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The IRS Hits Symantec with a $1 Billion Tax Bill
GnoWay writes "Macworld is reporting that the IRS has charged Symantec Corporation with about a 900 million dollar tax bill due to the charge that Symantec and Veritas (purchased by Symantec last year) under-reported the value of intellectual property which they had transferred to their two Irish subsidiaries. Another $100 million is connected to Symantec's 2003 and 2004 reports."
Why was this posted on Macworld? Talk about off topic...
Charles Wyble System Engineer
That's quite a big hit for Symantic. Anything think they might start selling off software titles? Norton is one of their big money makers so I doubt that will happen but I would definitely NOT want to be a Symantic employee right now.
I just had a thought. Do I owe anything?
Luckily, Norton Internet Security filtered out the IRS' notice before anyone at Symantec could read it. I won't tell if you won't...
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
In unrelated news, the IRS has reported sudden loss of all their backups, and serious infection from computer viruses.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
Is that like a smart building?
Lets hope they go bankrupt and sell off all the programs that were good... before they became totally bloated. :)
A billion dollars for intellectual property? Gosh, that's like charging $750 for copying one song... Seriously, though, how does one value these things? For that matter, what intellectual property is this? The article is rather vague.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I'd call one of those tax-help agencies. They can usually settle for pennies on the dollar.
I can't wait to see a box with a shirtless Peter Norton on the front.
That's pretty freakin' hot if you ask me.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
It will be tied up in Tax Court (where you appeal decisions like this) for years.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
I'm sure that the IRS and the evil company that didn't pay their taxes will come to some agreement, and it will be way less than a billion dollars. Companies always find a way out of messes like this. Of course, it'd be neat if Symantec were to declare that they were bankrupt, and then reopen under the name Norton, without paying a dime... Only in America... :P
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
pwned.
Unpleasantries.
Hey IRS - thanks for bringing down their stock price by 40 cents. Hit all us stockholders in the pocketbook. How about working on a payment deal without going for the headlines?
How do you VALUE intellectual property? Is it what someone ELSE might pay for it, or what you say it is worth?
If you go off of what someone ELSE might pay for it, then songs should be nearly free or much discounted vs what they are currently.
If you go by what you value it to be, then you can make the value arbitrary since you are the one who applies value to it right?
WTF? How do they make these determinations.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Now don't forget boy's and girls if you learnt something this year to accurately estimate the Intellectual property that you have gained and if you have taught anyone then that you have spent and report it on your tax bill. Also if that knowledge increases with value over time that gain must also be reported as well.
Honestly I just don't know what to say ladies and gentlemen. I do not think I could afford that tax bill.
Unless you are selling, and have a *real* dollar value, its all just shady accounting practices.
I hope this puts them out of business.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Show me an honest businessman, and I will show you a figment of your imagination.
The tax laws (as I understand them) are mainly for the middle class and lower classes. The rich and the corporations exploit a dizzying array of loopholes to avoid paying taxes. Most Americans do not earn enough money to qualify for these loopholes. Without the loopholes, the IRS tax guide would have exactly 3 pages: the front page, the tax formula, and the back page. The current IRS tax guide, packed with hundreds of detailed loopholes, requires more than 1000 pages.
The biggest unstated truth in the corridors of Congress is that 33% is the highest enforceable tax rate in America. Once the tax rate exceeds 33%, the rich move their money into offshore accounts that answer to no one. That goes double for George Soros.
They will just release another major virus soon and rake in the cash to cover this settlement with the IRS, no problem.
With a revenue of just over $1B expected this quarter, that certainly is a bite in the ass. Looks like the cost of Norton AV is going up.
http://religiousfreaks.com/900 millions and 100 millions add up to 1000 millions, not 1024 millions.
Luckily, Symantec can claim the millions/billions who use their live update as dependents, so this will really only end up being like a $20 tax bill when they are done filing. Thank GOD for TurboTax.
All thoughts should be taxable at 2 cents maximum......
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
I would subtract from the purchase price all of the tangible assets, then subtract the value of the "goodwill" (another valuation hocus pocus), and any other assets like securities and notes, etc... Whatever is left that would be value of the intellectual property - which is basically what you said: the price that the purchaser was willing to pay for it.
