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Microsoft Freeloading In Washington State Courts
reifman writes "For tax purposes, Microsoft reports that it's earned its estimated $143 billion in software licensing revenue in Nevada, where there is no licensing tax, as we discussed a few weeks ago. However, for legal purposes, Microsoft relies on Washington law and its underfunded courts to defend its contracts as it did in Microsoft Licensing GP vs. TSR Silicon. Application of common legal doctrines such as nexus, the step doctrine, and alter ego theory may lead to findings that Microsoft owes the state more than $1 billion in taxes, interest, and penalties."
I wonder how much of an impact would be, for MS, to pay that amount.
I also wonder how much did they expect this to happen but did it anyway, just in case it works.
Now now .. don't let common sense get in the way of a first post rant
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It's not that anyone cares that MSFT booked the revenue in Nevada.
BUT, That means the Laws of Nevada are dominant, not Washington. Microsoft needed to make one choice, but they seem to want the best of both worlds.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Taxes are a necessary evil in society. We can debate individual taxes all you want, but your blanket statement of giving the government the most possible tax money is off base. If Microsoft were paying this 775M+ in taxes they are avoiding with a loophole that is 775M less in taxes that need to be assessed elsewhere.
Do you Gentoo!?
......... And I see THAT as the real problem. Perhaps it is a boon to have a company with Microsoft's massive resources point out the many flaws in the current interstate/international systems. I'm glad this article came out, because I am sure that Microsoft is only a part of the billions in tax dollars we can recoup by fixing this type of "exploit".
The article brings it up, and your post helps get the proper mindset. Good for both!
How much revenue does Washington State get from Microsoft? Not just in direct taxes but on all the taxes that the employees pay? Odds are that one billion is a drop in the bucket and Washington state will not risk ticking off Microsoft.
Microsoft is a money pump for Washington State. How many billions of dollars a year does it bring into the state from other states and even countries?
Not that I say it is right but Washington State will not go after Microsoft for this because it just isn't worth the effort or the risk.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Agreed. The current system is intended to give breaks where there are legitimat shortfalls. It falls short of working in the intended way.
I don't have an axe to grind with Microsoft, and I like and use many of their products every day.
That said, I hope they do get nailed to the wall. The Slashdot community often rails against patent trolls venue shopping for their stupid lawsuits, because it's the best chance for a settlement in their favor.
Microsoft is doing nothing different; venue shopping to lessen their tax liability. It's dishonest, immoral, and it should be stopped. If Nevada is such a nice place to operate, then maybe they should have more of their operations there. As it stand, any corporation in the US could open a branch office there, then report whatever in that state, and whatever funds their actual home state would have received vanish.
This looks like a pretty transparent shell game, and I hope the regulators take steps to make sure it won't happen again.
I live here in Seattle, and this has been discussed in the newspapers before. Actually Microsoft does sell software here in Washington, just not very much. However, I think the state is just as happy to have all the high paying jobs. Technically Boeing is the largest single employer here in Seattle and they have sold planes out of Delaware for many years. It's nothing new.
Washington state has sales tax in place of income tax in other states. Currently it is 6.5% state wide, with an added 2.5% here in King county. So MS, Boeing, Motorola, Adobe, etc. all have sales outlets outside the state.
once more into the breach
Did you see the Borg icon next to the story? Anything less than scathing villinization of the MacroHard Collective is blasphemy!
Over half of what I earn goes to the government in taxes. Most of which get wasted so industry doesn't have to pay to expand their infastructure. OT but for example my power bill just went up to pay for new transmission lines to the states. But the people in the states can buy power produced an hr away from me for half the price I pay.
Further there is no down side to moving HQ offshore, to avoid taxes. Becoming a Panama flag flying ship or any such thing. When Somali pirates pirate ships, it is the US Navy that does the rescue even if the ship is registered in Panama. When there is no down side all the corporations will just go where the taxes are low.
Now that we have brain washed most Americans to vicereally hate taxes, whether it makes sense or not, the corporations have no down side at all. And we wonder why there are 40 million Americans without healthcare, why our infrastructure is crumbling and why there is no real wage growth in USA.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy!
Do you go out of your way to find the way in which you can legally give the government the most possible tax revenue?
It is absurd to suggest that any public company not do the maximum they can to minimize their tax liability. You obviously have an ax to grind with MS, and that's fine, but digging up this kind of garbage is ridiculous. The same statements that you have made about MS can probably be made about 95% of the Fortune 500.
I think the point here was that the system is broken. Not that MS takes advantage of it.
I am the lawn!
So then Microsoft would have no problem with me buying my MS licenses in China and using them in the US, right?
Yeah, riiiiiight.
"Do you go out of your way to find the way in which you can legally give the government the most possible tax revenue?"
Fair enough - but if that's the case, then let Microsoft lodge its licensing lawsuits and etc. in Nevada as well... where the laws are not as strongly in its favor.
Incidentally, my employer's corp headquarters is in the EU. Can I therefore claim the first $95k of my income as tax-exempt because it was earned "overseas", taking advantage of a wee tax loophole in spite of living in the US? Of course not - I'm not a corporation, so I have to claim the income as being earned right here in the US.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If Microsoft were paying this 775M+ in taxes they are avoiding with a loophole that is 775M less in taxes that need to be assessed elsewhere.
You will never be able to find a tax reduction you can attribute to the government collecting this. That's not how it works, it just means the government is taking more. That doesn't mean I think the government should tolerate tax evasion. It will make MS a little less profitable/competitive, because they either have to absorb the higher tax from their profits or raise their prices/sales.
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Really? I'll best most people in Washington (state) do.
.
I have a mutual fund that includes MS stock and I expect them to use all legal means possible to reduce their expenses. One way is to minimize taxes.
I would also point out that MS does not really pay taxes. This is just another expense that gets passed to the consumer.
It's not that anyone cares that MSFT booked the revenue in Nevada.
BUT, That means the Laws of Nevada are dominant, not Washington. Microsoft needed to make one choice, but they seem to want the best of both worlds.
I know. Unfortunately, a law passed in 2004 bars companies from going offshore to get around the most Byzantine tax system in the World that we have here in the US. Does it cross anyone's mind to change our tax system? Nope. We just keep piling shit on shit, causing this jockeying.
Hate MS all you want, but what they're doing is nothing.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Do note that the companies opening the offices in Nevada need to make sure they have good accountants. I'm fairly certain Microsoft is following the letter of the law (or, at least, coming very very close), not just making shit up and paying taxes on the fabrications.
(I'm not saying I think it is a great thing they are doing, just that you are painting a simplified picture, there has to be some reason that they are able to recognize the revenues in Nevada, and I bet the reason is present in Washington state law, and it isn't particularly likely that companies engaged in more material businesses would be able to easily follow along)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You will never be able to find a tax reduction you can attribute to the government collecting this. That's not how it works, it just means the government is taking more. That doesn't mean I think the government should tolerate tax evasion. It will make MS a little less profitable/competitive, because they either have to absorb the higher tax from their profits or raise their prices/sales.
The negative to this unfortunately unprovable. 775M might mean that the parking costs for using the state parks did not go up by $2/car, or that a school grant program was not reduced in funding, or that school funding was increased instead of holding steady. Just because taxes were not reduced does not mean it won't have an effect.
Do you Gentoo!?
I think it was during their anti-monopoly case that it came out they hadn't paid taxes in something like 3 of 4 years.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Why does the name of Michael J. Fox appears at the top of the contract?
Was reading an article from the BBC on corporations in the UK claiming other countries as their headquarters to save tax dollars.
Evidently if you do this in the UK, they check see that the heads of the company are ACTUALLY operating in that country.
Why don't we do that here in the US? It seems like a fair standard to me.
Now a days if US government cuts taxes, the corporations use the savings to build factories in China. So the old argument tax-will-foster-economic growth does not cut it anymore.
Tell me again, how much tax do they have to pay in China? Oh right, they're just moving across the globe to save on shipping costs.
Multiple Sclerosis [wikipedia.org] is a serious disease and most orgainisations that support MS sufferers are probably tax exempt.
In a technical/computer context, MS never ever means Multiple Sclerosis. Multiple Sclerosis means Multiple Sclerosis. MS means Microsoft.
Unless you want to swap your geek card for your doctor card and move over to slashmed.md :P
Well, you make profits here in America? Pay taxes in America. Take the factories anywhere you want. But pay tariff when you bring your goodies here.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The problem isn't MS choosing to report their income from software licensing in Nevada (where they pay no tax on it) instead of Washington (where it would be taxed). The problem is suing a New York state company over licensing issues in Washington state while reporting the income from licensing in Nevada. If Microsoft runs their software licensing business out of Nevada (as their tax reporting claims), then the appropriate venue for suing a New York state based company over licensing issues is either New York or Nevada. Is it legal? Apparently. Is it ethical? No.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Last time i checked, the government takes a nice big chunk out of my bread and butter. which is what microsoft is essentially avoiding, and then turning around and having the laws of a state they barely pay taxes to protect the assets they never sold in that state to begin with.
The tax system should be pretty simple. Whenever you earn money you pay a percentage to the government. The reason it is so complex almost everywhere is precisely because companies like Microsoft lobby to get little exceptions. Look at the percentage mentioned in this article. 1Billion in 143Billion? You try to find a civilised place (where anybody sane wants to live; I'm looking at you Bridge to Nowhere Land) where you can pay 0.6% tax.
Why do you think Nevada has such strange taxes? Because they want to attract companies like Microsoft who only do anything at all there because of this. Large amounts of the "intellectual property" "economy" are basically a tax dodge to shift earnings from places where people do work to offshore companies which own trademarks. Again; who's lobbying for "intellectual property" protection and why?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Not to mention this is why taxing corporations is a bad thing. They will A: look to be obligated with the least taxes and rightfully so, and B: just pass the costs onto the consumer who actually pays the taxes.
As for using the courts in Washington state, The owner and founder of MS is a legal resident of Washington as long as MS being located there and employing a crap load of other people who for all intents and purposes are Washington state citizens paying taxes and they deserve the legal protection of the state regardless of how much money he or his companies or any of the employees make somewhere else. This is not to mention that the losers of lawsuits generally pay courts costs so it isn't really like the state is out of much in the end anyways.
Well, personally, I hope the first companies to get nailed to the wall (who arguably really are doing something dishonest and immoral and which should be stopped, if you believe in this logic) are those like Accenture (headquartered in Dublin, previously Bermuda), Global Crossing (HQ: Bermuda) and Seagate (HQ: Cayman Islands).
With Microsoft, you're bickering over which state gets which benefits. At least it's still going to the U.S.
And, as was pointed out in the previous story referenced in the summary, it's not much different from the firms who register in Delaware (banks, lots of, for example) for reasons of "tax simplicity".
Is it all good and holy and pure? Maybe not in the idealogue viewpoint...but there are a lot of companies out there doing much, much worse.
Of course...they're not the evil Microsoft. Any other kdawson story would filled with vitriolic complaints about the nonsense he posts.
Well, you make profits here in America? Pay taxes in America. Take the factories anywhere you want. But pay tariff when you bring your goodies here.
Yeah, let's have a strong opinion on corporations vs. the government! I mean, it's not you who has to buy more expensive goods if the taxes are high, is it?
And you know the government spends all the taxes on roads and hospitals!
Maybe, but probably not. I would expect any government (Washington State or otherwise) that started receiving $775M+ in additional tax revenue would *spend* it, not cut taxes for others. Anyway, isn't there a difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion? I would imagine, given the size of the target, if M$ was evading taxes they would be brought to bear as quickly as the courts would allow.
Microsoft has an accepted two letter moniker of a uppercase 'M' followed by a '$' /. trolls use it but I don't think i've ever seen it outside that context.
Really? A lot of
Most short acronyms have different meanings in different contexts. Heck according to wikipedia ms has two different meanings even within the medical field.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Change their accounting and tax laws and this "problem" will go away! On the other hand, one of the downsides of having a federal system with 50 semi-independent states is you have competition. Washington might not like them, but Montana or Idaho might be more than willing to let Microsoft set up shop with nary a peep said ill of their practices.
