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Steve Ballmer Gets Billion-Dollar Tax Write-Off For Being Basketball Baron
McGruber (1417641) writes "According to a report published by The Financial Times (paywalled), ex-Microsoft CEO Billionaire Steve Ballmer will be able to write off about a billion dollars of his basketball team's purchase price from the taxable income he makes over the next 15 years. "Under an exception in US law, buyers of sports franchises can use an accounting treatment known as goodwill against their other taxable income. This feature is commonly used by tax specialists to structure deals for sports teams. Goodwill is the difference between the purchase price of an asset and the actual cash and other fixed assets belonging to the team."
This is a wise policy. If you tax the rich too much, then they won't buy local basketball teams and instead will look elsewhere. Eventually there wouldn't be any professional sports at all in our great and beautiful nation. Instead of sitting down to watch the NBA on their televisions, Americans would instead see only short-statured, low-wage Chinese tossing a ball around instead. Kudos to the government for allowing an entrepreneur like Ballmer to keep his local business going.
So when someone buys a team at overvalue, the regular tax payer is on the hook for that overvalue.
Nice deal the rich have going, getting someone else to pay their bills.
effort at understanding Accounting rules versus tax rules.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting)
To make double-entry accounting work, you NEED Goodwill. There's nothing wrong with it. International standards are quite sensible in that Goodwill doesn't go away until it is impaired.
Want to complain about US tax law? Be my guest.
We need to setup a foundation to get more money for Steve. ...everything!
He just can't survive.
Please help to feed Steve more billions of dollars so he can buy...
And the loopholes are there because of the influence the rich have over the government. You can be mad at the people who made a loophole and the people who abuse it simultaneously.
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This is why all of you drooling idiots saying the tax system is unfairly regressive for the wealthy are full of shit.
The wealthy get so damned many tax breaks it's obscene.
Wooo, you could afford to buy a billion dollars sports team and you're a billionaire ... we should give you a fucking tax break.
I'm sorry, but WTF does Steve Ballmer deserve a tax break for being such an insufferably rich douchebag that he can afford to buy a basketball team?
This is what happens when your taxes loopholes are written by other rich assholes. Being a rich asshole gets you preferential treatment that the rest of us don't.
Eat the fucking rich.
that money can buy.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
It doesn't even say he is taking advantage of it, just that the rules say he can (in which case he would be mad not to do it as I can't think of any group less capable of handling money than the government, he could flush half down the dunny and then give half to a charity and it would still be better spent than going in the tax coffers).
The implied assumption in the article and in the commentary indicates a deliberate misdirection or a simple understanding of the accounting principles involved in how a business accounts for a BAD DECISION. Every business has the ability to use this 'loophole'. But it's not a 'loophole'. It's a simple recognition that a capital purchase that turns out to not be a good deal should have the loss (cost of the purchase price minus the fair market value of the asset) amortized over the book life of the asset against the income produced by the asset.
Kids, this is basic accounting 301 (Intermediate management accounting). Most accountants will tell you that having good will on your books means you made a dumb decision at some point, and paid more than something was worth. The title SHOULD read:
"Ballmer pays twice what Basketball team is worse, can't write it off immediately, has to wait 15 years."
I don't get why this is on /.
you can be, except people like Gates and Ballmer are on record as suggesting the government needs to fix the tax loopholes and system. Only a fool would pay more to the government than they have to, Gates especially and even Ballmer do far more good with most of their money funneling into charities.
Americans, do not give into class warfare arguments. You too have the right to buy sports franchises and write off billion dollars from your taxable income. You too have the right to create a SuperPAC and spend a million dollars to launch attack ads against the politicians who you don't like. Every one is equal before the law. And America has the best political system money can buy, let no one try to convince you otherwise.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The rich have their own set of rules. The rich get richer, everyone else gets screwed.
And the loopholes are there because of the influence the rich have over the government. You can be mad at the people who made a loophole and the people who abuse it simultaneously.
I am glad you can see a difference between the two groups, because I sure can't.
LOL Gates is on record as being for a tax on consumption not wealth.
Can't imagine why a man with 80 billion dollars would hold this position.
According to your own words. Funny though how when I pointed out that most MS products don't earn a profit I was downvoted as flamebait.
This is simply unfair. Steve balmer is a entrepreneur and a jobcreator. We should all band together and give him another billion worth of taxbreak, so he dont have to get money up from his pockets to buy the team.