This will go to court and/or the IRS ( without the space it's "THEIRS" - funny) will just (maybe) settle for a smaller amount.
Great! This money will be well spent by Congress, oh wait....
it is already gone, what a shame, before I could even finish my congratulations.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Microsoft needs some kind of help to ba able to market its' up and coming anti-virus software. This is just the government's way of throwing MS a bone!
From the article the 900 million is "in connection with the Veritas claim, which covers the 2000 and 2001 Veritas tax returns" So symantec basicly got screwed in the whole deal , bought a company then has to pay their debts from 5 years ago. That sucks.
Symantec probably hired H&R Block to do their taxes this year.
$cat
If our CEO has a crystal ball.
I work at EMC, when we bought Legato then a couple of months later Symmantec bought Veritas I remember thinking "What kind of dumb@$$ manuever was that?!? We could have had VxVM/VxFS, Backup and clustering that people actually use for only a couple of hundred thou more than we bought Legato for!"
I still have a hate-on for Joe (what he's done overall to the companMy is disgusting) but I have to give him props for not getting sucked into a billion dollar fiasco.
IRS just neutered one of the of the dogs in the battle for the antivirus market.
Now they won't be able to afford to hire any additional developers to improve their crappy products.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Okay... So a company buys an other company.
Isn't the sales price what the value of the sold company is?
What has just happened with the principle that "the market knows best"?
Was Veritas "undervalued" in order to save on tax bill, and the difference of the sale price and the "real value" was paid under the table?
Or Veritas just made a bad deal and the IRS knows better what the real value for Veritas was?
I don't quite understand it.
Seriously, though, maybe that will help companies take a more measured approach to valuing "intellectual" "property".
The flaw in that argument is that the free market can only reach prices for scarce resources. Resources that are not scarce (information, ideas) and must be protected by statutory 'rights'. And the only way to enforce a statutory right is to violate a natural or property right (i.e., what I do with my recordable media in my DVD writer).
So, my initial irritation with the IRS deciding to extort a huge chunk of money is offset by knowing that a corporation that lives by the sword is getting cut by it too.
Let's see if the hits from Symantec to www.fairtax.org increase at all.
I used to work for veritas and got out shortly after the buyout. Veritas was a cool place to work. And when symantec took over, they sent out this 1/4" thick book full of management-speak. It was unreal. "What is winning?" "We believe in unity." "Our customers trust us to lead the way." After all of this, they listed the names of every employee from either company. Then they had a company-wide conference call with the new ceo. They had "questions from employees" dolled out by a pretty-sounding secretary type. One of the questions was "what can I do to be a better employee?" "You know, I'm being asked that all the time..." I nearly vomited. Ahead of their exit interview, they send you this questionaire to fill out planning to go ever it with you later. After I sent it back to them, they didn't want to have an exit interview anymore... something about how the ceo on the conference call sounded like a lord trying to placate the serfs. :-) I still have the book as a joke, and as a reminder of why, yet again, I've become a consultant and vow never again to be a wage-slave. I shudder to think about what it costs to print up 20,000 of these shiny black books. If they were trying to buy my loyalty with bull-shit management wrapped in a shiny package, they would have bought more loyalty by simply sending me a check for the printing cost of my little book.
I hear their stock has dropped by 1/3 since the buyout. I'm glad I didn't hang around for the stock options.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
The IRS Hits Symantec with a $1 Billion Tax Bill
Okay, I could understand "Product X costs almost $100" if the price is $90; that'a discrepancy of $10, and you qualified it with "almost".
This, however, is a one hundred million dollar round-up, with no qualifier. It's not even "almost." But "billion" sounds cooler, eh?
Please help metamoderate.
i thought $1 billion was $1024 million. oh wait. anyone else have the same reaction?
The flaw in that argument is that the free market can only reach prices for scarce resources. Resources that are not scarce (information, ideas) and must be protected by statutory 'rights' have no free market value. And the only way to enforce a statutory right is to violate a natural or property right (i.e., what I do with my recordable media in my DVD writer) by having the local justice monopoly (government) grant a useage monopoly (copyright, patent).
That's not free market.
