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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.
Would Microsoft really leave the state if the legislature decides to end the exemption/whatever that allows such a tax dodge?
As for this "voluntary tax", I sort of want to say, "No, unless it can be spent how the state pleases. Otherwise, donate it directly to the schools in question."
I think we might need a fourth branch of government that does nothing but hold the other three accountable.
We have that - it's called the press. Combined with an informed electorate it's pretty effective in the long run. It's not official in the government but you really don't want it to be. An official branch of government that isn't accountable itself is called a dictatorship. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like that.
This comes up in Massachusetts every so often. They have the normal rate for income tax but they also have an optional higher rate if people want to contribute more to the state government. So what happens? When people start calling out for people to pay more to support the schools or other issue of the day, the media starts pulling tax records and pointing out that those same people did not elect to pay more themselves.
Or even more hypocritical, someone took a picture of a state legislator license plate from Massachusetts at a New Hampshire liquor store. The legislator had just voted to up the tax on alcohol in MA and was evading it by buying in NH. So it's okay for others to pay more, but it's not okay for the people complaining the most to voluntarily pay on their own.
But it's, at best, a strawman (non-)argument to call them a tax dodge or to claim they owe your hypothetical billions.
If they took extraordinary action to avoid paying taxes while still staying within the letter of the law then they ARE dodging taxes. Any argument otherwise is merely equivocation.
Tax evasion and tax avoidance are two entirely different things.
Just because something is legal doesn't make it right. And I don't buy your argument because it is basically a "might makes right" argument. Just because they have the ability to hire lots of lawyers and accountants to do clever tricks avoiding taxes does not mean it should be acceptable. Finding clever loopholes that force others to make up the slack in civil society is not something to be applauded.
But if you're going to attack someone else for not paying more tax than they are legally obligated to
I'm not. I'm attacking them for paying less than they are ethically obligated to. I don't care for a moment that they aren't technically breaking the law. The fact that the laws were imperfectly written does not excuse their behavior. I assure you that I am paying a FAR larger portion of my income in taxes than Microsoft is AND even if we paid the same percentage Microsoft would feel less financial pain from doing so. So until Microsoft starts paying an amount of tax that hurts them as much as what I pay hurts me your argument is bogus.
Could you put a little more socialist bias in your description of the events?
Why no complaints about the 50,000+ six-figure jobs Microsoft created in King County? Or about how Seattle and the Eastside have some of the best public schools on the planet, funded by property taxes, paid by homeowners who work for MS, Amazon, and Google among others? Or about how the technological innovation these companies, and others, provide, funded by the money they don't have to pay as taxes, has improved the abilities of humans around the world to access information and training?
I'm guessing that as a typical socialist, you're unable to understand the concept of opportunity cost (i.e. when taxes remove money from the private sector, the private sector has to cut R&D, expansion, or other expenditures). You probably think that a broken window is good for the economy, despite what Bastiat proved.