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United States42974 Posts
On September 29 2017 00:30 Sermokala wrote:
Wait so if I work for a place I could form a company and contract my labor through that company to the company I work for and get a lower tax rate? If thats true thats the most bonkers shit I've heard yet from a trump plan.
Yes, but it's only worth it if your average rate would already be over 25%, which means the breakeven point is $248,000/year income. That's how much you need to earn to pay 25%.
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United States42974 Posts
On September 29 2017 00:35 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2017 00:32 Mohdoo wrote:On September 29 2017 00:30 Sermokala wrote:
Wait so if I work for a place I could form a company and contract my labor through that company to the company I work for and get a lower tax rate? If thats true thats the most bonkers shit I've heard yet from a trump plan. You *could*, but the money you would gain from a tax perspective would be eaten by the loss of benefits. At my company, I have an insane amount of benefits that pretty much directly translate into cash. Contractors don't get paid time off. Or paid holidays. Their insurance is really expensive and generally shitty. Millions of other things. But if your company is shitty anyway, I guess it does make sense..? Now Kwark please comment on this but couldn't I then now write off my benefits as a business expense on this company that I run to contract my labor to the company that I work for? The benefits that the company pays me could be translated to cash and I could subcontract the benefits that the company provides through said intermediary company that I'm independently contracting myself to provide a labor to the company I work for? I think I understand kwark now and thats starting to scare me.
Yeah, you can give yourself paid benefits. Obviously you'd need to start with the same total amount of money. If right now your total compensation is $100k, of which $70k is cash and $30k is benefits, then you'd not realize any advantage by structuring the $70k as contract work and forfeiting the $30k.
Most people don't pay anything like 25% in income taxes though. This is a rich people only benefit. Not for the plebs.
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This sounds like some employment voodoo to make even more people contract labor, rather than employees at will. Because you know what capitalism loves more at will employment? Contract employment where the business has even less investment in employees. It allows them to be “flexible” and “adaptive” in the market.
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Many independent contractors already contract though a LLC for liability/ other reasons. Tax dodge would just be an added bonus. Also much easier to keep the books in order (and much less likely to piss off the IRS) when you can put the business expenses and everything else in one place and personal elsewhere.
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United States42974 Posts
On September 29 2017 00:47 Plansix wrote:
This sounds like some employment voodoo to make even more people contract labor, rather than employees at will. Because you know what capitalism loves more at will employment? Contract employment where the business has even less investment in employees. It allows them to be “flexible” and “adaptive” in the market.
Nah, you're missing the point.
You work at a law office, right? The partnership doesn't make money or pay taxes because it's a flow-through entity. The partners make the money, and they recognize it as personal income, paying tax at their own individual tax rate. That's how flow-through entities work.
Now imagine the partners all found c corps and assign their partnership rights to their c corps. The partnership still doesn't pay taxes but now those profits are routed to c corps. The c corps can then decide how much to pay to their owners as income (IRS says it must be a "reasonable amount" but the IRS lacks the resources to police it). That's personal income. The rest, that can be distributed through dividends.
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United States42974 Posts
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Expect these High Schools and the Admins whose idea this was to be torn to shreds.
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From a Portland resident's perspective, gentrification is amazing. So many shitty little bars that go away and are replaced with amazing brunch places. There are so many areas in Portland that I previously had no interest in visiting that are suddenly useful.
I understand that there are a lot of people who aren't willing to live in a non-trendy city and that they are poor so they can't. I weep for them. Taking a 45 minute bus ride to work in the morning would be shitty.
However, from a bird's eye perspective, I see some serious benefits. There is a shit load of money being injected into the city. Average income is way up. Average education is way up. Areas are safer, cleaner and generally frequented by a straight up higher tier of person. There's something hilarious about groups of people wanting an area to remain low-income and to not have wealth injected into it.
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i mean being priced out of your home isn’t too funny. maybe just poor phrasing in your part? i know you acknowledged there’s an impact to the poor in gentrification but to end the post with it being ‘hilarious’ doesn’t feel quite right.
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Louisiana is one of the worst educated states in the country, and maybe it's because its politicians focus on shit like this instead of better educational reform. Thanks Trump (not Obama!).
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Who the fuck wants plenty of brunch places around, ugh... Dark Bars on the otherhand are the nicest places on earth.
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On September 29 2017 01:26 Mohdoo wrote:
From a Portland resident's perspective, gentrification is amazing. So many shitty little bars that go away and are replaced with amazing brunch places. There are so many areas in Portland that I previously had no interest in visiting that are suddenly useful.
I understand that there are a lot of people who aren't willing to live in a non-trendy city and that they are poor so they can't. I weep for them. Taking a 45 minute bus ride to work in the morning would be shitty.