So, my initial irritation with the IRS deciding to extort a huge chunk of money is offset by knowing that a corporation that lives by the sword is getting cut by it too.
They obviously pushed their IP to the Irish subsidiary's specifically to avoid the IRS. And they got caught. Sure, they will settle, but they WILL pay in this post-Enron world.
The issue stems from Symantic undervaluing the IP behind Veritas in 2000-2001. Now, I'm sure I'm not the only one on /. that had to deal with that worthless piece of crap software in that time frame. The IP value of Veritas wasn't worth the CD the software was burned on. I've seen more effective backup systems writen in 5 lines of bash script.
In any case, it hardly matters. Symantic and the IRS will argue, then settle for $20 mil.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Macworld is reporting that the IRS has charged Symantec Corporation with about a 900 million dollar tax bill due to the charge that Symantec and Veritas (purchased by Symnatec last year) under-reported the value of intellectual property which they had transferred to their two Irish subsidiaries. Another $100 million is connected to Symantec's 2003 and 2004 reports.
"a 900 million dollar tax bill" + "Another $100 million" = $1 Billion
Without the loopholes, the IRS tax guide would have exactly 3 pages: the front page, the tax formula, and the back page.
Not exactly. How do you define income? In other words, what is a business expense (I bought a widget for $15 and sold it for $25, so I made $10), and what isn't (I bought a widget for $15 and lunch for $5, then sold the widget for $25 - I still made $10)? What if I bought lunch to find widget buyers in the restaurant?
The whole concept of taxing income is flawed because income is abstract. It can be manipulated in multiple ways. It would be better to tax something tangible like property or sales - but that would lose politicians their power to play with the tax code to the benefit of their backers.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Transfer pricing is how companies allocate revenues and expenses across borders. Because an inter-company transaction isn't arms-length (nor at presumed fair market value), companies can play games with the prices at which goods are transfered between related parties. You try to shift income (minimize revenue, maximize expense) out of countries with high taxes, and into countries with lower taxes.
BTW, this is the same idea that underlies SALT strategizing (State and Local Tax). You move income out of states with high taxes (NY), and into states with low/no taxes (FL). That is why you'll see cost centers (backoffice) in low-tax states. The company then "charges" the revenue-generating units for use of these services, and income is shifted from the revenue units (high tax locations) into cost centers (low tax locations)
Here, it looks like Veritas licensed software (IP) to a subsidiary in Ireland, and at a transfer price that the IRS thought was too low (below market). The IRS is claiming that Vertias-U.S. should have recognized greater licensing revenue than they did, and as a result, they underreported their income. Complexities of international tax treaties aside, it could be because they wanted to leave more income in Ireland (lower expense for the Ireland sub), which might have had a lower tax rate. Or timing, or US vs IRE tax credits, or deductibility or software expensing/amortization, or witholding, or offsets with other subs, or phases of the moon, etc.
From the 8-K, "The Notice of Deficiency primarily relates to transfer pricing in connection with a technology license agreement between VERITAS and a foreign subsidiary."
From a news article: "Genevieve Haldeman, Symantec's vice president of corporate communications, ...explained that the notices related to transfer pricing of intellectual property, in effect licensing technology from the Symantec parent company to its Irish affiliate to sell outside of the Americas."
"Effectively what the IRS is saying is that separately both Symantec and Veritas undervalued the technology license that was used in the international subsidiary," she said. "They believe it should be valued at a higher rate, and given their valuation, we owe additional taxes."
There's a more thorough version of this story at Red Herring http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16541&hed =Symantec+Faces+Hefty+Tax+Billor=Industries&subsec tor=SecurityAndDefense
There are two parts to this
Veritas claim $900m
Symantec claim $100 m
That's a total of $1b
If you glance at the IRS rules for calculating penalties and interest your head will spin.
