Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Hires in Areas of Tax Dodging and Offshoring

Pay taxes (sign)



Summary: Microsoft saves money by reducing wages and avoiding tax

Microsoft has been hiring near SCO despite layoffs everywhere else in the Unites States. Overall, Microsoft is shrinking, but not all layoffs are created equal.



There is a lot to be learned from Microsoft's hiring/layoffs patterns, mostly because Microsoft favours areas of cheaper labour (like China and India) and areas of tax dodging, e.g. Ireland. We provided a lot of evidence before.

Last week was the last time we wrote about Jeff Reifman, a former Microsoft manager who accuses Microsoft of offences relating to taxation. He showed that Microsoft is using Reno as a distant place from which to process transactions and thus avoid paying tax like everyone else. Reifman appears in this new article from the Seattle Weekly and while the Seattle press reports on Microsoft laying off in Washington, some days ago we also found this new report.

Reno's Microsoft outpost has grown from 40 to 250 employees



[...]

“This is an attempt for people to know more about us,” said Mary Ellen Smith, general manager of the Reno operation which employs 250 people.


Is it not interesting that Microsoft is shrinking almost everywhere while in Reno it grows more than six-fold? Is it not related to the routine which saves Microsoft about a billion dollars in tax? Who could be so gullible? Financial fraud is not foreign to Microsoft [1, 2, 3] and now there is a lot of noise out there about the Reno operations. That's where they stash the tax money they do not pay (Google, Intel, and Apple are not innocent, either).

“Financial fraud is not foreign to Microsoft and now there is a lot of noise out there about the Reno operations.”Speaking of which, Microsoft's CFO, who is aware of all this and also partly responsible, has just quit the company. What a good timing. Chris Liddell, who was partly responsible for this potential violation of the law, might even leave the country and go back to New Zealand, having dumped his shares in Microsoft [1, 2].

Nevertheless, there is no reason to worry about Mr. Liddell, who quit with his own (very personal) special loot.

Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell will get $1.9 million after he leaves Microsoft, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.


It is mostly/only covered by the Seattle blogs, which are of course reluctant to say something negative. Some of them are sponsored by Microsoft.

Moving on a little, in recent weeks we wrote about Kristof from the New York Times calling for a boycott of Microsoft search, which incorporates suppressive censorship in China [1, 2, 3] (it also censors the competition, as we showed repeatedly before). Microsoft Nick plays along with the pathetic Microsoft defence (excuse) that this was a "bug".

Microsoft claims it fixed a controversial "bug" that made Bing Image Search deliver uniformly pro-Chinese-government results to politically sensitive queries inputted in Simplified Chinese.

Bing came under fire on Nov. 20 from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who accused Microsoft of "craven kowtowing" to the Chinese government by offering "sanitized pro-Communist results" in response to Bing searches in Simplified Chinese for terms such as "Tiananmen" and "Dalai Lama."


We previously showed that Microsoft and Bill Gates are politically close to China, not just because both are totalitarian and suppressive. In the news we now find: "Microsoft Talks China Outsourcing"

Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) has outsourced more than $100 million of business to China in 2009, qq.com reported December 3 citing Wang Ying, Senior Director of Microsoft China R&D Group's China Outsourcing Center.


Yes, that ought to save Microsoft a lot of money, but the English-speaking press hardly covers this (qq.com is Chinese). It does, however, write about a recovery of a bankrupt company of Microsoft's co-founder. We wrote about Charter before.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Articles Published by Bots, Dominating Google News
So a lot of the Web is Microsoft chatbot-generated anti-Linux FUD
 
