Awesome thanks! I didn’t catch that there were exceptions to this, but still available. That helps for what we may do on our house in a couple years.

...and likewise dissuade someone from moving to the state. There’s a reason why IL, CT, and NY are now losing population on net every year.

A friend of mine works for Inverland which is a mid-sized real estate developer. They just put up two buildings in NYC and describe the market there as “on the edge of catastrophe” saying that there’s “no liquidity.” Just my $0.02, I think the reason Trump recently said “we need a rate cut NOW” is because his friends (if he has any) are NYC/NJ real estate folks and they’re probably telling him that the market is terrible.

I just saw a poll that only like 20 percent of people think their taxes went down.

I find it interesting because I think around 60 percent of people say taxes should have gone down. (Obviously reduces services will likely follow).

But I find it strange that people don’t actually think their taxes went down.

It may be because people thought the tax cut would be sizable in the form of a huge refund. But overall the messaging from the gop seems to have been bad. Seeing how people don’t even think their taxes went down. (Which should be the only benefit from the tax cuts)

I got brutalized.

Live in CA, so took that hit.

Then a non-tax-sheltered brokerage account generated waaay more dividend income than ever before. Really weird. I had to double check the 1099-DIV form like 3 times.

So I had to write $30K check (on top of withheld taxes).

15.2% ETR.

I've got to look up last year, but for 2018 Fed only, 7.4% effective tax


It's way down from 16. My gross income is up 5.7% compared to 16, but my rate that year was 10.07%.

Why do you hate America? ;).

Kidding, but it does point how low actual effective rates are and much they vary. I have some problem when a person who makes a very good income, yet pays less than 10% in effective tax rate, endlessly repeats, "We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem." It's both, and it is always both, and extremely low tax rates are proof that. The anti-tax mantra is especially funny coming from millions of folks who in fact always pay extremely low federal income taxes, and are angry that their savings this year was paltry/negligible.

FWIW, I think that my ETR went up from 18% to 19%. (need to finish it this weekend)

https://www.atr.org/...down-25-percent-year

Must be wonderful to earn so much money. I love this time of year, its when I have hard proof I am in a relative term (relative to those I hang with) poor. You wrote a check for 6x more than I paid in fed. taxes.

Enjoy the income.

---

Just Triing
Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
Be kind English is my 2nd language. My primary language is Dave it's a unique evolution of English.

So, in conclusion, a steady dismantling of the middle and lower wage earners by the GOP, with tacit approval from Dems; camoflaged by the daily antics of Trump.

Hard to imagine someone already paying no federal taxes voting for Trump so that he can lower their federal taxes, but if you say so...

Ya that's one reason why they voted for Trump, and ya it's a head scratcher

Hard to imagine someone already paying no federal taxes voting for Trump so that he can lower their federal taxes, but if you say so...


As a tax accountant I realized long ago that people,

• lie about how much they make.
• lie about how well their investments did this year
• have no clue how taxes work
• have no clue about how much tax they pay in a year.

I am imagining this post voiced by Steve Martin as a variation of the intro to The Jerk.

"I was born a poor millionaire. Then the bad orange man raised my taxes to fifteen percent. Fifteen percent! It was brutal. I don't know how much longer the oppressed middle millionaire class can survive in this country."

Haha. I didn't blame Trump, though!

Also I drive a 6 year-old Ford Focus.

Continuing

https://www.epi.org/...gop-tax-cuts-passed/

I wonder how long before the new tax laws impact taxpayer behavior. My only clients that itemized this year were the very wealthy with large charitable contributions. No one else. With the SALT limits, it really impacted those with either large state income tax or here in Texas, the ridiculous property taxes. I have advised many that they should use their non-emergency investments to reduce their mortgages.

I anticipate that it will ultimately impact first and second time home buyers which will impact our economic engines. I think charities will be negatively impacted too.

On the upside, I got a 20% phantom deduction for being self-employed. Like I have been for 30 years.