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.
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 $29B in tax dollars isn’t going to hurt either.
OnlyOffice? The fuck is that?
Looks
Repackaged open source payware trash.
LibreOffice works just fine without having yet another third party dev pilfering it to make it their bankroll. They’ve seemingly built an entire ecosystem with resellers and all trying to FUD themselves into a claim of being more compatible with MS doc formats than LibreOffice.
Support LibreOffice development instead.
Or…
Just pay for MS Office if you have document compatibility concerns.
OnlyOffice is amazing if you need compatibility with MS Office products. Not saying it’s perfect, and I have and use LibreOffice, but OnlyOffice is better fit than LibreOffice if your goal is to use MSOffice files in FOSS software. I don’t get to decide what files and software my school or work uses, and they use only MSOffice. If I hand my boss or coworker an ODS, they’ll have no clue what to do with it. LibreOffice doesn’t handle XLSX files nearly as cleanly as OnlyOffice.
If I make a table in LibreOffice, even using their open formats, I am giving up some nice features from OpenOffice.
There’s no way OO is just a cheap repackage of LO. They look very different and have different features.
OO even breaks .ods spreadsheets created in LO.
I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted. OO is great for MSOffice files. I love LibreOffice, and it’s great for many things. It just can’t beat OO at MSOffice interoperability
6TB in Cloud Storage for 70$ 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.
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.”
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.
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.
Great! Now do Apple!
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.
If Microsoft pays that I’ll change my name to Microsoft.
Next week’s news: Microsoft negotiates tax bill down to $3.50. You still need to pay out the ass for healthcare, peasants.
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.
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.
29 billion? That’s it? It is so tiny!
