Microsoft Defrauding the Taxpayers, IRS Took Decades to Do Something About It
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer.
IRS Claws Back $122 Million From Wealthy Tax Cheats; Sends Microsoft a $29 Billion Bill.
The US Internal Revenue Service is waking up from its decade long slumber, initiated by the TEA Party revolt and suppressed further still by Donald Trump’s “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”.
Just a few years ago, Microsoft bragged about how many billions of dollars they were cheating our great nation out of while the government racked up huge deficits thanks to Trump’s “corporate free-for-all” law.
Well, now the shoe is on the other foot, as the IRS has sent Microsoft a $29 billion tax bill.
Microsoft has apparently been really naughty.
Not content with just grifting legally, they were cheating on their taxes and defrauding the IRS for over a decade and a half as well, by funneling profits through Puerto Rico, and basically daring the IRS to do anything about their scheme.
The IRS, according to the Fortune article, was “cowed” for years by the thought of fighting large corporations with endless resources, and wouldn’t do anything about Microsoft until now, even though it knew this was going on as far back as 2005.
Most of the people the IRS usually bothered, under Republican control of the government, were so utterly broke, that they couldn’t resist them, so the IRS combed over single mothers claiming an Earned Income Credit, and left Microsoft’s $29 billion dollar fraud alone.
It’s disgusting that it has taken the IRS this long to grow a spine and go after these criminals.
On a related note, the IRS conducted audits of 1,600 individuals that it believed owed $250,000 or more in back taxes and clawed back $122 million from 100 of them, so far, in an opening salvo under the fresh funding from the Inflation Reduction Act.
One of the more shocking cases closed by the IRS in September involved a former CEO, who was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay more than $15 million in restitution after he falsified millions of dollars of personal expenses as deductible business expenses.
The rich tax cheat used his unlawful proceeds to build a 51,000-square-foot mansion, featuring an outdoor pool and pool house; and tennis, basketball and bocce courts. His greed didn’t stop there. The IRS found he had falsified millions of dollars of expenses for luxury vehicles, artwork, country club memberships and homes for his children.
Another case targeted a restaurant owner who filed false tax returns and skimmed more than $670,000 from his business. He then spent $502,000 of his illegally obtained funds on gambling.
-AOL
Most people get a year in prison if they slap someone down at the bar, and the guy who defrauded the IRS of $15 million (that they know of) might get out in 6 months with good behavior. Really, all he has to do is pay back what he should have paid in the first place and go to white collar resort prison for a while.
But this is why the rich were panicking about the Inflation Reduction Act, and wanting the American people to think that 87,000 IRS agents would be camped outside their house like the Siege of Waco looking for that $5 they forgot to report last year.
Whenever the IRS is going after the rich, the rich invest in firing up the crazies.
No matter how many times Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says there will be no increased audits of anyone making under $400,000, Fox News will continue to lie.
Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and others are all under the federal government’s microscope and they all deserve worse, but they will do anything they can to throw a monkey wrench into our government so it breaks down and the looting can speed back up again. Mark my words. █