However the penalty for not paying is 0.5% per month for every month not paid.
so Veritas if we lump it all at the end of 2001 and say they didn't pay $900 million for 2002,3,4,5, and last 3 months of 2006
So that's $45 million per month for conservative 51 months = $2,295,000,000 in penalties excluding taxes (not compounded)
Plust interest at 6% per year (not compounded) - $54 million per year for 4 years + $13.5 million last three months = $229,500,000 in Interest
Then you have a $100 million Symantec Tax bill based on their subsidiary setup in an Irish tax haven to tranfer profits out of the US to Ireland (not making a moralistic comment just stating the facts)
This is for 2003/2004, so if we look at it like it all happened at the end of 2004 for simplicity, we have 12 months in 2005 and 3 months in 2005 for penalties
Or $5 million per month for 15 months = $75 million in penalties
That leaves $6 million in interest for 2005 and $1.5 million year to date for 06 in interest
Add it all up
Veritas tax claim $900m
Veritas Penalties $2.295B
Veritas Interest $229m
Symantec tax claim $100m
Symantec Penalties $75m
Symantec Interest $7.5m
Grand Total Potential claim - $3.607 Billion
Reality Check
Symantec will fight the tax claim and will negotiate to reduce the penalties and interest charges. However, as there is a significant amount of pressure from Wall Street, they probably need to wrap this up quickly.
No matter what they'll have to cook their estimates of what they think this will really cost into their reserves to provide a provision for it and that will hit the bottom line in their quarterly(may be there already).
Others have pointed out that it might have been smart of Symantec to perform a little due dilligence of Veritas.
I think Symantec is getting the picture now. They just bought an open can of worms and attracted the IRS's attention to look at their other transactions as well.
Like Norton and Symantec could get any more unsecure. With this tax bill, expect them to cut some of their staff - most likely their "best" programmers.
Everyone's favorite Jewish kid!
I was pretty upset over having to pay the state $13 this year, but I do believe that Symantec has it worse, heh.
This is NOT the IRS playing the media, this is based on a company filing a report with the SEC... following the legally established rules (see 13(l)) that the company must "disclose to the public on a rapid and current basis such additional information concerning material changes in the financial condition or operations..."
"I wish I had the income to experience your problem."
Symantec has yearly revenue of what... $20bil? The issue at hand is their filing over a $10bil acquisition?
I really wish I had such problems.
***Yes, I am aware I am not a huge, multi-national corporation that employees tens of thousands of people. I am, however, beset with my own financial setback today that somehow failed to make the news. My AC died, it's hot today and it's 10% of my salary to replace the entire system.
This is a RTFS! Read the f***ing summary!
I used to work for veritas and got out shortly after the buyout. Veritas was a cool place to work.
Tell us WTF happened with Veritas between versions 8.x and 9.x of Backup Exec???
We used to have 5 different buildings/LANS full of Wintel servers backed up with 8.6 and it worked mostly flawlessly. Then came version 9.0 and the product went to hell in a handbag. The switch to MSDE as the database storage was an abomination. I immediately noticed all the free memory on all the servers gobbled up by the MSDE SQL server process and the machines would grind down to a sluggish snail's pace. Backup jobs would fail left and right for various indeterminable reasons that never happened with version 8.6. The Open Files feature almost never worked after 9.0 either. Was the whole 9.x product redesign team smoking drugs or something? The product got so bad that we had to replace it with a competitor's backup software one year ago, at a great expense, in order to start getting good backups again. My boss was so cheesed over the whole deal that he will never buy anything again made by either Veritas or Symantec (yeah I know Symantec had little to do with the BE 9.x fiasco), which is a bummer because we use pcAnywhere and Ghost a lot and those two are very good products, but he won't allow us to buy them anymore, and we musty switch to alternatives.
SYM has not reported this issue for their investors yet:
& p=irol-news
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=89422
Maybe it's not true...
why does the word 'extortion' come to mind?
EMPLOYEE 1: You tell him
EMPLYOYEE 2: No YOU tell him
[gunshots heard from within]
charging $750 for copying one song.
So they finally they gave in to public pressure and reduced their prices.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Hope it makes a few corporations a bit more wary about "investing" in Ireland too. I'm Irish, and I fucking hate what the corporatist scumbags have done to the place in the past few years. AMERICANS: invest in India or something. Get the fuck out of Ireland (especially Shannon, you warmongering bastards).
Hope you sold your stock right after you bailed out!!
Golly, that FairTax thing is looking better everyday.
