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6bfd747b0dc86e7c65bcac7346ac672e
|
fastest way to move USD to EUR
|
[
{
"docid": "8995e92eb9f6fb42039cb4f73c8a21d5",
"text": "You're asking three different things: What is the fastest way, what is the cheapest way and what is the easiest way. You will not find one method that is all three at once. The fastest way is a wire transfer. The cheapest way that I've encountered is a foreign exchange service like XE. The easiest way is probably Paypal since the money is already in Paypal.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "5e378ee1d0052e8237391cc8a26c5555",
"text": "How should we disregard leverage when it's the leverage that creates the 'wipe-out' potential? If you simply convert 100K EUR to USDollars, you dollars might then fluctuate a few thousand, maybe even 10K over a year, but the guy that only put up 1000 EUR to do this has a disproportionally higher risk.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "93ed9100864a8c4146441b8c7bc0dab5",
"text": "Now, is there any clever way to combine FOREX transactions so that you receive the US interest on $100K instead of the $2K you deposited as margin? Yes, absolutely. But think about it -- why would the interest rates be different? Imagine you're making two loans, one for 10,000 USD and one for 10,000 CHF, and you're going to charge a different interest rate on the two loans. Why would you do that? There is really only one reason -- you would charge more interest for the currency that you think is less likely to hold its value such that the expected value of the money you are repaid is the same. In other words, currencies pay a higher interest when their value is expected to go down and currencies pay a lower interest when their value is expected to go up. So yes, you could do this. But the profits you make in interest would have to equal the expected loss you would take in the devaluation of the currency. People will only offer you these interest rates if they think the loss will exceed the profit. Unless you know better than them, you will take a loss.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4f83fd4e12068a3dd80172e8afb3afef",
"text": "In addition to TransferWise that @miernik answered with and that I successfully used, I found CurrencyFair which looks to be along similar lines and also supports US$.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "52d5eb834909fe217fc1de584ecdacbd",
"text": "The best way is to approach your bank and fill out a transfer form to send USD to your US account (if you are visiting India). They will require quite a number of proof (AADHAR, PAN, Passport) copies. Otherwise speak to your bank about how to do a wire transfer from your India A/C to US; after de-moitization regulations have tightened, the best course of action would be to speak to your bank directly.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f36e485e0a7440fb5ee9b39247f2c2c5",
"text": "A lot depends on how much is in the account, and whether you expect to be returning (or having any sort of financial dealings) in Europe in the future. My own experience (about 10 years out of date, and with Switzerland) is that the easiest way to transfer reasonable amounts (a few thousand dollars) was simply to get it in $100 bills from the European bank. I also kept the account open for a number of years while living in the US (doing contracting that was paid into the European bank), and could withdraw money from American ATMs. I eventually had to close the account due to issues between the bank and the IRS. I think it was only that particular bank (UBS) that was the problem, though.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9e7ade037d44f4b9595d38d7ea099389",
"text": "The website http://currencyfair.com/ provides a service which gives you both a decent exchange rate (about 1% off from mid-market rate) and a moderately low fee for the transfer: 4 USD for outgoing ACH in the US, 10 USD for same-day US wire. For the reverse (sending money from the US to EU) the fees are: 3 EUR for an ACH, 8 EUR for a same-day EUR wire. It has been online for quite a while, so I assume its legit, but I'd do a transfer for a smaller sum first, to see if there are any problems, and then a second transfer for the whole sum.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "db7a27bf0afb30d12a004f760578f6a8",
"text": "\"is there anything I can do now to protect this currency advantage from future volatility? Generally not much. There are Fx hedges available, however these are for specialist like FI's and Large Corporates, traders. I've considered simply moving my funds to an Australian bank to \"\"lock-in\"\" the current rate, but I worry that this will put me at risk of a substantial loss (due to exchange rates, transfer fees, etc) when I move my funds back into the US in 6 months. If you know for sure you are going to spend 6 months in Australia. It would be wise to money certain amount of money that you need. So this way, there is no need to move back funds from Australia to US. Again whether this will be beneficial or not is speculative and to an extent can't be predicted.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4d09b3d9cf7ceb80f318ecff449b2bfb",
