# Investigations document Microsoft’s Ireland-centred tax architecture Date: 2013 ## The fact In the 2010s [US Senate](/organizations/us-senate) investigations and later EU state-aid and OECD work documented Microsoft’s Ireland-centred tax architecture that shifted profits during the years [Gates](/people/bill-gates) was chairman and large shareholder. ## Context Neighbouring 2004 EU antitrust is a different Brussels file. Neighbouring Giving Pledge is private giving, not a corporate tax. He did not write the IRC. 2004 Commission antitrust is neighbouring EU. Giving Pledge 2010 is neighbouring private giving. Bill Gates was Microsoft CEO until January 2000, chairman until February 2014, then a technical adviser until 2020, and a Gates Foundation co-chair. That is not authorship of every Windows copy, every GAVI dose, or every IRS schedule. Melinda French Gates is a different person. Bill Clinton is PER-000772, a different person. A pledge is not a coverage rate. A docket is not a personality. ## Evidence and sources United States Senate carries the official instrument or communique. Reuters records the same dated act independently. ## Significance The path is [fiscal-policy sustainability](/drivers/fiscal-policy-sustainability) and [income-inequality](/drivers/income-inequality): a completed profit-shifting architecture is a tax-base cost. An investigation is not a completed personal evasion verdict. ## What is established and what is not Established: Documented Microsoft Ireland-centred profit shifting during Gates’s chair/shareholder years, independently reported. Not established: that Gates was convicted of personal tax evasion, or a unique later Irish GNI coefficient from one 10-K. What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, a later repeal, a court that vacated the instrument, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions. The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit. Tax counsel designed. Ireland hosted. Senators investigated. A later repeal, court stay, or successor order would be a different Fact with a different date. That pair identifies Investigations document Microsoft’s Ireland-centred tax architecture, not a later speech about Investigations document Microsoft’s Ireland-centred tax architecture. Co-authors and later implementers named in Context remain on the file. Investigations document Microsoft’s Ireland-centred tax architecture on 2013-05-21 is not a licence to treat every later United States Senate communique as this same act. If a later repeal, stay, or successor instrument exists, it needs its own date and its own row. This dossier refuses to average Investigations document Microsoft’s Ireland-centred tax architecture into a personality. The contribution described on this Person row is limited to He was chairman and large shareholder of the firm that used the architecture. Tax counsel designed. Ireland hosted. Senators investigated. That limit is the alternative to treating office-holding as authorship of every later series. ## People - Bill Gates: https://factrail.ai/people/bill-gates ## Drivers - Fiscal-Policy Sustainability: https://factrail.ai/drivers/fiscal-policy-sustainability - Income Inequality: https://factrail.ai/drivers/income-inequality ## Sources - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-tax-idUSBRE94K2K420130521 - https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/ ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ms-ireland-tax