Generall, experience valuation practitioners use 3 separate ways to value assets, or indeed, enterprises.
(1) Cost - what it cost you to create. More applicable to tangible, long-lived fixed assets in mature industries. Less so to IP, or to companies.
(2) Market - what it costs for comparable assets on the market. Very good if you can find similar comps. For IP, you'd look to licensing rates, for enterprises, you'd look to market transactions of similar companies.
(3) Income - the present value of a stream of future cash flows that arise from that assets. Depends a great deal on the assumptions that go into the model (market adoption of your IP, enterprise revenue and expense growth and the discount rate used)
You take these amounts, weight them according to the type of asset you are valuing, and give a range of probable value.
See also my post above about transfer pricing in this case. The IRS would use the above valuation techniques to figure out the appropriate transfer price.
No, they won't. You're under the misapprehension that companies have wealth. They do not. Only people hold wealth and property (this includes shareholders, by the way). Therefore, if the IRS hits Symantec with a $1 billion charge, you and I (as consumers and/or shareholders) will foot the bill.
Not unless Symantec has a monopoly on anti-malware. Otherwise, the market determines what they can charge. Given the price will not change much, then the shareholders are first in line for pain. Next the employees. Customers only come into the picture this way: as the company trims its workforce, customers can expect the rate of new features to be slowed down. This is not necessarily the end of the world. Prices may tick upwards very slightly.
Never let the class-warefare rhetoric let you forget that every time a company pays a fine or pays taxes, you as the consumer of that company's goods are actually paying that fine.
"Class-warfare rhetoric" is class-warfare rhetoric. At least in this case. Nobody is saying Symantec should pay taxes because they're fat cats. They pay taxes because we all pay taxes. Nothing could be fairer. Furthermore, if they tried to shelter income, and the shelter wasn't legal, they should pay the difference, plus interest. Just like you or I would.
The only way "class warfare" might come into the picture is if the size of the penalties were disproportionately large. However since we're talking about the better part of a billion dollars proportionate penalties will have a lot of zeros on the end. The news isn't that the government is on a crusade against people who produce wealth. The news is that somebody at Symantec made a mistake on their tax returns large enough to be news.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
[quote]The whole concept of taxing income is flawed because income is abstract. It can be manipulated in multiple ways. It would be better to tax something tangible like property or sales - but that would lose politicians their power to play with the tax code to the benefit of their backers.[/quote]
Taxing property is equally flawed. Often, property tax assessment can be inflated by 10-20% than what one would get on the open market. I remember when Washington State used to chare (several years ago) a registration fee based on the value of your car. The BLUEBOOK value. They often assessed unreasonable values based on the best condition for that car, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. They tried to get my friend had to pay a $400+ yearly registration fee because they value his 10 y.o. Mercedes at $15,000+. It has 180K miles on it and he payed $2300 for it in another state before he moved.
Property tax is also unfair because it doesn't assess what you can afford. Older couples may want to keep their big house but can't afford to pay the property tax on it because they don't have the jobs that bought in the money precisely because they are retired. California has (had?) the fairest system where property was taxed at 1% on the original buying price. If people decided to reap the profit on property going sky high, the government would also benefit from the NEW owners who knew what they were getting into, but people wouldn't be forced from their homes simply because suddenly the land became valuable.
Sales tax would be fairest. With rebates/allowments/coupons on clothing/food/necessities for the poor/lower income people. Yes, some loopholes but that is unavoidable in a society that doesn't want to present only faceless rules and have some humanity toward others.
im sure microsoft will "help out" by buying NAV and sysgate off of Symantec for a billion.
"Harsh penalties for non-crimes" (as I like to call them) don't work at all, and indeed aren't intended to work. Politicians know they won't work when they pass the legislature/congress, and governors/presidents know they don't work when they sign them into law, but they do it ANYWAY, knowing full-well it won't achieve anything.
They are, instead, put out there so that when the Helen Lovejoys of the world jump up and shriek "Won't someone PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!" any politicians present can point to the "stiff penalties" to give an impression of caring/"doing something" when they are, of course, doing nothing at all.
Punishing somebody harshly to make one group of people happy, rather than for the purpose of achieving justice is, in a word, unjust. And unjust laws breed contempt for all laws.