However, from a bird's eye perspective, I see some serious benefits. There is a shit load of money being injected into the city. Average income is way up. Average education is way up. Areas are safer, cleaner and generally frequented by a straight up higher tier of person. There's something hilarious about groups of people wanting an area to remain low-income and to not have wealth injected into it.
You're pushing them some place else that doesn't have any of the amenities that are now there. The poor remain poor and you get a nice little cafe to write your Twilight fan fic.
There's a lot more to gentrification than injecting "wealth" into an area. It's displacing people, erasing history, and "segregating" further the classes. If you're going to gentrify a neighborhood, then low-income housing needs to be mixed in. You need that variety of people to create a truly all encompassing experience so that you grow as a person. If you only stay around "high-tier" individuals, then you remove yourself from plights that happen right underneath your nose, because you're not part of that fabric any longer.
It's fine to gentrify, but you have a lot more to learn in that area.
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On September 29 2017 00:52 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2017 00:47 Plansix wrote:
This sounds like some employment voodoo to make even more people contract labor, rather than employees at will. Because you know what capitalism loves more at will employment? Contract employment where the business has even less investment in employees. It allows them to be “flexible” and “adaptive” in the market. Nah, you're missing the point. You work at a law office, right? The partnership doesn't make money or pay taxes because it's a flow-through entity. The partners make the money, and they recognize it as personal income, paying tax at their own individual tax rate. That's how flow-through entities work. Now imagine the partners all found c corps and assign their partnership rights to their c corps. The partnership still doesn't pay taxes but now those profits are routed to c corps. The c corps can then decide how much to pay to their owners as income (IRS says it must be a "reasonable amount" but the IRS lacks the resources to police it). That's personal income. The rest, that can be distributed through dividends.
I do work in the legal field and we deal with that sort of stuff all the time. But being the guy who has to help craft the arguments to justify to judges, I have a different view.
You see, when clients try to do stuff like that to avoid paying taxes by routing money through things, we call its “Sorcery”. Because the argument before the judge is always boils down “my client shouldn’t pay taxes or prove sales of interest took place because they are magic”. When in reality the argument is:
“but you see, this company took this property and its assets into a trust. Then they assigned the rights to the trust 35 times through different sales we can’t prove happen, but finally it is owned by our client. Why didn’t they keep records? Because those sales were inside the trust and didn’t matter to title, so it’s not a problem. Of course the records exist, we just don't know who has them or how to get them. What happens inside the trust stays inside the trust. Therefore, this means we they should pay taxes or have to worry about proving the sales took place. Please approve this corrective deed so we can get clean title. Why? Because the title insurance company didn’t buy the line of bullshit I just fed you.”
But no judge is fooled. They see the bullshit a mile off. So I can see how business people who think their sorcery should be law. It would avoid the problem of judges all together.
An alternative theory is that these policies were created by accountants who watched Inception to many times and said “But what if it was money? You can’t tax money inside of money. We will go 4 levels deep, where time goes 20X faster for increased interest rates.”
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On September 29 2017 01:26 Mohdoo wrote:
From a Portland resident's perspective, gentrification is amazing. So many shitty little bars that go away and are replaced with amazing brunch places. There are so many areas in Portland that I previously had no interest in visiting that are suddenly useful.
I understand that there are a lot of people who aren't willing to live in a non-trendy city and that they are poor so they can't. I weep for them. Taking a 45 minute bus ride to work in the morning would be shitty.
However, from a bird's eye perspective, I see some serious benefits. There is a shit load of money being injected into the city. Average income is way up. Average education is way up. Areas are safer, cleaner and generally frequented by a straight up higher tier of person. There's something hilarious about groups of people wanting an area to remain low-income and to not have wealth injected into it.
"sucks to be poor but at least I got so many brunch places".
Take a moment to think about what you just wrote and how that looks if your part of the poor people who got displaced.
Also, throwing out all the poor people to live in their own shit place where they don't steal wealth from us fine smart folk has always worked so well throughout history.
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On September 29 2017 01:34 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2017 01:26 Mohdoo wrote:
From a Portland resident's perspective, gentrification is amazing. So many shitty little bars that go away and are replaced with amazing brunch places. There are so many areas in Portland that I previously had no interest in visiting that are suddenly useful.
I understand that there are a lot of people who aren't willing to live in a non-trendy city and that they are poor so they can't. I weep for them. Taking a 45 minute bus ride to work in the morning would be shitty.
