NSA Data Center the Focus of Tax Controversy 120
Nerval's Lobster writes "Location is everything when choosing the site of a data center. Firms such as Microsoft and Google and Facebook spend a lot of time looking into the costs of land, power, regulation and taxes before placing their respective data centers in a particular place. Sometimes, that local tax bill comes into play in a big way. Just ask the National Security Agency which learned it faces a multimillion-dollar annual state tax on the power consumed by its new data center in Camp Williams, south of Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Tribune obtained a series of email exchanges between the feds and the state, with the NSA protesting a $2.4 million tax on its annual power expenditure, pegged at about $40 million. Harvey Davis, director of installations and logistics for the NSA, sent a letter (subsequently quoted by the newspaper) to state officials that made the logistics argument: 'Long-term stability in the utility rates was a major factor in Utah being selected as our site for our $1.5bn construction at Camp Williams. HP325 [the new law] runs counter to what we expected.'"
This would be the data center William Binney et al claim is logging almost all domestic communication.
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (Score:3, Funny)
So, the government is going to have to write the government a check?
Yikes.
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Government does this crap to private businesses all the time. I love the turnabout.
Detroit approved three casinos, giving them a contract which included tax rates, then jacked the taxes up a few years anyway. Government doesn't have to work hard to make unethical operations like casinos (and those granted legal monopoly status at that) look like abused victims.
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Where have you seen an engineering project that was (a) completely finished and (b) on schedule? A "Hello, World," perhaps, in Perl?
By law, the government has to give the contract to the lowest bidder. Not the best one, and not the most honest, but to the lowest one. This means that the contractors *have* to bid low, and hope to make it up later on, during the contract. Some contracts (cost plus) allow that. A contractor who bids exact or a little over does not get the job. Fair and honest estimates are
Just because you don't get out much doesn't mean (Score:2)
Plenty of times. Projects at power stations, oil refineries, steelworks and chemical plants for example have very tight windows for downtime so heads roll if the schedule slips.
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Projects at power stations, oil refineries, steelworks and chemical plants for example
Those are not R&D projects, they are implementation projects where there is no science left. Three hours for backup, one hour to physically replace the old server, three hours to restore, one hour to test and put online. Everything is known, everything had been practiced before in dry runs, and there are plans B, C and D just in case.
Government projects that (I suspect) were mentioned are blue sky R&D project
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Those are not R&D projects, they are implementation projects where there is no science left.
But you've only asked for engineering projects. I don't know where you live, but when I look around, most engineering projects contracted by the government have nothing to do with any kind of R&D at all.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Business_Innovation_Research [wikipedia.org]
SBIRs have fixed cost - at least in first two phases. Other R&D contracts are often cost plus from day zero; it is absolutely necessary when even the customer doesn't know where the idea will take them.
I'm sure there are government contracts that have nothing to do with R&D but still can be classified as engineering. For example, construction of a new building at a military base. I don't have experience with such jobs.
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This is not 100% true. There are a lot of government contracts that are "best value" instead of "low bid". It depends on the project and how complex it is.
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Public projects that were finished on time? How about the new 35W bridge in Minneapolis, MN? Looks great too.
I believe the Metrodome came in under budget and on schedule, and that wasn't cut-and-dried. I don't think there was much experience with inflatable domes for baseball and football stadiums before.
On a smaller scale, I've been on plenty of software projects that finished on time (and plenty that didn't).
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Federal government is going to have to write the state government a check.
Re:Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually, that's slightly incorrect. After reading through the articles a bit more, Utah specifically said they can't tax the federal government. So what they're doing is taxing the power company the additional 6% so that the power company can pass on the additional costs to the NSA, effectively taxing the NSA an additional 6%.
Which is sort of odd, because the State I am in does not make me pay sales tax (or any other kind of tax) when I sell to the Federal Government. So why is this power company collecting tax on the sales to the Feds?
The power company must be buying its power from somewhere else, rather than generating it itself.
