| Sony Ericsson says 4Q profit fell nearly 17 percent from last year
Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson said on Wednesday fourth-quarter profit fell nearly 17 percent as higher costs and taxes more than offset the impact of higher shipments. The joint venture Telefon AB LM Ericsson and Sony Corp. said it earned 373 million euros ($555 million) in the last three months of 2007, down from 447 million euros a year earlier. Sales remained almost unchanged at 3.77 billion euros ($5.61 billion) compared with 3.78 billion euros in the fourth quarter in 2006. Sony Ericsson said the number of shipped units rose about 18 percent in the quarter, but operating costs increased 16.2 percent to 724 million euros ($1.8 billion) from 623 million euros a year ago. The company added however that it gained market share in the quarter thanks to demand for its higher-end phones, including the K550 Cyber-shot, the W200, W300 and W580 Walkman phones in the Americas and Europe.
TAX REPORT
The IRS is definitely targeting [foreign] entertainers and athletes," says Charles Lubar, a senior tax partner in the London office of law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius. "They believe there has been a lot of avoidance by foreign artists and entertainers who go in and out of the United States and don't pay their proper U.S. taxes." For the vast majority of taxpayers, the odds of getting audited remain quite low. Only about 1% of all individual income-tax returns filed in each of the past few years have been audited. But the chances of attracting the IRS's attention now are significantly higher than they were just a few years ago. In fiscal 2007, the IRS examined a total of nearly 1.4 million individual income-tax returns. That's up 7% from the prior year and the highest number since 1997.
January 2003
New cabinet level departments, entitlements galore and so much more! W. James Antle III wants to know why government can afford everything except for tax cuts?
Single Federal Code Redux Part Two: Using Congress to safeguard our liberties: Bruce Walker continues his look at the benefits of a more powerful federal government with the role that Congress would play in his scheme
Blackmun's bane: Attorney Mark M. Trapp reads Roe v. Wade and it's supporting documentation, something few people have apparently bothered to do, and discovers something interesting
Fighting for freedom while losing our freedom: Once again American soldiers stand ready to defend their nation's interests and free a people from tyranny. Alan Caruba says it's a shame no one cares about the diminishing freedom of Americans
Problems for the Axis of Weasel: Jackson Murphy says that world events are rapidly illustrating the irrelevance of nations like France and Germany
Walking on thin ice: All the protests and UN posturing doesn't change a fact, says Henry Lamb, Saddam Hussein is on the thin edge of the wedge and it's going to be George W.
Snipes jury adjourns for day without verdict in actor's tax case
OCALA, Fla.: The jury in actor Wesley Snipes' tax case passed its first full day of deliberation Wednesday without a verdict. Snipes and two co-defendants are accused of fraud and conspiracy in an eight-count indictment from 2006. The action star faces six additional charges for failing to file tax returns from 1999-2004. The IRS alleges Snipes, Eddie Ray Kahn and Douglas P. Rosile engaged them in a long fight insisting the actor didn't owe any taxes. The government must prove not only that Snipes and company broke the law, but that they meant to. Snipes' lawyers say he was a victim of bad financial advice, and sincerely believed he didn't have to pay the government anything. Kahn is the alleged ringleader of a central Florida tax protest group called American Rights Litigators, then Guiding Light of God Ministries.
Call for windfall tax on oil firms
Union leaders stepped up their call for a windfall tax on oil companies ahead of an expected announcement from Shell of multi billion pound profits. Unite said recent profits in the industry were "obscene" and urged the Government to take action, especially because of rising energy prices. Joint general secretary Tony Woodley said: "Shell shareholders are doing very nicely whilst the rest of us, the stakeholders, are paying the price and struggling." There has been speculation that Shell could announce profits of over £13 billion later on Thursday, the highest earnings ever made by a British company. Mr Woodley said that amount of money, added to oil industry profits he put at over £50 billion in the last three years, was "quite frankly obscene".
Gov. lays out $124 bil spending plan
The budget proposes to close a deficit of $4.4 billion. According to Spitzer, if spending growth had been kept to around 5 percent over the last five years, there would be nearly a $4 billion surplus this year. �If we smoothed our spending,� Spitzer said in his budget address. �We would have a $4 billion surplus that could be used to close the gap.� Spitzer announced he had three main goals for the budget. Those objectives are closing the deficit, protecting core priorities, such as making sure education and health care reforms are completed and investing in economic growth. He handed out a 45-page presentation that outlined his exact goals for the upcoming fiscal year. A main objective of the proposed budget is no new taxes, a mantra that Spitzer has repeated since taking office. Spitzer also wants to close numerous tax loopholes, a move he said would eliminate the need for new taxes.
COLUMN: Honk if you'll miss Uncle Sam after April 15
It's about time for those guys in Uncle Sam costumes to do your taxes.You know, the folks wearing red-white-and-blue, long underwear and longer white beards who stand on the sidewalk in subpolar temperatures and beckon your business to their employer, an income tax-preparation business.They're called "human directionals" in the advertising trade. And they're the hottest trend in the business of separating consumers from their cash." ... the majority of Americans are impulse buyers," according to San Diego-based Allure Advertising, which hires human directionals in droves. "Our sign-twirlers/human directionals are twirling to thousands of impulse passer-byers. Only an intersection away, thousands are ready to buy and simply need to be pointed in the right direction."In other words, we're sheep with debit cards.Allure Advertising calls this magical process the "check-out lane effect.""The great minds behind the check-out lane concept don't expect every single person to buy; in fact they only require a small percentage to do so to be extremely successful," according to the company's Web site.
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