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On Tuesday, Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation agreed to pay a $787 million settlement to Dominion, concluding two years of litigation over the news network’s false claims, made by Tucker Carlson and others, that the 2020 election was rigged. (Janos Kummer / Getty Images)
Fox’s massive settlement with private-equity-backed voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems didn’t just spare the conservative news organization from a lengthy public defamation trial or a full public reckoning for its election lies — it could also mean a tax break as large as $213 million, according to a review by us.
On Tuesday, Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, agreed to pay a $787 million settlement to Dominion, the largest-known media defamation payout in US history, concluding two years of litigation over the news network’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
Thanks to an arcane line in the tax code, Fox can deduct that settlement payment from its income taxes, according to a company spokesperson and tax experts consulted by us. That’s because federal law allows taxpayers to write off many legal costs, providing that they are “ordinary and necessary” business expenses. The IRS has repeatedly affirmed that for major corporations, paying out settlements is just part of the cost of doing business.
In Fox’s case, that business involved ginning up false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump.
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,
Daniel Shaviro, a professor of tax law at NYU, told us. “And those profits are indeed reduced when you are successfully sued by the victims of your malicious falsehoods.”
Brian Nick, Fox Corporation’s chief communications officer, told us, “I can confirm tax deductibility but not the amount.”
Exceptions to these tax write-off rules exist for settlement payments in sexual harassment or abuse cases with nondisclosure agreements. Fox has paid out several such sexual harassment settlements, including a 2016 settlement with former host Gretchen Carlson, and also settled with shareholders in 2017 for creating a culture of sexual harassment that had a negative effect on the company’s value.
Tax law also prohibits deductions for most fines and penalties paid to the government. But when corporations cut deals to settle claims of legal wrongdoing with the government, they often reap tax benefits.
That was the case for major corporate settlements between banks and the federal government after the financial crisis, and between drug companies and localities amid the opioid crisis.
When JPMorgan settled with the federal government in 2013 over charges that the bank lied about the quality of mortgages it underwrote, $11 billion of the $13 billion settlement was tax deductible, news reports indicated.
At least $2.7 billion of a $5 billion settlement between the government and Goldman Sachs in 2016 for that bank’s misconduct in the lead-up to the financial crisis was tax deductible, earning the company a $936 million tax rebate. Of an $11.6 billion settlement between Bank of America and the federal government in 2014, $10 billion was tax deductible, ensuring the bank a $4-billion windfall from the IRS.
The 2017 Republican tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, amended the IRS statute so payments to government entities could not be deducted if they were related to the “violation of any law,” but were deductible if they constitute “restitution” or “remediation” payments or are the cost of “coming into compliance with a law.”
The drug companies that paid a combined $26 billion to settle litigation in 2021 over their roles in the opioid crisis indicated in financial filings they intended to recoup more than $4.5 billion from deducting the settlements from their taxes. (Congress asked the Biden administration to investigate the planned write-offs in March 2022.)
However, in the case of settlements between private entities, the entity making the payment can deduct the cost entirely — while the recipient pays corporate income taxes on it.
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.
However, Fox could save hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes on the settlement payment. The firm reported paying an effective income tax rate of 27 percent in 2022 — a combination of federal and New York corporate taxes. If Fox can write off the full settlement payment to Dominion, it could amount to an estimated $213 million in tax savings for the company.
If any of Fox’s settlement payment is covered by insurance, Fox could not write off that portion of the payment. However, the company would then be able to deduct any subsequent higher premiums triggered by an insurance payout.
You can subscribe to David Sirota’s investigative journalism project, the Lever, here.
Depiction of the peasants’ revolt led by Wat Tyler in 1381. A meeting between Wat Tyler and the revolutionary priest John Ball is depicted. Detail, miniature of the fifteenth century by Jean Froissart. (Prisma / UIG / Getty Images)
The English Rising of 1381 saw peasants and townspeople rebel against the poll tax imposed to pay for the king’s wars in France. The rebels converged rapidly on London, mainly from Essex and Kent, and for a brief time were able to impose themselves on the government of the realm.
