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Microsoft Offers Washington a Bargain: More State Taxes, For More Education
reifman writes: The Washington State Legislature and its budget is a complete mess this year but there's been an unusual bright spot which may quiet the protesters Slashdot reported earlier: Microsoft has volunteered for an exclusive $28 million annual tax — as long as the state funds a number of computer science degree programs. Visions of these faded after the 2008 recession when the legislature cut $4 billion from K-12 and higher education spending in part to cover the coming legalization and amnesty for Microsoft's Nevada tax dodge (students' tuitions only increased 58.6 percent.) With Microsoft's voluntary tax, the company will have fully repaid its $8.75 billion tax dodge by 2327, just 312 years from now.
Microsoft has cleverly figured out that it can spend $28 million to A) increase competition in the CS grad job market, thus driving down the cost of employees, and B) offload the costs they would incur training hires over to the state. How clever.
The only thing I worry about in this case is if Microsoft goes one step further and ties a "use Microsoft products exclusively in the schools or no deal" string to that money/tax bump.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
it's, at best, a strawman (non-)argument to call them a tax dodge or to claim they owe your hypothetical billions. Tax evasion and tax avoidance are two entirely different things.
They said Tax Dodge. You even posted Tax Dodge, then you transformed it into "Tax Evasion" which nobody else said and burned the strawman that you built. That's a nice slight of hand you tried to pull there. Nowhere is the word "Evasion" aka an illegal tax dodge used in the article or the summary or the headline.
However, I disagree with the principle of what you said, even if they had said "Tax Evasion". Considering the amount of lobbying and corruption that multi billion dollar a month corporations wield over governments, it's perfectly fair to say that even if you legally evade taxes, it's still tax evasion when you are the de-facto rule writer for yourself. Following the letter of the law while violating the spirit of the law means we can still judge the company as an asshole even if they are following what's written in ink.
Apple does it too. IBM used to do so (when they still made PCs & AIX workstations). Juniper does it at the community-college level. And, back in the day, you used to see a LOT of Sparc/Solaris machines in academic settings where they were definitely overkill.
Nothing sinister here.
Imagine all the people...