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on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML IRS Tactics Against Meta Open a New Front in the Corporate Tax Fight
cpncrunch wrote 12 hours 48 min ago:
Paywall free version here
HTML [1]: https://qz.com/meta-irs-16-billion-tax-bill-intellectual-prope...
laughing_man wrote 18 hours 42 min ago:
Differential pricing schemes are the primary way Corporations avoid
corporate income taxes. I remember reading an article by an old Africa
hand where he quoted the manager of an international corporation being
exasperated with him and saying "You think I'm actually trying to make
money here? This is all about taxes."
In theory overpaying for modules produced by your subsidiary, or
overpricing IP, in a low tax country is illegal, at least in the US,
but so much of that is subjective it's difficult for tax authorities to
actually do anything unless the numbers are eggregious.
philipallstar wrote 21 hours 26 min ago:
Corporation tax is so annoying, with so many r&d caveats etc. Just tax
outflows.
victorbjorklund wrote 9 hours 12 min ago:
On which level do you mean tax it - Do you mean tax it still on the
corporation but only when there is a dividend? Or do you mean only
tags the recipient. so zero tax if the recipient is based abroad?
If you mean the former, Estonia has that type of corporate taxation,
which is pretty interesting.
philipallstar wrote 8 hours 14 min ago:
Good question - it feels much neater to tax flows than tax money at
rest, letting companies save money in the good times rather than
run to spend it to avoid sending it all away as tax. On the topic
you mention I think export duty would work.
persedes wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
One thing I'd love the US to do was something that happend in Germany
~2015, where they bought a lot of "Steuer-CD"s, with leaked info about
people hiding money in offshore accounts. Then they allowed everyone to
self report and applied more scrutiny to larger corporations which in
total added several billions in revenue.
gryffyn wrote 19 hours 18 min ago:
Germany continues to do that, North Rhine-Westphalia just bought a
>1TB dataset in 2025.
HTML [1]: https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/landespolitik/offshore-steue...
mothballed wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
The US passed FATCA in 2010, you can't operate a foreign bank that
touches US anything without snitching out accounts with US persons as
ultimate beneficial owner.
mannanj wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
Yes great, and our local governments are also focusing on going after
US persons who decide to register their vehicles in Montana and
transfer ownership rights to LLC for privacy reasons. "Tax evasion" is
the only legitimate use of that, they say, only to the small man of
course.
wawaWiWa2 wrote 23 hours 40 min ago:
IRS Tactics Against Meta, Opens a New Front in the Corporate Tax Fight
There. I fixed it for you. Now you have a meaningful headline
loeg wrote 1 day ago:
> [The IRS] say the company failed to report roughly $54 billion in
income and owes nearly $16 billion in back taxes and penalties.
That's... just not very much? The claim is that Meta's global ex-US
income for the last 15+ years is less than a single year's US income?
I really wonder how they came up with this number.
Disappointingly little detail in the article about how the IRS
justifies the claim that the 2010 price was low (obviously, later
profits would not be completely foreseeable at the time -- in 2010
Facebook was simply a much smaller business), or any detail about the
1986 law. It seems pretty farcical to retcon a purchase for being too
cheap with evidence from 16 years later.
siliconc0w wrote 1 day ago:
If Corporates can offshore their IP I should be able to offshore my
likeness and rent it back to myself to reduce my personal taxes.
RobotToaster wrote 20 hours 28 min ago:
Didn't Stephen Colbert claim he was an actor playing the character
Stephen Colbert as some kind of tax dodge?
conception wrote 19 hours 41 min ago:
What else would you describe him as doing?
kylehotchkiss wrote 22 hours 58 min ago:
that's some sovereign citizen thinking right there, don't get your
car window smashed in when you get pulled over for your diplomat
plate :D
jedberg wrote 23 hours 2 min ago:
You can. It would just cost you so much in legal to not be worth it.
The reason it's worth it for these companies is because the number of
zeroes involved. The legal costs are a rounding error for them.
monster_truck wrote 22 hours 45 min ago:
Also true for just not paying taxes at all. The number of times I
have had people tell me that they just let it float for years so
they can settle up for a fraction later is unbelievable.
eikenberry wrote 21 hours 40 min ago:
I know people who didn't pay taxes at all for years and the IRS
came after them them several times (put them on payment plans
that they didn't pay) before giving up. They now call us chumps
for paying taxes. It is pretty absurd.
nzeid wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
What? You have to demonstrate financial hardship or risk getting
convicted.
monster_truck wrote 6 hours 54 min ago:
No, no you do not. If and when they finally realize it's been
12 years since you've filed, you might finally get that letter
one day. Good odds they're gonna be extremely wrong about what
you owe. Let them be
mothballed wrote 21 hours 46 min ago:
The people that get convicted seems to be either rich people
blatantly evading taxes or people that write entire books about
not paying taxes. Last I looked at the data for a normal
person to get convicted just for running late on payments you
basically have to tell the IRS to go fuck themselves and then
brag about it publicly and stir up enough people they have to
make an example out of you so no one else gets ideas. I'm sure
there's odd other examples but they seem to be rare.
By and large the IRS wants to squeeze you for what they can
get, not burn up a bunch of public resources convicting people
and hindering their ability to earn more money for the IRS.
cylemons wrote 10 hours 15 min ago:
They don't fine people for late payment?
mothballed wrote 2 hours 56 min ago:
Was thinking of criminal convictions in relation to
"convicted", not fines
monster_truck wrote 6 hours 36 min ago:
Like they said, you have to be _blatant_ to get rung up.
There are any number of life events you could use as
reasonable cause to avoid the fines entirely and get a
favorible payment plan.
cheriot wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
That sounds off. There's specific situations where the IRS will
settle for less than the amount owed and they're not pleasant.
edgyquant wrote 20 hours 56 min ago:
Not true. Itâs really common for 1099 people
zoobab wrote 1 day ago:
I wrote about this 20 years ago: [1] In the meantime, Ireland removed
their 0% tax over patent royalties, but Holland kept it at 0%.
HTML [1]: http://digital-majority.wikidot.com/forum/t-5766/software-pate...
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
SpaceManNabs wrote 17 hours 40 min ago:
Oh it was the EU that closed it down? didn't even know this ended as
an option
disgruntledphd2 wrote 6 hours 10 min ago:
Yeah, closed to new entrants in 2015, entirely gone by 2020.
Hilariously enough, all of the anti tax avoidance actually ended up
getting Ireland an absolutely absurd amount of corporation tax
(which we'll almost certainly waste, but them's the breaks I
suppose).
bobthepanda wrote 20 hours 29 min ago:
Your 20y old site gave me https errors when I tried to click it, fyi
q3k wrote 20 hours 11 min ago:
Don't access it over https then? The link is http.
LoganDark wrote 16 hours 37 min ago:
Don't modern browsers automatically redirect http to https?
kmeisthax wrote 12 hours 9 min ago:
Not unless the site sends the CSP header to tell it to upgrade
to https: [1] A client side option to force https might still
be useful though. But I can imagine at least some enterprise
webapp that would die horribly if you tried this.
HTML [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Refe...
Gigachad wrote 15 hours 52 min ago:
No they don't. I tried Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. None of
them attempted to redirect. They just show a "not secure"
warning in the URL bar.
The redirect only happens when it's configured on the web
server, set in HSTS, or on a TLD that enforces HTTPS. None of
these apply to this website.
LoganDark wrote 15 hours 37 min ago:
Apparently it's not on by default, but all of my browsers do
and also warn me whenever a site does not support HTTPS (and
require me to explicitly click through to the unencrypted
connection).
qu4z-2 wrote 16 hours 6 min ago:
Then use a non-buggy browser...
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
Works fine on my end. The HTTPS URL gives a 301 permanent
redirect to HTTP, and then I ordered some boner pills and put my
social security number to confirm.
ur-whale wrote 1 day ago:
HTML [1]: https://archive.is/Vsdqd
amelius wrote 1 day ago:
IRS is using AI now too.
ck2 wrote 1 day ago:
We cannot tariff our way out of debt by taxing consumption by
individuals just needing to eat and live
Billionaires silo-ing massive wealthy beyond multiple lifetimes must
pay their taxes
and Trillionaire corporations
Each state now has several Billionaires, there are almost 1,000 in the
USA
They need to pay their damn taxes, a flat tax without deductions for
everything over a million dollars of income per year [1]
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_the_numbe...
