You assume they’re paying it back and don’t do some pittance of a public service instead.

This article is basically their public flogging, they've paid their dues and can reenter society

For this to be criminal it'd probably require intent to be proven which is difficult without a "smoking gun" of an email being like "do this to avoid taxes or be fired"- CEO. For it just to be civil fines is a lot simpler to show. Their inevitable appeal and potential reduction in fine is a different issue.

Good. I hope it hurts.

But it's only back taxes on profits we know about

When you're a billion dollar company, It's cheaper to bribe politicians than it is to pay taxes.

There's a supreme Court judge right now who was giving companies favorable laws for like a pack of twizzlers.

it is just an inevitable consequence of money and lobby based politics. Whoever contributed to turn US elections into something like a pro wrestling match event is to blame

Coca Cola ensured that international drug laws grant them an exception to use real coca leaves (with the cocaine extracted from them first). Oddly enough, they could still make their cola taste the same without the leaves. The reason they still use them is because they likely wouldn't be allowed to call it "coca" cola if it had no coca leaves. The name was so recognizable that they asked for an exception to drug laws rather than change the name of their drink.

These are the incentives of the economic system. Are you up for radical change? We can't rely on companies choosing to be moral and nice.

We need workers to own the economy.

I'm pretty sure it's because the use of absurd amounts of high fructose corn syrup. There's 39g (can't confirm, I got it from Google) of sugar in a 12oz (340ml) can. US soda is pretty much just carbonated high fructose corn syrup water with a bit of flavoring. There's probably other significant differences too since the US has barely the minimum food safety laws.

Yeah. Colombian is better.

You're not going to believe this, but it turns out that no one knew this was happening - they're all completely innocent! As long as they promise not to do anything immoral ever again, they're fine. /s

So you're kinda right and kinda not.

Roughly what actually happens in cases of massive back-taxes likes this is that the movement of funds is tracked back through to the municipalities where they initially failed to pay. From there the actual unpaid amounts are calculated for each level, then priority weighting is assigned (if the total sum was reduced to less than the delinquent payment), then the repayment schedule is calculated for each municipality, and finally the IRS takes the cost of remediation investigation from the top (probably about 1.5 mil for this one) and begins repayment.

That 'repayment schedule' means that the funds not immediately disbursed can be loaned out (most often to other government agencies) (there's a term for the specific kind of loan this is, it's very short term but I am totally blanking on the name). Funds are usually given out at the next funding cycle unless there's a claim made for immediate funding, and from there it's just folded into the budget and assigned however that municipality / organization handles budget allocation.

TL;DR: Biden admin can't have the funds directly except in emergencies, that would be constitutional overstep. It just goes back to the government at the next budget assignment. Which you can draw your own conclusions about where Congress will put that additional money.

don't be silly

it'll get appealed and fought over and over until it's down to 600 million

they'll pay back 300 and we wont hear anything else about it for years until someone mentions Clarence Thomas getting a new 300 million dollar golden calf statue around the same time

And lots of people will stop drinking it because of that, and they will be healthier thanks to it.