"text": "You can use a service like Transferwise to send money. The trick is that they allow sending money to yourself, from a GBP account to an EUR account, effectively making it an exchange shop. Their rates are usually very good, with the transfers happening on the same day most of the time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "60f3356747247bc63b7afea2a1b05324",
"text": "Remember that converting from EU to USD and the other way around always costs you money, at least 0.5% per conversion. Additionally, savings accounts in EU and USA have different yields, you may want to compare which country offers you the best yields and move your money to the highest yielding account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d1b4070ae8f86c7d172defb39f9cd1a7",
"text": "Rates are arrived at by the cumulative buying and selling on the foreign exchange market, much the same way that stock prices are arrived at. If there are more people wanting to buy dollars with euros, EUR/USD goes down. If more people want to buy euros with dollars, then EUR/USD goes up. The initial rate was about $1.18 per euro when it began trading on January 1st, 1999. It replaced the European Currency Unit at that time, which was a weighted basket of currencies of (more or less) the participating countries. You're correct about the printing press in the US and other countries. The exchange rates do reflect in part how much of a relative workout those printing presses get.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "11ae7e9ec09f2cb9a371d6f336c3dd6a",
"text": "Then, is it possible to deposit rubles at the same ATM to get USD in my account at the same rate? No this is not possible. Generally deposits into accounts outside country and not offered.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "12c783ab58e622f4b75a45d00cc7d18a",
"text": "There is a way I discovered of finding the current exchange rate before committing to buy, go to send payments, put in your own second email, pay 1gbp as the amount and it will give you the exchange rate and fees in your own currency, in my case euro, before you have to click on send payment",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d1105d0dfbec07b6b30ea37e35393157",
"text": "HSBC exchange spread between HKD and USD was 483 bps (1 bps is 0.0001) on their 24 hours exchange network a few weeks ago when I checked. It is very high for a pair of linked currencies which has very little fluctuation. One should expect less than 5 bps or even 1 bps. I did my currency conversion at a US brokerage which can take HKD currency and then I was able to pick the time/rate and amount I like to make the conversion. Basically, the currency pair runs within a tight band and you just need to buy USD with HKD at the time when it is near the edge of the band to your advantage. There is usually no fee on currency conversion. They make money through the spread. HSBC premier allows you to wire free among countries. I forget whether they offer tighter spread or not. Rob was right on about the cost of transferring money overseas. The majority of the cost is in the conversion, not the wiring.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "057c8941ff4fd43be95685dd3b8b1374",
"text": "I'm sorry I guess what i meant to say was, what's the downside here? Why isn't everyone doing this, what am i missing? Someone clarified that i'm completely exposed to FX risk if I bring it back. What if I am IN australia, how would I do this, short USD's?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bc09b6dfa8e6977d71d0fb8eb8d69b13",
"text": "Cheaper and faster are usually mutually exclusive. If you want faster, nothing is faster than cash. I would recommend using an ATM to withdraw cash from your USD account as Florints and then use as appropriate. If you want cheaper, then the cheapest currency conversion commonly available is foreign exchange / transfer services like OFX / XE Trade / Transferwise. Turn around time on these can be as little as a business day or two but more commonly takes a few business days, but they typically offer the best currency exchange rates at the lowest cost. If you must make regular payments to 3rd parties, you can set these services up to send the converted currency to a 3rd party rather than back to your own account.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
f2df8325f65682e96d2265840830a816
|
How to start personal finances?