If that is the case, then they have to pay whatever taxes they would normally pay, just like I have to pay sales tax on the box I buy to ship stuff to the government.
Re:Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (Score:5, Informative)
"We don’t tax the federal government," Mayfield explained to a Utah Senate committee March 7. "So what this bill does is tax Rocky Mountain Power and then gives them the ability to pass that on as an increase in their energy bills. So we collect an equivalent of what would have been a tax on the federal government."
Re:Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
They can't tax the federal government. So they decided to create a law that allows for a loophole that taxes the power company and the law also allows the power company to pass the additional costs on to the federal government
I am sooooo OK with this. Seems like just deserts for all the times the fed has collected taxes and then held those funds hostage in order to force the states to pass laws like speed limits.
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You, uh, realize we pay for that anyway?
No offense to us in the US, but we do seem like a bunch of chumps. Maybe a few thousand more hamster wheels like this and someone will start thinking about what the point of a federal government should be.
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I try not to reply to your posts but this one is such an incredibly stupid lie that I think you have a responsibility to the readers to outline what agenda motivates you to lie in such a way.
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Are you really blaming a Federal government for something a State government is doing?
Well, if the NSA wasn't there, apparently doing the very important federal task of snooping on us, there wouldn't be public revenue going to those taxes.
incredibly stupid lie
I've noticed that you seem to confuse disagreement with lying. Maybe you should work on that.
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Torturing logic (Score:2)
Well, if the NSA wasn't there, apparently doing the very important federal task of snooping on us, there wouldn't be public revenue going to those taxes.
So, the SG wrote a recursive tax law, but because the FG exists it must be the FG's fault?
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At the same time, one might ask why the Federal Government thinks itself immune to all charges and believes that it has final authority over all in these situations? And if that were true, do the states also have final authority over counties and the people in monetary and legal matters as well? In the end, doesn't that kind of thinking make the people lowest on the totem pole and little more than slaves who serve the will and t
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I'm the OP and I know what I'm talking about.
> Desert = very dry place, famous ones have lots of sand
ALSO: Deserts = what you deserve.
> The phrase isn't "just deserts". It's "just desserts". Look it up.
Sure, here it is: just deserts [wiktionary.org]
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Which is exactly the point. They can't tax the federal government. So they decided to create a law that allows for a loophole that taxes the power company and the law also allows the power company to pass the additional costs on to the federal government.
Well, you've got to hand it to the Mormons; they're clever in their business dealings. Frankly I'm surprised that the NSA guys didn't see this one coming.
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Frankly I'm surprised that the NSA guys didn't see this one coming.
The NSA only reads e-mails you DON'T send to them.
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Which is exactly the point. They can't tax the federal government. So they decided to create a law that allows for a loophole that taxes the power company and the law also allows the power company to pass the additional costs on to the federal government
"We don’t tax the federal government," Mayfield explained to a Utah Senate committee March 7. "So what this bill does is tax Rocky Mountain Power and then gives them the ability to pass that on as an increase in their energy bills. So we collect an equivalent of what would have been a tax on the federal government."
As long as the state makes it a 6% tax on everyone, I'm okay with that. Then the voters in the state can decide if they like the tax.
If its not being applied equally, I'd suggest the federal government apply a 6% increase in income tax rates to the people of Utah and see what the voters think of that.
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No its not. RTFA.
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The US Government is going to have to write the Utah Government a check.
Which really isn't all that unusual - the Feds send money to the States every year. This is just the NSA whinging that they shouldn't have to follow the law.
Which, come to think about it, also isn't really that unusual....
Re:Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (Score:4, Informative)
"We don’t tax the federal government," Mayfield explained to a Utah Senate committee March 7. "So what this bill does is tax Rocky Mountain Power and then gives them the ability to pass that on as an increase in their energy bills. So we collect an equivalent of what would have been a tax on the federal government."
So the US government will be writing Rocky Mountain Power a check and Rocky Mountain Power will write a check to the Utah Government.
