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It’s possible to pay $150 in taxes on an income of $150K

rootofgood.com

31–40 of 107 posts

Re: It’s possible to pay $150 in taxes on an income of $150K

#31

Holy shit, $500 a year for health insurance? I pay twice that a month and don't even get an HSA option. Seems weird to put so much into retirement funds if your plan is to retire in your 30s, the penalties of touching that before 60 are pretty substantial. I suspect there's some sort of inheritance of property or something they're not disclosing.

I'm assuming he's planning on getting the money out of the 401k via a backdoor Roth IRA ladder. It's fairly common for people doing FIRE.

Re: It’s possible to pay $150 in taxes on an income of $150K

#32
post #17

The best tax optimization trick you can do is to open an LLC. Costs $800/year to maintain in California, enables you to claim business expenses for a looot of things. Sometimes surprisingly. You don’t even need a whole lot of revenue. Just sell something, anything, and go for it. The penalty for going overboard is to pay back taxes with a bit of interest. As long as you don’t do anything crazy, you should be fine. Re…

Also the extreme headache of an audit

I wonder if odds of that go up if you brag on the internet about your sort of shady approach to taxes and cavalier attitude that it's just some kind of game to be played.

Re: It’s possible to pay $150 in taxes on an income of $150K

#35

The author has 3 children, and that's a _household_ income of $150000. 150 grand is not a huge family income to support 2 adults and 3 kids; as a country, we give people tax breaks to encourage having children and to help support people who make that choice. Calling this "Houdini-like" (author's words) tax hacking seems like a bit of a misunderstanding of deliberate social policy!

>>150 grand is not a huge family income to support 2 adults and 3 kids An awful lot of families are doing this on 1/3 of that amount.

When you subtract all the retirement savings, they're doing it on half that ($73,000).

Re: It’s possible to pay $150 in taxes on an income of $150K

#36
I’m always amazed that people think 401(k)s are a great idea. Yeah, that’s exactly what I want, the government telling me how I can spend my money, until I’m almost ready to die, with no guarantee the laws governing 401(k)s won’t change along the way, or that some moron politician won’t siphon from my retirement.

Re: It’s possible to pay $150 in taxes on an income of $150K

#37

The author has 3 children, and that's a _household_ income of $150000. 150 grand is not a huge family income to support 2 adults and 3 kids; as a country, we give people tax breaks to encourage having children and to help support people who make that choice. Calling this "Houdini-like" (author's words) tax hacking seems like a bit of a misunderstanding of deliberate social policy!

That's about 2.5 times the median family income. It's a huge family income relative to that.

Re: It’s possible to pay $150 in taxes on an income of $150K

#40
post #17

The best tax optimization trick you can do is to open an LLC. Costs $800/year to maintain in California, enables you to claim business expenses for a looot of things. Sometimes surprisingly. You don’t even need a whole lot of revenue. Just sell something, anything, and go for it. The penalty for going overboard is to pay back taxes with a bit of interest. As long as you don’t do anything crazy, you should be fine. Re…

Yeah, for anyone reading who needs to read this: don’t do this. Unless you’re running a legitimate business, this is blatant tax fraud. Also $800/yr in California? You people are being ripped off. LLCs aren’t laid any fees to maintain annually in Arizona, and they’re perpetual entities.

Definitely not tax fraud. You’re allowed yo be bad at business if you can afford it.

Afaik you are “running a legitimate business” as soon as you’re selling stuff. Even if it’s github sponsorships for your opensource projects or whatever.

Fraud is what most people (probably) do — not report that income on your taxes.

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