|
[
{
"docid": "5d263c58e06cdef68f6e70bdde5012eb",
"text": "I'm assuming you're in Germany or Europe based on your question, but here's an American's perspective that should pertain you you as well: Once you have a steady income and an emergency fund large enough to keep you from going bankrupt, then start learning about retirement and investment options.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6d51479ea79b40327b9583dc739fd24e",
"text": "Personal finances are not intuitive for everyone, and it can be a challenge to know what to do when you haven't been taught. Congratulations on recognizing that you need to make a change. The first step that I would recommend is what you've already done: Assemble your bank statements so you can get an accurate picture of what money you currently have. Keep organized folders so you can find your bank statements when you need them. In addition to the bank statements for your checking and savings accounts, you also need to assess any debt that you have. Have you taken out any loans that need to be paid back? Do you have any credit card debt? Make a list of all your debts, and make sure that you have folders for these statements as well. Hopefully, you don't have any debts. But if you are like most people, you owe money to someone, and you may even owe more money than you currently have in your bank accounts. If you have debts, fixing this problem will be one of your goals. No matter what your debt is, you need to make sure that from now on, you don't spend more money than you take in as income. To do this, you need to make a budget. A budget is a plan for spending your money. To get started with a budget, make a list of all the income you will receive this month. Add it up, and write that amount at the top of a page. Next, you want to make a list of all the expenses you will have this month. Some of these expenses are more or less fixed: rent, utility bills, etc. Write those down first. Some of the expenses you have more control over, such as food and entertainment. Give yourself some money to spend on each of these. You may also have some larger expenses that will happen in the future, such as a tuition or insurance payment. Allocate some money to those, so that by the time that payment comes around, you will have saved enough to pay for those expenses. If you find that you don't have enough income to cover all of your expenses in a month, you need to either reduce your expenses somewhere or increase your income until your budget is at a point where you have money left over at the end of each month. After you've gotten to this point, the next step is figuring out what to do with that extra money left over. This is where your goals come into play. If you have debt, I recommend that one of your first goals is to eliminate that debt as fast as possible. If you have no money saved, you should make one of your goals saving some money as an emergency fund. See the question Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing for some ideas on what order you should place your goals. Doing the budget and tracking all of your spending on paper is possible, but many people find that using the right software to help you do this is much easier. I have written before on choosing budgeting software. All of the budgeting software packages I mentioned in that post are from the U.S., but many of them can successfully be used in Europe. YNAB, the program I use, even has an unofficial German users community that you might find useful. One of the things that budgeting software will help you with is the process of reconciling your bank statements. This is where you go through the bank statement each month and compare it to your own record of spending transactions in your budget. If there are any transactions that appear in the statement that you don't have recorded, you need to figure out why. Either it is an expense that you forgot to record, or it is a charge that you did not make. Record it if it is legitimate, or dispute the expense if it is fraudulent. For more information, look around at some of the questions tagged budget. I also recommend the book The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, which will provide more help in making a budget and getting out of debt.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bf7662a065b8944e12c197ad5175fda5",
"text": "\"A few practical thoughts: A practical thing that helps me immensely not to loose important paperwork (such as bank statements, bills, payroll statement, all those statements you need for filing tax return, ...) is: In addition to the folder (Aktenordner) where the statements ultimately need to go I use a Hängeregistratur. There are also standing instead of hanging varieties of the same idea (may be less expensive if you buy them new - I got most of mine used): you have easy-to-add-to folders where you can just throw in e.g. the bank statement when it arrives. This way I give the statement a preliminary scan for anything that is obviously grossly wrong and throw it into the respective folder (Hängetasche). Every once in a while I take care of all my book-keeping, punch the statements, file them in the Aktenordner and enter them into the software. I used to hate and never do the filing when I tried to use Aktenordner only. I recently learned that it is well known that Aktenordner and Schnellhefter are very time consuming if you have paperwork arriving one sheet at a time. I've tried different accounting software (being somewhat on the nerdy side, I use gnucash), including some phone apps. Personally, I didn't like the phone apps I tried - IMHO it takes too much time to enter things, so I tend to forget it. I'm much better at asking for a sales receipt (Kassenzettel) everywhere and sticking them into a calendar at home (I also note cash payments for which I don't have a receipt as far as I recall them - the forgotten ones = difference ends up in category \"\"hobby\"\" as they are mostly the beer or coke after sports). I was also to impatient for the cloud/online solutions I tried (I use one for business, as there the archiving is guaranteed to be according to the legal requirements - but it really takes far more time than entering the records in gnucash).