Who did what now?
Show the IRS' interests in the transaction. Credit is being measured in comparison to USD, and is not actualy worth any UNITED STATES Dollars (USD).
It's proven that living next to freeways has effected greater probability of developing symtoms of Asthma; should someone pay more taxes just because they think they can move someone else to live a little healthier?
Don't the shareholders expect their share of the IP would be more prosperous in another nation-state or country? Trying to supress the movement of IP is the same as hindering someones life. Don't register IP, other than by postal mail.
All I see in that above post is some idiot commenting on organized theft of a unproven claimant (IRS) trying to violate a security interest on IP from the shareholders of a corporation. Did not the shareholders consent to their property moving to another country just so it would be more effectively drawn from and implemented?
"Bite in the ass" is not informative, and not insigtful. Show me evidence you're not trolling for karma with attempts at misplaced comedy. "Internal Revenue Service" is corporation representing the International Monetary Fund on loans of alleged Debt to citizens of the United States; loans derived from no substance, but letters noting debt.
No value in that IRS and no value in the claim. Money is substance; debt notes are not substance, and the IRS tresspassed on a claim by appraising the value of the shareholders' IP in USD without evincing any motion to sell the IP.
Shouldn't SCO owe trillions of dollars? After all they own the IP for UNIX, which is a lot of money.
Not having money to run decent schools is getting fucked.
Let the corporations pay their taxes.
In response, I'd probably tell the IRS the truth: "Intellectual Property" is a marketing term not a tangible asset. US law does not recognize the concept (yet). In so far as "Intellectual Property" is a convenient fiction, the IRS has no authority to levy taxes on fictional assets.
The "value" of information ("intellectual property") depends on the the buyer. In fact, the value of the information that they are being assessed $900 million in taxes for is $0 to me. In fact, on average, it's likely to be $0 for most people (outside of the possibility that you're bound to find some idiot that will pay gobs of money for it).
I find it interesting that Symantec is hit with a $1B tax bill to defend against just as Microsoft is preparing a competitive product. Symantec is sure to be distracted at the least. Nice timing for Microsoft, coincidence?
--
$tar -xvf
Can I have my 45 grand back? I don't think the Feds'll be needing it now.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Doh!
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
And yet the oil tycoons get away with a 8 billion dollar profit. Looks like Symantec need to get a few senators in their back pocket.
Still not a foolproof system. I buy a house for half a million. Sometime later I sell it to my spouse for $1. Thus illustrating the need for assessors. That example is extreme enough that it is clearly fraudulent; devising subtler scenarios is left as an exercise.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Happy days are here again! The skies above are clear again! So let's sing a song of cheer again! Happy days are here again!
You need an Irishman on the board, but the reason people set up Irish companies is to enjoy the 12% flat tax rate. However, transferring IP's that already have track-records is completely dumb. The IRS can tax that transfer, and these guys will get manhandled by the government, I can assure you. You need to have the balls and forethought to create the Irish company and develop the IP there when it is still relatively worthless, or you will owe massive taxes.
The reason not everyone does this is because it can cost anywhere from $20k-$70k in legal fees, depending on how many companies in how many countries you want to connect the Irish corporation to.
"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
Yea, we've come a long way Baby!
Valuing intellectual property, perhaps?
but you already paid or someone you meet probably has.
This fine will pass right through the channels and come from the investors in the company or the purchasers of their products. Embedded it will hit consumers who use products and services of people who purchase Symantec products.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
will release a patch to fix THIS viral attack REAL soon...
BTW, I "did a Google" and searched for "etymology veritas" and got page that said, "truth, goddess of truth"
I clicked the URL, and veritas is not there...but, verity is...
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=v&p=3
I guess etymonline needs to "verify" their listings...
------
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/v/veritas.html
does have it, and Romans appear in the definition. I guess Symantec is going to feel the IRS is the new rear-reaming Romans.
--
But, makes you wonder... who piqued the IRS' attention. A "slip" of the tongue in Ireland? I guess some dragons will be getting slain... Imagine the IRS auditors salivating and rubbing their hands in glee (to Austin Powers.. with a little bit of Ren/Stimpy voice thrown in (Or, if you like, Simon Bar Sinister...)): "You owe US.. **O**N**E** BEEL-YUN dollars...(YEE--hee--haah--haah-haah-haah...)"
