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Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#61

Post by criddell »

The tax question I've always had is around conferences. If I attend a work-related conference in California, I'm being paid to be there and so that's California sourced income and I have to file taxes, right?

During the pandemic when everybody was working from home, I thought about renting some place with more interesting scenery for a few weeks. I mentioned it to my bosses and was given a very short list of places where I could do so without triggering tax issues for myself or the company (later in the pandemic more options opened up).

When I looked into it, it seems like lots of states are pretty strict about tax requirements for people working remotely from their state.

Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#62

Post by londons_explore »

rjst01 wrote: post #52
londons_explore wrote: post #40

Tax agencies don't go after air miles and other points schemes clearly designed to waste $$$'s of company money to get $ in their own pocket tax free. Considering that, I don't think they really care too much about a few engineers being allowed to keep loaner copies of software they used for testing.

The IRS decided in 2002 that taxing air miles was too difficult: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/a-02-18.pdf , but I wonder if this might change in the future if airlines continue to shift towards programs that reward dollars spent rather than miles flown + ticket class. Some countries have specific legislation to exclude air miles.

That announcement is really depressing. It isn't saying "airmiles aren't taxable". It says "we promise not to enforce laws about tax on airmiles".

As a law abiding citizen, I now have a moral dilemma. Pay tax as the law says, or don't pay tax because the government promised not to punish me?

Where will the latter lead? It's fine to do other crimes as long as you know the government usually won't prosecute? It's fine to write overly broad laws because we will only enforce them against the truly bad guys?

Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#63

Post by HPsquared »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #42
rswail wrote: post #23

In Australia, we have "Fringe Benefits Tax" which applies to that sort of thing. Basically anything that is considered a non-cash benefit is FBT tax owed by the employer. The tax is at the current maximum marginal income tax rate (47%) on a "grossed up" value of the benefit (currently 2.08). So $1000 of benefit is grossed up to $2080, then taxed at 47% so FBT of $977.60. Employer can deduct cost of the benefit ($1000…

America never did that because it would disrupt the careful allocation of health insurance to people with good jobs.

And if there's one thing the tax code can't have, it's exceptions!

Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#64

Post by bombcar »

criddell wrote: post #61

The tax question I've always had is around conferences. If I attend a work-related conference in California, I'm being paid to be there and so that's California sourced income and I have to file taxes, right? During the pandemic when everybody was working from home, I thought about renting some place with more interesting scenery for a few weeks. I mentioned it to my bosses and was given a very short list of places w…

Most of this strictness comes from taxing baseball player’s income for the games they play in state.

Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#65

Post by sseagull »

criddell wrote: post #61

The tax question I've always had is around conferences. If I attend a work-related conference in California, I'm being paid to be there and so that's California sourced income and I have to file taxes, right? During the pandemic when everybody was working from home, I thought about renting some place with more interesting scenery for a few weeks. I mentioned it to my bosses and was given a very short list of places w…

Technically you might owe taxes, depending on the jurisdiction, but of course most people ignore it.

It does hit professional athletes, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_tax

Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#66

Post by nickjj »

criddell wrote: post #61

The tax question I've always had is around conferences. If I attend a work-related conference in California, I'm being paid to be there and so that's California sourced income and I have to file taxes, right? During the pandemic when everybody was working from home, I thought about renting some place with more interesting scenery for a few weeks. I mentioned it to my bosses and was given a very short list of places w…

> If I attend a work-related conference in California, I'm being paid to be there and so that's California sourced income and I have to file taxes, right?

I'm not an accountant but I have read that baseball players pay state taxes based on where they play, such as away games in a different state. I'm not sure if it applies to tech in the same way, it sounds like it would be a nightmare to file, especially if your company has trips where most of the company might be operating in a different state for a few days or a week.

For example[0]:

> Professional athletes' taxes are also much more complicated than the average taxpayer. In the U.S., people must pay taxes based both on where they live and where they work. That means when the New York Mets play the Dodgers in Los Angeles, Mets players can be taxed for the days they played in California.

[0]: https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/sports/2023/12/15/ohtan...

Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#67

Post by bombcar »

michaelt wrote: post #38
kazinator wrote: post #7

What does it mean to "keep" the software? You can return the installation media, and say you erased the program, without having erased it. I would say that if you work for Microsoft and they give you a program free in order to test, then it's not a form of income. The program doesn't represent monetary value in that situation. Microsoft, the copyright holder, is licensing you to have a copy of that program under term…

> Microsoft, the copyright holder, is licensing you to have a copy of that program under terms which do not involve exchange of money. As I recall, this anecdote is part of a larger story: * This was at a time where it was common to buy software in retail stores, it would come in a fancy cardboard box with a stack of floppy disks (or a CD-ROM), a printed manual, a warranty card you could mail in, and so on. * Microso…

It’s exactly that - the IRS doesn’t want people bypassing taxes via weird gift freebie methods. So if it’s not much and it’s not regular, they don’t really care.

Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#68

Post by trylfthsk »

My least favorite taxes right now are those that apply based on location.

In theory, my tax return requires about 4 extra states and a few cities, and a bunch of state registrations, and my payroll provider doesn't support the operations; so the net result is a Helleresque fever dream.

In practice, I never leave home on paper.

Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#69

Post by bombcar »

michaelt wrote: post #34
londons_explore wrote: post #30

> changing Windows 95 so that it installed the Ctrl+C hotkey handler only when a clipboard paste operation was active, My understanding of the windows clipboard is that at boot time, the clipboard was empty, but at any other time the clipboard would retain the last thing copied. That presumably means this game would work after a fresh boot, but any other time the game wouldn't get past level 58. Doesn't sound fixed t…

It's a long time since I've pasted something into a Windows 95 DOS terminal, but I don't think it worked the way you're thinking. IIRC by default you couldn't just select text with the mouse - as DOS had never had mouse support, and didn't really have the concept of text being selected. You had to click a particular button to activate text selection before it was possible to copy. The GUI looked like this: https://co…

I suspect “paste” was more “simulate keyboard strokes that produce the text” in which case that could take a notable amount of time if you had a paragraph in the clipboard.

Re: Tax consequences of WIN95 team members keeping a piece of software for testing

#70

Post by criddell »

nickjj wrote: post #66
criddell wrote: post #61

The tax question I've always had is around conferences. If I attend a work-related conference in California, I'm being paid to be there and so that's California sourced income and I have to file taxes, right? During the pandemic when everybody was working from home, I thought about renting some place with more interesting scenery for a few weeks. I mentioned it to my bosses and was given a very short list of places w…

> If I attend a work-related conference in California, I'm being paid to be there and so that's California sourced income and I have to file taxes, right? I'm not an accountant but I have read that baseball players pay state taxes based on where they play, such as away games in a different state. I'm not sure if it applies to tech in the same way, it sounds like it would be a nightmare to file, especially if your com…

I don’t think any of that is limited to professional athletes though. If you are on vacation in another state and somebody from work calls you for the password for some machine, you are now working and need to file taxes in that state (if the state has no grace period, and some do).
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