HTML [2]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-billiona...
trollbridge wrote 1 day ago:
Note that the issue at hand here is almost entirely about
corporations earning money overseas and then trying to "import" the
money back into the U.S. whilst dodging taxes. It's quite germane to
the same concept as tariffs, although not the exact same thing.
timacles wrote 1 day ago:
Get ready for a lot more billionaires and a lot more poor people in
the next 5-10 years
josefritzishere wrote 1 day ago:
Tax evasion is so pervasive at large companies that I have come to the
conclusion that we need to start criminally charging the c-suite.
Without personal consequences they're never going to change.
loeg wrote 23 hours 48 min ago:
There's no crime element here.
throwaway173738 wrote 15 hours 9 min ago:
Moreover this is the same kind of thinking that has led us to
putting people in concentration camps for committing civil
infractions. Itâs frustrating that some people can totally avoid
taxes but I donât think we should normalize âput people in
prison for anything and everythingâ as a solution to societyâs
problems.
x3ro wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
According to the laws written by politicians who happen to get
large donations from those exact C-level folks, of course only for
their campaigns :)
loeg wrote 18 hours 24 min ago:
"According to the laws" is simply the basis of our entire
criminal code, of course.
numbers_guy wrote 1 day ago:
The less they tax corporations the more the burden will fall on income
tax. These big multinationals have been defrauding countries worldwide
for decades. The issue is at the core of the political turmoil we are
experiencing.
I'd like to know how much less income tax would be, if we could tax
multinationals properly.
which wrote 1 day ago:
The tax avoidance schemes used by most major US companies are to
avoid US taxes on foreign income. Most developed countries have
territorial tax systems so their companies do not even need to use
these fancy legal maneuvers because the income is largely exempt
anyways.
In any given year corporate income tax is like 6-10% of federal
receipts so even if that was doubled there would not be a huge
decline in income taxes needed. The way the US does corporate tax is
really also not that great from an economic perspective because it is
a form of double taxation. The Estonian model of only taxing
distributions incentivizes investment and avoids many debates over
depreciation etc.
erfgh wrote 1 day ago:
The income tax would be less but so would be your salary. The
corporate tax is another cost for the company.
shagmin wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
That's a bit tenuous. Corporate taxes are a cost after profit,
which usually means whatever is left over after expenses. This
means companies could pay higher salaries specifically to avoid
corporate taxes, or invest in things instead.
masfuerte wrote 1 day ago:
> contending the company lowballed the price of trademarks, customer
agreements, software licenses and other rights it moved offshore
At the same time they were telling HMRC (the British tax authority)
that IP rights, etc. were incredibly valuable and a significant cost of
doing business (in the form of payments back to the mothership), and
that's why they made very little profit in the UK and didn't need to
pay much tax.
pjc50 wrote 1 day ago:
Trying to trace more detail on this: [1] That mentions the digital
services tax; I remember some of HN being quite angry that "Europe"
was trying to get a share of the immense wealth extracted from it by
American multinationals.
HTML [1]: https://www.taxwatchuk.org/seven-large-tech-groups-estimated...
heavenlyblue wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
The have to share their wealth because they are allowed to operate
within a stable legal framework that everybody else is paying for
except them. It seems like US isn't using their own taxes
efficiently enough given that CEOs dont get killed on the street in
the EU but they do get killed in the US. And these corporations
arent willing to pay for that, well then they should not be allowed
to operate here either.
Muromec wrote 20 hours 35 min ago:
Wealth extracted from a company sounds like taxes.
rickydroll wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
Dividends extracted from a company also sound like (privatized)
taxes.
bjustin wrote 17 hours 34 min ago:
How did we go from "wealth extracted from [Europeans and Europe]"
to "wealth extracted from a company"?
philipallstar wrote 21 hours 25 min ago:
What you mean is American multinationals were inventing things
people wanted to pay for and the existing government rent seeking
wasn't working.
loeg wrote 1 day ago:
"Wealth extracted from it" seems like a disingenuous framing of
"voluntary market exchange of money for services." It's not like
Europe is a colony. Tech companies only make money by providing
goods and services people choose to pay for.
m4rtink wrote 23 hours 44 min ago:
Given all then dumping, bundling, vendor lock-in and shady
background deals I am not sure how voluntary this often is in
practice.
londons_explore wrote 20 hours 29 min ago:
Also, almost any web product could have the core functionality
reproduced by 3 guys in a couple of weeks.
The actual value is in the brand, siloed data, lockin, network
effect, etc.
China solved that by banning most western services and building
their own, and many of the results are better than the west,
yet the same network effects stop those services expanding.
These are all fairly strong arguments for regulator's to step
in because the market clearly is no longer working to direct
the profit towards the best products.
rolandog wrote 1 day ago:
Ah, the next level in determining Schrodinger's cat's outcome is if
the detector measures Zuckerberg's profit taxability instead of
radiation decay; the measurement's results depend on who is carrying
them out, where they've taken place and, in all instances, the cat
kills itself due to our inability to fix the crazy rich-favoring
taxation systems.
moomin wrote 1 day ago:
I see a very funny fight on our hands.
raverbashing wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder how much Meta wrote off with their Metaverse adventure
loeg wrote 1 day ago:
About $16 billion a year, every year since 2022 or whatever. You can
see RL spending in their public financials. Every company deducts
("writes off") R&D spending.
Nevermark wrote 1 day ago:
Well that was a 100% certifiably genuine ridiculous loss.
It is interesting how corporations develop personalities, that can do
some things well but reliably fail at others. No matter the funding,
personnel or efforts. And in this case, by developing a personality I
mean enabling Zuck.
rwmj wrote 1 day ago:
If it wasn't every last penny of their spend then they weren't being
honest with themselves.
ceramati wrote 1 day ago:
This is one of those situations where I hope both parties duke it out
to the maximum extent and completely obliterate each other.
mcs5280 wrote 1 day ago:
Surely Zuckerberg's bribe check is in the mail already
kotaKat wrote 1 day ago:
The "check" is what's given for a political favor and the "balance"
is what goes up once the check clears.
Simple enough lesson to me!
mentalgear wrote 1 day ago:
You mean send to one of Trumpo's milliard Crypto *hitcoins, just like
civilised nations like the UAE, Russia or the saudis do it?
dylan604 wrote 1 day ago:
You're brave enough to post about Trump, yet chicken*hit enough to
not type out the word shit? What standards are you setting for
yourself?
b112 wrote 1 day ago:
Solution (for big corp)?
Mega is big enough to buy entire islands, and be its own country. A
corporate country. One with a very specific constitution, enshrining
rights, but also?
No corporate taxes.
If done right, you could lure away Western judges, police, and more as
they retire. Or retire early. You could lure them away not with high
salaries, but with shorter work days, AI assistance, and with it being
a tropical paradise.
Compared to the billions Meta would pay in taxes annually, this
endeavour would be far cheaper. And citizens would still pay taxes, of
course.
Now imagine if Google, Musk Corps, Meta, and others all created a
consortium to do just this, and, to build and fund the initial island.
I agree, not fully plausible. But... these guys can do a lot of
interesting things, and I think if it was truly a tropical paradise,
and land and housing was cheap and aplenty, lots might be interested in
moving there.
Certainly, hiring the "glue" of society would be easy. I know so many
people who retire to third world nations, but anyhow...
Yes, holes but, maybe something to ponder.
Corporate towns have existed, why not corporate nations?
edit:
As I've said elsewhere, it's -20C outside my door, so a tropical
paradise with cheap housing and flying cars, and AGI and beaches and
free coconuts may be masking my thoughts a bit.
So downvote me, as you are. It burns, but by god it's -20C outside so
that's just fine.
(warms hands over burning post)
pjc50 wrote 1 day ago:
This is basically describing the Cayman Islands. Or, to lesser
extents, UAE or Malta (e.g. [1] ).
The problem with this warm Galt Gulch idea is that someone has to do
the actual work, and if the top level government is just a corrupt
sinecure designed to shield the corporation from actually paying
taxes, then nothing works properly. Comfortable island living is also
surprisingly expensive, you have to import everything.
