sdw2001

michelb76 said:

Alex1N said:

What did Apple do to tick France off do much and make them (the French) do seemingly weird things?

What is weird about informing consumers?

They don’t have the right to leak information. And you don’t think it’s weird that they intended to force a recall on a single iPhone product?  

gatorguy said:

AppleZulu said:

9secondkox2 said:

welshdog said:

9secondkox2 said:

darkvader said:

9secondkox2 said:

This is theft. 

The government wants money. Solution? Just retroactively “adjust” someone’s taxes from years ago! A good solid decade ought to do it. 

Pure evil. If there was ac actual issue all this years ago, the IRS WOULD HAVE NOTIFIED THEM AND THEY COULD PAY WHAT WAS OWED. this isn’t that. This is an extortionist government. 

Microsoft didn’t do anything illegal. They took advantage of the way the tax systems were set up, like any smart company would do. 

The only theft is what Micro$oft did.  And the sad part is that a company with $136 billion in profits in 2022 only has to pay $29 billion in penalties for their decade of theft.

Minimizing tax burden by storing your money in a more favorable location (still within US jurisdiction) wasn’t illegal at the time. Retroactively making it so is just theft by the government. Pure and simple. “Adjustment” my left buttock! Microsoft didn’t do anything wrong. They looked at options available to them and utilized them. anything else would just be dumb. But now you have the government retroactively changing things. If a company knew that would happen, of course they’d do things differently in the past. But they didn’t. Because it wasn’t wrong at the time. It’s like an entrapment feature of the government. Pure thievery.

You don't know that "Microsoft didn’t do anything wrong.". No one has said they were doing anything illegal, they simply didn't do the tax dodging in a manner the IRS thinks is correct. There will be a back and forth and eventually a settlement will be reached. There is no reason to ever place any faith or belief in corporations doing the right thing, that's not how they operate. All desisions are based on what makes or saves the most money - period. Apple are slightly less guilty of that than some mega-corporations, but MSFT? Come on, they are not going to follow the law to the letter if they think they can get away with it. Gates' legacy of hacking and gaming everything, always and forever lives on.

If that was so, it would have been caught the first year. The IRS watches big corporations like s hawk. 

They are even calling this an “adjustment.” Thst means the government is changing things now. That can be applied moving forward but should never be retroactive. That’s wrong. If the rules for a gamrr we change next year, you shouldn’t lose your trophy thst you won playing by the rules in years prior. 

The IRS has been intentionally underfunded for decades, specifically so that they lack the capacity to ‘watch big corporations like a hawk.’ It’s a bit willfully naïve not to recognize the likelihood that the scads of talented tax attorneys employed by big corporations would push the limits of loopholes to the extreme (and beyond) with the expectation that the IRS won’t catch things, nor have the capacity to do anything about it if they do. The reality is that this issue is probably just one of many more instances where big corporations have been coloring outside the lines with impunity. 

This is not an ex post facto change in the law. This is an audit finding that Microsoft did their taxes wrong. The “adjustment” refers not to a retroactive change in the law, but to a revision in what MS owes, based on the audit finding that they did their taxes wrong. 

Nailed it. 

Uh, no. The problem is not that the IRS isn’t funded well enough. The problem is the law and the way the IRS operates to begin with. The tax system is intentionally a disaster. You can’t fault corporations, or individuals for minimizing their tax liability. Everybody does it. The real question is not why they have lawyers for this, but why they need them? After all, corporations don’t really pay taxes anyway. People pay taxes. The solution is a simple and unavoidable tax system, to which nearly everyone contributes.  Everyone knows this, but it will never happen because the government doesn’t want it to happen (nor does the entire tax industry).  Do you have any idea how much we spend on the IRS by the way? We’re going to spend even more while the IRS goes after Microsoft on this for years.  

BlueLightning said:

Seems as if wealthy firms and individuals think white collar crime (including evading tax) is good, but they hate it when they experience blue collar crime, such as shoplifting, theft from employees, or smash and grabs.  I see no difference between the two, except the former is usually MUCH larger theft.  If they don't want blue collar crime, then pay the taxes and don't cheat customers.  

Is there some allegation that they stole the money? They DO pay taxes.  Microsoft isn’t the problem here.   The problem, as always is the government. Congress and the IRS develop Byzantine tax structures that it takes armies of lawyers to figure out. Even then, disputes go on for years. The entire system —both personal and corporate—is a giant scam. Taxes are literally an industry. It’s why we never see a simple and unavoidable tax system. It supports too many people.   In any case, businesses are going to business. Any for profit corporation is going to try to pay as little in taxes as possible. The government creates the system, and then freaks out when people actually follow it.  87,000 new IRS agents aren’t going to pay for themselves.  

I guess that’s a good thing, though at those capacities and the variance you’re not going to see any difference. Capacity varies by plus or -5% on most of these lithium batteries.  You’ll see a bigger difference just from having a new battery. My 14 promax is already down to about 80% to 85% capacity.

williamlondon said:

Think touchless iPad with attached keyboard/trackpad running a version of touchless iPadOS in a (durable) clamshell form factor.

Respectfully, that sounds absolutely terrible. It is a completely un-Apple design.  You’re taking the worst parts of all worlds and putting them together.  What could go wrong??

it is extremely unlikely Apple does this in my opinion. The iPad is already quite dominant in education. Apple doesn’t need a new notebook to go after the crappy Chromebook. Why compare MacBook sales with chromebooks? The iPad serves the same purpose and almost always has a keyboard case in education.