Of course, the up side to having that competition is that you have the ability to move to a state that is governed to your liking instead of having to stew in bitter resentment as a one-size-fits-all policy is forced on you.
No, but they do move to save on labor costs (including worker safety), environmental regulations, and consumer product regulations. Or maybe you're right, it's all about the taxes.
Yep, many countries levy taxes at the borders (up to 80% of retail value - if they catch you) for stuff (electronics etc.) that you buy outside the country and bring in because it's cheaper elsewhere. I think that only holds for individuals though.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Well, why shouldn't we?
flame-retardant underpants/
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
When I was working in Asia, I had to make sure that I spent less that 6 months in China. If I spent more than 6 months in China in a calendar year, then I would be assessed 40% income tax.
The author's argument is that they aren't doing it legally. Given the author isn't a lawyer or an accountant and Microsoft employs a bunch of them to make sure they dot the i's and cross the t's, large amounts of salt are in order.
Microsoft doesn't owe Washington jack crap, because what's it's doing with this Nevada thing is entirely legal. If Washington wants a piece of the pie then they need to change their state law to prohibit this practice by entities incorporated in Washington.
Yeah great example. You'd rather pay taxes on that first $95k in that famously low tax haven known as Europe...
Application of common legal doctrines such as nexus, the step doctrine, and alter ego theory
Those don't sound like legal doctrines. They sound like sci-fi movie titles.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
In the last 20-25 years, the US has become far less business-friendly than it once was. A lot more regulations, an increasingly litigious society coupled with a legal code that is often vague, more expectations on benefits, etc.
It also doesn't help things that the expectations of the American people haven't changed. My boss' cousin works for Honda as an assembly line worker. He makes a fair wage; the UAW guys practically down the street from their plant expect a few times that pay and benefits for the same job which puts their combined income at a level higher than most of the senior software engineers I work with! They act like it's still 1950 and the American car manufacturers face no serious competition from cheaper, more reasonable Japanese and Korean labor and products.
The Bush tax cuts increased tax revenue through increasing the volume of assets flowing through the economy as well, and they must have had some positive effect on domestic jobs to keep unemployment around 4-5% all those years.
Manufacturing isn't the only game in town, though it might be more profitable if unions didn't stand in the way of more automation. Thankfully a relatively free market has kept us from trying too desperately to remain in a market space where we are simply no longer competitive. Ironically, the first wave of Asian industrial manufacturing growth is now transitioning to the next wave of cheaper manufacturing in places like India. Of course they're whinging about it in an almost American fashion. Economies simply have to adapt. If you try to hold on to old modes artificially through things like protectionism, the tariffs simply make the cost of living for the whole population higher.
However I do agree that the US armed forces need to stop policing the world. If anything, foreign governments should be defraying the costs if we're to protect their shipping as well as ours. I would support closing most overseas bases and using carrier groups as the primary means of worldwide force projection. And we also need to stop dumping billions of dollars in 'aid' to nations all over the globe. My tax dollars shouldn't be flowing directly into corrupt dictators pockets.
The taxed always hate taxes if they're sane. You do realize that the American War of Independence was in many ways a tax revolt right? This country was born hating taxes. Thankfully it does too, or we'd probably be tossing even more of our product down the government toilet.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
There are a couple of phrases that are pet peeves of mine because people throw them around without really understanding them.
"Correlation does not imply causation" is, strictly speaking, true, but is often used to refute an argument rather than point out a possible questionable premise of an argument (if you don't understand the difference, don't use this phrase). Correlation by itself does not imply causation, but if the correlation is not a statistical anomaly, it implies either (a) causation or (b) common cause. Therefore it does not refute the argument so much as it says that "maybe the conclusion is wrong, but I can't say for sure without further information".
My other pet peeve phrase is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" which is misleading at best. A more correct statement would be "Absence of evidence before reasonable investigation is not evidence of absence". Once a reasonable search for evidence has been made, especially if said evidence should be reasonably detectable by currently available methods, then an absence of evidence IS evidence of absence.
I've given up being peeved by "begs the question". People are going to use that phrase wrong and no amount of education will help this.
*sigh* back to work...
Do you go out of your way to find the way in which you can legally give the government the most possible tax revenue?
No... I don't make much money, and I've got a couple dependents... So I'm not really trying very hard to pay more than they ask me to... But I also don't put much time and effort into paying less than they ask me to either. I know most people try to find as many loopholes and deductions as they can, which is maybe what you're aiming for... But I don't think most people report their income in an entirely different state to avoid paying taxes.
It is absurd to suggest that any public company not do the maximum they can to minimize their tax liability.
Ehhh... I guess it is true that a public company's first responsibility is to maximize the investment of its stockholders... Which minimizing tax liability will help accomplish... But you really think it is absurd to be surprised that a company would go this far?
The court system is funded by tax dollars. Microsoft uses the court system in Washington. But they don't like the prices that Washington courts charge (their taxes) so they decide to pay the courts in Nevada instead. Fine, maybe you can find enough loopholes and technicalities to make that legal... But how does that make sense?
You know, I like Apple's OS upgrade pricing much better than Microsoft's... When I upgrade to Windows 7 I'm going to pay Apple instead.
You obviously have an ax to grind with MS, and that's fine, but digging up this kind of garbage is ridiculous.
I don't personally have an axe to grind with Microsoft. I use their products every day and am reasonably happy with them. They get the job done, at least. And their products keep me employed. So, no, no axe to grind.
The same statements that you have made about MS can probably be made about 95% of the Fortune 500.
And if your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?
Since when is everybody else does it an acceptable argument?
The problem is that the system is being abused - not that Microsoft is committing the abuse. Of course if Fisher Price were dodging taxes we probably wouldn't see the story here on Slashdot, but that wouldn't make it a non-story or an ok thing to do.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
-= According to Wikipedia =-
Astroturfing is an English-language euphemism referring to political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally planned by an organization, but designed to mask its origins to create the impression of being spontaneous, popular "grassroots" behavior. The term refers to AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.
Thus, submitting a story to your own blog is probably Astroturfing.
It is absurd to suggest that any public company should be permitted to evade the law.
So? One criminal at a time.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Good for them. This is what they pay their lawyers and bean counters for. If they weren't working the system like this I would be disappointed.
All businesses and individuals should reduce their tax burden any way they can. If uncle sugar didn't want it to happen he would change the rules.
It is absurd to suggest that any public company not do the maximum they can to minimize their tax liability.
It is absurd to suggest that I, the alternative taxpayer, should not castigate them leaving the tax burden to me. If we're all just rationally self-interested parties, then I should be doing everything I can to get Microsoft to pay as much of the tax burden as possible, for exactly the same reasons that you assert that they should attempt to shift the burden onto me.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
...except there aren't any emergency bond measures because the financial sector isn't willing to lend money to good borrowers anymore.
Local governments might start having to "pay cash" as it were...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'll make it easy, the reason it's done is the entire tax burden for a corp registering it's revenues solely in Nevada is total tax on them regardless of how many or how little revenue there is is exactly $200. The reason in Washington Law your looking for is that the tax burden will be greater than $200.
It's simply a play to avoid taxes in Washington State while still taking advantage of the services Washington State offers.
Well that and Nevada doesn't have an information sharing agreement with the IRS so they're completely out of the loop on how much tax you actual owe based on your revenues. It helps on avoiding Federal taxes as well.
The same statements that you have made about MS can probably be made about 95% of the Fortune 500.
Then maybe we shouldn't condone that either. Last time I checked, doing something wrong wasn't okay just cause others do it. MS, as well as all other companies that do it should be pegged for this.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
I for one will quit using "beg the question" incorrectly, thanks. I have a degree in philosophy and had completely forgotten...
That's the first level reason and is pretty obvious. My point was that there is likely something in Washington law that allows Microsoft to pretend (err, state) that the revenues they are declaring in Nevada are not associated with their activities in Washington (something that would be sort of difficult to do when not dealing with something like software).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Do you go out of your way to find the way in which you can legally give the government the most possible tax revenue?
""Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as
possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the
treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.
Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister
in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone
does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any
public duty to pay more than the law demands."" - US Federal Court judge Learned Hand
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
As a Washingtonian I am here to say what they are doing is not wrong. Responsibility lies on law makers to make this practice illegal.
Really? I'll best most people in Washington (state) do.
I live in Washington State, and no, not really--I don't mind.
I'm thinking of starting my own business, and I would love to pay less in taxes, giving me the ability to spend the profit on other more important things like bonuses for employees that do great work, healthcare plans to entice better workers, and money for a general office slush fund for things like parties, a well stocked beer/soda fridge, etc...
There's no place like
Exactly.
Nobody thinks picking a good meal over a bad one is unethical.
But most people agree that picking the best parts off a buffet is at least questionable. Yes, it is economically rational, but it violates basic senses of fairness and cooperation that humans (as social animals) have. Corporations do not have such instincts, and that's why they constantly violate what us humans "feel" is right.
This is just one example. Picking up the best parts, maximizing your own profit. Most of us humans somehow "feel" that you have an obligation with a choice. Yet rational argument will lead us to "it's legal, they're a profit-oriented entity, so they should do it". And yet we can't shake the feeling that it's not ok.
Because it isn't. We've just not managed to write good laws that really express what we think society should be about. That's mostly because we let lawyers write laws, but that's a different discussion for a different time.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This is an overly simplistic criticism of the tax system that indicates a poor understanding of many of the issues involved. Multi-national (and even just multi-state) companies have a variety of complications and neither the states nor the companies themselves have clear answers to all of them.
For example, what if you do all of your R&D in South Dakota, then pack up and ship all your product from North Dakota, but California sales reps account for 95% of your revenue? Where did you "earn money" that you "pay a percentage to the government" ?
Municipals compete for corporate nexus by providing tax incentives and for good reason. Here in Oregon, most folks pay about 10% in income taxes. That means that for every $1M in wages that a company pays to the employees that end up coming to Oregon, the state gets $100k in income tax revenue. Not to mention the other revenue-generation activities such as real-estate taxes.
Do you go out of your way to find the way in which you can legally give the government the most possible tax revenue?
It is absurd to suggest that
Yes, it is absurd that you suggest going from paying your fair share to "out of your way to give the most".
The issue is that they take the services of one state without paying the taxes that fund those services, it's not honest. If they want to legally be in Nevada, let them use Nevada's courts, that wouldn't be absurd.
You can't take the sky from me...
My other pet peeve phrase is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" which is misleading at best. A more correct statement would be "Absence of evidence before reasonable investigation is not evidence of absence". Once a reasonable search for evidence has been made, especially if said evidence should be reasonably detectable by currently available methods, then an absence of evidence IS evidence of absence.
This only works if it is understood by both sides of the debate what the evidence looks like and that it's possible for it to exist. People tend to use this phrase when talking about atheism / agnosticism, because some people state "There's no evidence that there's a God" to imply "Therefore there is no God". The problem with this is that it's logical positivism, which in my view is a fallacy. In that particular debate, no-one can define what evidence for or against the existence of a God would look like, hence the only evidence-based conclusion is to say "I don't know". Absence of evidence is most certainly not evidence of absence.
But I take your point, for most topics, if you look hard enough and at least know what you're looking for, you'll find evidence either for, or against your hypothesis. Otherwise it's a crap hypothesis.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
Never has that little Bill Gates/Locutus graphic been more appropriate.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
It's possible that the Washington State government is perfectly fine with the situation. After all, I'm sure Microsoft brings in a lot of money to the state despite finding a loophole in this particular area.
What M$ is doing in not right but is not illegal apparently. so for any thing to happen the law needs to be changed. and I believe this guy has been trying to do this for years for this story has been posted several times on slashdot, with hundreds of comments on each post with same gist. http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/09/22/225233/Microsoft-Tax-Dodge-At-Issue-In-Washington-State (Sept 22, 09) http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/04/1520219 (Feb 04, 08) and http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/01/2137228 (Oct 01, 04)
Do you pay taxes to the state in any way? And would you like to pay less? If everyone contributed as they should then most taxes would be less.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
actually, that's exactly what you do. You physically base your business wherever you have the manpower/talent, and officially wherever is the cheapest you are legally allowed. Not all companies use Nevada because not all businesses have the same tax liabilities.
