Aggregator

The Lenhard Family Holiday Light Show is back Thursday. It's located at the Larry G. Crites Memorial Park in Festus.

UMSL is hosting a big women's volleyball tournament Thursday. It's the Division II NCAA Midwest Regionals.

Police are searching for two people of interest in a Thanksgiving murder.

Shani Knight likes to joke that the real reason she agreed to open GOTham and Eggs (3139 South Grand Boulevard, 314-833-8355) with her husband, Jason, is because she wanted her house back. Prior to opening the South Grand superhero-themed diner, the only venue for Jason's massive, mostly Batman-themed collection was their home.

An area once known for its factories, River North is now one of Chicago's hippest art and design neighborhoods.

For years, administrators of the Gateway Arch National Park suspected that visitors were being undercounted — and now they finally have proof. The undercount was confirmed in a new, two-year study of the downtown St. Louis national park, which used location-based mobile device data, park leaders say. Previously, counts were based on a visitor use study dating back to the 1990s, according to a press release issued by the park yesterday.

A St. Louis teenager is facing two assault charges after allegedly striking a stranger on the MetroLink in the head with a rock. The charges, one felony and one misdemeanor, were filed yesterday against Joseph Ahmad Davis, 19. Police say that he was on the train on November 14 when he began rifling through the grocery bags of another rider who he didn't know.

Sometimes, the true outcome of a political campaign isn’t reflected in the final vote count.   Jason Kander’s 2016 Senate race is a prime example. Despite Donald Trump winning Missouri by nearly 19 points, Roy Blunt only squeaked out a win with a margin under 3%, thanks in part to a viral advertisement featuring Kander assembling […]

The post Missouri politics proves that sometimes just entering a race makes you a winner appeared first on Missouri Independent.

The bankrupt broadcaster said it plans to drop regional sports broadcasts, possibly in September 2024, as part of a wind down.

WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress are divided on whether to set guardrails on additional military aid to Israel as that country responds to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks with airstrikes and a ground war in Gaza. It’s not yet clear what those conditions would be or how they would affect congressional support for aid […]

The post Democrats split on placing conditions on military aid to Israel appeared first on Missouri Independent.

On This Day, November 30, 2003…  New York City officially renamed a street on the Lower East Side Joey Ramone Place after the late Ramones frontman Joey Ramone, who passed away April…

Source

You’d think that working for your dad you'd have job security, but that wasn’t the case for Harry Waters, son of Pink Floyd rocker Roger Waters. Harry tells Rolling Stone that despite playing keyboard and organ for…

Source

Katie Anderson’s story shows the difficulty of finding some measure of accountability after being sexually assaulted.

Elon Musk enters his Caligula era.

State courts must now decide how to handle life-threatening pregnancy issues that state attorneys, lawmakers, and medical officials refuse to clear up.

by Paul Kiel

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Last month, Microsoft disclosed that the IRS had sent the company a bill for $28.9 billion in back taxes as part of an audit. The examination, which began more than a decade ago, is the largest in the agency’s history, and it’s far from over, as Microsoft has vowed to appeal the findings.

The centerpiece of the audit, as ProPublica detailed in an investigation nearly four years ago, is a 2005 transaction that moved tens of billions of Microsoft’s U.S. profits to Puerto Rico to help the software giant save billions in taxes. In a letter sent Wednesday, three senators, citing ProPublica’s reporting, focused attention on the company that helped Microsoft cook up that scheme: the mega-consultancy KPMG.

“KPMG’s role in Microsoft’s tax evasion is deeply disturbing, indicating that KPMG helped Microsoft reward shareholders and executives, while depriving the federal government of billions in tax revenue needed to pay for health care, environmental protection, infrastructure, and more,” says the letter, which was signed by Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse and sent to KPMG’s CEO. “You owe Congress an explanation for your firm’s actions.”

In 2004, Microsoft was considering closing a small factory in Puerto Rico where some 85 workers burned Windows and Office software onto CDs. The tax break that had led Microsoft to open the factory was expiring. But KPMG pitched Microsoft on an idea for a break that would be far more valuable.

Boasting about the firm’s experience in setting up similar deals for other huge companies, KPMG said it could help Microsoft save billions in taxes by transferring profits to the island. The little factory would buy the exclusive rights to Microsoft’s technology. Meanwhile, KPMG assured Microsoft that its San Juan partner had a long track record of negotiating “significant tax holidays for U.S. companies with the Puerto Rican government.”

At the time, as ProPublica’s reporting showed, KPMG took great pains to make Microsoft’s moves — which effectively increased the valuation of the Puerto Rican subsidiary from $0 to $30.4 billion over the space of 24 hours, according to the IRS — seem bona fide. “What can we do to make this thing real?” read the notes from one KPMG meeting.

After Microsoft agreed to the arrangement, KPMG helped the company complete the deal. Its economists generated complex models that justified the price the factory paid for Microsoft’s intellectual property rights.

Over a decade later, when the IRS fought to obtain KPMG documents as part of its audit, Microsoft objected that the material was protected by a privilege for tax advice. The IRS eventually won access to the documents when a federal judge agreed that KPMG had been promoting a tax shelter. “The Court finds itself unable to escape the conclusion that a significant purpose, if not the sole purpose, of Microsoft’s transactions was to avoid or evade federal income tax,” U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez wrote in his opinion. Martinez added that documents in the case showed KPMG had “promoted” the transactions.

Just as Microsoft was far from the only tech company to shift profits to tax havens, other Big Four consultancies also worked to enable those deals. But the Microsoft case provides a unique window into one of the largest deals, and the senators, in their questions, seek more detail about KPMG’s role in it, as well as the firm’s history assisting other profit-shifting transactions. Based on the evidence in the Microsoft case, they wrote, “KPMG clearly played a central role in the systematic offshoring of corporate profits, which has eroded the U.S. tax base.”

KPMG did not immediately respond to ProPublica’s inquiry about the letter. The firm declined to comment for our earlier story on the audit. (In a brief in the IRS case, KPMG wrote that it had “provided routine tax advice to its longstanding client, Microsoft, in response to Microsoft’s request for advice relating to a plan that Microsoft itself conceptualized — actions that do not, under any standard, qualify as the ‘promotion’ of a tax shelter.”)

In response to questions for ProPublica’s original article, Microsoft said it “follows the law and has always fully paid the taxes it owes.”

Expect heated debates over single words — and even commas — at COP28.

Nearly all of them are subject to noise levels linked to hearing loss, a study shows.

'I cannot stand losing,' Gary Pinkel said as he was named as the coach of the Mizzou football team on Nov. 30, 2000. Here was columnist Bernie Miklasz's first take on the hire.