you can't spell or use proper capitalization. Troll post. *sigh*
My take... (Score:2)
Re:Of all the things to knock MS for... (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah that's right, it's sarcasm. Fucking moron.
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.
Re:seattle a shit hole not becouse of MS (Score:3, Funny)
Hehm, and here I thought Seattle's problems were a combination of rain, fat women, and bleeding-heart sickos.
I, too, am glad to be out of Seattle. I don't know what ever possessed me in the first place to live there. Dumbest thing I've ever done, moving there was.
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, yo