Secondly, have you done your research? Surely Facebook is not the only company being targeted by the government right now. I can assure you that, surely there are more.
Thirdly, as much as I might dislike an administration, I won't take the giant, speculative leap as to assume that I know exactly what they're thinking.
Fourthly, if this "quietly disappears", why would you automatically assume the administration's involvement? Again, there are presidents I strongly dislike, but part of remaining objective requires grounding your position in fact. Facebook has world class lawyers. Having worked in the legal field for numerous years, I am more than positive that Facebook has made many things "quietly disappear" on their own.
It's not unfounded in the days of pardons to political donors, political donations to jury members, and firing of whistleblowers and witnesses.
You are allowed to assume bad faith when the entity has time and time again showed bad faith. This is suppose to be one of the detriments to acting in bad faith time and time again.
How long have we been in these "days," would you say?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_Unite...
Just to throw you a bone, you'll notice that AG Barr was involved in the pardons resulting from the Iran Contra affair as well.
That said, none of the things you mentioned are related to investigating tax evasion.
"Oh, you sneezed on Sally when you were in first grade without apologizing? You must be guilty of armed robbery."
"Secondly, have you done your research? Surely Facebook is not the only company being targeted by the government right now. I can assure you that, surely there are more."
Can you back this up with some factual information? Would love to know more about other companies. Thanks.
Unfortunately, the media loves to scandalize things, throw out big names, and hype-up news. The problem is when people just take it, run with it, and parrot it back in the public square.
Anytime a company rises to the stature of Facebook, the probability that they will come into the government's cross hairs is much higher.
[1] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/airbus-to-pay-unprecede...
The National Review for instance is excellent at fact-checking, but I would not call the NR a factual paper or a paper of record.
There are no rocks on which to build these days (probably ever), just a series of private rides you can choose to be taken on.
MY COMMENT: question / observation / speculation / hypothesis-with-circumstantial-evidence-to-support-speculation / expectation / expectation
YOUR REPLY: assertion / speculation
question / speculation / assertion
personal observation
question / self-evident-assertion / assertion / assertion
The main complaint to my comment was about unsupported speculation, which I don't see, instead I do see it in the reply. I genuinely want to do better if I should.
Also, your breakdown of the encounter is dishonest. You literally said "Surely" it was about political coercion. And you didn't even attempt to mildly address the allegations brought by the government against Facebook. Next time, you might want to use the world "might" or "potentially".
"Amongst all US companies that offshore profits, including the likes of Halliburton, Facebook has been singled out because the US administration wants the company to do it's bidding regarding policy and algorithms for political advertising"
So because other companies do it, it's okay for Facebook to do it -- that's your rationale? Not good, and all I see is a lazy attempt at utilizing "circumstantial evidence" that can't withstand the test of scrutiny. When cracking down on something, the government will almost always start with the big names in the industry to send a message. Why did you overlook that possibility, or why is that possibility less feasible? These are important questions that should've been asked and addressed.
Furthermore, the President has granted somewhere around 25 pardons; about two of those were actually controversial. The rest barely made headlines, and most haven't. You referenced this as part of your circumstantial evidence. Once again, this absolutely doesn't pass the test of scrutiny.
I didn't write your comment -- you did. Which is why I called you out on throwing claims out there, without even the slightest reference to any reasonable evidence. Throwing out overly-confident words and sloppily referencing acquittals, political reprisals, and talking about what you expect to happen is a good representation of an unfounded comment. Airbus just received the largest-in-history FCPA fine by the DoJ, totaling 3.9 billion. Is the President trying to bring them down as well? Maybe to help out Boeing? If I were to say, "Surely this is about helping Boeing", I would need much more than a couple of references to current events.
Lastly, I'm not a lawyer. Good day.
What news are you talking about? Whatever news you're watching is only giving you one perspective on events, so this "observation" is not helpful on its own.
The rest of your comment is similarly rooted in assumptions and speculation borne out of a hostile media's interpretation of recent events, so the conclusions you're reaching are built on a far less sturdy foundation of "evidence" than you may think.
Given this, many actions taken by the Obama administration that would have dominated the news cycle as impeachment-worthy if taken by the Trump administration were simply ignored or brushed aside by the Obama administration's media allies.
You don't watch FOX News much, I assume
The one where he wore a tan suit. Or the one where he asked for fancy mustard?
They were so hostile to him they had to find minor offenses to scream about.
And even his “friendly” press threw him under the bus for drone strikes and border detentions.
However, currently it's not possible to obtain a lot of facts about the inner workings of this administration, since it is effectively above the law in terms of things like subpoenas.
And on top of this, Congress has the power to grant subpoenas. The Supreme Court has affirmed this right since the 19th Century and it's absurd that defenders of the President keep insisting that every subpoena must be fought in court, all the way up to final appeal, in order to be valid. That is expressly not what Courts have said in the past. See: https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/07/cases-and-controversies-c...
