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Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

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Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#191

Post by dataflow »

cgriswald wrote: post #182
dataflow wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies with literally thousands of people with billions of dollars to invest have a hard time making their products bug-free no matter how many times they patch and rewrite, and we're talking about dealing with computers here. Exactly how many years of rewrites are you willing to spend on each piece of legislation to make it bug-free? Is it even remotely realistic? or will your solution grind legislation to a halt…

My statement that judges should interpret law and not lawmakers is not equivalent to this idea that law must be flawless and bug-free. Those are ideas you've brought to the table that I've already disclaimed. I said laws should be quality laws. What qualifies as quality in law isn't "100% bug-free, literal, unambiguous, single-definition words that don't require any interpretation at all." To the extent that a law is…

I realize you're disclaiming them, but I'm trying to say you what you're asking for has consequences that you can't just "disclaim" like that. Practically every law will have unintended loopholes that legislators couldn't think of or practically enumerate when writing the law. If you keep "punting it back to lawmakers" instead of letting judges handle the exceptions, you obviously further obstruct the legislature's ability to move onto new, more pressing issues. Maybe that's fine with you—or maybe it's even your goal, I can't possibly know—but your optimization on that axis has severe consequences that will quite obviously lead to undesirable outcomes on many other axes that others (if not you) actually care about. You can disclaim the implications and the consequences, but that doesn't mean they won't come along with your idea.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#193

Post by vmception »

bagacrap wrote: post #185
vmception wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the stock goes back up by the end of January so you’d be even, you are way behind there are ETFs created for the sole purpose of circumventing this, by providing exposure to the same asset or market forces the wash sale regulation has amendment aimed at preventing this by prohibiting trades of "substantially similar securities", but I don't think it passes muster or has any teeth. you report all the trades to t…

direct indexing helps with this as well --- own thousands of individual stocks that collectively act as an index, and trade in some losers for their similar competitors every time you have to realize gains But it's not exactly the case you could pull this off with, say, Tesla, unless there's some ETF that's 99% TSLA (is there?)

> But it's not exactly the case you could pull this off with, say, Tesla, unless there's some ETF that's 99% TSLA (is there?)

Don't know, doubt it but its a business opportunity. It’s why there are so many ETFs, take your 20 basis points from investors and work on something else.

More likely to find an ETF that hasn't rebalanced and has a large holding of Tesla.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#194

Post by shawnz »

kentonv wrote: post #113
etskinner wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they could, in theory, sell you the car for 150% of it's final price (so that they seats are there when sold), then buy back the seats immediately for 50% of its price. The invoice would say something like: Car with passenger seats: $15,000; Passenger seat buyback: $5,000; Total after buyback: $10,000. That way everyone gets what they want, and they've technically sold it with the seats still installed.

Law isn't interpreted by computers, it is interpreted by human judges, who generally aren't impressed by such hacks (though you might get lucky).

Aren't the seats themselves already a "hack"?

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#195

Post by alboy »

cgriswald wrote: post #167
JohnBooty wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally: sure! In reality: are you a software engineer? Or do you know one? Surely you (or they) have experienced how difficult it is to write code that manages even a small number of inputs? Even 10 different yes/no inputs give you 1,024 possibilities. Now imagine writing laws to precisely cover an effectively infinite number of possibilities, many of which don't exist at the time the law is written, and expecting t…

An interpreter tries to understand what your code means. It doesn't try to guess at your intentions. (Pedantically, some do, but on a limited scale.) You should write quality code. You should try to anticipate edge cases. Your code will fail sometimes. You'll fix it. Law has the advantage of much more advanced interpreters; but judges should still be interpreting the law, not guessing at the minds of the people who w…

Unspecified behavior[1] is used in programming language standards for a very similar reason: to provide the freedom to interpret in the, uh, spirit of the code, rather than the letter, when it would be overall beneficial.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unspecified_behavior

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#196

Post by whitej125 »

vmception wrote: post #118
djrogers wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling stocks at a loss is only helpful in the short term, or if you don’t think those stocks are going back up. If you harvest a loss for a tax deduction on December 31, and the stock goes back up by the end of January so you’d be even, you are way behind – because the loss only comes back to you at your highest tax rate.

