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According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

etymonline.com

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Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#101

Post by Locke1689 »

ars wrote: post #100
Locke1689 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, why would it eventually get spent? My inheritance is probably going to be very high.

And what are you going to do with the money? You'll spend some, invest some, etc. You'll also have kids, so even if you save it all, it'll get divided amongst more and more people. Or you'll give it all away to charity. Just look historically - are they any wealthy families that kept all the money in the family and never spent it? I don't think there are any that even lasted 3 generations before it was spent or dilut…

The Rockafeller and Walton families come to mind. My sister and I know a half-dozen families that have kept millions in inheritance over the course of about 100-150 years. Remember that America isn't that old and "modern" America is even younger.

My family tends to put a fair share of its yearly spending into family vacations, also, which wouldn't generate any taxes for the United States. This isn't really about my family though, it just doesn't make sense that you would rely on "eventual" wealth dissipation in order to collect taxes. Also, would you seek to tax different items differently? It seems like it would be more difficult to find and tax luxury items differently than simply using a progressive income tax. Would you have to establish VAT for items imported to the country? Would this be double taxation if you bought a good which has a VAT tax in another country?

Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#102

Post by frankus »

The author mentions thinking about doing an iPhone app, but being put off by the $9500 price.

I know the revenue share pitch is a big old red flag for any developer worth their salt (most people who want to do a revenue share have some sort of scammy half-baked idea with nothing else to offer for which they want half of the revenue).

But this guy is clearly bringing something important to the table (a curated database of etymological data), and the app wouldn't be that complicated (depending on whether the database ships with the app or is lazy-loaded from the server).

Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#103

Post by pw »

camz wrote: post #97
ars wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am interested. I believe you about the corporate taxes, but I have a hard time believing you are able to avoid the SE tax. On way or another the full 15.3% social security tax is going to be paid.

Hey ars, well the best way to explain the concept is to think about how you are taxed on dividends. When you buy stock in Google and receive dividends, you would pay tax on that income on your 1040, but it would not be taxed as a "self-employment income" and thus SE Tax is not levied. An S-Corporation is a standard C-Corporation that has elected for special treatment. Instead of paying double taxation, its income is…

I've always wondered what the proper criteria for "reasonable salary" were. Care to offer one of your wonderful Hacker News summaries on that matter?

By the way, it's great to see a qualified member of the HN community offering help to Etymonline. Do let us know if anything comes of it (he's says he's made contact with a local tax lawyer, but based on your reputation here, I'd rest easier if he were in your hands ;-).

Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#104

Post by smutticus »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

I'm always amazed, when the-tax-system-sucks posts come up on HN, how quickly most commenters are to trash the author and/or lecture the complainer on how wrong they are. There is a impedance mismatch at work in our system of governance that's not going away any time soon. The government makes laws by sticking people into little boxes and making rules for those boxes. This system of boxes and rules -- the tax code --…

The system isn't broken. It just wasn't written with individuals in mind. The system works wonderfully if you're a CPA or large financial institution.

If people understood their best interests and elected officials acted on behalf of those best interests we would have a simpler tax code. The opacity of law benefits only those who can understand it. Clarity of tax code is simply not in the interest of those who pay for laws to be drafted.

Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#105

Post by ars »

Locke1689 wrote: post #101
ars wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what are you going to do with the money? You'll spend some, invest some, etc. You'll also have kids, so even if you save it all, it'll get divided amongst more and more people. Or you'll give it all away to charity. Just look historically - are they any wealthy families that kept all the money in the family and never spent it? I don't think there are any that even lasted 3 generations before it was spent or dilut…

The Rockafeller and Walton families come to mind. My sister and I know a half-dozen families that have kept millions in inheritance over the course of about 100-150 years. Remember that America isn't that old and "modern" America is even younger. My family tends to put a fair share of its yearly spending into family vacations, also, which wouldn't generate any taxes for the United States. This isn't really about my f…

The Rockefeller family is unusual in that the money is locked in a trust, but when it expires there are over 150 family members who will split the money.

The Walton is just now reaching it's 3rd generation, so isn't that old.

If this part really bothers you, you can have a sales tax plus estate tax, but no income tax.