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dd64e46c50726738ae17a75b96984b18",
"text": "\"There are many paths to success, but they all begin with education. You made the first big step just by visiting here. We have 17,000 questions, arranged by tag so you can view those on a given topic. You can sort by votes to see the ones that have the best member acceptance. I'll agree with Ben that one of the best ones is \"\"The correct order of investing.\"\" We both offered answers there, and that helps address a big chunk of your issue. The book recommendations are fine, you'll quickly find that each author has his/her own slant or focus on a certain approach. For example, one financial celebrity (note - in the US, there are private advisors, usually with credentials of some sort, there are those who work for brokers and also offers help, there are financial bloggers (I am one), and there are those who are on the radio or TV who may or may not have any credentials) suggests that credit cards are to be avoided. The line in another answer here, \"\"You're not going to get rich earning 1% on a credit card,\"\" is a direct quote of one such celebrity. I disputed that in my post \"\"I got rich on credit card points!\"\" The article is nearly 2 years old, the account accumulating the rewards has recently passed $34,000. This sum of money is more wealth than 81% of people in the world have. The article was a bit tongue in cheek (sarcastic) but it made a point. A young person should get a credit card, a good one, with no fee, and generous rewards. Use the card to buy only what you can pay back that month. At year end, I can download all my spending. The use of the card helps, not hinders, the budgeting process, and provides a bit of safety with its guarantees and theft protection. Your question really has multiple facets. If these answers aren't helpful enough, I suggest you ask a new question, but focus on one narrow issue. \"\"Paying off debt\"\" \"\"Getting organized\"\" \"\"Saving\"\" \"\"Budgeting\"\" all seem to be part of your one question here.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "4b65a7bc2e4502b2f706e84c5fc12f04",
"text": "\"As THEAO suggested, tracking spending is a great start. But how about this - Figure out the payment needed to get to zero debt in a reasonable time, 24 months, perhaps. If that's more than 15% of your income, maybe stretch a tiny bit to 30 months. If it's much less, send 15% to debt until it's paid, then flip the money to savings. From what's left, first budget the \"\"needs,\"\" rent, utilities, etc. Whatever you spend on food, try to cut back 10%. There is no budget for entertainment or clothes. The whole point is one must either live beneath their means, or increase their income. You've seen what can happen when the debt snowballs. In reality, with no debt to service and the savings growing, you'll find a way to prioritize spending. Some months you'll have to choose, dinner out, or a show. I agree with Keith's food bill, $300-$400/mo for 3 of us. Months with a holiday and large guest list throws that off, of course.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "416ef7846826a6105c8771f921f2ad33",
"text": "\"You don't state a long term goal for your finances in your message, but I'm going to assume you want to retire early, and retire well. :-) any other ideas I'm missing out on? A fairly common way to reach financial independence is to build one or more passive income streams. The money returned by stock investing (capital gains and dividends) is just one such type of stream. Some others include owning rental properties, being a passive owner of a business, and producing goods that earn long-term royalties instead of just an immediate exchange of time & effort for cash. Of these, rental property is probably one of the most well-known and easiest to learn about, so I'd suggest you start with that as a second type of investment if you feel you need to diversify from stock ownership. Especially given your association with the military, it is likely there is a nearby supply of private housing that isn't too expensive (so easier to get started with) and has a high rental demand (so less risk in many ways.) Also, with our continued current low rate environment, now is the time to lock-in long term mortgage rates. Doing so will reap huge benefits as rates and rents will presumably rise from here (though that isn't guaranteed.) Regarding the idea of being a passive business owner, keep in mind that this doesn't necessarily mean starting a business yourself. Instead, you might look to become a partner by investing money with an existing or startup business, or even buying an existing business or franchise. Sometimes, perfectly good business can be transferred