#micros~1

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft put their tax-evasion in writing and now they owe $29 billion

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

If there's one thing I took away from Propublica's explosive IRS Files, it's that "tax avoidance" (which is legal) isn't a separate phenomenon from "tax evasion" (which is not), but rather a thinly veiled euphemism for it:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files

That realization sits behind my series of noir novels about the two-fisted forensic accountant Martin Hench, which started with last April's Red Team Blues and continues with The Bezzle, this coming February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

A typical noir hero is an unlicensed cop, who goes places the cops can't go and asks questions the cops can't ask. The noir part comes in at the end, when the hero is forced to admit that he's being going places the cops didn't want to go and asking questions the cops didn't want to ask. Marty Hench is a noir hero, but he's not an unlicensed cop, he's an unlicensed IRS inspector, and like other noir heroes, his capers are forever resulting in his realization that the questions and places the IRS won't investigate are down to their choice not to investigate, not an inability to investigate.

The IRS Files are a testimony to this proposition: that Leona Hemsley wasn't wrong when she said, "Taxes are for the little people." Helmsley's crime wasn't believing that proposition – it was stating it aloud, repeatedly, to the press. The tax-avoidance strategies revealed in the IRS Files are obviously tax evasion, and the IRS simply let it slide, focusing their auditing firepower on working people who couldn't afford to defend themselves, looking for things like minor compliance errors committed by people receiving public benefits.

Or at least, that's how it used to be. But the Biden administration poured billions into the IRS, greenlighting 30,000 new employees whose mission would be to investigate the kinds of 0.1%ers and giant multinational corporations who'd Helmsleyed their way into tax-free fortunes. The fact that these elite monsters paid no tax was hardly a secret, and the impunity with which they functioned was a constant, corrosive force that delegitimized American society as a place where the rules only applied to everyday people and not the rich and powerful who preyed on them.

The poster-child for the IRS's new anti-impunity campaign is Microsoft, who, decades ago, "sold its IP to to an 85-person factory it owned in a small Puerto Rican city," brokered a deal with the corporate friendly Puerto Rican government to pay almost no taxes, and channeled all its profits through the tiny facility:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

That was in 2005. Now, the IRS has come after Microsoft for all the taxes it evaded through the gambit, demanding that the company pay it $29 billion. What's more, the courts are taking the IRS's side in this case, consistently ruling against Microsoft as it seeks to keep its ill-gotten billions:

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-microsoft-audit-back-taxes-puerto-rico-billions

Now, no one expects that Microsoft is going to write a check to the IRS tomorrow. The company's made it clear that they intend to tie this up in the courts for a decade if they can, claiming, for example, that Trump's amnesty for corporate tax-cheats means the company doesn't have to give up a dime.

This gambit has worked for Microsoft before. After seven years in antitrust hell in the 1990s, the company was eventually convicted of violating the Sherman Act, America's bedrock competition law. But they kept the case in court until 2001, running out the clock until GW Bush was elected and let them go free. Bush had a very selective version of being "tough on crime."

But for all that Microsoft escaped being broken up, the seven years of depositions, investigations, subpoenas and negative publicity took a toll on the company. Bill Gates was personally humiliated when he became the star of the first viral video, as grainy VHS tapes of his disastrous and belligerent deposition spread far and wide:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/12/whats-a-murder/#miros-tilde-1

If you really want to know who Bill Gates is beneath that sweater-vested savior persona, check out the antitrust deposition – it's still a banger, 25 years on:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/revisiting-the-spectacular-failure-that-was-the-bill-gates-deposition/

In cases like these, the process is the punishment: Microsoft's dirty laundry was aired far and wide, its swaggering founder was brought low, and the company's conduct changed for years afterwards. Gates once told Kara Swisher that Microsoft missed its chance to buy Android because they were "distracted by the antitrust trial." But the Android acquisition came four years after the antitrust case ended. What Gates meant was that four years after he wriggled off the DoJ's hook, he was still so wounded and gunshy that he lacked the nerve to risk the regulatory scrutiny that such an anticompetitive merger would entail.

What's more, other companies got the message too. Large companies watched what happened to Microsoft and traded their reckless disregard for antitrust law for a timid respect. The effect eventually wore off, but the Microsoft antitrust case created a brief window where real competition was possible without the constant threat of being crushed by lawless monopolists. Sometimes you have to execute an admiral to encourage the others.

