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IRS Tactics Against Meta Open a New Front in the Corporate Tax Fight
- mitchbob 8mo ago> The agency is using real-world profit data to challenge how big companies value offshore intellectual property. https://archive.ph/2026.02.24-124153/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/business/irs-meta-corporate-taxes.html https://archive.ph/2026.02.24-124153/https://www.nytimes.com...
- notyourwork 8mo agoProbably less about tax revenue and more about the executive branch squeezing tech companies to assert influence.
- ambicapter 8mo agoI doubt the current executive branch has enough brain trust to understand these sort of tactics.
- lenerdenator 8mo ago"Trump's stupid" is how we got here. You don't need to be smart to get where he is. You just have to have the willingness to engage in shady business practices, have enough money to outlast opponents in a courtroom, and exist in a society where there's no real pressure on people who do those things.
- bonsai_spool 8mo ago> Probably less about tax revenue and more about the executive branch squeezing tech companies to assert influence. Absolutely not about this, as is clearly reported in the linked article.
- notyourwork 8mo agoBecause the article said so? That’s your rationale for saying the executive branch isn’t weaponizing the rest of government offices for their own influence and benefit. Sorry, color me unconvinced until this administration shows good faith.
- bonsai_spool 8mo ago> Because the article said so? Because... the article clearly says the case began under the FORMER administration, and goes further to say that it's not clear whether the CURRENT administration is going to drop the case.
- ryandrake 8mo agoAm I the only one who thinks it's totally bonkers that a lawsuit can outlast a 4 year presidential administration? I mean, I get it, court cases can be complex, but what on earth could they be continuously doing for four years? I would love to see an hour by hour accounting of the time actually spent by humans on a case like this. My guess is that it's like a poorly run software project: mostly empty, where Person X is blocked waiting on the output of Person Y for weeks, and so on.
- bonsai_spool 8mo ago> Am I the only one who thinks it's totally bonkers that a lawsuit can outlast a 4 year presidential administration? I take it you've never been party to a civil lawsuit between business entities or with the government.
- gamblor956 8mo agoWhen I was still at a firm, several of our clients were fighting off investigations related to the Bermudan loss harvesting scheme that started in the 1980s. The investigations started in 2003 and weren't resolved until 2013.
- helterskelter 8mo ago
- btown 8mo ago[flagged]
- erikerikson 8mo agoFrom your link: > The Wikipedia guidance points out that the Internet Archive and its website, Archive.org, are “uninvolved with and entirely separate from archive.today.” [ERROR] Isn't archive.ph associated with .org? [EDIT] ERROR tag added. In fact, it is not, thanks to replies for fixing my ignorance.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Choco31415 8mo agoArchive.today has several aliases including archive.ph, but archive.org is managed by the Internet Archive and unassociated.
- erikerikson 8mo agoThank you for correcting my knowledge gap.
- loeg 8mo ago> Isn't archive.ph associated with .org? No. > Guidance published as a result of the decision asked editors to help remove and replace links to the following domain names used by the archive site: archive.today, archive.is, archive.ph, archive.fo, archive.li, archive.md, and archive.vn.
- palmotea 8mo ago> Worth noting that this archive site has allegedly manipulated snapshotted content Are you claiming this link was manipulated? Because otherwise that's irrelevant to this discussion. IIRC, the archive.today has a grudge against someone trying to figure out their identity, and the manipulations and other shady behavior have been solely focused on that person.
- forgotaccount3 8mo agoMy 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.
- seanhunter 8mo agoSure but if that’s the case there should be some tax on the mark to market difference. If not it’s just straight up tax fraud (which I suspect is often actually the case).
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoWith the way that Zuckerberg both kisses up to and has bribed the current administration by “settling lawsuits”, this won’t go anywhere.
- blinding-streak 8mo agohttps://archive.ph/Vsdqd https://archive.ph/Vsdqd
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- bilekas 8mo ago> The agency has lost more than a quarter of its staff, withdrawn directives to auditors to crack down on aggressive tax shelters and permitted other auditing efforts to falter. When you see a government doing this, you know they're not interested in collecting Tax from their rich buddies. This case will sit in limbo for 20x years.