HTML [1]: https://taxjustice.net/2026/02/24/malta-the-eus-secret-tax-s...
trollbridge wrote 1 day ago:
Operating a military, maintaining positive diplomatic relations with
other countries, and keeping your workforce pacified might be more
expensive than you think.
Not to mention that a lot of people prefer to live in a democracy
instead of a giant company town, unless you compensate them really,
really, well, and even then, well-heeled people are notorious for
starting revolutions.
dctoedt wrote 1 day ago:
> Mega is big enough to buy entire islands, and be its own country. A
corporate country. One with a very specific constitution, enshrining
rights, but also?
It's a charming thought. But it can't possibly survive the brute
reality that the world is full of people with guns, planes, drones,
boats/ships, missiles, etc., who feel entitled to call the shots,
and sometimes to take whatever they can from whomever they can.
zf00002 wrote 1 day ago:
Snow Crash's Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities.
dsr_ wrote 1 day ago:
Also a Torment Nexus.
TacticalCoder wrote 1 day ago:
One question is: does the US wants to keep its big tech leader ship
or not? Thankfully for the US the EU is nowhere in tech (biggest
market cap is SAP and it's tiny compared to the US giants). But China
is becoming big and quickly.
RAM makers are going to feel the heat from China soon. Batteries
makers. China is eating the world with its EVs. Drones, etc.
If you're not nice with your corporations, they incorporate
elsewhere: that's why the EU is nowhere in tech. Insane taxes since
forever and a very strong anti-entrepreneurship mindset (in the EU
you're a loser if you tried and fail, for example).
Companies like Meta, Google, MSFT, Apple, etc. should receive medals
and thanks from the US government for the insane amount of money they
syphon of the other countries and the wealth they create for the US.
Some countries are understanding this: in the UAE for example Dubai
is now the world's busiest airport in the world for international
passenger traffic. Some countries really fucked up big times to allow
this to happen. Dubai is also now a very important hub for
commodities trading. And diamonds: Antwerpen/Anvers (Belgium) used to
be the city where the most diamonds exchanged hands, now it's...
Dubai.
There is such a thing as competition between nation states and at
some point entrepreneurs simply pick the best place to launch their
businesses. And having the IRS using "tactics" to say that Meta owes
them tens of billions does not send a nice message to people
wondering in which country it's best to incorporate.
I now live in the country with the 2nd or 3rd highest GDP per capita
in the world and that requires a mindset where businesses are
welcome, entrepreneurs are welcome and the IRS doesn't feel like
they're out there to get you at any cost.
And I'm here because I voted with my feet, my wealth and the future
wealth I was going to create.
ben_w wrote 7 hours 8 min ago:
> If you're not nice with your corporations, they incorporate
elsewhere: that's why the EU is nowhere in tech. Insane taxes since
forever and a very strong anti-entrepreneurship mindset (in the EU
you're a loser if you tried and fail, for example).
No, the reason the EU is "nowhere" in tech is comparative
advantage: While the US built up Silicon Valley, the EU went for
other things that play into Europe's strengths rather than
weaknesses (language barrier is a real thing, the EU has 24
official languages).
If you compare the largest EU/US companies in nominal USD, even
before considering the size differences of the economies[1], the
gap is there, but it's not huge: [1] [2] The very top of the US
chart? Walmart, and the reason the EU can't support something like
Walmart is that the market preferences are too diverse between
regions. For a fun weird example, Germany has two different Aldi's,
and their international expansion is disjoint: [3] But Europe has
Volkswagen, which is within spitting distance of the sum of the two
highest revenue US automobile companies[3], something which works
fine because cars are almost the same across the economic region (
[4] ).
Third on the US list? UnitedHealth Group, which doesn't make sense
in Europe because of all the nationalised healthcare.
But yeah, the reason tech isn't the core identity of Europe's
largest corporations is just comparative advantage, which in turn
is I think mostly due to Europe having internal language barriers
holding that back in ways that don't apply to other sectors. [1] by
which measure the US economy is (32 US)/(21 EU + 4 UK + 1 CH [2]) =
32/26 = 1.231 times the size, therefore those numbers naturally
should be expected 23% higher in the USA than Europe anyway. [2]
I'd count the UK and Switzerland for this kind of discussion, but
feel free to adjust accordingly if you don't. Russia's also "in
Europe" and on that list, but I don't think you meant to include
it, and you can skip whichever nations you want when comparing
those lists. [3] and proportionally more in comparison to the size
of the economy as per [1]
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in...
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in...
HTML [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aldi_branches_in_Europe...
HTML [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Countries_driving_on_th...
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote 23 hours 22 min ago:
Oh no! Heaven forbid nations around the world tax mega corporations
and lead to a more balanced way of living
pjc50 wrote 1 day ago:
> If you're not nice with your corporations, they incorporate
elsewhere
> China
China has capital controls and can still have billionaires
"disappeared" (Jack Ma). And yet its industrial strategy seems to
be working.
hirako2000 wrote 1 day ago:
Everything in correct. But one omission there is politics. People
occupy nations and don't all have the same interest. Those (felt,
or actually) left aside, not benefiting enough from the macro
growth speak and act in their interest.
The people in the E.U arguably are more successful at getting their
demands met. They typically are less fooled by the "American
dream", they see Zuckerberg and the others for what they are, a
tiny number of lucky, or privileged, sometimes just very gifted
unicorns, the extreme majority won't make it so they want social
welfare, this tax.
The IRS going after big corp may simply be the result of this MAGA
movement, which underneath really is just a popular uprise for the
little guy to get a slice of the lie.
Of course the current head of state is a master manipulator so this
news may just be fluff to make his electorate happy
Nevermark wrote 1 day ago:
There is being hospitable to startups, and there is being
hospitable to massive corporate giants.
Turns out there is a big difference in what âhospitableâ
actually means in these two cases. Although the tech giants donât
want people to think so. They work hard to keep up their
âscrappyâ underdog patinas.
I am not for punishing any organization for being successful, or
for being big. But actual neutral tax parity, for the middle class
up, would be good. The rich have so many tax-not-neutral alternate
ways to do the same thing, but with lower or no taxes, it is
ridiculous.
Progressive taxation isnât effective for the most part. And when
it is, the high disparity in application is its own kind of
unfairness.
But inescapable neutral tax treatment would remove so many high
paying financial, legal and lobbying jobs. Who would subsidize
political careers if we eliminated that work, and cut of those
perverse incentives? Not a likely scenario.
avmich wrote 1 day ago:
> Corporate towns have existed, why not corporate nations?
Will those nations survive Maduragate? Won't in essence it make
easier to deal with if they aren't under souvereign law, only
international?
dredmorbius wrote 1 day ago:
What exactly is "Maduragate"?
dredmorbius wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
Self-response: I'm suspecting a mispelling of "Madurogate",
referring to the US's abduction of the president of a sovereign
state.
laylower wrote 1 day ago:
This would not work. Investors are still based in actual countries.
Jurisdictions will also always have the ability to tax a % of revenue
at source / where it was generated and not on profit rolled up
through spvs to a couple low tax havens ;)
chii wrote 1 day ago:
> Corporate towns have existed, why not corporate nations?
because they dont need to do that. They can already obtain what they
want with smaller tax havens that have already established trade/tax
treaties, have existing facilities, infrastructures, etc.
pkilgore wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
Because they know for some problems it's easier to pay for the
service than take the CapEx.
b112 wrote 1 day ago:
This whole article is about "not anymore that way". So now we need
a new way. A way where it isn't -20C this morning outside my door,
OK?
floatrock wrote 1 day ago:
Sounds easier to just buy a few congressmen and a circuit judge or
two.
b112 wrote 1 day ago:
Listen my friend. It's -20C outside my house, so I'll kindly ask
you to allow this fantasy to continue unabated in my mind, OK? A
tech haven, filled with flying cars, and AGI, and warm sandy
beaches, and...
dfxm12 wrote 1 day ago:
The agency has lost more than a quarter of its staff, withdrawn
directives to auditors to crack down on aggressive tax shelters and
permitted other auditing efforts to falter.
