Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/20/irs-sues-facebook-for-9bn.html
…
9 Likes
So…I guess they won’t be needing any payment from me this year, right? 
6 Likes
I’m sure that FB and trump will come to “some sort of an arrangement” prior to Nov. 2020.
11 Likes
Facebook tells US tax bods: Swear to God, we were only worth $6.5bn in 2010 because we were menaced by… MySpace and smartphones
“The IRS rejected that version of reality […]”
17 Likes
There is something extremely bizarre to me about the government suing a corporation over unpaid taxes.
If a corporation owes taxes, issue a bill for the taxes. If they don’t pay, start with administrative penalties. If they think it’s unfair, have an appeal body. If they really won’t pay, pull their incorporation.
38 Likes
Didn’t you get a polite lawyers’ letter the last time you understated your income by 90% on your 1040?
20 Likes
hell no. In Facebook’s case, the IRS knows that they have the money to point out to the IRS that no law has actually been broken (this could obviously be argued and it will in court) where as with you the IRS will simply send you a bill and start issuing penalties becuse they know that regardless of right or wrong you can’t possibly have enough money to prove they are wrong. Remember, they know how much you have to defend yourself.
9 Likes
I just had a crazy idea: If a company wants to sell advertising, they need a federal license. Unpaid taxes, no license.
6 Likes
I feel like this guy and his pals are the Irish employees of these corporations who stash profits there:
6 Likes
To me it’s a little bit more like property taxes. If you don’t pay them, eventually they just take the house. If a corporation won’t pay taxes, just take it. (And then the shareholders can sue you if they think they’ve been done wrong but the corporation can’t, because the corporation doesn’t exist)
9 Likes
Please have pity on us. We are a small rocky island in the North Atlantic with no natural resources and a history of grinding poverty. The Irish’s state’s FDI strategy means that MNCs pay fuck-all in taxes to the Irish state, not just their ‘home’ country. This means that some of the largest private employers in Ireland (google, paypal, apple, facebook, airbnb, and many more U.S. tech companies) do not contribute to the public purse. The Irish state has to make up for the lack of corporate tax revenue by taxing its citizens. So Ireland has Scandanavian levels of taxation (probably worse) but piss-poor, neo-liberal austerity public services. The counter-argument presented is: “stfu before Intel hears you and takes its 4,000 jobs (salaries well above national median) to the netherlands!” It’s a catch 22 for Ireland now.
20 Likes
Facebook has finally found a use case to charge a fee.
Another crazy idea: corporations may only spend up to a percentage of the amount of tax they pay to the federal government (or a low minimum, say $1000, if you pay less than that threshold) on lobbying efforts.
So if Facebook pays $1 in federal tax, they may spend no more than $1000 total on lobbying efforts.
If they pay $10k they can spend some percent of $10k lobbying.
If they pay $1 billion they can spend some percent of $1 billion lobbying.
“lobbying efforts” would include paying someone else to lobby on your behalf, so no “Facebook didn’t lobby, FB Lobbying Co. #1 Ltd. (an ‘independent’ company whose only client is Facebook) lobbied in a way that benefited Facebook.”
5 Likes
Did they actually end up paying tax in the Republic? Historically, the Irish government has been extremely reluctant to collect tax from tech companies; after all the EU pretty much had to force them to accept 13 billion Euros in unpaid taxes from Apple:
4 Likes
How much you bet trumpty dumpty offers facebook a deal to call off the IRS if facebook slaughters his election opponent with fake news.
8 Likes
Tough news for the Zuck, maybe kill off those nazi / fascist / alt right / etc. pages now…
P.S. F’ you Zuck!
6 Likes
We don’t. Our system is relatively progressive though which helps ameliorate some of the income inequality.
Though not enough that people in Dublin can afford a flat as the rents are set at tech bro rates.
3 Likes
We will never get that money, and as I’ve said here before, we shouldn’t either. Those profits should be taxed in the countries they came from, it’s just offshoring funds.
1 Like
The Double Irish isn’t a coffee drink?
4 Likes
Although using Irish tax laws to ‘legally’ avoid US taxes is definitely a thing, that is not what this case is about.
This is simply about illegally underpaying US taxes.
2 Likes