for surprisingly little down with the right deal structure. If you're creative in any way, producing goods to earn long-term royalties might be a useful path to go down. Writing books, articles, etc. is just one example of this. There are other opportunities depending on your interests and skill, but remember, the focus ought to be on passive royalties rather than trading time and effort for immediate money. You only have so many hours in a year. Would you rather spend 100 hours to earn $100 every year for 20 years, or have to spend 100 hours per year for 20 years to earn that same $100 every year? .... All that being said, while you're way ahead of the game for the average person of your age ($30k cash, $20k stocks, unknown TSP balance, low expenses,) I'm not sure I'd recommend trying to diversify quite yet. For one thing, I think you need to keep some amount of your $30k as cash to cover emergency situations. Typically people would say 6 months living expenses for covering employment gaps, but as you are in the military I don't think it's as likely you'll lose your job! So instead, I'd approach it as \"\"How much of this cash do I need over the next 5 years?\"\" That is, sum up $X for the car, $Y for fun & travel, $Z for emergencies, etc. Keep that amount as cash for now. Beyond that, I'd put the balance in your brokerage and get it working hard for you now. (I don't think an average of a 3% div yield is too hard to achieve even when picking a safe, conservative portfolio. Though you do run the risk of capital losses if invested.) Once your total portfolio (TSP + brokerage) is $100k* or more, then consider pulling the trigger on a second passive income stream by splitting off some of your brokerage balance. Until then, keep learning what you can about stock investing and also start the learning process on additional streams. Always keep an eye out for any opportunistic ways to kick additional streams off early if you can find a low cost entry. (*) The $100k number is admittedly a rough guess pulled from the air. I just think splitting your efforts and money prior to this will limit your opportunities to get a good start on any additional streams. Yes, you could do it earlier, but probably only with increased risk (lower capital means less opportunities to pick from, lower knowledge levels -- both stock investing and property rental) also increase risk of making bad choices.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8dbae2056c5926e326a8d52d42980146",
"text": "\"What I would do, in this order: Get your taxes in order. Don't worry about fancy tricks to screw the tax man over; you've already admitted that you're literally making more money than you know what to do with, and a lot of that is supported, one way or another, by infrastructure that's supported by tax money. Besides, your first priority is to establish basic security for yourself and your family. Making sure you won't be subjected to stressful audits is an important part of that! Pay off any and all outstanding debts you may have. This establishes a certain baseline standard of living for you: no matter what unexpected tragedies may come up, at least you won't have to deal with them while also keeping the wolves at bay at the same time! Max out a checking account. I believe the FDIC maximum insured value is $250,000. Fill 'er up, get a debit card, and just sit on it. This is a rainy day fund, highly liquid and immediately usable in case you lose your income. Put at least half of it into an IRA or other safe investments. Bonds and reliable dividend-paying stocks are strongly preferred: having money is good but having income is much better, especially in retirement! Quality of life. Splurge a little. (Emphasis on a little!) Look around your life. There are a few things that it would be nice if you just had, but you've never gotten around to getting. Pick up a few of them, but don't go overboard. Spending too much too quickly is a good way to end up with no money and no idea what happened to it. Also, note that this isn't just for you; family members deserve some love too! Charitable giving. If you have more money than you know what to do with, there are plenty of people out there who know exactly what to do--try to go on living and build a basic life for themselves--but have no money with which to do so. Do your research. Scam charities abound, as do more-or-less legitimate ones who actually do help those in need, but also end up sucking up a surprisingly high percentage of donations for \"\"administrative costs\"\". Try and avoid these and send your money where it will actually do some good in the world. Reinvest in yourself. You're running a business. Make sure you have the best tools and training you can afford, now that you can afford more!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5c44b08854a031354dbe1f6080139836",
"text": "A Budget is different for every person. There are families making $40K/yr who will budget to spend it all. But a family making $100K of course will have a different set of spending limits for most items. My own approach is to start by tracking every cent. Keep a notebook for a time, 3 months minimum. Note, for homeowners, a full year is what it takes to capture the seasonal expenses. This approach with help you see where the money is going, and adjust accordingly. The typical goal is to spend less than you make, saving X% for retirement, etc. The most important aspect is to analyze how much money is getting spent on wasteful items. The $5 coffee, the $10 lunch, the $5-$7 magazines, etc. One can decide the $5 coffee is a social event done with a friend, and that's fine, so long as it's a mindful decision. I've watched the person in front of me at the supermarket put 4 magazines down on the counter. If she has $20 to burn, that's her choice. See Where can I find an example of a really basic family budget? for other responses.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a12a08c1ab1f090461328b8bd919817b",
