Income Tax Return Quotes

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.

The only imaginative fiction being written today is income tax returns.

Death and taxes in life are certain, knowing how to pay only your fair share is third.

In the first place, just as income tax returns allow us to study changes in income inequality, estate tax returns enable us to study changes in the inequality of wealth.

just as income tax returns allow us to study changes in income inequality, estate tax returns enable us to study changes in the inequality of wealth.

You could choose to live in either America or Denmark. In high-tax Denmark, your disposable income after taxes and transfers would be around $15,000 lower than in the States. But in return for your higher tax bill, you would get universal health care (one with better outcomes than in the US), free education right up through the best graduate schools, worker retraining programs on which the state spends seventeen times more as a percentage of GDP than what is spent in America, as well as high-quality infrastructure, mass transit, and many beautiful public parks and other spaces. Danes also enjoy some 550 more hours of leisure time a year than Americans do. If the choice were put this way—you can take the extra $15,000 but have to work longer hours, take fewer vacation days, and fend for yourself on health care, education, retraining, and transport—I think most Americans would choose the Danish model.

The wealthy have also fought to underfund and defang the Internal Revenue Service, so it doesn’t have the resources to audit or fight dubious deductions. Only about 6 percent of tax returns of those with income of more than $1 million are audited, along with 0.7 percent of business tax returns. Meanwhile, there is one group that the IRS scrutinizes rigorously: the working poor with incomes below $20,000 a year who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit. More than one-third of all tax audits are focused on that group struggling to make ends meet, even as the agency cuts back on audits of the wealthy—while the top 5 percent of taxpayers account for more than half of all underreported income.

Taking wildly different positions on the value of assets and using his emotional state to justify those valuations helps explain something else Trump has done repeatedly. Congress requires all presidential candidates to file a financial disclosure statement listing their assets, liabilities, and income. Trump’s ninety-two-page disclosure report valued one of his best-known properties at more than $50 million. But he told tax authorities the same property was worth only about $1 million. He valued another signature Trump property at zero—and demanded the return of the property taxes he had already paid.

The fact that Trump paid no tax came to light when casino regulators issued a public report on his fitness to own a casino. Trump’s tax returns showed negative income. That’s because Congress lets big real estate investors offset their income from salaries, stock market gains, consulting fees, and other income with losses from depreciation in the value of their buildings. If these paper losses for the declining value of their buildings are greater than their cash income from other sources, real estate investors can legally tell the IRS that their income is less than zero and no federal income tax is due. Trump

Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production much. The kind of government services then supplied in return, which among other things safeguard production itself, more than compensate for this. But the larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment.

Recent research, based on matching declared income on tax returns with corporate compensation records, allows me to state that the vast majority (60 to 70 percent, depending on what definitions one chooses) of the top 0.1 percent of the income hierarchy in 2000–2010 consists of top managers. By comparison, athletes, actors, and artists of all kinds make up less than 5 percent of this group.

I do wish, however, that Ms. Olson would give me some credit for the progress I’ve already made. In 1944, I filed my first 1040, reporting my income as a thirteen-year-old newspaper carrier. The return covered three pages. After I claimed the appropriate business deductions, such as $35 for a bicycle, my tax bill was $7. I sent my check to the Treasury and it — without comment — promptly cashed it. We lived in peace.

As it turns out, people who cut their work hours often take a smaller hit financially than they expect. That is because spending less time on the job means spending less money on the things that allow us to work: transport, parking, eating out, coffee, convenience food, childcare, laundry, retail therapy. A smaller income also translates into a smaller tax bill. In one Canadian study, some workers who took a pay cut in return for shorter hours actually ended up with more money in the bank at the end of the month.

In terms of statistical categories, it is indeed true that both the amount of income and the proportion of all income received by those in the top 20 percent bracket have risen over the years, widening the gap between the top and bottom quintiles.9 But U.S. Treasury Department data, following specific individuals over time from their tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service, show that in terms of people the incomes of those particular taxpayers who were in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1996 rose 91 percent by 2005, while the incomes of those particular taxpayers who were in the top 20 percent in 1996 rose by only 10 percent by 2005—and the incomes of those in the top 5 percent and top one percent actually declined.

Ultimately, the World Top Incomes Database (WTID), which is based on the joint work of some thirty researchers around the world, is the largest historical database available concerning the evolution of income inequality; it is the primary source of data for this book.24 The book’s second most important source of data, on which I will actually draw first, concerns wealth, including both the distribution of wealth and its relation to income. Wealth also generates income and is therefore important on the income study side of things as well. Indeed, income consists of two components: income from labor (wages, salaries, bonuses, earnings from nonwage labor, and other remuneration statutorily classified as labor related) and income from capital (rent, dividends, interest, profits, capital gains, royalties, and other income derived from the mere fact of owning capital in the form of land, real estate, financial instruments, industrial equipment, etc., again regardless of its precise legal classification). The WTID contains a great deal of information about the evolution of income from capital over the course of the twentieth century. It is nevertheless essential to complete this information by looking at sources directly concerned with wealth. Here I rely on three distinct types of historical data and methodology, each of which is complementary to the others.25 In the first place, just as income tax returns allow us to study changes in income inequality, estate tax returns enable us to study changes in the inequality of wealth.26 This

History lesson, folks: The tax system we have today—the one we've come to know and love—began ninety-four years ago as a (drum roll, please) flat tax! The monstrosity you see today is a flat tax on income after nearly a century of very imperfect evolution. At first, only a very small percentage of Americans were asked to pay income tax. In fact, that’s how they sold it to us—as a tax on the rich! Well, that all changed with World War II. The cost of the war effort led to an expansion of those who paid federal income taxes—and we were off to the races. The tax code was flattened again, if you will, in 1986. Since that time it has been amended 16,000 times. We now have more than 67,000 pages of statutes and regulations—which helps explain why, last year, nearly two-thirds of all tax filers had to seek professional help with their tax return.