Remember the fear mongering ads [0] Republicans ran during the 2022
midterms about arming IRS agents to act as a shadow army to go after
every day law abiding people? As it turns out, Republicans were just
talking about their own plans for ICE. Remember, every accusation from
Republicans is an admission. Additionally, they don't care about crime,
as they are specifically turning a blind eye to rich people and
corporations breaking the law.
0 -
HTML [1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-87000-irs-agents-midt...
mrbluecoat wrote 1 day ago:
> I.R.S. auditors have been pursuing Meta for about a decade
Soon: "I.R.S. auditors have been pursuing Meta for about [a decade +
length of current administration term]"
bilekas wrote 1 day ago:
> The agency has lost more than a quarter of its staff, withdrawn
directives to auditors to crack down on aggressive tax shelters and
permitted other auditing efforts to falter.
When you see a government doing this, you know they're not interested
in collecting Tax from their rich buddies.
This case will sit in limbo for 20x years.
themafia wrote 11 hours 3 min ago:
> you know they're not interested in collecting Tax from their rich
buddies.
Right.. because.. they're busy trading favors with them. It's
abuse of the public coffers.
0xy wrote 21 hours 23 min ago:
This is an extremely common misconception (or lie, depending on who's
saying it). The IRS, even before the cuts, targets exclusively the
middle class.
More agents = more middle class shake downs.
63% of the IRS' audits under the Biden admin targeted those earning
sub-$200K.
People earning $25K a year are MORE likely to be audited than those
earning $200K, too.
adolph wrote 20 hours 45 min ago:
> 63% of the IRS' audits under the Biden admin targeted those
earning sub-$200K.
In 2022 92.3% of filers reported income of less than $200K [0]. An
audit rate of 63% is lower than what one would expect if
audit-attracting behavior was evenly distributed across the
population.
0.
HTML [1]: https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-st...
0xy wrote 20 hours 7 min ago:
The notion that audits should be evenly distributed is nonsense.
Someone making sub-$200K usually has basic W2 income, versus
someone making $20M a year who likely has an extremely
complicated web of capital gains, deductions, strategies,
carry-forward losses etc.
It doesn't even make sense from a pure cash point of view. It's
better for an agent to audit someone making $20M and win a $500K
judgement than it is for them to audit 1,000 $25K earners and
fleece them $500 a piece. What a waste.
Audits should be exponentially lopsided, not targeted exclusively
at the middle class.
adolph wrote 14 hours 28 min ago:
Why bother commenting if you don't have any data to back up
your assertion?
You can make claims about what "should" happen but that is just
your fact-free opinion.
kgwxd wrote 23 hours 24 min ago:
Or they weren't happen with the amount of bribe money we already know
they paid, and so now they're being made an example of. Standard Mob
protocol.
bilekas wrote 16 hours 3 min ago:
Happy you state the obvious side quest. But they're not made an
example of.
up2isomorphism wrote 1 day ago:
It will be very naive to believe adding IRS staff will help with
that. It is far easier to audit W2 employees than dealing with mega
corporations.
kccqzy wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
It is very naïve to think adding staff wonât help. Just look at
what the IRS did before staff was cut; they investigated Microsoft
aggressively and announced $29 billion in back taxes for 2004 to
2013, plus penalties and interest.
AnthonyMouse wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
$29B over ten years is an annual amount of less than 1% of
Microsoft's current annual revenue. Meanwhile the company is
appealing it so the government hasn't actually won anything yet
(but is incurring additional costs), and on top of that it means
there is now going to be a court decision about how this works,
which benefits the companies wanting to do it by clarifying the
law so that even if they lose the courts will have told them what
they need to do differently next time in order to win. Of course,
if they win then it's even better for them because then they can
just keep doing what they were doing before.
The actual problem is that "transfer pricing" is inherently
ambiguous and subject to manipulation but it would take
structural legislative changes to the tax code (e.g. tax
corporations using something other than corporate income tax) to
take it out of play.
loeg wrote 32 min ago:
The goal of the IRS is to enforce payers paying the correct
amount, not to like, extract some huge fraction of companies'
annual revenue. If that's less than 1%, but it is net
additional revenue for the Treasury, great.
loeg wrote 1 day ago:
> It will be very naive to believe adding IRS staff will help with
that. It is far easier to audit W2 employees than dealing with mega
corporations.
You're saying auditing megacorps is hard, but somehow more staff
won't help? I don't buy it.
AnthonyMouse wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
> You're saying auditing megacorps is hard, but somehow more
staff won't help? I don't buy it.
It's not so much that it's hard, it's that it has a lower return
on investment, because the IRS gets money from finding mistakes
or intentional fraud. Megacorps have entire legal teams dedicated
to preventing those things from happening, while lowering their
taxes by finding lawful ways of reducing their taxes to almost
nothing by pouring over the unfathomable complexity of the tax
code to find obscure credits or chain together the right sequence
of things so their profits end up in a jurisdiction where they're
not taxed.
If you audit them you spend an enormous amount of resources
because their accounts are so complicated and then only get money
if they screwed up, which they're less likely to have done than
someone with fewer lawyers, and even then it will typically be
something like you found a credit they weren't allowed to take
and they owe $50,000 but the thing where they have a hundred
billion in revenue and 0.2% of that in taxable profit was all by
the book.
Meanwhile smaller entities are far more likely to have screwed up
because they have fewer resources to navigate the complexity of
the tax code, and their accounts are less complicated, which
makes it easier for the IRS to find mistakes and therefore get
money. So if you give the IRS more resources and tell them to do
audits to maximize recovery, those are the people they audit.
But that also involves auditing a ton of individuals and small
businesses who didn't do anything wrong in order to find the ones
that did, and they rightfully hate that because nobody is paying
them for the actual costs of the audit where the IRS found
nothing, which is why they keep lobbying to stop the IRS from
getting more resources to do that to them. And if the IRS had to
pay the taxpayer's side of the audit costs then their "recovery
efficiency rate" would go way down.
jandrese wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
> It's not so much that it's hard, it's that it has a lower
return on investment, because the IRS gets money from finding
mistakes or intentional fraud. Megacorps have entire legal
teams dedicated to preventing those things from happening
Or: Megacorps have entire teams of people looking for ways to
reduce their taxes, many of which are legally dubious but the
risk of being caught * the size of the fine means it makes
business sense to do it regardless of legality.
AnthonyMouse wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
> Megacorps have entire teams of people looking for ways to
reduce their taxes, many of which are legally dubious but the
risk of being caught * the size of the fine means it makes
business sense to do it regardless of legality.
"Legally dubious" is the problem, because ambiguous laws are
supposed to be interpreted most favorably to the defendant
rather than the government, and then all parties have to
incur much higher costs because the ambiguity means it goes
to litigation, and there is a significant chance that all of
those resources are consumed and it comes out in favor of the
corporation in the end. The IRS much prefers to find cases
where the taxpayer is clearly violating the law.
jandrese wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
If someday we get some kind of supergenius congress that
can write laws that are unambiguous and have no loopholes
then this won't be a problem. Until then there will be a
constant back and forth between people who want to fund
things with tax revenue and people who don't want to pay
taxes about how to interpret the wording.
AnthonyMouse wrote 10 hours 26 min ago:
That's not the problem in this case. There is no one
complaining about corporations avoiding their property
tax or payroll tax. When Walmart collects sales tax,
they're not finding some loophole that allows them to
keep the money themselves instead of remitting it to the
government, because that isn't really a thing.
The problem is specifically a structural defect in the
way corporate income tax works for multinational
corporations, because it's nominally a tax on profit. But
unlike workers or land or customers, that isn't a thing
with a physical location and that gives the corporations
an unlimited number of ways to move it around so it ends
up where they want it, which is in a place where they pay
the least in tax.
It's not a matter of writing the law better. When you use
that type of tax, the ambiguity is in the facts. If their
global profit margin is e.g. 15% and you can't measure
the fair market value of the things the subsidiaries in
one country buy from a subsidiary in another with a
smaller margin of error than that, they can shift all of
their profits to wherever they want.
