147 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. Any other educational assistance that is excludable from gross income (tax free),

      Can this be considered a definition of tax free?

    2. Qualified education expenses paid on behalf of the student by someone other than the student (such as a relative) are treated as paid by the student.

      Does Tuition paid for graduate students by the professor (from research grants) count as a third party?

    1. Scholarship - partially taxable. Amount spent on tuition and qualified education expenses (provide link) not taxable, the remainder is taxable ordinary income. Reported on 1098-T if from USA stipend is treated as a Scholarships
    1. You cannot claim a credit for education expenses paid with tax-free funds. You must reduce the amount of expenses paid with tax-free grants, scholarships and fellowships and other tax-free education help.

      What are tax-free funds? Are fellowship / tuition for grad students paid by faculty grants counted as tax free?

  2. Jan 2024
    1. It doesn’t matter if *you* believe in climate change or not… Because Insurance companies believe in climate change. And so you're *already* paying for the costs of climate breakdown
      • for: climate denial - insurance companies will make everyone pay, climate deniers - will pay carbon tax - via insurance, carbon tax - climate deniers
  3. Nov 2023
    1. offers above-market interest rates

      That money has to come from somewhere, since people in the program will supposedly be extorted less, this is apparently a scheme to fund a kickback to home buyers at the expense of people who can't afford to buy a home or already have one.

    1. By chance I was reading Robert Goodin's 30 year old book on Green Political Theory yesterday - yes, how I get my kicks. A statement near the end of the book jumped out at me - and, I think, pertinent to the Netherlands now and the heat and noise in my home town, Oxford re. transport policy."...greens will have to impose tougher restraints on the rich than on the poor; they will have to let the poor continue to damage the environment in ways that they are prepared to prevent the rich from doing."
      • for: carbon tax, tax the rich, carbon inequality

      • comment

        • an obvious and logical strategy because
          • the elites are few in number, but hold much wealth
          • the disenfranchised are many in number but hold little wealth
            • but the disenfranchised exist in larger numbers
            • so when it comes to voting, they are a strategic cohort to win over
        • this is in effect the same logic as the Paris Agreement and climate justice
        • climate justice requires us to protect the poor and give them the remaining carbon budget whilst those who already have enough must cut back
    1. That’s paid for by the state from a $40 million fund approved by the legislature.

      Per the #JustPowers clause of The Declaration of Independence, people can't grant powers they don't have to Gov, including legislators.

      Since I can't justly extort my neighbors to fund things I want, like training for local police, the legislature cannot justly do this either.

      The alternative would be to fund police training voluntarily through donations to a "training fund". Then the police funding would depend on what the local community is willing to support - not the whims of politicians.

      "Law enforcers" are mercenaries hired to impose political edicts on the masses, and they are funded with money extorted unjustly from the populace.

      They are predators on the people, not protectors as they are portrayed in media propaganda. Their only job is to keep the political racketeers tax slaves in-line.

  4. Aug 2023
    1. what I'm advocating here isn't radical redistribution it's merely more 00:13:08 redistribution in a and structurally dependable manner that is fair that is inclusive and that allows for the poor and improvised Nations to be granted excess not just a vital strategic resources that are very much needed in 00:13:21 maintaining the quality of life at own citizens but also more importantly the ropes to climb the ladder
      • for: W2W, TPF, stats, inequality, wealth redistribution, wealth tax, quote, quote - wealth tax, quote - inequality, stats, stats - inequality, stats - wealth tax
      • quote
      • stats
        • An annual wealth tax of just 5% on multi-millionaires and billionaires
        • could raise US $1.7 trillion a year
        • enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty
      • author Institute for Policy (2023)
      • comment
        • that breaks down to approximately $US 1,000 per person for 2 billion people from the 1% elites
        • this is pretty reasonable
        • W2W can begin with this simple VOLUNTARY ASK
        • if the multi-millionaires and billionaires do just this consistently, then it is so little from their coffers and they could avoid a wealth tax by simply stepping up voluntarily
        • Could W2W motivate them to?
    1. Views 0 CrossRef citations to date 32 Altmetric Research Article The spatial and social logic of the Minibus Taxi network: how access may support social inclusion in Cape Town, South Africa
      • for: cape town transportation, minibus industry South Africa , Cape Town, sustainable transportation, informal transport
      • title
        • Views 0 CrossRef citations to date 32 Altmetric Research Article The spatial and social logic of the Minibus Taxi network: how access may support social inclusion in Cape Town, South Africa
      • date
        • May 24, 2021
      • author
        • Ruth Joan Nelson
      • source
  5. Jul 2023
      • for: carbon inequality, w2w, leverage point - climate change, 1%, inequality, wealth tax
      • title
        • The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions
      • authors
        • Kristian S. Nielsen
        • Kimberly A. Nicholas
        • Felix Creutzig
        • Thomas Dietz
        • Paul C. Stern
      • date
      • abstract
        • People with high socioeconomic status disproportionally affect energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions directly
          • through their consumption and
          • indirectly through their financial and social resources.
        • However, few climate change mitigation initiatives have targeted this population segment,
          • and the potential of such initiatives remains insufficiently researched.
        • In this Perspective, we analyse key characteristics of high-socioeconomic-status people and explore five roles through which they have a disproportionate impact on energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions and potentially on climate change mitigation, namely as:
          • consumers,
          • investors,
          • role models,
          • organizational participants and
          • citizens.
        • We examine what is known about their disproportionate impact via consumption and
          • explore their potential influence on greenhouse gas emissions through all five roles.
        • We suggest that future research should focus on strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by high-socioeconomic-status people and to align their
          • investments,
          • organizational choices and
          • actions as social and political change agents
        • with climate change mitigation goals.
      • for: inequality, climate justice, wealth tax
      • policy paper
      • title
        • survival of the richest
      • date
        • Jan 16, 2023
      • executive summary
        • Since 2020, the richest 1% have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth
          • nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99% of the world’s population.
        • Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7bn a day,
          • even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India.7
        • Food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022,
          • paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders,
          • while over 800 million people went to bed hungry
        • Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes and
          • half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children.
        • A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year,
          • enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.
      • for: inequality, wealth tax, climate justice, earth system justice
      • policy paper
      • title
        • Survival of the Richest
      • source
        • Oxfam
      • date

