不能说的秘密

A |     WASHINGTON -- Charles and Kathleen Moore are about to have their day in the Supreme Court over a $15,000 tax bill they contend is unconstitutional.The couple from Redmond, Washington, claim they had to pay the money because of their investment in an Indian company from which, as Charles Moore, 62, said in a sworn statement, they “have never received a distribution, dividend, or other payment.”But significant parts of the story they have told to reach this point seem at odds with public records.The Moores are the public face of a high court case backed by business and conservative political interests that could call into question other parts of the U.S. tax code and rule out a much-discussed but never-enacted tax on wealth. The case is set for arguments on Dec. 5. The Moores are the latest example of plaintiffs whose lawsuits seem to simply be exercising their legal rights, but whose cases are backed by others with enormous amounts of money or a consequential social issue at stake. The Moores sought help from the anti-regulatory Competitive Enterprise Institute.Underscoring the case's importance at a recent Heritage Foundation event, lawyer Paul Clement said, "The constitutionality of a wealth tax may well be decided in the context of this case.”Details of the Moores' involvement with the company, initially called KisanKraft Machine Tools Private Limited, were first reported by Tax Notes, which caters to tax professionals. The public documents are filings with the Indian government.At issue in the case is a provision of the 2017 tax bill enacted by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by then-President Donald Trump. The law applies to companies that are owned by Americans, but do their business in foreign countries. It imposes a one-time tax on investors' shares of profits that have not been passed along to them, in order to offset other tax benefits. The measure is expected to generate $340 billion in tax revenues.The Moores, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and conservative think tanks, contend that the provision violates the 16th Amendment, which allows the federal government to impose an income tax on Americans.The $15,000 tax bill was for the Moores' share of KisanKraft's profits."If you haven’t received any income, how can you be required to pay income taxes?” Charles Moore asks in a video posted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.But far from being a passive investor with no influence over the company, Moore, who worked at Microsoft during his career in software development, served on KisanKraft's board of directors for five years.“The story the Moores told about Charles' involvement with KisanKraft is directly at odds with the fiduciary responsibilities of an individual holding a board seat for an Indian company,” Mindy Herzfeld, a professor of tax practice at the University of Florida law school, wrote in Tax Notes.And there are other indications of Moore's more extensive involvement with KisanKraft than his testimony indicated. The company paid for his travel to India four times and he made at least two investments beyond the $40,000 stake he put up in 2006.Moore also was prepared to invest an another roughly $250,000. That money was ultimately returned by KisanKraft, along with 12% interest.One other inconsistency is that while the Moores say they jointly invested the money, only Charles Moore's name appears in company documents.The couple and their lawyers did not disclose any of that information in legal filings in three different federal courts, including the Supreme Court.“The original declaration on which the case is built is full of lies,” said Reuven Avi-Yonah, an international tax expert at the University of Michigan law school.In a brief conversation with The Associated Press, Kathleen Moore said she and her husband would not discuss the case and referred questions to their lawyers. Andrew Grossman, the Moore's lead attorney, did not respond to messages seeking comment.The omissions, along with the Moores' failure to take advantage of other legal options that would have deferred, if not eliminated, their tax liability make Avi-Yonah and other experts in international tax law suspect the case was manufactured to get at a larger issue, the tax on billionaires that has been proposed by some prominent Democrats but never enacted.A wealth tax would apply not to the incomes of the very richest Americans, but their assets, like stock holdings, that now only get taxed when they are sold. “There really was no reason for the court to take it on, other than to send a signal to warn off the Congress from passing a billionaire tax," said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.Other provisions of the tax code could be upended by the court's decision, including measures relating to partnerships, limited liability companies and other business formations, Rosenthal said.Changes to those provisions also could affect some justices' finances. Chief Justice John Roberts holds a one-eighth interest worth up to $15,000 in an Irish partnership that owns a cottage in county Limerick, Ireland, and Justice Clarence Thomas' wife, Ginni, owns a limited liability company that generated between $50,000 and $100,000 in income last year from Nebraska real estate, according to the justices' financial disclosure forms. Two other recent Supreme Court cases advanced by conservative interests also raised questions about whether facts had been manipulated to get the disputes in front of the court. One of those involved a wedding website designer in Colorado who did not want to work with same-sex couples and a public high school football coach in Washington who wanted to pray on the field.Rosenthal said that “the ugly facts matter” and that the justices could return the Moores' case to a lower court without ruling on it.Charles Moore said in his sworn statement that he agreed to invest in the company that was being formed by his friend and former colleague at Microsoft, Ravindra “Ravi” Kumar Agrawal, because he liked the business plan and trusted his friend.“Moreover, I thought KisanKraft was formed for a noble purpose and had the potential to improve the lives of small and marginal farmers in India,” Moore said. The case had already kicked up ethical questions. Senate Democrats had asked Justice Samuel Alito to step aside from the case because of his interactions with David Rivkin, another lawyer who also is representing the Moores. The Democrats said Alito had cast doubt on his ability to judge the case fairly because he sat for four hours of Wall Street Journal opinion page interviews with an editor at the newspaper and Rivkin.Alito rejected the demands in a four-page statement issued by the court in which he said there “is no valid reason” for his recusal. ___Associated Press writer Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.___This story has been corrected to reflect that Mindy Herzfeld is a professor of tax practice at the University of Florida law school, not director of the master's program in international tax.。