George Romney’s private-sector experience typified the business world of his time. His executive career took place within a single company, American Motors Corporation, where his success rested on the dogged (and prescient) pursuit of more fuel-efficient cars.41 Rooted in a particular locale, the industrial Midwest, AMC was built on a philosophy of civic engagement. Romney dismissed the “rugged individualism” touted by conservatives as “nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.”42 Nor was this dismissal just cheap talk: He once returned a substantial bonus that he regarded as excessive.43 Prosperity was not an individual product, in Romney’s view; it was generated through bargaining and compromises among stakeholders (managers, workers, public officials, and the local community) as well as through individual initiative. When George Romney turned to politics, he carried this understanding with him. Romney exemplified the moderate perspective characteristic of many high-profile Republicans of his day. He stressed the importance of private initiative and decentralized governance, and worried about the power of unions. Yet he also believed that government had a vital role to play in securing prosperity for all. He once famously called UAW head Walter Reuther “the most dangerous man in Detroit,” but then, characteristically, developed a good working relationship with him.44 Elected governor in 1962 after working to update Michigan’s constitution, he broke with conservatives in his own party and worked across party lines to raise the minimum wage, enact an income tax, double state education expenditures during his first five years in office, and introduce more generous programs for the poor and unemployed.45 He signed into law a bill giving teachers collective bargaining rights.46 At a time when conservatives were turning to the antigovernment individualism of Barry Goldwater, Romney called on the GOP to make the insurance of equal opportunity a top priority. As

In exchange for some wide-ranging modifications demanded by the socialist government to the church’s 1929 concordat, Italy agreed to underwrite the remainder of the $406 million settlement.53 The changes to the concordat would have once been unthinkable. The church dropped its insistence that Roman Catholicism be the state religion. Moving forward, the state had to confirm church-annulled marriages. Parents were given the right to opt their children out of formerly mandatory religious education classes. And Rome was no longer considered a “sacred city,” a classification that had allowed the Vatican to keep out strip clubs and the porn industry. Italy even managed to get the church to relinquish control of the Jewish catacombs. “The new concordat is another example of the diminishing hold of the Roman Catholic church in civil life in Italy,” noted The New York Times.54 In return, Italy instituted an“eight-per-thousand” tax, in which 0.8 percent of the income tax paid by ordinary Italians was distributed to one of twelve religious organizations recognized by the state. During its early years, nearly 90 percent of the tax went to the Catholic Church (by 2010, the church received less than 50 percent as the tax was more equitably distributed). Not only did the tax relieve Italy of its responsibility for the $135 million annual subsidy it paid for the country’s 35,000 priests, it meant the church had a steady and reliable source of much needed income.55

Dru wins a striking victory at Elma, in upstate New York. Subsequently acclaimed ‘Administrator of the Republic’, he embarks on a dramatic programme of radical reform: introduction of a federal income tax, nationalisation of key industries, limitation of the working week, more stringent controls on concentrations of industry and the introduction of profit-sharing with employees in return for the abolition of strikes. Not content to rest there, he ensures women are granted the vote, and the Constitution is rewritten.

Federal taxes may be due on up to half of your Social Security benefits if what’s called your “combined income” is more than $25,000 a year ($32,000 for joint filers). If you make between $25,000 and $34,000 ($32,000 and $44,000 for joint returns), you may owe federal taxes on up to 85 percent of your benefits.

The IRS received the following note: “Gentlemen: Enclosed you will find a check for $150. I cheated on my income tax return last year and have not been able to sleep ever since. If I still have trouble sleeping I will send you the rest.

In 2014, corporate profits before taxes reached their highest share of the total economy in at least eighty-five years, tying the previous record set in 1942 when World War II pushed up profits (only to have most then taxed away). Between 2000 and 2014, quarterly corporate after-tax profits rose from $529 billion to $1.6 trillion. This rise didn’t reflect increasing returns to capital; it reflected increasing economic power. As I will show, this pushed the stock market to unprecedented heights, thereby enriching investors—most of whom are already in the upper ranks of the nation’s wealthy. Meanwhile, labor’s share of the economy has dropped. In 2000, labor’s share of nonfarm business income was 63 percent. In 2013, it was 57 percent, representing a shift from labor to capital of about $750 billion annually. Importantly,

due date for filing an income tax return is July 31 for non-corporate not-audit taxpayers. Only

After paying the amount owed, the income tax return can be filed.

US person is to disclose all the foreign financial accounts and related incomes, revise all previous years’ tax returns, pay tax, interest, penalty as well as pay the FBAR penalty based on the highest balance in the foreign financial accounts. While

For any investor, income tax matters. The effect of tax on the return is very important and material, especially for the investors in the highest tax bracket due to tax drag

This is Income Tax Returns (ITR) recording season, and there's a decent risk you may commit a couple of errors that could cost you sincerely later. The most ideal approach to maintain a strategic distance from mix-ups is to know them. We have accumulated a rundown of normal mix-ups you ought to maintain a strategic distance from to present a perfect ITR proclamation.

Gold belongs only in the portfolios of fearmongers and speculators. If you own gold in your portfolio, expect to not get paid an income, pay higher taxes on your returns, take a more volatile ride than the stock market, and get a long-term return lower than bonds.

No liquid investment alternatives with stable guaranteed principal values exist that can provide real returns by consistently beating the combined impact of inflation and income taxes.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.

To be sure, one could tax capital income heavily enough to reduce the private return on capital to less than the growth rate. But if one did that indiscriminately and heavy-handedly, one would risk killing the motor of accumulation and thus further reducing the growth rate. Entrepreneurs would then no longer have the time to turn into rentiers, since there would be no more entrepreneurs. The right solution is a progressive annual tax on capital. This will make it possible to avoid an endless inegalitarian spiral while preserving competition and incentives for new instances of primitive accumulation. For example, I earlier discussed the possibility of a capital tax schedule with rates of 0.1 or 0.5 percent on fortunes under 1 million euros, 1 percent on fortunes between 1 and 5 million euros, 2 percent between 5 and 10 million euros, and as high as 5 or 10 percent for fortunes of several hundred million or several billion euros. This would contain the unlimited growth of global inequality of wealth, which is currently increasing at a rate that cannot be sustained in the long run and that ought to worry even the most fervent champions of the self-regulated market. Historical experience shows, moreover, that such immense inequalities of wealth have little to do with the entrepreneurial spirit and are of no use in promoting growth. Nor are they of any “common utility,” to borrow the nice expression from the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen with which I began this book.

Labor’s dominance applies more broadly still among the million jobs listed by name in the earlier discussion of elite hours—finance-sector professionals, vice presidents at S&P 1500 firms, elite management consultants, partners at highly profitable law firms, and specialist medical doctors. These specifically identified workers collectively constitute a substantial share—fully half—of the 1 percent. The terms of trade under which they work—the economic arrangements that underwrite their incomes—are well known. All these workers contribute effectively no capital to their businesses and therefore again owe their income ultimately to their own industrious work, which is to say to labor. Comprehensive data based on tax returns corroborate that the new economic elite owes its income predominantly not to capital but rather, at root, to selling its own labor. The data themselves can be technical and even abstruse, but a clear message emerges from them nevertheless. The data confirm that the meritocratic rich (unlike their aristocratic predecessors) get their money by working. Even guarded estimates, which defer to tax categories that treat some labor income as capital gains, show a stark increase in the labor component of top incomes. According to this method of calculating, the richest 1 percent received as much as three-quarters of their income from capital at midcentury, and the richest 0.1 percent received up to nine-tenths of their income from capital. These shares then declined steadily over four decades beginning in the early 1960s, reaching bottom in 2000. In that year, both the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent received only about half of their incomes from capital (roughly 49 percent and 53 percent, respectively). The capital shares of top incomes then rose again, by about 10 percent, over the first decade of the new millennium, before beginning to fall again at the start of the second decade (when the data series runs out).