        • Jan 2023
      • Executive Summary

        • Since 2020, the richest 1% have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth
          • nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99% of the world’s population.
        • Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7bn a day,
          • even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India.7
        • Food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022,
          • paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders,
          • while over 800 million people went to bed hungry
        • Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes and
          • half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children.
        • A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year,
          • enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.
  6. Jun 2023
    1. tax AI powered businesses at 98 right so suddenly you do what the open letter was trying to do slow them down a little bit and at the same time get enough money to 00:39:34 pay for all of those people that will be disrupted by the technology
      • potential government policy
        • to slow down premature AI rollout
        • by taxing at 98%
  7. Feb 2023
    1. windfall taxes on excess profits could help to fund low-carbon investment, as well as progressive taxation in countries, including developing countries, which often under-tax rich citizens and companies.
      • = tax the rich everywhere
  8. Jan 2023
    1. But that’s just one way to get batteries into low-income customers’ homes. Sunrun also acts as a third-party owner of solar and battery systems that Grid Alternatives installs for customers that can’t or don’t want to borrow money to finance it. Third-party owners can monetize the value of federal tax credits for low-income households that don’t pay a large enough federal tax bill to take advantage of the credits themselves. 

      This feels like the project partner thing from before - income households can't access the support themselves, so you need an intermediary to arrange someone with a tax bill to recude, and presumably take a cut in the process.

    1. there's a landlord tax the the  one percent in their day were the landlords you   have to tax away the land rent and make that  the public uh tax base not income not taxes on   consumer goods not taxes on capital because you  want good capital investment you want fortunes to   00:45:07 be made in a good way that add to the economy's  productivity you don't want them to be made in   a predatory bad way uh the whole fight to tax  economic rent and to even recognize that most   income is unearned when you talk about the uh  income disparity almost all this disparity is   unearned income it's economic rent it's not  income that's made by increasing uh production   00:45:33 it's not income that's made by increasing living  standards it's just predatory rent seeking from   special privileges that the wealthy have gained  from government and today it's not the landlord   class anymore as it was in the 19th century it's  the financial class and the raw materials class   uh and uh without dealing uh with this uh  cl structure i don't uh the system is going   00:45:57 to shrink and shrink and we've seen this before  we saw it in rome the same kind of polarization   and concentration of wealth in the roman empire  well the last stage of that is feudalism so we're   back to what rosa luxemburg said the choice is  between socialism and barbarism basically and uh   there's no other way to do it you can't  solve the problems within the existing system   00:46:23 because it's controlled already by the one  percent

      Micheal Hudson : tax the rent seeking class or face barbarism like in Rome - The situation today is degrading in the same way Rome degraded into feudalism - rent seeking class today is not the landlord class, but the financial and raw materials class that are making large fortunes from rent seeking - that is the system level reform necessary today

    2. think of the yellow vest movement in france a   couple of years ago which was a major tax level  to get rid of a very what i think was a very uh   an equal project to raise the carbon tax basically  on the poorest group in society and and there will   00:11:27 be you know to address uh climate uh challenges  but also you know all sorts of social and   developmental uh challenges uh we will we you know  societies will have to to to to find ways of

      Thomas Piketty comment Yellow Jackets - was a (carbon) tax result from the poorest sector of society

  9. Dec 2022
    1. If your investment charges ongoing management fees, those fees are tax-deductible when held in a non-registered account.

      Inactivity Fees?

    1. the report suggests an increase of the city’s current income tax rate of 1.85% to 2.25% would be the most productive way to address the narrowing excess of revenues over expenditures

      Always "extort more" from MORPC, never "Gov should operate within its budgets".

  10. Oct 2022
  11. Aug 2022
    1. You can control your tax bracket

      In class, I’ll ask people, “Where do you think tax rates are going in the future, up or down?”

      Most of the people in the class think that taxes will be going up.

      So the next question I ask is, “If you think taxes will be going up in the future – what are you doing about it now?”

      People will say, “But I can’t control whether taxes go up or down.”

      To which I reply, “Right, but YOU CAN control your tax bracket."

      “What?”

      “You can control your tax bracket – if you plan ahead – and you know what you’re doing.”

      Think about this – if all of your retirement money is in tax-deferred accounts, you will have to pay taxes on the money as you take it out in retirement. So what happens when tax rates go up? You’ll pay more in taxes.

      But what if you planned ahead? What if you had money available from a variety of sources that were taxed at rates lower than ordinary income tax rates – or were tax-free?

      You would be in a position to decide from which accounts you would take the money – and thereby decide how much you would be paying in taxes.