I bet the Symantec eyes POPPED out at that board meeting.
Moral of the story about rampant M&A activity: Don't lie about the assets value, OR, just don't make the purchase/acquisition...
Interesting: word image: "backyard"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
They have been far over-valuing their intellectual property. So I guess Uncle Sam is going to have to write them a nice check one day soon ;-)
Depends on whether it's your two cents' worth, or someone is giving a penny for your thoughts.
Apparently it is a buyers market...
Muuuuaaaaahahahahhahahahahahahaha ! ONE BILLION DOLLARS !
They better call Ronnie Deutsch! She can help settle tax debts for pennies on the dollar!
Obviously Norton Antivirus doesn't protect against the IRS. Dammit, I knew should have read the EULA.
Well done.
Now for those wishing extra reading, Google for "Transfer Pricing for Intangible Property under Section 482"
That is Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Sec 482 (26 U.S.C. 482).
Explained in more depth in Treasury Regulation 1.482-1(a)(1), et al. (scroll down).
It should be noted that Sec 482 covers both tangible and intengible proprty, & domestic and international transfers. Also, note that the US is odd in that it taxes citizens and corps on theiir worldwide (not just domestic) income (see IRC Sec. 61, "from whatever source derived").
Some idiot must have deployed Symantec AV and/or Client Security on all the PCs at the IRS. I guess those IRS guys finally got pissed off enough at Symantec's crappy software always slowing down and crashing their computers, so they decided to get even... Can't say I blame them.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
IRS to Symantec: "We want... $1 BILLION Dollars!" (Dunn dunn dunnnnnnn)
Everyone knows Symantec products are practically worthless.
Norton Autoupdate just included an antivirus patch for the IRS. The IRS is a Trojan Horse that goes off ever April 15, unless the 15th is on a Saturday or Sunday. Those with bank accounts will find that the virus loves to take your money. The hackers who programmed it work for the government. A traceroute indicated they are in 1500 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
...QUICKBOOKS 2005 and Intuit decided to use its "sundowning" policy a bit differently this time -- it randomly reset the flags on cleared transactions to not yet cleared, unbalancing the key accounts. Oh, no., that was me. Never mind.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
if only symantec had done the transfer using offshore bank accounts linked to their paypal account... oh? the IRS is onto that as well?!? nevermind!
Actually Symantec has at least $2.4 billion in cash. If it doesn't get overturned it will be significantly reduced in a settlement and Symantec will be able to write it off as an expense on future taxes. I would be surprised if they have to pay more than $200 million total.
since when is 1 billion equal to 900 million?
Congressman Ron Paul: America Without An Income Tax?
t m
As April 15 approaches, ponder these words from Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who has introduced legislation to abolish the income tax:
"[C]ould America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history.
"Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck.
"Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion - a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000!
"Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels? Perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all.
"It's something to think about this week as we approach April 15th."
Indeed!
Source: "Cough Up" by libertarian Congressman Paul:
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2006/tst041006.h
Libertas in infinitum
One dollar transfers happen all the time in Ohio, and not in an attempt to avoid property taxes. If John and Jane Smith bought a house when they were in their 50's, and now they are in their 70s, it is probably a good idea to seriously think about dealing with one of their deaths.
Transferring the house from a Warranty deed to a Survivorship deed will avoid probate for the survivor. So John & Jane would sell to John & Jane for one dollar.
If John dies and Jane wants to put the house into a trust so that an executor maintains control even while she is incapacitated in a nursing home, she would sell it to the Jane Doe Irreconcilable Trust, James Doe Executor, for a dollar.
This is a very serious issue to all of us in the software and IP business, think about this for a moment - we use a wide variety of methods to try and determine the value of our IP, yet until we actually produce something there is no way to actually establish a value. If the IRS moves against the engineers and software companies based on some "Value" without any actual production of revenue might they next tax the value of oil in the ground before it is recovered, processed, and delivered? Or the value of timber before harvesting, cutting, and distributing? Write you congressman or woman - we need a new tax system!!!