Their demands were not confined to the abolition of the tax. They wanted the end of serfdom, and effectively of the whole secular and religious aristocracy, barring the king himself. If they had won, this would have turned England into a kind of peasant confederation, with the monarchy stripped of its feudal power, reduced to the role of arbiter between autonomous local communities.
There was to be “no law within the realm save the law of Winchester,” the rebels proclaimed, apparently meaning the abolition of all but local government. This was an ambitious, not to say revolutionary, program, and one that appears to be without precedent in popular demands before this point.
Even so, the rebels and their aims did not come out of the blue sky. The movement of 1381 was rooted in the development of popular protests, and their entanglement with elite conflicts, going back for over two hundred years.
The struggles of townspeople, particularly Londoners, are relatively visible, due to the interconnections between elite politics and the efforts of Londoners in the twelfth century to win self-government, as well as the striking social revolt of poorer Londoners under William Longbeard. The discontents of rural people appear much less clearly in the historical record.
The English movement of 1381 was rooted in the development of popular protests going back for over two hundred years.
While peasant rebellion on the scale of 1381 is largely a late-medieval phenomenon in Europe, sporadic unrest must have been a constant feature of feudal society. It is not until the thirteenth century, with the increasing survival of judicial records, that we can get a glimpse of many of these instances of unrest. As soon as we examine these records, the peasants belie their undeserved reputation for engaging in revolts that were merely spontaneous and reactive, or “elemental” in the words of some historians.
In one case, some villagers banded together to take legal action, which would have been very expensive, and alternated that tactic with the use of combined force against their lord. First, in 1242, the peasants of Brampton in Huntingdonshire obtained a letter patent to prevent their lord from increasing feudal dues. Then, when it looked as if he was going to ignore this, they armed themselves with axes and staves and chased his bailiffs all the way back to Huntingdon. Afterward, they once again took up legal action to defend themselves. For these people, there was no artificial separation between due process and militancy.
There is a widespread misconception of the Middle Ages as a period of lawless power. Yet while the monarchy did not have a monopoly on violence, law and custom were real constraints on the actions of even the most powerful.
Law is always contradictory, for while its primary purpose is to uphold and legitimate the rule of the exploiting class, its necessary drive toward universality opens up strategies for the exploited to defend themselves. When the barons were able to impose Magna Carta on King John in 1215, in order to restrain the arbitrary power of the monarchy over their own class, this also gave peasants and townspeople an avenue to struggle for more rights of their own.
While the monarchy did not have a monopoly on violence, law and custom were real constraints on the actions of even the most powerful.
For this reason, Londoners were at the fore in supporting the baronial party, in the process securing greater recognition of London’s corporate rights, as well as those of other towns, in the first version of Magna Carta. The barons only intended this charter to protect their own position against the monarchy’s power, but they needed to justify their actions and appeal for wider support. As a result, they began to use the language of the “community of the realm,” as if they stood for wider interests than their own.
The royal party responded in kind, with the result that successive iterations of Magna Carta gradually extended the rights it had enshrined beyond the nobility. In 1225, Henry III’s new version of the charter extended some important rights to unfree peasants. Feudal lords found that in limiting the ability of the king to act arbitrarily, they had also undermined their own jurisdictions, because the principles and practices that applied in royal courts tended to be taken as applying in all lesser courts as well.
Magna Carta had also established an assembly that was to provide “the common counsel of the kingdom” to give assent to taxation; this was the origin of the English parliament. It was to consist only of archbishops, bishops, abbots, and the greatest barons, who held their lands directly from the king.
Even London was excluded: if the barons prevented the king from freely taxing towns under his authority, then the lords themselves might be similarly prevented from raising revenues from the boroughs under their own jurisdictions. However, Londoners again supported the baronial party in the revolt of 1263, and by 1265 towns were being included in the kingdom’s assemblies, as a parliament of commons and lords began to take shape.
The persistent conflicts between king and barons were opening up spaces through which commoners could assert themselves and claim the right to participate in political life. The possibility of legalistic avenues to struggle against their lords continued to inspire peasants and townspeople into the fourteenth century.
