Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

seattletimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 74 posts

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#51

Post by seanmcdirmid »

techsupporter wrote: post #40
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this classic Almost Live segment about the 425 area code switch over: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V9jlo4Ht2YA At the end, an east side Bellevue woman snobbishly complains about 425 containing Renton.

Or this one ("Cops in Redmond"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pxGDSucCEI > And if you cannot afford a lawyer...well, uh, what are you doing living in Redmond? Maybe you meant Renton? They do sound similar, Redmond, Renton... Also, Pat Cashman is a treasure. "Did you have to dial a one...before?"

Ya, and the communities are so different. The only time an east sider will intentionally go to Renton is if they need to go to IKEA (unless they work for Boeing or Wizards of the Coast).

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#52

Post by kerng »

_bxg1 wrote: post #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…

Underdog? It's the largest company by market cap in the world. That can be viewed as being the most successful company there is (over time).

They sure do a lot of things right lately though.

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#53

Post by 1123581321 »

ABCLAW wrote: post #34
RHSeeger wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a repeated response to what I said, so I'll just respond once. The fix for companies using loopholes to avoid taxes is not to raise the tax rate. The fix is to remove the loopholes.

>The fix is to remove the loopholes. Is it, though? This is a situation where Chesterton's Fence is important to consider. No single government regulates tax worldwide, and each is iteratively attempting to balance a multitude of concerns, while remaining competitive to capital. Additionally, many of the loopholes aren't legislative tax exemptions on the books. They're determinations regarding how and when certain th…

Chesterton’s Fence would apply to tax rates and new taxes as well.

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#54

Post by [deleted] »

_bxg1 wrote: post #9
rlanday wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#55

Post by kerng »

_bxg1 wrote: post #16
polyomino wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft used to be a boxed software business, now they're transitioning to saas. It's really that simple.

Right, but Amazon and Google are arguably better than them at SaaS. AWS is second to none for cloud hosting, and Google is second to none for AI.

I think Microsoft is the best SaaS provider overall. Google has some quirky offerings with GSuites that honestly arent comparable to other enterprise offerings from a quality perspective- especially if you are used to Office, Outlook and AD. And when it comes to cloud computing Google is a distant third.

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#56

Post by barry-cotter »

_bxg1 wrote: post #16
polyomino wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft used to be a boxed software business, now they're transitioning to saas. It's really that simple.

Right, but Amazon and Google are arguably better than them at SaaS. AWS is second to none for cloud hosting, and Google is second to none for AI.

Microsoft understands customer service though, and Google refuses to learn. Surely that’s relevant to SaaS.

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#57

Post by Rapzid »

brianberns wrote: post #35
RHSeeger wrote: post #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.

Amazon nearly doubled its profits to $11.2 billion in 2018 from $5.6 billion the previous year and didn’t pay a single cent of federal income taxes.

They will have paid a lot in payroll taxes and sales taxes. Their employees will have paid taxes on their income as well.

I say this because when people make a simplistic statement about a company not paying much or any taxes on profits a lot of people are mislead into believing the company is somehow not contributing to government revenue. Which is obviously not the case at all.

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#58

Post by chillacy »

cheeze wrote: post #31
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property and sales tax are necessary in Washington in lieu of an income tax. If you live in Seattle, schooling, roads and even the police aren’t that bad (compared to other cities), heck, you can choose to live in Bellevue where all those things are better (though at the cost of being boring). In general, taxes get used pretty darn well in WA, at least compared to other states.

> police aren’t that bad (compared to other cities) You mean the police department that was investigated by the DOJ for being engaged in a "pattern or pratice" of violating constitutional rights through excessive force, specifically against minorities? The same police department that turns a blind eye to _any_ property crime? Just making sure that we're talking about the same Seattle Police Department here. SPD has b…

I've heard Chicago and LA have it worse, and the taxes pay for it.

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#59

Post by repsilat »

gamblor956 wrote: post #22
RHSeeger wrote: post #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.

I do not understand how people can not understand that a percentage tax, by it's definition, does have the largest companies pay more. I do not understand how people can not understand that the largest companies pay a lot of money to structure their taxes so that they pay proportionately less of their income in taxes than smaller companies do despite deriving significantly more economic benefits from the stable econo…

With apologies to Tony Hoare:

> There are two ways of constructing a corporate tax system: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no loopholes, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious loopholes.

Re: ‘Making Amazon look bad’: Microsoft supports a state tax on businesses

#60

Post by roenxi »

ABCLAW wrote: post #20
RHSeeger wrote: post #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.

>I do not understand how people can not understand that a percentage tax, by it's definition, does have the largest companies pay more. They don't understand it because it isn't true on a proportional basis (and in some cases on an absolute dollar value basis, too). Larger companies have access to tax avoidance strategies which are unavailable to smaller companies[1] which substantially changes the calculus. I've gon…

Why is that important?

I have two taxpayers, Roy the rich ($1000 / month) and Peter the poor ($100 / month). Today we will have a 10% flat tax. Peter pays $10. Roy pays $100. The total tax take is $110 and Roy is paying 91% of it.

If we imagine a 'comfortable' lifestyle costs $200/month then there is an argument against using this flat tax system, but it is difficult to escape from the fact that Roy is doing almost all the heavy lifting from the who-is-funding-society perspective. Even if Roy has a very good team of accountants and is managing to only pay 5% of his income in tax (grossly unfair!) he would still be paying 83% of the total tax take (50 / 60). If we use percentages, the rich are going to be paying for most of what the government does, whether they pay personally or through corporate tax.

Most people overestimate how profitable companies are, the economics of business tend to squeeze margins. I've seen a lot of arguments in Australia whinging that not enough taxes are paid by companies like Quantas because they don't understand concepts like depreciation and carrying losses forward. Those concepts are quite fair once it is accepted that maybe assets take a few years life in them before they need to be replaced.

EDIT Bit slow this morning, I figured out what you meant by proportional basis.

Post reply on HN