A complete meritocratic accounting of earned advantage is more expansive than this and traces income through its shallow sources back to its deep roots—to reveal that some income nominally attributed to capital in fact originates in labor and therefore should be counted as earned through effort, skill, and industry. An entrepreneur who sells founder’s shares in her firm, an executive who realizes appreciation after being paid in stock, and a hedge fund manager who gets paid a “carried interest” share of profits on funds she invests (but does not own) all report capital gains income on their tax returns. But all these types of income ultimately reflect returns to the founder’s, the executive’s, or the manager’s labor and, the meritocrat insists, are on this account earned. A similar analysis applies to pensions and owner-occupied housing. All this income is earned in a way that distinguishes it from the true capital income of the hereditary rentier who lives, at leisure, from returns on an inherited patrimony. Regardless of what the tax accounts say, therefore, accurate meritocratic accounting attributes all these types of income not to capital but to labor.

Under government rules, tax returns are accepted as filed unless the IRS audits and then challenges a return. The two years that Bush’s return would have been most likely to be selected for audit, 2000 and 2001, were the record low years for audits of high-income Americans. The richest taxpayers benefited mightily those years because, at the insistence of the most right-wing Republicans in Congress, the IRS focused on tax returns filed by the working poor. In 1999, for the first time, those who made less than $25,000 were more likely to be audited than those who made more than $100,000.

According to Poterba’s calculations, shown in Table 1.5, taxable investors in stocks might lose as much as 3.5 percentage points per year to taxes. In the context of a pre-tax return of 12.7 percent per year, the tax burden dramatically reduces the rewards for investing in equities. The absolute level of the tax impact on bond and cash returns falls below the impact on equity returns, but taxes consume a greater portion of current-income-intensive assets. According to Poterba’s estimates, 28 percent of gross equity returns go to the tax man, while taxes consume 38 percent of bond returns and 42 percent of cash returns. Table 1.5 Taxes Materially Reduce Investment Returns Pre-Tax and After-Tax Returns (Percent) 1926 to 1996 Source: James M. Poterba, “Taxation, Risk-Taking, and Household Portfolio Behavior,” NBER Working Paper Series, Working Paper 8340 (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2001), 90. Tax laws currently favor long-term gains over dividend and interest income in two ways: capital gains face lower tax rates and incur tax only when realized. The provision in the tax code that causes taxes to be due only upon realization of gains allows investors to delay payment of taxes far into the future. Deferral of capital gains taxes creates enormous economic value to investors.*

whether or not economic value gets monetised through the market does matter a good deal to finance, to business and to government. Financiers only make a return—by extracting interest, rent or dividends—on economic value that has a market value. Business can only capture value as revenue and profit when that value has been monetised in sales. And governments find it far easier to levy taxes for public revenue on economic value that is exchanged through the market. All three of these—finance, business and government—are structured to expect and depend upon a growing monetary income: if GDP is no longer set to grow even though total economic value may well continue to do so, then those expectations need to change profoundly.

This book explains the flaws in the income tax, some of which are inherent and some of which are self-inflicted. It proposes that the solution to the current income tax problem is to kill off the income tax completely, giving it a decent burial of course, and replace it with a progressive consumption tax collected electronically and automatically at the point of sale, free of burdensome tax returns as we now know them. This book comes at an appropriate time for several reasons.

TAX-SAVVY IDEAS We suggest 14 tax-reducing ideas for tax-savvy investors. Most are easy to understand and to implement. We can think of no better way for most taxpayers to maximize their after-tax returns. Use tax-advantaged accounts (401(k), 403(b), IRAs, 529 tuition plans, etc.). Buy fund shares after the distribution date. Place tax-INefficent funds in retirement accounts, and tax-Efficient funds in taxable accounts. Use tax-managed or tax-efficient index funds in taxable accounts. Avoid balanced funds (stocks and bonds) in taxable accounts. Keep taxable fund turnover low to avoid capital-gains taxes. Avoid short-term gains by holding for more than 12 months. Sell losing shares before year-end (tax-loss harvest). Sell profitable shares after the new year (to delay tax payment). Determine the most favorable tax-basis method before selling fund shares. Consider municipal bonds and U.S. Savings Bonds for taxable accounts. During years of low income, consider converting to a Roth. Consider gifts to charities of securities with large capital gains. Appreciated holdings in taxable accounts are capital gains and income tax free if left to heirs.

If your company has any credible strategy for providing equity-based returns with muted volatility, you have not just a value proposition, but one of the most important value propositions of our time.... What's the concept in an operating real estate REIT? Operating real estate (as distinct from net leases or mortgages, which are other financing concepts) has the potential to produce equity-like long-term returns, but isan extremely powerful diversifier, in that real estate correlates positively with inflation while stocks and bonds correlate negatively with it. Inflation, with it attendant higher interest rates, chokes off new supply of real estate: new expensive to build, to expensive to finance at prevailing market rents. When new supply dwindles, normal growth absorbs the available space and puts upward pressure on rents, increasing cash flows to the owners... until rents get to a point where new construction pencils out again. (Meanwhile, in an inflation/interest rate flareup of any consequence, stocks and bonds are usually getting hit, and sometimes hit hard.) This, to me, is a trifecta of a conceptual value proposition: (a) the potential for the equity-like long-term returns investors need, (b) historically correlated positively with inflation, unlike all financial assets, and (c) just when you think this story can't get better, with 90% of available income paid out currently to income-starved investors.... What's the concept for variable life insurance? It's certainly the least expensive long-term form of life insurance, in that, as the investment portion grows, it extinguishes the insurance company's exposure. (As Ben Baldwin gnomically and brilliantly observes, 'All insurance is term insurance.') It may also be, in a given situation, the cheapest way of funding an estate tax liability, leaving the maximum legacy to one's heirs. And, of course, if the ownership is vested in an insurance trust, one may (under current law at this writing) be bequeathing wealth without income or estate taxation. As long as there is an estate tax - any estate tax - there will be a financial planning issue in the life of every affluent household/family: how do you want the heirs to pay it? And it seems likely that, conceptually, VUL will always be an answer.... Small cap equities? The concept is, clearly, higher returns with - and precisely because of - their higher volatility.

an immediate income, your returns are reinvested in a tax-deferred environment so that when you’re ready you can, at will, turn on the income stream you want for the rest of your life. You can literally have a schedule for what your income will be when you’re 40, 50, 60—for every year of your life.

