Paywalled articles shouldn't be on the front page of a public aggregator like this then. What's the point in an article most people can't read, just a catchy headline?
What is with this phrase "one weird trick"? I see it used constantly in all kinds of spammy marketing.
Do the marketers really somehow realize that the word "weird" makes the speaker seem like an impartial reporter, or makes people more curious about the trick?
Because it's freaking "weird"! I wouldn't think such a word would work like gangbusters but it keeps being used. And it's almost always spammy marketers.
"One weird trick to do that thing you always wanted to do."
Noted, Deng, and sorry. But you must get sick of seeing the "predictable" cavalcade of ruses for getting past paywalls in the comments. And the cognitive dissonance of incessant anti-advertising threads sprinkled within HN's feed of interesting news articles, some of which will always be behind paywalls.
I'm having this same discussion with my tax attorney and CPA firms. Right now my corporate structure is all LLC's with plans to elect to be treated as a C Corp for taxation. For smaller companies there are a lot of headaches involved in keeping the documentation for a C Corp. Whether you held all your board meetings becomes important if you get sued and they try to pierce the corprate veil.
I contacted them about using their services for my existing Delaware C Corp that I originally registered using incorporate.com . They told me that the company must be opened through them for them to manage it later.
But be careful to read through their list of prohibited businesses. I know a fair number of people who got the boot for doing IT support because tech support scams have made Stripe classify that as high risk.
There's less documentation for a C corp than there is for an LLC. Literally all you need is a Statement of Information (usually 1 page of basic info, like name and address) and Articles of Incorporation (also 1 page, though they can be longer as required by the needs of the business).
LLCs also require the equivalent of board meetings (aka, member meetings) to avoid veil-piercing, and indeed for veil-piercing purposes have all the same requirements as corporations. (I wrote a law review article on veil-piercing for LLCs, so I'm very familiar with how it works).
My understanding is that as a professional couple, that is "service businesses", my wife and I are hit super-damn-hard by the new tax law.
Apparently working for your income, rather than rent-seeking or capital investment, is something to be discouraged in the modern economy.
Damned uppity folks that thought they could get an education, become professionals, and work their way to a better life than their forebears. Where do they think they are, America?
Service businesses still get 20% deduction on business income up to a certain income threshold, which is pretty substantial (I think it's just under 400k). Have you talked to your accountant?
You may not get as large of cuts as others, but if you are paying more taxes than the previous year you have some very special circumstances or have a really bad accountant. I'll actually be seeing a significant reduction in taxes due to the 20% pass through benefit and doubled standard deduction.
Well, I mean, it's not like Democrats don't do this sort of thing. It's politics. As someone once said, "elections have consequences", and surely should!
And it's a question of fairness too. Should the federal tax code give high-tax State residents a break? Why should it? Or why should it not? These questions have reasonable answers, and reasonable people can disagree.
> Should the federal tax code give high-tax State residents a break?
It's not a break, it's mathematically necessary to prevent federal taxation from artificially negating what would otherwise be beneficial social action. Without local tax deductibility, local tax funded programs have artificially reduced net local benefit, which impact is greater the higher the federal income tax rate which is paid by the payers of the state taxes. The result is that, absent full deductibility, there is an artificial incentive (given progressive federal income taxes) not only for lower state taxes and spending even where a tax-funded program would be economically efficient before federal taxation was taken into account, but also for less progressive state taxes than would otherwise be adopted.
Oh yeah? Why, when I live in Kansas, should I have to pay higher taxes to subsidize welfare state residents? Seems to me like its just leveling the playing field.
> Why, when I live in Kansas, should I have to pay higher taxes to subsidize welfare state residents?
In federal terms, Kansas is, in fact, heavily subsidized by the states hurt by the SALT change even before the change. The question is why those in California and similar states should have to subsidize their deliberately failed state even more for it's decision not to pay for its own citizens’ needs.
Who is this "we"? Not all folks here live in high-tax States. Unless... you mean that they all have too-high taxes... I see. Well, but even so, not everyone lives in the higher-taxing States.
I think we'll be plus or minus $1k next year but that's just back of the envelope; in reality, nobody has a great handle on this yet.