Gates, who has already donated in excess of $26 billion, is once again the richest person on the planet, according to Forbes Magazine's annual report on the richest people in the world
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Our government demonizes the rich when in fact its government who approves these loopholes in the first place.
And who do you think OWNS the government?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Hate the game.
I'll wager that Ballmer doesn't actually know much about his taxes. He pays someone (or, more likely, a group of someones) to figure out his tax return. Their job is to make sure he pays what he owes and not a penny more. I make considerably less than Ballmer but I also employ an accountant to do my tax return versus doing it myself. I expect her to advise me on how to pay the correct amount. I'm not looking to get audited or get sent to jail for tax fraud, but on the same token I have many other uses for my own money that don't involve paying taxes. My wife runs her own business and also uses the same accountant, who advises her on what deductions she can take and which ones she cannot.
I would personally like to see the US tax code vastly simplified. Much like trying to debug horribly written spaghetti code, the sheer complexity and length of it (IIRC it is will over 30K printed pages at this point) makes effective auditing difficult, if not impossible. As others have mentioned, the "fairness" comes into question when people (including corporations, because they are people, too!) of enormous wealth are lowering their rates considerably using these strategies. I think everyone on some level knows that some level of taxation is required to pay for roads, court systems and other services we like here in the first world -- but people get pissed off when they see anyone (rich or poor) who seems to be abusing the system -- from welfare fraud all the way up to billion dollar tax dodges.
I'm sure you mean "every DOLLAR is equal before the law" right? Bigger pile is therefore more equal than smaller pile.
And the loopholes are there because of the influence the rich have over the government. You can be mad at the people who made a loophole and the people who abuse it simultaneously.
It's not like tax policy doesn't also help poor people in some ways.
The earned income tax credit is basically the way we've raised minimum wage for the past thirty years. (We haven't formally raised minimum wage because that would be hard politically--turns out it's much easier to make policy when you do it in taxes.)
The difference is that in a certain strict sense, Congress made the loopholes on the rich, thus Congress deserves blame. The people who influenced Congress to make those changes and the people that take advantage of those loopholes are pretty much the same set, though.
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They have lots of ways to steal, and they are really good at it. First, of course is their monopoly status. It's what every giant corporations dreams of. All the benefits of pretend capitalism, none of that pesky competition.
Then there's the stadium scam. Get a city to build you a stadium, along with getting a bunch of tax breaks. Pretend that you are bringing in "jobs". In fact most of the jobs are low level minimum wage jobs for running the physical plant and selling food. Not much in the way of real economic benefit.
The media contracts are where they real big time theft happens. If you have cable or any high speed media link, you are automatically paying for sports. Then if you want to watch something not in your area, you have to pay extra for the privilege. It's like the MicroSoft Tax, only worse. The only way to opt out is to stick to terrestrial HD broadcast.
No wonder Ballmer joined the owners club. He finally achieved 100% monopolist status, which he was never quite able to get at Microsoft.
Personally, I hope he chokes to death on some greasy stadium food.
Why is Snark Required?
And if someone is on record as supporting something, then clearly they actually support it. Also, it's funny how the ploy of thinking that they are great people by giving money to charity worked on you.
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Slashdots "Eat the rich" attitude alive and well.
Yet, under any serious scrutiny, this makes complete sense.
Direct from the IRS:
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/...
Summary: Most of the value in a sports team is in "intangible" assets. Sure, the stadium can be appraised and valued at X. But what are the players contracts worth? The teams name? How much did the previous owners actions damage that name? Etc... And every owner is going to argue tooth and nail that they lost money on the deal. So much so that the IRS finally just allowed them to claim the sale is worth a flat percentage of the selling price. This way they at least get some money and avoid a decade of legal battles to get it. They do the same sort of thing with dozens of other businesses.
Don't like it? Support a flat use tax. No deductions for loss.
The summary (and the non-paywalled article) are not clearly written. I am guessing that they mean sports team owners can depreciate goodwill over fifteen years...
If Bill gave away all but his last billion, he would still have A BILLION DOLLARS. So, nice of him to help, but there's no real cost to him for spending billions on charity work.
GO %local_sports_team% !
Exactly what does society benefit from this?
I mean, come on, wer'e talking the Clippers here...
We he have had that money if he hadn't engaged in a lot of illegal activity while at Microsoft? Doubtful.