On one hand this is a strong argument for British style federalism from about 20 years ago(devoluting Scotland and wales in effect created states, which was dumb on a number of levels) that is to say no provinces (in your case organized as states). On the other it means all your devoluted entities (states) compete with each other, which hopefully makes them more efficient (at dealing with things that can move between states) than a single monolithic state. In practice the big monolithic state is bureaucratic and slow, and the devoluted states are on the dole of the bigger corporates who buy their way to favourable tax policy in the cheapest place possible.
Careful though, because saying they can't base in Nevada is a very slippery slope. Where, on a moral basis should a company base itself?
Where it has the most revenue from?
Where the most employees are? I bet india is going to have a strong case that the largest number of employees of big companies are in india soon, even if not how you count the point below
Where you spend the most money on employees?
Where you build your corporate HQ (and if so, how do you define corporate HQ)?
Where you spend the most money (employees + subcontractors)?
Where you were founded? Well what if where you were founded doesn't have any applicability to your current business?
Where your product is actually produced (and if this is MS's product physical disks or the code they write or the service they provide?)
and for just about all of them If so, how do you compare the aforementioned british monolithic state to nevada. Just about everyone big international does more business in Britain or France than any single US state, but that's hardly a fair comparison.
One of these days the EU is going to jump up and say 'you have to pay taxes here if the majority of your revenue comes from here' (and then companies will have to pick an EU member state to base in), and then India will say you have to base where the largest number of customers or employees is. That doesn't work so well for china since a lot of the business in china is they build it at a chinese company for a foreign design firm. Very quickly trying to tell companies where they need to base could get very very complicated.
Quickly now. Where is the largest piece of MS's revenue from, the US or the EU? Which is growing fastest? What 'state' does MS have the most employees in, Washington or Andhra (Pradesh) or somewhere else? Intels big processor family was designed in Israel, yet they are incorporated in Delaware but based in California, which of those 3 should they be based in? Where the important work is, where the tax code is most favourable or where the corporate HQ happens to be? And how much would it cost to relocate the corporate HQ away if they start having tax issues.
This sort of article ran not too long ago, and it was dumb then, it's dumb now. Not liking MS doesn't mean they're doing anything different than anyone else. Except maybe general motors, and we know how well that worked for them.
Trying to minimize their tax liability in a grotesquely complex and arbitrary system. Quit being righteously indignant. You do it too. Taxes are not voluntary. Everybody pays what they have to and no more.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Sure you don't visit state parks in Washington, but then maybe you go visit one in California despite never buying an Apple product. One great thing about our nation is that we share and welcome each other. When you do visit a state park in Washington, you don't expect to be questioned about why you are allowed to be there.
If you wanna get technical, MSFT means Microsoft.
I'm not a corporation, so I have to claim the income as being earned right here in the US.
And there's the problem. You hear the claim that a corporation is legally a "person" and therefore needs all the rights and privileges we guarantee to people, but really they're not treated like people. They're not bound by the same rules as people. They don't have the responsibilities people have. They have more rights and more freedoms than people have. And if a corporation gets itself into enough trouble, the people running it can essentially close up shop and walk away without consequences.
The same statements that you have made about MS can probably be made about 95% of the Fortune 500.
Doesn't make those actions, or the companies that committed them, good or acceptable. Large companies have the luxury of voting with their LARGE campaign contributions, which sadly, often hold more water than a single vote.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
No it doesn't. Its headquarters is in WA. This is pretty typical stuff here, and instead of crying that the state is losing money, maybe we need to rethink exactly what it is government should be doing.
Really? Bonuses for individual employees that do great work are more important to you than the greater social good that is potentially created by a fair and balanced taxation system? Universal medicare for example?
I'm not opposed to the concept of bonuses, but to argue that they're "more important" than taxes is to ignore any history of benefits that you may have gained or may in the future gain from the common social contract.
There's a reason we organize into political structures, the common good is one of the key ones. When the individual becomes MORE important than the collective you're standing on the precipice of a slippery slope.
There is of course a flip side, but don't give me some bullshit Soviet Union/Cuba/China communism argument. In all of these cases an elite group of individuals *espoused* the importance of the collective good, while simultaneously protecting their own selfish interests.
So...maybe you think your taxes are already fair, but it *seems* like Microsoft is trying to have their cake and eat it too, and Washington state is being left on the hook.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Exactly.
But most people agree that picking the best parts off a buffet is at least questionable.
I think "most people" would agree that the whole idea of a buffet is picking the bits you like best.
Or a country that nationalizes a particular highly profitable national resource such that they don't have to compromise. (Saudi Arabia...)
If a corporation uses local infrastructure but dodges local taxes, it's me who ends up paying to support them (more welfare for the rich, YEAH!)
I would rather have the option to save by buying less consumer goods than have cheap consumer goods where they get to pick my pocket to make up the difference.
Exactly, and of course, no other technology company would ever fiddle the tax system in their favour either.
No, only Microsoft would ever do that.
What is the story here? Simply another anti-Microsoft troll? or has someone been asleep for the last 18 months of the financial crisis and only just realised Microsoft fiddles the system whilst missing the fact every other major company in the world also does this.
Yeah it sucks, whinging about Microsoft wont fix it, you have to whinge about the system as a whole and get that fixed if you want it to stop! The problem is the way corporations are left to get away with murder through fear of them fucking off to the next country that lets them get away with murder if you clamp down on them. It needs fixing on a global level.
If you think this is news, you may want to look into what's special about Zug (Switzerland).
Exactly. It's simply a matter of flesh and blood people claiming rights at least equal to those of legal fictions. Since we can't just not tax anyone, the equalization will mean that we have to stop the fictions from dodging their taxes.
If you wanna get technical, MSFT means Microsoft.
Only on the stock market, which again is not technical but financial.
Umm, buffet owners generally assume that people are going to pick the best parts and price according to a weighted average. The fact that people generally do so is factored into the price sort of like how espresso stand owners know that almost invariably the customers will have their free drink be much more expensive than the ones they were earning punches on.
Those things get factored in for and if you don't do it you're probably a sucker.
This on the other hand is completely different as by convention one is supposed to file suit in the person/company's home district rather than at an arbitrary district of your choosing. On top of that MS is booking profits in Nevada on the licenses to avoid paying the taxes from the state that it mainly exists in. MS would never move to Nevada as the cost of doing most of their business would be much higher. It's no accident that Bungie, Nintendo of America, MS and Amazon are all local to western Washington. Furthermore it's highly unlikely that MS would've moved Bungie to Kirkland if it was of better business sense to move it to Nevada.
It is absurd to suggest that any public company should be permitted to evade the law.
Yes, but tax minimization (unlike tax evasion) isn't "evading the law".
Which one it actually is in this case is up for the courts to decide. I doubt anyone here actually has enough knowledge, and/or access to documentation, to make a definite conclusion either way.
1. "Byzantine?"
What do you think Byzantine means in this context? I looked it up (granted, on the vast network of half-truths known as Wikipedia). "...confusing complexities organization of its ministries [...] as well as for its supposed lack of backbone in martial affairs." That's a fair assessment of the manner that tax laws for corporations in America are constructed. Certainly the manner in which taxation is split between levels of government as well as lobby-backed riders that are clearly targeted to help certain industries.
2. "19% tax on everything you buy"
Value added tax is irrelevant to a discussion of corporate tax.
3. "at least your constitution openly states, that when your government becomes unbearable, you can shoot them:
No, you stop voting for them. Like after the second Bush term.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Why do people argue this only about god? These same people are prefectly fine saying "the tooth fairy doesn't exist."
Of course my argument is that since there is no evidence of a god, it doesn't make any sense to act like there is. God may or may not exist, but since we have no evidence, we should act like there isn't a god, because to do otherwise is pointless. (If we don't even have evidence a god exists, how can we possibly know what a god would want from us if one did exist?)
WOW! What an outrageous tax rate! 10% On top of your sales taxes?!
Fair enough - but if that's the case, then let Microsoft lodge its licensing lawsuits and etc. in Nevada as well... where the laws are not as strongly in its favor.
Why? If you had the option, wouldn't you pick the one which benefited you the most? I know I sure would.
There is of course a flip side, but don't give me some bullshit Soviet Union/Cuba/China communism argument.
Slavery should be legal, but don't give me some bullshit "Human Rights"/"All men are created equal" argument. See what I did there?
Calling a valid argument "bullshit" doesn't make it any less valid.
The same statements that you have made about MS can probably be made about 95% of the Fortune 500.
Doesn't make those actions, or the companies that committed them, good or acceptable. Large companies have the luxury of voting with their LARGE campaign contributions, which sadly, often hold more water than a single vote.
or, all the votes, for that matter.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
I understand the problem with taxing revenues or, for that matter, gross profits. Technically, Washington State's tax is on Gross Income, which can be slightly different from the usual legal definition of revenues, but probably isn't in Microsoft's case. Most of MS's income would fall under either Manufacture or Wholesaling, with a tax rate of .00484 in either case.
Microsoft certainly also could get the High Technology credit against this base, and while I won't bother to look up enough of their public records to be sure, I would say, offhand, they could probably qualify for some of the community empowerment credits and related in a way that would be quite advantageous. I'm not one of Microsoft's accountants, and I wouldn't venture to guess whether their research costs would make a significant dent in that total rate or not - The total rate is still trivial, But I agree, the principle of taxing gross instead of an honestly figured net is neither moral, nor pragmatically the most functional method.
But the whole argument against double taxation of corporations is itself a fallacy. A "C" corporation exists under law as a separate person in itself. It gets taxed once. In exchange, it gets benefits such as legal person-hood, and perhaps more significantly, shareholder's limited liability. Any stockholders get taxed on their income, not the corporation's. Those stockholders could vote to convert the "C" corp to one or more Partnerships, "S" corporations or other pass-throughs. While there are some limits on this, it's generally doable even for a company the size of Microsoft any time they sufficiently don't like the "burden of double taxation".
With its vast number of stockholders, Microsoft would have to restructure as multiple "S" corps and particularly as a structure of parellel holding companies and other fairly complex systems, and they would have to do some special shuffling of options to move foreign investors out of some sub-corps, but any divisions they split off this way could exist without taxation, and some of their divisions are small enough the conversion becomes rather simple, yet MS has no interest in avoiding this 'double taxation' even in those cases.
That's certainly understandable, both because a voluntary split up still feels just like being busted up under anti-trust to many investors, and because the independent sub-corps would become direct competitors in some cases, but if the taxes involved really hurt the way some corporations claim, they'd be willing to pay such prices.
The chief reason not to is the owners of "S"'s and other pass through entities can't take an active role in managing the company without also having full liability for what their company does.
Incidentally, Washington state fully recognises the usual federal tax entities such as Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships. It allows all major non-C structures - Limited Partnerships, Limited Liability Partnerships, Limited Liability Corporations. And it allows for the use of the Massachusetts Trust structure.
Who is John Cabal?
Which government?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I thought slavery had been replaced by salaried employees "forced" into working unpaid overtime? Same shit different wrapping. Especially if you put no-compete clauses into the equation.
Would you also accept that a murderer could choose to go to court in a no-death-penalty state if they committed a murder in a death-penalty state? That is akin to what Microsoft are doing, shopping Union-wide for the "best" treatment for each separate law aspect.
Really? I'll best most people in Washington (state) do.
I live in Washington, and I don't mind at all.
Washington is quickly trying to follow California's path of taxing companies out of the state... I'd much rather Microsoft pay less in taxes and employ 75,000 people here (or however many it is after the recent layoffs) than have them move the whole she-bang to Utah, or God-knows where.
The State is lucky in that their other big employer, Boeing, is extremely expensive to relocate. That's not stopping Boeing from opening all their *new* plants in states with a better tax environment.
Our biggest problem in Washington right now is that all the damned Californians won't stay away-- they ruined their shitty state, so now they're all coming up here to ruin nice one. (That complaint sounds familiar to Southern Californians, I'm guessing. ;) 15-20% population growth, most of it from California, just isn't sustainable... our infrastructure is already creaking!
