InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[hock1]

Follow up on previous post....So, there are some obvious and not-so-obvious ramifications of this practice of short-term naked shorting.
The obvious ones (although they do take some thought to comprehend) are: 1) The average, legitimate investor who has been merrily going along thinking that the market for any particular stock is a zero-sum game (i.e. there is a finite number of shares)is wrong. 2) The market value of any issuer is necessarily going to be skewed as more shares have been sold than exist. 3) Not borrowing and delivering actual shares within T+3 is akin to "free-riding" (I assume board members know what this is, but I would be happy to explain to anyone).
Not so obvious (and I would like any board accountants to correct me if I am wrong) are the complications arising if IDC were to issue a dividend. If you are the unlucky owner of naked-shorted shares, you will receive a "payment-in-lieu-of" dividend (which the short will have to come up with) that is not a true dividend and is taxed at your income tax rate, not at the reduced (I believe it is 5%) dividend rate.
So, as a legit investor you have not only suffered from the suppression of the value of your investment, but even when your company has been successful enough to pay a dividend, you have a dilemma: do I pay the income tax rate, or do I defraud the IRS and claim it is a legit dividend? What a country!