Re:Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (Score:4, Informative)
"So the US government will be writing Rocky Mountain Power a check and Rocky Mountain Power will write a check to the Utah Government."
And where does the federal government get money to pay its bills? That's right you and me. So Utah is f**ing all US taxpayers.
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...and nobody's getting fat, except mama cass.
Re:Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (Score:5, Funny)
yikes! What about poor Mary? She gets nothing?
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What are you talking about? Mary got shafted.
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Actually, she gets her pick: Problem is they're all herbs.
Why is this surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the government is going to have to write the government a check?
Yikes.
Why is this surprising? Government is not one, homogeneous thing. Here we have a state government indirectly trying to tax an agency of the federal government.
Again, why is this surprising? Look at any corporation of sufficiently large size. Such a corporation would be divided into either departments or business units (each with their own specific budgets). When one renders a service to another, or when two or more need to engage into some type of cross-organizational project, they need to decide how to fund them from their budgets. And if one causes costs to run higher than a certain cap, that one unit has to compensate the others' budgets from its own.
A more tangible scenario in IT is when IT is its own department with its own budget and its own infrastructure. Other departments deploy their systems with them with some specific SLA agreements. Such SLA agreements typically include IT to pay a penalty (from its annual budget) to the other departments whenever that department(s) experience a downtime during core hours (because those "core hours" down times cause said departments to bleed money in terms of lost transactions, idle employee/users time, etc.)
Large organizations (public or otherwise) do not have a universal budgel like a cookie jar where everyone puts his hands on. Budgets get allocated per department or business unit, with money flowing among them when rendering a service or paying a penalty for loss of service.
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Cry me a river... (Score:3, Interesting)
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The power bill went up and they aren't happy about it. A private company would have almost no recourse in a similar situation.
I'm guessing by your comment that you're not an American citizen, cause if you are, YOU'LL be paying the tax bill. (Where do you think the Federal government gets its money?)
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NoStringsAttached will be paying the bill from their allocated budget, meaning they will be able to record 6% less of EVERYTHING
Re:Cry me a river... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Where do you think the Federal government gets its money?)
They borrow it from China.
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Yeh, um, you didn't think that one through. They borrow it from future-you and your unborn children. China is merely loaning the money.
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Re:Cry me a river... (Score:5, Informative)
(Where do you think the Federal government gets its money?)
They borrow it from China.
The US debt is about US$ 16.7T right now: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current
China owns about $1.25T of that: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt
That's about 7.5%. The next largest foreign owner is Japan, which owns $1.1T (6.6%).
The largest single holder is the US Social Security Trust Fund, with the Fed also owning about $2T currently thanks to their quantitative easing activities.
It's become of a bit of an urban legend: yes, China holds a good chunk, but not as much as people think.
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They borrow it from China.
And turn around and send foreign aid money to .... don't get ahead of me on this .... China.
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US has had a trade deficit going on 4 decades ... the US has never been the charitable one in this game.
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Total US foreign aid is a little over $70 billion. The US borrows $120 billion from China. Of that $70 billion, China gets $7 million. It only takes a couple minutes for the US to borrow that from China. They aren't equivalent.
Foreign aid source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#Remittances [wikipedia.org]
Borrowing from China source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_money_does_the_US_borrow_from_china_a_year [answers.com]
Foreign aid to China source: http://foreignassistance.gov/CountryIntro.aspx [foreignassistance.gov]
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Still different pots at different tax rates.
You can make a serious discussion out of which income groups are hurt more or less by federal versus state expenditure in different places.
Every major country in the world has various levels of government, even the UK which is relatively centralized still has city, county and now the national but sub national parliaments in wales and scotland.
The feds pay the state, the state pays the county, the county pays the city. Yes, if you're a taxpayer from anywhere outsi
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NSA can't just allocate more money from the national budget or raise taxes to compensate, their budget is fixed. The added "tax" that Utah is levying is $2.4million worth of bullshit the NSA just doesn't get to do so I'm all for it.