However, from a bird's eye perspective, I see some serious benefits. There is a shit load of money being injected into the city. Average income is way up. Average education is way up. Areas are safer, cleaner and generally frequented by a straight up higher tier of person. There's something hilarious about groups of people wanting an area to remain low-income and to not have wealth injected into it. You're pushing them some place else that doesn't have any of the amenities that are now there. The poor remain poor and you get a nice little cafe to write your Twilight fan fic. There's a lot more to gentrification than injecting "wealth" into an area. It's displacing people, erasing history, and "segregating" further the classes. If you're going to gentrify a neighborhood, then low-income housing needs to be mixed in. You need that variety of people to create a truly all encompassing experience so that you grow as a person. If you only stay around "high-tier" individuals, then you remove yourself from plights that happen right underneath your nose, because you're not part of that fabric any longer. It's fine to gentrify, but you have a lot more to learn in that area.
Are you two talking about the same thing?
Lets make it a little 3step process:
1) only low income people live there
2) higher incomes move in, mixed district
3) all low income people are pushed out, only higher incomes remain
Gentrification is usually used as a term for the process 1->3.
Mohdoo somehow got all fuzzy about 1->2 and wondered how people can consider gentrification bad.
Your described "segregating classes" only happens at 2)->3). In fact, the part described by Mohdoo actually reduces that.
So the part described by Mohdoo is actually a positive for 80% of your post.
Higher income people and wealth injections to poor districts are desirable for what you explained.
So Bad->Good->Bad.
Mohdoo only talked about Bad->Good and ignored that it usually turns back to Bad again.
And you talked only about Good->Bad and ignored that it was the same Bad before.
Great conversation.
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On September 29 2017 01:41 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2017 01:26 Mohdoo wrote:
From a Portland resident's perspective, gentrification is amazing. So many shitty little bars that go away and are replaced with amazing brunch places. There are so many areas in Portland that I previously had no interest in visiting that are suddenly useful.
I understand that there are a lot of people who aren't willing to live in a non-trendy city and that they are poor so they can't. I weep for them. Taking a 45 minute bus ride to work in the morning would be shitty.
However, from a bird's eye perspective, I see some serious benefits. There is a shit load of money being injected into the city. Average income is way up. Average education is way up. Areas are safer, cleaner and generally frequented by a straight up higher tier of person. There's something hilarious about groups of people wanting an area to remain low-income and to not have wealth injected into it. "sucks to be poor but at least I got so many brunch places". Take a moment to think about what you just wrote and how that looks if your part of the poor people who got displaced. Also, throwing out all the poor people to live in their own shit place where they don't steal wealth from us fine smart folk has always worked so well throughout history.
I am saying that from the perspective of the city and related metrics, gentrification is unquestionably an improvement. If this was Sim City, you'd be rubbing your hands together watching your city get gentrified. In that regard, it is a ridiculous thing to argue against. A city managing to attract tech business, increase net revenue, decrease crime and modernize infrastructure/architecture is a plain and simple win.
Speaking about Portland in particular, it has a few areas nearby that are very cheap. This essentially means that people who worked in Portland, while renting in Portland, now have to move away and take a 45 minute bus to work. This undoubtedly sucks ass. But my point is that there is such tremendous advantage to the "city as a whole". The entire idea of people protesting tech companies moving in, new condos (thus reducing housing scarcity) going up, old buildings being replaced is madness because it is such a clear net positive. I am using brunch places as a crude example of the fact that some shitty bar that never really did that well to begin with being replaced with amazing brunch is a good thing.
The argument against gentrification is a clear argument against a greater good scenario. It disproportionately impacts vulnerable, poor, renting families, but that's where things get weird.
Here is a situation that is very common: Person owns a house and rents it to people. They rent it at a rate consistent with a home value of $150K. People around this area are selling homes for upwards of $350K. You check the value of your home, speak to a realtor and it turns out you can walk away with $250K in your pocket by selling this rental property. But here's the catch: A poor family of 4 lives in this house. They pay $800/month in rent. Because the owner of the house sees an opportunity to make an insane amount of money, they decide to sell the house. Reddit loses their god damn minds. Many locals don't think that these home owners should be allowed to sell the house. They think these renters should be grandfathered into their current lease for the next 3-5 years until they can find somewhere else to live. So this dude who owns and rents the house out should be disallowed from selling it? How does that make sense?
And that's the issue. The things that people advocate for as a way to fix this are all ridiculous. The only way to "fix" the problem is to prevent the property owners from selling their property. Even if you impose renting restrictions, they can always just sell the place for a great profit.
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On September 29 2017 01:47 mahrgell wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2017 01:34 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 29 2017 01:26 Mohdoo wrote:
From a Portland resident's perspective, gentrification is amazing. So many shitty little bars that go away and are replaced with amazing brunch places. There are so many areas in Portland that I previously had no interest in visiting that are suddenly useful.