  12. Jul 2022
    1. The Delaware County Land Reutilization Corporation has been awarded nearly $500,000 in demolition grants from the Ohio Department of Development that will be used for various demolition projects around the county.

      They spent decades taxing this land, and now that it's abandoned, they have to go to the State for extorted money to pay to clear it out for more development.

      ...because private developers don't have enough money.

      If Delaware County isn't saving enough of its property tax extortion racket money, that is the Delaware County Commissioner's problem - or better yet, the landowners or future developers.

  13. Jun 2022
    1. Numerous studies have shown thatthe fiscal state’s rise in power made a major contribution to the pro-cess of economic development. The new receipts did in fact make itpossible to finance expenditures that proved indispensable not onlyfor reducing inequalities but also for encouraging growth. These ex-penditures included a massive and relatively egalitarian investmentin education and health care (or, at least, a much more massive andegalitarian investment than any previous); expansion of transporta-tion and other community infrastructure; the replacement income,such as retirement pensions, necessary for supporting an aging popu-lation; and reserves, such as unemployment insurance, for stabilizingthe economy and society in the event of a recession.1

      See especially P. Lindert, Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

      Ample evidence has shown that increasing taxes in Western countries along with the states' power to use it during the majority of the 1900s not only reduced inequalities but encouraged growth.

    2. In France, a wealthyvoter giving 7,500 euros (the current ceiling) to his preferred politicalparty has a right to a tax deduction of 5,000 euros, financed by the restof the taxpayers.
    3. In concreteterms, a state that levies taxes amounting to only 1 percent of the na-tional income has very little power and capacity to mobilize society.
    1. My parents noticed that I didn’tplay with LEGOs like other kids. Instead I spent my time organizingand reorganizing the pieces. I remember being completelycaptivated by the problem of how to create order out of the chaos ofthousands of pieces of every shape and size. I would invent neworganizational schemes—by color, by size, by theme—as I becameobsessed with the idea that if I could just find the right system, Iwould finally be able to build my magnum opus—a LEGO spaceshiplike the ones I saw in the sci-fi movies I loved

      This is also generally an administrative problem in this space. People spend ages tinkering with their tools and not enough time using them for what the tools are meant for.

    Tags

    Annotators

  14. May 2022
    1. Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Choosing Your App

      What are the common pitfalls when choosing a note taking application or platform?

      Own your data

      Prefer note taking systems that don't rely on a company's long term existence. While Evernote or OneNote have been around for a while, there's nothing to say they'll be around forever or even your entire lifetime. That shiny new startup note taking company may not gain traction in the market and exist in two years. If your notes are trapped inside a company's infrastructure and aren't exportable to another location, you're simply dead in the water. Make sure you have a method to be able to export and own the raw data of your notes.

      Test driving many

      and not choosing or sticking with one (or even a few)<br /> Don't get stunned into inaction by the number of choices.

      Shiny object syndrome

      is the situation where people focus all attention on something that is new, current or trendy, yet drop this as soon as something new takes its place.<br /> There will always be new and perhaps interesting note taking applications. Some may look fun and you'll be tempted to try them out and fragment your notes. Don't waste your time unless the benefits are manifestly clear and the pathway to exporting your notes is simple and easy. Otherwise you'll spend all your time importing/exporting and managing your notes and not taking and using them. Paper and pencil has been around for centuries and they work, so at a minimum do this. True innovation in this space is exceedingly rare, and even small affordances like the ability to have [[wikilinks]] and/or bi-directional links may save a few seconds here and there, in the long run these can still be done manually and having a system far exceeds the value of having the best system.

      (Relate this to the same effect in the blogosphere of people switching CMSes and software and never actually writing content on their website. The purpose of the tool is using it and not collecting all the tools as a distraction for not using them. Remember which problem you're attempting to solve.)

      Future needs and whataboutisms

      Surely there will be future innovations in the note taking space or you may find some niche need that your current system doesn't solve. Given the maturity of the space even in a pen and paper world, this will be rare. Don't worry inordinately about the future, imitate what has worked for large numbers of people in the past and move forward from there.

      Others? Probably...

  15. Jan 2022
  16. Dec 2021
    1. It is also a long-standing position of the Internal Revenue Service that in a nonemployment context, reimbursements for expenses incurred by a taxpayer on behalf of another are not includible in the taxpayer's gross income. See for example, Rev. Rul. 79-142, 1979-1 C.B. 58; Rev. Rul. 77-280, 1977-2 C.B. 14; Rev. Rul. 67-30, 1967-1 C.B. 9; Rev. Rul. 63-77, 1963-1 C.B. 177; and Rev. Rul. 55-555, 1955-2 C.B. 20.

      Money paid for expenses paid on behalf of another (including a school board) are not taxable.

    2. OFFICE OF CHIEF COUNSEL October 06, 2008 Number: INFO 2009-0124

      IRS Guidance re reimbursements to parents for expenses under the IDEA - nontaxable - so parents do not need to declare.

  17. Nov 2021
    1. While I still enjoy org-roam, things feel (to me anyway) a bit up in the air with it at the moment, as there are big changes coming in version 2 which will probably involve a bit of backwards incompatibility. I couldn’t decide whether to wait to make the changes, or transition to the new version now, and that indecision made me reluctant to add to my collection of notes.

      Example of someone who doesn't want to use their digital notebook because of admin tax of pending future changes.