B |     根据麦肯锡（McKinsey）今年稍早发布的测算，全球数据中心容量将从2025年的82吉瓦增至2030年的219吉瓦，相当于现在的2.7倍左右。其中美国占比约45%，约90至95吉瓦。英伟达（Nvidia）首席执行官黄仁勋近期估算，基于英伟达架构新建一吉瓦算力的成本可能很快达到800亿至1000亿美元。按此换算，未来五年全球新增产能对应的资本开支是万亿美元量级。         与投入规模同步升温的，是对超大云厂商资本开支的质疑。

C | 作为全球芯片板块的先行指标，费城半导体指数（SOX）在过去一个月中下跌了13.38%。         不过，美国投资分析机构NDR首席主题策略师乔西克（Pat Tschosik）在最近一场研讨会上表示，数据中心建设的物理扩张不会因为质疑声而立即放缓，电力设备、变压器、散热系统等物理层建设因两到五年的交付周期已被锁定。他表示，“超级周期尚未走完”，但对训练层资本开支的容忍度，正在进入一个更审慎的阶段。         乔西克在回应第一财经记者关于折旧的提问时说，即便把折旧成本算进去，结论也不会变。“真正重要的还是云销售增长的数字。”他认为，一旦资本开支增速持续跑赢云计算收入增速，“资本开支义警”（capex vigilantes）就会出现，用抛售给出市场信号。         从“训练主导”转向“推理主导”          当前，费城半导体指数（SOX）两年期相对标普500的超额收益，在今年6月已升至125%至150%区间，这是NDR认为的“泡沫观察区”。上一次触及是在2021年2月，同年12月SOX相对强度即见顶。         但从预租率来看，对数据中心的需求目前仍真实存在。据仲量联行（JLL）数据，北美数据中心空置率约为1%，且自2024年底以来维持在这一水平；美国在建产能中92%已经预租，欧洲这一比例为82%。乔西克认为，这组数字说明需求本身仍然存在，建设方也愿意继续投入，但审批流程和电网接入速度构成硬约束，这一瓶颈在欧洲更为明显。         美国银行分析师也认为，未来五年美国将需要超过230吉瓦（GW）的新发电容量，但受监管的公用事业公司预计仅能增加约93吉瓦的合格供应量，从而留下了超过100吉瓦的电力缺口。报告显示，在此期间，单是数据中心就可能增加大约125吉瓦的美国电力负荷，从而将2026年至2030年的整体电力需求推高至4.1%的复合年增长率。         不过，从更细分的角度来看，乔西克认为，就整体产能建设而言，目前处于“中局”（middle innings）；但专门用于模型训练的产能建设，已经进入“后段”（later innings），从2027年起，新增容量将更多流向推理需求，而非训练需求。         “训练与推理对基础设施的需求曲线并不相同，当训练需求见顶时，围绕训练能力构建的资本开支逻辑将首先面临检验。”他解释说，值得反复追问的是，“这些产能真的用得上吗？推理需求真的会起来吗？”          乔西克提出的另一个变量是生产力兑现的时滞。他的团队测算显示，科技支出占美国国内生产总值（GDP）比重的变化，与生产力提升之间存在约20个季度、即五年左右的滞后关系。据此推算，当前围绕模型训练进行的巨额投入，其对应的生产力回报要到数年后才会显现。         这意味着，即便整个超级周期尚未走完，推理需求带来的下一轮增长仍会到来，数据中心资本开支仍可能在生产力兑现之前，先经历一轮调整。乔西克将这一调整的时间窗口大致设定在两年左右，快于20个季度的历史滞后期，逻辑是一旦云厂商销售增速率先放缓，市场不会等到生产力数据兑现才做出反应。“我的基准情形是，数据中心会经历一轮调整，直到推理端真正开始发力为止。         如何判断数据中心繁荣期的尾声          根据标普全球市场智库（S&P Global Market Intelligence）的数据，2025年数据中心的并购（M&A）交易额达到了约500亿美元，是前一年的两倍多。         乔西克提出，本轮数据中心繁荣可能以三种历史脚本之一收场：供给过剩、需求下滑，或融资枯竭，分别对应1999年、2022年和2008年的教训。         他为每一种脚本给出了一组可以实时追踪的指标。供给过剩是1999年互联网泡沫留下的教训。乔西克列出的观测指标包括数据中心建设周期、空置率和GPU租赁价格。目前建设周期仍需两到五年，尚未出现缩短迹象；空置率如前所述维持在约1%的低位；仲量联行和世邦魏理仕（CBRE）发布的数据均未显示供给过剩的信号。         需求下滑是他称为“最值得对照”的2022年教训。彼时，随着企业削减云计算开支，云厂商销售增速放缓，而资本开支仍在加速，亚马逊和英伟达股价当年跌幅均超过50%。

