Microstrategy and Michael Saylor reach $40 million settlement in DC tax lawsuit

US software company MicroStrategy and its chairman Michael Saylor have agreed to pay $40 million to settle charges from the DC Attorney General that the company and its co-founder defrauded the company of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.

The District of Columbia filed suit against Saylor in August 2022 for failure to pay taxes. Saylor accused him of failing to pay more than $25 million in D.C. income taxes, falsely claiming he was a resident of a low-tax jurisdiction. The complaint was later amended to make the same accusations at MicroStrategy.

“For nearly a decade, Saylor engaged in a fraudulent scheme that deprived the District of hundreds of millions of dollars in income he earned while living in the District by falsely claiming to be a Florida resident.” The D.C. Attorney General alleged in the complaint. “Showing a disdain for the rules everyone else must follow, Saylor publicly flaunted his billionaire lifestyle while also bragging to his friends and associates that he was dodging district taxes.”

This news appears to have been well received by MSTR investors. In premarket trading, MSTR stock is trading 4.5% higher than Friday’s closing price of $1,541.

Microstrategy stock has been a popular buy among Bitcoiners due to the company’s commitment to amassing massive corporate treasuries in BTC. At the time of this writing, MSTR has amassed nearly $15 billion worth of Bitcoin.

The company recently announced plans for MicroStrategy Orange, a decentralized identity solution that will operate on the Bitcoin network.

This expanded concept has applications for fighting social media bots and spam, authenticating documents, and protecting medical records. However, when the proposed specifications for Orange were released on GitHub last month, they received a mixed response from Crypto Twitter, in part due to the technical complexity of the plan.

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