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Donald Trump 2020

Francisco 2.0

By Francisco 2.0
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Thatguy
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Let me be candid and honest here my man. I cannot be sympathetic to your comments because this is how adult life has always been. From the moment I stepped out of my home and headed off to college I h

Francisco 2.0
Francisco 2.0
henrygandorf
henrygandorf

it won't matter if his taxes ever come out.  it won't matter if his taxes don't ever come out.  you wanna know why?  because we already know what's in them. since early 2017 when people starting

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RomaVicta

RomaVicta 29,931

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

This factor in here? Article from July

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/07/28/non-partisan-watchdog-accuses-trump-campaign-of-laundering-170-million/#ef5fb6a61283

 

Trump wasn't actually paying Ivanka. He was funneling the mondey back to himself, I'm sure (no proof) that circulating money through consultants was a way for him to keep it personally. The consultants are money launderers and likely all vulnerable to charges. 

Plus, isn't this scheming enough to be a RICO issue?

I'm not fool enough to get my hopes up, but, at long fucking last, we may be able to shine a light on the roaches nest criminal enterprise that is Trump and the GOP.

I've thought for a long time that only general, collective fear of jail could cause so many in that party to tear the country apart. Their collective ass could end up in jail for years. I think the guys who resigned at the time Ryan did are praying for distance enough to weather the storm.

To stay out of jail, they will do anything. I think there will be blood.

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45,691

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1 hour ago, sachick said:

I know this has been said many times but Trump could shoot someone on the way into the debate on video and just say it didn’t happen and his base would believe him. There is nothing they won’t excuse him for.

yep.  It's wild.  Could any of us ever imagine being so enthralled with a politician that you threw out logic and reason?  That alone should disqualify these people from life.

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Guest Lobo

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24 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Trump wasn't actually paying Ivanka. He was funneling the mondey back to himself, I'm sure (no proof) that circulating money through consultants was a way for him to keep it personally. The consultants are money launderers and likely all vulnerable to charges. 

Plus, isn't this scheming enough to be a RICO issue?

I'm not fool enough to get my hopes up, but, at long fucking last, we may be able to shine a light on the roaches nest criminal enterprise that is Trump and the GOP.

I've thought for a long time that only general, collective fear of jail could cause so many in that party to tear the country apart. Their collective ass could end up in jail for years. I think the guys who resigned at the time Ryan did are praying for distance enough to weather the storm.

To stay out of jail, they will do anything. I think there will be blood.

What you described would rise to the level of the RICO statutes.  But federal crimes have never been the target here, RICO is federal.  
What will fuck Trump over here is his falsified state income/state capital gains taxes for the State of New York filings.  And how he counted those taxes paid against his federal income, which would explain his underpayments.  Well, that and another dozen or so fraudulent issues.  

He's going to contest this election.  Always.  And he's going to lose it.  And his supporters are going to murder roughly 100-200 Americans during the period of contest.  But it's not about defeating Trump at this point, it's about ending his movement.  It will never completely go away.  But him hiding in Florida to avoid rotting in an Albany prison will go a long way to bring that to fruition.  

 

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Guest Lobo

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"Davinci Code" question---isn't the symbol of a reverse-pyramid also the symbol for feminine vagina?  Works out well since most Trumpers are Pussies.  

Fight me, fucking cowards.

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Mrs Whiggins

Mrs Whiggins 13,050

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Posted (edited)
42 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

That is bad for some of the rural states, plus ABC said it could cost Texas about $500 mil in lost federal funding. California could actually gain some rep apparently. Maybe someone should tell Wilbur.

Edited by Mrs Whiggins
Left off some zeros.
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WhatTheBuck

WhatTheBuck 28,788

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1 hour ago, Bama Chick said:

Sure he is.

His entire motivation for running for president was because Obama embarrassed him at The White House Correspondents Dinner.

Difference his most normal humans take embarrassment over something and learn from it. Trump takes embarrassment as confirmation he’s being persecuted and uses it as motivation for spite and revenge.

That's rage. 

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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13,515

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1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

Trump wasn't actually paying Ivanka. He was funneling the mondey back to himself, I'm sure (no proof) that circulating money through consultants was a way for him to keep it personally. The consultants are money launderers and likely all vulnerable to charges. 

Plus, isn't this scheming enough to be a RICO issue?

I'm not fool enough to get my hopes up, but, at long fucking last, we may be able to shine a light on the roaches nest criminal enterprise that is Trump and the GOP.

I've thought for a long time that only general, collective fear of jail could cause so many in that party to tear the country apart. Their collective ass could end up in jail for years. I think the guys who resigned at the time Ryan did are praying for distance enough to weather the storm.

To stay out of jail, they will do anything. I think there will be blood.

Probably a decent chance that you’re right that Ivanka was not able to keep that money. Trump probably gave her a bit, or even if she received it all, she probably was forced to host a charity foundation event at a trump property.

it will be interesting to see if Trump will pardon his kids for any and all crimes committed in the last 20 years. First, it’s not fully established that blanket pardons are really allowed today,  Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. Second that will free the Trump children from being able to claim the 5th amendment of self incrimination when asked about Donald’s crimes. And failure to testify can be a future crime not covered by the pardon. 

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45,691

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1 hour ago, Lobo said:

What you described would rise to the level of the RICO statutes.  But federal crimes have never been the target here, RICO is federal.  
What will fuck Trump over here is his falsified state income/state capital gains taxes for the State of New York filings.  And how he counted those taxes paid against his federal income, which would explain his underpayments.  Well, that and another dozen or so fraudulent issues.  

He's going to contest this election.  Always.  And he's going to lose it.  And his supporters are going to murder roughly 100-200 Americans during the period of contest.  But it's not about defeating Trump at this point, it's about ending his movement.  It will never completely go away.  But him hiding in Florida to avoid rotting in an Albany prison will go a long way to bring that to fruition.  