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/courts-slow-trum...
Sucks when the other party uses the rules against you.
If you believe you're being attacked by politically motivated partisans, it's your duty to obstruct them by whatever lawful or procedural means available.
It's all just a dog and pony show anyway. The news just want to drum up advertising because they're a dying media. The best way they have found to do that is click-bait political fighting.
Not sure where in the Constitution this appears...
This emoluments suit has been going since 2017 and got tossed on appeal via a technicality instead of being evaluated on merits, for example, and it hasn't even gone to SCOTUS yet: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/07/appeals-court-rejec...
Then, if you recall FB recent stance on e2e, Barr's and Lindsay's comments, the question of political influence over IRS becomes much less an unlikely proposition.
It does not make it automatically true, but let us not pretend that IRS moves in mysterious ways.
To claim otherwise is to ignore context in which IRS goes after them. It may be completely unrelated, but it does raise questions.
the IRS is famously understaffed, why Facebook? why not Apple? or Amazon? or will they go after them next??
edit: and google?
Also the IRS would definitely go after Amazon instead if it were politically motivated.
[1]: Can't find absolute numbers but US users have 10x revenue per user: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...
amazon is running computing services for the government, which makes me doubt it.
And what about Google?
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-13...
Also if FB is being picked out of all large companies by the Trump administration for something like this which most all large companies have been doing for decades it's easy to believe it may be to get FB back in line with the fake narrative of "stop silencing conservatives on FB" which is a narrative that doesn't exist, but has been pushed by Trump admin folks online for a while now.
> Secondly, have you done your research? Surely Facebook is not the only company being targeted by the government right now. I can assure you that, surely there are more.
But, if this administration does have something to do with targeting Facebook, why would they not go after Amazon if this is politically charged? Trump has been vocal about his hatred of Bezos and Amazon, and his base would love to see it. It would be a fairly safe thing to go after, and honestly even I would have trouble being outraged by it as a non-Trump person.
Also, does the IRS need staff to sue an entity? If they wanted to audit Facebook, sure, they would need staff. But in this case, it's a lawsuit. All you need is lawyers. And since lawyers aren't busy doing IRS audits, they probably have a lot more free time to handle billion dollar lawsuits.
Halliburton uses a different scheme. Its assets are physically offshore, though there are R&D and depreciation shenanigans (buy out of American profits, depreciate against onshore expenses, and tax the production where it happens).
Facebook, on the other hand, claims most of its assets, which are principally intangible, live in Ireland. Its American sub is charged massive licensing fees by the Irish sub, thereby shifting away profits.
Legally speaking, apples and oranges.
This is correct. But the fraction of assets which are physical are high for Halliburton and low for Facebook.
Richard Nixon demanded that the IRS investigate his enemies, but the IRS commissioner at the time refused to do so and eventually testified against Nixon on this issue.
What's the difference? It good anyway for the US because it would set an important precedent for future litigation on the matter of profit offshoring.
BUT, on the other hand, IRS has to win this one case and all others will start negotiating. Once this is declared illegal, it's over for all. So they had to pick one case.
What was the "coercion" in 2016 about? Tin foil hats?
We know people read what they want into political media. the content may affect your experience on facebook but Facebook has not been proven to have any effect on the ballots.
Facebook was probably caught in the act. IRS probably found some legal loophole to actually sue facebook and has not yet found one for google, etc. whats more important to the irs? Getting facebook to change its content policies which would have zero effect on this upcoming election given everyone already knows how theyre going to vote, or 9 billion dollars?
That said, I do believe that tackling offshore revenue is a good move.
Unfounded conspiracy theory?
Just because they haven't gone after other companies, doesn't mean they shouldn't go after Facebook. They might believe the other companies are guilty but don't have enough evidence to win the trial.
Facebook is clearly a US company. Founded and HQ'd in the US, so they should be paying US taxes.
It's a complex area of tax accounting and there are a lot of judgement calls to be made. This lawsuit is about one of those judgement calls.
If most of the advertisers are outside the US, most of the users are outside the US, and most of the servers are outside the US, I think you will agree that it's not reasonable to say ALL of the profit should be taxed in the US.
Which part of the profit should go where is an endless debate among pundits, politicians and academics.
Also hard to argue that their campus that houses the majority of their employees in the US isn’t the one generating the IP.
1) The entire issue here is about international revenue not US revenue.
2) Your second point is true but this IP was then sold to a subsidiary. The dispute is about the price paid in this sale, not about the origin of the IP.
Source? 96.75% of the world population is outside the US, of Facebook users it will be a smaller percentage, but it seems highly unlikely that most of the revenue will come from such a narrow base.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...