Meta Tells the IRS Its A.I. Data Centers Might Fail — to Claim Billions in Tax Credits

It often strikes me as quite the biased and one-sided take when a tax-paying entity is called out by the press for tax avoidance (NOT tax evasion, which is illegal). (yes TFA implies that Meta is breaking the law, I'm not talking about situations where entities break the law).

Previously we've seen "The Secret IRS Files" from Propublica as well as other coverage of tax avoidance that never resulted in tax evasion charges. Coverage wide enough that it's arguably safe to assume that no laws were broken because there was quite the demand for an enforcement response.

The funny thing is that a more accurate title for these pieces would be, "Federal Government Allows [tax-paying entity] a Massive Tax Break." And then the piece would be all about how the senate, congress, and president either explicitly wanted there to be this extreme tax loophole or was incompetent and allowed something they didn't mean to allow.

Folks are continually getting upset and riled up about players in the economic system instead of who and what makes the rules.

An analogous example: everyone got cranky about Martin Shkreli, mostly because he raised prices on Deraprim, although also because many would label him a brash jerk. But he went to jail for finance stuff, not raising prices. Why? Because raising prices in the way he did wasn't something the feds thought was illegal or wasn't something they thought he could be convicted of.

Folks get mad at Musk, Zuckerberg, etc... if they're doing something illegal […]

> Under a tax credit created in the 1980s to spur innovation, companies can get a rebate for supplies, but only if they are being tested in an experimental effort, not standard business operations. Meta is claiming that the costly A.I. computer chips it buys from companies, including Nvidia, are entitled to a taxpayer-provided discount as part of the experiment. [...]

> The company started claiming the credit for the data centers two years ago. Since then, Meta’s savings from the credit have soared, trimming almost $4 billion off its tax bill last year, filings show.

Yeah... as a US citizen and taxpayer I think I'd like that $4 billion back.

I think a fun exercise would be for the Times to ask their own accountants how they classify their own engineering employees for the R&D tax credit.

When people are evading taxes, we need to blame the taxes, not the people.

We pay an enormous amount of dumb taxes that are simply funneled into

* government "Contractors". Aka the 1%, or the people that are golf buddies with your legistators

* wars. Which ultimately ends up in #1's pocket.

And why not, it's basically near zero risk save billions in tax. The worst case is they fight this for months, lose, and pay minor fines that acts as low interest rate loan.

It's crazy that some of these facts incentives for smaller businesses are abused by multinational conglomerates. I think the laws should set some sort of limits on who can take the tax breaks, like hello?! This isn't about not paying taxes through some weird schemes. This is literally abusing the system to the next level in my opinion

> One of the biggest expenses of any A.I. data center was computer chips, which are made by companies like Nvidia and cost thousands of dollars each.

“Thousands.” Yes, in the same way that the earth is thousands of years old. 4.5 million thousands, but still, thousands.