 

Sadly, I feel this is closest to the truth. But I got a feeling the whole Dotard family is going down. 

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Guest Lobo

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11 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

ding, ding, ding - he better start fundraising now for his legal defense. do ex presidents get secret service protection in prison ?

That's a good question, actually.  There's really no precedent.  I mean, in some ways...they can't build him a special prison.  But he can certainly have like a secure wing.  And there, he can be allotted special privileges.  Shit, with his tax magic show, he would have himself a little Andy Dufresne type accounting practice in the prison basement with which he could favor with the guards.  I'm sure the shower stories write themselves with the help of Rex Kramer.  

But in all seriousness---he'll hide out in Florida and never actually be compelled to appear in New York.  He'll be under subpoena and under State of New York charges, but he'll die in Florida while fighting the orders to appear.  

You can't tell me, even if you're a Trumper, you wouldn't subscribe to a Netflix series about a former U.S. President who had to serve time in a state prison and all the logistics that go along with that.  "Oz" meets "Escape from New York" meets "House of Cards" meets "Caged Heat (My Ivanka fantasy)" meets "All the President's Men" meets "Shawshank Redemption."  I'd watch the shit out of that show.  

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45,691

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1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Nothing to see here folks, move along:

 

 

 

He shouldn’t have to worry about it because:

A) god willing, he won’t be president in February and

B) if he is the fucking president, maybe he could, I don’t know,  NOT LET IT EXPIRE???

 

*not a foreign policy expert

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lemonlime

lemonlime 5,503

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1 hour ago, Lobo said:

What you described would rise to the level of the RICO statutes.  But federal crimes have never been the target here, RICO is federal.  
What will fuck Trump over here is his falsified state income/state capital gains taxes for the State of New York filings.  And how he counted those taxes paid against his federal income, which would explain his underpayments.  Well, that and another dozen or so fraudulent issues.  

He's going to contest this election.  Always.  And he's going to lose it.  And his supporters are going to murder roughly 100-200 Americans during the period of contest.  But it's not about defeating Trump at this point, it's about ending his movement.  It will never completely go away.  But him hiding in Florida to avoid rotting in an Albany prison will go a long way to bring that to fruition.  

 

NY has a state equivalent to RICO.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32,395

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Yeah, it's the Onion, but it's no less true:

 

https://www.theonion.com/you-people-made-me-give-up-my-peanut-farm-before-i-got-1819585048?utm_campaign=The Onion&utm_content=1601310722&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0ZbJyiuxhwaPTge82HLjxFkj-v3aBuAXcfDAn8UUxQhpS1Ow1oaq5nrFE

 

Quote

For generations, U.S. presidents have gone to great lengths to avoid potential conflicts of interest. When I was elected, I followed suit by placing my small business in a blind trust to assure our citizens that I would always put the country’s interests ahead of my own. It’s a vital presidential tradition. That’s why I find it a bit curious that our new commander-in-chief has been allowed to ignore it.

 

Quote

For Christ’s sake, you people made me get rid of my peanut farm before you let me be president.

I grew up on that farm. When my father died, I moved back home and worked those fields with my own two hands to keep it afloat. It was a hard job, but it was so rewarding. It wasn’t just a business—it was the place I called home. Letting go of the family farm was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I did it because the American people asked me to. I did it for their sake, without enthusiasm, but also without hesitation.

 

Quote

Boy, times sure have changed, haven’t they? I couldn’t help but notice that the current occupant of the White House owns more than 500 companies, has business interests across the Middle East and Asia, and owes hundreds of millions of dollars to banks he is now responsible for regulating. It seems a touch unfair that a bigger fuss was made about my little peanut operation than all his office towers, hotels, and golf courses combined. All I had was a farm, you know? A small, precious farm.

Seriously, it was just a few fields and a warehouse, and you idiots still appointed a special prosecutor and spent six months investigating it.

 

Spoiler

Not a day goes by when I don’t think about what life would be like if I still had my peanut farm. I miss it so much. I miss feeling the sun on my face. I miss the earth in my hands. Sometimes, I’d go out to the fields before dawn. I’d watch the sun come up, watch it cast golden light on my plants, row by row. It was so calm; so quiet. Those were some of the best days of my life. It sure would’ve been nice to live out the rest of my years there, but I had to do what was right. I suppose only some of us have to.

God, I loved that peanut farm!

And where were my conflicts of interest, exactly? Seriously, do enlighten me, America, because I honestly have no idea. Did you worry I might be cutting deals in back rooms with the peanut butter lobby? Or that I might be too busy at harvest time to focus on the economy or the Middle East? Apparently, you did, and almost obsessively. Meanwhile, your new president holds a lease from the federal government to operate a $200 million hotel six blocks from the White House. I mean, come on!

Maybe I’m just a sucker. Apparently, all I needed to do was hand off control of the farm to my family. If I’d staged an elaborate song and dance about distancing myself—whatever that means—from all the day-to-day planting, picking, and salting, maybe I could have kept my peanut farm with the full blessing of you, the American people.

Besides, that peanut farm would probably be worth $200 million today, easy.

 

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Bookman

Bookman 4,639

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3 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

His entire motivation for running for president was because Obama embarrassed him at The White House Correspondents Dinner.

I think he was also motivated by the money. Being President is probably his first profitable business venture.