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Sure they would. They would make large donations during the next election cycle to incumbents or other candidates that will introduce bills reversing the tax, or giving the company a grant or tax break or otherwise returning the money.
The NSA on the other hand will just have anyone associated with the current bill thoroughly investigated for ties to terrorism, drug dealing, child pornography, and movie/tv/music/software piracy. Those that don't capitulate get an all expense paid trip to the nearest federa
Re:Cry me a river... (Score:5, Insightful)
A *small* private company maybe. I think a company like GOOG or MSFT can make sure the appropriate wheels are greased.
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I take it you didn't actually read the text of the bill, then?
The bill pretty clearly includes any military installations in Utah, including Utah National Guard.
And what it seems to do is establish an equivalent of the pre-existing munici
Re:Cry me a river... (Score:5, Informative)
"We don’t tax the federal government," Mayfield explained to a Utah Senate committee March 7. "So what this bill does is tax Rocky Mountain Power and then gives them the ability to pass that on as an increase in their energy bills. So we collect an equivalent of what would have been a tax on the federal government."
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Re:Cry me a river... (Score:4, Insightful)
The power bill went up and they aren't happy about it. A private company would have almost no recourse in a similar situation.
A private company operating an enterprise of equivalent size might actually have made a few little 'community investments', possibly scored some sweet 'development incentives', maybe even a 'public/private partnership' to get some of the infrastructure built for them...
Sucks for their smaller competitors; but private enterprises shake down state and local governments all the time. If anything, this particular situation is probably coming up because the location of the NSA datacenter was decided by jockying at the federal level(rather than by the NSA shopping it around and having states beg for it), so once the location was fixed, the state has a strong incentive to soak them just hard enough that they don't actually pack up and leave.
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Please, do let me know about the part where I said it was 'okay'(or not okay, for that matter)...
My point was exclusively a hypothesis about strategies under different constraints:
When large corporations shop around projects(ie. siting a new plant, or even a new stadium, complete with six jobs selling hotdogs...) they usually try to get multiple states and municipalities competing to offer them sweeter 'incentives'. There are even consultancies, often associated with full-service corporate relocation outfit
Speaking of power (Score:2)
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40 million power bill.
The power bill on the Titan is 9 million.
So about 4 computers the size of the Titan.
I doubt if that's enough to capture the whole internet.
This is UTAH (Score:2)
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The power bill went up and they aren't happy about it. A private company would have almost no recourse in a similar situation.
When I don't pay my power bill, they shut my power off. They don't call me, they leave a bill on my door, and they sure as fuck won't work with me.
NSA has it lucky, so they can fuck off. Turn off their power and see how long they refuse paying you.
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NSA builds coal-fired generator on site and arranges to have coal brought in by rail...
Oh please - this is NSA. The scenario will probably go something more like this:
...Or about the nude pictures you sent to the woman 'Jenni' you met online in February of this year?
[RING]
NSA: Hello Governor Herbert?
Herbert: Yes?
NSA: This is the NSA. We were just wondering if your lovely wife Jeanette, or children Shannon, Heather, Bradley, Kimberli, Daniel and Nathan knew about the passionate email you sent to your ex-girlfriend Suzanne in December 14th, 2011.
Herbert: Whaaaaa..?
NSA:
Herbert: But, I never...
N
How Useful! (Score:3)
Wow!
Those sure are some really useful and interesting email addresses and phone numbers!
Thanks, Salt Lake Tribune!
I completely support this (Score:2)
Let the state tax the hell out of the Federal government. Chalk up the NSA's overhead as an unfunded mandate. Oh the irony.
I completely oppose this (Score:2)
Utah is a welfare state! They already get too much money from the federal government! They now want to take more of our money? WTF?
We should stop subsidizing Utah... and all the other loser states.
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It is so ironic that the Red States are also the welfare states.
I mean if they were serious about their political views they should refuse all Federal aid and assorted earmarks.
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I would gladly refuse all Federal Dollars in my State, as soon as they turn over title of all the land in the State they own to the State Government.