There is no reasonable way to fix it while still using
that type of tax because it's not possible to measure the
fair market value of everything with enough precision
that they can't manipulate the outcome. You have to use a
different type of tax instead, but then people don't do
that and complain about the inevitable result.
thaumasiotes wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
No, that's a contradiction of your parent comment. In your
model, doing more audits would increase "the risk of being
caught" and have good ROI.
loeg wrote 22 hours 50 min ago:
This is a moved set of goalposts from the comment I responded
to -- and we know that, because the original author had already
confirmed that replying to me before your comment: [1] .
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139400
AnthonyMouse wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
Both of those comments are making a consistent argument: It's
easier (and I would add more cost effective) to target
smaller taxpayers, so that's what the IRS typically does when
given more resources.
bdangubic wrote 23 hours 30 min ago:
> It's not so much that it's hard, it's that it has a lower
return on investment, because the IRS gets money from finding
mistakes or intentional fraud....
Isn't this exactly what all megacorps are hoping for everyone
thinks? I am not saying that you are wrong but these megacorps
are some of the most evil the Civilization has ever seen (see
Meta) and now you and I are hired as tax attorneys - pretty
soon (if not right away) one of us will go "this shit's very
much so illegal but who is actually going to audit us? - the
answer, per your comment is basically no one because we think
these megacorps and their lawyers are there to play by the
book...
AnthonyMouse wrote 23 hours 16 min ago:
In order for that to make sense to them, it would have to be
impossible for them to avoid paying taxes without breaking
the law, but the very nature of applying "corporate income
tax" to an international supply chain makes that relatively
straightforward.
The general problem is this. You have a company with its
headquarters in Ireland that designs a product in California,
manufactures it in China and sells it in Germany. In which
country did they make a profit and therefore owe taxes? It
depends on what each subsidiary bought from the others and
how much they paid, so they're going to structure their
operations so that the profit ends up in the one with the
lowest taxes. That's the defect in "corporate income tax" for
international companies, and why it gives international
companies an advantage over domestic ones.
In order to fix that you need a tax code that says the taxes
have to be paid to the country where whatever subset of their
operations you want to tax is actually present. But then it's
not "corporate income tax" anymore. If you want to tax them
in the location they have workers it's payroll tax, if it's
where they have buildings it's property tax, if it's where
they have customers it's VAT, etc. You need it to be
something they can't so easily move out of your jurisdiction.
Because if you say that it's profit then they'll just arrange
to make their profits in Ireland or Bermuda.
oarsinsync wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
Or the US could tax it's corporations just like it taxes
it's citizens.
Doesn't care that the citizens pay tax in whatever country
they live in. If they earn over some 6 figure sum, they
have to pay tax in the US as well.
That would put US corporations at a distinct disadvantage
on the global scene, so it won't happen. Disadvantaging
citizens doesn't seem to matter as much.
solidsnack9000 wrote 22 hours 4 min ago:
The problem here is not how the US taxes corporations,
but rather that there are different corporations
involved. A regular citizen can not establish an
additional, foreign citizen that "owns" them or
"supplies" them with IP (or labor hours, &c) -- this kind
of tax management accounting is not possible for
citizens.
oarsinsync wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
They're not different unrelated corporations, they're
subsidiaries of a parent that is ultimately a US
entity.
The citizen has literally upped and moved themselves
entirely to a foreign country.
The corporation has just forked a bit of itself
elsewhere.
And yet the corporation can't be taxed, but the
individual can.
AnthonyMouse wrote 21 hours 52 min ago:
You still haven't answered the question: What are you
going to do when Apple or Google becomes
"subsidiaries of a parent that is ultimately not a US
entity"? What about your proposal prevents them from
registering the parent company somewhere else while
changing nothing else about their operations? Making
them file different paperwork doesn't accomplish
anything.
bdangubic wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
would in this case help to treat Apple and Google
as foreign company? No government contracts (or
super strict rules to get them), tariffs�
AnthonyMouse wrote 21 hours 27 min ago:
> No government contracts (or super strict rules
to get them)
Now you've created a disadvantage for
corporations to bid on government contracts,
reducing competition and causing the government
to pay more for stuff. Meanwhile the companies
that actually bid are then the ones that
specialize in lobbying the government and
register locally and other corporations still
register elsewhere.
> tariffs
If you were going to use that you could just as
easily use VAT to begin with.
bdangubic wrote 19 hours 14 min ago:
foreign-owned companies already are at
disadvantage (rightfully so) getting gov
contracts. so if you gonna try to evade paying
taxes claiming you are based in Burma the
government should treat you accordingly. given
that there is no bigger customer than US
government the companies might re-think their
Burmese HQ?
AnthonyMouse wrote 18 hours 32 min ago:
> given that there is no bigger customer than
US government the companies might re-think
their Burmese HQ?
Only if the percentage of their business
represented by US government contracts is
more than the US corporate tax rate, i.e.
only for companies like Lockheed whose
business is focused on government contracts.
But those are some of the largest "domestic
companies" being put at a disadvantage by the
existing tax system because they already
can't use the same international tax
avoidance strategies as other companies when
they're required to use domestic supply
chains by those same government contracts.
Meanwhile the companies that do lower
percentages of their business with the
government would just stop doing business
with the government at all, causing the
government to pay more for things because
that company would otherwise have been the
one to get the contract by being the one to
offer the government the best price.
AnthonyMouse wrote 22 hours 38 min ago:
The thing the US does to its citizens is bizarre and
atypical and it should stop doing that.
But how would that even work for a corporation? Suppose
you did that; is anything multinational going to remain a
US corporation? Of course not, they'll just register in
some other country. The CEO of Stellantis nee Chrysler is
in Michigan but how many people can guess which country
the corporation is registered in without looking it up?
up2isomorphism wrote 1 day ago:
Of course it wonât help. If you have an audit target to meet
you want target meta?
This exactly why ICE agents tends to target illegal immigrants
that actually get a job and contribute to the society instead of
criminals. Because the former are easy targets.
Also fundamentally the tax law in the US are intrinsically favor
capital owners, especially large corporations, adding more IRS
agents only cost more tax payerâs money and give regular people
more headaches.
loeg wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
> If you have an audit target to meet you want target meta?
I don't believe the approach the IRS takes is to set targets
and only audit the lowest hanging fruit up to some target.
They have different sub-organizations pursuing different goals,
and some sort of vision about fairness that means going after
tough cases.
> This exactly why ICE agents tends to target illegal
immigrants that actually get a job and contribute to the
society instead of criminals. Because the former are easy
targets.
This is completely orthogonal, but also untrue. It's way
easier to go after criminals, as long as states cooperate. The
recent Trumpian ICE is more expensive and less effective than
earlier regimes.
> adding more IRS agents only cost more tax payerâs money and
give regular people more headaches.
Many, many regular people underpay the taxes they owe.
Additional IRS agents help close the gap between taxes owed and
taxes paid, at a cost lower than the additional revenue. Your
argument is just "individual tax cheats should be able to get
away with it," which I can't agree with.
pimlottc wrote 1 day ago:
I think they are suggesting the lack of political will to go
after big companies is the bigger problem
lenerdenator wrote 1 day ago:
Ayup. Trump was able to get a stay on a case on an "allegedly"
improperly-applied tax write-off for his casino's bankruptcy. It's
been in limbo at least since 2016. Ten years. This is the standard
operating procedure for people at that level of wealth.
Which would suggest that perhaps that level of wealth doesn't need to
exist in our society.
tempodox wrote 23 hours 40 min ago:
> that level of wealth doesn't need to exist in our society.
But then the inquisition arrives saying this is socialism or
whatever.
scottyah wrote 23 hours 21 min ago:
True, as it is just another symptom of not too much wealth, but
the growing disconnect of what wealth is designed to be. Money
shouldn't be power, too many people are starting to blame "too
much money" instead of asking why money is turning into political
power. Seemingly none of the politicians or rich people want that
narrative because they all want both.
adrianN wrote 23 hours 7 min ago:
Has there ever been a society were money and power didnât go
hand in hand?
jandrese wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
Sure, societies that don't have the concept of currency. The
inhabitants of the Sentinel Islands for example.
Some other societies have different ways of measuring
authority and delegating power, but in general currency is
more efficient and if they have to interface with the rest of
the world then money will be critical. That's why money is
usually a proxy for power.
chowells wrote 23 hours 2 min ago:
Is it even possible for money to not be power? Like, how do
you separate purchasing power from influence power?