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MillerEP

MillerEP 30,491

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Posted

https://monsterhunternation.com/2020/09/28/no-you-idiots-thats-not-how-taxes-work-an-accountants-guide-to-why-you-are-a-gullible-moron/

NO, YOU IDIOTS. THAT’S NOT HOW TAXES WORK. – AN ACCOUNTANT’S GUIDE TO WHY YOU ARE A GULLIBLE MORON
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 CORREIA

Spoiler

 

I posted that last night on Facebook, and sure enough, this morning my feed is filled with people who don’t know shit about taxes retweeting the stupid opinions of other morons who also don’t know shit about taxes. This is just as annoying as last week when these same idiots all suddenly became Constitutional Scholars. Or the month before that when they were all experts on use of force laws and police tactics. Or the month before that when they suddenly got their epidemiology degrees from the University of Internet and turned into infectious disease experts.  

Holy shit, you Dunning-Krugerands are annoying. Of course the comments are all about the “morality” of paying your “fair share”. Which isn’t how any of this works in real life. Just stop it with your vapid hot takes already. You clearly have a child-like grasp of a complex topic, and your words are making America dumber.

As a former accountant, please allow me to explain why all of today’s newly formed tax experts are fucking morons, and we should metaphorically put a brick in a sock and beat them over the head with it until they shut up.

I’m going to keep this blog post simple. I’m not going to get into any of the specifics of the leaked Trump taxes. Why? Because:

We don’t know how full of shit the NYT is, and you don’t do taxes based on rumors and innuendo. You do taxes based upon financial statements and the company’s books.
This shit is super complicated and my happy ass is retired and likes getting paid more money to write books instead of reading through thousands of pages of IRS regs.
So big picture time…

First off, “morality” doesn’t have jack shit to do with taxation. You pay what you legally owe. Nobody willingly pays the government more than they legally owe.

This has always been this way since America has had income taxes. There is endless court precedent. You pay what you legally owe. That’s it. If you pay less than you legally owe, then the government will fine or imprison you. If you pay more than you legal owe, the government will laugh and laugh, because you are an idiot, and you deserve to be poor.

Every single person who barks about how somebody else should be paying more? They themselves are paying the minimum they can get away with. As they should. As should you.

I remember when I was taking my first tax class back in college. This class was all accounting majors by this point. At the beginning of the semester the professor (who’d had a long career as a tax guy) gave us an imaginary family as our clients and had us do their taxes. One kid didn’t take advantage of all the obvious deductions for his clients. When the professor asked why, the kid said some mushy thing about how he didn’t think it was FAIR to keep that money from the government… Holy shit. The professor ripped this kid a new asshole. HOW DARE YOU!?! IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S MONEY! IT IS YOUR CLIENT’S MONEY. YOU OWE THEM YOUR BEST! IT IS YOUR SACRED DUTY TO SAVE THEIR MONEY! YOU DISGUST ME AND YOU SHOULD NEVER BE A CPA!

That class was one of my favorites.

Basically, you pay what you owe, no more, and anyone who claims otherwise is full of shit.

Second, “loopholes” is a term most often used by people who don’t understand accounting or tax law, to complain about how somebody else used the existing laws created by congress to pay less than what that person thinks is “fair.” Regular people have heard the bullshit term loopholes tossed around so much that they start to believe that it is some magical easy button that rich guys can just push that makes it so they don’t have to pay taxes.

Nope. They’re just laws. These “loopholes” exist because at some point in time congress (both democrat and republican both!) decided that they wanted to promote some type of behavior or discourage some other behavior. So they basically put a reward into the law saying if you do this thing we like, you’ll pay less taxes! Or the opposite, congress wanted to discourage some behavior, so if you do that thing we don’t want, it will cost you more.

Both sides have done this forever, state and federal. We want you to drive electric cars so if you buy an electric car you get a tax break this year. YAY! Uh oh, we want you to stimulate the economy by buying this kind of machinery faster, so you have to depreciate your assets this other way or you’ll pay more! BOO! You get a discount for paying your employees health insurance, YAY! Oh, wait… Not that kind of health insurance. BOO!.

So on and so forth, up and down, these perks come and go, all based upon whatever behavior congress is trying to promote at that time (or what favors they are doing for their friends). Why was mortgage interest deductible? Because at one point congress said “we really want people to own houses!” Even regular people have things that are considered “loopholes” to somebody.  

So when the blue check mark journalism major (who probably dropped out of PoliSci because “there’s too much math”) declares that it is immoral that some rich dude didn’t pay his fair share because he used loopholes, those are basically a bunch of meaningless buzz words strung together to prey on the feelings of the gullible.

Joe Biden has been making shit like this up for forty something years now. Congress meddles in business and your personal lives to try to steer outcomes. And as a result the tax law just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and more complicated and confusing, until it is the bloated leviathan we have today.

How big is the US tax code? NOBODY KNOWS! (and I’m only partially kidding with that answer, because there’s thousands of pages of actual laws, and I don’t think anybody can actually pin down how many thousands of pages there are of supporting documentation and IRS regs and findings that translate those broad laws into the nitty-gritty real world application accountants have to deal with).

It is this complexity that makes it hard to figure out what anyone actually owes. The more complicated your affairs, the more of these laws you run into, the more “loopholes” you may be able to take advantage of.

We’ve already determined, nobody willingly pays more than they owe. The real problem is determining what you actually legally owe. And this is where it gets sticky. Because the laws are very complex, the more complicated your finances, the more likely you are to have confusion over your taxes.

Let me give you an example. I can’t remember the exact details because this was over 20 years ago, but when I was getting my accounting degree we learned about this challenge someone did, where they got something like a hundred different tax preparers, ranging from Big 5 (back then)firms, medium size firms, small firms, individual CPAs, TurboTax, H&R Block, the works… to do the taxes of the same hypothetical family of five. This family had a small business, some investments, some rental property, so on and so forth, but nothing super complicated. Then they had the hundred different preparers do their taxes… And they got a hundred different answers of what they owed that year. And each of those answers could be argued as being correct… And yet each of those answers could also be determined as wrong by an IRS auditor.