    1. Nuance and ambiguity are essential to good fiction. They are also essential to the rule of law: We have courts, juries, judges, and witnesses precisely so that the state can learn whether a crime has been committed before it administers punishment. We have a presumption of innocence for the accused. We have a right to self-defense. We have a statute of limitations.

      Great quote by itself.


      How useful is the statute of limitations in cases like slavery in America? It goes against a broader law of humanity, but by pretending there was a statue of limitations for going against it, we have only helped to institutionalize racism in American society. The massive lack of a level playing field makes it all the harder for the marginalized to have the same freedoms as everyone else.

      Perhaps this is why the idea of reparations is so powerful for so many. It removes the statue of limitations and may make it possible to allow us to actually level the playing field.

      Related:

      Luke 12:48 states, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." Is this simply a statement for justifying greater taxes for the massively wealth?

  18. Sep 2021
    1. Is the fact that these exist a function of how quiet and unknown these can be within a small subset of select society? Because the're not more common or commonly known, the average person isn't aware (not helped by the complexity of the details) on a daily basis and thus they can continue on helped by politicians in power who can be lobbied (or otherwise captured).

    1. Until we recognize the systemic role that supermoney plays in our economy, we will never make much of a dent in inequality. Simply raising taxes is a bit like sending out firefighters with hoses spraying water while another team is spraying gasoline.

      Taxation needs a total revamp because it's inefficient, slow and the rich adapt by becoming a moving target.

    2. The tax system could and should become more dynamic rather than more predictable.

      Exactly: decide the tax for each citizen at the end of the year, by a division of the required amount.

    1. The tunnel far below represented Nevada’s latest salvo in a simmering water war: the construction of a $1.4 billion drainage hole to ensure that if the lake ever ran dry, Las Vegas could get the very last drop

      Deep Concept: Modern America is mostly corrupt from it's own creation of wealth. Wealth is power, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely! Money and wealth have completely changed the underlying foundation of America. Modern America is the corrupted result of wealth. Morality and ethics in modern American have been reshaped to "fit" European Aristocracy, ironically the same European aristocracy America fled in the Revolutionary War.

      Billions and billions of tax payer money is spent on projects that could never pass rigorous examination and best public ROI use. Political authoritative conditions rule public tax money for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. The public "cult-like" sheep have no clue how they are being abused.

      The authoritative abusers (politicians) follow the "mostly" corrupt American (fuck-you) form of government and individual power tactics that have been conveniently embedded in corrupt modern morality and ethics, used by corrupted lawyers and judges to codify the fundamental moral code that underpins the original American Constitution.

  19. Aug 2021
    1. Now consider we want to handle numbers in our known value set: const KNOWN_VALUES = Object.freeze(['a', 'b', 'c', 1, 2, 3]) function isKnownValue(input?: string | number) { return typeof(input) === 'string' && KNOWN_VALUES.includes(input) } Uh oh! This TypeScript compiles without errors, but it's not correct. Where as our original "naive" approach would have worked just fine. Why is that? Where is the breakdown here? It's because TypeScript's type system got in the way of the developer's initial intent. It caused us to change our code from what we intended to what it allowed. It was never the developer's intention to check that input was a string and a known value; the developer simply wanted to check whether input was a known value - but wasn't permitted to do so.
    1. Quelle: Isabel Martínez 2021, Schätzung anhand von acht für die Schweiz repräsentativen Kantonen für das Jahr 2010.; Grafik: WOZ

      QUELLE: ISABEL MARTÍNEZ 2021, SCHÄTZUNG ANHAND VON ACHT FÜR DIE SCHWEIZ REPRÄSENTATIVEN KANTONEN FÜR DAS JAHR 2010.; GRAFIK: WOZ

    2. Die zehn Prozent mit den höchsten Einkommen bezahlten 78 Prozent der direkten Bundessteuern.

      How much money is that actually?

    1. By contrast, a systematic ordering, which finds its contemporary equivalent in modern outliners, soon runs into difficulties. The anthropologist Alan MacFarlane noted some time ago that "one danger inherent in paper indexes is the amount of effort they take to add to and maintain. That means that more and more of the worker's energies go into the creation of the tools for research, and the less time there is to actually do the research and the writing." He traced this problem to the hierarchical classification that he thought paper makes necessary and complained that the system broke down at 40.000 cards because the preconceived categories proved inflexible. Luhmann's alternative avoids this problem.
  20. Jun 2021
    1. Too many “Digital Gardens” end up as not much more than a record of someone dicking around with their note-taking workflow for a couple of months.

      I've seen this pattern. I suspect some of the issue is having a clean, useful user interface for actually using the thing instead of spending time setting it up and tweaking it.

  21. May 2021
    1. Ru does a retrospective about how much work and energy a static site can be to maintain a personal website.

    2. Yet, every time I open up my Eleventy codebase, I want to puke (figuratively). Having gained distance and perspective from the codebase, it now looks less like a personal website and more like software. Even if a lot of it is well-engineered, it feels overblown for what it is supposed to do.

      Even for a smart and experienced programmer, maintaining a static website generator site can be a lot of work.

  22. Apr 2021
    1. Watching Representative Katie Porter Grill Trump Administration Officials Is Still My Favorite Pandemic Pastime

      watching Katie Porter support repealing the SALT Caps has betrayed me to my core, shattered my hopes for what the Democratic party could be. pretending to speak for the middle class, she's giving an enormously regressive tax cut to the ultra-wealthy, and it's sickening to watch & soils my every memory of her fighting good fights. Incredibly dishonest & tragic, using so many fake GOP style "think of the middle class" ways to sell something that hardly affects them.

