431–440 of 504 posts
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I'm not in favor of telling people what to do, in general. As long as what they're doing doesn't cause undue harm to others, it's better than what most governments do nowadays.
We have very different definitions of what is "a favor to society".
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For an average person, there's not. Like, if I pay twice as much taxes as I do now, literally nothing would change in anything paid by taxes, and I have no ways to effect that change. Same if by some miracle I stopped paying all federal taxes, there's literally nothing that would change in federal government's actions or budgets.
If everyone thought this way the government would be bankrupt.
It is extremely disingenuous to put this conundrum at my feet, as if my actions, with my puny tax which I am too lazy to even calculate how much it would be in percents, but it's sure to have quite a bunch of zeros in front, had even the tiniest influence on those decisions. It never did and never will. Maybe Buffett's decisions may, but not mine. So stop trying to shame me for things that have nothing to do with me and never could have anything to do with me.
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> surprised to pay less than ones secretary. I don't think this is actually true. It's a nice rhetorical soundbite, but if you count properly (e.g. all taxes all assets owned by Buffett actually pay) there's no way he pays less unless his secretary is extremely exceptional for some reason. It is true that her tax structure is probably different from Buffett's, so if you creatively form your query so that taxes that B…
I don't think the quote is meant in absolute dollars, but rather the percentage of her income and assets.
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If “they all do it” and it’s so well‐known, surely one can point to examples where it has been used?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41410835
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It’s a shame it seems to come to that about once every hundred years. We’ve won the war against the communists before though, and we’ll do it again.
Maybe if we don't strip poor people of any chance of getting out of poverty they won't turn to communism. If you chase an animal in the corner, it will fight back. You can shoot it and win but don't be surprised if the situation repeats.
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I don't think it's that unfathomable when you look at how governments spend the money. E.g. a public Czech university spent 80k euros to change their logo from this: https://cdn.xsd.cz/resize/21404adf37a83977870fe87fe0eb4ea6_r... to this: https://www.em.muni.cz/cache-thumbs/logo_muni_web-1580x790-2... Why does a public university, one of the most popular in the country, need a new logo? And if it needs a new logo, wh…
That top logo is horrible and childish looking. The new logo will look dated soon, but at least it looks professional. And 80k for a logo is incredibly cheap.
The marketing for the school is the success of the students and the research.
"When a loved one passes, the last thing on most people’s minds is taxes, but they do play an important role in settling the estate. In Canada, there is no inheritance tax. You don’t have to pay taxes on money you inherit, and you don’t have to report it as income. But this doesn’t mean your inheritance is immune from taxation.
Why? The moment someone passes away, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) considers all their assets as part of their estate and taxes this estate directly, before any money is released to beneficiaries. In other words, the reason you don’t pay taxes on your inheritance is because it has already been taxed.
Here’s what else is worth knowing about how taxes impact your inheritance." https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tips/do-you-pay-taxes-on-money-yo...
In the USA, while there is an inheritance tax, there are a few widely used loopholes.
Rather than the normal solutions, it would be really nice to just move to a progressive consumption tax. 1) All investments are tax deductible, not just 401Ks. 2) The sale of investments is treated as income. 3) Money from loans is also taxed as income, unless used for (1).
Investments aren’t taxed until capital gains are realized or income received via dividends. The point of 401Ks is to enable investing income which has not been taxed. So, I don’t understand your proposal.
Unlike a 401k there's no limit to how much he can save paying taxes on it, or any limit on what he can use it on when he spends it. But when investments don't have their cost basis deducted when sold and are rolled in with regular income rather than getting a flat 20% tax.
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People always talk like this from the outside and yet when placed in the actual situation essentially everyone acts differently. "If I were in battle I wouldn't be scared" vs in actual battle essentially every soldier is scared. "If I were rich then I wouldn't worry about taxes" vs after becoming rich, essentially everyone worries about taxes. Is there a word for this phenomenon? What makes everyone believe they're a…
>"If I were rich then I wouldn't worry about taxes" vs after becoming rich, essentially everyone worries about taxes. Consider that the type of people who are more inclined to accumulate wealth are the ones faced with this choice. The people who'd rather strum guitars don't often find themselves in that position. So your observation is painfully anecdotal and not really useful.
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This tacitly assumes a pretty naive model of how these markets work. The dynamics of poor liquidity, dead equity, stock restrictions, intangible asset loss, etc materially change the outcomes you can expect. In many cases it may cost the government more than the revenue generated, and the counter-party as well. This doesn’t work like your retirement account. Similar types of scenarios historically created by civil li…
>This tacitly assumes a pretty naive model of how these markets work. The dynamics of poor liquidity, dead equity, stock restrictions, intangible asset loss, etc materially change the outcomes you can expect. In many cases it may cost the government more than the revenue generated, and the counter-party as well In all seriousness, that is extremely unlikely to be the case, especially in broad terms. I mean, to purcha…
Otherwise, when do you expect the government to actually realize its gains? If I have a house I intend to live in until I die and the govt take 2% of my stake away each year, when would it be allowed to force a sale to realize it?
Do I just lose my house once it has a majority stake? Does it just wait until I die? If it does, how is this better than an inheritance tax that is significantly easier to implement?