Sometimes there is confusion about what can or cannot be deducted. Some things are clear. Others are questionable. Some things the IRS has clearly stated are good to go, others you make your best guess, and then hope the auditor doesn’t disagree. There is an old tax preparer saying, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Which brings us to today, with people freaking out about how Trump allegedly didn’t pay taxes for 10 out of 15 years and how that’s UNFAIR. Assuming that the anonymous tip isn’t total bullshit—and this is the New York Times we’re talking about and they love to just make shit up—and that the information is accurate (which means that whoever leaked it committed a felony, but that’s a whole different discussion)… my answer is so?

Is it plausible that a billionaire paid no taxes for a period of several years? Yep. Totally. See all that stuff I wrote above about the complicated tax code and how it is an accountant’s sacred duty to take advantage of all the stupid laws congress has passed to save their client’s money? Pretty much that. It has happened many times before, and it will happen many times again.

One thing that’s really unfair about our tax system is that it is rigged in favor of people who have more resources. Government meddling makes it more costly to conduct business. The more complicated the regulatory burden, the more smaller companies can’t compete. Make the laws complicated enough and the only companies that stay in business are the ones who can afford to pay for twenty guys like me. (my last regular accounting job paid extremely well, and nearly everything I did was jump through government mandated hoops, filling out government mandated paperwork which nobody in the government would probably ever read)

Trump has those resources. I bet he’s got a room full of accountants, and their leader is probably a grizzled old CPA with an eye patch and a raven who sits on his shoulder. The raven also has an eye patch and an accounting degree. This man has wrestled bears, and he’s going to take advantage of every tax break in the US Code for his client, and do so gleefully, knowing that many of those laws were signed by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

On the other side, you know damned good and well that the IRS has sent their most fearsome auditor against him. This man sold his soul to the devil, and then fined the devil for failing to list that soul as a depreciable asset. When he shows up to audit your company, he appears a flash of fire and brimstone, as a Finnish death metal band plays his theme song. He is an auditor bereft of mercy, compassion, or pity, and beneath his leathery wings serve a legion of IRS goblins, who will crawl into every nook and cranny of the Trump Corporation’s P&L looking for errors, and if a mouse so much as shits a turd large enough to unbalance that ledger, there will be hell to pay.

Is it unfair that rich guys can employ Gandalf level CPAs and take advantage of more complicated tax laws, while regular people use TurboTax? Yep. But in the meantime, as long as those tax laws are there, the rich guys would be utter fools not to take advantage of them.

I recall a similar freak out several years ago when it came out that some giant mega-corp (I think it was GE, but I don’t remember) didn’t pay any taxes due to some Obama green energy tax breaks. Only that time the freak out was coming from the right (who hate Obama) and the Bernie Bros (who hate all business). It’s the same kind of thing though. If the laws are on the books, of course companies (and individuals) are going to take advantage of those laws. THAT IS WHY CONGRESS PUT THEM THERE.

Now, it is perfectly okay to get mad at congress for writing stupid laws and needlessly complicating everything with their endless meddling. But it’s stupid to get mad at the people for obeying the laws that are in place.

If it comes out that Trump broke the law, then it goes back to that soulless abomination from the IRS (which again, I say with all due respect, Mr. Auditor Sir, please don’t hurt me) to hook his ebony talons into the Trump Corp’s meaty flank, to pull it down and feast upon the carcass.

Why yes… During the course of my accounting career I did go through several audits with various government agencies. Why do you ask? 😀  (that said, the IRS auditing the various corporations I worked for was always way nicer than being audited by the DCAA. What a fucking nightmare clusterfuck that organization is. I’ve been through ATF audits and they were way better than the DCAA. Though for pure incompetent malfeasance, the SBA still takes the cake.)

That’s how it works. On one side CPAs, and the other, hellspawn audit demons, and they’ll argue, and battle, and go to court over what is and is not owed to the government, and then the client will pay what is legally owed plus any applicable fines and penalties (and not a dime more). Both sides of this titanic eternal struggle are far smarter than anyone at the New York Times and they have access to the actual financial data, unlike all the blue check mark idiots on Twitter who are whinging on today about their feelings. Barf.

Your feelings don’t mean shit. Same as the rest of us, Trump owes what he owes. And the IRS will determine if that number is accurate or not.

 

 

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 25,975

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

I read an article a year or so ago about how real estate has become the preferred method of bribery of public officials. It usually goes something like this: Lets say Jimmy and Bob are big time home builders, and they want to make it really hard for a person to sue their builder for building them a shitty McMansion. Jimmy donates a decent enough amount of money to get invited to a lot of fundraisers for a certain political party. Say Jimmy goes to one of these shindigs and meets the governor, and has a long conversation about how hard it is to run a successful homebuilding business because "those people" always want to sue for every little thing, and what we really should do is pass some kind of tort reform legislation to make it harder for those free loaders always trying to bring down the winners of the world. Say, by the way governor, do you invest in real estate? You really should, great way to make money you know. Hey, if you're interested I know of a real nice piece of land that just hit the market. It would be a great development opportunity in the future (wink, wink). So the Governor buys a nice piece of land for $500,000, financed with very favorable terms by an LLC that's "run" by Bob's mistress, a day shift stripper named Jasmine or some shit. The Governor sits on the land for a year or two, all the while championing the cause of Tort Reform to the adherents of his party until he convinces 52% of the voting citizens of his state to vote it into law, thus protecting Jimmy and Bob from consequences for building a shitty house. Shortly after, the Governor sells said piece of real estate for $1,000,000 to a 3rd party, arranged by Bob, he makes $500K on what amounts to a $30K "Investment" and Michael Dell ends up with a kick-ass estate.  

