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California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

xconomy.com

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Re: California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

#211

Post by caseysoftware »

natrius wrote: post #166
techsupporter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully you aren't fond of electricity[0], water[1], schools[2], or roads[3]. 0 - http://www.ercot.com/news/press_releases/show/26375 1 - http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DM_south.htm 2 - http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-budgets-call-for-cu... 3 - http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-polit... (Texas is my home state. I left, though I keep close ties to it through family and frequent visits.)

Electricity is being worked on, as that press release indicates. On the hottest day or two of the year, the power might go out for a little bit. It's not a big deal. Water is going to be the biggest issue this legislative session. California has similar water problems. Schools... are complicated. That one might not get fixed, but performance is better correlated with household income than education spending. Roads ar…

I moved here to Austin from the DC area two years ago and absolutely love the place.

And I do visit the Bay Area regularly as I work for Twilio. I just wouldn't want to live there.

Re: California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

#213

Post by king_magic »

zzzeek wrote: post #137
king_magic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's rough. After federal, SS/payroll, NY state and NYC residential taxes, I take home 57.95% of my salary. I don't have the energy to find which state would give me the best deal, but I seriously doubt it's NY. :-)

salaries are a lot higher here than in a southern/midwest state though (largely driven by the crazy costs of housing).

The cost of living is brutal here; e.g. $100K in NYC really isn't that great.

Re: California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

#214

Post by tesmar2 »

A lot of the discussion arounds this makes me think that the joke "The Republic of California" is not just true of CA, but for Washington, too. Is the talk of high taxes just limited to those two Western states or is it a bigger trend in other parts of the West Coast?

Re: California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

#215

Post by jacoblyles »

On a related note - California capital gains tax is going up by 50% this year[1] (24.3% to 37.1%). That's a big jump and I haven't heard many people talk about it. In the short term it doesn't have much effect but in the long run it will reduce the amount of capital in the Valley available for angel investment and bootstrapping.

[1]http://jacobexmachina.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-fiscal-cliff-...

Re: California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

#216

Post by king_magic »

untog wrote: post #73
king_magic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, I've been throw into the gulags and tortured at least 5 times while living in NY. It's awful - just awful. Don't come here, whatever you do. Don't say I didn't warn you!

I've been throw into the gulags and tortured at least 5 times while living in NY Seriously, stop going to bars around Times Square. You should know better by now.

I feel like this joke would also work for "rush hour subways" in place of "bars around Times Square" :)

Re: California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

#217

Post by bradleyjg »

lisper wrote: post #102
bradleyjg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the US Supreme Court: See Carpenter v. Pennsylvania, 58 U.S. 456 (1854): "The debates in the federal convention upon the Constitution show that the terms "ex post facto laws" were understood in a restricted sense, relating to criminal cases only, and that the description of Blackstone of such laws was referred to for their meaning. 3 Mad.Pap. 1399, 1450, 1579. This signification was adopted in this Court sh…

The Court gets things wrong occasionally. They got this wrong. Legislative intent does not trump the clear unambiguous wording of the law. This is why, for example, minting the trillion dollar coin would be legal despite the fact that this was clearly not the intent of the legislation.

ex post facto isn't English, it's not even really Latin. It's a legalism. The go to source of meaning for Anglo legalism in the late 19th century was Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" . It's the Blackstone definition that the Court adopted.

Re: California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

#218

Post by LockeWatts »

nostromo wrote: post #172
jey wrote: post #110

Can we just hurry up and address the real problem: California's constitution? We should just burn that flawed thing and start over. As I understand it, one of the major problems with California is that the reasonable-sounding idea that citizens should be allowed to amend the constitution through a ballot proposition has backfired and led to all sorts of special interests amending the constitution to protect their own…

I also think states and locales should be able to declare bankruptcy and restructure their obligations. Currently there is no clear way to get out from under prior bad governance. Here's a good article about how San Bernardino is trying: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/13/us-bernardino-bank... > a third of the city's 210,000 people live below the poverty line, making it the poorest city of its size in Californ…

Do you have a problem with the amount of money they're paying, or the fact that they're paying a pension at all?

What your suggesting seems like a horrible idea. The point of a pension is that it's a guaranteed obligation. Being able to absolve yourself of it with a bankruptcy is a wonderful way to screw over the workers who paid into it their entire lives.

Re: California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

#219

Post by redm »

tarice wrote: post #123
redm wrote: post #86

I'm not sure I would recommend Texas either. Use tax means you pay annual taxes on everything you own, plus sales tax on any affiliate deals; franchise tax will hit you hard even if your not making a dime because it's based on 'net worth' and not on profit. It's a tough place to be.

No state income tax, much cheaper housing costs than the national average, and cheap gas make it a pretty good place to live and work. Plus, because of all that, you can pay your employees much less (than California) and still provide them an equally-good standard of living. And Tex-Mex! I don't see how people in other parts of the country could live without Tex-Mex food.

That's great if you are making money. If you are loosing money and still paying taxes then it's not so great.

Re: California To Hit Startup Founders with Big Retroactive Tax Bills

#220

Post by LockeWatts »

notdrunkatall wrote: post #202
Niten wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It completely baffles me how any reasonable person could look at the retirement and health benefits situation in our country and come to the conclusion that our problem is being too generous to the working class. Yes, the private sector has been much more effective than the public sector in collectively diminishing workers' wages and benefits in recent years. The logical conclusion is not that the public sector shoul…

In case you didn't realize it, that costs the states money, and money is what states don't have.

The states can find other things to cut than middle class benefits.
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