‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
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Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
#2> I don’t know what’s gotten into Microsoft lately. Remember when it was the Death Star, monopolistically glowering over technopolis and threatening to cut off the air supply of competitors and regulators alike?
Microsoft is a relative underdog now (among the tech giants). Underdogs tend to benefit more, personally, from the greater good, and also have less clout with which to push others around. This makes them come off as being more humble, and if they're smart they lean into that image in their public relations. Just look at AMD and T-Mobile.
With this move Microsoft is trying to fertilize a shared resource, investing some of its own money but also hoping to pressure Amazon - the company it's trying to get a leg up on - to invest alongside it. Amazon has less need for the shared resource and would have to contribute a greater amount to it. On top of that, Microsoft gets some positive PR. It's a smart move.
Edit: I've been informed that Microsoft is currently #1 in market cap, so not an underdog overall. They feel like an underdog in most isolated product categories, but maybe this really is purely a PR move.
Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
#3Isn't the general argument that state taxes mean almost nothing to businesses like Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, et al (in Washington State) but are actually a huge pain in the ass for small/mid-size businesses? The quote featured in this headline underscores an editorial bias that is pro-Microsoft (who keeps their campus in the suburb of Renton) and anti-Amazon (the scapegoat for rising Seattle real estate).
Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
#4> Let’s ask the largest companies in the tech sector, which are the largest employers of high-skilled talent, to do a bit more
I do not understand how people can not understand that a percentage tax, by it's definition, does have the largest companies pay more.
Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
#5Isn't the general argument that state taxes mean almost nothing to businesses like Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, et al (in Washington State) but are actually a huge pain in the ass for small/mid-size businesses? The quote featured in this headline underscores an editorial bias that is pro-Microsoft (who keeps their campus in the suburb of Renton) and anti-Amazon (the scapegoat for rising Seattle real estate).
>Isn't the general argument that state taxes mean almost nothing to businesses like Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, et al (in Washington State) but are actually a huge pain in the ass for small/mid-size businesses?
"The bill proposes increasing the state business and occupation tax by 20 percent on about 40 categories of technical services, such as telecom, engineering, medical and finance. And by 33 percent on tech firms with more than $25 billion in annual revenue.
But here’s where this goes off the charts, into politically unheard-of territory. It mandates a top rate, a whopping 67 percent business tax increase, for those “advanced computing businesses” with “worldwide gross revenue of more than one hundred billion dollars” per year."
Not sure if you read more than the headline but I don't think this bill targets small/mid-size businesses.
Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
#6> I don’t know what’s gotten into Microsoft lately. Remember when it was the Death Star, monopolistically glowering over technopolis and threatening to cut off the air supply of competitors and regulators alike? Microsoft is a relative underdog now (among the tech giants). Underdogs tend to benefit more, personally, from the greater good, and also have less clout with which to push others around. This makes them come…
> Microsoft is a relative underdog now (among the tech giants).
Microsoft is currently the largest company in the world by market cap.
Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
#7> I don’t know what’s gotten into Microsoft lately. Remember when it was the Death Star, monopolistically glowering over technopolis and threatening to cut off the air supply of competitors and regulators alike? Microsoft is a relative underdog now (among the tech giants). Underdogs tend to benefit more, personally, from the greater good, and also have less clout with which to push others around. This makes them come…
> Microsoft is a relative underdog now
How so? According to NASDAQ, MSFT is valued higher than all of the FAANG companies. It's north of $900B right now.
Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
#8Isn't the general argument that state taxes mean almost nothing to businesses like Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, et al (in Washington State) but are actually a huge pain in the ass for small/mid-size businesses? The quote featured in this headline underscores an editorial bias that is pro-Microsoft (who keeps their campus in the suburb of Renton) and anti-Amazon (the scapegoat for rising Seattle real estate).
Most of the Microsoft main campus is in Redmond, not Renton. They have some buildings in Bellevue and Seattle. But as far as I know, Microsoft has no office space at all in Renton.
Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
#9> I don’t know what’s gotten into Microsoft lately. Remember when it was the Death Star, monopolistically glowering over technopolis and threatening to cut off the air supply of competitors and regulators alike? Microsoft is a relative underdog now (among the tech giants). Underdogs tend to benefit more, personally, from the greater good, and also have less clout with which to push others around. This makes them come…
> Microsoft is a relative underdog now (among the tech giants). Microsoft is currently the largest company in the world by market cap.
Hmm, that's surprising. It has a dodgy foothold in mobile, Amazon (and possibly also Google?) has it beat in cloud services, Google Docs has taken a chunk of Office's territory, Chrome OS is overtaking Windows in education, Mobile+Apple+Chrome OS are swallowing it in personal computing and (I believe) gaining some ground even in enterprise. It doesn't seem like Microsoft has dominance in anything but desktop OS right now.
It's just a general perception, as a casual observer, that Microsoft has been ceding lots of territory lately and not really gaining much.
Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses
#10How much tax are you going to get when Amazon shifts to HQ2? Bezos deliberately started Amazon here in Washington because there was no state tax.
I’ve been an Amazon employee and I’ve paid a lot of taxes here and have seen the government waste that money. Our property tax has gone up by hundreds of dollars a month and our schools, roads, and police forces are still in disarray. I don’t mind paying tax as long as it’s ised effectively and efficiently.