Flack is a pejorative, and really speaks to spokespeople, which I'm not. I write all the time about what my day job is, and I regularly disclose it whenever there is even an vague intersection with a story I'm writing.…
As I've said elsewhere, if the US wants to set some max window for realizing gains, that could be fine. ProPublica and others are welcome to write opeds arguing for it. People can debate that on its own merits. The…
It's the same as property taxes. Do they factor capital gains in some obvious sense? Sure! They're based on assessed value, which should be closer to market value than original sale price. But no one looks at them as…
lol at "paid flack". Brb gonna update my LinkedIn. Anyway, I awarded a correction bounty here. I'd said in the same piece "if your only criteria for publishing are some measure of verification and some measure of…
OP here. Slept on it. I said in that same segment "if your only criteria for publishing are some measure of verification and some measure of newsworthiness". In re-reading their piece, that's all they checked for. So…
> How do you envision changing incentives and accountability? I'm writing a piece about that on Thursday actually. TLDR is a mix of paying for corrections (really just "more correct information flow") and maintaining a…
Ok, useful context. Thanks. (I've never submitted my own link, but it seems my readers do from time to time. I'll try to be mindful of this if it's something I'd like to see posted here.)
The offense was you intimating that I had bad motives when I simply wanted to centralize discussion and then link from one to the other (as I did). You clearly have no idea what it's like to manage replies at scale.…
If you'd been respectful, there'd be no ban!
lol I've directly engaged with 100+ comments today. I stand behind my work in ways that virtually no writers do. All I ask in return is a basic bit of respect in the form of default rules of engagement. Forcing me to…
It's certainly true that political winds are driving the reversions. But what's driving the politics? Wealth taxes face three classic problems: (1) they're very hard to set in any fair sense given complexities of…
ProPublica said that these billionaires were avoiding taxes because their unrealized gains weren't being taxed, and implied that they should be in a direct sense for fairness. (Note that ProPublica mentions wealth taxes…
OP here. Three things: 1. Most countries that have tried wealth taxes have either abandoned them or have had to constantly readjust them due to logistical difficulties and capital flight. They're elegant in theory, but…
We'll start with the meta here. Some of these vehicles have arcane applications that I wouldn't know about. I'm not a CPA, and I pay people for corrections for a reason (which I'm pretty sure I'm about the only person…
I just mean that so far as the invention/calibration of the taxes, the idea was that a high estate tax would offset the reset of capital gains. I don't have a strong position on whether the laws do this well or make…
The only way this is possible is if the assets are still accruing value in sufficient excess of loans made against the assets. So long as this happens, it's fine for the realization to be 1,000 years off. The IOU…
Just to start with one thing here, you're arguing that Robinhood's retail customers are not in fact actual customers despite the fact they very obviously meet the definition you use? lol ok
Most of those instruments retain the initial cost basis. They're a way of getting around gift taxes, not capital gains.
OP here. I sort of agree with you, but it's a bit complicated and it wasn't obvious what the right way to word that was. To get granular: Wealth taxes are a bit distinct from taxing unrealized gains directly (even…
If you actually have substantive criticisms (that don't devolve to "I can clairvoyantly intuit your intent and thus know you to be an unreliable narrator even though I'm not going to be concrete/specific anywhere"), I'm…
I mean saying that my headline was incendiary is fair. That's just not synonymous with trolling imo?
