Microsoft paid out dividends because they were sitting on a mountain of cash and the shareholders demanded their piece of the pie. Nothing more to it than that.

During the .com boom dividends fell out of favor because shareholders were making huge capital gains on tech stocks.

And, as usual, the whackos have put their spin on something to instill unwarranted fear. The one percenters are going to cry everyone. Panic time.

From Bloomberg:

"In what he billed a bid for tax fairness and deficit reduction, Obama reversed his previous policy of taxing dividends more lightly than wage income. The budget plan would raise $206.4 billion over 10 years by treating dividends as ordinary income for married couples making more than $250,000 a year and individuals making more than $200,000.

“We simply can’t afford to devote $206 billion for lower tax rates for the highest-income Americans,” Gene Sperling, White House director of the National Economic Council, told reporters. “Our system for taxing investment income for the most well-off Americans is clearly broken.”"