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‘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

#61

Post by chii »

Rapzid wrote: post #57
brianberns wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is personal taxes of the employee considered taxes paid by the company?

If it's fair for a company to have the legal rights of a person, it's only fair they pay the same rate of taxes as a natural person.

If the share holders of the company is legally indemnify against the debts/risks of the company, then they shall also pay their fair share of taxes, and should not deduct it from the already paid portion of company tax. So this way, if you want legal protection of a limited liability corp, you have to pay double taxes. But if you accept legal responsibility if the company, then you don't get double taxed.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by mnm1 »

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.

Maybe because they see that Amazon (and other companies) paid nothing in federal taxes last year despite federal taxes being a percentage tax.

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

#64

Post by Rapzid »

chii wrote: post #61
Rapzid wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is personal taxes of the employee considered taxes paid by the company? If it's fair for a company to have the legal rights of a person, it's only fair they pay the same rate of taxes as a natural person. If the share holders of the company is legally indemnify against the debts/risks of the company, then they shall also pay their fair share of taxes, and should not deduct it from the already paid portion of comp…

I'm simply putting out there that a ton of the revenue Amazon takes in ends up as government revenue.

I don't really have an opinion on anything else you're talking about.

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

#65

Post by throwaway_9168 »

_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…

I think of them as the trust fund babies among the tech giants. A lot of people who have actually worked on both Azure and AWS/Google Cloud remark that Azure is awful in comparison, but its their only option because (some reason which ties back to Microsoft's dominance 15+ years ago). In search, after MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Bing Rewards and what not, Microsoft still didn't really put a dent into Google's marketshare. In mobile, they are an also ran. They had to do a 180 on their open source policy to come back to relevance. In other words, if you took away their OS/Office stronghold, it is hard to see them actually competing and winning in any business which has strong competitors.

Which reminds me. I knew some folks who worked at Microsoft who used to talk about open source as if it was cancer - in 2005. Now they display equal enthusiasm for the opposite view. If you have actually seen it, it looks quite like a comedy scene from one of those movies which spoof corporate life, where all employees act gung-ho no matter what.

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

#66

Post by Jach »

_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…

Where are your casually observing eyes focused? If Hacker News is your main internet watering hole, maybe expansion is called for...

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

#67

Post by masonic »

Rapzid wrote: post #57
brianberns wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The buyer pays the sales tax, not Amazon. Of course, even that assumes that Amazon properly forwards all the sales taxes they collect and don't keep any.

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

#68

Post by kthejoker2 »

throwaway_9168 wrote: post #65
_bxg1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think of them as the trust fund babies among the tech giants. A lot of people who have actually worked on both Azure and AWS/Google Cloud remark that Azure is awful in comparison, but its their only option because (some reason which ties back to Microsoft's dominance 15+ years ago). In search, after MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Bing Rewards and what not, Microsoft still didn't really put a dent into Google's ma…

I'll just provide.an anecdotal counterpoint in that I've used GCP, AWS, and Oracle cloud, and Azure is night and day a better experience.

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

#69

Post by kthejoker2 »

_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.

Cloud hosting isn't SaaS. Think productivity, CRM, business apps ...

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

#70

Post by linuxhiker »

anth_anm wrote: post #46
almost_usual wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

That's true, but what is the rate now? If it's going from 3% to 5% that's not as bad as 10 to 17 or whatever.

The B&0 tax is off the top based on gross revenue generated in Washington state. For my small company, 5% would put me out of business. I don't recall the exact rate we pay but it's nowhere near five.
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