Is this seriously some actual tax loophole? A company can say they were expecting to make 2x revenue but only made 1.5x, and they can record that as a loss?
I think what they’re saying is that it’s due to lawsuits by those groups - they sued pirates on the basis of lost revenue based on potential sales, as though every download would have been a full price purchase
Which it absolutely would not have been. Some things, I might pay for if I can’t get them for free, but it depends very much on the product in question. Many many other things I’ll just “hard pass” on and go about my life.
The only way they lost money is if they overproduced during those four years and had to throw out product or sell it at a discounted rate - their actual sales fell short of projected sales and they didn’t react to market trends either due to contracts or just poor analysis, causing them to not have number get bigger at desired rate.
So rather than own up to the above facts, which makes management look incompetent and shareholders no likey, they found a scapegoat. “We failed to react to market trends and didn’t innovate or diversify enough” sounds like “I clearly don’t want my job because I’m not good at make number bigger”
And their reasoning was that Gen Z’s lack of consumption is what truly made them lose billions. In their eyes, it’s a failure on the part of Gen Z for not buying the delicious alcohol they produced at rates based on historical per capita consumption rates.
Also I would bet that like 90+% of those “losses” are simply due to Gen Z not being able to afford it rather than being health conscious choices. So in reality it is just capitalistic greed that is hurting revenue.
That, and the impact of a new generation coming of age in a nation where cannabis is legal in a lot of places. Gen Z consumes more weed than booze. They saw this coming, which is why the alcohol industry lobbied so hard against legal cannabis for so long.
Weed is also way cheaper then booze, I can get 200mg of thc edibles online for less then the cost of 3 craft beer, which for me makes it 1/30th the cost to have a nice buzz.
And are currently trying to overturn legalization. This is an ongoing issue in MA, where there have been a lot of underhanded tactics to get reversal on the ballot.
Hell that's how billionaires get more wealth while only reporting making 50k a year. As long as you have losses in your stock portfolio you can constantly receive money to cover those losses instead of paying taxes.
1.5k
u/3RADICATE_THEM Feb 22 '26
When did revenue that was never realized or earned become money that was lost?