I.
LOVE.
THIS.
COUNTRY!
WOOOOOOO!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
He has given away some $26B of illegally earned money.
This referenced article is just trying to incite anger and rally progressives and is little more than click-bait. A basketball team is an investment and should be treated as such. It is not a new exotic sports car that will be parked in Ballmer's garage. When a trash company buys a new trash truck they expense the entire purchase and then depreciate the value over time. Goodwill is not the same concept, but it is from the same vein. Ballmer acquired a business and paid way more than it was worth. He would be right to use goodwill in taxation purposes. His investment will eventually make a profit and that will be taxed. It in no way compares to any of you buying a sports car or house. There is no special treatment here.
So that he will be able to use this credit, even in the next 15 years?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
it shouldnt be about "what hurts you" that is horrible way of looking at it, its a jelous mind. It should be about how much help he has done for others. I wouldnt care of he had a trillion dollars, he still does more to help people than anyone else does financially.
Growing up in america, it was everyone dream to become rich, now it seems everyones dream is to shit on the rich... explain to me how that helps ANYTHING for ANYONE???
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is the Jewish racist who was "forced" to sell his team for a record all time high.
, , , I'm more interested if he'll hire Bobby "The Chair Chucker" Knight to be head coach . . . They certainly share the same style . . .
It is *not* a _loophole_ - it is the tax _law_. If you don't like it then abolish the 16th Amendment and the IRS.
Yes, he gets to write off a "Loss". When he sells the team his tax will be based off the written down value. Short story, he'll eventually pay.
i never said that he was "great people" I simply said he is giving away more money of his own than anyone else is. its well known that bill gates was a d bag, but the point remains that he is doing more to help than most.
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You are ignoring the harm that he has done through anti-competitive business practices. What he's giving to charity is chump change in comparison, and his charity is of questionable efficacy (other than being a tax shelter and being good PR). There's nothing inherently wrong with being rich, but at a certain level of wealth, you will find little other than robber barons.
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Government-sanctioned monopolies that suck billions of dollars out of tax-paying citizens.
And that's a moot point if he's done more harm than most. If I steal a thousand dollars from you and buy you a case a beer, it doesn't put them in a better position than a friend who buys you a single beer but didn't rob you.
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LOL Gates is on record as being for a tax on consumption not wealth.
Can't imagine why a man with 80 billion dollars would hold this position.
Gates is for consumption taxes because with consumption taxes he pays the same rate as the person who works at MacDonalds. If he were interested in helping people, he would be for a progressive tax rate.
But for a useless luxury good like sports entertainment?
Why the hell should we subsidize that??
He 'gave' that money to himself to his own tax deductible foundation. Notice now he is 'lets tax the rich'. He has already put his money into a very nice tax shelter. Bill Gates is in it to *win*. He will do anything to win. He basically has his own hedge fund to make sure that money is well taken care of and sheltered from taxes. He is not a 'good for you, you have a bunch of money' he is a 'i want it all and you have none' kind of guy.
He can lead by example too.
http://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html
Yet he has not.
Any time you hear any rich person asking for more taxes ask them have they donated to the gov and not used any deductions they are entitled to. You will see quite the verbal tap dance. Most people who say 'lets tax X' mean 'tax everyone BUT me'.
Thats probably a whole years doughnut budget for him! (Im not saying he is fat but he is really fat!)
Never mind that, just add up all the productivity lost due to BSODs, crashes, freezes, virus infections, spambots...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
anti competitive business practices? are you talking about "bundling a web browser?" granted IE was shit but giving away something for free should not be against the law
not that I disagree with you in principle, but i just dont get all the jealousy against rich people. one day I hope to be one. perhaps if more people thought that way (like americans did until the past 20 years) we would be better off
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Any time you hear any rich person asking for more taxes ask them have they donated to the gov and not used any deductions they are entitled to.
and i dont blame them for not giving the government money it doesnt deserve. The same government that is giving guns to gangs accross borders, spying on all americans and people abroad, illegally detaining people. why would I want to help fund that more than i am obligated to?
the government is not there to help YOU. it should be but in its current form its only goal is to rape the people for their own good.
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except for thats apples and oranges. we can question some things MS has done in the past, most of it IMO is blown out of proportion (bundling IE for example should never have been an issue for example) bill gates and M$ has never stolen anything from me, so im not out anything based on his practices. he was a ruthless businessman no question
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i am pretty sure someone that is lactose intolerant views dairy the same way.