I understand that there are a lot of people who aren't willing to live in a non-trendy city and that they are poor so they can't. I weep for them. Taking a 45 minute bus ride to work in the morning would be shitty.
However, from a bird's eye perspective, I see some serious benefits. There is a shit load of money being injected into the city. Average income is way up. Average education is way up. Areas are safer, cleaner and generally frequented by a straight up higher tier of person. There's something hilarious about groups of people wanting an area to remain low-income and to not have wealth injected into it. You're pushing them some place else that doesn't have any of the amenities that are now there. The poor remain poor and you get a nice little cafe to write your Twilight fan fic. There's a lot more to gentrification than injecting "wealth" into an area. It's displacing people, erasing history, and "segregating" further the classes. If you're going to gentrify a neighborhood, then low-income housing needs to be mixed in. You need that variety of people to create a truly all encompassing experience so that you grow as a person. If you only stay around "high-tier" individuals, then you remove yourself from plights that happen right underneath your nose, because you're not part of that fabric any longer. It's fine to gentrify, but you have a lot more to learn in that area. Are you two talking about the same thing? Lets make it a little 3step process: 1) only low income people live there 2) higher incomes move in, mixed district 3) all low income people are pushed out, only higher incomes remain Gentrification is usually used as a term for the process 1->3. Mohdoo somehow got all fuzzy about 1->2 and wondered how people can consider gentrification bad. Your described "segregating classes" only happens at 2)->3). In fact, the part described by Mohdoo actually reduces that. So the part described by Mohdoo is actually a positive for 80% of your post. Higher income people and wealth injections to poor districts are desirable for what you explained. So Bad->Good->Bad. Mohdoo only talked about Bad->Good and ignored that it usually turns back to Bad again. And you talked only about Good->Bad and ignored that it was the same Bad before. Great conversation.
I'm having trouble finding the issue here. I simply completed his story with the reality of what is happening/going to happen. I know how it goes from bad to good to bad. I've witnessed it firsthand in San Diego and now again in Kansas City. I'll see if I can find a chart that explains it. We learned it in school.
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and you’re certainly not wrong. depending on your perspective gentrification really can be great, as you’ve mentioned.
but as there always is, there’s another perspective. let’s pretend you’re a relatively poor family made up of minimum wage employees. now you can’t afford rent in the home you’ve lived in all your life. even if you could stay there, where do you shop now? all your cheap stores and corner markets turned into brunch places you can’t afford to eat at.
idk, not hilarious.
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pretty sure this is illegal if you're a public school. First amendment and all that.
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On September 29 2017 01:55 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2017 01:41 Gorsameth wrote:On September 29 2017 01:26 Mohdoo wrote:
From a Portland resident's perspective, gentrification is amazing. So many shitty little bars that go away and are replaced with amazing brunch places. There are so many areas in Portland that I previously had no interest in visiting that are suddenly useful.
I understand that there are a lot of people who aren't willing to live in a non-trendy city and that they are poor so they can't. I weep for them. Taking a 45 minute bus ride to work in the morning would be shitty.
However, from a bird's eye perspective, I see some serious benefits. There is a shit load of money being injected into the city. Average income is way up. Average education is way up. Areas are safer, cleaner and generally frequented by a straight up higher tier of person. There's something hilarious about groups of people wanting an area to remain low-income and to not have wealth injected into it. "sucks to be poor but at least I got so many brunch places". Take a moment to think about what you just wrote and how that looks if your part of the poor people who got displaced. Also, throwing out all the poor people to live in their own shit place where they don't steal wealth from us fine smart folk has always worked so well throughout history. I am saying that from the perspective of the city and related metrics, gentrification is unquestionably an improvement. If this was Sim City, you'd be rubbing your hands together watching your city get gentrified. In that regard, it is a ridiculous thing to argue against. A city managing to attract tech business, increase net revenue, decrease crime and modernize infrastructure/architecture is a plain and simple win.
The thing about Sim city is it is the Most America simulation game that has zero interest in modeling humanity in any way. You start with virgin land that no one owns. You build a city where the people instantly find new jobs and houses when they destroy there. Destroy anything, building anything. Natural features like rivers can be paved over like they don't exist. It is a computer game that is about cities that had no interest in what a city really is. It is a model set.
These arguments against gentrification are simple, the city is exporting lower income workers to other towns with lower cost of living. The city wants to reap the rewards of the labor, but have zero interest in the humans that provide it. At the highest level, it becomes like San Fran, an open air playground for the wealthy that has no interest in even providing shelter for the homeless. The problems arise when all the surrounding cities get into gentrification and the poor labor can't travel into the area. Or one town becomes the home of all low income workers and they start to get mad they can't share in the surrounding wealth. Because at some point, you run out of space to export those poor people to.
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EPT