    1. You'll need to have paid more sales tax than state and local tax to take this deduction.
    2. You'll usually only take this sales tax deduction if you live in a state that doesn't have state income tax, but it's available to everyone.
  23. Feb 2021
  24. Jan 2021
  25. Aug 2020
  26. Jul 2020
    1. Your deductible medical expenses include unreimbursed medical expenses that are deductible on Schedule A. You can include medical expenses and copayments for you, your spouse, and your dependents. You can only deduct the part of your expenses that exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. Enter the full amount of your medical expenses, and we'll calculate if the medical expenses are more than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. The definition of what constitutes a medical expense is very broad and includes expenses to diagnose, cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent disease. However, cosmetic surgery is not deductible unless it is related to disfigurement from a congenital abnormality, accidental injury, or a disfiguring disease. Other examples of nondeductible medical expenses are nonprescription drugs, doctor prescribed travel for "rest", and expenses for the improvement of your general health such as a weight-loss program or health club fees (the weight-loss program is deductible if it is to treat a specific disease). Examples of deductible medical expenses include: Abortions Acupuncture Alcoholism treatment Ambulance costs Birth control pills Child birth classes Chiropractors Contact lenses Crutches Dentist Dentures Doctor fees Drug addiction treatment Prescription drugs Dyslexia reading programs and tutors Eye examination and glasses Guide dogs Health insurance Hearing aids Hospital bills Insulin Laboratory fees Long-term care insurance Nursing home if for medical treatment Optometrist Osteopath Physical therapy Psychiatrist Psychologist Travel to medical clinics Vasectomy Wheelchair
    1. What types of income are NOT taxable? Don't overpay the IRS by including nontaxable income on your tax return. The following income is generally NOT taxable income. There are always exceptions. For example, inheritances are generally not taxable, but if you inherited an IRA account, you will be taxed when you receive IRA distributions. But for most people, these types of income are NOT taxable: Life insurance proceeds IRA and Pension rollovers Child support payments Inheritances Gifts Workers Compensation Disability payments if you paid the premiums on the policy. If your employer paid the policy, then the disability payments are taxable. If you paid part of the policy, then part of the disability payments you paid are nontaxable. Court damages or settlements for personal physical injuries or physical sickness. Punitive payments are taxable. Health and accident benefits Federal income tax refund State income tax refund (if you took the standard deduction last year) Most scholarships, fellowships, and Pell grants Foster care payments (certain restrictions for individuals over age 18 in foster care) Gain on the sale of your personal residence is usually nontaxable. The gain might be taxable if you lived in the residence less than two years or if the residence has ever been used as a rental property or home office Roth IRA qualified distributions Welfare payments Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Social security benefits (including SSDI) are either nontaxable or partially taxable. Enter your social security benefits on the Social Security Benefits screen and we'll calculate how much, if any, of your benefits are taxable Cancellation of debt because of bankruptcy or insolvency. Enter your 1099-C or 1099-A on the Canceled Debt (1099-C or 1099-A) Information screen and we'll calculate how much, if any, of the canceled debt is taxable Veterans Administration disability benefits Pay-for-Performance Success Payments that reduce the principal balance of your home mortgage under the Home Affordable Modification Program Black lung benefits Cash rebates. For example, if you receive a cash rebate of $100 after you purchase a new washing machine Insurance proceeds for theft or damage to your property Utility rebates Long-term care insurance benefits Military allowances Peace Corps living allowances Reimbursement for medical care Certain individual care provider income Disaster relief payments
  27. Jun 2020
    1. Services to UK Expats in Australia

      If you're british expats in Australia and need good, reliable and credible cross border financial planning & UK expats tax advice, Alexander Beard Group can help you!

    1. IR-2020-107, May 28, 2020 WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service announced today that later this summer taxpayers will for the first time be able to file their Form 1040-X, Amended U.S Individual Income Tax Return, electronically using available tax software products.
    2. IRS announces Form 1040-X electronic filing options coming this summer; major milestone reached for electronic returns
  28. May 2020
    1. AppCache was standardized in the Offline Web applications section of the HTML specification. The standard is formally referred to as application caches. New Web applications should be built around Service Workers. Existing applications that use AppCache should migrate to Service Workers. AppCache access was removed from insecure origins in M70. This intent addresses AppCache usage in secure origins.

      First and foremost, AppCache is a deprecated standard with serious architectural concerns. Second, Chrome's AppCache implementation is a security and stability liability. AppCache is documented as deprecated and under removal in MDN and in the WHATWG standard, and marked as obsolete in W3C’s HTML 5.1. It is incompatible with CORS, making it unfriendly for usage with CDNs. Overall, AppCache was changed in over 400 Chromium CLs in 2018-2019. It has imposed a tax on all of Chrome’s significant architectural efforts: Mojofication, Onion Souping, and the Network Service. The security benefits of the removal are covered under Security Risks.

