[Am-info] Microsoft taxes?

[Roy Bixler]

On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 11:12:09AM -0500, Eric Bennett wrote:
> Companies sometimes list their tax liability and then, separately and more
> obscurely, list a their stock option tax credit.  This makes it *appear* as
> if they have paid a lot in taxes, when in some cases the option credit
> almost entirely cancels out the tax liability.  I think some companies
> don't even list the options tax credit in their financial statements,
> although last time I checked, Microsoft did list it, but it wasn't listed
> right next to the tax liability.  Sometimes the liability is listed on the
> balance sheet as money "allocated" to pay income taxes but, in fact, the
> allocated money is never spent because of various tax credits.  I haven't
> looked at Microsoft's financial statement so I don't know whether the
> numbers in the above article take this into account or not.

I just checked Bill Parish's Web site at "http://billparish.com" where
he links to an article called "Inside Story on Microsoft and Enron"
which he wrote for the Portland Tribune on 26 February 2002:

http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=9726

In the article, he reiterates his claim that Microsoft pays no income
taxes.  It would be interesting to see if that's still true.

R.