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Meta spent $4.3 billion on its VR division in three months, and made checks figures $440 million in return (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 79 points 2 years ago (6 children)

I'm surprised they made 440m. However, investing in r+d is not unusual. This amount is not a huge investment for them based in overall revenue.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    If you report a loss you don't pay taxes. Or something like that I'm not an accountant.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Write-offs are entirely misunderstood by people. Writing off losses doesn't magically make loss profitable.

    I'll use myself as an example. I teach underwater photography at a university as a side gig. Last year I made about $3,000 teaching the class, and I also spent about $1,000 on underwater camera gear for the class. Because of that I get to reduce my taxable income by $1,000, so it's as if I made $2,000.

    At my tax bracket a write-off reduces my income taxes by 22% of the expense. So on a thousand-dollar purchase I'm still losing nearly 800 bucks.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    And you still have the value, nobody takes it away from you and you propably can sell it without loss which makes it still a good deal.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    Of course it's better than not having the write-off. But it's not like it's free.

    Business expenses aren't profit so they aren't taxed because it's money you didn't actually make.

    Since most businesses operate on a small margin, removing tax deductions would make tax burdens higher than profits.

    And it's not like that camera lens isn't being taxed. I'm buying it from a company that pays taxes on its profits and payroll and whose employees pay taxes, and on top of that I'm paying sales tax (to a different entity of course).

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Yeah. Come back in 10-15 years when half the world is using it or a successive product and people will be posting articles like these laughing at them like they do with the ones saying the internet or cell phones will never catch on and surprisingly no one will open up and admit they were the ones denying it would come. Meta has the money, they don't care how much they spend, as long as they can get in and corner the market early they will make it back many times over in the years to come... assuming climate change or nukes don't make it impossible of course.

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