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Sony gets double-taxed, PS3 sheds a tear
Sony, what's going on with all these tax issues? Friday, Japanese tax authorities commanded Sony Corp. to pay an additional 27.9 billion yen (about $243 million) relating to Sony's game consoles and other operations in the U.S. after finding mistakes in old tax files. Sony will write up a protest claiming this is double taxation under U.S.-Japan bilateral taxing treaties.Why are they being asked to pay so much more? What were the mistakes? It seems Sony had been claiming it had made less profits than it really had -- based on the tax bureau's findings, 74.4 billion yen in income was not reported. That's about $647 million! This may mean bad news for the PS3. If the double-taxation angle fails and Sony ends up having to pay this extra amount, losing $300 on each system will hurt just a little bit more. However, with the extra income after taxes anyway, they've still got a bit of cash to fall back on.
