You didn't say Microsoft didn't pay taxes from 1997-2000. You said Microsoft does not pay taxes.
No one calculates tax rates based on revenue. Let me correct that. No one who is not trying to delude themselves into a false sense of outrage calculates tax rates based upon revenue. Taxes are always based upon operating income and in this case that's closer to 30%.
And yes, I'm pretty sure those taxes were really paid. The data I linked to is based upon documents filed with the SEC. Any inaccuracy in those documents is considered major fraud and subject to criminal prosecution. Your data is based upon random quotes on the web.
No, you didn't say Microsoft broke any laws. You said Microsoft does not pay any taxes. So far the only support you've provided is a bunch of articles written over 6 years ago referring to the late 90s. On the other hand, there are the financial statements that are on file with the SEC claiming an average of $4.7 B over the last 3 years.
Again, I hurt to burst your bubble of outrage, but the $40B was REVENUE, not operating income. Taxes are collected based upon operating income, not revenue.
I hate to dampen your outrage but MSFT has paid an average of $4.7 Billion in income taxes over the last 3 years on income averaging $15.7 Billion over the same period of time: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MSFT&annual
It's worse than that. Here's what Morningstar had to say about this:
We have historically not agreed with Apple's "no harm, no foul" treatment of its shareholders when it comes to option issuance, pricing, and follow-on dilution. We are especially cautious about the spin that this CEO grant was simply canceled. A careful read of the situation reveals two CEO grants under review, representing 17.5 millions options with strikes in the $18-$30-plus range, were nearly worthless in March 2003 when they were canceled and replaced with 5 million shares of restricted stock, worth about $7 each at that time.
This has nothing to do with tax avoidance. Microsoft's plan had more to do with underwater options but it was basically the same thing. An option that is underwater has no current value but does have value in the marketplace. Microsoft allowed employees to sell their underwater options for their market value. The difference was MS's plan was limited to underwater options and was a one-time all-or-nothing deal.
I've had 2.0 crash consistently on a PPC Mac, two Intel Macs and two Vista machines. In all of those cases, going back to 1.5 fixed the crashes. I don't have any toolbars installed. 3 of these machines were brand new ones that were repaved over the last week.
Bill Gates, or rather an investment group led by him, is doing that, not Microsoft.
The Vista voucher scheme (promising XP->Vista upgrades for PCs bought now).
They've always done that as far as I remember - for a few months before a new Windows or Office release. IIRC, Apple does that also and so do many other software companies.
THEY have to prove that you owe them money - and that usually involves having something with your signature on it. Write to the credit reporting agency and ask them to take it off. The company that claims you owe them money has 30 days to prove that you do or they have to take it off.
I had my identity stolen. It was a huge mess but a few months later, I got it all cleaned out.
The fruit seller down the street from me is not guaranteed that anyone will buy his oranges before they go bad. That doesn't make stealing them ok.
The producers, writers and actors of TV shows expect that if they do a good job, their show will go into syndication and sell on DVD. You can't just deprive them of that income because those sales aren't guaranteed. The fact that people are willing to pay for the DVDs and watch those reruns and that advertisers are willing to pay for those reruns to be aired proves that TV shows have a value beyond their first airing.
Also, who are you to decide where movies should be paid for? The fact that there are people willing to pay to buy and rent movies proves that there is a value to DVDs. Your deciding otherwise doesn't change anything.
The option strike price is not almost always higher than the then-current trading price of the stock. In most of th cases being discussed, that is not the case. The idea behind stock options is to provide the recipient with an incentive to raise the stock price but to do so without a direct cost to the company. In other words, you're saying "I know you don't own 10,000 stocks of our company but we'll give you these options so that if you raise the stock price, you'll also gain just as if you owned 10,000 stocks of our company". What's happening in the cases being discussed is that the options are backdated to a point in time when the stock price was lower, in effect increasing the value of the awarded options.
None of that is illegal. Where the illegality comes about is in terms of how it is reported. Granting back-dated allows the company to provide a greater reward while reporting a smaller expense. It's as if they were able to pay their employees $1 million/year in salaries but report it as if they were only paying $400k/year. It skews the companies earnings reports and in effect dupes investors into thinking the companies expenses are lower than what they really are.