> and the stock goes back up by the end of January so you’d be even, you are way behind there are ETFs created for the sole purpose of circumventing this, by providing exposure to the same asset or market forces the wash sale regulation has amendment aimed at preventing this by prohibiting trades of "substantially similar securities", but I don't think it passes muster or has any teeth. you report all the trades to t…

The wash sale rule has teeth. Currently, trades on a stock or direct derivative (options tied to that stock) will all trigger the wash sale rule.

I have never seen an ETF of a single security. Got an example? It would be hard for me to fathom that one could be made and remain economically viable but who knows.

ETFs however, do currently provide some loopholes with wash sales. While selling/buying AAPL within 30 days is a wash sale... selling VOO and buying IVV (both which track the S&P 500) within 30 days is currently not considered a wash sale.

You see some explanations as to why that currently is (technically those two ETFs are from different asset managers... so they have some different risks, etc). But it looks like the rule just hasn't been amended and maybe the IRS doesn't see this as prevalent enough of a case to change the tax code.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#197

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

notmercedespr wrote: post #188
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a more relevant and legally robust example is the Mercedes Benz Sprinter, which is manufactured in Germany, but US-bound vehicles have various parts removed before shipping. A facility in NC reassembles the vehicles (the removed parts are shipped with the van) once they arrive, which reduces or eliminates the tax.

Bit off, this was done near Charleston, SC as recently as a few years ago but has since transitioned to full manufacturing.

How right you are!

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#198

Post by ianlevesque »

setr wrote: post #163
quickthrower2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lesson for anyone implementing metrics and incentives

Well, it still did its job of increasing cost of external cured ham… just by not as much of an increase, or as directly, as they intended

Also an egregious waste of carbon emissions in the era of climate change though.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#199

Post by magicalhippo »

Hello71 wrote: post #91
magicalhippo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Norway we have the infamous "E6 ham". We have an import tax on dry-cured ham[1], but not unprocessed meat. Someone figured out it was cheaper then to import unprocessed meat from Spain to Norway, turn the truck around as soon as they were customs cleared and drive the 3000 km or so back to Spain for curing. Once cured they'd re-import the processed meat, which now has a different tariff due to being "Norwegia…

source? upon searching for "e6 ham", "norway ham tax", "e6 skinke" etc found only this post.

A friend of mine works at a company that does just this.

He said the drivers who haven't done it before gets quite confused when ordered back to Spain just as they've crossed the border, without unloading.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#200

Post by drzaiusapelord »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #35
RC_ITR wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also goes to show how corrupt the import tax system is. Why SHOULD a cargo van have higher import taxes than a passenger van, other than to serve the needs of some random private company? Even moreso, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ford lobbied FOR those laws before changing its mind in where to produce a particular sku

No lobbying involved. It’s the remnants of a tariff war with France and Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

I find it incredible that people think the government does things like this "just because." It do so because its capitalist masters demand it. Of course this is lobbying driven. The government in a capitalist society exists almost solely to bring the agenda of lobbyists into the legislature by any means possible be it via cash contributions, manufacturing consent via the corporatist media, riling people up via the pulpit, fixing elections, demonizing unrelated minority groups, threatening or even attempting coups, blocking the teaching of certain subjects in school, assassination, etc.

Its incredible to me that there's an entire political identity that borderline denies any of this happens, and instead the government itself is somehow naturally corrupt but business and the lobbying and capital owning class are all angels and saints. Everyday conservatism buys into this fallacy fairly well and this dishonesty seems to be the core of libertarianism.

Explaining this concept to some people feels like how I would imagine explaining water to fish must be. We're just so surrounded by it and it defines so much of our culture, that you can fail to see if you choose. You can just call everything government corruption from cradle to grave without asking about the source and motivation of that corruption. You can swim your whole life and never wonder why you're wet.

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