Re: {SPAM?} Re: [SLUG-POL] Facist economic model, wealth v. income, Jackson v. Bank all over again, China -- WAS: one-sided political figure jabs?

From: Bryan J. Smith (b.j.smith@ieee.org)
Date: Fri Sep 10 2004 - 12:08:05 EDT


On Fri, 2004-09-10 at 10:42, Levi Bard wrote:
> Yeah, just like our economy would be destroyed if M$ was split up :P
> (I've had people say this to me in all seriousness.)

Microsoft doesn't pay tax at all.

They write-off literally _billions_ of dollars a year donating software
while expensing it at the "list price" that costs them maybe 6 figures
in media and paper.

The result is that they actually operate in the red from a tax
standpoint, but their revenues exceed actual expenses, so they are very
much in-the-black.

To top that, they don't even pay dividens (at least not until
recently). Ralph Nader has repeatedly brought up the fact that
Microsoft is a _financial_leech_ on our economy, _not_ vice-versa.

They write off literally billions of dollars they create out of
thin-air, but our tax laws allow them to do because any donation can be
taken as an expense of "fair market value." So that $495 copy of MS
Office they donate to a school cost not even a buck to actually make.

That's why when Gates promised $400M to India, they said, "okay, give us
the money and we'll do what we want with it." In actuality, Gates was
only going to give about 7 figures in actual, tangeable goods (cash,
hardware, etc...).

Because in the end, they still "make money" on the deal because they can
now write off more than their income.

-- Bryan

P.S. It should be noted that Gates and his wife use their charity to do
most of this. It's a win-win because Microsoft gets billions of dollars
in write-offs in "fair market value" for its products to the charity,
and then the charity turns around and makes it look like Gates is
passing out billions of dollars of his own money. Again, in reality,
not even $1M in "actual media/paper reproduction cost" is done.

-- 
     Linux Enthusiasts call me anti-Linux.
   Windows Enthusisats call me anti-Microsoft.
 They both must be correct because I have over a
decade of experience with both in mission critical
environments, resulting in a bigotry dedicated to
 mitigating risk and focusing on technologies ...
           not products or vendors
--------------------------------------------------
Bryan J. Smith, E.I.         b.j.smith at ieee.org



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 19:57:17 EDT