Comment of the year
Except that arguing the supposed communist nations against socialism doesn't work, there's a big freaking difference between the USSR, Cuba, China, and... well basically everyone else in the world.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
That's not the Constitution; you're thinking of the Declaration of Independence, which was more or less a declaration of War against Britain.
Piracy is rampant in China, so MS adjusted their prices there. See, for example: Microsoft cuts prices in China to fight piracy.
"Microsoft said it had slashed the price for Office 2007 Home and Student Edition to 199 yuan ($29) from 699 yuan ($102)."
There are actually "usage fees" in many places. Court costs apply to individuals and corporations both but are usually tacked on only if you lose whatever case you are presenting / defending.
What is this apparently obvious ethical system you're using to decide this is not ethical? I don't think ethics means what you think it means.
"Cashpocalypse" I like that. Mind if I borrow it?
To a certain extent true - but you are forgetting that the whole reason MSFT registered (or whatever the word is) in Nevada is because (at least according to the article), there is no tax at all in that state. Also, is this not the third or fourth time this has been in the news lately?
"But I don't think most people report their income in an entirely different state to avoid paying taxes."
Most people don't have the opportunity. Those that do, probably would. I would.
"Since when is everybody else does it an acceptable argument?"
Actually, for many things it IS a perfectly acceptable argument. It implies that the problem isn't the action by the entity, but that the act is permitted - and tolerated (or even accepted) - by society.
"Ehhh... I guess it is true that a public company's first responsibility is to maximize the investment of its stockholders... Which minimizing tax liability will help accomplish... But you really think it is absurd to be surprised that a company would go this far?"
Of course it's absurd to be surprised. To me this sounds like an uncomplicated decision for any corporation. Structure your national presence to minimize the tax burden, structure your litigation to maximize your chance of success. It would be absurd for a publicly traded company to do any less.
"The problem is that the system is being abused - not that Microsoft is committing the abuse."
Calling it "abuse" doesn't make it so. If Microsoft is operating within the rules then they are not abusing the system, they are "using" it. If it isn't working well, then it should be changed.
The riffraff don't understand this, though. They think "fat cat" corporations are pulling one over on the "little man" if you don't tax them.
They should just stop taxing corporations and increase the capital gains tax and taxes on dividends.
I've been beating this drum over "Correlation does not equal Causation" and the related form used here, but damnit, unlike a dead horse, the drum needs some more beating.
Take two events or implications that seem to be highly correlated. If one doesn't cause the other, certain things will happen.
For one, continuing to check correlation over a longer timeframe or in other circumstances will build up enough data to stop showing it (In which case you've just proved the original correlation was a statistical fluke).
(If you're not sure lack of Iodine in the soil causes Goiter just because it seems to work that way in Kansas, look at the incidence of Goiter in other inland regions vs seashores, or ship some Iodized salt to Kansas and see if the incidence goes down.).
Another thing may happen - somebody will propose at least one specific mechanism to explain the correlation, i.e. a common cause. There will be ways to check that mechanism too, i.e. logic or scientific experiment.
So what has anyone done by invoking the phrase "Correlation does not imply Causation"? Causation is frequently the best fit for the existing data. The claim amounts to, "If we gather more data, that could change.". Unless you can propose how to gather that data, the claim in itself means nothing. Or perhaps you mean "There could be a common cofactor.". Unless you can propose what that cofactor could possibly be, and how to test it, and usually how to decide among multiple competing cofactors, it still means nothing.
If it's possible to take some more measurements, by all means take them. But if there's negative consequences to being wrong, negative consequences to delaying, and you have some data, there's a point where you have to go with what you already have.
Who is John Cabal?
No... I don't make much money, and I've got a couple dependents... So I'm not really trying very hard to pay more than they ask me to... But I also don't put much time and effort into paying less than they ask me to either. I know most people try to find as many loopholes and deductions as they can, which is maybe what you're aiming for... But I don't think most people report their income in an entirely different state to avoid paying taxes.
Because they can't legally do so. If they could, they would. Personally I would avoid (there is a difference between avoiding and evading) taxes to the point where I was paying what I considered a fair amount, maybe 10-15% overall if I could legally do so and not feel in the slightest bit bad about it. Have you seen what they spend tax money on?
The problem is that the system is being abused - not that Microsoft is committing the abuse. Of course if Fisher Price were dodging taxes we probably wouldn't see the story here on Slashdot, but that wouldn't make it a non-story or an ok thing to do.
Dodging taxes (as in avoiding, not evading) is not abusing the system. Generally the "system" abuses everybody, not vice-versa. To put it in the parlance of the day, don't hate the player hate the game.
From what I've heard, using M$ comes from the days when they were Micro-Soft, and they needed an abbreviation with a hyphen in it. Combine an S with a hyphen, and you get a $. Hence, Micro-Soft became M$.
Bold statements. Do you have any evidence of a law being broken other than the law of "I don't like them or what they're doing"? Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question. I fully understand you're just talking made up bullshit out of your ass.
The Bush tax cuts increased tax revenue through increasing the volume of assets flowing through the economy as well, and they must have had some positive effect on domestic jobs to keep unemployment around 4-5% all those years.
Wow, how's that Kool-Aid?
We are still sorting out the fallout from Bush's policies, economic and otherwise. If you think our current predicament is not the result of the Bush administration, I got a bridge to sell you.
What is this apparently obvious ethical system you're using to decide this is not ethical? I don't think ethics means what you think it means.
adjective 1. pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct.
2. being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice, esp. the standards of a profession: It was not considered ethical for physicians to advertise.
It is wrong to use one set of rules when it is to your advantage (the laws of the state of Nevada for tax purposes) and a different set of rules when they are more to your advantage (the laws of the state of Washington when suing for violation of software licensing).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Really? I'll best most people in Washington (state) do.
Microsoft employs about 45,000 in the Seattle area and owns 8 million square feet of office space.
High paying jobs. Clean industry. Not a tough sell.
The median family income in Redmond [population 46,000] is $92,000. The average home costs $455,000.
Returning $4,000 a year in property taxes. Redmond, WA
You want to give all that up? See Microsoft move out?
There isn't a politician in any state or province anywhere in the world wouldn't be pleased to accomodate you.
I think you both misunderstand VAT.
It's a tax on consumption, and as such it lowers the tax on production and labour.
Corporate tax is generally lower in countries with a higher VAT and so companies thrive.
A prime example is Denmark that with 25% has the highest VAT the EU allows and some of the highest personal (income) taxation anywhere, yet their economy is very strong with some of the lowest unemployment figures in the west.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I find this conversation and others about state taxes interesting because people rarely bring up the real problem.
Federal taxes.
I pay far, far more in Federal taxes than state taxes. And what do those assholes do with it? Send it to another state? Force the states to implement federal laws which the federal govt. has no jurisdiction over by holding back highway money to improve the road system I actually use? Use it to buy votes from old people and poor people? Pay assholes $8k to buy a house or $4.5k to buy a car? Seriously, wtf?
The Federal govt should be doing things like funding the military, cross-state law enforcement, food and drug safety, diplomacy, etc.. not bullshit vote pandering and wealth redistribution. I have no control over how the federal govt spends my money, I have 50-200X the control over my local state.
So quit whining about the big mean evil corporations and look at the real problem here.
then I should be doing everything I can to get Microsoft to pay as much of the tax burden as possible, for exactly the same reasons that you assert that they should attempt to shift the burden onto me.
And that's fine, if by "everything you can" you mean lobbying to have their loopholes removed, rather than retroactively punishing them for actions that were legal when they occurred. And yes, that is in your best interests; you really don't want politicians being able to throw you in prison because something you legally did last year is now illegal.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
You make a fairly good point. But - as the summary says - MS claims to be a Nevada company for tax purposes, then claims to be a Washington company for legal purposes. Come on - you can't have your cake and eat it too. It's dishonest. Pick one, and stick with it.
In short, they are bleeding Washington state.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
what everyone needs to understand is business really does not pay taxes in the end, the consumers do. If a business has to pay more in taxes, it will only raise the prices of goods and services.
A Smith & Wesson beats four aces -- Murphy's Law of Poker
It's not wrong. You're tying two arbitrary and unrelated concepts together and claiming they are related when they're not. You're also just making a statement that it's wrong with no real backing other than the statement.
Microsoft has a net positive impact on Washington and they do pay taxes in Washington. They are entitled to services. If Washington doesn't like it they can change the laws. Microsoft has a responsibility to its shareholders and its employees.
Further, you assume the Washington tax is "fair". What if it's not? Should Microsoft be beholden to pay an unfair tax? What is a fair tax and who gets to decide?
Finally, the "rules" allow what Microsoft is doing. If they don't then they will be smacked down in court. So you've falsely concluded there are two sets of rules when there is only one set of rules - Washington state laws. And they appear to allow this.
Exactly.
> "...may lead to findings that Microsoft owes the state more than $1 billion in taxes,
> interest, and penalties."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Nevermind the fact that credit default swaps were made possible by the Clinton administration's passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Of course everything is Bush's fault.
I don't like most George W. Bush's policies much either, but he is not the grand scapegoat that so many people have made him out to be.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
People are going to use that phrase wrong and no amount of education will help this.
People are going to use that word incorrectly and no amount of education will help this.
Actually, this does fit in with what the GP said - we can't tell without a reasonable investigation but nobody has the faintest clue how to actually investigate God's existence. (Well, apart from the people who deem a thought experiment a thorough investigation.)
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Microsoft needed to make one choice
No. No they don't.
Now I'm not COMPLETELY certain about Washington, but if I'm not mistaken, filing for legal action is NOT a free process. The state charges fees for this (at least they did when I sued a guy here in Illinois).
This is simply another baseless bitch about how Microsoft is "getting over" in an attempt to simply grab MORE money from Microsoft. If you think Microsoft is getting off scott-free in Washington, you're NUTS. On top of that, exactly how much is Microsoft pumping into the local economy through their employees?
If you want to be anti-corporate, fine. If you want to be envious of a person or corporate entity that has more money than you, fine. Just be up-front about your motivations in the first place, with yourself especially.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And yet we can't shake the feeling that it's not ok.
I can. The feeling that someone else should act in your self interest instead of theirs is known as "entitlement."
Another reason, Microsoft is a public corp and "S" corps cannot sell their shares to companies only individuals.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
Yes we do....
And what really ticked us off was Bill Gates (whilst still working there day to day) and Steve Balmer complaining at lectures in Seattle about the state of education in Washington and about not being able get good hires here in Seattle.
Given how much they DON'T pay here in taxes and how that is 100's of times the budget shortfall is in all the greater Seattle area school districts, that did not sit well....You don't contribute the same as other companies locally and in fact go out of you way to do so, you forfeit the right to complain about the quality of services those taxes pay for.
They have a LOT more Nevada corps than any other WA company - and that's on top of all the other benefits they get by threatening to leave
That's very simple to answer. Try not paying taxes in a serious way and whichever one turns up with the most weapons will answer the question for you.
C'mon that's an answer which all box fitting people ("conservative", "libertarian", "liberal" or "anarcho-capitalist" or whatever) should be able to agree on.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Revenue.. gross income, right?
Last I looked, the average individual paid taxes on their gross income (minus some allowed non-taxable withholdings). How is this different? It certainly wouldn't be very wise to go with taxes on profit, because then a corporation would have an incentive to bump up costs in some way shape or form in order to control what is listed as profit. I'm no accountant, but I'm sure they can probably work that and still provide incentives to investors as well.
But then I cannot choose to 'live' in three different places simultaneously for tax purposes, legal purposes and other perks.
Don't anthropomorphize corporations, they don't like it.
I get where you are coming from, and our tax advisers, I'm sure, say much the same as you do. However, years of work in "multinationals" has lead me to a fine understanding that the system works in our (the multi-nationals) favour.
For example, what if you do all of your R&D in South Dakota, then pack up and ship all your product from North Dakota, but California sales reps account for 95% of your revenue? Where did you "earn money" that you "pay a percentage to the government" ?
barring your legal minimum margin (mostly zero), "wherever the tax rate is lowest". I mean that wasn't even difficult. If you want an encore, I can even answer the "when we write this contract, should the profit be in licenses, services or capital expenditure" question.
