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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (145094)	8/9/2002 8:38:16 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Interesting comment on the taxation - I wonder if that is true always or only when the puts are exercised. And, taking the statement literally, gains and losses on early retirement of debt would also not be taxable. He said "trading in their own securities." Is that right? Anyway, the article didn't really say anything at all about GAAP accounting, other than to imply a potential hit to earnings if MSFT didn't have so much cash ("Since Microsoft has about $21 billion in cash, they could probably pay that off without a hit to earnings."), which doesn't really make any sense. Regardless, I'm still wondering what this has to do with employee option accounting. Is there a point to all this MSFT put sales discussion? PS: All the references in the article to "making lots of money" was referring to cash premiums received, which looked like free money while the stocks were rising, but does not answer the question you raised as to the accounting treatment.