Steve Ballmer Gets Billion-Dollar Tax Write-Off For Being Basketball Baron
C'mon, we can do better than that:
Ballmer Bags Billion Bucks By Becaming Basketball Baron
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
yeah, thats true. if theres one thing I hate gates for the most its the damn BSOD... and clippy
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Because they set the rules, schedule the games, helps set the pay – which makes more teams competitive and the game more enjoyable. Mostly housekeeping stuff. So I have low objectives here.
Here is a link.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...
That being said, I am looking at a construction site for a new sports stadium which I am helping to pay for via my taxes. Subsidies for billionaires. That I grumble over.
No, the loophole is there because paying taxes on a loss makes zero sense. Did you even read what you responded to?
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Don't be an idiot. Food is important, even foods that only 99.999% of the population can eat. Secondly: Lactaid.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Actually, they got off very light for the harm their business practices caused. That you can't easily point to a simple direct effect it has on you is irrelevant. They are good at tricking you in these things because our brains don't really work on the kind of scale in place here, but it's a real stretch to claim that Gates' ledger is in the black, especially since a lot of the practices of B&MGF are themselves harmful or of limited utility.
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Intentionally breaking compatibility with DR-DOS, anti-Linux FUD, the difficulty in getting back the MS tax, countless instances of embrace, extend, extinguish, threatening OEMs with what is effectively a kiss of death if they didn't only ship MS software. That you think it was about bundling a browser suggests you have a very limited background here.
Actually, that's exactly how we got here in the first place. We put up with a lot of bullshit because we were told that one day we might be rich, and we thought that it would be us.
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Goodwill is not a "loophole", it a tax law it it relates to money spent on a purchase of a business over and above it's market value. It's only a loophole in the sense that you don't like it and it needs to have a bad name to try and demonize it. A loophole is: "an ambiguity or inadequacy in the law or a set of rules". Not a specific rule for how certain value can be deducted from profits.
Goodwill as a tax advantage works whenever anyone buys a business. So if your parents go and buy a mom and pop store down the street, and pay more than what it's value appears to be, they get a tax advantage in the future profits of that business. If you buy a business of any kind, whether it's value is in the thousands, millions or billions, you get to use goodwill. It's not a "loophole for the rich" apart from the argument that only the rich can afford to buy businesses.
If you don't like the rules around goodwill, I would urge you to understand what it is and what it's there for rather than lashing out at it without any knowledge beyond "Ballmer is saving a bunch of money on taxes, damn that cheater!". It will help your argument against it immensely.
It's not a subsidy. The federal tax code taxes income, but not spending. It's not really a subsidy when spending is not being taxed. Even if you made the leagues taxable entities, the actual tax paid would be near zero.
I wasn't even discussing the specifics of this case here, just dispelling the 'hate the player, not the game' meme because it's utterly idiotic, and you can put blame on both the government and individuals.
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This really dose not effect anyone else, so who cares. Maybe it would if people cared about balancing the national budget. For now people say they want to balance the budget, but don't want to give up the government handouts.
Besides, he will be taxed when HE sells the team anyway. Or whoever inherits the team when he dies pays a huge tax.
It's not jealousy, it's a fear of plutocracy.
People with money understand that if someone else has money, their money becomes less valuable, so they change the laws and lobby government to keep other people from getting rich.
Example: copyright laws being stretched over and over again to keep corporate cash cows from falling into public domain. Disney and their mouse. Submarine patents. Net Anti-neutrality.
I remember a story of how Apple successfully sued an ex-employee for starting a new business because he had obviously thought of the idea for the business while working at Apple.
*Thought of*, they sued him over his thoughts, not that he left with a pile of paper or a floppy disk.
Hey, if you can hire an army of lawyers for millions of dollars, you to can win every court battle.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
Even minimum wage job saves a lot of tax dollars. Instead of taking free paychecks from the city, they pay some to the state. It is minimum wage because it takes no real skill to sell food, if someone wanted to be paid better they should have got a better education. Besides, no one really cares about the money federal/state government spends anyway,
How about...
Ballmer Benefits! Bastard's Billion-Bucks Better By Becoming Basketball Baron.
BALLS!
> This is not $70 millions in non-taxable charities, but an investment on a money machine in the sports/entertainment industry.