A decade in IRS hell will be even more painful for Microsoft than the antitrust years were. For one thing, the Puerto Rico scam was mainly a product of ex-CEO Steve Ballmer, a man possessed of so little executive function that it's a supreme irony that he was ever a corporate executive. Ballmer is a refreshingly plain-spoken corporate criminal who is so florid in his blatant admissions of guilt and shouted torrents of self-incriminating abuse that the exhibits in the Microsoft-IRS cases to come are sure to be viral sensations beyond even the Gates deposition's high-water mark.

It's not just Ballmer, either. In theory, corporate crime should be hard to prosecute because it's so hard to prove criminal intent. But tech executives can't help telling on themselves, and are very prone indeed to putting all their nefarious plans in writing (think of the FTC conspirators who hung out in a group-chat called "Wirefraud"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Ballmer's colleagues at Microsoft were far from circumspect on the illegitimacy of the Puerto Rico gambit. One Microsoft executive gloated – in writing – that it was a "pure tax play." That is, it was untainted by any legitimate corporate purpose other than to create a nonsensical gambit that effectively relocated Microsoft's corporate headquarters to a tiny CD-pressing plant in the Caribbean.

But if other Microsoft execs were calling this a "pure tax play," one can only imagine what Ballmer called it. Ballmer, after all, is a serial tax-cheat, the star of multiple editions of the IRS Files. For example, there's the wheeze whereby he has turned his NBA team into a bottomless sinkhole for the taxes on his vast fortune:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Or his "tax-loss harvesting" – a ploy whereby rich people do a "wash trade," buying and selling the same asset at the same time, not so much circumventing the IRS rules against this as violating those rules while expecting the IRS to turn a blind eye:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

Ballmer needs all those scams. After all, he was one of the pandemic's most successful profiteers. He was one of eight billionaires who added at least a billion more to his net worth during lockdown:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/billionaire-bonanza-2020/

Like all forms of rot, corruption spreads. Microsoft turned Washington State into a corporate tax-haven and starved the state of funds, paving the way for other tax-cheats like Amazon to establish themselves in the area. But the same anti-corruption movement that revitalized the IRS has also taken root in Washington, where reformers instituted a new capital gains tax aimed at the ultra-wealthy that has funded a renaissance in infrastructure and social spending:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

If the IRS does manage to drag Microsoft through the courts for the next decade, it's going to do more than air the company's dirty laundry. It'll expose more of Ballmer's habitual sleaze, and the ways that Microsoft dragged a whole state into a pit of austerity. And even more importantly, it'll expose the Puertopia conspiracy, a neocolonial project that transformed Puerto Rico into an onshore-offshore tax-haven that saw the island strip-mined and then placed under corporate management:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#que-viva-albizu

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Suzuki UT-1 Concept, 1995. Utility Transport 1 was a prototype for a small pick-up presented at the 31st Tokyo Motor Show. It could turn into a micro-sized semi-trailer for larger loads, or you could clip on a panel van-style covered back section with a hatch

[officialrailscales]

HK 416 + AAC 416-SD

Karve | Carbon Black

QTR Stop | Carbon Black

4-Slot G10 RailScales | Dragon Texture

3-Slot G10 RailScales | Dragon Texture

2-Slot G10 RailScales | Dragon Texture

QDX Sling Mount | Carbon Black

CSMR Button | Apex Style | Carbon Black

- RS

[countingstars-17]

the suspicious amount of new accounts that started following me ovenight

[chippedcupwrites]

Sandor Clegane & Arya Stark + emoji kitchen

[kruemel8]

Simon Eriksson. 1.06&3.06

[animalshowdown]

Phylum Round 1

Acanthocephala: Spiny-Headed Worms. These internal parasitic worms have a proboscis that they can evert outside of their body. The proboscis has a "head" of spines, which is used to hold onto the host. They have no mouth or stomach, but absorb nutrients directly from the host through their skin. Acanthocephalans, similar to some other parasitic phyla, are notable for having complex life cycles that involve multiple different hosts. Some species are able to alter the behavior of their intermediate crustacean hosts.

Tardigrada: Water Bears or Moss Piglets. These micro-animals have been found on every continent, including Antarctica. They are well-known for their ability to survive extreme conditions such as dangerous radiation, extreme heat/cold, or lack of food and water. Members of Tardigrada have even been studied on space missions, and survived the vacuum of space. They can endure these conditions by entering a "tun" state, where they lose almost all of their water and slow all their life systems to a near-stop. Tardigrades live on moist mosses and lichens, but can survive when their habitat dries out, and reawaken when water returns.