And, of course, more and more people will fall into the "paying more" camp as time goes on thanks to the temporary nature of the recently-passed tax plan, so it makes sense to plan ahead.
Serious question are you just making this up or trolling? Because nearly everybody should see a tax reduction? Are you structured as a pass-through LLC?
Do you own a house and live in New York or Caifornia?
People make decisions based on the available information, which does NOT included a looking glass.
Imagine if your property taxes quintupled because it turns out your governor misallocated tax revenue and now they need to make up the shortfall. Well, serves you right for moving to TN, right?
> People make decisions based on the available information, which does NOT included a looking glass.
All the information on underfunded state pensions is public, and has been for some time.
I don't know why anyone would move to fiscally-troubled states like Illinois or Kentucky, for example, and expect their taxes not to substantially increase over the next couple decades. Some states are simply better fiscally run than others.
Could Tennessee handle an influx of 30 million people? I doubt it. Clearly it is not feasible to say to everyone, “Just move.” There is also the fact that southern states tend to be subsidized by the richer states. The low taxes of Tennessee come, partly, from the generosity of the wealthier states.
Are you talking about the southern states or California? California gets less from the federal government than they give to the federal government. The reverse is true for most southern states.
The idea behind the SALT deduction is that the Federal government gets their taxes after the states collect theirs. It's traditionally been framed as a conservative states' rights issue.
Yes but you can deduct up to 10k, you probably won't be above that if you are in a truely rural area. Unless you are a business owner but then we are back to being rich.
Should there be a difference between someone who inherits a debt free, million dollar house in a liquid real estate market versus someone who inherits a million dollars worth of index funds in a Fidelity account?
In California, the heir to the house is arguably better off because they would likely inherit the proposition 13 tax basis and pay very little in property taxes.
Considering that California and NY combined represent at least 20% of the total US population, clearly it is not true that "nearly everyone" should be receiving a tax reduction. Indeed, the way the tax law works, most middle class households should see a minimal tax break, if any, with the tax benefits disappearing in or by 2020.
> Apparently working for your income, rather than rent-seeking or capital investment, is something to be discouraged in the modern economy
The tax code was already pretty regressive, with regular wage-earners paying Social Security and Medicare taxes on the first dollar they earn, while hedge fund guys pay a very small percentage of their income in taxes.
The new tax "reform" now adds more carve-outs that specifically target people who work for their income.
If your pass-through entity is for passive income like investments and real estate, the pass-through deduction is unlimited, and the hedge-fund "carried interest" loophole is preserved.
But if your pass-through is for your own labor like consulting, you're penalized with the deduction phase-out stating at $157k for individuals and $315k for joint filers.
With you 100%. There's no economic justification for these arbitrary designations that pick winners-and-losers.
The rationale for these deductions was grounded in the acknowledgment of real expenses that can affect one's ability to pay. And, also fairness: that is, not taxing people on taxes.
These expenses don't just magically disappear because a political party decided to favor other groups and needed to pay for it.
Don't understand how it's Constitutional either. For instance, it's no secret that regions with the highest SALTs tend to be Democratic strongholds. Picking winners and losers along those lines is outrageous.
>Apparently working for your income, rather than rent-seeking or capital investment, is something to be discouraged in the modern economy.
And, this. Just within the last week or so there was discussion here about income inequality. I didn't bother chiming in. The same folks that sit around scratching their heads about this "intractable" inequality problem will defend to the death the rationale behind tax policy that favors capital over labor, busting unions, and other forms of trickle-down economics.
Just did a bit of research and it looks like 'Architects & Engineers' are exempt from the 'service business' designation, and thus eligible for the full deduction.
77 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
Do the marketers really somehow realize that the word "weird" makes the speaker seem like an impartial reporter, or makes people more curious about the trick?
Because it's freaking "weird"! I wouldn't think such a word would work like gangbusters but it keeps being used. And it's almost always spammy marketers.
