Great article from Reuters on this issue, here.
I admit I contributed.
As Lynnley Browning, who has just shifted to Reuters from the NYT noted:
Things were rosy in the giant software company's just-ended fiscal fourth quarter, which produced record sales of nearly $17.4 billion, a 30 percent increase in after-tax profit, and a 35 percent gain in earnings per share.
But for the Internal Revenue Service and foreign tax authorities, things weren't so rosy. Microsoft reported only $445 million in taxes in the U.S. and other foreign countries, just 7 percent of its $6.32 billion in pre-tax profit.
No wonder the US is in a mess.
No wonder the world is.
And until companies like Microsoft pay tax it will be.
So much for BillGates' philanthropy: it's easy to be generous when you don't pay much tax on your source of wealth.
As Browning noted:
Critics such as Richard Murphy of Tax Research LLP, an anti-poverty and tax research firm based in Britain, argue the U.S. system allows companies to park profits in places where the tax obligation largely disappears. He called Microsoft "a giant tax-planning exercise."
It sure looks that way to me.
Stand Gates along side Bono, I say.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
“So much for BillGates’ philanthropy: it’s easy to be generous when you don’t pay much tax on your source of wealth.”
I have no comment on the above article only the one sentence above. To discredit the philanthropic work of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is completely unfounded, and I must say rather insulting. Their programs have immunised millions of people against the most appalling diseases. Diseases that you were most probably immunised against at birth and take for granted. They have made a visible impact to communities in Asia and Africa and for an article to cheapen their contribution to the basic standard of health of some of the worlds poorest people is not to attack Gates, it is to attack the millions of people who have benefited from their programs and who are alive today because of it.
I have no problem with Bill Gates and his philanthropy
I do object tio it being paid for by tax avoidance
The state could do the job so much better if tax were paid – especially in developing countries themselves
Gares is notably quiet on this issue
Why?
The government could arguably do no where near as good a job. Political persuasions aside. The government of America (where gates is based) wastes huge sums of money. Whether it be wars, government embezzlement like that at the Department of Agriculture, medicade funding discrepencies or the committees they have been spending billions a year to produce reports that do not assist in any way.
Why would Gates be anything but quite on the issue. There is nothing to discuss. He is using legal and legitimate means of avoiding taxation. Those regulations were not of his doing, they were of the governments doing. The same government that was voted into power by the majority of the United States.
Utterly disingenuous
Gates is simply, you say, a taker of gov’t regulation on tax with no lobbying power
But has the power to change policy and outcomes on vaccination
Utter crap
He can, and does, massively lobby gov’t through Microsoft for the tax breaks – tax breaks that impose poverty on millions and maybe billions
He is responsible
A little conscience salving charity for publicity does not let him off the hook