Microstrategy and Michael Saylor Reach $40 Million Settlement in DC Tax Lawsuit

American software company MicroStrategy and its chairman Michael Saylor have agreed to pay $40 million to settle charges from the D.C. attorney general that the company and its co-founder defrauded the district of millions in unpaid taxes.

The District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against Saylor for unpaid taxes in August 2022. It accused Saylor of failing to pay over $25 million in D.C. income taxes and said he falsely claimed to be a resident of lower-tax jurisdictions. The complaint was later amended to level the same accusations at MicroStrategy.

“For nearly a decade, Saylor has been engaged in a fraudulent scheme to deprive the District of tax revenue on hundreds of millions of dollars in income that he earned while a resident of the District by falsely claiming to be a resident of Florida,” the D.C. attorney general claimed in its complaint. “Demonstrating his disdain for the rules that everyone else has to live by, Saylor publicly flaunted his billionaire lifestyle while bragging to his friends and associates about how he was evading District taxes.”

The news seems to have landed well with MSTR investors. In pre-market trading, MSTR shares are trading 4.5% higher than Friday’s close of $1,541.

Microstrategy shares have been a popular buy among Bitcoiners because of the company’s dedication to amassing a huge corporate treasury of BTC. At the time of writing, MSTR has amassed nearly $15 billion worth of Bitcoin.

The company recently rolled out plans for MicroStrategy Orange, a decentralized ID solution that will operate on the Bitcoin network.

The sprawling concept has applications for combating social media bots and spam, authenticating documents, and securing medical records. But as the proposed specification for Orange went public on GitHub last month, it received a mixed reaction from Crypto Twitter, in part due to the technical complexity of the plans.

The company said MicroStrategy Orange is an attempt to facilitate immutable, or permanently fixed, decentralized identities. These identifiers would then provide a way for individuals to control and verify their identity without relying on a central authority.