What a Trump win means to the technology sector

What a Trump win means to the technology sector

President-elect Trump may shake up things in more than the wall construction industry. As some of you may have noticed recently, executives from well-known companies such as Amazon, Netflix and Salesforce, to name but a few, were rather vocal about president-elect Donald Trump. He’s been known for his tremendous sense of humor, right? All right, so perhaps having even one of these industry leaders comparing him to certain historical dictator might have been a bit much.

Unfortunately for some of us in the technology industry, we may be seeing a lot of red laser dots appear on our foreheads as we congregate in boardrooms soon. That might be a flagrant exaggeration, but wasn’t Mr. Trump threatening to boycott Apple? Wasn’t he going after Amazon for antitrust violations? What about Facebook? Didn’t they have suspect immigration policies? Surely Mr. Trump was kidding when he accused Google of suppressing negative headlines about Hilary Clinton!

All the bad blood and accusations aside, you should be worried regardless. He won, so that may satisfy the new commander in chief and spare the technology sector from retaliation. What we should all really worry about are tax-related statements he made to the press. There’s a slight possibility the president-elect may remember his own words about Amazon. “Amazon is getting away with murder, tax-wise”.

If your tax advisors keep telling you to save taxes by declaring all that income in Ireland or some not so far tax haven, perhaps you should remember the public attention you may be getting in the coming 4 years and prepare accordingly. What may be perfectly legal might not look so great when coming out of president-elect Trump’s mouth live on television.

Bob Pellerin is an author and avid podcaster specialized in technology and finance. More technology articles can be found at www.ctobob.com