The TCJA created a tax treasure for pass-through business owners, such as landlords set up as sole proprietorships, LLCs, and partnerships. Any profits earned through the rental properties get “passed through” to your personal income tax return. If your rental properties qualify as a business for tax purposes—and they almost always do when you actively participate in the business—the new tax law lets you deduct 20 percent of your net rental income from your taxable income. That can translate into huge tax savings, freeing up more money so you can beef up your investments or pay down some debt.

If the company meets all of the qualifications for a REIT, it enjoys special tax status: it doesn’t have to pay any taxes at the company level, which means more cash and higher returns for shareholders. (This is in contrast to the double-taxation issues of corporate stocks, where the corporation has to pay taxes on its income before distributing dividends to shareholders, and then the shareholders have to pay taxes on the dividends they receive, resulting in the same money being taxed twice.)

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. —Herman Wouk

The success of a man should be measured not by his income but by his tax returns.

The business must file Form 2553 along with Form 1120S (the form for an S-corporation’s annual tax return) no later than six months from the date Form 1120S would have been due for that year, No shareholder of the corporation can have reported his or her income for the year inconsistently with the S-corp election, and

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Why is it that some bright students choose to cheat? Why do some otherwise upstanding citizens chisel on their income tax returns? Why do some physically-fit, talented athletes inject themselves with performance-enhancing drugs? How can some folks who profess to be religious look you in the eye and tell you a lie? How is it that some law-abiding people cheat on their spouses? Why do some super-wealthy corporate executives line their already bulging wallets through fraudulent methods? And, while we are figuring out life’s mysteries, why is it that some of the richest people seem to have the hardest time parting with money for those in need?

The real income reported on federal tax returns by the vast majority of Americans, the 90 percent, doubled between the end of the war and 1973.

He cheats on his income tax.” Dudley ha! ha! ha!’d. “So do I, so does my friend Malcolm and so would our grand savior Jesus Christ should he return and settle in America.

CHECKLIST Statement of earnings from Social Security Income tax returns Checkbook records Old and current statements Gifts Winnings Loans Capital gains Illegal sources Contract labor not reported to the IRS (tips, babysitting, errands)

In a married couple’s joint tax return, the couple must ‘stack’ their wages. The higher earner (given the gender pay gap this is usually the man) is designated the ‘primary earner’, and their income occupies the lower tax bracket. The lower earner (usually the woman) becomes the ‘secondary earner’, and their income occupies the higher tax bracket. To return to our couple earning $60,000 and $20,000, the person earning $20,000 will be taxed on that income as if it is the final $20,000 of an $80,000 salary, rather than all she earns. That is, she will pay a much higher rate of tax on that income than if she filed independently of her higher-earning husband.

Srivastava first found the fraud committed by Shumana Sen by illegally granting a reimbursement of Rs.1.46 crores ($325,000[11]) to NDTV by fudging the accounts and Tax Returns of NDTV. He then found a series of favors she received from NDTV for hushing up fudging in accounts by the TV channel, which employed her husband at an exorbitant salary of more than Rs.15 lakhs per annum in 2005, while most of the prominent journalists were getting around half of that. Many favors were granted to Shumana Sen including all expenses paid foreign vacations with entire family [affidavit of Ms. Shumana Sen and her partner-in-fraud Ashima Neb before Delhi High Court, Writ Petition (C) No.1373 of 2011 titled as “Shumana Sen and Anr. Vs. S K Srivastava and Ors.”, para 3.43]. Srivastava also found that Ashima Neb was part of this racket and had actively colluded and conspired with Shumana Sen and Abhisar Sharma in facilitating NDTV frauds and had shared the spoils of the grand fraudulent exercise for laundering the illegal black money of NDTV through evasion of Income Tax.

list of documents that may be required. It can look intimidating, especially if you’ve not been actively involved in your family finances, but don’t panic. If you can’t find all of them or don’t have access, there is a later step in the divorce process called “discovery,” when you can legally compel the other side to provide copies of anything else you need: •Individual income tax returns (federal, state, local) for past three years •Business income tax returns (federal, state, local) for past three years •Proof of your current income (paystubs, statements, or paid invoices) •Proof of spouse’s income (paystubs, statements, or paid invoices) •Checking, savings, and certificate statements (personal and business) for past three years •Credit card and loan statements (personal and business) for past three years •Investment, pension plan, and retirement account statements for past three years •Mortgage statement and loan documents for all properties you have an interest in •Real estate appraisals •Property tax documents •Employment contracts •Benefit statements •Social Security statements •Life, homeowner’s, and auto insurance policies •Wills and trust agreements •Health insurance cards •Vehicle titles and/or registration •Monthly budget worksheet •List of personal property (furnishings, jewelry, electronics, artwork) •List of property acquired by gift or inheritance or owned prior to marriage •Prenuptial agreements •Marriage license •Prior court orders directing payment of child support or spousal support Your attorney or financial advisor may ask for additional documents specific to your case. Some of these may not be applicable to you.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TAX SHELTER AND TAX DEFERMENT The first lesson I learned was simple: not every tax break is scuzzy. Leona Helmsley, also known as the “Queen of Mean,” may have been sentenced to sixteen years in prison for tax evasion (ah, sweet justice), but there’s a big difference between legal and illegal tax avoidance. When I first started out, I didn’t have nearly as many tax-avoidance strategies as the rich did, but there are a few available to anyone, and taking advantage of every opportunity is absolutely critical. Tax sheltering means putting your money someplace where taxes no longer apply. Think of taxes as gravity in The Matrix, or logic in the Transformers movies. Even if it technically exists, it doesn’t apply to you. For example, if you invest in an index ETF and it goes up, it’s not reported on your tax return. If you earn interest on that account, ditto. Once your money is inside a tax shelter, you never get taxed on it again. This is because the money that goes into a tax-sheltering account has already been taxed. Tax deferment, on the other hand, is the process of taking a chunk of your income and choosing not to pay income taxes on it that year. Here’s how it works: You contribute a portion of your income to a tax-deferred account. The amount you contribute reduces your taxable income for that year, and accountants would call this contribution “deductible.” So, if you made $50,000 one year, and you chose to defer $10,000, then that year you would only be taxed as if you earned $40,000. That $10,000 you deferred gets put into a special account where it can grow tax-free, but if you withdraw it, it will be added on to your taxable income and you’ll pay taxes on it then. This is because money going into tax deferral hasn’t been taxed yet. To recap . . . Tax Shelter Tax Deferral Contributions are . . . Not deductible Deductible Growth/interest/dividends are . . . Tax-free Tax-free Withdrawals are . . . Tax-free Taxed as income

Connecticut’s Solidarity Dividend was almost immediate. In the first legislative cycles after public financing, the more diverse (by measures of race, gender, and class) legislature passed a raft of popular public-interest bills, including a guarantee of paid sick days for workers, a minimum wage increase, a state Earned Income Tax Credit, in-state tuition for undocumented students, and a change to an obscure law championed by beverage distributor lobbyists that resulted in $24 million returning to the state—money that could contribute to funding the public financing law. Despite regular efforts to curtail it, Connecticut’s Citizens’ Election Program has endured for over a decade, highly popular with both Connecticut residents and candidates, 73 percent of whom opted into the system in 2014.

anything regarding tax returns or income splitting.

