Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Seattle Times Finally Questions Microsoft's Political Games for Tax Avoidance

Washington and Microsoft



Summary: Even the Seattle Times, one of the local papers that sometimes seems to be Microsoft-sponsored propaganda, is starting to question what Microsoft is doing to Washington and how

THE PREVIOUS post showed that Microsoft has many reasons to avoid expenditures such as tax. To quote a key sentence, “Microsoft has a huge debt approaching a tenth of a trillion dollars.” Last week we added this Wiki page about Microsoft's tax dodge and also evasion, for which it was found guilty in a court of law. Microsoft does not prioritise compliance with the law, so it's probably a nonevent really.



A former Microsoft employee continues to expose the government cronyism that enables Microsoft to essentially legalise its evasion of tax (which can then no longer be labeled "evasion"). When former Microsoft managers write the law, why would the law paint Microsoft a "fraud"?

Struggling to close a $2.8 billion fiscal deficit, the Washington State Legislature ended its recent special session with two huge gifts for Microsoft:

1) It gave Microsoft an effective $100 million annual tax cut by revising the definition of the royalty tax. Under the old law, all of Microsoft's $20.7 billion annual software licensing sales were taxable in Washington state at .484%. Under the new law, the royalty tax will be apportioned so that only the portion of sales to Washington State customers would be taxable, a tiny fraction of Microsoft's taxable revenue.

2) It also gave Microsoft amnesty on an estimated $1.25 billion in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties that the company has avoided paying since 1997 by reporting this revenue from a small Reno, Nevada office. The state's Department of Revenue has ignored this practice and refused to address precedents that call the legality of Microsoft's accounting into question.

Most of the legislation was led by Chair of the Finance committee Rep. Ross Hunter, a 17 year veteran former employee of Microsoft.

[...]

Given that the Seattle Times waited until almost the close of the special session to acknowledge the dispute about Microsoft's Nevada tax practice, we imagine that Chairman Gates has greatly appreciated this blog's investigative work of his company's tax practices and the quiet effective accomplishments of Rep. Hunter.


Please help promote this in Slashdot. It deserves more attention.

The Seattle Times, which is probably the Seattle publication that's deepest in Microsoft's pocket (we have explained just why on numerous occasions), says that "Microsoft chooses key time to remind Olympia of its clout" (we covered this in [1, 2]).

Microsoft insists the timing is coincidental.

Yet it chose Friday to publicize a study showing its massive economic effect on the state.

Not any Friday, but the Friday before lawmakers huddled for a last push to decide what taxes Microsoft and everyone else must pay to keep the state afloat.


This is actually part of quite a scandal and it deserves the front page of local papers (at the least). We wrote about this in length 6 days ago.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
 
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025