- yellow_lead 8mo agoOr they'll settle with Meta in a few years for a small fee with no admission of wrongdoing to save face.
- InkCanon 8mo agoMeta is actually at a huge disadvantage here. The IRS has a litigation success rate of 93%. It's an astoundingly successful legal entity.
- aljgz 8mo agoWhat's the success rate when data is limited to only very large companies, say top 50 in size?
- shagie 8mo agoThat's a success rate that largely is based on suing people who don't have the resources to fight it (no claims made about if they're right or not). However, the IRS has had reductions in staff and funding which made it harder to go after the bigger accounts who have more forensic accounting needing to be done to find the money in the various tax shelters. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/irs-faces-challenges-in-2026-tax-season-due-to-jobs-cuts-and-new-laws https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/irs-faces-challenges-in-... > "The IRS is simultaneously confronting a reduction of 27% of its workforce, leadership turnover, and the implementation of extensive and complex tax law changes" mandated by Republicans' tax and spending measure that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer, Collins said in her report. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-fiscal-impact-of-irs-staffing-cuts/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-fiscal-impact-o... (May 2025) > The Global High Wealth department of the IRS is designed to audit ultrawealthy individuals and corporations, who often hire highly sophisticated tax advisors to devise ways to avoid taxes and to respond to the IRS if they are challenged. But, as of late March, the department was cut by nearly 40 percent—and likely more by now with the additional RIFs. I would be willing to contend that while they've got a 93% overall, that's historical numbers and the teams that would go against Meta and others are severely understaffed.
- mrbluecoat 8mo ago> I.R.S. auditors have been pursuing Meta for about a decade Soon: "I.R.S. auditors have been pursuing Meta for about [a decade + length of current administration term]"
- draw_down 8mo ago[dead]
- dfxm12 8mo agoThe agency has lost more than a quarter of its staff, withdrawn directives to auditors to crack down on aggressive tax shelters and permitted other auditing efforts to falter. Remember the fear mongering ads [0] Republicans ran during the 2022 midterms about arming IRS agents to act as a shadow army to go after every day law abiding people? As it turns out, Republicans were just talking about their own plans for ICE. Remember, every accusation from Republicans is an admission. Additionally, they don't care about crime, as they are specifically turning a blind eye to rich people and corporations breaking the law. 0 - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-87000-irs-agents-midterm-elections/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-87000-irs-agents-mi...
- b112 8mo agoSolution (for big corp)? 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? No corporate taxes. If done right, you could lure away Western judges, police, and more as they retire. Or retire early. You could lure them away not with high salaries, but with shorter work days, AI assistance, and with it being a tropical paradise. Compared to the billions Meta would pay in taxes annually, this endeavour would be far cheaper. And citizens would still pay taxes, of course. Now imagine if Google, Musk Corps, Meta, and others all created a consortium to do just this, and, to build and fund the initial island. I agree, not fully plausible. But... these guys can do a lot of interesting things, and I think if it was truly a tropical paradise, and land and housing was cheap and aplenty, lots might be interested in moving there. Certainly, hiring the "glue" of society would be easy. I know so many people who retire to third world nations, but anyhow... Yes, holes but, maybe something to ponder. Corporate towns have existed, why not corporate nations? edit: As I've said elsewhere, it's -20C outside my door, so a tropical paradise with cheap housing and flying cars, and AGI and beaches and free coconuts may be masking my thoughts a bit. So downvote me, as you are. It burns, but by god it's -20C outside so that's just fine. (warms hands over burning post)
- dctoedt 8mo ago> 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.
- floatrock 8mo agoSounds easier to just buy a few congressmen and a circuit judge or two.
- b112 8mo agoListen my friend. It's -20C outside my house, so I'll kindly ask you to allow this fantasy to continue unabated in my mind, OK? A tech haven, filled with flying cars, and AGI, and warm sandy beaches, and...
- mcs5280 8mo agoSurely Zuckerberg's bribe check is in the mail already
- mentalgear 8mo agoYou mean send to one of Trumpo's milliard Crypto *hitcoins, just like civilised nations like the UAE, Russia or the saudis do it?
- dylan604 8mo agoYou're brave enough to post about Trump, yet chicken*hit enough to not type out the word shit? What standards are you setting for yourself?