1935 tax bill, then popularly called the “Soak the Rich Tax,” the top marginal income tax rate for individuals rose to 75 percent (versus as low as 25 percent in 1930). By 1941, the top personal tax rate was 81 percent, and the top corporate tax rate was 31 percent, having started at 12 percent in 1930. Roosevelt also imposed a number of other taxes. Despite all of these taxes and the pickup in the economy that helped raise tax revenue, budget deficits increased from around 1 percent of GDP to about 4 percent of GDP because the spending increases were so large.5 From 1933 until the end of 1936 the stock market returned over 200 percent, and the economy grew at a blistering average real rate of about 9 percent. In 1936, the Federal Reserve tightened money and credit to fight inflation and slow an overheating economy, which caused the fragile US economy to fall back into recession and the other major economies to weaken with it, further raising tensions within and between countries.

Following is a sample list of some points you will want to include in your business plan. These can all be organized in a very professional manner in a notebook that includes tabs. • Executive summary. Include a one- or two-page summary of your plan. • Mission statement. Include one or two paragraphs that succinctly state your purpose. • Background. Present information about yourself and your experience. • Financial statement. List your assets, liabilities, and net worth. • Site location. Include a list of benefits, maps, and proximity to shopping and schools. • Demographics. Present information about the people living in the area (income, education, etc.). • Competitor analysis. Determine who your competitors are and present average rents and sales comparisons. • Marketing strategy. Define your target market (tenants, buyers, etc.). • Financial analysis. Include historical and pro forma operating statements. • Improvements. Define capital improvements to be made to the property. • Purchase agreement. Include your sales contract with the seller. • Exhibits. Include photographs of the property, tax returns, sample floor plans, and the like.

First, reframe the purpose of taxes to help build social consensus for the kind of higher-tax, higher-returns public sector that has been a proven success in many Scandinavian countries. And remember, the verbal framing expert George Lakoff advises to choose your words wisely: don’t oppose tax relief—talk about tax justice. Likewise, the notion of public spending is often used by those who oppose it to evoke a never-ending outlay. Public investment, on the other hand, focuses on the public goods—such as high-quality schools and effective public transport—that underpin collective well-being.57 Second, end the extraordinary injustice of tax loopholes, offshore havens, profit shifting and special exemptions that allow many of the world’s richest people and largest corporations—from Amazon to Zara—to pay negligible tax in the countries in which they live and do business. At least $18.5 trillion is hidden by wealthy individuals in tax havens worldwide, representing an annual loss of more than $156 billion in tax revenue, a sum that could end extreme income poverty twice over.58 At the same time, transnational corporations shift around $660 billion of their profits each year to near-zero tax jurisdictions such as the Netherlands, Ireland, Bermuda and Luxembourg.59 The Global Alliance for Tax Justice is among those focused on tackling this, campaigning worldwide for greater corporate transparency and accountability, fair international tax rules, and progressive national tax systems.60 Third, shifting both personal and corporate taxation away from taxing income streams and towards taxing accumulated wealth—such as real estate and financial assets—will diminish the role played by a growing GDP in ensuring sufficient tax revenue. Of course progressive tax reforms such as these can quickly encounter pushback from the corporate lobby, along with claims of state incompetence and corruption. This only reinforces the importance of strong civic engagement in promoting and defending political democracies that can hold the state to account.

But whether or not economic value gets monetised through the market does matter a good deal to finance, to business and to government. Financiers only make a return—by extracting interest, rent or dividends—on economic value that has a market value. Business can only capture value as revenue and profit when that value has been monetised in sales. And governments find it far easier to levy taxes for public revenue on economic value that is exchanged through the market. All three of these—finance, business and government—are structured to expect and depend upon a growing monetary income: if GDP is no longer set to grow even though total economic value may well continue to do so, then those expectations need to change profoundly.

Once again, a single sentence would hold the key. I found it in The Economic Status of Black Women: An Exploratory Investigation, a 1990 staff report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: On average married black women contribute 40 percent to household income compared with only 29 percent for white women.° Simply put, all wives did not contribute to their households in the same way: Black women were likely to earn as much (or more) money as their husbands, while white women were likely to earn much less. This was certainly true in the case of my parents (whose income was more or less equal most years). But the joint tax return system, under which most married couples file their taxes together, offers the greatest benefits to households where one spouse contributes much less than the other to household income. That meant couples like my parents-my hardworking, home-owning, God-fearing parents, who wanted to earn a little bit more to enjoy their lives after raising two daughters-weren't getting those breaks. My parents' tax bill was so high because they were married to each other. Marriage-which many conservatives assure us is the road out of black poverty -is in fact making black couples poorer. And because the IRS does not publish statistics by race, we would never know. It's long been understood that blacks and whites live in separate and unequal worlds that shape whom we marry, where we buy a home, whom we have as neighbors, and how we build a future for our children. Race affects where we go to college and how we pay for it. Race influences where we work and how much we are paid. What my research showed was that all of this also determines how much we pay in taxes. Taxpayers bring their racial identities to their tax returns. As in so many parts of American life, being black is more likely to hurt and being white is more likely to help. The implications of this go far beyond the forms you file every April. In the long run, tax policy affects whether and how you'll be able to build wealth. If you're eligible for tax breaks, you either pay less in taxes throughout the year or receive a larger refund in the spring. If, like my parents, you're considered ineligible for a particular tax break, you never see that money. One missed tax break may not sound like much, but those dollars not given to Uncle Sam can be put into your bank account, invested in stocks or property, or used to build home equity through improvements or repairs every year. Think of that money as an annual pay raise – but if you do not get it, you cannot save it. Over time those dollars, or the lack of them, add up to increased or depleted wealth

For a sole proprietorship, the business income and expenses are reported on Schedule C of the owner's personal tax return, Form 1040. The sole proprietor pays taxes on the net income from the business as personal income.

Corporate Income Taxation Taxation of corporate net income imposes a “double” tax on the owners of corporations: once on the official “corporate” income and once on the remaining distributed net income of the owners themselves. The extra tax cannot be shifted forward onto the consumer. Since it is levied on net income itself, it can hardly be shifted backward. It has the effect of penalizing corporate income as opposed to income from other market forms (single ownership, partnerships, etc.), thereby penalizing efficient forms of enterprise and encouraging the inefficient. Resources shift from the former to the latter until the expected rate of net return is equalized throughout the economy—at a lower level than originally. Since interest return is forcibly lower than before, the tax penalizes savings and investment as well as an efficient market form.

