Another busy week filled with news we didn’t want to hear. Fox’s huge $787.5 million payout in the Dominion lawsuit seems appropriate, but Lever News reports that Fox can take a tax deduction from the settlement. Ironically the financial consequences of lying are just a cost of doing business for Murdoch and Co.
Fox Corporation reported $1.2 billion in net income in 2022, so the $787 million Dominion settlement is equivalent to about two-thirds of the company’s profits last year. The Lever quotes Daniel Shaviro a tax professor at NYU:
“If your business model is to tell lies so that you’ll get viewers and have lots of advertising revenues, then, odious though this business model may be, the tax system’s job is to tax you on the profits that you actually make from it…”
Fox reported paying an effective income tax rate of 27% in 2022 (the combination of federal and New York taxes). If Fox can write off the full settlement payment to Dominion, it could amount to an estimated $213 million in tax savings. On to cartoons.
Fox didn’t even have to do this:
Losing the lawsuit didn’t cost Fox any viewers:
Justice Sam Alito was in an especially grumpy mood after the other Justices on the Supreme Court ruled that access to Mifepristone will remain unchanged while the case continues to wind through the courts. Alito and Thomas dissented even though the underlying suit is frivolous:
Note that Thomas is drinking a coke.
That the SpaceX rocket crashed and burned was totally on brand for Elon:
Kevin McCarthy explains his position:
Dalai Lama must retire:
To get serious about the debt and the GOP plan, to cut the IRS budget (the IRS can only do their job with the proper staff)… so to cut the budget is to cripple the IRS. And then what? Make the Park Service have to delay maintenance on parks that are tourist meccas and support a large tourist economy of folks who spend a lot of money. A trip to Grand Canyon means hotel room, bottles of wine at dinner etc. If you want to see a high end convenience store, go to Grand Canyon. All the best ready to be sold to happy visitors.
Or what else do they want to destroy? Oh – yes inducements to a greener economy.
In any case though you can find conservative think tanks that can prove that the tax cuts did not drive the debt…. well that’s just spin.
I am an insider re the Park Service. My wife ended her career with 25 years at Eastern National – a non profit that owns the books and fixtures on the book stores at many national parks. She would go to travel conventions representing the Park Service (with a few Rangers). The travel industry loves our National Parks and cannot understand how we try to cut spending for one of the most popular govt agencies.