TECHRIGHTS has many posts about Microsoft's tax dodge but rarely do we see individual positions on the subject. Yesterday we showed that a former Microsoft manager, Ross Hunter, in now working in the Washington government to rid Microsoft of tax while passing all the burden to the public. Now it turns out that Microsoft' CEO personally pays to lobby for himself to pay less in taxes:
Ballmer and Bezos opposing income tax initiative I-1098
Microsoft as a company has been silent on the initiative, although the Washington Roundtable, which represents executives from large corporations, including Microsoft, opposes the measure.
The contributions by Ballmer, Bezos and others "says that they've reached the same conclusion that many others have, which is this is really bad for the economy and really bad for job creation," Mullin said.
Sandeep Kaushik, a spokesman for Yes on I-1098 campaign, said he wasn't surprised by the contributions. "We've known for some time that some of the state's wealthiest people, who would pay more under I-1098, are opposing it for that reason," he said.
Here's another one of our favorites from Ballmer. Yes, Larry Ellison was paid $74 million when Ballmer said this. Ballmer had received less than a million. Though most of Ballmer's money comes from ownership of Microsoft stock. When this was reported, the guy was worth $15 billion. Sorry, but if you are worth that kind of money, the last thing you should be complaining about is someone else being overpaid.
1. Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards. -- Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft (MSFT)
Allegedly, Ballmer made this statement upon learning that engineer Kai-Fu Lee was leaving Microsoft in order to join Google (GOOG). Microsoft sued Google over the hiring, arguing that it was in violation of Lee's noncompete agreement. In a legal document used in the lawsuit, another engineer named Mark Lucovsky recounted Ballmer's words when he decided to defect from Microsoft for Google in 2004.