Consider the following example: If you have $100,000 in a CD and it grows 2%, you have a taxable event. You will have $102,000 in your account at the end of the year, but you will have to pay federal and state tax on every last bit of that 2% growth. So, $2,000 gets thrown right on top of all your other income and is taxed at your highest marginal tax rate. Assuming marginal tax rates of 30% (24% federal, 6% state), you would owe the IRS $600. So you didn’t really experience $2,000 of growth, you only experienced $1,400. Thus, your after-tax rate of return on that $100,000 is only 1.4%. This annual taxation is one of the perils of the taxable bucket.

Once again, a single sentence would hold the key. I found it in The Economic Status of Black Women: An Exploratory Investigation, a 1990 staff report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: On average married black women contribute 40 percent to household income compared with only 29 percent for white women.° Simply put, all wives did not contribute to their households in the same way: Black women were likely to earn as much (or more) money as their husbands, while white women were likely to earn much less. This was certainly true in the case of my parents (whose income was more or less equal most years). But the joint tax return system, under which most married couples file their taxes together, offers the greatest benefits to households where one spouse contributes much less than the other to household income. That meant couples like my parents-my hardworking, home-owning, God-fearing parents, who wanted to earn a little bit more to enjoy their lives after raising two daughters-weren't getting those breaks. My parents' tax bill was so high because they were married to each other. Marriage-which many conservatives assure us is the road out of black poverty -is in fact making black couples poorer. And because the IRS does not publish statistics by race, we would never know. It's long been understood that blacks and whites live in separate and unequal worlds that shape whom we marry, where we buy a home, whom we have as neighbors, and how we build a future for our children. Race affects where we go to college and how we pay for it. Race influences where we work and how much we are paid. What my research showed was that all of this also determines how much we pay in taxes. Taxpayers bring their racial identities to their tax returns. As in so many parts of American life, being black is more likely to hurt and being white is more likely to help. The implications of this go far beyond the forms you file every April. In the long run, tax policy affects whether and how you'll be able to build wealth. If you're eligible for tax breaks, you either pay less in taxes throughout the year or receive a larger refund in the spring. If, like my parents, you're considered ineligible for a particular tax break, you never see that money. One missed tax break may not sound like much, but those dollars not given to Uncle Sam can be put into your bank account, invested in stocks or property, or used to build home equity through improvements or repairs every year. Think of that money as an annual pay raise – but if you do not get it, you cannot save it. Over time those dollars, or the lack of them, add up to increased or depleted wealth.

USING YOUR NEST EGG TO DELAY CLAIMING If you’re fortunate enough to have a nest egg and you want to retire, you can consider withdrawing more savings up front as a way to hold off starting your Social Security benefit. But does the strategy make sense? It well may, and there are some important things to keep in mind. Social Security benefits go up about 7 percent for each year they are not claimed between age 62 and your full retirement age. Wait longer and the reward grows even more: Benefits increase 8 percent annually for each year they are not claimed between full retirement age and 70. Are your financial resources adequate to support your lifestyle without Social Security, so you can delay claiming and lock in the income gains I just described? The issue can get complicated, and those interested may want to talk it over with a financial advisor. Among the considerations are the following: The tax bite: A portion of your Social Security benefit may be subject to income tax (though at least 15 percent is tax free for everyone). Withdrawals from (non-Roth) Individual Retirement Accounts will surely have tax implications. But some research has shown that withdrawing more up front may reduce the tax bite later. Check your situation with an expert. Family income: Is your spouse eligible for Social Security based on his or her work record? This increases your options. Just know that your total income may affect whether your Social Security benefits are subject to income tax, how much, and whether it makes sense to delay claiming. (See Chapter 13 for a discussion of income tax rules and Social Security, including provisional income.) Your investments: Consider reasonable rates of return, including your appetite for risk, in weighing the pros and cons of delaying a claim for Social Security. It’s extremely difficult to beat Social Security’s guaranteed returns. Finally, a note of caution (and common sense): If your nest egg is modest, the strategy of withdrawing savings to delay Social Security may be unwise, because it’s important to have a cushion. Be realistic when calculating how much of a cushion you need.

Another investor I know structured his portfolio of a few million dollars to produce income at the level he wished to spend. Accordingly, his portfolio consists mostly of short- and intermediate-term bonds, on which he pays a significant income tax. Curiously, he thinks he can only spend income, in the form of dividends and interest, and he views capital appreciation as something less real. I tried, and failed, to convince him that higher total return (after tax) means more money to spend and more money to keep, no matter how it divides between realized income and unrealized capital gains or losses. To own a stock like Berkshire Hathaway, which has never paid a dividend, and therefore produces no “income,” would be unthinkable for him. This investor’s costly preference for realized income rather than total return (economic income) is common.

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the joint tax return system, under which most married couples file their taxes together, offers the greatest benefits to households where one spouse contributes much less than the other to household income.

An S Corporation is a business entity that allows income and losses to pass through to its shareholders, and the profit which each of the shareholders receives is then taxed on their (shareholders’) personal tax returns at their individual tax rates.

The first time I put on my play I Know I’ve Been Changed, I took for granted that it would be a huge success. I envisioned folks lining up outside the theater and filling all the seats. I could hear their loud laughter and endless applause resounding in my ears. Feeling optimistic, in the summer of 1993 I spent every cent from my income tax return, money that should have gone to a car

For example, until the mid-2010s many senior executives in traditional companies cackled that Amazon’s business still showed no profits. They felt it was a low-margin activity propped up by a hyperinflated share price. And within their traditional way of understanding corporate performance, they were right. But seen through a different frame, they were utterly wrong. Jeff Bezos had reframed the idea of commercial growth, away from producing annual returns for shareholders (and handing about a third of the profits to governments in the form of tax) and toward reinvesting every penny of net income to establish adjacent business lines, from Kindle books to cloud services. People see it plain as day in hindsight, but the new frame was incomprehensible to many in the moment.