The persistent conflicts between king and barons were opening up spaces through which commoners could assert themselves and claim the right to participate in political life.
In 1326–27, the people of St Albans claimed rights against the abbey there. This was on the basis not only of a charter from Henry I’s administration (1100–1135), but also a creative local tradition that liberties had been granted by the eighth-century King Offa of Mercia.
In 1377, at least forty villages from Sussex to Dorset formed some kind of confederation, and with legal help, obtained “exemplifications” from the eleventh-century Domesday Book as proof of their freedom from serfdom and exemption from feudal dues. This movement caused enough concern for a panicked petition to be sent to Parliament about the looming possibility of a devastating peasant revolt along the lines of the 1358 Jacquerie in France.
Both peasants and townspeople were developing concrete ideas about the rights they should have, and strategies to win them. Socially dissenting religious views were also spreading widely by the fourteenth century, best illustrated by William Langland’s long narrative poem, Piers Plowman. The name, Piers Plowman, was even used as a moniker by the rebels of 1381 themselves.
John Ball, a poor priest and radical preacher, was freed from imprisonment in Canterbury by the rebel army early in the Rising. He preached a social-revolutionary sermon to the rebel host on Blackheath, outside London, with the famous line: “When Adam delved, and Eve span, who then was the Gentleman?”
The rising of 1381 marked a major step forward in the radicalism of popular demands. There was also a much greater degree of coordination across substantial areas of the country among peasants, artisans, and townspeople.
The rising of 1381 marked a major step forward in the radicalism of popular demands.
Although the revolt began simultaneously in Kent and Essex, the rebel hosts converged quickly upon London. The civil wars of the thirteenth century and the evolution of Parliament had made the city the clear political center of the kingdom. The rural rebels clearly understood that to effect major social and political change, it was essential to capture not only the king, but this center too.
There is a good deal of evidence, which historians rarely acknowledge, that the rising across at least the two counties of Kent and Essex was planned beforehand. The main sequence of the risings began on the very same day, June 2, at two widely separated points, and the movements of the rebel bands, first to the country towns and then to London, were synchronized and highly effective in overwhelming the ability of the authorities and landowners to respond.
If we accept the evidence for prior planning, we still need to ask how the rebels achieved this scale of organization. It seems likely that London was not merely the target of the rebels but had also served as the coordinating point for organizers. This would have been natural, as the relatively commercialized economy of the southeast already centered on the city.
In the judicial records following the revolt, there were accusations that some of the aldermen of London had been complicit in it. While these charges were probably just the result of factional quarrels within the elite, the proceedings carry with them a substantial assumption that the revolt had been organized with the involvement of Londoners.
For example, one accusation claimed that a certain Adam atte Welle, a master butcher, had
travelled into Essex fourteen days before the arrival of the rebels from that country in the city of London; there Adam incited and encouraged the rebels of Essex to come to London. . . . Afterwards . . . Adam brought the Essex men into London.
This accusation too could have been false, but it does reveal what was thought to be plausible in the aftermath of the revolt.
One of the chroniclers, Jean Froissart, is the most inclined to identify the long-term causes of the revolt in the conflicts between serfs and lords. He also foregrounds the organizational role of Londoners in making common cause with rural people in class terms:
Of [John Ball’s] words and deeds there were much people in London informed, such as had great envy at them that were rich and such as were noble; and then they began to speak among them and said how the realm of England was right evil governed, and how gold and silver was taken from them by them that were named noblemen: so thus these unhappy men of London began to rebel and assembled them together, and sent word to the foresaid countries that they should come to London and bring their people with them, promising them how they should find London open to receive them and the commons of the city to be of the same accord, saying how they would do so much to the king that there should not be one bondman in all England.
Froissart probably overestimates the degree to which the townspeople were the animating force behind the revolt, but he is the only chronicler to give a plausible context for what happened when the rebels reached London.
Whether they were coming from Essex or Kent, the rebels needed to be able to gain access through the gates to the city, as a siege would have been out of the question. The whole enterprise depended upon their ability to get those gates to open.
