Dear Microsoft, You owe us $70m. Love, France

[nsane.forums]

Following recent investigations, French tax authorities are demanding a payment of €52.5m ($70m) from Microsoft, amid disputes over the company's accounting and tax policies there.

The issue of large corporations paying their taxes has become increasingly contentious in these straitened times. Last month, we reported that Nokia facilities in India had been raided as authorities there accused the company of evading $545m USD (€407.7m EUR / £351.3m GBP) in taxes, while in November 2012, executives from Amazon and Google were brought before the Public Accounts Select Committee in the United Kingdom to answer some very probing questions surrounding their tax payment policies there.

After Amazon and Google answered to Members of Parliament, Microsoft was named in British media as another company that had allegedly exploited loopholes in legislation to avoid paying as much as £159m ($246.5m / €184.5m) in corporation tax in one year alone. Earlier in the year, Microsoft had also come under scrutiny from French tax authorities, who were investigating the possibility that the company may have evaded some tax payments.

Further investigations in France have now resulted in tax authorities demanding an adjustment payment of €52.5m ($70.2m / £45.2m) from Microsoft, as BFMTV reports. The issue at hand is that Microsoft France operates as an 'agent' of another Microsoft subsidiary company based in Ireland, and as The Next Web reports, MS France only accounts for a fraction of the total revenue from any products sold there.

To put this another way, MS France sells on behalf of the Irish company, and takes a commission on each sale; this lower amount is then registered as the revenue generated in France, and it is the profits from this lower revenue figure on which the French subsidiary eventually pays tax. The Irish company also pays corporation tax, but at a lower rate than France's 33%.

French authorities have also been investigating whether Microsoft conducts any direct business (i.e. without using the Irish company as an intermediary) in France.

As a result of their investigations, French authorities are now requiring that Microsoft pay the €52.5m to effectively 'correct' the company's tax payment. It's important to note that this is not the same as a fine or a penalty, but rather an adjustment to top up what France believes to be an underpayment of taxes owed.

Microsoft told BFMTV that it is disputing France's take on the issues, going on to say that another tax adjustment in France for a different fiscal year will in fact be made in its favour. The French giveth, the French taketh away...

View: Original Article

[ffi]

After decades of socialism in France the socialist seem to be running out of other french peoples money peoples money, now they are going after non-EUSSR companies but it won't be long before they discover they can use the EUSSR to rob the hardworking dutch and german taxpayers...

[flitox]

after decades of socialism in france..... now it is sure you know what you are talking about lol

[LeetPirate]

Microsoft should pull out from France and let them use Linux as punishment. :lmao:

[ffi]

Microsoft should pull out from France and let them use Linux as punishment. :lmao:

or worse osx :lmao:But if it was me running MS I would indeed leave France, I don't do business with people who change the rules midgame, even if I still win in spite of the rule change. The french government needs to learn that the money made by companies is earned by those companies and therefor belongs to those companies, no one is entitled to the fruits of some one else's labor. I would heed the words of Unilever and indeed leave France if they continue this theft http://www.beurs.nl/nieuws/binnenland/3168097/unilever-doet-geen-afstand-van-theemerk-elephant . The french need more coragieus men like Bernard Arnault and Gerard Depardieu who dare to say enough is enough maybe than those socialists will finally learn there lessons because there will be no one left who produces anything to steal from.

[flitox]

don't worry, soon there will have no need to produce things as ordinary people won't be able to buy them anyway.

Bernard Arnault is the kind of people capable of selling you horse meat as beef so he can make more money.

[ffi]

don't worry, soon there will have no need to produce things as ordinary people won't be able to buy them anyway.

Bernard Arnault is the kind of people capable of selling you horse meat as beef so he can make more money.

Consumption is the reward for production, you have to produce first if you want to buy stuff to consume first. The problem with France is that is had become so socialist that people don't even get this simple fact anymore. You need to work, produce stuff for other people(in other countries), pay off your debts, because in the past you consumed far more than you produced and then maybe you can start to enjoy consumption again.

I like horse meat, I have been eating it for years, it much sweeter, leaner, healthier, ethical(no bio-industry, not that I care but many people do) and tender than beef, it's almost like venison...

