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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

> In May, Disney+ announced a content removal plan designed to cut US$1.5bn worth of content, meaning it substantially reduces the company’s value, giving it a lot less tax to pay.

This really seems like something that should not be permitted. You can just take something off from a streaming platform and use that as a reason to write down its value?

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In an era where Disney is also increasingly not making physical media available, some of these shows now have literally no legal copies. As the Disney+ streaming service was the only place some of these shows were ever available.

Disney is no longer releasing any bluray or other physical media in Australia and other markets are sure to follow suit: https://thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/072523-1400

Its hard not to see this as a media long game, similar to software licenses, you'll have no possible way to own anything. That also seems to open up possible stronger enforcement on pirated copies of movies from streaming services since there is no legitimate way anyone could have had such a copy.

Both topics also discussed on the Linus Tech Tips "WAN Show" podcast this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VIeSXvzyIE "Disneys' Ruining Movies"

Basically, the streaming equivalent of "The Vault".

You can. Assets are yours to to use or waste.

You can go to your wardrobe, pick out your newest clothes and throw them away. You can pull out your wallet and burn all the bills. You can rm -rf ~, delete every project on your github account, etc. None of this is forbidden.

You can leave your well-paying job, which reduces your tax bill and isn't forbidden. You're not required to act in such a way as to earn more or pay more tax.

> You can pull out your wallet and burn all the bills. (…) None of this is forbidden.

Depending on where you live, it might be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_burning#Legality

So I can paint 'Mona Free Moneya', value it at $1Billion and then burn it for a tax write-off, right?

Yes, you can. The net tax effect will be about -$5: ① Purchase paint and canvas for $5 ② Create $1B asset and add it to your accounting ③ Write down asset to zero. You can claim a $5 loss and reduce you tax burden by $1 or something like that, so the scheme only costs you $4.

Clever people try to do more sophisticated versions of this around the end of a year. Add an asset in December, write it down in January, or the other way around. That can make sense if the rules for the two years are different, or if there's some reason to pay the tax in 2023 instead of 2024, or…

But they aren't destroying the asset in this case. They are just not using the asset. The show is presumably not destroyed. They are just not showing it.

You couldn't put clothing in another wardrobe and claim that as a loss, could you? Could you claim moving all your code to Bitbucket devalued it as Bitbucket is harder to use and fewer devs know how to use it?

They are reclassifying the asset to "show that won't be aired", which I assume changes the depreciation regime and allows instant writeoff.

(Depreciation, for those that don't know, governs how much of an asset is assumed to be lost each year. If you buy a computer, you spend e.g. $1000 and get an asset worth $1000, so there's no change to the value of the company on that day. The taxman will let you assume that in the second year it's worth ⅔ and in the third ⅓, and after that it's worthless (completely written off). Your accounting for the second year will show a loss of $333 for that computer, since it started the year being worth $1000 and ended it worth $667. This means that the loss of value of the computer allows you to earn $333 without having to pay tax, if you'll pardon the simplification.)

It really shouldn’t be allowed, but, at the very least, if they’re writing off the show on their taxes, they should have to release it into the public domain.

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