- kotaKat 8mo agoThe "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!
- ceramati 8mo agoThis is one of those situations where I hope both parties duke it out to the maximum extent and completely obliterate each other.
- raverbashing 8mo agoI wonder how much Meta wrote off with their Metaverse adventure
- rwmj 8mo agoIf it wasn't every last penny of their spend then they weren't being honest with themselves.
- Nevermark 8mo agoWell 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.
- loeg 8mo agoAbout $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.
- techpulse_x 8mo ago[flagged]
- masfuerte 8mo ago> contending the company lowballed the price of trademarks, customer agreements, software licenses and other rights it moved offshore At the same time they were telling HMRC (the British tax authority) that IP rights, etc. were incredibly valuable and a significant cost of doing business (in the form of payments back to the mothership), and that's why they made very little profit in the UK and didn't need to pay much tax.
- moomin 8mo agoI see a very funny fight on our hands.
- rolandog 8mo agoAh, 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.
- pjc50 8mo agoTrying to trace more detail on this: https://www.taxwatchuk.org/seven-large-tech-groups-estimated-to-have-dodged-2bn-in-uk-tax-in-2021/ 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.
- loeg 8mo ago"Wealth extracted from it" seems like a disingenuous framing of "voluntary market exchange of money for services." It's not like Europe is a colony. Tech companies only make money by providing goods and services people choose to pay for.
- m4rtink 8mo agoGiven all then dumping, bundling, vendor lock-in and shady background deals I am not sure how voluntary this often is in practice.
- numbers_guy 8mo agoThe less they tax corporations the more the burden will fall on income tax. These big multinationals have been defrauding countries worldwide for decades. The issue is at the core of the political turmoil we are experiencing. I'd like to know how much less income tax would be, if we could tax multinationals properly.
- erfgh 8mo agoThe income tax would be less but so would be your salary. The corporate tax is another cost for the company.
- shagmin 8mo agoThat's a bit tenuous. Corporate taxes are a cost after profit, which usually means whatever is left over after expenses. This means companies could pay higher salaries specifically to avoid corporate taxes, or invest in things instead.
- which 8mo agoThe 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.
- josefritzishere 8mo agoTax evasion is so pervasive at large companies that I have come to the conclusion that we need to start criminally charging the c-suite. Without personal consequences they're never going to change.
- loeg 8mo agoThere's no crime element here.
- 0xedd 8mo ago[dead]
- x3ro 8mo agoAccording to the laws written by politicians who happen to get large donations from those exact C-level folks, of course only for their campaigns :)
- loeg 8mo ago"According to the laws" is simply the basis of our entire criminal code, of course.
- throwaway173738 8mo agoMoreover this is the same kind of thinking that has led us to putting people in concentration camps for committing civil infractions. It’s frustrating that some people can totally avoid taxes but I don’t think we should normalize “put people in prison for anything and everything” as a solution to society’s problems.
- ck2 8mo agoWe cannot tariff our way out of debt by taxing consumption by individuals just needing to eat and live Billionaires silo-ing massive wealthy beyond multiple lifetimes must pay their taxes and Trillionaire corporations Each state now has several Billionaires, there are almost 1,000 in the USA They need to pay their damn taxes, a flat tax without deductions for everything over a million dollars of income per year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_the_number_of_billionaires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_the_num... https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-billionaires-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-billio...
- timacles 8mo agoGet ready for a lot more billionaires and a lot more poor people in the next 5-10 years
- trollbridge 8mo agoNote 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.
- amelius 8mo agoIRS is using AI now too.
- ur-whale 8mo agohttps://archive.is/Vsdqd https://archive.is/Vsdqd
- zoobab 8mo agoI wrote about this 20 years ago: http://digital-majority.wikidot.com/forum/t-5766/software-patents-and-fiscal-optimisation http://digital-majority.wikidot.com/forum/t-5766/software-pa... In the meantime, Ireland removed their 0% tax over patent royalties, but Holland kept it at 0%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
- bobthepanda 8mo agoYour 20y old site gave me https errors when I tried to click it, fyi
- q3k 8mo agoDon't access it over https then? The link is http.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 8mo agoWorks fine on my end. The HTTPS URL gives a 301 permanent redirect to HTTP, and then I ordered some boner pills and put my social security number to confirm.
