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Comment by blantonl | Hacker News Reader

A new congressional investigation claims Microsoft has been able to avoid paying $6.5-billion in taxes since 2009 thanks to the complicated tax structure in the U.S.

The role of a CFO (and his office) is to do exactly what resulted above. Build a team of accountants, lawyers, and financial analysts that makes sure that the financial health of the company is strong. "Is this a tax credit we can take advantage of, do it." "Can we legally execute this transaction and conserve millions of dollars? do it."

If these items are legal based on federal law and pass Microsoft's board's scrutiny, then why is this even an issue?

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The role of a CFO (and his office) is to do exactly what resulted above.

And the role of Congress and its tax committees is to take note when they've left open obviously abused loopholes and close or limit them.

This Puerto Rico scheme has been going on since well before 2009 and more companies than just Microsoft have been abusing it. The Senate Finance Committee and the Ways And Means Committee have been well aware for many years before that.

Someone here is cheating. It's not the corporations that take advantage of a loophole that is legal even though it is unfair and harmful to the nation. The cheaters are the lazy and corrupt congressmen and senators that watch it happen and read their reports every year, year after year, and can't rouse themselves to do anything about it.

Lucky for you, you get to fire some of them six weeks from now.

> why is this even an issue?

Because the Democrats want to press home the message that corporations and wealth are inherently evil in this election cycle, and the chairman of the committee quoted in the article is a Democrat, as the article mentions, twice.

An unfortunately large percentage of the US population apparently isn't capable of formulating the good and simple question in the last sentence of your post -- a large enough percentage that the story can attract enough eyeballs to justify its publication.

>Because the Democrats want to press home the message that corporations and wealth are inherently evil

Excuse me while I go pick up my eyes that just rolled across the floor. This isn't even remotely true - there's nothing wrong with wealth or corporations in general - but when corporations begin doing evil things in the pursuit of wealth, big surprise, people are going to complain.

> Because the Democrats want to press home the message that corporations and wealth are inherently evil in this election cycle...

Can we see quote from a Democrat saying this?

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