Feds own 60% of the land inside my State borders. Much of that Federal "welfare" is just money the Feds are spending maintaining and operating on THEIR land.
Consider the money the Feds pay my State as Rent for operating Wilderness Areas, National Forests, National Research Laboratories and Military Bases for them.
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I doubt your state would do well without the federal help. The "rent" we pay for "your" land doesn't include paying people working in your state to run those military bases, research labs and parks. You likely would have next to nothing of an economy without the money coming in to pay for gainful employment.
In addition, national forests belong to the nation not to your state and a majority decided they were too important to leave to the locals who'd probably degrade their own source of tourism over time.
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I'd gladly refuse all Federal Aid and earmarks for my state, as long as I could refuse the taxes as well. Then the blood sucking parasites of society would pack it off to your state to find a new host.
Oh really? So you don't want any interstate highways there, or help from FEMA, or education funds, or protection from the military?
Oh, Where to begin (Score:2)
So the NSA had no clue what was going on in tax law? They are kind of the agency that is supposed to know what is going on, were they too busy reading everyone's Facebook pages?
Or everyone should be exempt from a law because they didn't expect it and didn't plan for it (can you say Obamacare?)?
Or the NSA can't imagine who is really going to end up paying this tax bill?
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This is where organisations should be signing agreements with local governments and utilities ensuring that they have a guaranteed rate, with a maximum yearly price adjustment, for a given period of time. If the local government reneges on the agreement, then there should be a penalty in the contract, which was signed.
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Allow me: the economic depression, coupled with state / federal governments having grown far too large for the country / tax base to support them, are having to resort to cannibalism to keep themselves going. The state government doesn't want to starve anymore than the federal government...and probably reasons that it's better to eat them first, than be eaten later.
Tax on Utah (Score:1)
wtf (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a sad that I know for a fact there are people in that facility watching this very thread right now and I can't say what I really think about it. That's where we are today. It's not going to get better, it's going to get worse. We can't even appeal to those that are watching us to do what is right and moral, because they were chosen specifically for their psychological predilection to do what they're told. The government of this country is doomed not just because of it's direction but also because the one thing it's excelled at over the years is squashing dissent without appearing to do so. Governments in the rest of the world have to deal with revolutions every so often, but like the forest that's long overdue for a wildfire, this countries going to go up like a torch when it finally does happen.
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It's a sad that I know for a fact there are people in that facility watching this very thread right now and I can't say what I really think about it.
Yeah, as if they couldn't figure out what you think about it based on this sentence.
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Yeah, as if they couldn't figure out what you think about it based on this sentence.
Well, they failed to account for those crafty Mormons finding a way to tax them, so I'm not so sure.
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I sometimes practice self censorship too. However, other times I think back to 1776, and how the founders of this great nation wouldn't stand for their unfair treatment: I'm 99% sure they started a Revolution Instead! (I wasn't there, so there's at least a 1% chance the history books are lying). Then, I make innocuous posts including words like, "Give me Liberty, or Give me Death," which showed real courage and are thought to trigger the anti-establishment or anarchy detection filters -- Purely for the
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Federal activities exempt from state taxation? (Score:2)
I thought that US government activities have been exempt from state taxation for quite a long time, starting with McCulloch v. Maryland way back in 1819 and affirmed and expanded down to the present day. I can see so many bases on which the NSA, for Jebus' sake, could argue that they live above mere state taxation laws. Any genuine attorneys want to comment?
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it was explained that they instead went to tax federal business partners some extra.
so instead of taxing the government for drinking coffee.. you make a tax law for taxing whoever brings the feds the coffee. it's loopholing of course but who can blame 'em when the government loopholes around basic human rights.
Eh (Score:2)
In unrelated news, all Utah state employee bank statements, credit reports, penis and breast enlargement related health records, online dating history and other interesting materials were found posted on 325 websites around the country, along with compromising photos of those concerned presumed to come from their personal email and facebook accounts....
And then... (Score:1)
Go renewable! (Score:1)