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Laumeier Sculpture Park’s 2023 Visiting Artists in Residence are Pittsburgh-based artists Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis. This collaborative duo utilizes innovative approaches to conceptualism and minimalism to realize their […]
The post A Number of Tragedies appeared first on Explore St. Louis.
As the death toll in Israel rises, the Biden administration will provide charter flights to help U.S. citizens leave the country and continued Thursday to pledge unconditional support for the Middle East ally in the aftermath of an attack by the militant group Hamas. The number of Americans killed in Hamas’ attack that began Saturday […]
The post With violence raging in Israel, U.S. citizens to be flown out on charters appeared first on Missouri Independent.
On Oct. 12, National Farmers’ Day, Americans honored the hardworking people who keep the world fed and clothed. But the farming labor force has a problem: It’s aging rapidly. The average American farmer is 57 and a half years old, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s up sharply from […]
The post America’s farmers are getting older, and young people aren’t rushing to join them appeared first on Missouri Independent.
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In a long-awaited development, the largest audit in the history of the IRS has finally taken its next step. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that the agency had notified the company that it owes $28.9 billion in back taxes, plus penalties and interest.
The case is epic not only in dollars but in scope. As ProPublica reported in an in-depth narrative in 2020, the IRS saw the case as a chance to prove the agency’s effectiveness. Often cowed by the prospect of facing off against corporations with endless resources, the IRS set out to be bolder and more aggressive. It took the unusual step of hiring a corporate law firm to represent the agency, a step that incensed Microsoft. The company, along with others in its industry, responded by rallying allies in Congress to rein in the IRS.
The audit is already well over a decade old and figures to grow older, since Microsoft is allowed to appeal the IRS’ conclusions and says it plans to. The audit focused on a deal the agency would later describe as “illusory in nature, serving no material economic purpose except to shift income.” In 2005, ProPublica wrote, Microsoft “sold its most valuable possession — its intellectual property — to an 85-person factory it owned in a small Puerto Rican city.” Having struck a favorable tax deal with Puerto Rico, Microsoft then channeled its profits to the facility, which burned Windows and Office software onto CDs.
At the time, some Microsoft executives celebrated this “pure tax play,” and they had reason for optimism. Initially, the IRS did not take an aggressive tack. An early audit resulted in a much more modest change in 2011.
But earlier that same year, the IRS had set up a new unit to audit intra-company deals that sent U.S. profits to tax havens — deals that were especially common among tech companies like Google, Facebook and Apple. The leader of the new unit decided that Microsoft’s deal in Puerto Rico was worth a much closer look. The IRS withdrew its initial finding and dug in to build a deep, comprehensive case.
By the time ProPublica published its story on the audit in 2020, the two sides had sued each other, and one case had long been stuck in court. Almost three years after the last motions in the case, a federal judge still had not ruled on whether the IRS should receive documents it was seeking. Shortly after ProPublica asked the court for an update, the ruling finally came down.
The judge sided with the IRS, writing “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.” He agreed with the IRS’ characterization of the deal as a tax shelter.
For the next three years, the case disappeared from public view until Microsoft’s announcement.
“We believe we have always followed the IRS’ rules and paid the taxes we owe in the U.S. and around the world,” wrote Daniel Goff, a senior Microsoft executive, in a blog post on the company’s site that revealed the IRS’ determination.
The $29 billion that the IRS was seeking, he wrote, covered 2004 to 2013. He asserted, however, that the total, were the IRS to ultimately prevail, would be reduced by about $10 billion in taxes that Microsoft has already paid on its overseas profits. A major feature of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax bill was a requirement that companies repatriate those profits, though they paid a special, low tax rate when they did. Microsoft had stored up $142 billion in offshore profits by 2017.
The conclusion of the audit sends the fight to a new phase. The IRS has an internal appeals division, and Microsoft said it would pursue its arguments there. It’s a significant development since the IRS had once signaled that it would bar Microsoft’s access to an appeal, a stance that led to blowback in Congress from the company’s allies. IRS appeals officers, who are independent of the auditors, often settle cases for steep discounts out of fear that the agency will lose a court battle. The appeals process is secret.
If Microsoft does not get the result it wants there, it can take its case to the U.S. Tax Court. Each step is likely to take years, meaning the case could easily stretch into the late 2020s.