BTW, you are asking me a bunch of questions on the details, when none of this is my idea. I'm just parroting what the proponents of the "Fair tax" say.

Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#106

Post by gregpilling »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #86
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone owes income taxes and Social Security/unemployment ("FICA") taxes on all of their income. Actually, this isn't true; the Social Security portion of FICA (which is most of it) is only paid on the first $106k of your gross income (in 2010). Additionally, the word "income" in your sentence reveals some very complex questions about the differences between gross revenue, gross income, modified adjusted gross inco…

Thank you for providing a moan of despair, right on cue! According to my off-the-cuff hypothesis, this suggests that you have the soul of a CPA. ;) Obviously, my pocket-sized rule of thumb isn't designed for people who earn $100+K per year. Those people can afford accountants. Likewise, people for whom adjusted gross income is a necessarily complex calculation involving the phase of the moon can probably also afford…

Yes, TurboTax would have caught this.

Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#107

Post by notahacker »

jackfoxy wrote: post #87
moultano wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you propose instead? A link is fine.

The right, even obligation, of the sovereign is to dip a straw in the stream of commerce and extract revenue. Tax farming was the way to do this in olden days, a highly inefficient and grossly unjust means. Today the income tax is the predominant means, and it is sold as the socially just alternative. I don't want to argue the social justice aspect. I pointed out some contradictions in another comment. I will argue f…

The correlation between energy use and ability to pay large tax bills is at best, loose. Alaskans on average consume >5x the amount of energy New Yorkers, which certainly doesn't reflect their respective per capita incomes http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank30.html

On average the rich use energy more than average people, but the proportional difference isn't huge, and it's pretty safe to assume the top 1% of earners aren't consuming anywhere close to 20-30% of household energy.

Replacing income tax with a levy on energy would be regressive beyond belief, to the point where I don't think it would be possible to match the returns generated by the current system and maintain a minimum tax-free level of fuel consumption that would allow the average person in some states to stay warm and be able to travel to work on a daily basis.

And this is coming from someone who gets by comfortably paying approx 4x the fuel tax Americans do...

Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#108

Post by Locke1689 »

ars wrote: post #105
Locke1689 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Rockafeller and Walton families come to mind. My sister and I know a half-dozen families that have kept millions in inheritance over the course of about 100-150 years. Remember that America isn't that old and "modern" America is even younger. My family tends to put a fair share of its yearly spending into family vacations, also, which wouldn't generate any taxes for the United States. This isn't really about my f…

The Rockefeller family is unusual in that the money is locked in a trust, but when it expires there are over 150 family members who will split the money. The Walton is just now reaching it's 3rd generation, so isn't that old. If this part really bothers you, you can have a sales tax plus estate tax, but no income tax. BTW, you are asking me a bunch of questions on the details, when none of this is my idea. I'm just p…

Fair enough. For what it's worth, according to the President's Advisor Panels and the Brookings institute, this would raise taxes for the bottom 90% of taxpayers and drop taxes for the top 10%. http://www.brookings.edu/papers/1998/03taxes_gale.aspx

Reading his paper it seems like this idea has some merit but this implementation is also fairly suspect.

Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#109

Post by Locke1689 »

earl wrote: post #48
icco wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds hilarious, source?

I don't know about the not getting prosecuted bit, but drug taxes are real -- see eg http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1578857,00.ht... http://marijuanastamps.com/state-stamps.htm Mostly, it's another way for pigs to steal from people. The idea being they can not only throw you in prison for dealing, but then use tax forfeiture laws to take everything you own.

Just to let you know, the way you worded your entire last paragraph reversed the tone of your post for me. What was informative before became ignorant and vacuous. Is it too much to ask that we keep away from the obvious logical fallacies on HN?

Re: According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google

#110

Post by smackfu »

grandalf wrote: post #11

Most of this kind of things probably slips under the IRS's radar. Similarly, when's the last time anyone here declared the value of gifts they received as income? The problem with this sort of thing (and the new 1099 rules) are that they criminalize a large swath of the population. Sure, the violations are minor, but the fact is if you break the rules you are guilty of a crime. The problem with this is that if we're…

Gifts aren't income. Unless someone is compensating you for work done in lieu of pay.

(The gift tax applies to the giver, not the receiver.)

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