D | 乔西克提出的判断阈值是：当资本开支增速超过销售增速的1.5倍，市场通常会做出负面反应，这一关系在微软身上同样成立。         “如果只能挑一两个指标来看，第一位是超大规模云厂商的云业务增速，第二位就是它们的资本开支指引，”他表示，“一旦这些公司开始下调指引，往往说明它们已经察觉到需求端出了问题。

E | ”          融资枯竭对应2008年金融危机的教训。乔西克关注的核心变量是资本开支占经营现金流的比例，亚马逊这一比例已接近100%，亚马逊、微软、谷歌等超大规模云厂商合计约为70%。         “我相信，一旦这个比例逼近甚至超过100%，市场对这些公司融资的态度就不会像现在这样友善。”乔西克提到，谷歌近期已经开始发债支持扩张。此外，科技行业高收益债利差、“新云”公司（如CoreWeave、甲骨文）的股价表现，以及OpenAI和Anthropic两家公司未来的上市时点，都是判断融资环境是否收紧的辅助信号，“这说明现在的市场环境可能已经是最好的时候了，所以它们才要上市。”          折旧是否被低估          值得关注的是，资本开支占经营现金流的比例，有可能掩盖了折旧对企业盈利的实际侵蚀。该指标所依据的经营现金流会将折旧加回，因此无法反映折旧在利润表层面造成的拖累，而如果单独测算折旧压力，数据中心繁荣的拐点是否会提前出现？          对于第一财经记者的提问，乔西克在回应中承认，这一质疑成立。“确实，我能理解这会被视为一种激进的会计处理方式。

F | ”但他表示，更重要的变量是企业是否会因为不愿耗尽经营现金流，而转向发债融资。         “让我们把注意力放在真正重要的因素上，”他说，市场会看到企业债务开始增加，一旦市场对新增债务作出负面反应，就意味着“资本纪律”正式回归。他将这一现象称为“资本开支义警”。在他看来，与其纠结折旧的会计处理方式，不如紧盯云销售增速与资本开支增速的相对关系，这才是真正决定市场情绪的变量。         这一问题延伸出另一层担忧，即GPU资产本身的折旧年限是否被低估。乔西克的回应是，训练阶段需要性能最强的芯片，但推理阶段对算力速度的要求更低，这意味着旧款GPU在被训练环节淘汰后，仍可以流入推理场景继续使用，加之二手GPU市场已经存在，实际使用寿命可能长于市场的悲观假设。“我不认为这像有些人渲染的那样严重。         (本文来自第一财经)。

G |