At the end of this farce I asked what would happen next. "You'll probably have someone come out to talk to you" they said. Fine. So far I haven't had a call asking for an appointment... if they arrive unannounced they're going to be SoL.
No doubt they're relying on their ability to compel me to jump through those hoops. However what they've failed to take into account is that the hassle and stress of unemployment is nothing to me compared to the hassle and stress of trying to play "weekend accountant". If it comes to it, they can seize my pay - they are doing this already, after all. If that doesn't leave me enough to live off (eg to run my car so I can get to work) I'll resign, and the IR can then go and fuck themselves with a plank wrapped in rusty barbed wire. The more intimidating and threatening they get with me, the more I've won.
When I think of Symantec, I think of a company that hasn't truly developed a single application from the ground up! (If they have, which one was it?) It seems like they just buy out other products after other people make them good, hire programmers to change the installers and splash screens to say "Symantec" all over them, and resell the result.
Their "staple" items, the Norton products, were all technically bought out - since Peter Norton had no part of "Symantec Corp." when he was doing his thing. I don't believe "PC Anywhere" was originally their product? Ghost used to be made by a company called "Innoval", as I recall. And their backup product has been shuffled around from company to company - but I *think* Veritas was the original developer of Backup Exec?
Brilliant, derivative, and subversive all at the same time!
:P
This parody was put together by pros who (wisely) remain anonymous.
Otherwise the legal eagles behind Symantec and the record label that put out
Marky Mark (Wahlberg) and the Funky Bunch's GOOD VIBRATIONS would be all over them
in a heartbeat!
Some parodys are forgettable crap--like the one 2Live Crew did years ago that became a SCOTUS-level court case that eventually 'made' this much, much better parody possible.
This is definitely time capsule material! (^_^)
I don't know if even Wierd Al Yankovic is capable of this level of excellence apart from his 'main title song' to UHF which I consider to be his masterpiece.
P. S. This file needs to be mirrored on the Internet far and wide in the fine tradition of 'Ballmer's Ipod' and 'endoftheworld.swf'.
Due to an unexpected increase in tax liabilities, Symantec is announcing that Norton Antivirus products will no longer scan email sent to any .gov domain for viruses and worms. This change has the effect of leaving all government email systems open to such attacks, while at the same time reducing the value of Symantec's own intellectual property. This change in IP value will reduce the chances of unexpected tax liabilities in the future due to its reduced IP asset value as well as the Internal Revenue Services ability to generate and email any notice of such delinquency.
Even in the event that Symantec has to pay, which it won't, Symantec has like $2.4 billion in cash. So worse case senario they slightly deplete their cash reserves. What is more likely to happen is either it will get appealed or Symantec will negotiate a significant reduction settlement, pay the back taxes, and then write off the payment as an expense accured during the purchase of Veritas.
What a boon for them! I know a LOT of people looking for a good reason to dump NetBackup... and I can't begin to tell you what a powerhouse Commvault has become in the last 2 years. I just went from a BackupExec -> Netbackup -> Tivoli Storage Manager -> Commvault QiNetix full implementations (obviously over the last 2-3 years), and by far, Commvault outperforms all of the rest. So far. :D We'll see how it likes AIX's HAACMP clustering and Oracle 10g. If it can't pass that muster, well... damn. We may have to get creative! :D
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
yeah, the tax people didn't think of that one.
If you sell it for 1 dollar, the new owner pays the tax on it's value.(as determined by the state).
I have been a home owner for 20 year in CA. on Or. and not once has the apraised value of the home been more then the money I could sell it for. Ca still calculates value. For example, if you rebuild you get your tax adjusted.
IN truth, it's been about 20-50% lower then what I can sell my house for.
I still prefer a system where once a house is purchased, the tax on that house stays the same. There are many retired people in oregon who have to sell there house becasause they are on a fixed income. Terible way to loose your house.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
AMerica has recognizde IP for a very long time.
There are three catagories, each unique:
Patent
Copyright
Trademark
Each one is know as IP to the US government, and has been for many, many years.
Where does this IDEA that IP is new come from?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the correct answer is:
Irish Ladies.
Boom chucka Bwuaw wuaw.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on