[goodbyesf]

> It seems like Microsoft believes they can settle for something much lower.

They could hire the best lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, etc in the world. Unless someone at microsoft did something criminal, it's likely they could knock a significant portion off the tax bill.

> The stock price doesn’t seem to be hurting pre-market at all.

Microsoft's market cap is $2.5 Trillion. The one-time tax bill amounts to about 1% of its 'total value'. It's like a one time $1000 special property tax on your $100K rental property. It sucks but it's not the end of the world. Besides, even if they had to pay $30 billion in back taxes, MSFT's customers are utlimately going to pay for it, not microsoft. It doesn't affect microsoft's market share in OS, Office, Servers, etc.