Purchasing is a very easy route to influence.
scottyah wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
It is A form of power, but it should not have such a
liquid/easy transaction to political power.
mothballed wrote 1 day ago:
>..withdrawn directives to auditors to crack down on aggressive tax
shelters..
The above might be a salient point, but as for the 1/4 auditors lost
and the rest:
The low income (under 25k) with EITC, were the largest audited group
with 298,485 of 626,204 audits performed in 2022. The rest of those
earning under 200k had 250,391 audits.[]
48% of audits were under 25k income w/ EITC. 87% of audits were
people under 200k income.
Kind of interferes with the idea these audits were all about going
after the "rich buddies." They were way more about going after the
poor than they were about going after the rich.
[] IRS management audit reports obtained via FOIA by via TRAC /
HTML [1]: https://tracreports.org/reports/706/
orwin wrote 1 day ago:
What percentage of that is automated audit, and what percentage is
manual audit? Nowaday my country is mostly sane with tax filings,
but in the weird time between the 90s and the 2010s, we had an
uptick in "fraud" by low-income earners. This was caused by
inconsistencies between filed data and the data the IRS equivalent
had, but i guarantee you no effort was put into thsi (except
secreterial manpower for the hotline/mail), that was just automated
system ringing.
In fact my first college side-job was exactly that, responding to
taxpayers who were "caught" by the automated system and needed a
payment delay.
idontwantthis wrote 1 day ago:
Biden and democrats increased funding in order to have the
resources to go after rich offenders and they were doing it
successfully and earning more than it cost, but Trumpublicans
immediately rescinded it.
Itâs all public record go look for it.
gamblor956 wrote 1 day ago:
Not sure why you're being downvoted for this comment as it's
true.
Democrats increased IRS funding so it could go after more tax
evaders. Conservative estimates are that eliminating tax evasion
(evasion, not avoidance) by the ultra-wealthy could allow the
U.S. to reduce rate brackets by 2-3% across the board while
maintaining revenue.
mothballed wrote 1 day ago:
Yet they refused to codify the "promise" it wouldn't be used for
under 400k income families. Look at what they do, not what they
say. In public they make 'promises' but in statute it turns into
ether, meanwhile real audit data pointing to otherwise.
-------- re: below due to throttling ------
>I'm very confused about where you're going with this. Are you
upset that too many rich people are getting audited, or that tax
cheats under 400k income might also get audited?
... this was a direct response to parent stating increased
funding was added specifically for going after rich people. Yes
I would be upset if I was told they were adding new funding
specifically to go after rich tax cheats but then turns out to be
something like "welp actually we refuse to codify that or make
anything binding that it will be used for those purposes, but for
the cameras we will pinky swear it will be used for that and
please don't look at the historical data for inferences."
jasonlotito wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
> Yet they refused to codify the "promise" it wouldn't be used
for under 400k income families.
This is a lie. They didn't refuse. They didn't have it codified
because they were trying to figure out how to define that. For
example, one of the challenges IRS was having was someone
reporting $390,000 but they actually earned $450,000. How do
you deteremine that without an audit? Do you need a waiver? How
does that get resolved without breaking the promise.
> Look at what they do, not what they say.
They were actively working on how to respect the promise in a
reasonable way.
alistairSH wrote 23 hours 4 min ago:
Yep. Here are some details, for anybody interested...
HTML [1]: https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2024/09/irs-behind...
idiotsecant wrote 1 day ago:
I'm very confused about where you're going with this. Are you
upset that too many rich people are getting audited, or that
tax cheats under 400k income might also get audited?
alistairSH wrote 23 hours 2 min ago:
Biden's desired policy was none of the additional funding
would be used to increase audit rates for <$400k returns.
The IRS didn't follow the intended policy, getting bogged
down in the details of how they would define that threshold
(primarily, would somebody who understated their income to
get below the threshold count as "under 400k and audited").
Not really sure why the OP is so upset - either way, the
payback on additional funding to the IRS is almost
universally stated as revenue-positive.
hnburnsy wrote 1 day ago:
This has been debunked as these are just data matching audits as
EITC is full of fraud with an estimated 30% of over claiming and
improper payments by taxpayers.
axus wrote 1 day ago:
And I would estimate 30% of people using tax shelters are
underpaying their taxes. If there's profitable work to do for
tax auditors, hire more auditors and cover both problems.
mothballed wrote 1 day ago:
Even if you change the view to it's mostly the poor who are the
tax scammers it doesn't degrade the counterpoints that these
auditors were by far mostly going after the middle class and poor
-- you're just asserting the poors are *disproportionately tax
cheats that perhaps deserve it.
*edit: since my words were take in bad faith
fwipsy wrote 1 day ago:
I think you're strawmanning a bit. They're not saying poor
people are tax cheats, just that tax cheats tend to be poor.
This makes sense for the same reasons other types of crime are
also associated with poverty. This is not to say that wealthy
people do not also evade taxes, but they do so in ways that are
harder to catch and prosecute. You're implying that going after
poor people is some sort of classist discrimination but I think
it's far more likely that there are good reasons for it.
breppp wrote 1 day ago:
am i missing something, or is the statistic that is used to
pinpoint someone as poor, is the same statistic that is gamed
here? Namely the amount of income that a person declares to
the IRS?
SAI_Peregrinus wrote 1 day ago:
Or just that there are more poor people. Say 10% of all
people are tax cheats, evenly across income. The top 1% who
are the rich is much smaller than the bottom 50% who are the
poor. So in absolute numbers there will be far more poor tax
cheats than wealthy. Even if 100% of the wealthy are tax
cheats, that still ends up being fewer wealthy tax cheats
than poor tax cheats. Anything involving absolute numbers of
audits is going to be skewed to show more happening to the
poor, because there are so many more poor people than rich
people.
mothballed wrote 1 day ago:
Last I checked it's way closer to 28% than 48% of people
that have earned income of at least $1 (thus EITC) and
total income less than $25k -- which fall under the bucket
of 48% of audits were for those with EITC and income under
25k. They are definitely disproportionately going after
the poorest workers.
hnburnsy wrote 1 day ago:
They wrote a program years ago to data match EITC, little to no
extra manpower from the IRS is needed, that is the point.
jcarreiro wrote 1 day ago:
There are many, many more tax returns filed by people earning under
200k adjusted gross income than those earning more, I assume. So if
there's a uniform chance that a return is audited, we would expect
most audits to be done on returns under that threshold.
Of course, it may not make sense to select returns uniformly at
random for audits...
ryandrake wrote 1 day ago:
Also, if tax cheating is uniform across the population, then the
statement "there are more tax cheats earning under 200k" is true
but wildly misleading, since "there are more taxpayers earning
under 200k" is also true.
mothballed wrote 1 day ago:
Nowhere near 48% of the population earns enough wages for EITC
but still under 25k. It's way way way way overrepresented in
audits. Nearly half of the audits are aimed at the poorest
workers.
------- re: below due to throttling-----------
.... they were audits according to IRS. This is from the FOIA'd
audit numbers from IRS via TRAC.
oklahomasports wrote 1 day ago:
They are not audits. They are automated notices to idiots
trying to claim the same child tax credit in multiple returns
or hiding income(not reporting their w2 lol) to claim the EITC
buttercraft wrote 1 day ago:
In other words, understaffed agency goes for the low hanging
fruit
oklahomasports wrote 20 hours 45 min ago:
Weird way to frame it. The computer does it automatically.
They would do it whether they were well staffed or not.
johnnyanmac wrote 18 hours 34 min ago:
The computer does not do all the loopholes and tax codes
automatically. If it did that would solve a lot of these
problems. But we need audits in the cases companies or
people lie/exaggerate/forget/etc.
mikestew wrote 1 day ago:
Kind of interferes with the idea these audits were all about going
after the "rich buddies."