[bl-bracket]

Horny on Main Round 1: Tharn (The Sign) vs Ritsu (The End of the World with You)

[Submitted Reasons Under Cut]

Tharn: "let’s not forget his whole horny dream about phaya choking him out and fucking him against his bathroom wall. the dream that he proceeded to think about in the midst of making breakfast the next morning"

Ritsu: "The man could not keep it in his pants. The world is ending and all he wants is to bang Masumi into the mattress!"

[sableghost]

ALEX ALBON

A-Z Race Winners Challenge! | Grill The Grid 2023

[sensiblethingtodo]

Anna and Brittany rehearsing “Cheap Thrills” from Ester’s IG

[practicecourts]

@jilychallenge I've struggled with my January challenge but it clearly needed some additional prompts, so thank you @jilymicrofics for the Moody March list. So here it finally is @petals2fish.

I loved your Hungergame AU Catching Fire so I hope you will like this Medieval Jily fic. JilyChallenge January 2024 Theme: Love in Tough Times. Prompt: oh lord, o lord what have I done? I’ve fallen in love with a man on the run, Oh Lord, Oh lord, I’m begging you please, Don’t take this sinner away from me (The devil’s backbone / civil wars) / TS Don’t blame me (Oh lord, save me, my drug is my baby, I’ll be using for the rest of my life @jilymicro-oops || Moody March day 4 || despondent || ca 1250 wrds. Read Chapter one: To Hang... on ao3 thanks @tinyluminaryzombie for last minute beta reading (Chapter 2 will be up sometime tomorrow) ! please check the warnings in the notes !

To Hang...

People enter the city through the guarded gates, most are on foot, some on horseback. A few heavy carts, pulled by oxen with laboured breaths, make their way to the heart of town. The smells of baked goods mingle with earth and mud and unwashed clothes.

Lily has escaped her sister's nagging and moves through the throngs of people who have come to watch the procession later today. Unlike others who have come to their wares at the market or in the hopes of making a good bargain, Lily has come on a fanciful whim. She has met someone, a stranger. Rationally she knows he will be long gone. He’s a man of adventures, a sword for hire, who does not linger in a place like this. Still, she's come today on the off-chance she might catch a glimpse of him.

The sun still hangs low in the sky but she can already tell it will be another hot day.

read on...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ireland's privacy regulator is a gamekeeper-turned-poacher

This Saturday (May 20), I’ll be at the GAITHERSBURG Book Festival with my novel Red Team Blues; then on May 22, I’m keynoting Public Knowledge’s Emerging Tech conference in DC.

On May 23, I’ll be in TORONTO for a book launch that’s part of WEPFest, a benefit for the West End Phoenix, onstage with Dave Bidini (The Rheostatics), Ron Diebert (Citizen Lab) and the whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri.

When the EU passed its landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it seemed like a privacy miracle. Despite the most aggressive lobbying Europe had ever seen, 500 million Europeans were now guaranteed a digital private life. Could this really be?

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Well, yes…and no. Despite flaws (Right to Be Forgotten), the GDPR has strong, well-crafted, badly needed privacy protections. But to get those protections, Europeans need their privacy regulators to enforce the rules.

That’s where the GDPR miracle founders. Europe includes several tax-havens — Malta, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland — that compete to offer the most favorable terms to international corporations and other criminals. For these havens, paying little to no tax is just table-stakes. As these countries vie to sell themselves out to giant companies, they compete to offer a favorable regulatory environment, insulating companies from lawsuits over corruption, labor abuses and other crimes.

All of this is made possible — and even encouraged — by the design of European federalism, which lets companies easily shift which flag of convenience they fly. Once a company re-homes in a country, it can force Europeans across the union to seek justice in that country’s courts, under the looming threat that the company will up sticks for another haven if the law doesn’t bend over backwards to protect corporate citizens from the grievances of flesh-and-blood humans.

Big Tech’s most aggressive privacy invaders have long flown Irish flags. Ireland is “headquarters” to Google, Meta, Tinder, Apple, Airbnb, Yahoo and many other tech companies. In exchange for locating a handful of jobs to Ireland, these companies are allowed to maintain the pretense that their global earnings are afloat in the Irish Sea, in a state of perfect, untaxable grace.

That cozy relationship meant that the US tech giants were well-situated to sabotage Ireland’s privacy regulator, who would be the first port of call for Europeans whose privacy had been violated by American firms. For many years, it’s been obvious that the Irish Data Protection Commission was a sleeping watchdog, with infinite tolerance for the companies that pretend to make Ireland their homes. 87% of Irish data protection claims involve just eight giant US companies (that pretend to be Irish).

