Thread

1. simonw · 1790862939 · focus · HN ↗

   > 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.

   1. off_with_their_ · 1790863095 · focus · HN ↗

      [dead]

   2. tt24 · 1790864368 · focus · HN ↗

      Don’t worry, you won’t be getting any of that money. It’ll be going in entirety to the utility monster (bottom quintile)

      1. username223 · 1790867041 · focus · HN ↗

         Those utility monsters contain about 9000 grams of protein apiece when fully grown! They're a bargain compared to your typical protein powder.

         1. kurthr · 1790867411 · focus · HN ↗

            Do you prefer yours Red or Green?
      2. danny_codes · 1790867547 · focus · HN ↗

         I don’t see the connection between the utility monster concept and poor people.

         Also I’m confused, do you want a regressive tax system?

         1. tt24 · 1790868564 · focus · HN ↗

            Yes, I’d prefer a regressive tax system.

            1. mcmcmc · 1790869556 · focus · HN ↗

               Ah, you must be one of those efficient evil types Thiel was talking about

               1. logicchains · 1790871657 · focus · HN ↗

                  There's nothing good about taking from people who work hard to give to people who live off other people's hard effort while contributing nothing to society.

                  1. mcmcmc · 1790872477 · focus · HN ↗

                     You sound like you’ve never lived without money. Most people drawing welfare payments are working full time or multiple part time jobs that fail to pay a living wage. Taking money back from people who work hard to exploit and extract value from everyone beneath them merely rights a power imbalance. You know US workers are deprived of roughly $15B a year through wage theft? It’s also incredibly narrow minded to believe that the only measure of contributing to society is a person’s income.
                  2. danny_codes · 1790880981 · focus · HN ↗

                     Fascinating. Does this include inheritance, or is that an exception to your rule.

                     1. tt24 · 1790923665 · focus · HN ↗

                        Well inheritance isn’t taking from anyone, it’s a voluntary transaction
                  3. verall · 1790890386 · focus · HN ↗

                     This is interesting because it's the same logic either way -

                     "taking from people who work hard (the working class or billionaires) to give it to people who live off other peoples hard effort (billionaires or poor people)

                     In 2026 capitalism who is living off whom? Who is really toiling or creating utility?

                     Also to be clear, regressive taxes is ghoulish.

      3. mtoner23 · 1790869766 · focus · HN ↗

         No. its going to old people and health care
   3. [deleted] · 1790864547 · focus · HN ↗

      [deleted]

   4. atomicUpdate · 1790867775 · focus · HN ↗

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

      It was never yours in the first place. It was their money they kept, not money given to them by the government. I don’t know why this distinction is so difficult for people.

      1. SmasherEpilepti · 1790868931 · focus · HN ↗

         Your tax burden is a responsibility to society, and not paying your share is benefiting from systems without carrying your own weight, effectively stealing from the system.

         > I don’t know why this distinction is so difficult for people.

         It's only a distinction if you don't understand what the purpose of taxes are.

      2. mindslight · 1790871768 · focus · HN ↗

         Corpos are inherently government creations. It's utterly fallacious to apply individualist libertarian thinking to them. This is not a case of a noble individual suffering the drag of a government they'd rather distance themselves from! Rather what we have here is an artificially-designated group that only exists because of the government, enthusiastically wielding the power of government for their own benefit, but then choosing a position that the outsized benefits they receive from that system are still not enough to contribute back.

         1. robocat · 1790988844 · focus · HN ↗

            Governments and businesses are symbiotic.

            You could just as equally say that governments are created by businesses and that governments feed by taxing corporations.

            You can frame it either way to make an argument from either direction.

            We mostly argue that businesses depend upon our government because reasons.

            1. mindslight · 1790992852 · focus · HN ↗

               I said corpos specifically, not businesses. I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I don't really see how it's relevant to what I said?

               Maybe it could be a stronger way of saying what I said? Pointing out that government wouldn't be taxing us in the first place without businesses willing it into existence?

               But this feels a bit too reductive in that it dilutes the motivation to business in general rather than specific businesses.

   5. burnerRhodov3 · 1790868662 · focus · HN ↗

      Spend millions on taking Amazon to court -> Spin months getting congressional support for law change -> two years later, Amazon pays a settlement and the government buys 200 MOABs, Amazon now does a double dutch/ irish/ Cayman islands tax evasion. The game continues.

      For these companies, it's totally worth doing illegal tax shit. Even if they are forced to pay, they pay it years down the line, so the current cost of capital starts to come into play.

   6. yieldcrv · 1790869009 · focus · HN ↗

      To satisfy the experiments vs operations criteria, all they have to do is deploy a software update to the inference library for slightly higher tokens per second, and compare, you know, in an experiment

      This is something we all do

      pitchforks down, its the reporter and the non technical accountants that are wrong and both groups should be replaced

   7. xgbi · 1790882539 · focus · HN ↗

      How can you claim that this is an experiment when you deploy it everywhere all at once, and have semi-autonomous, paying versions of it (Muse, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dev.meta.ai&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dev.meta.ai&#x2F;) in the hands of 1000s of people?

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