1y ago

Microsoft owes $29 billion in back taxes plus penalties and interest to IRS

appleinsider.com Microsoft owes $29 billion in back taxes plus penalties and interest to IRS

The IRS sent a surprise bill to Microsoft, hitting the company with a $28.9 billion bill for back taxes and penalties spanning a decade, starting in 2003.

Microsoft owes $29 billion in back taxes plus penalties and interest to IRS::The IRS sent a surprise bill to Microsoft, hitting the company with a $28.9 billion bill for back taxes and penalties spanning a decade, starting in 2003.

69 comments

The IRS agent who worked up this case is either going to be up for a few days of extra vacation time or perhaps a job at Microsoft.

Corporations are not people, fuck them up.
- Even if we treat then like people, they easily deserve that (and some criminal charges) for circumventing tax law.
  If organizations are treated like people, they must be accountable to the law in a proportional way.
- Dissolve them. That fucked country still has fucking death penalty.

Next week, Microsoft negotiates the pending tax figure to $0...
Week after that, Microsoft is raising Office plans by $5 per user per month across the board to cover their tax bills...
- this is not very wholesome
- Paying to use Microsoft office when OnlyOffice exists, lmao.
  And if it's a company paying for the user's Microsoft office bs, then imo the point is mute.
  Honestly, Microsoft can get bent. They aren't going to negotiate to 0, these actions are being done after being long overdue, and it's clear this administration is raising hell.
  And the extra incentive here of $29B in tax dollars isn't going to hurt either.
  EDIT: LibreOffice is great if you live in a bubble world where Microsoft Office hasn't dominated the business and school markets for 30 years. But here in the real world OnlyOffice and Google Docs are popular because they're backwards compatible.
  If LibreOffice ever wants to have a chance of overtaking OnlyOffice, Google Docs or Microsoft Office, they need to work on backwards compatibility with Doc and Docx. Also I don't get the "payware" issue. They're selling services. The Software is FOSS. It's AGPL v3.
  
  OnlyOffice? The fuck is that?
  Looks
  Repackaged open source payware trash.
  LibreOffice works just fine without having yet another third party dev pilfering it to make it their bankroll. They've seemingly built an entire ecosystem with resellers and all trying to FUD themselves into a claim of being more compatible with MS doc formats than LibreOffice.
  Support LibreOffice development instead.
  https://www.libreoffice.org/
  Or...
  Just pay for MS Office if you have document compatibility concerns.
  
  OO even breaks .ods spreadsheets created in LO.
  
  I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. OO is great for MSOffice files. I love LibreOffice, and it's great for many things. It just can't beat OO at MSOffice interoperability
  
  6TB in Cloud Storage for 70$ a year, where else would I get that?

Wow I wish I could not pay taxes for 3 decades and like do something nice with all that money…
- Well, in fairness, they didn't do anything nice with the money either.
  
  Becoming a monopoly and tech giant is pretty nice..
  
  Microsoft has lots of kickass stuff. Just Bing it, bro. Or jump on Teams with me and I'll explain it while I rock out with my Zune.
  /s obv

But they're a giant corporation so that's apparently fine.
- To misquote J Paul Getty: "If you owe the IRS $29,000 that's your problem. If you owe the IRS $29,000,000,000 that's the IRS's problem"
  
  But no.

Great! Now do Apple!

So where are all those fake democrats complaining that Biden's funding the IRS is just going to have them go after small businesses and the lower/middle classes?
How's that go? Gaslight, obstruct, project? lol
The IRS overwhelmingly go after poor people as they don’t have the means to defend themselves and end up settling out of desperation.
I’m sure after they get more money they’ll totally change though lol
Applejacks where you at buddy?
- False dichotomy. They can go for a big, easy target as well as little peeps. Monitoring $600 transactions kind of shows they're not just interested in big guys.
  
  Right? It's so silly that they think it's an all or nothing process. Then again, it's the internet lmfao.
  How about we uphold that the law and taxes are for ALL people, not just rich or poor. We have graduated/progressive tax brackets for a reason. Everyone should be paying their fair share.

That's a pretty penny.
- Yeah but they eared more than double that in profit in their 2023 year. This is taxes over a 20 year period.
  In this context it does not seem like it’s too much.
  
  It's still way more than "none". Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.
  
  I didn't believe you so I looked it up. You're wrong. Their gross profit is over 4x that amount in 2023.

Clippy pops up on Excel. “Hey, it looks like you are trying to funnel revenue through a shell organisation in the Caribbean.”

Next week's news: Microsoft negotiates tax bill down to $3.50. You still need to pay out the ass for healthcare, peasants.

Imagine any other citizen doing the same. they would be rotting in prison.
- I'd like to agree but it is not illegal to not pay your taxes. It is illegal to not file your taxes. So if you file your taxes and owe $5,000, you can't go to jail/prison for not paying it.

With that money you could buy yourself a default search engine position at Apple.
- Or 2 international space stations built today with modern tech
  
  Or not quite half a Twitter (pre-Musk).
  Space stations cost less than what some "send a short message" platform does... insanity.
  
  I don't know if today is do-able, best to give it at least till the end of the week.
- With that much money, you could effectively end homelessness in the U.S. for a full year [^1]
  [^1]: According to a rough estimate by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, it would cost $20 billion in 2012 dollars to afford every homeless person in the U.S. with one year of housing via vouchers. Independent groups have more recently recalculated this amount as ~$30 billion in 2023 dollars using similar methodologies. This is an estimated annual cost, but advocates argue that the program pays for itself -- both in the sense that eliminating homelessness will reduce costs to other social programs & in the sense that many homeless will eventually return to self-sufficiency if given a fair opportunity.

If Microsoft pays that I'll change my name to Microsoft.
- Lemmy name or real name? I want to see this happen. Win win.
  
  Both

Most of the major corporations in the US do not pay their fair share of taxes. Fuck the greedy pigs.

Five years from now it'll be settled and Microsoft will pay ten billion.

IRS commin' in tellin' me "Ain't you boys goin' gimme some back taxes?"
I told them they'd be lucky if they got some front taxes.

They can afford 29 billion. I hope they lose the battle.

Can't imagine running business is difficult when you don't pay taxes.

The issues that generated this debt pertains to intercompany transfer pricing.
Can someone explain what this means in english?
Edit: I looked into it more and it seems the IRS objects to how Microsoft attributed cost and revenue between its international entities. I’ve heard of this practice being used to arbitrarily shift tax burden internationally. For example, let’s say a US company builds Widgets that cost $20 to make and sells them for $50. By normal accounting, that would result in a net of $30 taxable in the US. But if the company spins up a subsidiary in Ireland to hold its Widget production patents, they can charge the US branch $30 per unit in patent royalties. This results in net $0 taxable in the US and $30 taxable in Ireland. One limitation is that the money has to stay in Ireland. But if the company is already a multi-national one, there’s a good chance they have legitimate business expenses in Europe that the money could be later spent on. The end result is that talent and work from American workers, and revenue largely coming from American buyers, is being manipulated to avoid paying taxes back into the American economy, just because the business has international interests and there are many tax havens overseas.
- A company as big as Microsoft is not just one company. Just like movie studioes will famously make their film "lose money" to avoid royalty payments, I would bet Microsoft is trying to avoid taxes by selling services, products or profits "at a loss" between different corporate LLCs all owned by Microsoft.
  Imagine if your time spent grocery shopping was an "import" corporation that overcharged your "works for a salary" corporation, all within your household.
  But I'm sure someone can read the SEC filing and understand for sure.