But they are part of your net worth. If somebody who becomes richer every year, passively, has "no income", then the definition of income does not match people's intuition about what constitutes fair targets for taxation.
There is a good case to be made to tax wealth rather than income, which comes closer to people's intuition about what's fair.
Student loans actually can be discharged in bankruptcy. There’s been this myth floating around for awhile. Yes it is harder and it’s a bit more work for your lawyer but is absolutely doable.
In theory, one can discharge student loans through bankruptcy. In practice, the bar demonstrating an undo hardship severe enough to have them discharged de facto impossible to cross.
Thus, people simply say that they aren't dischargeable.
If you talk to a lawyer on the subject, they will tell you exactly that. Even developing cancer that gives you a 20% chance of living for the next five years isn't a hardship undo enough for courts to discharge student loans.
in these mostly socialist countries, the top income bracket starts much much lower than in the US. these countries tax the middle class and consumption with VAT ranging from 15-21% on consumption. in spain the top bracket starts around 60,000 euros a year and its 45% not including local tax.
these policies and similar ones in other countries in effect keep the rich rich and make it much, much harder for the poor/middle class to move up.
Yup, moved back to one of those countries from a 20%-ish country and since I'm still not rich enough to have tons of deductions I'm really getting squeezed out of about half what I earn.
I agree that corporation taxes are a bad idea, however I don't understand your argument about the tax rates in spain. How do they "keep the rich rich and make it much, much harder for the poor/middle class to move up"? You said yourself that the marginal income above 60k is taxed at 45% - that's clearly heavily taxing the rich
Quibble on stocks: as with other asset classes, they are highly sensitive to the quantity of money and availability of credit, so they're not insensitive to inflation. Though they are generally positively affected by increases in the money supply: see QE and US stock market respose.
Few people hold all their wealth in banknotes, and none of them are rich. The rich invest their wealth in companies and assets that appreciate much faster than inflation.
in a very wealth neighborhood of Honolulu, think where the average home is 4-5+ Million USD, a japanese owner of many houses 20+ wanted to build a gallery for his art. the wealthy neighbors didnt want it so what he did instead was rent all of his houses to low income hawaiians and put the art out on one of his vacant lots. they were mainly weird statues. naked greek gods etc. Just goes to show what people can do when sufficiently motivated.
for anyone that wants to read further his name is Kawamoto and he was recently arrested for Tax evasion in japan and was forced to sell his Kahala Homes Portfolio
amazon has required me to re-enter card numbers when shipping to an address not associated with that card. I have bought on Amazon in the US, Spain and Mexico with this happening each time.
LLCs are passthrough entities so you pay what your personal rate. You still pay self employment tax however this might spur some to change their structure to benefit from new tax proposal
Edit: there is also a proposal to change how partnerships and pass through entities are to be taxed.
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