But among for hardened GDPR warriors, the real extent of the Data Protection Commissioner’s uselessness is genuinely shocking. A new report from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties reveals that the DPC isn’t merely tolerant of privacy crimes, they’re gamekeepers turned poachers, active collaborators in privacy abuse:

https://www.iccl.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/5-years-GDPR-crisis.pdf

The report’s headline figure really tells the story: the European Data Protection Board — which oversees Ireland’s DPC — overturns the Irish regulator’s judgments 75% of the time. It’s actually worse than it appears: that figure only includes appeals of the DPC’s enforcement actions, where the DPC bestirred itself to put on trousers and show up for work to investigate a privacy claim, only to find that the corporation was utterly blameless.

But the DPC almost never takes enforcement actions. Instead, the regulator remains in its pajamas, watching cartoons and eating breakfast cereal, and offers an “amicable resolution” (that is, a settlement) to the accused company. 83% of the cases brought before the DPC are settled with an “amicable resolution.”

Corporations can bargain for multiple, consecutive amicable resolutions, allowing them to repeatedly break the law and treat the fines — which they negotiate themselves — as part of the price of doing business.

This is illegal. European law demands that cases that involve repeat offenders, or that are likely to affect many people, must be fully investigated.

Ireland’s government has stonewalled on calls for an independent review of the DPC. The DPC continues to abet lawlessness, allowing corporations to use privacy invasive techniques for surveillance, discrimination and manipulation. In 2022, the DPC concluded 64% of its cases with mere reprimands — not even a slap on the wrist.

Meanwhile, the DPC trails the EU in issuing “compliance orders” — which directly regulate the conduct of privacy-invading companies — only issuing 49 such orders in the past 4.5 years. The DPC has only issues 28 of the GDPR’s “one-stop-shop” fines.

The EU has 26 other national privacy regulators, but under the GDPR, they aren’t allowed to act until the DPC delivers its draft decisions. The DPC is lavishly funded, with a budget in the EU’s top five, but all that money gets pissed up against a wall, with inaction ruling the day.

Despite the collusion between the tech giants and the Irish state, time is running out for America’s surveillance-crazed tech monopolists. The GDPR does allow Europeans to challenge the DPR’s do-nothing rulings in European court, after a long, meandering process. That process is finally bearing fruit: in 2021, Johnny Ryan and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties brought a case in Germany against the ad-tech lobby group IAB:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/16/inside-the-clock-tower/#inference

And the activist Max Schrems and the group NOYB brought a case against Google in Austria:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/15/out-here-everything-hurts/#noyb

But Europeans should not have to drag tech giants out of Ireland to get justice. It’s long past time for the EU to force Ireland to clean up its act. The EU Commission is set to publish a proposal on how to reform Ireland’s DPA, but more muscular action is needed. In the new report, the Irish Council For Civil Liberties calls on the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, to treat this issue with the urgency and seriousness that it warrants. As the ICCL says, “the EU can not be a regulatory superpower unless it enforces its own laws.”

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

[Image ID: A toddler playing with toy cars. The cars are Irish police cars. The toddler's head has been replaced with the menacing, glowing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The toddler's knit cap is decorated with the logos for Apple, Google, Facebook and Tinder.]

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[officialrailscales]

MK16 Monday

RSBM-P | FDE

HTP XOS-H 3.5-Slot MLOK Scale | Matrix Texture | FDE

- RS

[zerotosixty]

Fernando Alonso, 2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix Post-Qualifying

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

update, y'all: suddenly i have SIX (6) micro writing projects for the weekend, and i'm hyped!!

[porkcracker]

KINKTOBER DAY 1 - MICRO/MACRO

Pairing: Jazz/Prowl Continuity: G1

After Jazz gets accidentally shrunken to the size of Prowls servo, the two have some fun with the new size difference between them.

It had been an accident. One visit to the labs to check on the progress of a prototype weapon later and Jazz found himself in a bit of an odd situation. Sure, the gun was shooting, but it hadn’t been supposed to do what it had done. Nevertheless, intended or not, as it was, Jazz found himself a lot smaller than he had been before. To be more precise, Prowl’s servo small. And as it so happened that was exactly where he found himself after being checked over thoroughly by Ratchet to make sure that he was fine beyond suddenly being servo sized. Luckily he was, there had been a note of odd resistance to what would usually inflict injury, but with nothing else needed from the medbay, Jazz had been picked up by his partner and carried away. 