Generally speaking, there's always some grey, but there are pretty clear areas where most of the money is being made in one area but the tax is being paid elsewhere. When that's happening, the tax authorities of both places should be fixing the system. If the multinationals feel that they have to take advantage of loopholes which allow this at least they should be stating very clearly and openly what they are doing and why so that those people are under pressure to fix. When they do it secretly (as is standard now) their officers should end up being arrested.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
This is why we need to be able to establish our own borders...
Of course we have evidence; there are texts that people claim came from him, and stories of miracles. They may be unconvincing evidence, but that is a different argument. You may vlaim that this gives you very slight reason to believe, but that just means that pascal's wager says you should believe (multiplicities of beliefs aside.)
(The logic as developed in the judeo-christian tradition tends to reason, to some extent, from first cause about the goodness of God, which would tell us what he wants from us, to some extent at least.)
I'm a concientious
Exactly.
Nobody thinks picking a good meal over a bad one is unethical. But most people agree that picking the best parts off a buffet is at least questionable.
You're related to that bad analogy guy, aren't you?
Actually almost any economist will tell you it takes about 8 years for a presidents policies to trickle down into the mainstream economy.
By your logic then Clinton did a good job, and the issues now, the financial collapse, stocks plummeting and rising unemployment are the Bush policy legacy.
Better to be pissed off than piss on
I live in washington and I want them to pay up.
Or move out.
actually, I'd rather they pay up, we need the money.
Be seeing you...
Yes I do pay taxes to the state. I actually like our tax system in Washington. I like sales tax much better than income tax.
And who will decide how much they "should" pay besides the law? You expect CEOs with contract bound fiduciary duties to give away a single penny more than is the law?
All I'm saying is that Microsoft's responsibility is to provide product in accordance with the law. It's Washington State's responsibility to mandate laws and taxes. Simple
p>
Further, you assume the Washington tax is "fair". What if it's not? Should Microsoft be beholden to pay an unfair tax? What is a fair tax and who gets to decide?
What makes you think that I assume the Washington tax is "fair"? I hold no such position. However, if MS wants its software licensing business to be governed by the rules in the state of Washington, it should follow the laws governing a software licensing business in Washington, including the tax structure. If MS wants its software licensing business to be taxed according to the rules in the state of Nevada, then it should bring court cases related to software licensing either in Nevada or in the state where the company it is bringing to court resides.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
How long before the recession was the CFMA passed? 8 years. By YOUR logic then, Clinton was the cause of the recession, and further the good ol' Clinton years were all Reagan and HW Bush's doing. Not only that, but any economic turn around during the Obama administration will be, by this magical assumption, also creditable to George W. Bush! Of course this is all hogwash. The nation's economy is far more complex than to be ruled by an oversimplified priciple such as the one you suggest. Lucky for you.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
The company pays taxes and then all the individuals have to as well, whenever they take out any of the value that has already been taxed.
Washington residents don't pay state income tax, only federal so unless you are referring to something else, your statement isn't true.
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
I'm thinking of starting my own business, and I would love to pay less in taxes
But you still want good roads and schools, right? If you want to have your tax locus in nevada, then move there. There are plenty of startups in seattle, so we don't need vultures like you skipping out on their obligations.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Why are Washington's courts underfunded despite the State having the additional taxes compared to Nevada? I mean, even if Microsoft does not pay their "fair share", at least some other companies in the State do. And yet, the courts remain "underfunded".
Could it be, that the tax revenue is being used for something else, and that even if Microsoft did pay as kdawson would want them to, the courts would've remained underfunded anyway?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Windfall. I guess the roads will get repaired this year.
of it's software, but has no problem trying to not pay for taxes. Seems if microsoft is leading by example then people should have no problem getting microsoft software for free.
And that's fine, if by "everything you can" you mean lobbying to have their loopholes removed, rather than retroactively punishing them for actions that were legal when they occurred. And yes, that is in your best interests; you really don't want politicians being able to throw you in prison because something you legally did last year is now illegal.
First, I want to stress that I already in this very short interaction have respect for you -- you seem to be basing your position on solid fundamentals. I appreciate that, and respect it.
And I must respectfully disagree. :)
Whether it was legal last year is not for us to decide, as WANAL. It is for the courts to decide, which is what the original submitter is saying. We (the alternative taxpayers) have good rationally self-interested cause to seek to have Microsoft pay maximal taxes (assuming the pure rational self-interested position presented earlier). The original submitter (or the article he is parroting, or whatever) claims to have valid legal cause to support our rationally self-interested objective. It is then in our rational self-interest to test the theory at court, except to the extent that the cost to us of the court proceeding exceeds the value to us of shifting the tax burden (admittedly an extremely difficult pair of numbers to calculate, let alone predictively calculate).
Again, this is assuming the pure rational self-interest model which is the basis for Microsoft attempting to minimize its portion of the tax burden.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
> You obviously have an ax to grind with MS, and that's fine, but digging up this kind of garbage is
> ridiculous. The same statements that you have made about MS can probably be made about 95% of the
> Fortune 500.
I don't see how that makes it any better. The "Fortune 500" are a very small percentage of businesses out there. However, they all have the distinction of being large enough to play these sorts of games.
What is wrong with questioning the ethics of claiming your doing business in one area for the purpose of using its legal system, but not paying taxes into that same system, by claiming your profits are elsewhere?
It does seem like they are trying to game the system to get advantage. I think its entirely appropriate that we question whether such games are appropriate, or should be stopped. Regardless of who is doing them.
I am all for saying "who cares" about such a percieved violation if the amount in question is so small as to not be worth finding a solution for....however, if this one company can rack up so much of a difference just by playing this game, they it looks like the amounts are worth discussing.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The State of Washington can do many many things to sue just about anyone it wants.
Check this out:
The State of Washington can bring up a case under any of the above.
|| There's a reason we organize into political structures, the common good is one of the key ones. When the individual becomes MORE important than the collective you're standing on the precipice of a slippery slope. ||
Actually, the slippery slope is the other way around. Individual liberty, protection of, is of utmost importance, as it contributes to the good of the *cough* collective *cough*.
Holding the collective to be more important than the individual is the road to tyranny.
No, this country was born hating taxes without any rights or say as to how those taxes are being used. Being a US citizen doesn't automatically imply a hatred of tax, and shouldn't.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I don't like most George W. Bush's policies much either, but he is not the grand scapegoat that so many people have made him out to be.
That can be said for any politician. None are to blame and all are to blame. That's the problem with the current system... nobody stands up and says "this is my fault" and takes responsibility. They're all trying to get reelected and live off the welfare state. Make no mistake, politicians are the worst welfare abusers in this country.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Is a failure to fix a broken program any different than creating the program yourself? Obviously Bush agreed with it and so he did nothing.
Let us also keep in mind that it was passed under a heavily republican congress. I'm so sick of everyone blaming the president for crap congress was doing or not doing. If congress had been doing it's job through both Clinton and Bush years then we wouldn't be in this mess. They are too corrupt and spineless for real action. If there was one positive contribution by Bush's administration it was that action can happen regardless of congressional oversight or lack there of. Of course most people view this as a high negative as they should since a major function of congress is to balance out the powers of the president which is a function they even now are unwilling to properly perform.
He left a huge wake of problems behind, much it through broken policies that were already in place and much of it through new policies which degraded our situation fast. The unemployment figures were always doctored and there was too much emphasis on a single number to begin with. Everyone knows someone who got laid off from work due to falling revenues. Who cares if 10 million are out of work now if a different 10 million are out of work the next week? The rate is the same but the number of people affected is much higher.
I hear you on the not wanting to blame everything on Bush when there is plenty of blame to go around. Even though I hate the man and all of his policies, blind, rabid, reactionary politics won't get us anywhere pleasant.
This is pretty much standard operating procedure for corporations from "mom and pop" all the way up the chain to multi-billion dollar businesses. It's been this way for decades and will continue to be this way.
This wouldn't be any kind of news if it weren't MS.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
No, WA doesn't have an income tax. They do, however, have a pretty hefty sales tax. Not far from the MSFT main campus is a strip of road that has a Jaguar/Land Rover dealer (I think they have Lambos, too), Rolls/Bentley dealer, BMW, and Aston Martin dealers, along with a used car showroom that carries new Lotus cars and used cars most of us will never afford. All of them are within a few blocks of each other. All of them pass on to the state of WA a nice chunk of change with each car purchased, and I doubt any would be there (except for maybe BMW and Jag/LR) were MSFT not down the road.
The point is, the state government is getting their money one way or the other, and WA has chosen the sales tax route. In addition to the sales tax, WA gets to collect corporate tax from the car dealers and big-screen TV dealers. WA was also wise enough to encourage MSFT to stay far enough from sales-tax-free Portland so as to not make it worth the drive.
As a Washingtonian I am here to say what they are doing is not wrong. Responsibility lies on law makers to make this practice illegal.
But if no one thinks it is wrong until there's a law against it, then who is going to make the law against it?
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -Gandhi
I hope you're being deliberately obtuse. Do you think that thousands of people would risk their lives and fortunes if they thought the tax laws were fair? Do you think that if rank and file colonists truly believed that their interests were being served, regardless of the political system, that there would have been open, violent revolution? 'No taxation without representation' was a simple trope that encapsulated an idea. If there were cars in the 18th century it would have been a bumper sticker, but you're attempting to read it like a law or some transcendent principle of social illumination of the period.
Representation was simply a catalyst to the larger and deeper issue of taxation that had been brewing ever since the Seven Years' War created a debt that somebody had to pay. Taxation as the more key issue is underscored by the fact that the first outbreak of violence after the Revolution was another tax revolt, the Whiskey Rebellion, because in the hard times after the war, the colonists-turned-Americans didn't much care to be paying new masters instead of old ones. (Hell, even DURING the revolution there was Shays' Rebellion, another tax revolt.)
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Just want to clarify things for a few of the commenters: Although offensive, it's completely legal for Microsoft to sue in Washington courts on its Nevada-based contracts. However, it's record of doing so further erodes its tax argument that it isn't in the software licensing business in Washington. The article, if you take the time to read it, explains why Microsoft's tax practices may constitute illegal tax evasion. It's really up to the Department of Revenue to explain why it's as yet chosen not to contest Microsoft's returns - and they are preparing to respond again soon.
Yeah, except if you had thought about it for more than 5 minutes you'd realize that taxing businesses on profit is actually MORE insane than revenue because profit is much more difficult to assess objectively. This leads to "Hollywood style" accounting where the books are fudged to make every project look like a money losing failure to save money on taxes. Remember that Forest Gump movie? Huge flop, lost millions of dollars, true story.
Is a failure to fix a broken program any different than creating the program yourself? Obviously Bush agreed with it and so he did nothing.
So I take it you'll hold Mr. Obama to his failings regarding warrantless wiretapping, the PATRIOT Act, telecom immunity, etc? I suspect you'll probably vote for him when the time comes. Very few people vote on principle anymore, and then we point fingers at everybody but ourselves when the shit 'we' voted hits the two elected branches of government.
(Also, people 'blame the [P]resident' because he is supposed to be the last line of defense against bad laws. It's one thing if the President vetoes something and congress overrides it, at least that shows he has some integrity, but to do nothing at all is, as you said yourself, as responsible as doing it directly.)
I'm not sure what you're trying to say about unemployment. Turnover is not just how it works, but how it SHOULD work. If the same x number were unemployed month to month, it would be a fuckton worse than if different people were, as that x number would rapidly move from 'inconvenienced' to 'bankrupt'. Most sensible people can handle a few weeks or even a few months of unemployment, but few can endure several months or more. Unemployment with high turnover is a BETTER economic state than unemployment with low turnover, because that creates wards of the state and debts that will never be paid.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
It's absurd to suggest that any entity, individual or business, should be *assumed* to be breaking the law. TPTB are (allegedly) trained in applicable rules, regulations, codes and laws and file accordingly. If the state disagrees, it'll investigate and take appropriate actions.
Of course we have evidence; there are texts that people claim came from him, and stories of miracles. They may be unconvincing evidence, but that is a different argument. You may vlaim that this gives you very slight reason to believe, but that just means that pascal's wager says you should believe (multiplicities of beliefs aside.)