Sadly, when the board is found to have defrauded and misled investors by doing things like this, the penalty for it, most often, is to fine the company, i.e. its investors.
We don't have a mechanism to make the executives responsible for the deception pay for it. Instead we force the shareholders, who've already been duped, to pay the penalty.
Most of the 9/11 terrorists were actually from relatively wealthy Saudi Arabian families.
A percentage of the Palestinian suicide bombers do actually fall into the "nothing to lose" category where the prospect of their families being rewarded for their deaths is actually part of their motivation but that does not apply to the majority of the terrorists.
You're still trying to think about this from the point of view of a westerner when you assume that you would only do something suicidal if you had nothing to lose.
At the time of the fatwa, the only significant US military presence in the Arab world was the military base in Saudi Arabia which was responsible for making sure Saddam didn't attack Kuwait and Saudi Arabia again. It's not like the US really had a choice but to be there if you view the possibility of the annihilation of Kuwait and/or Saudi Arabia to be an unacceptable risk to take.
Microsoft will not retaliate against any computer manufacturer that supports non-Microsoft software. To provide transparency on this point, Microsoft will post a standard volume-based price list to a Web site that is accessible to computer manufacturers, as it has under the U.S. antitrust ruling. Windows royalties will be determined based on that price list, without regard to any decisions the computer manufacturer makes concerning the promotion of non-Microsoft software.
Microsoft will not retaliate against any computer manufacturer that supports non-Microsoft software. To provide transparency on this point, Microsoft will post a standard volume-based price list to a Web site that is accessible to computer manufacturers, as it has under the U.S. antitrust ruling. Windows royalties will be determined based on that price list, without regard to any decisions the computer manufacturer makes concerning the promotion of non-Microsoft software.
Other articles on this subject state that Microsoft intends to publish a volume-based price list for OEMs. As long as they conform to that price structure, they can't be accused of retaliation.
Slashdot Mirror
You didn't say Microsoft didn't pay taxes from 1997-2000. You said Microsoft does not pay taxes.
No one calculates tax rates based on revenue. Let me correct that. No one who is not trying to delude themselves into a false sense of outrage calculates tax rates based upon revenue. Taxes are always based upon operating income and in this case that's closer to 30%.
And yes, I'm pretty sure those taxes were really paid. The data I linked to is based upon documents filed with the SEC. Any inaccuracy in those documents is considered major fraud and subject to criminal prosecution. Your data is based upon random quotes on the web.
No, you didn't say Microsoft broke any laws. You said Microsoft does not pay any taxes. So far the only support you've provided is a bunch of articles written over 6 years ago referring to the late 90s. On the other hand, there are the financial statements that are on file with the SEC claiming an average of $4.7 B over the last 3 years.
By your logic, Bill Clinton is the President of the United States
Again, I hurt to burst your bubble of outrage, but the $40B was REVENUE, not operating income. Taxes are collected based upon operating income, not revenue.
s p?Country=USA&Symbol=MSFT&stocktab=finance&pgid=qt qnnavfinstate
Also, looking at the past 10 years financial statements, I don't see these tax-free years you refer to: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/Stock/Income10.a
Certainly nothing to justify your outlandish claim that they don't pay _any_ taxes.
That's not really GPS. It uses the proximity to nearby wireless towers to approximate your location instead of using GPS satellites.
I hate to dampen your outrage but MSFT has paid an average of $4.7 Billion in income taxes over the last 3 years on income averaging $15.7 Billion over the same period of time: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MSFT&annual
This has nothing to do with tax avoidance. Microsoft's plan had more to do with underwater options but it was basically the same thing. An option that is underwater has no current value but does have value in the marketplace. Microsoft allowed employees to sell their underwater options for their market value. The difference was MS's plan was limited to underwater options and was a one-time all-or-nothing deal.
