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Your 20y old site gave me https errors when I tried to click it, fyi

Trying to trace more detail on this: https://www.taxwatchuk.org/seven-large-tech-groups-estimated...

That mentions the digital services tax; I remember some of HN being quite angry that "Europe" was trying to get a share of the immense wealth extracted from it by American multinationals.

I see a very funny fight on our hands.

Ah, the next level in determining Schrodinger's cat's outcome is if the detector measures Zuckerberg's profit taxability instead of radiation decay; the measurement's results depend on who is carrying them out, where they've taken place and, in all instances, the cat kills itself due to our inability to fix the crazy rich-favoring taxation systems.

You can. It would just cost you so much in legal to not be worth it.

The reason it's worth it for these companies is because the number of zeroes involved. The legal costs are a rounding error for them.

that's some sovereign citizen thinking right there, don't get your car window smashed in when you get pulled over for your diplomat plate :D

Didn't Stephen Colbert claim he was an actor playing the character Stephen Colbert as some kind of tax dodge?

My only concern here is that it's using ex post facto information to try to dispute earlier assessments.

If I 'moved' some AI 'patents' to another country 5 years ago and stated they were worth $x using some formula and now some years later the government steps in and says 'No no no, you earned $x + $y and lied on the original value which should have represented the discounted future income!' that's not disputing the formula used in the original point. It's just that 5 years ago people underestimated how far and how valuable AI would be.

Probably less about tax revenue and more about the executive branch squeezing tech companies to assert influence.

Or they'll settle with Meta in a few years for a small fee with no admission of wrongdoing to save face.

Or they weren't happen with the amount of bribe money we already know they paid, and so now they're being made an example of. Standard Mob protocol.

>..withdrawn directives to auditors to crack down on aggressive tax shelters..

The above might be a salient point, but as for the 1/4 auditors lost and the rest:

The low income (under 25k) with EITC, were the largest audited group with 298,485 of 626,204 audits performed in 2022. The rest of those earning under 200k had 250,391 audits.[] 48% of audits were under 25k income w/ EITC. 87% of audits were people under 200k income.

Kind of interferes with the idea these audits were all about going after the "rich buddies." They were way more about going after the poor than they were about going after the rich.

[] IRS management audit reports obtained via FOIA by via TRAC / https://tracreports.org/reports/706/

Exactly. This is just one big tech fighting another big tech using the government as a weapon.

Ayup. Trump was able to get a stay on a case on an "allegedly" improperly-applied tax write-off for his casino's bankruptcy. It's been in limbo at least since 2016. Ten years. This is the standard operating procedure for people at that level of wealth.

Which would suggest that perhaps that level of wealth doesn't need to exist in our society.

This is an extremely common misconception (or lie, depending on who's saying it). The IRS, even before the cuts, targets exclusively the middle class.

More agents = more middle class shake downs.

63% of the IRS' audits under the Biden admin targeted those earning sub-$200K.

People earning $25K a year are MORE likely to be audited than those earning $200K, too.

It will be very naive to believe adding IRS staff will help with that. It is far easier to audit W2 employees than dealing with mega corporations.

At what point does the term “regime” become an accurate description of that government rather than a derogatory label?

the B is specifically the delta on the IP transfer pricing -- the IRS is saying the 2010 valuation of the intangibles moved to Ireland was too low, and then projecting forward what the income should have been attributed to the US entity under arm's-length pricing. it's not Meta's total ex-US income, it's the gap between what was reported and what IRS thinks a proper cost-sharing arrangement would have produced. the hard part for IRS is always that the 2010 valuation is inherently speculative -- Facebook was pre-IPO and the IP value is defined by future performance you can't know at transfer.

The "check" is what's given for a political favor and the "balance" is what goes up once the check clears.

Simple enough lesson to me!

You mean send to one of Trumpo's milliard Crypto *hitcoins, just like civilised nations like the UAE, Russia or the saudis do it?

Germany continues to do that, North Rhine-Westphalia just bought a >1TB dataset in 2025.

https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/landespolitik/offshore-steue...

The US passed FATCA in 2010, you can't operate a foreign bank that touches US anything without snitching out accounts with US persons as ultimate beneficial owner.

Well that was a 100% certifiably genuine ridiculous loss.

It is interesting how corporations develop personalities, that can do some things well but reliably fail at others. No matter the funding, personnel or efforts. And in this case, by developing a personality I mean enabling Zuck.

