Macro Implications of funding the IRS are well known by this board, seems like having enough agents to audit tax returns and enforce the code that is already on the books would be like shooting fish in the barrel. I wonder why it doesn’t happen ?? lol
Good article by ProPublica on the awesome tax benefits derived from owning a yacht. Details on how a yacht can be owned for purely personal uses, but can still write off all of the expenses of owning the yacht. And these writeoffs are worth $Millions for even just one enterprising yacht owner.
I want to buy about a 25 foot pontoon boat, and I want to write off/depreciate the purchase price of the boat, writeoff all of the fuel used in towing it to the lake, writeoff the fuel used while cruising around the lake, writeoff maintenance on the boat and the tow vehicle, and even writeoff the booze and food consumed while on the pontoon. I wonder if the IRS would allow my writeoffs, they are just as “legitimate” as the yacht owners writeoffs, lol.
How Harlan Crow Cut His Taxes With Clarence Thomas Cruises — ProPublica
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Commercial use of assets (whatever they might be), and related expenses, are tax deductible provided some type of benefit (generally revenue) can be documented.
“Commercial use of assets (whatever they might be), and related expenses, are tax deductible provided some type of benefit (generally revenue) can be documented.”
from the link:
“ProPublica’s data for the company runs from 2003 to 2015. Rochelle Charter reported losing money in 10 of those 13 years… In order to claim these sorts of deductions, taxpayers must be engaged in a real business, one that’s actually trying to make a profit. If expenses dwarf revenues year after year, the IRS might conclude the activity is more of a hobby. That could lead to the deductions being disallowed, plus penalties. Nevertheless, the ultrawealthy often pass off their costly pastimes, like horse racing, as profit-seeking businesses. In doing so, they essentially dare the IRS to prove otherwise in an audit.”
So the IRS would want to see me making a profit off of my pontoon boat business, would demand that it show a profit over time, or it would be deemed a hobby. Seems like Mr Crow has himself a hobby by the standards that would be applied to you or me.
If there were enough IRS agents to audit these tax scams, $Billions would be coming into the tax coffers. And it sounds like it would be like shooting fish in the barrel easy for these audits to be won by the IRS.
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YES…
…and critically important is the possibility (and I think a high probability) that the desire to avoid taxes amongst a large part of of those who are pretty rich (like me as my costs drop and my investments did well) to the staggeringly rich leads to
funding dangerously opportunistic idiot congresscritters who, besides whoring to rich people into tax avoidance and often nothing else, are also whores to crazy maniacs who can whip up lots and lots of deluded voters by pushing for totalitarian/illiberal/wack job issues that endanger civil governance and, increasingly, human survival.
david fb
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