CA Congressman "Duke" Cunningham went to prison because he sold his San Diego home to a defense contractor for about twice what it was worth.

4 hours ago, Gardner Barnes said:


You can’t directly. But you can indirectly via a software stack called a CDP which aggregates non related data like income, zip code, and grocery store data, demographics, health data and website tracking data.

Using those is very easy to drill down and then use your target audiences for digital ad buys.

Lots of companies (and agencies) sell this kind of adtech. I used to sell it to pharma companies.

So, assume that I buy grape "drink" instead of grape juice?

4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

My frequent purchases at mexican supermarkets are gonna bite me in the ass, aren't they?

I understand that lard-based sex lube is gaining in popularity

4 hours ago, Gardner Barnes said:


If you use a loyalty card or curbside shopping then your data is tracked. If you don’t, probably not, other than your pharmacy purchases.

Yeah, somewhere, some server knows that I buy a lot of pringles and bud light.

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Continental Op

Continental Op 3,934

Posted
Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

https://monsterhunternation.com/2020/09/28/no-you-idiots-thats-not-how-taxes-work-an-accountants-guide-to-why-you-are-a-gullible-moron/

NO, YOU IDIOTS. THAT’S NOT HOW TAXES WORK. – AN ACCOUNTANT’S GUIDE TO WHY YOU ARE A GULLIBLE MORON
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 CORREIA

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I posted that last night on Facebook, and sure enough, this morning my feed is filled with people who don’t know shit about taxes retweeting the stupid opinions of other morons who also don’t know shit about taxes. This is just as annoying as last week when these same idiots all suddenly became Constitutional Scholars. Or the month before that when they were all experts on use of force laws and police tactics. Or the month before that when they suddenly got their epidemiology degrees from the University of Internet and turned into infectious disease experts.  

Holy shit, you Dunning-Krugerands are annoying. Of course the comments are all about the “morality” of paying your “fair share”. Which isn’t how any of this works in real life. Just stop it with your vapid hot takes already. You clearly have a child-like grasp of a complex topic, and your words are making America dumber.

As a former accountant, please allow me to explain why all of today’s newly formed tax experts are fucking morons, and we should metaphorically put a brick in a sock and beat them over the head with it until they shut up.

I’m going to keep this blog post simple. I’m not going to get into any of the specifics of the leaked Trump taxes. Why? Because:

We don’t know how full of shit the NYT is, and you don’t do taxes based on rumors and innuendo. You do taxes based upon financial statements and the company’s books.
This shit is super complicated and my happy ass is retired and likes getting paid more money to write books instead of reading through thousands of pages of IRS regs.
So big picture time…

First off, “morality” doesn’t have jack shit to do with taxation. You pay what you legally owe. Nobody willingly pays the government more than they legally owe.

This has always been this way since America has had income taxes. There is endless court precedent. You pay what you legally owe. That’s it. If you pay less than you legally owe, then the government will fine or imprison you. If you pay more than you legal owe, the government will laugh and laugh, because you are an idiot, and you deserve to be poor.

Every single person who barks about how somebody else should be paying more? They themselves are paying the minimum they can get away with. As they should. As should you.

I remember when I was taking my first tax class back in college. This class was all accounting majors by this point. At the beginning of the semester the professor (who’d had a long career as a tax guy) gave us an imaginary family as our clients and had us do their taxes. One kid didn’t take advantage of all the obvious deductions for his clients. When the professor asked why, the kid said some mushy thing about how he didn’t think it was FAIR to keep that money from the government… Holy shit. The professor ripped this kid a new asshole. HOW DARE YOU!?! IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S MONEY! IT IS YOUR CLIENT’S MONEY. YOU OWE THEM YOUR BEST! IT IS YOUR SACRED DUTY TO SAVE THEIR MONEY! YOU DISGUST ME AND YOU SHOULD NEVER BE A CPA!

That class was one of my favorites.

Basically, you pay what you owe, no more, and anyone who claims otherwise is full of shit.

Second, “loopholes” is a term most often used by people who don’t understand accounting or tax law, to complain about how somebody else used the existing laws created by congress to pay less than what that person thinks is “fair.” Regular people have heard the bullshit term loopholes tossed around so much that they start to believe that it is some magical easy button that rich guys can just push that makes it so they don’t have to pay taxes.

Nope. They’re just laws. These “loopholes” exist because at some point in time congress (both democrat and republican both!) decided that they wanted to promote some type of behavior or discourage some other behavior. So they basically put a reward into the law saying if you do this thing we like, you’ll pay less taxes! Or the opposite, congress wanted to discourage some behavior, so if you do that thing we don’t want, it will cost you more.

Both sides have done this forever, state and federal. We want you to drive electric cars so if you buy an electric car you get a tax break this year. YAY! Uh oh, we want you to stimulate the economy by buying this kind of machinery faster, so you have to depreciate your assets this other way or you’ll pay more! BOO! You get a discount for paying your employees health insurance, YAY! Oh, wait… Not that kind of health insurance. BOO!.

So on and so forth, up and down, these perks come and go, all based upon whatever behavior congress is trying to promote at that time (or what favors they are doing for their friends). Why was mortgage interest deductible? Because at one point congress said “we really want people to own houses!” Even regular people have things that are considered “loopholes” to somebody.  

So when the blue check mark journalism major (who probably dropped out of PoliSci because “there’s too much math”) declares that it is immoral that some rich dude didn’t pay his fair share because he used loopholes, those are basically a bunch of meaningless buzz words strung together to prey on the feelings of the gullible.

Joe Biden has been making shit like this up for forty something years now. Congress meddles in business and your personal lives to try to steer outcomes. And as a result the tax law just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and more complicated and confusing, until it is the bloated leviathan we have today.

