I considered that -- we're effectively subsidizing research. I feel way better about that, then giving defense contractors 300/hr to drag&drop some Telerik components into Visual Studio. I figure that's the lesser of two evils IMO. Some companies don't even pay taxes -take Apple[1] who posted 30 billion in profit (for those of you who haven't paid retained earnings taxes, that's ~10 billion that should have gone to the federal government, and if you live in California, your state wouldn't be broke anymore (or significantly less broke)). More than $100 billion dollars homed in a nominal 'headquarters' to rob hard working Americans. (Granted I'd be transfer pricing too if my corporation could afford to retain Skadden, haha.) On the upside, I think they pay the salary for a few LLVM guys.

We digress. Support other startups, if you have a startup - use Tarsnap. ;)

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/29/apple-tax-... (The Guardian does have a bit of a liberal slant, FYI. Think of them as the UK's NYT.)

The spending on pure research is trivial compared with IBM's profits. In its last financial year: "Total capital return to shareholders of $9.5 billion; dividends of $4.9 billion and gross share repurchases of $4.6 billion" http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/48846.wss

IBM also spends a lot of money buying dozens of companies to bolster its results. These include These include Cognos ($5bn), Softlayer ($2bn), Netezza ($1.7bn), Kenexa ($1.4bn) and Trusteer ($1bn). http://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-vs-microsoft-and-the-battle...