About $16 billion a year, every year since 2022 or whatever. You can see RL spending in their public financials. Every company deducts ("writes off") R&D spending.

If it wasn't every last penny of their spend then they weren't being honest with themselves.

There's no crime element here.

The tax avoidance schemes used by most major US companies are to avoid US taxes on foreign income. Most developed countries have territorial tax systems so their companies do not even need to use these fancy legal maneuvers because the income is largely exempt anyways.

In any given year corporate income tax is like 6-10% of federal receipts so even if that was doubled there would not be a huge decline in income taxes needed. The way the US does corporate tax is really also not that great from an economic perspective because it is a form of double taxation. The Estonian model of only taxing distributions incentivizes investment and avoids many debates over depreciation etc.

The income tax would be less but so would be your salary. The corporate tax is another cost for the company.

Note that the issue at hand here is almost entirely about corporations earning money overseas and then trying to "import" the money back into the U.S. whilst dodging taxes. It's quite germane to the same concept as tariffs, although not the exact same thing.

Get ready for a lot more billionaires and a lot more poor people in the next 5-10 years

This is basically describing the Cayman Islands. Or, to lesser extents, UAE or Malta (e.g. https://taxjustice.net/2026/02/24/malta-the-eus-secret-tax-s...).

The problem with this warm Galt Gulch idea is that someone has to do the actual work, and if the top level government is just a corrupt sinecure designed to shield the corporation from actually paying taxes, then nothing works properly. Comfortable island living is also surprisingly expensive, you have to import everything.

Operating a military, maintaining positive diplomatic relations with other countries, and keeping your workforce pacified might be more expensive than you think.

Not to mention that a lot of people prefer to live in a democracy instead of a giant company town, unless you compensate them really, really, well, and even then, well-heeled people are notorious for starting revolutions.

This would not work. Investors are still based in actual countries. Jurisdictions will also always have the ability to tax a % of revenue at source / where it was generated and not on profit rolled up through spvs to a couple low tax havens ;)

> Corporate towns have existed, why not corporate nations?

because they dont need to do that. They can already obtain what they want with smaller tax havens that have already established trade/tax treaties, have existing facilities, infrastructures, etc.

> Mega is big enough to buy entire islands, and be its own country. A corporate country. One with a very specific constitution, enshrining rights, but also?

It's a charming thought. But it can't possibly survive the brute reality that the world is full of people with guns, planes, drones, boats/ships, missiles, etc., who feel entitled to call the shots, and sometimes to take whatever they can from whomever they can.

> Corporate towns have existed, why not corporate nations?

Will those nations survive Maduragate? Won't in essence it make easier to deal with if they aren't under souvereign law, only international?

Snow Crash's Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities.

Sounds easier to just buy a few congressmen and a circuit judge or two.

One question is: does the US wants to keep its big tech leader ship or not? Thankfully for the US the EU is nowhere in tech (biggest market cap is SAP and it's tiny compared to the US giants). But China is becoming big and quickly.

RAM makers are going to feel the heat from China soon. Batteries makers. China is eating the world with its EVs. Drones, etc.

If you're not nice with your corporations, they incorporate elsewhere: that's why the EU is nowhere in tech. Insane taxes since forever and a very strong anti-entrepreneurship mindset (in the EU you're a loser if you tried and fail, for example).

Companies like Meta, Google, MSFT, Apple, etc. should receive medals and thanks from the US government for the insane amount of money they syphon of the other countries and the wealth they create for the US.

Some countries are understanding this: in the UAE for example Dubai is now the world's busiest airport in the world for international passenger traffic. Some countries really fucked up big times to allow this to happen. Dubai is also now a very important hub for commodities trading. And diamonds: Antwerpen/Anvers (Belgium) used to be the city where the most diamonds exchanged hands, now it's... Dubai.

There is such a thing as competition between nation states and at some point entrepreneurs simply pick the best place to launch their businesses. And having the IRS using "tactics" to say that Meta owes them tens of billions does not send a nice message to people wondering in which country it's best to incorporate.

I now live in the country with the 2nd or 3rd highest GDP per capita in the world and that requires a mindset where businesses are welcome, entrepreneurs are welcome and the IRS doesn't feel like they're out there to get you at any cost.

And I'm here because I voted with my feet, my wealth and the future wealth I was going to create.