- LoganDark 8mo agoDon't modern browsers automatically redirect http to https?
- qu4z-2 8mo agoThen use a non-buggy browser...
- Gigachad 8mo agoNo they don't. I tried Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. None of them attempted to redirect. They just show a "not secure" warning in the URL bar. The redirect only happens when it's configured on the web server, set in HSTS, or on a TLD that enforces HTTPS. None of these apply to this website.
- siliconc0w 8mo agoIf Corporates can offshore their IP I should be able to offshore my likeness and rent it back to myself to reduce my personal taxes.
- jedberg 8mo agoYou 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.
- monster_truck 8mo agoAlso true for just not paying taxes at all. The number of times I have had people tell me that they just let it float for years so they can settle up for a fraction later is unbelievable.
- loeg 8mo ago> [The IRS] say the company failed to report roughly $54 billion in income and owes nearly $16 billion in back taxes and penalties. That's... just not very much? The claim is that Meta's global ex-US income for the last 15+ years is less than a single year's US income? I really wonder how they came up with this number. Disappointingly little detail in the article about how the IRS justifies the claim that the 2010 price was low (obviously, later profits would not be completely foreseeable at the time -- in 2010 Facebook was simply a much smaller business), or any detail about the 1986 law. It seems pretty farcical to retcon a purchase for being too cheap with evidence from 16 years later.
- snowhale 8mo ago[dead]
- wawaWiWa2 8mo agoIRS Tactics Against Meta, Opens a New Front in the Corporate Tax Fight There. I fixed it for you. Now you have a meaningful headline
- mannanj 8mo agoYes great, and our local governments are also focusing on going after US persons who decide to register their vehicles in Montana and transfer ownership rights to LLC for privacy reasons. "Tax evasion" is the only legitimate use of that, they say, only to the small man of course.
- persedes 8mo agoOne thing I'd love the US to do was something that happend in Germany ~2015, where they bought a lot of "Steuer-CD"s, with leaked info about people hiding money in offshore accounts. Then they allowed everyone to self report and applied more scrutiny to larger corporations which in total added several billions in revenue.
- mothballed 8mo agoThe 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.
- gryffyn 8mo agoGermany continues to do that, North Rhine-Westphalia just bought a >1TB dataset in 2025. https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/landespolitik/offshore-steuerhinterziehung-nrw-100.html https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/landespolitik/offshore-steue...
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- philipallstar 8mo agoCorporation tax is so annoying, with so many r&d caveats etc. Just tax outflows.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- victorbjorklund 8mo agoOn which level do you mean tax it - Do you mean tax it still on the corporation but only when there is a dividend? Or do you mean only tags the recipient. so zero tax if the recipient is based abroad? If you mean the former, Estonia has that type of corporate taxation, which is pretty interesting.
- philipallstar 8mo agoGood question - it feels much neater to tax flows than tax money at rest, letting companies save money in the good times rather than run to spend it to avoid sending it all away as tax. On the topic you mention I think export duty would work.
- travem 8mo agoA different perspective is that tax policy is intended to also shape behavior. Raising taxes on behavior we want to disincentivize, and lowering it on behavior we want to incentivize. While I get the conceptual neatness argument, adhering to that undermines the ability to use tax policy as a tool of government.
- victorbjorklund 8mo agoYea, seems to work pretty well for Estonia.
- laughing_man 8mo agoDifferential pricing schemes are the primary way Corporations avoid corporate income taxes. I remember reading an article by an old Africa hand where he quoted the manager of an international corporation being exasperated with him and saying "You think I'm actually trying to make money here? This is all about taxes." In theory overpaying for modules produced by your subsidiary, or overpricing IP, in a low tax country is illegal, at least in the US, but so much of that is subjective it's difficult for tax authorities to actually do anything unless the numbers are eggregious.
- cpncrunch 8mo agoPaywall free version here https://qz.com/meta-irs-16-billion-tax-bill-intellectual-property https://qz.com/meta-irs-16-billion-tax-bill-intellectual-pro...