[flitox]

Consumption is the reward for production, you have to produce first if you want to buy stuff to consume first. The problem with France is that is had become so socialist that people don't even get this simple fact anymore. You need to work, produce stuff for other people(in other countries), pay off your debts, because in the past you consumed far more than you produced and then maybe you can start to enjoy consumption again.

I like horse meat, I have been eating it for years, it much sweeter, leaner, healthier, ethical(no bio-industry, not that I care but many people do) and tender than beef, it's almost like venison...

and how can a state can pay its debt if it should not tax what is sold on its soil like you said???

i was awaiting that kind of dumb answer for the meat problem.... who cares if horse is good or not, when you buy beef, you have to get beef.

i suppose you would not be happy if next time you get the latest microsoft product, you end up with some modified mac product to looks like it's from microsoft.

for someone who do not like people who change rules midgame, i'm surprise you haven't find that yourself.

BTW look likes all is well in the land of hard working dutchmen

http://www.institutneerlandais.com/nieuws/2013-02_sluiting_IN.php

[ffi]

and how can a state can pay its debt if it should not tax what is sold on its soil like you said???

I guess you and neither the french government never heard of the Laffer-curve which states that when the tax level is 0% revenue is 0 and when the tax level is 100% revenue is 0% (no one will work or will evade taxes), so somewhere between 0-100% there is a tax level with an optimum revenue, any higher taxes and revenue will go down. It is obvious the tax level is is way past its optimum in France, so increasing taxes will only further decrease revenue but socialist envy will keep them from lowering the tax burden (which will help everyone)

when you buy beef, you have to get beef.

Well all products contained beef, the ingredients never say how much, so you got a little bit of bonus horse meet. The stupid thing is I usually go out of my way to find products with horse meet.

BTW look likes all is well in the land of hard working dutchmen

http://www.institutn...sluiting_IN.php

I wouldn't lose a nights sleep over this, in fact it is one less taxburden to worry over, the only real shame is we have to pay billion of new liras to the EUSSR for defaulting countries and farm subsidies (now where did all those farm subsidies end up again..... )

[flitox]

i didn't know about that curve (but now i do). this is not the problem with microsoft. the problem with them is that they didn't declare all the money they made here, only a part of it. it's less a question of the taxes being too high than a plan to make as much profit as possible so their share at the stock exchange keep rising and so that they can give share holders more money.

hear that new yesterday about Danone sacking 10% of their employees despite being in the green and making money. some say it is because maket is slowing down so they prepare themself for that but as they didn't fired the 'productive' guys but some executives, this is bullshit. they only did that because they are under pressure from one Us investor who want they them to give more money to share holder (again...)

yep i agree, all products contained beef but none had 'also contains horse' written somewhere on the packaging.

no offer of horse meat on the market, surprising no one had taken that market (maybe they are too busy trying to con us to do so??)

why EUSSR, if it was so, they would have said, we nationnalise all the banks & fuck all those we owe money to. i found it more to be EUSA (european union of slave for america).

too many ultra liberals in brussel (no wonder why the idea of europe as a nation doesn't evolve, they don't care about that), too many ex employees of golman sachs there. they tried to save the dollar by sucking all our wealth.

america is more in debt than greece, yet it hardly got degrated by notation agencies. (one did, usa retaliate by suing them which cause another notation agency to degrade their note and in return that 1st agency degraded the note of the latter, highly comical, dont you think?

and all that thanks to same us banks who create rotten placements which caused the crisis.

all they will harvest is the collapse of the whole system so let's stay positive and hope that some smarter guys will come up with the idea of a better system for the world to work on before it implodes

[LeetPirate]

Microsoft was named in British media as another company that had allegedly exploited loopholes in legislation to avoid paying as much as £159m ($246.5m / €184.5m) in corporation tax in one year alone. Earlier in the year, Microsoft had also come under scrutiny from French tax authorities, who were investigating the possibility that the company may have evaded some tax payments.

Using loopholes in legislation to avoid taxes is not illegal, France is bullying Microsoft.

Tax evasion is illegal but that is not what happened here. We are all guilty of tax avoidance, this is why we use tools like Turbo Tax software to automatically help us avoid higher taxes, and this is within the law. France is stupid as per usual, they produce nothing, make no useful contribution to the modern world, and want to leech off American corporations. France is dead weight, like Greece, all of those useless countries in EU are leeching from Germany because they keep wasting their own money and begging Germany to bail them out. They all sought allies in the West to betray and destroy the German empire in WWII but now they want to leech from Germany.