The offset, such as it is, is that estates below a certain threshold pay a lower rate of 18%. So the tax was designed to make the wealthy pay more, irrespective of whether it does a good enough job there. But to be…
I know they happen for offshore wealth getting repatriated. Possible that they've existed for onshore too? Interesting thing to look into. But even if so, that just seems a vanilla case of "Congress should be held…
I mean there are elaborate schemes to avoid this, but it's not obvious to me that many of them really work short of active (i.e., illegal) tax evasion. You can, for example, shield stuff in trusts, which is…
OP here. Can give some partial answers. 1. Lots of possible deductions. Charitable giving is a big one here. I guess we'll see from future instalments in the ProPublica series which ones were specifically used. 2. You…
Flack is a pejorative, and really speaks to spokespeople, which I'm not. I write all the time about what my day job is, and I regularly disclose it whenever there is even an vague intersection with a story I'm writing.…
As I've said elsewhere, if the US wants to set some max window for realizing gains, that could be fine. ProPublica and others are welcome to write opeds arguing for it. People can debate that on its own merits. The…
It's the same as property taxes. Do they factor capital gains in some obvious sense? Sure! They're based on assessed value, which should be closer to market value than original sale price. But no one looks at them as…
lol at "paid flack". Brb gonna update my LinkedIn. Anyway, I awarded a correction bounty here. I'd said in the same piece "if your only criteria for publishing are some measure of verification and some measure of…
OP here. Slept on it. I said in that same segment "if your only criteria for publishing are some measure of verification and some measure of newsworthiness". In re-reading their piece, that's all they checked for. So…
> How do you envision changing incentives and accountability? I'm writing a piece about that on Thursday actually. TLDR is a mix of paying for corrections (really just "more correct information flow") and maintaining a…
Ok, useful context. Thanks. (I've never submitted my own link, but it seems my readers do from time to time. I'll try to be mindful of this if it's something I'd like to see posted here.)
The offense was you intimating that I had bad motives when I simply wanted to centralize discussion and then link from one to the other (as I did). You clearly have no idea what it's like to manage replies at scale.…
If you'd been respectful, there'd be no ban!
lol I've directly engaged with 100+ comments today. I stand behind my work in ways that virtually no writers do. All I ask in return is a basic bit of respect in the form of default rules of engagement. Forcing me to…
It's certainly true that political winds are driving the reversions. But what's driving the politics? Wealth taxes face three classic problems: (1) they're very hard to set in any fair sense given complexities of…
ProPublica said that these billionaires were avoiding taxes because their unrealized gains weren't being taxed, and implied that they should be in a direct sense for fairness. (Note that ProPublica mentions wealth taxes…
OP here. Three things: 1. Most countries that have tried wealth taxes have either abandoned them or have had to constantly readjust them due to logistical difficulties and capital flight. They're elegant in theory, but…
We'll start with the meta here. Some of these vehicles have arcane applications that I wouldn't know about. I'm not a CPA, and I pay people for corrections for a reason (which I'm pretty sure I'm about the only person…
I just mean that so far as the invention/calibration of the taxes, the idea was that a high estate tax would offset the reset of capital gains. I don't have a strong position on whether the laws do this well or make…
The only way this is possible is if the assets are still accruing value in sufficient excess of loans made against the assets. So long as this happens, it's fine for the realization to be 1,000 years off. The IOU…
Just to start with one thing here, you're arguing that Robinhood's retail customers are not in fact actual customers despite the fact they very obviously meet the definition you use? lol ok
Most of those instruments retain the initial cost basis. They're a way of getting around gift taxes, not capital gains.
OP here. I sort of agree with you, but it's a bit complicated and it wasn't obvious what the right way to word that was. To get granular: Wealth taxes are a bit distinct from taxing unrealized gains directly (even…
If you actually have substantive criticisms (that don't devolve to "I can clairvoyantly intuit your intent and thus know you to be an unreliable narrator even though I'm not going to be concrete/specific anywhere"), I'm…
I mean saying that my headline was incendiary is fair. That's just not synonymous with trolling imo?
The offset, such as it is, is that estates below a certain threshold pay a lower rate of 18%. So the tax was designed to make the wealthy pay more, irrespective of whether it does a good enough job there. But to be…
I know they happen for offshore wealth getting repatriated. Possible that they've existed for onshore too? Interesting thing to look into. But even if so, that just seems a vanilla case of "Congress should be held…
I mean there are elaborate schemes to avoid this, but it's not obvious to me that many of them really work short of active (i.e., illegal) tax evasion. You can, for example, shield stuff in trusts, which is…
OP here. Can give some partial answers. 1. Lots of possible deductions. Charitable giving is a big one here. I guess we'll see from future instalments in the ProPublica series which ones were specifically used. 2. You…