I've had 2.0 crash consistently on a PPC Mac, two Intel Macs and two Vista machines. In all of those cases, going back to 1.5 fixed the crashes. I don't have any toolbars installed. 3 of these machines were brand new ones that were repaved over the last week.
I'm glad they got the phishing filter right over less important things like not crashing all the time.
I'll take Firefox 1.5 without the phishing filter, thank you.
Buying hotels (the Four Seasons hotel group).
Bill Gates, or rather an investment group led by him, is doing that, not Microsoft.
The Vista voucher scheme (promising XP->Vista upgrades for PCs bought now).
They've always done that as far as I remember - for a few months before a new Windows or Office release. IIRC, Apple does that also and so do many other software companies.
You are not allowed to make more than 6 withdrawals a month from a savings account without paying a fee.
You can't just post something like this without a link to the post in question.
Please?
THEY have to prove that you owe them money - and that usually involves having something with your signature on it. Write to the credit reporting agency and ask them to take it off. The company that claims you owe them money has 30 days to prove that you do or they have to take it off.
I had my identity stolen. It was a huge mess but a few months later, I got it all cleaned out.
Something tells me it'll be the red and blue lights that will bother him more than the red and green kind.
The fruit seller down the street from me is not guaranteed that anyone will buy his oranges before they go bad. That doesn't make stealing them ok.
The producers, writers and actors of TV shows expect that if they do a good job, their show will go into syndication and sell on DVD. You can't just deprive them of that income because those sales aren't guaranteed. The fact that people are willing to pay for the DVDs and watch those reruns and that advertisers are willing to pay for those reruns to be aired proves that TV shows have a value beyond their first airing.
Also, who are you to decide where movies should be paid for? The fact that there are people willing to pay to buy and rent movies proves that there is a value to DVDs. Your deciding otherwise doesn't change anything.
The option strike price is not almost always higher than the then-current trading price of the stock. In most of th cases being discussed, that is not the case. The idea behind stock options is to provide the recipient with an incentive to raise the stock price but to do so without a direct cost to the company. In other words, you're saying "I know you don't own 10,000 stocks of our company but we'll give you these options so that if you raise the stock price, you'll also gain just as if you owned 10,000 stocks of our company". What's happening in the cases being discussed is that the options are backdated to a point in time when the stock price was lower, in effect increasing the value of the awarded options.
None of that is illegal. Where the illegality comes about is in terms of how it is reported. Granting back-dated allows the company to provide a greater reward while reporting a smaller expense. It's as if they were able to pay their employees $1 million/year in salaries but report it as if they were only paying $400k/year. It skews the companies earnings reports and in effect dupes investors into thinking the companies expenses are lower than what they really are.
Sadly, when the board is found to have defrauded and misled investors by doing things like this, the penalty for it, most often, is to fine the company, i.e. its investors.
We don't have a mechanism to make the executives responsible for the deception pay for it. Instead we force the shareholders, who've already been duped, to pay the penalty.
Most of the 9/11 terrorists were actually from relatively wealthy Saudi Arabian families.
A percentage of the Palestinian suicide bombers do actually fall into the "nothing to lose" category where the prospect of their families being rewarded for their deaths is actually part of their motivation but that does not apply to the majority of the terrorists.
You're still trying to think about this from the point of view of a westerner when you assume that you would only do something suicidal if you had nothing to lose.
At the time of the fatwa, the only significant US military presence in the Arab world was the military base in Saudi Arabia which was responsible for making sure Saddam didn't attack Kuwait and Saudi Arabia again. It's not like the US really had a choice but to be there if you view the possibility of the annihilation of Kuwait and/or Saudi Arabia to be an unacceptable risk to take.
Do you really think such a major product decision would be made overnight because someone got upset about a poster?
It's "fesses up", which means to acknowledge, admit, avow, concede, confess, grant or own (up).
To face up means something completely different and nothing that makes sense in this context.
Other articles on this subject state that Microsoft intends to publish a volume-based price list for OEMs. As long as they conform to that price structure, they can't be accused of retaliation.
When teh fact of teh matter is that it is law that states they must give consumers 30 days to return .....
There is no such law in the US.