The rebels needed to be able to gain access through the gates to London, as a siege would have been out of the question.
Froissart tell us that the mayor, William Walworth, “and divers other rich burgesses of the city,” tried to have the gates of London closed. However, there was a large number of Londoners who shared the “unhappy opinions” of the rebels — more than thirty thousand, according to Froissart.
The Anonimalle Chronicle, whose author may have been an eyewitness, reveals the cooperation between the men of Kent and the poor of the South London suburb, Southwark. First, the rebels broke into the Marshalsea prison and freed the inmates, many of whom were there for crimes related to the nonpayment of feudal dues. They then went on to destroy “all the houses of the jurors and professional informers belonging to the Marshalsea.”
Actions of this kind would have depended upon local knowledge but were accomplished at great speed, indicating that local allies were ready and waiting to give direction to the rebels. This would certainly have required prior planning and coordination.
The same chronicle recounts the taking of London Bridge. The details again suggest that there would have to have been organizing in advance to ensure the bridge could be overrun with such speed that the nobility and the city elite would not be able to respond effectively:
The mayor was ready before them and had the chain drawn up and the bridge lifted to prevent their passage. And the commons of Southwark rose with the others and cried to the keepers of the said bridge to lower it and let them enter, or otherwise they would be undone. And for fear of their lives, the keepers let them enter, greatly against their will.
Overwhelming the gates would have been impossible without this kind of support, so the rebels of Kent and Essex must have had strong assurances that allies were waiting in London and would help them to ensure the success of their very dangerous endeavor.
Taking London was the major success of the Rising, but the rebels subsequently were less effective in maintaining their cohesion or in capturing and controlling the king. The result was that the revolt was defeated and its leaders killed or executed.
Taking London was the major success of the Rising, but the rebels subsequently were less effective in maintaining their cohesion.
While the rebels failed to achieve their revolutionary aims of abolishing serfdom, the church hierarchy, and the nobility, serfdom itself went into an inexorable decline thereafter. There were various contributing factors behind this. But the shock of the revolt for the ruling class, and their worries that such an event could occur again, would certainly have played a major part in the willingness of lords to let feudal dues and services fall by the wayside.
As well as this social impact, there was also a legacy in terms of political ideas. The concept of the community of the realm, or commonwealth, that the barons had introduced in their conflict with the monarchy could now be conceived as one without the feudal power of either lords or king — that is, without a ruling class altogether. The revolutionary ambitions of the Rising have not been forgotten ever since.
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Foreign Minister Eli Cohen travels to Turkmenistan for opening of new Israeli embassy – just 10 miles from the Iranian border.
By TPS
Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen is in Turkmenistan where he is opening a new Israeli embassy located just 17 km (10 miles) from the Iranian border.
This also marks the first time that an Israeli cabinet minister visited the country in 29 years.
Cohen is set to hold a series of meetings with the president of Turkmenistan and other officials.
“The relationship with Turkmenistan is of great security and political importance, and this visit will strengthen the position of the State of Israel in the region,” said Cohen.
Before Turkmenistan Cohen visited Azerbaijan where he held meetings with the country’s President and Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov.
Minister Bayramov said he was delighted to welcome Minister Cohen and that Azerbaijan looks “forward to the further developing our multifaceted partnership. Azerbaijan and Israel are tied with long-standing relations.”
The post Israel opens new embassy near Iranian border appeared first on World Israel News.
“The time has come for Aharon Barak to listen to the voices of the people and stop behaving like a legal dictator,” says CEO of right-wing group.
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
Hundreds of right-wingers demonstrated outside of the home of former Supreme Court chief justice Aharon Barak on Wednesday evening in a show of support for judicial reform.
Barak, who served as the president of Israel’s highest court from 1995 to 2006, has been a vehement opponent of potential changes that would curb the court’s power.
The right-wing Zionist NGO Im Tirtzu organized the protest, which saw protesters gather near the judge’s home in Tel Aviv, holding banners calling the Supreme Court a threat to national security and a dictatorship.