At first, he had thought that Prowl was carrying him to his own office, then to Prowl’s office and when that had not been the case it had become clear where this was going. As such, the Polyhexian was not surprised, when they entered their shared quarters and Prowl seated himself on their berth. Sitting upright, door wings to the berth top and legs stretched straight ahead, Jazz was placed on his lover's lap rather gently, his small frame covering the plates of Prowl’s interfacing array just so, the position of it all not lost to the servo sized mech. Even more so, the idea of interfacing with his lover like this was rather arousing.

It was a shared secret between the two lovers that even their rather small size difference was arousing to both of them, so really with the sudden drastic increase of size difference between the two of them it was not surprising at all that they ended up in the berth. Perhaps Jazz would have expected a bit more hesitation from Prowl, but it seemed that the reserved mech had discarded any hesitation for the cycle. Something, most likely leading back to the medbay trip just behind them that had assured him that he would not be injuring his much smaller lover, if they got intimate in this state. Still, beyond placing Jazz quite tellingly, Prowl did not do anything further, motivating Jazz to tease his lover.

“Come on Prowler, we both knaw that A’m sittin here fer a reason, so why don’t yer stop thinkin bout whatever yer thinkin bout and focus on tha fun we could be havin, hmm?”, visor bright and a big grin on his faceplate, Jazz ground his own small interfacing panel on the big one he was sitting on. It seemed that his words, or perhaps actions, had drawn Prowl out of whatever stupor he had been in as his helm optics visibly snapped to look at the juncture connecting both of their panels. And then, quicker than Jazz could have reacted, he was picked up in a loose fist wrapped around his middle, pinning his arms to his side. Prowl didn’t lift him a lot, only enough to have him hover over his interfacing panel, but it was enough to have Jazz protest with a “Hey!”. Alas, that changed little as a dark smile grew on Prowls faceplate and his optics dimmed as he tutted at his much smaller lover.

“Now, now, you and your hurrying. I’d much rather take my time with you and well, you’re not really in a position to direct our encounter Jazz. So open your panel and don’t overload.”, where his voice had been somewhat teasing, the last part was an order and Jazz swallowed his visor brightening. Opening his interfacing panel, revealed his valve and spike. Just like the rest of his frame, his equipment had shrunken and Prowl had to note that it looked almost adorable, and unbelievably hot. His lover’s spike was just big enough to be pleased by the last segment of his digits and was quickly pressurizing, betraying Jazz eagerness as much as his words had and the pink translucent sheen already beginning to cover his cute little valve.

Lowering Jazz down again, he pushed him a little tighter down than he had been just sitting and began to rub his lover over his panel. Cute little valve smushed down on his panel, he watched as a small wet patch began to grow on his panel, his lover whimpering and twisting in his grip as his valve folds and anterior node were rubbed against the metal without any regards to his own pleasure. “O-oh come on, this ain’t f-fair.”, Jazz complained, but Prowl disregarded the complaint without a comment, simply continuing to grind Jazz into his panel until he felt that his panel had become wet enough to take it to the next step. Lifting Jazz again, there came a hopeful whimper from the Polihexian, alas it wasn’t meant to be. While Prowl indeed opened his own panel, revealing his own valve and his quickly pressurizing spike, he still didn’t impale Jazz on it. 

Once again the smaller mech was lowered, this time however, Prowl rubbed him against his spike, grinding up from time to time to keep the rhythm ever-changing. The longer this continued, the less Jazz focused on the hope of being actually fragged and more and more on holding back his overload. Even without penetration, the feeling of his lover’s spike grinding over his anterior node and valve entrance was arousing, and the visual of a spike almost the size of himself being pleasured by rubbing his frame against it was hot as well. It was when it became harder and harder to keep his overload at bay, that Jazz spoke again, interrupted by his own gasps and keens as he did so.

It took a few attempts before he got the words out, but once he did, Prowl simply hummed before saying “No.” and giving an especially vicious grind upwards and into Jazz valve. The longer his overload was denied, the blurrier the world around him became as the spymaster focused himself on not overloading. It was as such that he missed the way Prowl began to speed up and move out of rhythm as his own overload approached. Only becoming aware of it when it happened. 

Pulling Jazz down once more, this time Prowl aimed his spike towards the entrance of his dazed little lover's valve. Even aroused and wet as it was, the small valve struggled with the size of his spike and Jazz whined and keened at the feeling of the big spike head pressing into his valve entrance without backing off until it finally popped in with an audible pop. However, the pop was overshadowed by the low groan of Prowl as his spike head popped into the tight valve, clamping shut right behind his spike head, and came, as well as Jazz near scream as he overloaded as his valve was stretched open and filled with hot transfluid.