The IRS attorneys who worked on the case believed it to be, by far, the largest U.S. audit ever, and the amount the IRS is seeking from Microsoft is several times larger than in any other publicly disclosed audit in the agency’s history. The case, in a way, is the last, great vestige of the IRS before it was gutted by budget cuts over the course of the 2010s and corporate audits plummeted. While the recent infusion of billions from the Inflation Reduction Act will allow the agency to rebuild itself in the coming years, the Microsoft case shows the fruit of those efforts could take a long, long time to reap.
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Congress is one step closer to prioritizing stillbirth prevention at the federal level.
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act, which ensures that federal maternal and child health dollars can be used for stillbirth prevention efforts. Every year in the U.S., more than 20,000 pregnancies end in the death of an expected child at 20 weeks of pregnancy or more. Research shows as many as 1 in 4 stillbirths may be preventable.
The passage in the Senate marks a milestone for the bill, which was first introduced last year but never came up for a vote in either the House or Senate. This time, the bill was introduced in July and passed by the Senate on Sept. 30.
ProPublica’s ongoing reporting on stillbirths over the last two years has revealed systemic failures that have contributed to the country’s stillbirth crisis, from federal agencies not prioritizing research, awareness and data collection to the racial disparities that have led to higher stillbirth risks in Black communities. In March, the National Institutes of Health released a report calling the country’s stillbirth rate “unacceptably high” and issued a list of recommendations to reduce it, many of which were aimed at the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., reintroduced the bill with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. The next day, U.S. Reps. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, and Alma Adams, D-N.C., introduced the measure in the House.
“ProPublica’s investigative reporting has helped call public attention to this major public health concern, and with the tremendous advances we’ve made in modern medicine, we have the capability to do much more,” Merkley said in a statement.
He urged the House to quickly pass the bill, citing the devastating impact stillbirth has on parents and families. He emphasized that some stillbirths can be prevented.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, an original co-sponsor, said he was grateful the Senate came together to unanimously pass the legislation and echoed the hope that it continues to move swiftly through Congress.
“Effective problem solving starts with having a thorough understanding of root causes, contributors and vulnerabilities,” he said in a statement. “Our bill would get rid of limits on federal resources so that the medical community can further pursue evidence-based efforts to support expectant moms and save babies’ lives.”
The bill united lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and has the power to “help save lives and ensure more mothers have the chance to raise their babies,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who added she is eager for Congress to send it to President Biden’s desk for his signature.
“In one of the richest countries in the world, our rising maternal mortality rate and high number of stillbirths is absolutely unconscionable,” said Duckworth, who has worked on other maternal and child health legislation.
The nonprofit Healthy Birth Day, which is based in Iowa, championed the bill and celebrated its passage in the Senate. CEO Emily Price traveled to Washington, D.C., last month with families that have suffered stillbirths to raise awareness about the crisis.
“This is a huge win for families who have endured the tragedy of stillbirth and a huge win to keep future families from facing life without their baby,” Price said. ProPublica’s reporting, she said “helped show Congress, staffers and Americans the reality of living through stillbirth and the major impacts it can have on families and communities.”
Less than a third of state health departments are using money allocated under Title V Maternal and Child Health block grants for stillbirth reduction, Price said. The bill, which doesn’t provide additional funding, amends the Social Security Act to explicitly permit public health officials to use those federal dollars for stillbirth prevention initiatives.
Healthy Birth Day, which created a Count the Kicks app to encourage expectant parents to be aware of and track movements in the womb, has worked with health departments to focus on the importance of monitoring fetal movement.
Price said it is also critical that lawmakers pass another key stillbirth prevention bill currently in Congress, the Stillbirth Health Improvement and Education (SHINE) for Autumn Act. That sweeping legislation addresses significant gaps in stillbirth research, data, awareness and fetal autopsy training.
Adams, co-chair of the Black Maternal Health Caucus, said she was proud to see the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act pass in the Senate and hopes her colleagues in the House will soon follow suit. Congress, she said, is finally treating stillbirth “with the urgency it deserves.”
“For too long, stillbirth has been a silent crisis,” Adams said, “but the mothers and families experiencing this crisis deserve a voice.”
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