No, its not evidence at all, any more than T2 is evidence that we'll build a computer that becomes self aware and destroys the world. Its not any more evidence than you had when you believed a fat man came through the chimney and left toys in your living room. Claiming its evidence is delusional, in and of itself.
Judeo-christians threw out logic a long time ago.
That's not quite true. In particular
a) Correlation says nothing about which way any causation goes. As an example people that cough a lot are more likely to have the flue than people who don't cough. That does not however mean that coughing causes the flu. It is the flu that causes coughing.
b) Even if there is causation it does not mean that any mechanism for explaining the causation is correct. If I decide to treat a cold by resting beneath a "magic" carpet with astrological signs on it, and if I combine it with drinking a lot of "homoeopathic" remedy, then it will most likely help me feel better, but it doesn't make Astrology or Homoeopathy any less nonsensical.
c) Two things can be correlated with statistical significance, but still have distinct unrelated causes if the causes themselves are correlated due to statistical coincidences. Such a situation can arise because the periods over which the causes fluctuate may be much longer than the period over which you observe the consequences.
To give a concrete example of how tricky things like this can be, consider the correlation between low vitamin D levels and skin cancer mortality. Does skin cancer tend to reduce the skin's ability to produce vitamin D ? Are patients that know they are at risk of skin cancer avoiding the sun, hence having lower vitamin D levels in the skin? Does vitamin D protect again skin cancer? Does UV light cause damage healthy cells can repair but cancer cells cannot, thereby functioning as a form of radiation therapy when exposure is moderate? Do people with dark skin, who are less prone to skin cancer, naturally produce less vitamin D ?
As should be clear to anybody with some sense of logic, it can be quite a little bit more complicated than "causation or common cause" because there could easily be multiple common causes and mechanisms of causation, and the various means of causation may indeed run both ways forming various types of feedbacks.
The TFA (one of them) says: Since the tax is small, less than half a percent of gross revenue, it does not violate the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which regulates interstate trade.
Say WHAT?
The commerce clause says:
[The Congress shall have power] To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
Not "except for state taxes under one percent". All commerce. Every last copper.
(And how is a tax totaling a billion dollars "small"?)
If nothing else in the article seems bogus that's an incandescant red flag.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The tax system should be pretty simple. Whenever you earn money you pay a percentage to the government.
We do that, but with about 80,000 pages of tax code devoted to putting you into different brackets, deductions/loopholes, type of income, schedules, etc. Additionally the IRS has its own rules and so do each of the states, counties, and municipalities. Yeah, the cost of figuring out taxes when time and money spent doing so can be nearly as excessive as the taxes themselves.
The easiest solution is probably to just forgo taxing income and simply tax sales. FairTax seems pretty simple, being like 130 pages (most of it is repealing the other tax laws). A rebate to offset taxes to poverty level like FairTax does also seems like a good idea so the system is progressive. All goods and services would be taxed once and only once at the point of final (retail) sale at a rate of 23 cents per dollar. A few things might have an occasional excise (such as gas having an additional tax to build roads, or a tobbacco tax used to pay for lung cancer cost to medicade, makes sense), and investing wouldn't be taxed (as the goal would be to encourage growth of wealth and attract foreign investment. There's little overhead, a good deal of transparency, and your private financial matters wouldn't be subject to a metaphorical anal probe by the IRS.
Ideally the Constitution could be amended, as while FairTax is completely constitutional right now, it would be a good idea to repeal Amendment 16 (which allows for Congress to tax income), and mandate that any exemptions or excises require some sort of supermajority requirement with exices being required to be used to fund specific items.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Hmm... A company imports cars into the US and sells them here.
Q: How much profit do they make?
A: sale price minus their costs, of course!
Q: so what are their costs?
A: Um... they'll tell us?
Q: Riiight....
That's still too easy. How about this: the execs that move all their factories, jobs, and capital out of America get to move their plush headquarters and themselves to the same place. I mean it is good enough for us peasants, it should be good enough for them too.
Really? Bonuses for individual employees that do great work are more important to you than the greater social good that is potentially created by a fair and balanced taxation system?
Why, yes. While I recognize the need for a certain level of taxes (maintaining infrastructure, financial costs of the government's operation), I would much rather reward and retain individuals that are skilled and industrious workers than distribute that money as a free handout to everyone in the US.
Right now, a lot of my money is being taken and given to some fabulously wealthy defence contractors for their thousand dollar toilet seats. I'd prefer that it go to something worthwhile that will improve the quality of life in this country, which would include a universal healthcare. There is a sweet spot between the government spending no money and the government spending some money. We spend too much on defence, not enough on health. Disclaimer - I think that welfare is implemented in a way that does more harm than good to the recipients.
Remember, the money you made, you did not make and secure it on your own. You made it with the help of roads, public education (for you or your customers who can read your ads), the internet (how was that made?). It's protected with emergency services, the armed forces (yes, its necessary to a degree), and the FDIC.
Clearly, the devil is in the details. Everything you said is correct and I am aware of these subtleties, but chose what I thought to be a reasonable simplification sufficiently detailed to make my point.
I don't believe my simplification was misleading, however, since your (a) and (b) fit neatly inside my (a), and your (c), while always a danger, was purposefully excluded when I eliminated statistical anomalies. In retrospect, I probably should have made it clearer in my (a) that causation could go either way.
Thanks for pointing that out.
*sigh* back to work...
And second, you may wish to review your "Fortune 500" statement. Are you discussing people or companies?
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Bullshit, if MSFT could raise their prices they already would. Same with most corporations especially ones in kind of a monopoly (oligopoly) situation.
Same as when you lower their taxes, it just goes to extra profit rather then the savings being passed on.
I see this locally with gas. I live just outside an area that has an extra 10 cents a litre tax for transit. Locally the price of gas is usually just a couple of cents cheaper even though the cost is 10 cents cheaper. As most people seem happy with the couple of cents savings why would the oil companies lower it any more?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Well generally we tend to get mad at the law and then move to change it. Why would you think the only way people would care about this is if it already were law. Did all the other laws just magically pop out of no where?
So, hm, only about 184 million in property tax, or about 1% of the budget.
Again, warrantless wiretapping was illegal and it was up to congress to enforce such laws that the executive was breaking. Of course not only did they not prosecute but they changed the law to make it legal in certain cases despite there being perfectly good oversight processes that don't endanger lives.
The president can't introduce legislation which is why bad laws start with congress and it would be up to the president to veto them. There was very little political will to fight with the president because of the whole Clinton debacle which was the last time congress was vaguely doing their job even if it was barking up a ridiculous tree in my opinion. They were at least investigating the allegations that something illegal was going on.
As for unemployment with ridiculous high turn-over, I think you fail to understand what happens when you lose your job. People will tide themselves over for a few weeks or months if they were smart and saw it coming but few have that kind of savings and they overinvested in houses they can't afford and made all sorts of other stupid investments, they lost their income, are now saddled with debt and the new job is paying them less and that's all if they manage to keep the new job. Even on top of that, it takes months to recover from unemployment so if you get laid off of your new job within six months you are now bumped into poverty in a lot of cases.
Of course this hasn't happened to me, just many people I know from all parts of this country except for the mid-west and Vermont since people seem to be fiscally more responsible in those areas. There most of course are exceptions to that rule.
High turnover also shows the overall state of businesses, if all businesses are needing to lay off employees then you have a coming tidal wave of depression. Across the board you see companies shrinking their staffing as much as possible. This is why I do the work of 10 IT guys, they refuse to hire help because they need to maintain certain levels of liquidity. Fortunately for me it does mean a level of job security seldom seen in the industry right now.
The bottom line is that Americans are going to have to learn to be more thrifty, a talent they used to have and something that has lost a lot of value over the last couple decades.
Of course it doesn't hurt when the president sends a message to the people saying that credit will solve all our problems. I like the thought process of doing the exact same things that got us into the mess and then hoping that will fix the problem.
Really? I'll best most people in Washington (state) do.
I live in Washington State, and no, not really--I don't mind. I'm thinking of starting my own business, and I would love to pay less in taxes, giving me the ability to spend the profit on other more important things like bonuses for employees that do great work, healthcare plans to entice better workers, and money for a general office slush fund for things like parties, a well stocked beer/soda fridge, etc...
That Service or Goods Business you plan on creating better not use any Public Roads or other Public Services and then you can ask those mythical bonuses you plan on giving out to our employees that they have to pay as they go.
Hi. It's my fault. Sorry about that
Well I guess the reactions were fairly predictable. Apart from maintaining my manners and referring to Microsoft and Microsoft I see I've been modded as a troll anyway. This really demonstrates that referring to Microsoft as M$ is only an unacceptable moniker to the Microsoft fanboi contingent. If anything this story demonstrates how appropriate M$ is to refer to Microsoft.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
FDI Foreign Direct Investment flowing into Taiwan, Korea, China, Phillipines, Singapore etc amounted to trillions of dollars.
Indeed, the reason for this is ever-increasingly easy to invest there. More investment there does not equal less here. It is also common for Chinese companies to invest here. This just means we have to ensure it is profitable to invest in the USA.
Further there is no down side to moving HQ offshore, to avoid taxes. Becoming a Panama flag flying ship or any such thing. When Somali pirates pirate ships, it is the US Navy that does the rescue even if the ship is registered in Panama. When there is no down side all the corporations will just go where the taxes are low.
Corporations will do whatever is most profitable. This is an unchangeable reality and rather than whining about it we need to ensure we are the most competitive location. We have an educated population with high worker productivity and a well developed infrastructure. There is nothing magical about China nor is there any maximum market size, we can compete in a global market, and we really don't have any choice.
And we wonder why there are 40 million Americans without healthcare, why our infrastructure is crumbling and why there is no real wage growth in USA.
First of there is a large difference between being without health insurance and being without health care. If you have a heart attack and cannot pay hospitals are legally required to treat you (of course this is partially why healthcare is so expensive, hospitals must raise rates on everyone else to cover this expense). You might not be able to get non-emergency treatment but you will be treated in an emergency (often hospitals can't or won't turn down people in non-emergency situations, but they will be stuck spending hours in the ER if they are not urgent). About half of the uninsured tend to be young (particularly young males) who tend to prefer spending their money elsewhere (or tend to prefer higher paying jobs to ones with good health benefits). This is just their choosing to run that risk and the young tend to be less likely to get sick, but it is a frequent cause of bankruptcy. Insurance is just a risk pool. You will pay more on average with it than without it, but you are paying for the security of reduced risk. The insurance company knows that it is going to make money on average but that some customers will result in a loss. They obviously will charge a higher rate for someone at higher risk, be it a health insurance company charging more for pre-existing conditions or a car insurance company charging more for a driver with a DUI conviction. If someone would rather use their money for something other than purchasing a reduction in risk, say attending college, I don't know that having the government micromanage their finances is better than letting them manage their own finances.
As for infrastructure, that varies wildly based on state. In Colorado we have snow to deal with and our roads are in mediocre shape, in Texas roads are cheap and generally well maintained. I still have no trouble getting where I need to go.
As for wages, we are in a recession. Wages are not growing in most countries. Indeed, the US took a much lighter hit than most of the EU and is in far better shape than most 3rd world countries.
The Gospel according to lolcat
I thought slavery had been replaced by salaried employees "forced" into working unpaid overtime? Same shit different wrapping. Especially if you put no-compete clauses into the equation.
Apparently I'm in the same situation as you. Lots of work to be done, no overtime pay, and signed a no-compete.
The difference is that I recognize that I voluntarily entered into the contract, where you are apparently complaining that it's unfair that you entered in to that contract.
Would you also accept that a murderer could choose to go to court in a no-death-penalty state if they committed a murder in a death-penalty state?
There's quite a difference between doing what you can legally to avoid giving the government butt-loads of money and the government saying "you're guilty" and killing you.
There's no place like
Really? Bonuses for individual employees that do great work are more important to you than the greater social good that is potentially created by a fair and balanced taxation system? Universal medicare for example?
So how much money do you give every year (out of your own pocket) to pay for your neighbors healthcare?
And why would you want to compel me to pay for someone elses healthcare?
