General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 572

His companies are private (along with his personal finances), so there's not much than can be done.

 

So if I'm a billionaire and invest 100 million dollars in something (and hold onto it long enough), any profits will get taxed at the capital gains rate, right? But loses I can deduct from my income?

Someone please tell me there isn't this giant loophole in our tax system... cause if your profits only get taxes at 20% but you can write off your losses for 40% even bad investments can actually turn a profit

 

If it's ordinary business income, it gets reported on your Schedule E, which flows through to the first page of your 1040, rolls up into your taxable income and gets taxed at your personal rate.

Capital gains get taxed at capital gain rates.

 

this definitely seems sincere

 

Trump's hotel company was registered an LLC/S Corp I believe. I'm not gonna get into the weeds there, though.

But as far as i know, you can't write off regular investments, but rather write down/write off future depreciation of assets? But idk how that has anything to do with Trump's 95 return because I believe they were NOL's which are losses on his businesses? I have no idea...I know I know this shit but I'd really have to sti down and study the situation and think about it to try and figure it all out.

 

It's really tough to say, since everyone is just guessing at the actual business activity, but I think the assumption is that he had to write down the value of investments since they were deemed to be impaired (worth significantly less than they're valued at on the corporation's books). This is ordinary income.

Depreciation is also ordinary income. Could be part of this, but probably not a major percentage of the $1B, I'd think. People demonize depreciation sometimes, but all it is is expensing property/equipment that you purchased. It's expensed over the estimated life of the asset rather than in the year purchased. So it would have to be A LOT of assets to incur $1B of depreciation in one year.

 

But can't he accelerate the depreciation all into one year, instead of doing it gradually over time? Do you have to be in bankruptcy to do that or is it something you can do at any point?

 

Unless I'm missing something, no. What you might be referring to is "bonus depreciation," which is an opt-in thing you can elect instead of regular tax depreciation. The amount allowed has varied, but at times it has allowed for a full 100% depreciation expense in the year of an asset's acquisition. Bonus depreciation wasn't introduced until after 9/11 to spur business to spend, so it wouldn't fit the timeline.

An aside - technically, most, maybe all, tax depreciation methods are referred to as "accelerated" because compared to the straight-line depreciation used for financial reporting purposes, tax depreciation does allow for more depreciation at the beginning of an asset's life (also to spur businesses to spend).

The thing to keep in mind with depreciation is it's just a timing difference. All expenses incurred by a business (with the exception of certain disallowed expenses) are claimed for tax purposes in the year that you incur them. If anything, depreciation is considerably more conservative, since it spreads the cost that you paid out over multiple years.

Bankruptcy has no impact on depreciation. If you sell the property/equipment to pay off debts, you'd then take a gain/loss on the property. This would be a capital gain/loss.

 

I was hoping he'd do this.

 

and from a swing state, no less

 

I bet LeBron could win Ohio if he was on the ballot. Heh.

 

I'm not sure why I'm seeing so much about this tax situation. It's not an indictment of Trump. Only a horrible businessman would purposely not avail themselves of every benefit or deduction or tax break they could. I wouldn't look down on someone claiming the child tax credit. It's there, it's in the system, use it if available. The amount doesn't matter. It was legal.

 

Happy new year fam

 

I haven't kept up on the story, but this is about the extent of my feelings as well. Don't blame the billionaire who doesn't pay taxes. Blame the legislators who took money from billionaires to pass a code that makes it legal.

Also, to give Clinton credit where it's due, I recently saw that she wants to raise the estate tax to top out at 65%. Although I would favor a progressive one that maxes out even higher, it's good that she's talking about it. And hopefully they do something about people who circumvent estate taxes through irrevocable trusts and stocks.

 

I blame both. Legislation is influenced by the wealthy elite. The system is designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the lower classes. Trump and those like him know what they're doing when they pour money into politics. Likewise, politicians know what they're selling when they ask for corporate money.

 

I don't think you can elect a King.

 

Not according to the voters of Iowa

 

NYMag interview with Obama and Sanders.

 

Barack Obama on 5 Days That Shaped His Presidency

 

I'm not sure I get this argument ... it sounds like they're saying compromise is bad and incremental change is as well.

 

Depends on what youre compromising on. Im not compromising on systemic racism and such.

 

I don't know what compromising on systematic racism would even mean or look like to be honest.

 

It looks like our current reality.

 

Does this mean by extension that zero change that has occurred to this point as a result of working for incremental change, compromising?