I think you misread the parent comment, who said exactly the
opposite.
spiderfarmer wrote 1 day ago:
At what point does the term âregimeâ become an accurate
description of that government rather than a derogatory label?
wiml wrote 21 hours 31 min ago:
"Regime" is mostly derogatory among the terminally online. It's an
accurate description of any government, regulatory system, zone of
applicability of a natural law, etc etc.
kgwxd wrote 23 hours 22 min ago:
Long, long time ago. Accuracy don't matter to enough people though.
tempodox wrote 23 hours 36 min ago:
Are you suggesting that an accurate description would not be
derogatory?
p_j_w wrote 1 day ago:
When their agents execute people in the street with no
repercussions.
autoexec wrote 23 hours 57 min ago:
In that case I can't think of time my country hasn't been a
regime I guess. Police have pretty much always been executing
people in the streets without repercussions. Although there has
been a small amount of progress recently, these days they do it
on camera and still face zero repercussions much of the time.
kgwxd wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
Yup, and the people calling it out all this time were
consistently shrugged off as being hyperbolic. Still are.
Always will be.
reactordev wrote 1 day ago:
Exactly. This is just one big tech fighting another big tech using
the government as a weapon.
yellow_lead wrote 1 day ago:
Or they'll settle with Meta in a few years for a small fee with no
admission of wrongdoing to save face.
InkCanon wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
Meta is actually at a huge disadvantage here. The IRS has a
litigation success rate of 93%. It's an astoundingly successful
legal entity.
shagie wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
That's a success rate that largely is based on suing people who
don't have the resources to fight it (no claims made about if
they're right or not).
However, the IRS has had reductions in staff and funding which
made it harder to go after the bigger accounts who have more
forensic accounting needing to be done to find the money in the
various tax shelters. [1] > "The IRS is simultaneously
confronting a reduction of 27% of its workforce, leadership
turnover, and the implementation of extensive and complex tax law
changes" mandated by Republicans' tax and spending measure that
President Donald Trump signed into law last summer, Collins said
in her report. [2] (May 2025)
> The Global High Wealth department of the IRS is designed to
audit ultrawealthy individuals and corporations, who often hire
highly sophisticated tax advisors to devise ways to avoid taxes
and to respond to the IRS if they are challenged. But, as of late
March, the department was cut by nearly 40 percentâand likely
more by now with the additional RIFs.
I would be willing to contend that while they've got a 93%
overall, that's historical numbers and the teams that would go
against Meta and others are severely understaffed.
HTML [1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/irs-faces-challenges...
HTML [2]: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-fiscal-impa...
johnnyanmac wrote 21 hours 35 min ago:
Man who spent career evading taxes weakens tax collection
system. Who would have thunk it?
shagie wrote 21 hours 22 min ago:
While he's the most recent one, it's been a systemic problem
that's largely been from congressional budget cuts.
2014 The War on the IRS [1] 2015 Poor IRS Service Reflects
Congressâs Deep Funding Cuts [2] 2018 How the IRS Was
Gutted [3] 2020 Congressional Budget Office Confirms That IRS
Budget Cuts Lose Money and Benefit the Rich
HTML [1]: https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/war-irs
HTML [2]: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/poor-irs-s...
HTML [3]: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-g...
HTML [4]: https://itep.org/congressional-budget-office-confirm...
aljgz wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
What's the success rate when data is limited to only very large
companies, say top 50 in size?
blinding-streak wrote 1 day ago:
HTML [1]: https://archive.ph/Vsdqd
raw_anon_1111 wrote 1 day ago:
With the way that Zuckerberg both kisses up to and has bribed the
current administration by âsettling lawsuitsâ, this wonât go
anywhere.
mitchbob wrote 1 day ago:
> The agency is using real-world profit data to challenge how big
companies value offshore intellectual property.
HTML [1]: https://archive.ph/2026.02.24-124153/https://www.nytimes.com/2...
forgotaccount3 wrote 21 hours 9 min ago:
My only concern here is that it's using ex post facto information to
try to dispute earlier assessments.
If I 'moved' some AI 'patents' to another country 5 years ago and
stated they were worth $x using some formula and now some years later
the government steps in and says 'No no no, you earned $x + $y and
lied on the original value which should have represented the
discounted future income!' that's not disputing the formula used in
the original point. It's just that 5 years ago people underestimated
how far and how valuable AI would be.
seanhunter wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
Sure but if thatâs the case there should be some tax on the mark
to market difference. If not itâs just straight up tax fraud
(which I suspect is often actually the case).
notyourwork wrote 1 day ago:
Probably less about tax revenue and more about the executive branch
squeezing tech companies to assert influence.
bonsai_spool wrote 1 day ago:
> Probably less about tax revenue and more about the executive
branch squeezing tech companies to assert influence.
Absolutely not about this, as is clearly reported in the linked
article.
notyourwork wrote 1 day ago:
Because the article said so? Thatâs your rationale for saying
the executive branch isnât weaponizing the rest of government
offices for their own influence and benefit. Sorry, color me
unconvinced until this administration shows good faith.
bonsai_spool wrote 1 day ago:
> Because the article said so?
Because... the article clearly says the case began under the
FORMER administration, and goes further to say that it's not
clear whether the CURRENT administration is going to drop the
case.
loeg wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think that really disproves GP's hypothesis. The
Trump admin is happy to drop lawsuits for connected entities.
The fact that they're sustaining a Biden-initiated suit is
plausibly because they just don't like Meta/Zuckerberg.
bonsai_spool wrote 23 hours 46 min ago:
Help me understand the thinking.
>> Probably less about tax revenue and more about the
executive branch squeezing tech companies to assert
influence.
The case existed and presumably had the same lawyers all
the while. How, then, can the case become less about tax
revenue?
You may say that there are ulterior motives, but, at the
most, one can say that additional concerns have complicated
the tax revenue concern. We're well into fascist times, but
the OP comment simply ignores the facts.
ryandrake wrote 1 day ago:
Am I the only one who thinks it's totally bonkers that a
lawsuit can outlast a 4 year presidential administration? I
mean, I get it, court cases can be complex, but what on earth
could they be continuously doing for four years? I would love
to see an hour by hour accounting of the time actually spent
by humans on a case like this. My guess is that it's like a
poorly run software project: mostly empty, where Person X is
blocked waiting on the output of Person Y for weeks, and so
on.
snowwrestler wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
> what on earth could they be continuously doing for four
years?
Itâs not continuous. Court time in particular is a scarce
resource. Many people are involved in complex litigation,
and for almost all of those people it is not their only
project / job.
> My guess is that it's like a poorly run software project:
mostly empty, where Person X is blocked waiting on the
output of Person Y for weeks, and so on.
Correct but the off times arenât empty; the lawyers and
staff simply pick up one of the other hundreds of tasks in
front of them while they wait.
rayiner wrote 23 hours 57 min ago:
The court system is designed to optimize throughput at the
expense of latency, against the background of a system
where authority is vested in a relatively small number of
presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed
constitutional officers. About 350,000 civil cases and
65,000 criminal cases are filed every year, spread out
across less than 700 district court judges.
To maximize throughput, proceedings are structured like
batch processing systems. You submit work, it waits in the
queue until the system gets to it, some intermediate
decision is rendered, and then you submit some more work.
For constitutional reasons, criminal cases cut in line,
which can further increase the latency of civil cases. That
means that, in a four-year case, the lawyers don't actually
work on the case for four years straight. They do batches
of work a couple of months at a time, and then work on
other cases while waiting for the output.
Moreover, court case are, to a degree, inherently serial.
Motions to dismiss--briefs that argue a case must be
dismissed because its legally defective--must be filed
before you start deposing witnesses or exchanging
documents. You generally need to do depositions of
witnesses after you've reviewed all the relevant documents.
And all the fact gathering must be done before you file
summary judgment motions--briefs that argue a case can be
decided on the factual record without a trial.[1]
Part of the inherent delay is that the legal system is
already an "exception path" in the ordinary course of
business. A lot of time is spent waiting for people outside
your organization who don't work for you. For example, when
you're deposing a witness, they have work responsibilities,
vacation plans, etc., and everyone has to work around that.
It's possible to structure cases where everything can be
done in a year. That's what happens at the International
Trade Commission, for example. Arbitration proceedings can
also be structured like that.
[1] This also means that legal teams aren't very big.