"text": "\"Your questions seek answers to specifics, but I feel that you may need more general help. There are two things, I feel, that you need to learn about in the general category of personal finance. Your asking questions about investing, but it is not as important, IMHO, as how you manage your day-to-day operations. For example, you should first learn to budget. In personal finance often times \"\"living on a budget\"\" equates to poor, or low income. That is hardly the case. A budget is a plan on how to spend money. It should be refreshed each and every month and your income should equal your expenses. You might have in your budget a $1200 trip into the city to see a concert, hardly what a low income person should have in theirs. Secondly you need to be deliberate about debt management. For some, they feel that having a car payment and having student loans are a necessary part of life and argue that paying them off is foolish as you can earn more from investments. Others argue for zero debt. I fall in the later. Using and carrying a balance on high interest CCs and having high leases or car payments are just dumb. They are also easy to wander into unless you are deliberate. Third you need to prepare for emergencies. Engineers still get laid off and hurt where they are unable to work. They get sued. Having the proper insurance and sufficient reserves in the bank help prevent debt. Now you can start looking into investments. Start off slow and deliberate with investing. Put some in your company 401K or open some mutual funds on the side. You can read about them and talk with advisers, for free, at Fidelity and Vanguard. Read books from the library. Most of all don't get caught up in too much hype. Things like Forex, options, life insurance, gold/silver, are not investments. They are tools for sales people to make fat commissions off the ignorant. You are fortunate in that Engineers are very likely to retire wealthy. They are part of the second largest demographic of first generation rich. The first is small business owners. To start out I would read Millionaire Next Door and Stop Acting Rich. For a debt free approach to life, check out Financial Peace University (FPU) by Dave Ramsey (video course). His lesson on insurance is excellent. I am an engineer, and my wife a project manager we found FPU life changing and regretted not getting on board sooner. Along these lines we have had some turmoil, recently, that became little more than an inconvenience because we were prepared.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "aac3d7275a71c19714675cdce0db0350",
"text": "Most individuals do not need a personal financial advisor. If you are soon entering the world of work, your discretionary investments should be focused on index funds that you commit to over the long run. Indeed, the best advice I would give to anyone just starting out would be: For most average young workers, a financial advisor will just give you some version of the information above, but will change you for it. I would not recommend a financial advisor as a necessity until you have seriously complicated taxes. Your taxes will not be complicated. Save your money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2ccdf1e5dd46c8433b4bc98d3814f4ea",
"text": "We don't have a good answer for how to start investing in poland. We do have good answers for the more general case, which should also work in Poland. E.g. Best way to start investing, for a young person just starting their career? This answer provides a checklist of things to do. Let's see how you're doing: Match on work pension plan. You don't mention this. May not apply in Poland, but ask around in case it does. Given your income, you should be doing this if it's available. Emergency savings. You have plenty. Either six months of spending or six months of income. Make sure that you maintain this. Don't let us talk you into putting all your money in better long term investments. High interest debt. You don't have any. Keep up the good work. Avoid PMI on mortgage. As I understand it, you don't have a mortgage. If you did, you should probably pay it off. Not sure if PMI is an issue in Poland. Roth IRA. Not sure if this is an issue in Poland. A personal retirement account in the US. Additional 401k. A reminder to max out whatever your work pension plan allows. The name here is specific to the United States. You should be doing this in whatever form is available. After that, I disagree with the options. I also disagree with the order a bit, but the basic idea is sound: one time opportunities; emergency savings; eliminate debt; maximize retirement savings. Check with a tax accountant so as not to make easily avoidable tax mistakes. You can use some of the additional money for things like real estate or a business. Try to keep under 20% for each. But if you don't want to worry about that kind of stuff, it's not that important. There's a certain amount of effort to maintain either of those options. If you don't want to