Summary: The accounting tricks of Microsoft attract some attention from Carl Levin, who is critical of the financial firms cartel in the US

Microsoft's dodge from tax has been very apparent for a very long time, but almost no politician was willing to deal with this systemic and systematic corruption.

We are seeing signs of change as one outspoken (against financial misconduct) senator takes on Microsoft: "Microsoft has been accused of avoiding $6.5bn in taxes (over three years) by using a complex set of transactions with offshore subsidiaries located in Puerto Rico, Ireland, Singapore and Bermuda. The memo, issued by US Senator Carl Levin, did not accuse Microsoft of doing anything illegal, but simply put that they are using a loophole to domestic funds using non-traditional channels."

The Microsoft boosters covered that as well: "A new report out by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found that the software giant used subsidiaries in Puerto Rico, Ireland, Singapore and Bermuda to avoid more than $6.5 billion in taxes, Bloomberg News reports."

Microsoft foes such as Pogson are happy about this development: "Well, it looks like the oh so loyal USA is being betrayed by M$. All those $billions in revenue reported to SEC are not pumping up the US economy after all. In fact, M$ is a drain on the US economy by charging monopoly prices at home and effectively giving the rest of the world a discount."

Whether something will change is a separate matter and that remains to be seen. ⬆