How Microsoft evades the taxman

How Microsoft moves profits offshore to cut its tax bill

When someone buys a copy of Office at the Microsoft Store in Bellevue Square, that cash doesn’t take the short route to the company’s Redmond headquarters four miles up the road.

Instead, after accounting for state taxes, the profit goes to a Microsoft sales subsidiary in Nevada.

From there, much of that money begins a complicated global trek that ultimately leads across the Atlantic, with two stops on the island tax haven of Bermuda.

Microsoft in the past 20 years built that network of subsidiaries in part to minimize the taxes it pays to governments worldwide.

The company is hardly alone. Many multinational corporations have set up similar structures, in some cases reducing their tax burden to near zero.

— source seattletimes.com | Matt Day | Dec 12, 2015

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France bans Office 365 and Google Docs in schools

The French Ministry of National Education has urged educational institutions to stop using free versions of Google Workspace and Microsoft Office 365 for schools and students. The Ministry said the offerings are incompatible with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Schrems II judgment of the European Court of Justice and France’s internal doctrines.

France’s privacy watchdog (CNIL) recommends that institutions use collaborative suites offered by service providers “exclusively subject to European law” which “host the data within the European Union and do not transfer it to the United States”.

The minister added that “the deployment of Office 365 is prohibited in French administrations“. In fact, France’s interministerial digital director issued a circular published in

— source techzine.eu | | Nov 22, 2022

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Microsoft vs Indian Farmers: Agri-Stacking the System

In April, the Indian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft, allowing its local partner CropData to leverage a master database of farmers. The MoU seems to be part of the AgriStack policy initiative, which involves the roll out of ‘disruptive’ technologies and digital databases in the agricultural sector.

Based on press reports and government statements, Microsoft would help farmers with post- harvest management solutions by building a collaborative platform and capturing agriculture datasets such as crop yields, weather data, market demand and prices. In turn, this would create a farmer interface for ‘smart’ agriculture, including post-harvest management and distribution.

CropData will be granted access to a government database of 50 million farmers and their land records. As the database is developed, it will include farmers’ personal details, profile of land held (cadastral maps, farm size, land titles, local climatic and geographical conditions), production details (crops grown,

— source counterpunch.org | Colin Todhunter | May 21, 2021

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How Microsoft Killed Nokia and Harmed an Entire Country

— source techrights.org | 2020/12/27

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Microsoft’s new “Productivity Score” helps employers spy on workers

Microsoft has expanded the analytics provided with its Office 365 suite of productivity applications into a “full-fledged workplace surveillance tool” according to privacy advocates. The tool, called Productivity Score, allows employers to know the number of days a person was active on Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype and Teams over the previous four weeks and on what type of device. The software gives managers access to 73 pieces of granular data about employee behaviors, all of which is associated with employees by name.

— source wsws.org | 29 Nov 2020

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How Microsoft Became ‘Successful’

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