To begin with, your premise is that the only primary sources are press conferences and that press conferences only provide information in response to questions.
But even taking it literally, isn't that one of the things LLMs could actually do? You're essentially asking how a text generator could generate text. The real question is whether the questions would be any good, but the answer isn't necessarily no.
Author here. Our blog generally concerns property tax reform for our regular readership which is admittedly less clear to a new reader coming in cold: the intuitions I’m referring to is the average homeowner kind of assumes any tax reform (such as shifting taxes off buildings and onto land) is designed to impoverish them personally. The purpose of these maps is to show such people where land value in cities is really concentrated - Ie, not the m the suburbs. Mono centric city value might be intuitive to academics, but it’s not among regular everyday people.
Do you mean people underestimate how steep the gradient is, or they don't know it at all?
It seems kind of dubious to me that "everyday" people don't understand that land in cities is worth more than land in suburbs. It seems very transparent that you get a smaller lot size for the same price.
Both. They do understand that it’s worth “more” in the city but they vastly underestimate the magnitude, and they vastly underestimate what that means in terms of where the total bulk of land value is concentrated, and therefore what the distribution of winners and losers will be in any tax shift scenario.
> I was waiting to read about what these "wildly incorrect intuitions" were, but it's never explained. The maps correctly matched my own intuitions.
If you are into land value tax discourse maybe, but from my experience at least there is a big lack of awareness of the impact of economic activities on land values as they are not reflected by anything that people get in contact with. That's especially true because neither rents nor property taxes (the one thing people might have exposure to) fully capture it.
I had guessed land in Manhattan vs the bronx as 7x more valuable, based on living in the Bronx and paying rent. For the joys of living in the Bronx my rent was under $1k and I had a separate bathroom that was part of my studio apartment. Meanwhile Manhattan apartments wanted $2k and I had to use a bathroom shared with the floor.
Same. My assumption, before seeing this, was "ok, I'm going to guess land in a city is worth 100 or 1000x land anywhere else", and I guess I overestimated a bit.
>Death is a popular escape from deferred taxes. When you die, your obligations to the government vanish. Your heirs inherit assets/property at market value. Their assets depreciate from new cost bases.
The article only addresses a subset of economic activity. The larger portion of the adult population are wage earners or retirees, not business owners. For them, large investments in Traditional IRAs or 401k plans are most definitely not able to escape upon death the income taxes that were deferred.
>People sometimes get into trouble with this if they rapidly depreciate real estate and then sell it. Even if you sell for less than your purchase price it is possible to owe taxes.
But in the U.S. you can't rapidly depreciate real estate, it is generally straight-line over 27.5 or 39 years (residential vs. non-residential). The gain on real estate due to depreciation is technically referred to as Section 1250 gain, and if there is no gain (which is calculated against your adjusted basis, not purchase price), then it follows that there is no Sec. 1250 gain (often mistakenly called "depreciation recapture").
No, you can do cost segregation to classify some of the real property as Section 1245 (which is accelerated vs Section 1250). People doing this and then selling is how they get unexpected tax bills.
The “unexpected tax bill” usually comes from people not realizing they pulled those deductions forward earlier.
Also worth noting, if you don’t sell (or you 1031), that recapture can be deferred, which is why a lot of investors still use cost segregation aggressively.
This is a pretty clear breakdown of how 1245 vs 1250 recapture actually works on sale if anyone wants the full picture:
Do you have an example? I've seen dozens of IRS letters for dozens of different taxpayers and none of them had any "angry" language in them.
The myth that the IRS is trying to scare or traumatize you is just a dark pattern by certain 3rd party "tax resolution" services. The IRS is quite tolerant of the person who breaks the law by not filing and paying on time and provides many opportunities to come into compliance, starting with an automatic first-time abatement of the most common penalties.
They weren't angry with me. They were, however, obstinate. They disputed an education related credit. Each time I called them, they told me what documents they would need. I'd send it, and they'd continue the dispute. The cycle would repeat.
Here's what happened:
University sends me tax form. I file with my taxes.
"Just because they sent you the form doesn't mean you actually attended the school and paid your fees. Send us proof you paid them."
Sent proof of payments to the university.
"Just because you gave them money doesn't mean it was for tuition. For all we know they could be parking tickets. Send us the billing statement"
Called the university[1] to get a copy of the billing statement. Sent to the IRS to show the payments matched the tuition billed.
"Sorry, that's not enough. Send us a statement from the university with a line item showing the tuition was paid."
Sent it. They finally accepted it.
The university told me they'd never heard from any student that the IRS didn't simply accept the original tax form they send out.
[1] Keep in mind that this conversation happened 2-3 years after graduating.
I file every year and I had one year where the IRS miscalculated my taxes twice on an older return. I got the first notice which was ok and they requested me to respond, which I did. The 2nd notice they recalculated what I owe and said I owed more than the original notice and said if I didn't pay in the next 1-2 months I owe tens of thousands of dollars plus interest. I ended up calling them and getting someone who needed help from someone else. She ended up laughing and hanging up the phone. I called again and got an old lady who immediately knew they made a mistake and I ended up with a $0 balance. If you get the right person, it is ok. I was kind of scared I would have to owe all this money I already paid and then some. It ended well but I lost sleep for days thinking about it.
True, apparently I got backspace happy when Inposted the reply on mobile. I was talking about the belief by a perspective juror that law enforcement personnel are more credible or trustworthy than others due to their status as law enforcement personnel.
This is not quite true. The rules of evidence state that law enforcement (official) testimony is more credible than civilian testimony. Officials have a wide exemption from hearsay objections, if the offfical was working at an official task at the time.
There is nothing complicated about these, a 1099-R is one of the more straightforward info forms and any tax software can handle the input numbers and distribution code. Whether the IRA is inherited or not does not add complexity to the 1099-R, so not sure why this attribute gets multiple mentions.
The only other thing that might be considered complicated is the Form 1116 foreign tax credit. MFJ filers don't need it if total is $600 or less, so this might have added needless complexity.
Interesting that there is no Schedule A here, because that is one form (of many) that gives the lie to those who claim "oh the government already knows everything about your tax filing and could generate your return for you".
In short, this exercise didn't really involve any "intelligence" beyond what every tax software already does.
>excluding California, New York City, Seattle and Colorado.
I question your basic math skills if you conclude that those jurisdictions amount to only 1% of the U.S.
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