Ovid_and_Flem said:In reply to frenchyd :
Are you really Donald Trump or Warren Buffet incognito with those marginal tax rates?
With 77,000+ pages in the old tax code ( an estimated additional 10,000 with the new code!) plus the nearly limitless legal precedents established
All it takes is some preplanning and a really sharp tax guy who actually knows how the IRS looks at things and people can avoid paying as much as I do.
Have you considered renting the house out to a fellow tradesman. The shop would be perfect for a self employed carpenter type. Anybody with that kind of background could serve as his own property manager and alleviate many of your headaches. I'm not a property manager, but I should be one. Many of my customers take off for the Winter and I'm left with the keys. Lots of my other customers call me first for everything. If I can't do it, I know a guy. You need someone like me living there. I just finished converting a house that had been converted to offices back into small apartments. The owner of the building put an ad on CL looking for recently divorced contractor types to move in. He ended up with three different tradesman and everything seems to be going extremely well. So far I have been able to fix a couple of things over the phone just by talking to the guys at the house. Place the ad with an emphasis on how great the shop would be for a tradesman living in an apartment and paying rent at a storage place. That way you can avoid the single mom, man hater with the 20 year old broken down Altima, that has an excuse for everything, and is quick to pick up the phone to try and get someone else to do something for her.
In reply to tr8todd :
Need a place to rent? Lol!!
When did Albany become such a hellhole? I enjoyed going there in the early 80s.
In reply to spitfirebill :
Loss of all of the the major manufacturing employers meant loss of the jobs for the middle class. It routed the economy, and left nothing but the impoverished bottom end, and the privileged upper end. There's not much of an upper middle class left at all.
In reply to frenchyd :
"..
avoid paying as much as u do..."?
You consider 2% federal and 3% state a lot"?
In reply to Ovid_and_Flem : well I’m no where near as good as our president at avoiding taxes
After-all I work for a living and receive my income in the form of a paycheck. Thus I’ve often had to pay the alternative minimum tax.
SVreX said:In reply to spitfirebill :
Loss of all of the the major manufacturing employers meant loss of the jobs for the middle class. It routed the economy, and left nothing but the impoverished bottom end, and the privileged upper end. There's not much of an upper middle class left at all.
You are absolutely correct. My brother is a well recognized Doctor with impressive credentials and after paying for insurance, taxes, and other professional expenses lives a middle class life at best.
He had to stop driving his beloved Porsche when putting his kids through college. His home while nice does not reflect what a Harvard grad, Johns Hopkins Alumina, Mayo Clinic trained Doctor should live in.
Upper middle class people are rare and more rare still if they are the first generation to achieve that on their own.
SVreX said:In reply to spitfirebill :
Loss of all of the the major manufacturing employers meant loss of the jobs for the middle class. It routed the economy, and left nothing but the impoverished bottom end, and the privileged upper end. There's not much of an upper middle class left at all.
Good paying jobs where little education is required are gone. Instead they are done by robots. So labor costs seldom really factor in when you consider import duty and transportation costs. Wages in China have been increasing significantly the last 30 years. So cheap foreign wages are no longer the reason good paying jobs have have left.
Air bags are made in Finland or Japan not America. Why? Investment in manufacturing facilities. Even though social costs( taxes) and wages there are higher than here in America.
Same with more than 50% of parts in so called American made cars.
Why can Toyota and Honda etc make small cars here in America and make a good profit while GM Ford etc struggle? Investment in modern facilities.
frenchyd said:In reply to Ovid_and_Flem : well I’m no where near as good as our president at avoiding taxes
After-all I work for a living and receive my income in the form of a paycheck. Thus I’ve often had to pay the alternative minimum tax.
If you're paying AMT you certainly are paying more than 2% federal income tav.
Maybe a few of you should start a thread about taxes?? 
SVreX said:Maybe a few of you should start a thread about taxes??
Avoiding the patio, avoiding taxes...the sneaky will always find a way to try. :) :) :)
In reply to Ovid_and_Flem :You do realize the alternative minimum tax is charged to those who through legal loopholes manage to avoid paying taxes.
If your income is structured properly even the AMT can be pretty small.
It’s moot though, starting next year the AMT is gone!
In fact as I read the preliminary reviews of the pro-ported highlites it seems to me a lot of the deductions I used to start with will be gone. Now I realize a lot of the tax code isn’t really settled so I don’t want to alarm anyone. While expenses for private Jets and other really high end goodies are still deductible for those with the means to own Park Avenue penthouses and Montana Hunting lodges. Some stuff the working class has used is already gone with more likely to go.
The real truth will be out by this fall. Here’s wishing everyone good luck.
My sister is a Dr that lives in Hoboken, NJ but commutes to NYC. She is broke all the time. It freaking expensive to live up there. Her brownstone rental cost is $3400 a month
and she does not even get a parking space. That is “extra”. Even though she is making money but gets poor quickly paying her bills, she still LOVES it up there.
In reply to frenchyd :
Better check your sources. AMT exemptions have been raised but AMT remains....for individuals. You might be confused a bit by the fact AMT has been repealed for corporations. Surprise surprise.
I was only making an observation that if you were only paying 2% federal tax I could'nt understand how AMT would have been relevant. Full disclosure...I'm not a tax attorney. I just know enough as to when to refer someone to an expert. In law school I hated tax law courses and promised my tax professors I would never practice in that field if they would just give me a C.
In reply to Ovid_and_Flem : All I really know about taxes is what my preparer shares with me and what little I read about.
I was failing my pre-law coarse at San Diego state when I happen to overhear my family law lawyer talk about how to write off hobby flight lessons with a seldom used legal precedent. That night I worked that into an answer on the test and wound getting a B on the coarse. I can only assume the professor wanted to fly.
That sparked my interest in legal precedent. It’s also the standard I used to find my tax guy.
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