  29. Dec 2019
    1. There are several itemizable tax deductions, but the bulk of most taxpayers' deductions come from the "big four": Mortgage interest on as much as $750,000 in principal. Medical expenses in excess of 10% of your AGI. State and local taxes (SALT), including property taxes and state income or sales taxes, up to a maximum of $10,000 per year. Charitable contributions. For most Americans, adding up these four deductions can be a good indicator of whether itemizing will be worthwhile
    1. For the first time, a nonresident alien can take an equity stake in an S corporation, albeit indirectly as a trust beneficiary, without terminating the ESBT and S corporation statuses. This change presents a new opportunity for a nonresident alien to invest in an S corporation without compromising the entity's S corporation status. To be clear, the long-standing prohibition on a nonresident alien's being a direct S corporation shareholder (Sec. 1361(b)(1)(C)) was left intact. Accordingly, it is still necessary to ensure that under no circumstance could the trust distribute S corporation shares to a nonresident alien beneficiary, as such a distribution would jeopardize the trust's status as an ESBT as well as the S corporation status.
  30. Oct 2019
  31. Sep 2019
  32. Aug 2019
    1. The total yieldfrom this tax plus the recovery of taxes lost through the Internal Rev-enue Service subsidy of employment-based insurance could allowdiscontinuation of the payroll tax, corporate tax, and other taxes.

      Involvement with tax and its loss.

  33. Jul 2019
    1. A GAAR reassessment upheld, primarily on the basis that the Tax Court judge was correct to look at one of the steps in the series of transactions on an objective basis and ask if the permissible objective of creditor protection could have been achieved without it, without which it was open to him to find that its primary purpose was to achieve the tax benefit.

    2. It seems to me that in considering the purpose of a subset of the entire series of transactions, Justice Paris had in mind the correct test. As this Court said in MacKay v. Canada, 2008 FCA 105 (CanLII) at paragraph 25: The existence of a bona fide non-tax purpose for a series of transactions does not exclude the possibility that the primary purpose of one or more transactions within the series is to obtain a tax benefit.

      Existence of a bona fide non-tax purpose for a series of transactions does not exclude possibility that the primary purpose of one of the transactions in the series is to obtain a tax benefit.

  34. Apr 2019
    1. April 15, the day when you pay your taxes, gives you a good index of how democracy is functioning. If democracy were functioning effectively, April 15 would be a day of celebration. That’s a day on which we get together to contribute to implementing the policies that we’ve decided on. That’s what April 15 ought to be. Here it’s a day of mourning. This alien force is coming to steal your hard-earned money from you. That indicates an extreme contempt for democracy. And it’s natural that a business-run society and doctrinal system should try to inculcate that belief.
    1. the legislation all but ensures that paying taxes remains a giant, expensive pain in the ass for most workers and insulates Intuit, which runs TurboTax, and H&R Block from the potential harmful effects of competent governance to their bottom line.

      Not sure how accurate this characterization is, but it does seem that Intuit has been lobbying to keep things less than straightforward for taxpayers for some time. Unfortunate. https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-these-taxprep-companies-lobby-hard-to-keep-tax-day-a-torture-for-you-20150414-column.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboTax (see controversies)

  35. Mar 2019
    1. PwC is one of the most powerful companies in the world, especially when it's in lockstep with the other three big global consulting and auditing firms, KPMG, EY (formerly known as Ernst & Young) and Deloitte. Known together as the "Big Four," this quartet of companies generally flies under the radar of public awareness.
  36. Feb 2019
    1. The opposition of suburban whites to the welfare state (“entitlements”), beginning with the 1970s tax revolts (Burton rails at having to pay high school taxes and then see his son be forced to go to school in the inner city, and against “welfare freeloaders”), only intensified as the “hard-working” (white) “common man” in his orderly suburban family saw the New Deal dream evaporate. Burton declared in 1974: “I wanted to be somebody”, and in the economic environment symbolized by the oil price shock of that year, his identity became more and more at odds with the desire of the excluded in US society to also “be somebody”. By 1976, Burton had abandoned the Democratic party and the New Deal ethos, seeing in Ronald Reagan someone who could “deliver the nation out of its malaise”, with a reprise of Wallace’s “freshness, independence, backbone and scrappy spirit”. This is not a new story. It is rather a reflection of US history as a whole, where a frontier-spirit, classless liberalism is organically bound up with anti-democratic exclusion and an ethic of private responsibility. It is but one facet of American racialized, gendered neoliberalism.
  37. Nov 2018
    1. All of this also has to be weighed against the additional money Walmart will get from the tax cuts. According to what a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy told the New York Times, Walmart could easily save $2.2 billion a year from the tax cuts. The company says that the wage increases and bonuses would run $700 million.

      2200000000 - 700000000 = 1500000000 tax bonus after wage increases and bonuses

  38. Sep 2018
  39. Jun 2018
    1. http://cookislandsnews.com/national/local/item/13335-brown-back-for-documentary/13335-brown-back-for-documentary

      Working for CBC?

      No. I was not "working for" CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I was funded by CBC to fly back from New Zealand to Rarotonga as a public source for a CBC story. On offshore banking, and the background to offshore banking in the Cook Islands.

      My impression? They needed a local "talking head" to illustrate their story, safely. Having gained footage of what they were interested in, the CBC reporter leading the story has rejected my own story about offshore banking.

      Good enough to be a CBC headline source, but not good enough to be a CBC investigative source.

  40. Oct 2017
    1. A Pew Research Center analysis of IRS data from 2015, the most recent available, shows that taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes,

      This data is "old". This also show how much leverage those tax payers have, their income tax can pay one or more teachers.