I don't live in France but this is how I see the issue looking in from the outside.

[ffi]

hear that new yesterday about Danone sacking 10% of their employees despite being in the green and making money. some say it is because maket is slowing down so they prepare themself for that but as they didn't fired the 'productive' guys but some executives, this is bullshit. they only did that because they are under pressure from one Us investor who want they them to give more money to share holder (again...)

But the shareholders are the owners of the company, of course they decide what to do. Why should a pensioner(usually pensioners directly or indirectly through pension funds own stocks) in the US support an unproductive or marginally productive employee in France? Companies are no charity, they need to make profits (ie. allocate scarce resources as efficiently as possible to produce the goods and services most demanded)

why EUSSR, if it was so, they would have said, we nationnalise all the banks & fuck all those we owe money to. i found it more to be EUSA (european union of slave for america).

too many ultra liberals in brussel (no wonder why the idea of europe as a nation doesn't evolve, they don't care about that), too many ex employees of golman sachs there. they tried to save the dollar by sucking all our wealth

What do you mean when you write liberal because if you use it the way Americans use it, we agree, Brussels is indeed ruled by liberals. And neither the FED nor the ECB are saving the dollar or euro, they are both racing to destroy them Zimbabwe style. It wil make the books look good for a while, it will make the exporting companies happy but in the end it will really hurt us all. Debasing a currency doesn't make a country more competitive in producing goods but it does make exports cheaper, so more goods and services will be shipped abroad and less goods and services can be imported leaving the people with less stuff to buy (and the exportors with more money to buy the stuff that is left over).

Banks shouldn't be nationalized they should go bankrupt and shareholders, bondholders and depositors should be hurt (in that order) never the taxpayer

[ffi]

all they will harvest is the collapse of the whole system so let's stay positive and hope that some smarter guys will come up with the idea of a better system for the world to work on before it implodes

I listen to guys like Jim Rogers(I am long his index with a lot of money, yes i do have an interest), Marc Faber and especially Peter Schiff because the predicted this crisis long before it happened

[flitox]

but the shareholders are the owners of the company, of course they decide what to do. Why should a pensioner(usually pensioners directly or indirectly through pension funds own stocks) in the US support an unproductive or marginally productive employee in France? Companies are no charity, they need to make profits (ie. allocate scarce resources as efficiently as possible to produce the goods and services most demanded)

sure they are the boss, that doesn't mean that what they do is right. i have no idea if the guys they fired are unproductive or not as it's only them who says that (you might know the saying, when you want to kill your dog, you say it has rabies) i'm more enclined to think that those guys have a very short term vision and only try to get as much money as possible in the shortest time possible. they don't care about what they produce, even less about the people who make their product, not even about the company they have part into, all they care is stock exchange rate and if it is going up or not.

have you notice that most of the time if not everytime a company fired people, their shares go u pat the stock exchange, while since they fired it morelikely that things are doing well for them so it should go down.

hard working men getting paid and wankers being toss, i wouldn't say so.

What do you mean when you write liberal because if you use it the way Americans use it, we agree, Brussels is indeed ruled by liberals. And neither the FED nor the ECB are saving the dollar or euro, they are both racing to destroy them Zimbabwe style. It wil make the books look good for a while, it will make the exporting companies happy but in the end it will really hurt us all. Debasing a currency doesn't make a country more competitive in producing goods but it does make exports cheaper, so more goods and services will be shipped abroad and less goods and services can be imported leaving the people with less stuff to buy (and the exportors with more money to buy the stuff that is left over).

we agree for the liberal term.

don't you find it stranges that in a world where scarcicy mean expensive, silver & dollar price stay balanced or even go down.

i know the horse is just a side discussion but it's a good example of how the system works. as i said the problem is not having to eat horse meat, it could have been dog/cat/snake meat or whatever else that is comestible. it's the fact that in order to make more profit, they decide to sell something else as beef. i see that as a step toward soylent green.

horse meat very expensive in belgium? offer isn't strong enough (and some dude trying to make too much off it), it's time to start your company.

leet pirate, france ain't dead yet, it still produces things that are totally useless for ordinary people, we're still good in the luxury market. we might still be alive in some other sectors but in the days of multinational, it's getting to really know what belongs to who