Desperate government will now go after the big corporations.

Governments and corporations have, for the past 60 years, had "fusion" in the form of the military industrial complex which Ike warned us about decades ago.  But this solidarity was based on screwing the common man out of his labor by giving unfair advantage in all things to corporations.  The scam culminated with the shark jump known now as "corporations are people".  Even the nanny state loving liberals saw that as an overstep.  That news item, IMO, spells "peak corporations" for the USA and perhaps for the world.  Instead of giving no-growth corporations all the breaks, government is now going to give small business a better shake and they are going to give large corporations a different kind of shake: a shake-down.

The reason?  Because it is very difficult to raise taxes in a never ending recession (or a depression as we will find in 2015, 2016 and 2017).  But greedy government will not slim down until all avenues of revenue collection have been exhausted and that means going after large corporations.  It will be no different than the gold confiscation that happened decades ago.  Corporations will be targeted not because they really did anything wrong but simply because they have the ability to pay.  The disenfranchised people will all go along with it since all corporations will be painted as evil and greedy (whether or not it is in fact true).

The latest volley in this unfolding saga is Microsoft vs. the IRS.  After all these years of letting Mr. Softy warp the laws to its own benefit simply because the government did not want to mess with growth as long as it was happening, the IRS is now suddenly interested in how MSFT does its accounting.  What's at stake is big money which has not been paid on sales revenues because it was all kept offshore.  In the case of MSFT, that could be up to $29.6 billion in unpaid taxes if government can find legal basis for repatriation of that money.

MSFT is going to have a hard time with this one because citizens think that MSFT overcharges for its products and citizens think that they do not have the opportunity to offshore their income to avoid taxes so why should corporations.  After all, corporations are people, riiiiiiggghhhhtttt?  Bottom line: MSFT has a cash pile and that makes it an easy target and someone with "the ability to pay".  The old Charlie Daniels song says "when you shake hands with the Devil you get burned".  Well, banks and corporations have done more than just shake hands.  They are in bed with the government and now they all better watch their backs because government doesn't care who it parasitically steals from as long as it gets a big share of the pie.

Sadly, anything that the government takes, no matter who it got taken from, ultimately comes out of the pockets of the people even if indirectly.  Example: if government steals MSFT cash pile in order to pay back taxes that were suddenly ruled to be due, think of what that would do to the share price.  Pension funds own that "safe" stock as do insurance companies and individuals own it in their 401ks.  Lots of individuals own it.  So when government steals from anyone, it is always stolen from the people at the end of the day.