Massive corporate cases with billions of dollars on the
line are handled with core teams of a dozen or so
lawyers--with maybe another dozen or two parachuting in to
help with specific phases like trial. Technology was
squeezed out a lot of the parallelizable work. The days of
20 junior attorneys sitting in rooms reviewing boxes of
paper documents are gone.
samat wrote 18 hours 41 min ago:
Thank you so much for this explanation. Love HN for this
type of comments!
helterskelter wrote 1 day ago:
This is the nature of any non-trivial litigation. It can
take a long time just to source all the records of what's
being argued over, then it takes a long time to argue over
what's allowed, then a long time to argue what all of it
means, then a long time to argue over which laws,
jurisdictions and precedents apply, then a long time to
figure out when the judge (who is juggling >1000 cases) can
fit you in, then your legal counsel is on vacation, then
the complaint gets amended and you have to reevaluate
everything you've been fighting over for the past half
decade, repeating much of the above, then opposition
replaces their counsel (that's a 60 day pause), then the
judge dies from old age, and then finally everybody forgets
about it because space has expanded so much since you
started the case that nobody can communicate anymore and
the universe is going into heat death.
Kafka was trained as an attorney, after all.
lesuorac wrote 23 hours 41 min ago:
> It can take a long time just to source all the records
of what's being argued over,
It seems to me that if you can't timely procure your own
records in a court case the case should be allowed to
proceed with any assumptions based on them in your
opponent's favor. Whats really the difference between
taking 2+ years to procure a document and deleting that
document?
AnthonyMouse wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
It's typically not a matter of having the documents,
it's a matter of filtering them.
Suppose you have a corporate mail server with all your
mail on it, and a competitor sues you. Your emails are
going to be full of trade secrets, prices negotiated
with suppliers, etc. Things that are irrelevant to the
litigation and can't be given to the competitor.
Meanwhile there are other emails they're entitled to
see because they're directly relevant to the
litigation.
What option do you have other than to have someone go
read ten years worth of emails to decide which ones
they get?
> Whats really the difference between taking 2+ years
to procure a document and deleting that document?
The difference is obviously that they get the document
in the 2nd+ year of the trial instead of never.
mlhpdx wrote 21 hours 25 min ago:
As someone who has built an e-discovery platform I
can tell you that any delays these days are because
they are helpful to minimize negative employer cash
flow. In other words, exactly why corporate lawyers
are paid.
The technology for legal review is extremely fast and
effective.
johnnyanmac wrote 21 hours 39 min ago:
>What option do you have other than to have someone
go read ten years worth of emails to decide which
ones they get?
This funnily enough sounds like the exact use case of
AI in streamlining timely, tedious, but important
matters. Now the that someone simply needs to verify
that the filtered documents are relevsnt.
Of course, I'm assuming a world where AI works on
this scale. Or a world where this slow walking
discovery isn't a feature for corporations.
> The difference is obviously that they get the
document in the 2nd+ year of the trial instead of
never.
Yeah, after using that year to make billions of
dollars. That's how the current AI litigation is
going. Once again by design. Pillage until the cows
come home in 5-6 years.
AnthonyMouse wrote 21 hours 33 min ago:
> Now the that someone simply needs to verify that
the filtered documents are relevsnt.
Now someone simply needs to verify that the
filtered in documents are relevant and the filtered
out documents are not relevant. But wait, that was
the original problem.
johnnyanmac wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
If they are trusting AI to replace labor, they
should trust AI to be accountable for bad
filters. What happens when a human misses over a
document or 2?
AnthonyMouse wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
> If they are trusting AI to replace labor,
they should trust AI to be accountable for bad
filters.
Surely all of the AI hype is true and there are
no hypocrites in Corporate America.
> What happens when a human misses over a
document or 2?
If they were obligated to produce it and don't
they can get into some pretty bad trouble with
the court. If they hand over something
sensitive they weren't required to, they could
potentially lose billions of dollars by handing
trade secrets to a competitor, or get sued by
someone else for violating an NDA etc.
johnnyanmac wrote 21 hours 1 min ago:
>Surely all of the AI hype is true and there
are no hypocrites in Corporate America.
Worst case they are right and now we have
more efficient processing. Best case,
bungling up some high profile cases
accelerates us towards proper regulation when
a judge tires of AI scapegoats.
I don't see a big downside here.
>If they were obligated to produce it and
don't they can get into some pretty bad
trouble with the court.
Okay, seems easy enough to map to AI. Just a
matter of who we hold accountable for it. The
prompter, the company at large, or the AI
provider.
AnthonyMouse wrote 18 hours 50 min ago:
> I don't see a big downside here.
There is an obvious downside for them which
is why they don't do it. To make them do it
the judge would have to order them to use
AI to do it faster, which would make it a
lot less reasonable for the judge to get
mad at them when the AI messes it up.
> Just a matter of who we hold accountable
for it. The prompter, the company at large,
or the AI provider.
You're just asking who you want to have
refuse to do it because everybody knows it
wouldn't actually get it perfect and then
the person you want to punish when it goes
wrong is the person who is going to say no.
johnnyanmac wrote 18 hours 44 min ago:
>There is an obvious downside for them
which is why they don't do it.
Well yes. This is all academic. I already
said in the first comment that they have
a financial incentive to stall the
courts.
>You're just asking who you want to have
refuse to do it....
I just want efficiency. It's a shame we
can't have that when it comes to things
that might help the people and hurt
billionaires.
So what's really wrong with what I'm
asking?
AnthonyMouse wrote 18 hours 10 min ago:
> I already said in the first comment
that they have a financial incentive to
stall the courts.
They have a financial incentive to not
be found in contempt of court. And
another financial incentive to not
disclose sensitive information they're
not supposed to disclose.
When false positives and false
negatives are both very expensive,
what's left is a resource-intensive
slog to make sure everything is on the
right side of the line. "Use the new
thing that sacrifices accuracy for
haste" is not a solution.
> I just want efficiency.
Asking for efficiency from the court
system is like asking for speed from
geology. That's not typically where you
find that and if it is you're probably
about to have a bad time.
The way you actually get efficiency is
by having a larger number of smaller
companies, so they're not massive
vertically integrated conglomerates
that you need something the size and
speed of the US government to hold them
in check.
johnnyanmac wrote 16 hours 42 min
ago:
>That's not typically where you find
that and if it is you're probably
about to have a bad time.
Why do we accept mediocrity from the
government we pay our taxes to? They
can't be as fast and lean as a small
team, but there are surely
optimizations we can make in process,
especially as technology improves.
>by having a larger number of smaller
companies, so they're not massive
vertically integrated conglomerates
that you need something the size and
speed of the US government to hold
them in check.
Agreed. Now I'd also like to have
that sometime within my (maybe your)
lifetime.
But these two ideas aren't mutually
exclusive.
cylemons wrote 12 hours 51 min ago:
It's not mediocrity. courts being
slow is a feature, not a bug to
insure that the final outcome is
the most just as possible.
Otherwise, you leave the door wide
open for corruption where judges
can swiftly persecute the side that
is out of favor.
helterskelter wrote 23 hours 27 min ago:
Oftentimes the records aren't in the hands of either
party and need to be subpoenaed. When you get them,
they can open up entirely new lines of inquiry.
Opposition will fight this tooth and nail so that the
evidence can't be included, or they'll go on a fishing
expedition under the guise of having all the facts on
the table, and the court might just allow them. This
process can take a very long time, and from what I've
seen, the higher the stakes, the more the court will be
willing to allow it to happen, so nobody can cry to the
appeals court that something important was left out.
Judges don't like their rulings overturned.
gamblor956 wrote 1 day ago:
When I was still at a firm, several of our clients were
fighting off investigations related to the Bermudan loss
harvesting scheme that started in the 1980s. The
investigations started in 2003 and weren't resolved until
2013.
bonsai_spool wrote 1 day ago:
> Am I the only one who thinks it's totally bonkers that a
lawsuit can outlast a 4 year presidential administration?
I take it you've never been party to a civil lawsuit
between business entities or with the government.
ambicapter wrote 1 day ago:
I doubt the current executive branch has enough brain trust to
understand these sort of tactics.
lenerdenator wrote 1 day ago:
"Trump's stupid" is how we got here. You don't need to be smart
to get where he is. You just have to have the willingness to
engage in shady business practices, have enough money to outlast
opponents in a courtroom, and exist in a society where there's no
real pressure on people who do those things.
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