“The time has come for Aharon Barak to listen to the voices of the people and stop behaving like a legal dictator,” Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg said in a statement.
אהרון ברק ביקש כל כך יפה אז הבאנו את המחאה עד למרפסת שלו.
בכל זאת איש מבוגר, חבל שיתאמץ. pic.twitter.com/c91b3BQ0eo
— Igal Malka – (@igal_malka) April 19, 2023
“It is time to show responsibility,” he added. “Not to trample on the will of the voter. The majority of the people chose legal reform, and even those who did not choose to reform the judicial system today understand the importance of reform and are working toward it. We must put an end to anarchism and reckless behavior.”
Notably, during his tenure, Barak openly promoted a judicial activist approach, which saw the court intervene on matters beyond the court’s previous jurisdiction.
אהרון ברק התראיין ביום הזכרון לנספי השואה והתחנן שנצא להפגין.
החלטנו לענות לתחנונים של הזקן המסית הזה מחולל כאוס. pic.twitter.com/1RhZEslrkg
— איציק שאג (@itzikshag) April 19, 2023
Barak decided that the court was not limited to interpreting the law, and could essentially issue rulings as de-facto legislation.
The former judge recently told Hebrew language TV stations that he would sacrifice his life in order to stop reforms to the judicial system.
“If putting me to death would put an end to this drastic shake-up,” he told Channel 12 News, “I’d be prepared to go before a firing squad.”
He added that Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s proposals, which include giving elected lawmakers more say in the process of selecting new Supreme Court justices, were “a string of poison pills” and “the beginning of the end” for the State of Israel.
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85 dead and over 320 injured after gunfire sparks panic during Ramadan event in Yemen’s capital, leading to stampede.
By The Associated Press
A crowd apparently panicked by gunfire and an electrical explosion stampeded at an event to distribute financial aid during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Yemen’s capital late Wednesday, killing at least 85 people and injuring at least 320 others, according to witnesses and Houthi rebel officials.
The tragedy was Yemen’s deadliest in years that was not related to the country’s long-running war, and came ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan later this week.
Armed Houthis fired into the air in an attempt at crowd control, apparently striking an electrical wire and causing it to explode, according to two witnesses, Abdel-Rahman Ahmed and Yahia Mohsen. That sparked a panic, and people, including many women and children, began stampeding, they said.
Video posted on social media showed dozens of bodies, some motionless, and others screaming as people tried to help. Separate footage of the aftermath released by Houthi officials showed bloodstains, shoes and victims’ clothing scattered on the ground. Investigators were seen examining the area.
The crush took place in the Old City in the center of Sanaa, where hundreds of poor people had gathered for a charity event organized by merchants, according to the Houthi-run Interior Ministry.
People had gathered to receive about $10 each from a charity funded by local businessmen, witnesses said. Wealthy people and businessmen often hand out cash and food, especially to the poor, during Ramadan.
Interior Ministry spokesperson Brig. Abdel-Khaleq al-Aghri, blamed the crush on the “random distribution” of funds without coordination with local authorities.
Motaher al-Marouni, a senior health official, said 78 people were killed, according the rebels’ Al-Masirah satellite TV channel. At least 73 others were injured and taken to the al-Thowra Hospital in Sanaa, according to hospital deputy director Hamdan Bagheri.
The rebels quickly sealed off a school where the event was being held and barred people, including journalists, from approaching.
The Interior Ministry said it had detained two organizers and an investigation was under way.
The Houthis said they would pay some $2,000 in compensation to each family who lost a relative, while the injured would get around $400.
Yemen’s capital has been under the control of the Iranian-backed Houthis since they descended from their northern stronghold in 2014 and removed the internationally recognized government.
That prompted a Saudi-led coalition to intervene in 2015 to try to restore the government.
The conflict has turned in recent years into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, killing more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians and creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
More than 21 million people in Yemen, or two-thirds of the country’s population, need help and protection, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Among those in need, more than 17 million are considered particularly vulnerable.
In February the United Nations said it had raised only $1.2 billion out of a target of $4.3 billion at a conference aimed at generating funds to ease the humanitarian crisis.
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