How big is the US tax code? NOBODY KNOWS! (and I’m only partially kidding with that answer, because there’s thousands of pages of actual laws, and I don’t think anybody can actually pin down how many thousands of pages there are of supporting documentation and IRS regs and findings that translate those broad laws into the nitty-gritty real world application accountants have to deal with).

It is this complexity that makes it hard to figure out what anyone actually owes. The more complicated your affairs, the more of these laws you run into, the more “loopholes” you may be able to take advantage of.

We’ve already determined, nobody willingly pays more than they owe. The real problem is determining what you actually legally owe. And this is where it gets sticky. Because the laws are very complex, the more complicated your finances, the more likely you are to have confusion over your taxes.

Let me give you an example. I can’t remember the exact details because this was over 20 years ago, but when I was getting my accounting degree we learned about this challenge someone did, where they got something like a hundred different tax preparers, ranging from Big 5 (back then)firms, medium size firms, small firms, individual CPAs, TurboTax, H&R Block, the works… to do the taxes of the same hypothetical family of five. This family had a small business, some investments, some rental property, so on and so forth, but nothing super complicated. Then they had the hundred different preparers do their taxes… And they got a hundred different answers of what they owed that year. And each of those answers could be argued as being correct… And yet each of those answers could also be determined as wrong by an IRS auditor.

Sometimes there is confusion about what can or cannot be deducted. Some things are clear. Others are questionable. Some things the IRS has clearly stated are good to go, others you make your best guess, and then hope the auditor doesn’t disagree. There is an old tax preparer saying, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Which brings us to today, with people freaking out about how Trump allegedly didn’t pay taxes for 10 out of 15 years and how that’s UNFAIR. Assuming that the anonymous tip isn’t total bullshit—and this is the New York Times we’re talking about and they love to just make shit up—and that the information is accurate (which means that whoever leaked it committed a felony, but that’s a whole different discussion)… my answer is so?

Is it plausible that a billionaire paid no taxes for a period of several years? Yep. Totally. See all that stuff I wrote above about the complicated tax code and how it is an accountant’s sacred duty to take advantage of all the stupid laws congress has passed to save their client’s money? Pretty much that. It has happened many times before, and it will happen many times again.

One thing that’s really unfair about our tax system is that it is rigged in favor of people who have more resources. Government meddling makes it more costly to conduct business. The more complicated the regulatory burden, the more smaller companies can’t compete. Make the laws complicated enough and the only companies that stay in business are the ones who can afford to pay for twenty guys like me. (my last regular accounting job paid extremely well, and nearly everything I did was jump through government mandated hoops, filling out government mandated paperwork which nobody in the government would probably ever read)

Trump has those resources. I bet he’s got a room full of accountants, and their leader is probably a grizzled old CPA with an eye patch and a raven who sits on his shoulder. The raven also has an eye patch and an accounting degree. This man has wrestled bears, and he’s going to take advantage of every tax break in the US Code for his client, and do so gleefully, knowing that many of those laws were signed by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

On the other side, you know damned good and well that the IRS has sent their most fearsome auditor against him. This man sold his soul to the devil, and then fined the devil for failing to list that soul as a depreciable asset. When he shows up to audit your company, he appears a flash of fire and brimstone, as a Finnish death metal band plays his theme song. He is an auditor bereft of mercy, compassion, or pity, and beneath his leathery wings serve a legion of IRS goblins, who will crawl into every nook and cranny of the Trump Corporation’s P&L looking for errors, and if a mouse so much as shits a turd large enough to unbalance that ledger, there will be hell to pay.

Is it unfair that rich guys can employ Gandalf level CPAs and take advantage of more complicated tax laws, while regular people use TurboTax? Yep. But in the meantime, as long as those tax laws are there, the rich guys would be utter fools not to take advantage of them.

I recall a similar freak out several years ago when it came out that some giant mega-corp (I think it was GE, but I don’t remember) didn’t pay any taxes due to some Obama green energy tax breaks. Only that time the freak out was coming from the right (who hate Obama) and the Bernie Bros (who hate all business). It’s the same kind of thing though. If the laws are on the books, of course companies (and individuals) are going to take advantage of those laws. THAT IS WHY CONGRESS PUT THEM THERE.

Now, it is perfectly okay to get mad at congress for writing stupid laws and needlessly complicating everything with their endless meddling. But it’s stupid to get mad at the people for obeying the laws that are in place.

If it comes out that Trump broke the law, then it goes back to that soulless abomination from the IRS (which again, I say with all due respect, Mr. Auditor Sir, please don’t hurt me) to hook his ebony talons into the Trump Corp’s meaty flank, to pull it down and feast upon the carcass.

Why yes… During the course of my accounting career I did go through several audits with various government agencies. Why do you ask? 😀  (that said, the IRS auditing the various corporations I worked for was always way nicer than being audited by the DCAA. What a fucking nightmare clusterfuck that organization is. I’ve been through ATF audits and they were way better than the DCAA. Though for pure incompetent malfeasance, the SBA still takes the cake.)

That’s how it works. On one side CPAs, and the other, hellspawn audit demons, and they’ll argue, and battle, and go to court over what is and is not owed to the government, and then the client will pay what is legally owed plus any applicable fines and penalties (and not a dime more). Both sides of this titanic eternal struggle are far smarter than anyone at the New York Times and they have access to the actual financial data, unlike all the blue check mark idiots on Twitter who are whinging on today about their feelings. Barf.

Your feelings don’t mean shit. Same as the rest of us, Trump owes what he owes. And the IRS will determine if that number is accurate or not.

 

 

OK, genius.  Hire one of your children as a full time staff member at a company you own, pay them $750k in "consulting fees" and let us know how your IRS audit goes. 

