91–100 of 109 posts
> someone who was desperately trying to lose money before the end of the year Isn't donating to charity a lot easier than gambling on options? It's both legal and extremely easy to donate 5k to a tax-deductible charity of your choice...
> someone who was desperately trying to lose money before the end of the year Isn't donating to charity a lot easier than gambling on options? It's both legal and extremely easy to donate 5k to a tax-deductible charity of your choice...
donating would go against the American spirit of individualism where you only care about yourself. after all, who ever helped you for free, right?
> A simple fix for the problems mentioned above would be to have slow phase-outs instead of sharp thresholds. How about the even simpler fix of not having phase-outs? This generally works: the cost of a subsidy generally does not increase as the recipient pays more taxes, so the higher total tax paid by a higher-income person will easily pay for the cost of a subsidy. And giving higher-income/wealthier people the sam…
The UK tax system also has a bunch of unfortunate cliffs, and tapers that create >60% marginal tax rates and worse. There's a calculator here that illustrates it well https://tax-cliffs.britishprogress.org/calculator The childcare cliff edge is probably the worst, but the personal allowance taper isn't ideal either as it's compressed over a relatively short income range And of course all the thresholds remain frozen,…
The Economist has this crazy graph of UK VAT thresholds and how they are causing companies to stay small, to keep their turnover under the threshold which avoids a lot of paperwork. It's the most infuriating thing, we are literally throttling our companies, the engines of growth, because of some accounting stupidity. Graph: https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=10... from this article: https://www…
> someone who was desperately trying to lose money before the end of the year Isn't donating to charity a lot easier than gambling on options? It's both legal and extremely easy to donate 5k to a tax-deductible charity of your choice...
The UK tax system also has a bunch of unfortunate cliffs, and tapers that create >60% marginal tax rates and worse. There's a calculator here that illustrates it well https://tax-cliffs.britishprogress.org/calculator The childcare cliff edge is probably the worst, but the personal allowance taper isn't ideal either as it's compressed over a relatively short income range And of course all the thresholds remain frozen,…
Oh I don't doubt it. In my native country of Belgium the tax rate can go to 69% and more: 50% income tax (used to be as high as 52.5% and maybe even 55%, don't remember) and then, on top of that, an addition 19% social wellfare tax. That's not mentioning stuff like, if you manage to buy stocks with what you have left, 30% state tax (+ crazy bank fees) on any dividends you receive from those stocks.
And then the brand new (1st jan 2026) 10% tax on any capital gain, once again: in addition to all the already existing taxes.
Add some arbitrary decisions on top of that, where if you happen to maybe have bought/sell a bit too many stocks or if you happen to have managed to put a too big part of your wealth into stocks, they may consider you're a "professional investor" and then your capital gains are taxed at your income rate.
Some are going to say: "Oh but create a company, get back the VAT, do this/do that".
I don't want to basically become a fiscal lawyer just to not be assraped by ever more taxes.
Instead of trying to "optimize", I just voted --before they'll introduce an exit tax (I'm sure that's coming)-- with my feet, my money and the future wealth I was going to create and left the country.
For what was I getting in return? According to a flemish university an estimated 55 000+ undocumented illegal migrants are now living in the capital city of Belgium, Brussels, alone. That's 5% of the population of the city that are undocumented migrants. They don't live in proper conditions. They're a drag on the economy. They're not happy, they're not thriving. Locals aren't happy either.
I didn't vote for this.
To me once politicians go too far, that's what they deserve: the middle class living the city in drones and being replaced by poor people. As I tell of my friends and family who also left the city: I just went a bit further and left the country altogether.
Following the example of my friend and ex-neighbor who did so decades ago: he left for SoCal (btw I didn't go to the US) and created two startups. Second one was a big hit. Belgium (and the EU) saw exactly zero return of his incredible drive and talent.
Another recent statistics: 40% of the people of Brussels are living close to the poverty line.
But at least socialists got the utopia they dreamed of: they're sure to never lose an election again. The middle class is dying in Brussels. The poor won't vote against socialism.
I just packed and left and advice anyone who can flee a sinking ship to do so. Many countries in Europe have decided to commit suicide and to turn themselves into slums.
I think this is just the beginning for may EU cities/countries: there's much more pain ahead --and although AI is going to be used as a scapegoat-- this has absolutely nothing to do with AI and all to do with political decisions.
It pains to see how my native city has been dragged into poverty... But good riddance.
As for the next gen: from day one I raised my kid in english. At 11 y/o she's totally fluent and our thinking was simple: english is at least understood mostly everywhere in the world. She'll have to move because I fear it's not just my native city that is toast.
There is a hilarious one in the Indian direct tax (Income tax) code right now: If your (taxable) income is less than 7L (inr), no tax is assessed. If your income is greater than 7L, but upto 12L, tax is assessed, but a tax _rebate_ (a discount on payable tax) is granted for the exact amount of tax owed. This means net tax paid till 12L is zero. But if your income is 12L + 1, this rebate no longer applies, so the enti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that really just reflects the fact that on subjectively graded tests the score really doesn’t have that many significant figures of accuracy. That a regrading can find 3 to 5 points by being more generous - or presumably take 3 to 5 off by being harsher - says that really you could save a lot of effort by treating the final grades as bucketing into 10 point bands and treating 25-35 as the actual cutoff.
Isn't that equivalent to just setting the passing threshold to 25, with the same incentives?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think because the gradient is simply too confusing for laypeople to understand. Even for a simple system like US social security that has a gradient. For every $2 you make over the limit, you lose $1 in benefits. I've heard countless times misconceptions of people thinking they'd be losing money (as in literally having less money net) by working.
I agree, but almost everyone today can use a computer or smartphone. They can type in their income, and the computer can calculate it, providing them an average number of what their percentage of actual taxable income was- I think Turbo Tax and other software might do something like this. They don't have to understand how it works to do their own taxes.
Not to mention the amount of misinformation that can get passed around