
How long as this case been going on for?
At this rate Microsoft will be bankrupt before they have to pay the fine.
Now that they're going the HP way burning cash making useless hardware it's shouldn't take very long.
The EU's second-highest court has rejected Microsoft's appeal on the antitrust fine levied by the European Commission four years about, although it did knock a cool €39m (£31.2m) off the total. The General Court was unmoved by Microsoft's arguments against the fine, which was imposed by the European Commission after Microsoft …
Damn right. Without our tax h̶a̶v̶e̶n̶ efficient status, we'd just be another Belgium, and look how well they're doing.
Actually, no, we wouldn't be another Belgium, because half of them commute over and work here anyway! So we *and* Belgium would be worse off.
I suppose we do have the EIB, European Courts of Human Rights, and a few other institutions lying around. But kill off the tax efficiency, and the population would halve (okay, a quarter would leave...). Also, if you thought you'd seen a property bubble, OH BOY...
So please don't. It's nice and cushy here!
Using Luxembourg 'to act as a tax haven'? Is your vivid imagination responsible for popping that thought in to your little head or did you believe something you read on the internet?
I think you will find that MS (along with most US tech companies) are based out of Dublin for tax purposes.
Yeah, because with their two 100billion+ payouts already, 0.8bn is going to make a hell of a difference.
The money would be better spent put towards alternatives to MS (e.g. LibreOffice government projects) because that would not only help the Greeks but everyone else too (Hell, the British government just shaved off 65m on their IT this year alone by negotiating with MS directly).
But, actually, what will happen is it will end up being seen as a "windfall" to the EU and they'll use it for some international advertising campaign for green energy or some other such waste of space.
That way, they can tack on their "investigation" fee, charge 40% interest and bump it up 15% just for the hell of it.
Sell it on a couple of times too, to compound the charges.
Hey, seems like what they tried to do with my "fines". (Was an admin error by HomeChoice.) (Which in turn was SUCH an error on my part...)