Edited by Continental Op
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Pig Bellmont

Pig Bellmont 8,719

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Lobo said:

But in all seriousness---he'll hide out in Florida and never actually be compelled to appear in New York.  He'll be under subpoena and under State of New York charges, but he'll die in Florida while fighting the orders to appear.  

That’s not how this works in the US - it’s not like FL is some Ecuador without the ability to arrest and extradite. 

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105,158

Posted
Posted
https://monsterhunternation.com/2020/09/28/no-you-idiots-thats-not-how-taxes-work-an-accountants-guide-to-why-you-are-a-gullible-moron/
NO, YOU IDIOTS. THAT’S NOT HOW TAXES WORK. – AN ACCOUNTANT’S GUIDE TO WHY YOU ARE A GULLIBLE MORON
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 CORREIA
Spoiler

 
I posted that last night on Facebook, and sure enough, this morning my feed is filled with people who don’t know shit about taxes retweeting the stupid opinions of other morons who also don’t know shit about taxes. This is just as annoying as last week when these same idiots all suddenly became Constitutional Scholars. Or the month before that when they were all experts on use of force laws and police tactics. Or the month before that when they suddenly got their epidemiology degrees from the University of Internet and turned into infectious disease experts.  
Holy shit, you Dunning-Krugerands are annoying. Of course the comments are all about the “morality” of paying your “fair share”. Which isn’t how any of this works in real life. Just stop it with your vapid hot takes already. You clearly have a child-like grasp of a complex topic, and your words are making America dumber.
As a former accountant, please allow me to explain why all of today’s newly formed tax experts are fucking morons, and we should metaphorically put a brick in a sock and beat them over the head with it until they shut up.
I’m going to keep this blog post simple. I’m not going to get into any of the specifics of the leaked Trump taxes. Why? Because:
We don’t know how full of shit the NYT is, and you don’t do taxes based on rumors and innuendo. You do taxes based upon financial statements and the company’s books.
This shit is super complicated and my happy ass is retired and likes getting paid more money to write books instead of reading through thousands of pages of IRS regs.
So big picture time…
First off, “morality” doesn’t have jack shit to do with taxation. You pay what you legally owe. Nobody willingly pays the government more than they legally owe.
This has always been this way since America has had income taxes. There is endless court precedent. You pay what you legally owe. That’s it. If you pay less than you legally owe, then the government will fine or imprison you. If you pay more than you legal owe, the government will laugh and laugh, because you are an idiot, and you deserve to be poor.
Every single person who barks about how somebody else should be paying more? They themselves are paying the minimum they can get away with. As they should. As should you.
I remember when I was taking my first tax class back in college. This class was all accounting majors by this point. At the beginning of the semester the professor (who’d had a long career as a tax guy) gave us an imaginary family as our clients and had us do their taxes. One kid didn’t take advantage of all the obvious deductions for his clients. When the professor asked why, the kid said some mushy thing about how he didn’t think it was FAIR to keep that money from the government… Holy shit. The professor ripped this kid a new asshole. HOW DARE YOU!?! IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT’S MONEY! IT IS YOUR CLIENT’S MONEY. YOU OWE THEM YOUR BEST! IT IS YOUR SACRED DUTY TO SAVE THEIR MONEY! YOU DISGUST ME AND YOU SHOULD NEVER BE A CPA!
That class was one of my favorites.
Basically, you pay what you owe, no more, and anyone who claims otherwise is full of shit.
Second, “loopholes” is a term most often used by people who don’t understand accounting or tax law, to complain about how somebody else used the existing laws created by congress to pay less than what that person thinks is “fair.” Regular people have heard the bullshit term loopholes tossed around so much that they start to believe that it is some magical easy button that rich guys can just push that makes it so they don’t have to pay taxes.
Nope. They’re just laws. These “loopholes” exist because at some point in time congress (both democrat and republican both!) decided that they wanted to promote some type of behavior or discourage some other behavior. So they basically put a reward into the law saying if you do this thing we like, you’ll pay less taxes! Or the opposite, congress wanted to discourage some behavior, so if you do that thing we don’t want, it will cost you more.
Both sides have done this forever, state and federal. We want you to drive electric cars so if you buy an electric car you get a tax break this year. YAY! Uh oh, we want you to stimulate the economy by buying this kind of machinery faster, so you have to depreciate your assets this other way or you’ll pay more! BOO! You get a discount for paying your employees health insurance, YAY! Oh, wait… Not that kind of health insurance. BOO!.
So on and so forth, up and down, these perks come and go, all based upon whatever behavior congress is trying to promote at that time (or what favors they are doing for their friends). Why was mortgage interest deductible? Because at one point congress said “we really want people to own houses!” Even regular people have things that are considered “loopholes” to somebody.  
So when the blue check mark journalism major (who probably dropped out of PoliSci because “there’s too much math”) declares that it is immoral that some rich dude didn’t pay his fair share because he used loopholes, those are basically a bunch of meaningless buzz words strung together to prey on the feelings of the gullible.
Joe Biden has been making shit like this up for forty something years now. Congress meddles in business and your personal lives to try to steer outcomes. And as a result the tax law just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and more complicated and confusing, until it is the bloated leviathan we have today.
How big is the US tax code? NOBODY KNOWS! (and I’m only partially kidding with that answer, because there’s thousands of pages of actual laws, and I don’t think anybody can actually pin down how many thousands of pages there are of supporting documentation and IRS regs and findings that translate those broad laws into the nitty-gritty real world application accountants have to deal with).
It is this complexity that makes it hard to figure out what anyone actually owes. The more complicated your affairs, the more of these laws you run into, the more “loopholes” you may be able to take advantage of.
We’ve already determined, nobody willingly pays more than they owe. The real problem is determining what you actually legally owe. And this is where it gets sticky. Because the laws are very complex, the more complicated your finances, the more likely you are to have confusion over your taxes.