"One weird trick to do that thing you always wanted to do."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The paywalls suck, of course. But HN without all those articles would suck much worse, so we live with the workarounds.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Either view in "Reader Mode" in a popular browser or remove the Javascript before viewing with something like
Are there SaaS providers to streamline the compliance process?
https://stripe.com/atlas
LLCs also require the equivalent of board meetings (aka, member meetings) to avoid veil-piercing, and indeed for veil-piercing purposes have all the same requirements as corporations. (I wrote a law review article on veil-piercing for LLCs, so I'm very familiar with how it works).
Apparently working for your income, rather than rent-seeking or capital investment, is something to be discouraged in the modern economy.
Damned uppity folks that thought they could get an education, become professionals, and work their way to a better life than their forebears. Where do they think they are, America?
For joint filers, it's $315,000, with phase-outs to $415,000.
And it's a question of fairness too. Should the federal tax code give high-tax State residents a break? Why should it? Or why should it not? These questions have reasonable answers, and reasonable people can disagree.
It's not a break, it's mathematically necessary to prevent federal taxation from artificially negating what would otherwise be beneficial social action. Without local tax deductibility, local tax funded programs have artificially reduced net local benefit, which impact is greater the higher the federal income tax rate which is paid by the payers of the state taxes. The result is that, absent full deductibility, there is an artificial incentive (given progressive federal income taxes) not only for lower state taxes and spending even where a tax-funded program would be economically efficient before federal taxation was taken into account, but also for less progressive state taxes than would otherwise be adopted.
In federal terms, Kansas is, in fact, heavily subsidized by the states hurt by the SALT change even before the change. The question is why those in California and similar states should have to subsidize their deliberately failed state even more for it's decision not to pay for its own citizens’ needs.
:)
And, of course, more and more people will fall into the "paying more" camp as time goes on thanks to the temporary nature of the recently-passed tax plan, so it makes sense to plan ahead.
Do you own a house and live in New York or Caifornia?
So for some earning beyond a certain income threshold, yeah, they will get taxed a lot more.
Interestingly, I think I saw that engineering and architecture services are exempt.
Imagine if your property taxes quintupled because it turns out your governor misallocated tax revenue and now they need to make up the shortfall. Well, serves you right for moving to TN, right?
Wrong.
All the information on underfunded state pensions is public, and has been for some time.
I don't know why anyone would move to fiscally-troubled states like Illinois or Kentucky, for example, and expect their taxes not to substantially increase over the next couple decades. Some states are simply better fiscally run than others.
In fact, it's the other way around: high SALT states tend to rely less on federal aid and so are actually subsidizing the other states.
So, yeah...maybe we should all move there. Oh, wait.
>deserves to be screwed to benefit rich folks
Hate to break it to you but if you own a home in NY or CA your probably one of the rich folks.
Why? State income taxes apply to you no matter where in the state you live.
In California, the heir to the house is arguably better off because they would likely inherit the proposition 13 tax basis and pay very little in property taxes.
Examples of the 'rent seeking' that you despise so much?
The tax code was already pretty regressive, with regular wage-earners paying Social Security and Medicare taxes on the first dollar they earn, while hedge fund guys pay a very small percentage of their income in taxes.
The new tax "reform" now adds more carve-outs that specifically target people who work for their income.
If your pass-through entity is for passive income like investments and real estate, the pass-through deduction is unlimited, and the hedge-fund "carried interest" loophole is preserved.
But if your pass-through is for your own labor like consulting, you're penalized with the deduction phase-out stating at $157k for individuals and $315k for joint filers.
The rationale for these deductions was grounded in the acknowledgment of real expenses that can affect one's ability to pay. And, also fairness: that is, not taxing people on taxes.
These expenses don't just magically disappear because a political party decided to favor other groups and needed to pay for it.
Don't understand how it's Constitutional either. For instance, it's no secret that regions with the highest SALTs tend to be Democratic strongholds. Picking winners and losers along those lines is outrageous.
And, this. Just within the last week or so there was discussion here about income inequality. I didn't bother chiming in. The same folks that sit around scratching their heads about this "intractable" inequality problem will defend to the death the rationale behind tax policy that favors capital over labor, busting unions, and other forms of trickle-down economics.
https://www.pscpa.com/professional-services-new-20-pass-thru...