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.
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.
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 $29B in tax dollars isn’t going to hurt either.
EDIT: LibreOffice is great if you live in a bubble world where Microsoft Office hasn’t dominated the business and school markets for 30 years. But here in the real world OnlyOffice and Google Docs are popular because they’re backwards compatible.
If LibreOffice ever wants to have a chance of overtaking OnlyOffice, Google Docs or Microsoft Office, they need to work on backwards compatibility with Doc and Docx. Also I don’t get the “payware” issue. They’re selling services. The Software is FOSS. It’s AGPL v3.
OnlyOffice? The fuck is that?
Looks
Repackaged open source payware trash.
LibreOffice works just fine without having yet another third party dev pilfering it to make it their bankroll. They’ve seemingly built an entire ecosystem with resellers and all trying to FUD themselves into a claim of being more compatible with MS doc formats than LibreOffice.
Support LibreOffice development instead.
Or…
Just pay for MS Office if you have document compatibility concerns.
OO even breaks .ods spreadsheets created in LO.
I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted. OO is great for MSOffice files. I love LibreOffice, and it’s great for many things. It just can’t beat OO at MSOffice interoperability
6TB in Cloud Storage for 70$ a year, where else would I get that?
Self Hosting
2TB in Closet Storage for 64$ a year. Each new year subscription tier upgrades +2TB for free.
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…
Okay they aren’t good, but seriously what makes them a monopoly? I haven’t seen anyone make a good argument for this. There isn’t a single industry they’re in, that I know or can think of, that they hold enough market capture to be a monopoly.
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.
Great! Now do Apple!
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.
That’s not wrong then. 4 times is more than double.
I got my number from the article that was posted.
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.
Alright, fine… You got me! It’s actually Microsoft’s problem.
XD
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.
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]
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. ↩︎
Imagine any other citizen doing the same. they would be rotting in prison.
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
Five years from now it’ll be settled and Microsoft will pay ten billion.
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?
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.