Let me give you an example. I can’t remember the exact details because this was over 20 years ago, but when I was getting my accounting degree we learned about this challenge someone did, where they got something like a hundred different tax preparers, ranging from Big 5 (back then)firms, medium size firms, small firms, individual CPAs, TurboTax, H&R Block, the works… to do the taxes of the same hypothetical family of five. This family had a small business, some investments, some rental property, so on and so forth, but nothing super complicated. Then they had the hundred different preparers do their taxes… And they got a hundred different answers of what they owed that year. And each of those answers could be argued as being correct… And yet each of those answers could also be determined as wrong by an IRS auditor.
Sometimes there is confusion about what can or cannot be deducted. Some things are clear. Others are questionable. Some things the IRS has clearly stated are good to go, others you make your best guess, and then hope the auditor doesn’t disagree. There is an old tax preparer saying, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.
Which brings us to today, with people freaking out about how Trump allegedly didn’t pay taxes for 10 out of 15 years and how that’s UNFAIR. Assuming that the anonymous tip isn’t total bullshit—and this is the New York Times we’re talking about and they love to just make shit up—and that the information is accurate (which means that whoever leaked it committed a felony, but that’s a whole different discussion)… my answer is so?
Is it plausible that a billionaire paid no taxes for a period of several years? Yep. Totally. See all that stuff I wrote above about the complicated tax code and how it is an accountant’s sacred duty to take advantage of all the stupid laws congress has passed to save their client’s money? Pretty much that. It has happened many times before, and it will happen many times again.
One thing that’s really unfair about our tax system is that it is rigged in favor of people who have more resources. Government meddling makes it more costly to conduct business. The more complicated the regulatory burden, the more smaller companies can’t compete. Make the laws complicated enough and the only companies that stay in business are the ones who can afford to pay for twenty guys like me. (my last regular accounting job paid extremely well, and nearly everything I did was jump through government mandated hoops, filling out government mandated paperwork which nobody in the government would probably ever read)
Trump has those resources. I bet he’s got a room full of accountants, and their leader is probably a grizzled old CPA with an eye patch and a raven who sits on his shoulder. The raven also has an eye patch and an accounting degree. This man has wrestled bears, and he’s going to take advantage of every tax break in the US Code for his client, and do so gleefully, knowing that many of those laws were signed by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
On the other side, you know damned good and well that the IRS has sent their most fearsome auditor against him. This man sold his soul to the devil, and then fined the devil for failing to list that soul as a depreciable asset. When he shows up to audit your company, he appears a flash of fire and brimstone, as a Finnish death metal band plays his theme song. He is an auditor bereft of mercy, compassion, or pity, and beneath his leathery wings serve a legion of IRS goblins, who will crawl into every nook and cranny of the Trump Corporation’s P&L looking for errors, and if a mouse so much as shits a turd large enough to unbalance that ledger, there will be hell to pay.
Is it unfair that rich guys can employ Gandalf level CPAs and take advantage of more complicated tax laws, while regular people use TurboTax? Yep. But in the meantime, as long as those tax laws are there, the rich guys would be utter fools not to take advantage of them.
I recall a similar freak out several years ago when it came out that some giant mega-corp (I think it was GE, but I don’t remember) didn’t pay any taxes due to some Obama green energy tax breaks. Only that time the freak out was coming from the right (who hate Obama) and the Bernie Bros (who hate all business). It’s the same kind of thing though. If the laws are on the books, of course companies (and individuals) are going to take advantage of those laws. THAT IS WHY CONGRESS PUT THEM THERE.
Now, it is perfectly okay to get mad at congress for writing stupid laws and needlessly complicating everything with their endless meddling. But it’s stupid to get mad at the people for obeying the laws that are in place.
If it comes out that Trump broke the law, then it goes back to that soulless abomination from the IRS (which again, I say with all due respect, Mr. Auditor Sir, please don’t hurt me) to hook his ebony talons into the Trump Corp’s meaty flank, to pull it down and feast upon the carcass.
Why yes… During the course of my accounting career I did go through several audits with various government agencies. Why do you ask?  (that said, the IRS auditing the various corporations I worked for was always way nicer than being audited by the DCAA. What a fucking nightmare clusterfuck that organization is. I’ve been through ATF audits and they were way better than the DCAA. Though for pure incompetent malfeasance, the SBA still takes the cake.)
That’s how it works. On one side CPAs, and the other, hellspawn audit demons, and they’ll argue, and battle, and go to court over what is and is not owed to the government, and then the client will pay what is legally owed plus any applicable fines and penalties (and not a dime more). Both sides of this titanic eternal struggle are far smarter than anyone at the New York Times and they have access to the actual financial data, unlike all the blue check mark idiots on Twitter who are whinging on today about their feelings. Barf.
Your feelings don’t mean shit. Same as the rest of us, Trump owes what he owes. And the IRS will determine if that number is accurate or not.
 

 


What none of the sycophants get is the more strenuously they make the argument that Trump didn’t cheat on his taxes...they run right into demonstrating that he’s a fucking GODAWFUL businessman. You get that kid of swell tax treatment....by having MASSIVE losses. That’s not a win.

Carry a big loss or two for a few years to your advantage? Them’s the breaks, and it’s a smart enough move. Do so for multiple years? You are bad at making money.
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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31,497

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8 hours ago, Celery Man said:

If Parscale was black and not a Trump conspirator the cops would have been BEYOND justified to just riddle him, his wife, anyone else in the house, neighbors at a similar address, other nearby black people, etc with bullets. This is based on non political research conducted in our news section.

It's fucking sick but, "other nearby black people" made me chortle.

You left out the dogs.

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