No really. My neighbor constantly sits outside smoking and drinking. He has cancer from the smoking. He calls the ambulance weekly and never goes to the hospital. I constantly see him doing yardwork, yet he can't seem to get a job because of his disability.
So tell me again why you want to have the government force me to pay for his bad decisions?
And then tell me why you aren't shelling money out of your own pocket to pay (or partially pay) for those without healthcare?
There's no place like
But you still want good roads and schools, right? If you want to have your tax locus in nevada, then move there. There are plenty of startups in seattle, so we don't need vultures like you skipping out on their obligations.
I'm not saying cut taxes entirely. We do need tax money to pay for certain services. These services are usually provided by your state or local government. If you find their tax rates, policies, or projects to be poorly thought out, move to another state.
To be perfectly blunt, I could give a crap about schools. I went to public schools and they are so focused on teaching the mass of students, that they don't bother with individuals. If I can afford it, my kids will go to private school.
Let me be even more blunt. Nothing I learned in school prepared me for the work force in any way, except for two things: One term of keyboarding taught me how to type a resume, and two terms of a specially-created class (just for me) which consisted of helping run the high school network taught me how not to run a network.
Remember that a business is designed for one thing: profit
No one wants to invest in a business or be involved with a business that isn't going to make money. Money pays for employees, benefits, etc...
In my humble opinion, the best way to deal with this is have the state tax money spent on goods and services. That way whenever any person or company spends money in the state, the state gets their cut. Drop the other bajillion tax rules and loopholes.
There's no place like
That Service or Goods Business you plan on creating better not use any Public Roads or other Public Services and then you can ask those mythical bonuses you plan on giving out to our employees that they have to pay as they go.
I never said that taxes should be abolished.
But on the other hand, the town I grew up in had a toll bridge. It was privately owned for a long time. It paid for the upkeep of the bridge.
Somehow years later the state got the bridge. The rates doubled and tripled. The bridge is still in a decent state of repair, but the city of a few hundred people has a fireworks budget that rivals the New York City display.
I'd be pretty happy if private companies took over maintaining roads and I paid a yearly use-fee. I'd bet money that you'd never see a crew of 9 people sitting around while one guy replaces a stop sign again...
There's no place like
Is that so. I first saw it used in the late 80's so it pre-dates /. by several years. Thats before 1993 when Bill Gates said:
"The Internet? We are not interested in it"
So perhaps it's just something bearded Unix guys got used to using. I guess that using the M$ moniker really only offends fanbois otherwise why would they attempt to switch it to MS.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I live in Washington State and I don't care. But aside from anecdotal evidence, it would be completely out of character for most Washington state residents to care. Most of them would figure that MS is bringing that potential tax revenue back to the state in other ways. In contrast to Boeing, their rep locally is pretty good. In addition it wouldn't be surprising if the state changed the law to allow the company to continue, and most people here wouldn't say a damn thing about it. It happens here all the time, and many people support it because the state is often seen as not having a very attractive business climate.
Think again.
Boeing only just moved its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001.
Analysts are predicting that Boeing's production facilities could be gone from WA state entirely in another 10 years, taking 100,000 job with them.
If an airplane manufacturing company can up and leave, a software company sure as hell can up and leave.
Not to me.
Or, maybe, I know someone suffering from MS.
What is wrong with saying M$ anyway? This discussion makes it seem especially appropriate to me. Sure, everyone minimises their taxes, but only M$ can do it to the tune of a cool $Billion. M$ is about money thats why M$ is an appropriate moniker.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
And there's the problem. You hear the claim that a corporation is legally a "person" and therefore needs all the rights and privileges we guarantee to people, but really they're not treated like people. They're not bound by the same rules as people. They don't have the responsibilities people have. They have more rights and more freedoms than people have. And if a corporation gets itself into enough trouble, the people running it can essentially close up shop and walk away without consequences.
Exactly, when I was a kid, I was confused why many companies called themselves "Limited". Why would you want to "limit" your company. When I grew up learn basic economic, it turns out that means "Limited Liability". Yes, I know it's a slightly different context (as in they can't go after the owner/board for debt of the company), but it seems applies equality well in the legal/punitive sense.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
As an Australian I am here to call your spade a bloody small shovel. Wrong is wrong, no matter how many weasels you have to chorus that what you're doing is legal - and if we RTFA, even that's unlikely (yeah, IMO, IANAL, etc). And law makers have the responsibility to make a practice illegal only if somebody flouts their own responsibility to be a good citizen - there's no need to make laws about something if nobody is doing it!
Crap like this - and there's a lot of it going on - undermines the social contract. I know it, you better know it, and I damn well hope your government figures it out. Because falling doesn't hurt near as much as the sharp sudden stop at the end, and I don't want to find out the hard way if America's blast radius is big enough to take my country with it.
I think you fail to understand what happens when you lose your job.
I have been unemployed about a dozen times in the last seven years. Granted I'm a contractor and that's somewhat par for the course, but not every lapse was foreseen. Also, I have never taken unemployment insurance money.
I still don't think you understand unemployment turn-over. 'Ridiculous high turn-over' as you say would be, in the otherwise inherently negative terms of unemployment, the best possible scenario. It means that a lot of people are being (relatively) minimally damaged, whereas slow turnover means a few people are being virtually destroyed. No kind of unemployment is good, but the shorter the better, and when periods are short, turn-over is high, therefore turn-over is good, insofar as it is superior to more static, more destructive scenarios. If some people made such unwise decisions as a few weeks of unemployment ends up being destructive to them, fuck 'em. They made their bed and they can lie in it.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
We do that, but with about 80,000 pages of tax code devoted to putting you into different brackets, deductions/loopholes, type of income, schedules, etc. Additionally the IRS has its own rules and so do each of the states, counties, and municipalities. Yeah, the cost of figuring out taxes when time and money spent doing so can be nearly as excessive as the taxes themselves.
It scales, though. How many of those 80,000 pages do you really think apply to you specifically? A lot of it deals with corporate taxation, or tax laws as they apply to trusts or non-profit organizations, etc.
Like look at the internal revenue code. Only one subtitle will apply to most people reading this; and of that subtitle, only a small percentage of the provisions apply to the average person on the street.
Granted, doing something like maintaining a qualified pension plan under the IRC gets a little complicated, but very few of you will have to deal with that. And if you're running a pension trust with $500 million in assets, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect you to be able to pay for a tax lawyer to help you.
These services are usually provided by your state or local government. If you find their tax rates, policies, or projects to be poorly thought out, move to another state.
That's what I'm saying. If you don't like seattle taxes, go live in nevada.
To be perfectly blunt, I could give a crap about schools. I went to public schools and they are so focused on teaching the mass of students, that they don't bother with individuals. If I can afford it, my kids will go to private school.
Well, I agree with that in part, but the flip side is that schools are crappy here because they can't get the money they need.
Nothing I learned in school prepared me for the work force in any way
You learned how to deal with morons, right?
Remember that a business is designed for one thing: profit
First, so what? Second, no. A business is designed for profit by offering value for money spent, but it also has a social obligation.
In my humble opinion, the best way to deal with this is have the state tax money spent on goods and services.
What's this got to do with evading licensing taxes? You're talking about what the spend is on.
Reboot macht Frei.
That's what I'm saying. If you don't like seattle taxes, go live in nevada.
Are you saying that if your accountant came to you and said "I found a legal way to save you $1,000 on your personal taxes next year" you wouldn't take it? That's all Microsoft is doing.
Well, I agree with that in part, but the flip side is that schools are crappy here because they can't get the money they need.
No, it's not about the money. Who do you think will get a better education: Someone like me who was kid number 32 in a room with 35 kids or my children who are currently being home schooled where they are 2-5 kids with one teacher.
I suppose money could come in to play when a teacher whines that $80k is too little for them to educate 35 children 9 months out of the year. Well--$80k, good retirement, great benefits, etc... (Most of my extended family are grade and high school teachers.)
Nothing I learned in school prepared me for the work force in any way
You learned how to deal with morons, right?
LMAO!
First, so what? Second, no. A business is designed for profit by offering value for money spent, but it also has a social obligation.
What is this social obligation? No one seems able to define it for me. It's this vague, nebulous thing that appears to translate to "whatever my cause is at the moment, that's what businesses need to do".
I no more have a 'social obligation' to you or anyone else that they do of me. Just because you were born, doesn't mean I am required to help you in any way. I am not obligated to give you food, medical care, a roof over your head, or a bed to sleep in. And that's not required of businesses either.
Keep in mind that I am talking about governments and laws at the moment. On the flip side is *personal* beliefs like religion. In my case, my religion says I should take care of widows, orphans, the sick, the elderly, etc... But I'll be damned if the government is going to force me to do that.
When you give out of the kindness of your own heart, that's charity. When you are compelled to give by force of law, that's slavery.
In my humble opinion, the best way to deal with this is have the state tax money spent on goods and services.
What's this got to do with evading licensing taxes? You're talking about what the spend is on.
If everyone were required to pay a sales tax on purchased goods and services with no loopholes for corporations like Microsoft, that would 'ease' the tax burden on everyone. And that sounds good--but on the flip-side, I'm betting Nevada and their low tax rate and tax breaks for large companies brings them in *tons* of revenue.
In other words, would you rather have Microsoft in Washington State paying $x in taxes here and $y in taxes in Nevada--or would you like to close the loophole and have Microsoft say "Screw it, let's just move *everything* to Nevada."?
Even worse, some companies say "Screw paying millions of billions in taxes to the US, we'll pay hundreds of thousands to $THIRD_WORLD_COUNTRY". The company pays less in taxes, and the third world country gets a decent chunk of change.
There's no place like
Note that Washington shares the dubious distinction of being the only state in the nation that taxes on GROSS revenue, not profit. We have this thing called a B&O tax - Business and Occupation tax. It is a tax on every dollar that comes through your doors, regardless of costs or profitability or loss associated with that dollar. So it's a bit different than any other civilized place you can find.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You pay Federal income taxes on adjusted gross income - your gross income after a bunch of deductions and the like. Here in Washington you get the wonderful opportunity to pay your B&O tax on gross revenue - before any deductions. That's a very big difference in taxation.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
We Americans like to double and triple tax everything; just because you earned every cent overseas and live overseas doesn't mean you are exempt from paying US income tax as well!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands." - Judge Learned Hand
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Yes, No sales tax. Unless you live in Washington and work in Oregon.
You also pay that 10% tax on food and other items that are exempt in other states.
Wrong is wrong, legal or otherwise, I agree absolutely. But the change MUST come with respect the law as it is written. The law is our honor and our word to one another. To not have this undermines the trust between every citizen.
Angry mobs who rise up to get "what is rightfully theirs" rarely act with good decisions or tact.
Oh silly Aussie. We do things big here in America! Clearly if we take ourselves out we're taking out everyone else with us.
What you are saying is that because the indirect effects that are caused by every other business on earth are caused by Microsoft as well, they should be exempt from playing by the same rules as the laundry shop next door? Interesting..
Of course, the implied threat that MS might leave the area in your post makes it OK to not play fair. The bullies are always right, after all. ;) argument of modern business.
"I did not punch you in the face and you still complain that I took your lunch money? Maybe I should mash you into pulp after $educational_institute is over." - The killer (literally
775M might mean that the parking costs for using the state parks did not go up by $2/car
Yet you have accepted the basic premise that government continually takes more money. When you view restraint from increasing the cost of government services as a win it means you have accepted expanding government costs as the status quo.
a school grant program was not reduced in funding, or that school funding was increased instead of holding steady.
Yet there is not a very good correlation between increasing money spent on public education and good educational outcomes. Increased money for education is many times useful only for political self-promotion of the incumbent. I already accept that the money the government takes may benefit the politicians, I am extremely sceptical of the claim that it will reduce the tax burden on other portions of the population.
In my country, tax per capita has increased by more than a third since 1996 after allowing for inflation. Government collecting more money will result in an increase of government expenditure power not an easing of tax burdens for others. It's possible for it to happen some other way, but I'll believe it when I see it.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
No, it was a declaration of... Independence. War only occured because the king of England didn't recognize the sovereignty of the United States.
Learn something new.