Yes, he bought a business, so he'll pay income tax on any income that is generated. If he buys T-shirts for $10 each and sells them for $25 each, that's a $15 profit he'll be taxed on.
If he buys hot dogs for $2 and sells them for $8, that's a $6 profit on which he'll pay taxes.
If he buys a team for a billion dollars and over 15 years he gets his billion back plus $500 million more, that's a $500 million profit he'll pay taxes on.
The billion he apent buying the team is money he ALREADY earned from Microsoft, so he ALREADY paid taxes on it. Of course he doesn't have to pay income taxes on the same money again when spends it on a team. It's INCOME tax, not SPENDING tax. The article is just clickbait for the uninformed and gullible, silently assuming he should have to pay income tax over and over on the same money. How many times he should be taxed on that money the author doesn't say.
ok, ill bite. explain to me how something M$ or bill gates has done that directly affected me??? (in a negative way)
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"We" are subsidizing that only if you and I own sports teams. It's the teams that pay for it.
Taxes are paid when you make money. If you buy a widget for $5 and sell the $10, you've made $5, which you'll pay taxes on. The teams make money and pay taxes. The NFL is setup where the NFL itself is not allowed to make money. Because it doesn't make money, it doesn't owe any income tax. The teams make money and therefore must pay income tax.
If I buy a car that turns out to suck, I don't get a tax writeoff for it.
The whole professional sports business is a racket - things like the NFL being a non-profit, etc.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
How does that make zero sense? I pay taxes on my gains, why not a deduction for losses? If you just taxed gains, then rich people would just trade everything through a fund so that the losses would offset the gains before taxes. Which would be yet another barrier that hurts the middle class more than the wealthy, great job Karl.
If Ballmer is morally opposed to that stuff, he has more effective tools than avoiding paying taxes through the legal avenues available to him.
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I didn't say it affected you directly, which is why it's easy to hide the costs. Here's an example. Because MS controlled the browser market, HTML standard adoption languished, and web developers had to support IE6 much longer than we would in an actual competitive market. The amount of extra time spent for that is enormous (and in many cases, supporting IE would take about as much time as supporting all other browsers combined). They've also added on costs with bullshit patent lawsuits that have added more than the cost of the Windows Phone OS to most Android manufacturers. In addition to being low quality patents, a lot of them are only needed because MS doesn't support filesystems they didn't create. So, if you want a phone to conveniently work as a flash drive on any machine you plug it into, you have to use Fat32 or NTFS. There are plenty of perfectly good filesystems that would be fine if MS would support anything that they didn't create. NIH syndrome is one of the biggest issues of MS asserting their dominance.
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This is just another tax-break for the super-wealthy. Nothing unusual about that.
These lavish tax breaks are not just for Ballmer, there are many such tax breaks for one percenters.
A, how much help.... Yes, he has donated. For me, he got that money in unethical ways, so... I dont know... If I made a billion stealing, but then donated some of that back, and kept some to live very comfortably on, am I a good guy, or bad? Lots of shades between black and white... Where does this lie?
B, "what hurts you". He is not really sacrificing much is the point.
C, dreams, becoming vs demonizing the rich. We have both. When the rich misbehave/misuse their power, they should be called on it. They decide to outsource jobs, seeking higher returns ( and they should seek higher returns, but not at any cost ), knowing that the source of the money to buy their products is the same society they decided would not have as much income. They decide to lobby government, using the power that wealth gives them, to seek more wealth, to the detriment of the general society, knowing that they will not be affected. And then stand up and shout about how unfairly they are treated.
fair enough points. but it all boils down to choice. you always could have bought a mac. you always could have bought netscape (back in the day) if business didnt base its builds on active x (and now silverlight) it wouldnt be browser specific. the people who made the tools always could have stayed strictly HTML compliant, they chose not to. I cant fault microsoft for bad business practices of others.
If anything one could argue the exact opposite, due to M$ policy, it caused others to get outraged and make competing products better.
i get your points, I know I hated that time when IE dominated the landscape as much as anyone else and was so happy when mozilla came to the rescue. but I would hardly call any of that "harm". I mean they could just not exist at all, and we wouldnt have a lot of what we do have today. you can make the same complains against any big company, ma bell, the railroads, electricity. while it may not be perfect, its STILL orders of magnitude better than the previous generation
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> This is not $70 millions in non-taxable charities, but an investment on a money machine in the sports/entertainment industry.
