Fox News recently settled a massive lawsuit with Dominion over reporting the network did after the 2020 presidential election.
Not only did the settlement avoid a messy trial between the two the mainstream media was frothing at the mouth for. They’ve discovered that Fox News can use the settlement as a tax break.
The left wing news organization Lever News broke the news to liberals:
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 U.S. 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 The Lever. 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.
Folks, they…are…mad.
“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 said. “And those profits are indeed reduced when you are successfully sued by the victims of your malicious falsehoods.”
Fox News confirmed that is the play telling the left-wing blog site, I can confirm tax deductibility but not the amount.”
The media was really looking forward to a nasty long trial that would embarrass the news powerhouse. Instead, the suit was settled and the network could receive a massive tax break.