If there were cars in the 18th century [no taxation without representation] would have been a bumper sticker,
That statement is actually available on license plates for people who are residents of Washington DC, because of that whole no-senators/representatives thing. Not just bumper stickers, but government provided vehicle registration tags.
Learn something new.
you really don't want politicians being able to throw you in prison because something you legally did last year is now illegal.
Ex post facto laws are forbidden in the United States by the Constitution. Politicians here are UNABLE to punish you for shit that wasn't illegal when you did it.
Learn something new.
Yes, I know. I work in DC. And they can have representation when they give their citizens the Second Amendment rights that the rest of the US enjoys. (That actually has frequently been the condition outlined by conservatives in Congress whenever the issue has come up to a vote.)
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
And holding the individual to be more important than the collective is the road to anarchy. There's a balance point somewhere in the middle that produces an optimal solution.
Every time you pay your health insurance premium or pay a hospital bill directly you are "shelling money out of your own pocket to pay for those without health care" whether you like it or not.
As to why I want to compel you to pay for some elses health care it's the same reason I'd be happy to pay for your health care if some drunk hits your car and you become a quadriplegic which bankrupts you and you are unable to personally pay for the care you need.
If you could deny care at ER's based on ability to pay then maybe your way would work but that's not a morality I subscribe to.
I thought that got fixed last year, with the Heller decision?
Learn something new.
Are you saying that if your accountant came to you and said "I found a legal way to save you $1,000 on your personal taxes next year" you wouldn't take it? That's all Microsoft is doing.
And then what if a couple of years later someone comes along and notices that No, the tax tactic he came up with doesn't actually work legally. People are wandering off on tangent subjects, but that is the issue raised by the link in the story. It makes a case that the stuff Microsoft has done does not successfully dodge their Washington State tax liabilities. If he's right (and I've seen no one here making any sort of case refuting his legal argument), them Microsoft is still liable for those back taxes. Just because a company comes up with a tax avoidance scheme does not mean it is legally valid, and just because the government has not yet gone after them does not entitle the company to continue using an invalid tax dodge, and does not exempt them from paying those back taxes.
If someone gave you an invalid way to "save $1000 on your personal taxes", and you haven't paid that money for the past five years, then you are merely an uncaught tax evader, and you are still liable for $5000+interest+penalties.
Who do you think will get a better education: Someone like me who was kid number 32 in a room with 35 kids or my children who are currently being home schooled where they are 2-5 kids with one teacher.
With high probability, kid number 32 in a room with 35 kids.
While it is certainly possible for home schooling to produce exceptional results - it is just that - exceptional. The vast majority of people, the vast majority of parents, are grossly unqualified and grossly incompentent to provide a quality modern education.We have professional trained teachers for the same reason we have professional trained doctors. If your kid has an appendicitis and needs surgery, any parent engaging in "home medicaling" surgery on their kids would not merely be ridiculed, they would almost certainly be thrown in prison. Where do people get the notion that random untrained parents trying to play teacher is somehow any better an idea than random untrained parents trying to play doctor?
And it's even worse than that. We're not just talking about average parents. Even a half-ass effort at home schooling is a fairly herculean task for a parent to take on. It pretty much amounts to an additional full time job. It takes an extremely "motivated" parent to yank their kid out of the public school system and try to educated the kids themselves. While such parents certainly have many good and beneficial motivations, someone yanking their kid out of public school is highly likely to have been pushed to that point by some "unhealthy" motivation in the mix. There are plenty of valid reasons to be disappointed with the quality of the public school education system, there are plenty of failings of the pubic school system, but it generally takes a rather "unconventional worldview" for a parent to consider the public school system to be some evil threat they have to protect their children from. It generally takes a parent with a pretty extremist ideology to consider mainstream society and mainstream schools to be some sort of evil threat to their children. There are a number of "unhealthy motivations" that might drive a parent to homeschool, but lets take religion as perhaps the most common one. Imagine some cultist, or some Scientologist, or even some "non-mainstream" Christian with intense religious beliefs, who wants to shield their child from the "evil" and "corrupting" ideas of normal mainstream society. A parent motivated to keep their kid UN-educated and UN-exposed to normal mainstream ideas and normal mainstream society.
A parent highly motivated to indoctrinate their kid into whatever unconventional and extreme ideology motivated them to yank the kid out of the public school system.
Yes, in exceptional circumstances it is possible to provide a child with an education superior to that offered in
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Every time you pay your health insurance premium or pay a hospital bill directly you are "shelling money out of your own pocket to pay for those without health care"
As to why I want to compel you to pay for some elses health care it's the same reason I'd be happy to pay for your health care if some drunk hits your car and you become a quadriplegic which bankrupts you and you are unable to personally pay for the care you need.
First off, I pay for insurance that covers me if I get hit by a drunk. I also have life insurance that covers my family if I were to die. While I appreciate your concern, I don't need your money.
But I do have a wonderful idea. If you are so compassionate that you want to help others in need, feel free to donate to a charity, or flat-out give money to someone who needs it.
Remember the saying 'Change comes from within'? It seems like most social liberals are more than happy to use everyone's money--but they don't start by giving their own. Think about what George Clooney makes per movie. He could easily pay for the healthcare of thousands of people. Take the salary of everyone in Hollywood, professional sports, and congress. They could each give 50% of their salary and every person without insurance would be covered. And since they're only giving 50% of their salary, they'd still live like kings.
But they don't want to do that with their money. They have a wonderful idea and they want everyone to pay for it.
If you could deny care at ER's based on ability to pay then maybe your way would work but that's not a morality I subscribe to.
So you want the government to legislate your morality? You want to force doctors to work without getting paid? Hospitals to provide supplies and treatment without reimbursement?
That's a novel idea. Maybe I can get the government to legislate my morality. If you've ever driven with more than 0% alcohol in your system, be prepared for the death penalty. If you've cheated on your wife, be prepared to be castrated.
Wait--that's extreme? Who cares. I like making my personal beliefs law.
Hell--I should totally be for socialized medicine.
I smoke a pack every two days currently. Because of my dumb choice, I will probably get cancer. I think you and everyone else should pay for me being a retard.
If you're just gonna cover my healthcare costs, maybe I'll start eating Big Macs every day for lunch, drink heavily on the weekend, and maybe do something dangerous like ride motorcycles at unsafe speeds. After all, there really aren't any consequences to me--you're volunteering to pay for them.
There's no place like
While I knew about Heller, I was under the impression that most semi-autos were still banned; however, it seems just last month the DC council decided it was better for them to repeal that law than let Congress do it (as a bill was on the move that would have). So that's two steps in the right direction. Now if only the licensing, registration, and may issue position on concealment could be rolled back, DC might finally have a system comparable to most states in the union.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Be careful when you say something is "wrong", rather than illegal.
"wrong" is an opinion, your version of right and wrong may or may not be shared by everyone else. Trying to impose your version of a "social contract" is exactly what is "wrong" with much of the world today.
dishonest?
...and it should be stopped?
That implies they are lying about it, which they are not.
immoral?
That is a value judgement. Are you sure you're qualified to make that on everyone's behalf?
So lobby your congressmen and have them change the laws. You are also free to not do business with Microsoft, you're free to think they are idiots, however complaining about it here or calling it "wrong or immoral" is pointless.
"Yet rational argument will lead us to "it's legal, they're a profit-oriented entity, so they should do it". And yet we can't shake the feeling that it's not ok."
Here is the problem...
Microsoft is a legal entity with the obligation to its shareholders to maximize profit. The board of directors is legally bound to do whatever possible to make the shareholders as much money as possible.
What you suggest would be illegal, because it would be acting against the interests of the shareholders...
Perhaps, and if it gets worse as it is likely to do as soon as inflation hits from all the Fed money printing and all our war debts being called in, we can credit that to good ol W.
Even time thinks he screwed up in some major ways:
BUSH'S ECONOMIC MISTAKES
Bush's Budget Blunders
1. The Return to Deficits
2. Iraq
3. Tax Cuts for the Rich
4. Financial Regulation
5. Telling Us to Go Shopping
6. Energy Policy
7. A State of Denial
8. The Muddled Bailout
In an article discussing the fact almost 70% of professional presidential historians are listing him as the worst president in U.S. history they had this to say:
One who made the comparison with Nixon explicit wrote, “Indeed, Bush puts Nixon into a more favorable light. He has trashed the image and reputation of the United States throughout the world; he has offended many of our previously close allies; he has burdened future generations with incredible debt; he has created an unnecessary war to further his domestic political objectives; he has suborned the civil rights of our citizens; he has destroyed previous environmental efforts by government in favor of his coterie of exploiters; he has surrounded himself with a cabal ideological adventurers . . . .”
If he enacted any policy that helped anyone but his close friends, I promise you it was on accident, not a stroke of economic genius.
"their thousand dollar toilet seats"
[Citation Needed]
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Rep Reagan cut top marginal rates. "; which failed.
Or as George Bush called it: Voodoo economics.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
(c) random, chance.
Which has been known to clump.
""Absence of evidence before reasonable investigation is not evidence of absence""
no. The statement is factual and accurate. The fact that it may or may not be reasonable is irrelevant.
"People are going to use that phrase wrong and no amount of education will help this.
then it will eventually be correct.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"American War of Independence was in many ways a tax revolt right? "
Nice Strawman. It wasn't about taxes. it was about not ahving a say in the government nor any protection from the government. Not just 'taxes'.
Taxs have been need to run a large society since the invention of a large city.. a large city being more then 500 people.
You are not sane if you expect a good society and no taxes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
never mind that the republicans had majority and would have overridden any veto.
Never mind the fact that he spoke against it. Never mind he still managed to change it so it wasn't just the rich benefit, never mind you lack of understanding on how the government works.
George W. Bush was told this was coming, the republican majority was told this was coming. Then it happened, Obama became president and now pundits blame him.
You MUST look at control of all parts of the government when thinking about why something happened.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Your problem is that you think everything is Binary when usually it's far more complex the that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A President should veto bad legislation on principle regardless of what Congress may or may not do next, otherwise they are, obviously, unprincipled and too weak to deserve the office. If Bill Clinton had actually vetoed the bill and it passed anyway, I would never have attributed blame to him, since he would have obviously done what was within his power to try to stop it. As it was, the CFMA passed on his watch, he did not use the full powers of his office to try to stop it, and therefore the blame is his. Get over it.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Sorry, I'm an old fart. This was a big scandal in the 80s.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-16-pentagon-travel_x.htm
http://armedservices.house.gov/list/speech/armedsvc_dem/AndrewsOS092409.shtml
http://www.cdi.org/adm/725/
(excerpt :
Senator GRASSLEY [R Iowa]: The Defense Department wants you to believe that they are making dramatic changes in the way things are purchased, particularly spare parts. I think the most out-standing example is the $600 toilet seat of 1983. And we thought that we had that problem taken care of and, 16 years later, the $600 toilet seat was costing $1800. )
It wasn't about taxes. it was about not ahving a say in the government nor any protection from the government. Not just 'taxes'.
See post here.
Never did I say taxes were not necessary. They are the very definition of a necessary evil, because while society cannot function without them, at the same time they are almost always inefficient, unfair, and damaging to growth.
To quote Cullen Hightower: "There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little - and it's always somebody else."
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Agree. For full clarification I should have added "to the detriment of everyone else", because that's what this is about.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Nope standard Federal Tax law that allows for the movement of revenues. Most states that have taxes higher than 0% are having the same issue right now where multi-state companies are moving the revenues out of state to avoid taxes.
Clarification: The rights of the individual and protecting those rights, is more important than the collective.
The only balance point is, as soon as laws/rules/etc. of the collective start infringing on individual rights, you've gone too far, and that's exactly why rights of the individual and protecting those rights is paramount.
What individual rights are you talking about? They can't be unlimited.
The civilization we live in is a collective enterprise. Maintaining it requires collective rights. Without them the civilization would fail.
As I said there's a balance between individual and collective rights.
Oh, come on now.
The rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, starting with the Bill of Rights.
And, I understand what you are saying regarding this subject, but your statements, arguments, etc. are not persuasive in changing my mind that the rights of the individual are paramount.
As a result, I am done responding to you. We have a point of disagreement, looks like that point will remain in disagreement. And so, is life.