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MicroStrategy Founder Michael Saylor Agrees to $40M Settlement in D.C. Income Tax Case

The District of Columbia sued Saylor in 2022 for allegedly not paying income taxes while living in the district.

Updated Jun 3, 2024, 7:11 p.m. Published Jun 3, 2024, 12:04 p.m.
MicroStrategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor (CoinDesk)
MicroStrategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor (CoinDesk)
  • The $40 million deal is D.C.'s biggest-ever income tax fraud recovery, officials said.
  • The district sued Saylor in 2022 for allegedly not paying income taxes while living in the district.
  • Saylor disputes the allegations and said he settled to avoid the "burdens of litigation."

MicroStrategy (MSTR) founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor agreed to a $40 million settlement with the District of Columbia in what officials said was the biggest-ever income tax fraud recovery in the district, the attorney general's office announced on Monday.

The District of Columbia sued Saylor and his company in August 2022, alleging the executive paid no income taxes in the district during the more than 10 years he had lived there. It also said MicroStrategy conspired to help him do so. The attorney general’s office alleged Saylor avoided paying more than $25 million in taxes to the district, saying he had claimed to live elsewhere.

The New York Times first reported the news.

“Florida remains my home today, and I continue to dispute the allegation that I was ever a resident of the District of Columbia,” Saylor told the New York Times. “I have agreed to settle this matter to avoid the continued burdens of the litigation on friends, family, and myself.”

Shares of the Tysons Corner, Virginia-based software developer, rose 3% in pre-market trading.

UPDATE (June 3, 12:15 UTC): Updates headline and story with the statement from the attorney general's office.

Sheldon Reback

Sheldon Reback is CoinDesk's European news editor. Before joining the company, he spent 26 years as an editor at Bloomberg News, where he worked on beats as diverse as stock markets and the retail industry as well as covering the dot-com bubble of 2000-2002. He subsequently managed the Bloomberg Terminal's main news page before becoming the European editor for a global project to produce short, chart-based stories across the newsroom. His previous work as a journalist took him to Hong Kong, where he reported and edited for several technology magazines, and he also has experience in market research and writing computer manuals. Sheldon has an MBA from the London Business School and an industrial chemistry degree from Brunel University. He owns a small amount of ether.

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