    1. ate graced them with honors and privileges, not least of them an exemption from taxe
    2. e great tax farmers established hereditary rights over dozens of villages, in which they acted as virtual landlords and patrons. In addition to collecting taxes from the peasants they took care of various administrative tasks, mediated local disputes, and lent money on a large scale. Large stocks of food came into their possession as tax payments, giving them a highly profitable control over the grain supply to the city.
    3. The most lucrative and influential government positions involved tax collection.
  41. Jun 2017
    1. The Belgian newspaper Le Soir, Spain's El Mundo, L'Espresso of Italy and the French online site Mediapart are members of European Investigative Collaboration (EIC), a cooperative initiative in investigative journalism.

      Here is the exact list of media outlets involved: L'Espresso, Le Soir, NRC, DER SPIEGEL, The Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism / TheBlackSea.eu, Mediapart, Politiken, NewsWeek Serbia, El Mundo, Expresso, Dagens Nyheter, Malta Today, The Intercept and Agência Sportlight.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Treize médias européens commencent à publier une enquête sur les activités de paradis fiscal de Malte, qui préside actuellement l'Union européenne. En France, en Allemagne ou en Italie, ces médias pointent du doigt des politiques, des financiers, des représentants du milieu du spectacle et des entreprises prestigieuses.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Ultimately they may have deprived the state of nearly €32bn (£28bn; $36bn). As the German broadcaster ARD wryly noted, that would have paid for repairs to a lot of schools and bridges.

      Interested in more tax scandals in Europe? The #MaltaFiles uncovered how companies and rich individuals throughout Europe wire their money through the small Island Malta for saving taxes in their home countries. Find more information here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. How bankers, consultants, and lawyers have been plundering the German state for decades. And who tracked them down and exposed them.

      Interested in more tax scandals in Europe? The #MaltaFiles uncovered how companies and rich individuals throughout Europe wire their money through the small Island Malta for saving taxes in their home countries. Find more information here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Deutsche Konzerne sollen mithilfe von Tochterfirmen auf Malta ihre Steuerlast in Deutschland drücken. Das berichtet der Spiegel unter Berufung auf Tausende Dokumente, die dem europäischen Recherchenetzwerk EIC zugespielt wurden. Die sogenannten Malta Files gäben Aufschluss über zahlreiche Firmeninhaber auf Malta. Unter ihnen seien aktuell oder in der Vergangenheit Dax-Konzerne wie BMW, BASF, Deutsche Bank, Puma und Merck. 

      Mehr Informationen über #MaltaFiles und weitere Projekte des EICnetwork gibt es hier: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Zahlreiche Konzerne, darunter auch aus Deutschland, nutzen in großem Stil Tochterfirmen auf Malta, um ihre Steuern in ihrer Heimat zu drücken. Das geht aus tausenden Dokumenten hervor, die der "Spiegel" gemeinsam mit seinen zwölf Partnern vom Recherchenetzwerk European Investigative Collaboration (EIC) ausgewertet hat. Diese begannen am Freitag mit der Veröffentlichung ihrer Auswertung. Dem EIC waren in den vergangenen Monaten zwei Datensätze, die sogenannten Malta Files, zugespielt worden. Die Papiere erlauben laut "Spiegel" einen tiefen Einblick in das maltesische System von Firmengründungen und legen die Inhaber dortiger Firmen offen.

      Mehr Informationen über #MaltaFiles und weitere Projekte des EICnetwork gibt es hier: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. 13 testate giornalistiche, raggruppate nella rete dei media European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), hanno iniziato a pubblicare i “Malta Files”, decine di migliaia di documenti confidenziali che rivelano i retroscena di un paradiso fiscale di cui si parla poco.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. De familie van de Turkse president Recep Tayyip Erdogan heeft in 2008 zonder te betalen een olietanker verkregen ter waarde van 20 miljoen dollar. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van journalistennetwerk EIC (European Investigative Collaborations).

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. he consortium of media included German weekly Der Spiegel, Belgian daily Le Soir, and Spain's El Mundo, as well as online-only media such as Mediapart in France and The Black Sea.

      Here is the exact list of the media organizations involved: L'Espresso, Le Soir, NRC, DER SPIEGEL, The Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism / TheBlackSea.eu, Mediapart, Politiken, NewsWeek Serbia, El Mundo, Expresso, Dagens Nyheter, Malta Today, The Intercept and Agência Sportlight.

    2. Maltese politicians defended the country's tax regime over the weekend, after an international group of media outlets began publishing stories about the so-called Malta Files. The EU’s smallest nation came under new public scrutiny on Friday (19 May) when a journalists’ network called the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) published the Malta Files.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. The Commission had no comment on pan-European media investigation into Malta’s tax system.

      This pan-European media investigation is referred to as #MaltaFiles, a project of the European Investigative Collaboration short EICnetwork. Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Ces documents illustrent comment l’île méditerranéenne attire les entreprises avec sa fiscalité minimaliste et comment son régime de sociétés offshore permet de blanchir l’argent sale.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Après les Panama Papers, les Mata Files. Treize journaux européens, dont le site d’investigation Mediapart, membres du réseau European Investigate Collaborations (EIC), ont publié, vendredi 19 mai, des documents révélant des pratiques d'évasion et d'optimisation fiscale à Malte, pays par ailleurs président de l’Union européenne jusqu’au 30 juin.

      Here is the exact list of the media organizations involved: L'Espresso, Le Soir, NRC, DER SPIEGEL, The Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism / TheBlackSea.eu, Mediapart, Politiken, NewsWeek Serbia, El Mundo, Expresso, Dagens Nyheter, Malta Today, The Intercept and Agência Sportlight.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Le réseau de journalistes d’investigations EIC (European Investigative Collaborations) dont Mediapart est le membre français, viennent de commencer à publier les Malta Files (« dossiers Malte »).