How to Apply for the Best divorce Advocate in Chennai? When a marriage does not last for an extended period of time, couples frequently search online for information on how to apply for divorce Lawyers in Chennai. Many couples must endure the difficult process of separation that eventually results in the best divorce advocate in Chennai at some point in their lives. It is a serious truth that provides us with a second chance to start over. The lack of legal complexities and the emotional turmoil each spouse experiences while deciding to end their partnership amicably are the reasons why the proceedings are simple. This article will teach you how to file for divorce, especially if you're Indian. Frequently Mentioned Events that Ultimately Lead to Divorce As we have closely analyzed, it has been conceivable over time to list a few typical legal justifications that are adequate for one spouse to petition the family court for a divorce from the other. These factors include: The petitioner has learned that their partner is having an extra - marital or sexual relationship with someone else. when the petitioner's spouse has avoided them for a period longer than two years beginning on the date the divorce petition was filed. when the petitioner's partner repeatedly mistreats him or her, either physically or mentally, in a way that seems so grave that it could be death. Another cause for filing a divorce petition could be inability or rejection of sexual activity. Divorce proceedings may start when one partner or better half has had a terminal illness for a long time. If there is evidence of mental illness, the other party may choose to divorce lawfully. List of Paperwork Required for Divorce Filing If a married couple in India wants to end their marriage by mutual consent, they must present the following paperwork to the court: the partners' biographical information and family information. The previous two years' income tax or IT returns statement for the spouses. Types of Divorce in Chennai In Chennai, a divorce typically occurs using one of the two processes listed below: Divorce by mutual consent Contested divorce In the first scenario, the spouse's consent to divorcing one another. These divorces' maintenance obligations can be any amount of money or nothing at all. Any parent whose obligation is shared is solely responsible for child custody. Again, this depends on the cooperation and respect between the two people. The husband and wife must execute a "no-fault divorce," as permitted by Section B of the Hindu Marriage Law, under this consensual arrangement. The first motion is done on the date set by the family court, and the relevant couple's statements are electronically recorded and preserved for later use. Both parties agree to maintain the jury as a witness throughout the remaining processes. The judge gives the couple six months to reevaluate their next motion or second motion. Many couples change their minds during this time, thus the court is using this as an opportunity to prevent a negative event like divorce. Even after these six months, if there is still no change of heart, the court moves forward with its decision and issues a divorce decree, officially recognising the previously married couple's permanent separation.

spreading income to your minor children, simply because it gets the income off of your tax return.

With a substantial amount of capital, even investments with modest returns result in massive passive income.

...Of course, he'll have to begin filing income tax returns. But the revenue people aren't going to come around to find out whether Taxpayer Andrew Martin is a human being or not. All they'll care about is whether Taxpayer Andrew Martine pays his taxes on time.

Bill and Al were smart guys, the best and brightest. I chided them both about being show-offs about their knowledge, which got a good laugh. The two of them returned again and again to three themes: the expansion of human rights—gay, black, and female; income inequality—the threatening consequences of tax cuts for the rich and turning over Social Security to Wall Street; and the environment—the projected melting of the ice caps, global warming, and certain devastation within fewer than fifty years.

Oil and Gas Investing in Permian Basin-Smart Move As the true scope of Permian Basin is being understood, one thing is very clear; it is going to attract a lot of investment. As in case of all oil and gas investments, the sooner you invest, the better your returns are going to be. Right now is the perfect time for oil and gas investing in Permian Basin. There are a lot of benefits of choosing to invest in things other than the property, shares and stocks circuit. It not just helps you spread out your earnings, it lets you test potential markets such as these. As these markets are not overcrowded, there is more scope for growth. But why should you choose oil and gas investing in Permian Basin when you have dependable assets elsewhere? The answer is that those assets multiply at such a slow pace that you forget they are there while when there is an oil and gas boom, it turns your fortunes. An oil well investment brings with it years of steady income with the benefit of tax deduction on the investment. It is not as much a gamble as it is made out to be and oil strikes are more frequent than people would like you to believe. About 15% annual income from oil and gas wells is exempt from tax and 65-85% of your first year's investment can be waived off. Gone are the days when all you could do with oil well was bore increasingly downwards, vertically. Now there is technology available that lets you draw oil supply for a long, long time after the initial vertical bore runs dry. With new advancements in drilling and extracting techniques, a lot of oil that was earlier as good as not being there has suddenly become readily available. Being with a company that is well equipped with the latest technology gives your investment more stability. That is one of the reasons for a revival of the boom in Permian Basin and it has been predicted to last for a long time to come. Choose with great care a reliable and experienced company that is a seasoned hand at oil and gas drilling and production. Oil and gas investing in Permian Basin is bound to attract many investors looking to be a part of the upward trend. Invest today and reap benefits for years to come.

This type of tax structure also minimises the opportunity for citizens to protest against their government. Direct taxes, in particular income tax, are viewed as the category of tax that gives citizens most proof that they are contributing to the public purse. In Arab countries, the majority of tax receipts are derived from indirect sales and customs taxes hidden in the price … These types of tax typically conceal the direct link between tax payments and funding of the public purse, thus weakening public pressure for accountability. At the same time, income tax revenue is negligible and tax evasion is on the rise, particularly among influential social groups, which, in principle, should shoulder the greatest burden in funding the public purse, if only as fair return for their greater share of power and wealth. Moreover, in Arab countries, the share of direct taxes appears to have dropped over time, as a result of increasing resort to indirect taxes.

In these uncertain days, bond funds are an especially important option for investors. Unlike stock funds, they have high predictability in at least these five ways: (1) The current yields (on longer-term issues) are an excellent—if imperfect—predictor of future returns. (2) The range of gross returns earned by bond managers clusters in an inevitably narrow range that is established by the current level of interest rates in each sector of the market. (3) The choices are wide. As the maturity date lengthens, volatility of principal increases, but volatility of income declines. (4) Whether taxable or municipal, bond fund returns are highly correlated with one another. Municipal bond funds are fine choices for investors in high tax brackets, and inflation-protected bond funds are a sound option for those who believe that much higher living costs will result from the huge federal government deficits of this era. (5) The greatest constant of all is that—given equivalent portfolio quality and maturity—lower costs mean higher returns. (Don’t forget that index bond funds—or their equivalent—carry the lowest costs of all.)

In many cases, help for the poor is not simply an income transfer used for short-run consumption but is a government benefit that enables poor households to raise their long-term productivity. Some of the key government programs for poor households include help for nutrition of mothers and young children; preschool; college tuition; and job training. Each of these is a government-supported investment in “human capital” and specifically a way for a poor household to raise its long-term productivity. Taxing the rich to help the poor can then mean cutting lavish consumption spending by the rich to support high-return human investments by the poor. The outcome is not only fairer but also more efficient. The

Tax-Deferred does not mean Tax-Free It never ceases to amaze me when I meet with people who do not know that tax-deferred does not mean tax-free. You mean I have to pay taxes when I take this money!? This is not all mine!? These are common remarks I hear as we are looking at their most recent retirement account statement. Somehow this consideration was missed when they enrolled in the savings plan and each year when they postponed the tax when filing their tax return. I am not a tax professional but I can understand how an accountant or tax preparer wouldn’t think to make sure the client understands that they are postponing taxes and the tax calculation during their working years. I met an accountant that expressed how difficult it is when he gets the client that believed they were ready to leave work only to find out that because of taxes they are coming up a little or a lot short. This happened to one of my relatives that worked at least 30 years as an x-ray technician and then supervisor at a very large hospital. While working, they always had the nice houses, the nice cars, and a nice upper-middle class lifestyle, nothing fancy. After he retired and even though his wife still worked as a school principal, he had to take a sales clerk job at a nearby liquor store so that his family could maintain their lifestyle. I will never forget other relatives joking and laughing about him miscalculating his retirement. I’m certain that his unsuccessful retirement and that of other relatives influenced my interest in retirement planning if for no one else but me. With a limited amount of retirement income, most retirees would prefer to keep their dollars rather than give them to Uncle Sam. Even those with an unlimited source of funds don’t want to pay more taxes than necessary. Fortunately, there are some ways to decrease your tax burden once you’ve done the obvious work of ensuring you’ve taken all the deductions and credits to which you’re entitled when you file your taxes.