Yes, he bought a business, so he'll pay income tax on any income that is generated. If he buys T-shirts for $10 each and sells them for $25 each, that's a $15 profit he'll be taxed on.
If he buys hot dogs for $2 and sells them for $8, that's a $6 profit on which he'll pay taxes.
If he buys a team for a billion dollars and over 15 years he gets his billion back plus $500 million more, that's a $500 million profit he'll pay taxes on.
The billion he apent buying the team is money he ALREADY earned from Microsoft, so he ALREADY paid taxes on it. Of course he doesn't have to pay income taxes on the same money again when spends it on a team. It's INCOME tax, not SPENDING tax. The article is just clickbait for the uninformed and gullible, silently assuming he should have to pay income tax over and over on the same money. How many times he should be taxed on that money the author doesn't say.
Wait, what? $70 million per year for the next 15 years (future tense) is money he already made (past tense)?
Yes, he made a billion dollars and paid taxes on that.
He then spent that money buying something, theoretically in the hopes of making a profit. If he makes a profit, ie ends up with more money, he'll pay taxes on the increase. If, over the next 15 years, the billion he already paid taxes on comes back to him, why should he pay taxes on it again? If you buy a car for $10,000 and later sell it for $5,000, do you again pay taxes on the $5,000 you got back? Of course not. You already paid taxes on that money whwn you earned it. You'd only owe more tax if you sold it for more than you bought it for - if you made money on the deal.
Intentionally breaking compatibility with DR-DOS, anti-Linux FUD, the difficulty in getting back the MS tax, countless instances of embrace, extend, extinguish, threatening OEMs with what is effectively a kiss of death if they didn't only ship MS software. That you think it was about bundling a browser suggests you have a very limited background here.
Lol.. you think MS earned billions of dollars by breaking DRDOS in a beta version of Windows that nobody used? You're exhibiting defective thinking like most anti-ms trolls.
In the real world, what happened was they built products that people liked and got paid for it. Everybody starts out at 0 income with no influence. If you're begrudging MS playing hardball to win customers and contracts, then all I have to say is you have some growing up to do. Go talk to some sales people in your company.
Except for the fact that MS effectively killed all reasonable choice. I would argue that Apple was a bit of a co-conspirator in this matter, as they priced themselves out of being a legitimate mainstream competitor while taking the public's eye as the most visible choice that wasn't MS and actually contributed to the IE lock-in. You are not realizing the impracticality of other choices because of MS's actions.
Except that healthy competition does a way better job of that than fighting a powerful. The iron grip of IE was a small dark age in regards to browser advancements. The rapid growth we've seen as of late is the result of having a number of competing browsers trying to outdo one another.
You are assuming that if they hadn't exist, nobody else would have fulfilled the same niche. That is only true on accidental inventions. Had Alexander Graham Bell been struck by lightning on the way to patent office, we would've had Elisha Gray to take his spot the same day, and probably at least a half dozen others within a year or two.
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any business you buy can have goodwill and you write that off on a schedule, just like you depreciate or write off business expenses.
Steve Baller
The Sports-Industrial Complex is Bleeding America Dry
He's also pushed forward extremely damaging programs in other countries that has drastically reduced quality of education and health. You know, making poor people's lives more difficult for charity.
You have taken the bait. Hook, line, and sinker, as they call it. As long as you're aware that you literally can not be as wealthy as Gates without destroying a lot of lives in the process, chase your dreams. If your conscience ever wakes up and questions your dubious goals, you'll have to kill it off to continue.
Why not just be happy with median income, and work to redistribute the hoarded wealth back down to everyone else? Are you also implicitly arguing that wealthy people must have all their wealth? Will the planet collapse if a billionaire suddenly isn't a billionaire anymore?
Stop worshipping the rich.
the portions that apply to individuals who are not running a business with other people would actually fit into a volume of around 100 pages
In an era of unemployment, I keep hearing pundits encourage other un- or under-employed people to start their own business, with proverbial blackjack and hookers. This would bring more ordinary people under the scope of the other tens of thousands of pages that do apply to those "running a business with other people".
The only people who need to know and understand these things can easily employ professionals to manage them.
Does this include a startup without a big pile of venture capital?
This is a short term benefit that may or may not fit into Balmer's financial plan. The goodwill being depreciated will have to be recaptured when he sells the team.