      Here is the exact list of the media organizations involved: L'Espresso, Le Soir, NRC, DER SPIEGEL, The Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism / TheBlackSea.eu, Mediapart, Politiken, NewsWeek Serbia, El Mundo, Expresso, Dagens Nyheter, Malta Today, The Intercept and Agência Sportlight.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Treize journaux, regroupés au sein du réseau de médias European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), ont commencé à publier vendredi les "Malta Files", promettant de révéler les "coulisses de ce paradis fiscal méconnu", a annoncé le site français Mediapart.

      Here is the exact list of the media organizations involved: L'Espresso, Le Soir, NRC, DER SPIEGEL, The Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism / TheBlackSea.eu, Mediapart, Politiken, NewsWeek Serbia, El Mundo, Expresso, Dagens Nyheter, Malta Today, The Intercept and Agência Sportlight.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Le site Mediapart et douze autres médias internationaux du réseau d’investigation European Investigative Collaboration (EIC) publient, vendredi 19 mai, des révélations sur les pratiques fiscales de Malte. Les « Malta Files » sont constitués, détaille Mediapart, de deux ensembles de documents :

      Here is the exact list of the media organizations involved: L'Espresso, Le Soir, NRC, DER SPIEGEL, The Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism / TheBlackSea.eu, Mediapart, Politiken, NewsWeek Serbia, El Mundo, Expresso, Dagens Nyheter, Malta Today, The Intercept and Agência Sportlight.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Algunos de los personajes más ricos de España ‘custodian’ hasta 900 millones de euros en el ‘paraíso fiscal’ de Malta, según desvela El Mundo a partir de los denominados ‘Malta Files’.

      Malta Files' es el trabajo que sigue a Football Leaks, la investigación de la red de periodismo de investigación EIC que en diciembre del año pasado desveló la cara oculta de personajes del fútbol mundial como José Mourinho, Jorge Mendes o Cristiano Ronaldo. Encuentren más informacion acá: http://www.elmundo.es/economia/malta-files/2017/05/20/5920291b22601d6c678b45cf.html

      o acá: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. La pequeña isla mediterránea miembro de la Unión Europea es un paraíso desconocido de "la evasión fiscal y la corrupción", según la información divulgada por el diario El Mundo y la red de medios European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) y conocida como Malta Files.

      Para más información sobre MaltaFiles y otros projectos de EICnetwork visiten: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Anche in Spagna cominciano a trapelare dai cosiddetti Malta-files i primi nomi di Vip (imprenditori, nobili, personaggi dello sport, come Per Guardiola, fratello dell’allenatore del Manchester City) che, secondo il quotidiano El Mundo, deterrebbero su conti offshore nell’isola del Mediterraneo un patrimonio di almeno 900 milioni di euro.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/projects/malta-files

    1. Os documentos foram analisados pelo consórcio EIC (European Investigative Collaborations), do qual o Expresso e outros jornais internacionais fazem parte.

      Here is the exact list of the media organizations involved: L'Espresso, Le Soir, NRC, DER SPIEGEL, The Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism / TheBlackSea.eu, Mediapart, Politiken, NewsWeek Serbia, El Mundo, Expresso, Dagens Nyheter, Malta Today, The Intercept and Agência Sportlight.

      Learn more about MaltaFiles and projects of the EICnetwork here: https://eic.network/

  42. May 2017
  43. Jan 2017
    1. Income for services performed outside the United States is foreign-source and not subject to U.S. tax for a nonresident alien, even if paid by a U.S. employer or payer.
    2. If the recipient is a nonresident alien and the compensation payment is U.S.-source income, you must withhold 30 percent (called “NRA withholding”) unless an exception applies.
    1. If you are providing this Form W-8BEN to document yourself with respect to a financial account that you hold with a U.S. office of a financial institution, provide your date of birth.

      Seems to indicate that birthdate is optional if you don’t have a US account.

  44. Jun 2016
    1. The warning came in the wake of a Justice Department investigation of the role that certain Swiss banks had played in helping United States citizens evade federal taxes.

      I am surprised the New York Times did not mention the IRS Voluntary Disclosure Program for Offshore Assets. According to the IRS, "voluntary programs have resulted in more than 45,000 voluntary disclosures from individuals who have paid about $6.5 billion in back taxes, interest and penalties." (See IRS June 6, 2014 Press Release available here

      There is a good chance that some of the tax-payers tax structures analyzed in preparation for this article came into compliance through it. To make matters worse, the NY Times reported on it numerous times since its first incineration in 2009— with the latest Jan. 10 2012 on page B6, available at — which only makes this passing mention of investigations by the Department of the Treasury that much more disappointing.

  45. Apr 2016
    1. By valuing capital gains above all others, we end up extracting the value of our marketplaces and rendering them incapable of generating economic activity. As a Deloitte study showed, corporate profits over net worth have been decreasing for 75 years. Corporations are great at accumulating capital, but terrible at deploying it. They vacuum the money off the playing field altogether, impoverishing the markets and consumers–not to mention the employees–on whom they ultimately depend.
  46. Dec 2015
    1. Australian Tax Office transparency report.

      The data contains the total income, taxable income and tax payable of more than 1,500 public and foreign private entities for the 2013-14 income year. The companies each have a total income of $100 million or more. Cells containing a dash (-) represent "an amount of zero or less". The report only contains individual companies, not groups of companies.