They Will Never Leave Linus Torvalds Alone, Rust is Just Another Way to Cause Instability and Infighting in Linux
We already identified the Rust "community" as troublemakers more than 5 years ago and we wrote about the evidence
Apple: Social Justice or Social Nationalism?
Remember to buy Apple, folks
Links 14/02/2025: Mass Layoffs at Sophos, Chatbots Failing Very Badly, "DOGE as a National Cyberattack"
Links for the day
Moving Away From Certificate Authorities (CAs) Like Let's Encrypt Means Taking Away From the US Government the Power to 'Censor' Sites by Revoking Certificates
Gemini capsule is cheap to run and easy (easier than a Web site) to maintain. More people disillusioned and frustrated with social control media flock to it.
BetaNews' Managing Editor Wayne William Took Charge of GNU/Linux Articles and His Articles Are Real (He Actually Wrote Them)
We are frankly relieved to see that Wayne William recognised the problem and did something about it
Links 14/02/2025: Publicity Rights Violated (ByteDance), Bribes to Trump Passed via Social Control Media 'Settlements' Again
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/02/2025: Constitution, Cosmic DE, and More
Links for the day
Links 14/02/2025: Measles Outbreak in Texas, Zelensky Warns Russia Will Attack a NATO Country
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 13, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, February 13, 2025
Gemini Links 13/02/2025: gwit and Restart
Links for the day
Links 13/02/2025: Algorithm Bots and 'Teleport' Breakthrough
Links for the day
EPO Staff Representatives Confront the President Who Says 'F--king' in Front of Female Workers Over Measurable Discrimination Against Female Colleagues
Central Staff Committee versus Lukashenko's sponsor
IBM Layoffs in 'RTO' Clothing Reported by Thomas Claburn
This "hey hi" (AI) nonsense is just a go-to excuse that IBM and GAFAM (and many others) use
Still Waiting for the EU to Abolish the Illegal and Unconstitutional Court Linked to EPO Corruption and Lobbyism by the Patent Litigation Industry
Sadly, all the blogs that used to talk about those issues have been infiltrated and then completely hijacked by the very perpetrators of the illegality
Social Engineering of the Free Software Movement is a Corporate Takeover With Code of Conduct (CoC) to Drive Out or Expel Dissent
Richard Stallman (RMS) covered "cancel culture"
Links 13/02/2025: Mass Layoffs at Google (Disguised as "Buyouts"), Telecoms Price Hikes as Collusion/Price-Fixing
Links for the day
[Video] Richard Stallman Questions and Answers Session in Google's YouTube or Invidious
From last night
Gemini Links 13/02/2025: Broken Watches and Naming Types
Links for the day
Corrupt Bill Gates Worming His Way Into Richard Stallman Videos in Google's YouTube
Reputation laundering riding other people's names?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 12, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Links 12/02/2025: Crytek Layoffs, Security Holes, and Giving Ukraine to Russia
Links for the day
Relaying GAFAM Talking Points and Lies Using GAFAM LLMs, or Slop Pasted in by Brittany Day
linuxsecurity.com is relaying slop, i.e. misinformation
Photos From This Evening's Talk by Dr. Richard Stallman in Torino, Maybe a Video Soon
The talk that Dr. Richard Stallman gave today (a few hours ago) was recorded and streamed
IlSoftware.it Covers Richard Stallman's Visit to Give Talks in Italy
The publication is in Italian, the talk was in English
Macho Patent Office
At the EPO there's always room for women in top roles
Gemini Links 12/02/2025: "Bream Gives Me Hiccups", Making Chinese Tea, and More
Links for the day
This is Why Codeberg Issues an Apology Today
This response was clear and relatively swift
The Register Studies (to Affirm) Reports of IBM Layoffs "at the Finance and Operations business unit"
something about that specific unit
Links 12/02/2025: SSL FUD, DEI Phase-out, Felonies Committed by MElon (Data Breaches)
Links for the day
Italian Media Covers Richard Stallman's English Talk Ahead of Tonight's Public Appearance
article in La Stampa
Destruction and Distortion of Information, Including Facts About Linux (Bonus: This is Destroying the Planet)
All that LLMs have going for them is hype, and moreover media that intentionally misrepresents them and their supposed capabilities
Google Seems to Have Just Killed All Instances of Invidious
YouTube is rapidly becoming just "another Neflix"
Microsoft Skype in a Freefall: About 20% Decrease in Site Traffic in 3 Months (Amid Microsoft Phasing Out Credits)
Microsoft axing more services/features may mean that now they scrape the bottom of the barrel and Skype will simply die, discontinuing service (like ICQ) in a matter of years
Gemini Links 12/02/2025: Depression, Gabbro, WikiTok, and More
Links for the day
Links 12/02/2025: Health, Security, and Monopolies
Links for the day
Gemini Protocol is Increasingly Important to the Net
Gemini Protocol will turn 6 this summer
Former EPO Manager Warns That the Illegal 'Court' for "Unitary Patents" Enables “Law Shopping”
Daniel X. Thomas opposed the very existence of the UPC, which any honest person could recognise was both illegal and unconstitutional
Like GAFAM, the EPO is Passing the Financial Pains to Staff
the EPO is operating illegally at this point
Morale at Microsoft Ruined by the Company Labelling Thousands of Workers 'Low Performers', Sacking Them on the Spot and Denying Them Basic Benefits
people laid off as "low performers" go to social control media to bemoan the label
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, February 11, 2025