Chasing tax cheats using normal procedures was not an option. It would take decades just to identify anything like the majority of them and centuries to prosecute them successfully; the more we caught, the more clogged up the judicial system would become. We needed a different approach. Once Danis was on board a couple of days later, together we thought of one: we would extract historical and real-time data from the banks on all transfers taking place within Greece as well as in and out of the country and commission software to compare the money flows associated with each tax file number with the tax returns of that same file number. The algorithm would be designed to flag up any instance where declared income seemed to be substantially lower than actual income. Having identified the most likely offenders in this way, we would make them an offer they could not refuse. The plan was to convene a press conference at which I would make it clear that anyone caught by the new system would be subject to 45 per cent tax, large penalties on 100 per cent of their undeclared income and criminal prosecution. But as our government sought to establish a new relationship of trust between state and citizenry, there would be an opportunity to make amends anonymously and at minimum cost. I would announce that for the next fortnight a new portal would be open on the ministry’s website on which anyone could register any previously undeclared income for the period 2000–14. Only 15 per cent of this sum would be required in tax arrears, payable via web banking or debit card. In return for payment, the taxpayer would receive an electronic receipt guaranteeing immunity from prosecution for previous non-disclosure.17 Alongside this I resolved to propose a simple deal to the finance minister of Switzerland, where so many of Greece’s tax cheats kept their untaxed money.18 In a rare example of the raw power of the European Union being used as a force for good, Switzerland had recently been forced to disclose all banking information pertaining to EU citizens by 2017. Naturally, the Swiss feared that large EU-domiciled depositors who did not want their bank balances to be reported to their country’s tax authorities might shift their money before the revelation deadline to some other jurisdiction, such as the Cayman Islands, Singapore or Panama. My proposals were thus very much in the Swiss finance minister’s interests: a 15 per cent tax rate was a relatively small price to pay for legalizing a stash and allowing it to remain in safe, conveniently located Switzerland. I would pass a law through Greece’s parliament that would allow for the taxation of money in Swiss bank accounts at this exceptionally low rate, and in return the Swiss finance minister would require all his country’s banks to send their Greek customers a friendly letter informing them that, unless they produced the electronic receipt and immunity certificate provided by my ministry’s web page, their bank account would be closed within weeks. To my great surprise and delight, my Swiss counterpart agreed to the proposal.19

MY RECOMMENDATION Below is my advice about regarding selling SpaceX stock or options. No complicated analysis is required, as the rules of thumb are pretty simple. If you believe that SpaceX will execute better than the average public company, then our stock price will continue to appreciate at a rate greater than that of the stock market, which would be the next highest return place to invest money over the long term. Therefore, you should sell only the amount that you need to improve your standard of living in the short to medium term. I do actually recommend selling some amount of stock, even if you are certain it will appreciate, as life is short and a bit more cash can increase fun and reduce stress at home (so long as you don’t ratchet up your ongoing personal expenditures proportionately). To maximize your post tax return, you are probably best off exercising your options to convert them to stock (if you can afford to do this) and then holding the stock for a year before selling it at our roughly biannual liquidity events. This allows you to pay the capital gains tax rate, instead of the income tax rate.

In West's guide, rule-of-thumb guidance comes in two formats that most valuation experts recognize:  Percentage of annual sales: If a business had total sales of $ 100,000 last year and the multiple for that business was 40 percent of annual sales, the price based on that particular rule of thumb would be $ 40,000.  Multiple of earnings: An earnings multiplier makes the most sense to prospective buyers. It directly addresses the buyer's motive to make money: to achieve a return on investment. In many small companies, this multiple is commonly used against what is known as seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), which are earnings before accounting for the following items: • Income taxes • Nonrecurring income and expenses • Nonoperating income and expenses • Depreciating an amortization • Interest expense or income • Owner's total compensation for one owner/ operator after adjusting the total compensation of all owners to market value

Chetty and his colleagues were interested in how opportunity shapes who ends up innovating. They reasoned that some kids would grow up in environments that gave them special access to resources. When they linked federal income tax returns with patent records for more than a million Americans, they found an alarming result. People raised in the top 1 percent of family income were ten times more likely to become inventors than people from families below the median income. If you grew up wealthy, your odds of earning a patent were 8 out of 1,000. If you grew up poor, they plummeted to 8 out of 10,000.

Part B charges a monthly premium that in 2016 is $104.90 for most beneficiaries. However, about 5 percent of Part B subscribers earned enough money to push them into higher premium brackets. This set of surcharges is known as the income-related monthly adjustment amount, or IRMAA.16 Social Security makes this call and bases premiums on federal tax returns two years prior to the program year in question. So, the agency used 2014 returns to determine any 2016 Part B premium surcharges. For the detail-minded, the agency uses a measure of taxable income called “modified adjusted gross income.”17 Chapter 9 includes details of Part B premiums and surcharges.

By way of background, the measure of income used in the IRMAA rules is called modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI. It consists of adjusted gross income (AGI), which taxpayers are used to seeing on their tax returns. Adding tax-exempt interest income (from, say, municipal bonds) to AGI produces MAGI. The other key thing about IRMAA is that any IRMAA charges this year will be based on your tax returns of two years ago. So, for 2016 IRMAA obligations, use your 2014 tax returns. This lag, by the way, reflects how long it takes Social Security to get and process IRS tax-return records.

Another method to identify misogyny is to picture a well-known politician as belonging to the opposite sex and see where that takes you. For instance, imagine Donald Trump as a woman. Let's call her Donna. During the 2016 presidential election, Donna Trump said the exact same things as her male twin, Donald, did in real life. Orange-faced, sporting a fantastically cantilevered helmet of yellow hair, she hid her weight under baggy, navy-blue pantsuits. Bellowing from the podium, she was angry, boastful. Only SHE could save the country. She called people nasty names, made fun of handicapped reporters and Gold Star Families, and refused to turn over her income tax returns. She lied and/or exaggerated on a daily basis. She had been married three times and cheated on all three husbands. She bragged about grabbing unsuspecting men's penises. Would Donna Trump have been viewed as blunt, honest, and refreshing? Would SHE have won the election?