put in the effort to do that, it makes sense not to do this. If you have additional money split the bulk of it between stock and bond index funds. You want to maintain a mix between about 70/30 and 75/25 stocks to bonds. The index funds should be based on broad indexes. They probably should be European wide for the most part, although for stocks you might put 10% or so in a Polish fund and another 15% in a true international fund. Think over your retirement plans. Where do you want to live? In your current apartment? In a different apartment in the same city? In one of the places where you inherited property? Somewhere else entirely? Also, do you like to vacation in that same place? Consider buying a place in the appropriate location now (or keeping the one you have if it's one of the inherited properties). You can always rent it out until then. Many realtors are willing to handle the details for you. If the place that you want to retire also works for vacations, consider short term rentals of a place that you buy. Then you can reserve your vacation times while having rentals pay for maintenance the rest of the year. As to the stuff that you have now: Look that over and see if you want any of it. You also might check if there are any other family members that might be interested. E.g. cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. If not, you can probably sell it to a professional company that handles estate sales. Make sure that they clear out any junk along with the valuable stuff. Consider keeping furniture for now. Sometimes it can help sell a property. You might check if you want to drive either of them. If not, the same applies, check family first. Otherwise, someone will buy them, perhaps on consignment (they sell for a commission rather than buying and reselling). There's no hurry to sell these. Think over whether you might want them. Consider if they hold any sentimental value to you or someone else. If not, sell them. If there's any difficulty finding a buyer, consider renting them out. You can also rent them out if you want time to make a decision. Don't leave them empty too long. There's maintenance that may need done, e.g. heat to keep water from freezing in the pipes. That's easy, just invest that. I wouldn't get in too much of a hurry to donate to charity. You can always do that later. And try to donate anonymously if you can. Donating often leads to spam, where they try to get you to donate more.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "69cbc69ac62683bd3f6e8483896dcb81",
"text": "\"You can't get started investing. There are preliminary steps that must be taken prior to beginning to invest: Only once these things are complete can you think about investing. Doing so before hand will only likely lose money in the long run. Figure these steps will take about 2.5 years. So you are 2.5 years from investing. Read now: The Total Money Makeover. It is full of inspiring stories of people that were able to turn things around financially. This is good because it is easy to get discouraged and believe all kind of toxic beliefs about money: The little guy can't get ahead, I always will have a car payment, Its too late, etc... They are all false. Part of the book's resources are budgeting forms and hints on budgeting. Read later: John Bogle on Investing and Bogle on Mutual Funds One additional Item: About you calling yourself a \"\"dummy\"\". Building personal wealth is less about knowledge and more about behavior. The reason you don't have a positive net worth is because of how you behaved, not knowledge. Even sticking a small amount in a savings account each paycheck and not spending it would have allowed you to have a positive net worth at this point in your life. Only by changing behavior can you start to build wealth, investing is only a small component.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "819557c32a8d63b6258f95d14b085c0a",
"text": "Put your budget down on paper/spreadsheet/tool of choice (e.g Mint, YNAB, Excel). Track every cent for a few months. Seeing it written down makes The Financial Conversation easier. One simple trick is to pay yourself first. Take $100 and sock it away each month, or $25 per paycheck - send it to another account where you won't see it. Then live off the rest. For food - make a meal plan. Eggs are healthy and relatively cheap so you have breakfast covered. Oatmeal is about $2 for a silos' worth. Worst case you can live off of ramen noodles, peanut butter and tuna for a month while you catch up. Cut everything as some of the others have answered - you will be amazed how much you will not miss. Dave Ramsey's baby steps are great for getting started (I disagree with DR on a great many things so that's not advocating you sign up for anything). Ynab's methodology is actually what got me out of my mess - they have free classes in their website - where budgeting is about planning and not simply tracking. Good luck.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9a1057d9581e4575e06f536cbe97931e",
"text": "\"I have the same problem. The people above are right to an extent. You have to be more disciplined. But there is no reason why you can't get there in stages. If you try to do too much too fast you'll just give up. You need to find a system that removes some of the passive barriers affecting you. You need to think what in particular is overwhelming you. For me it was sitting down at the end of the month to write it all down. Writing it all down at the end of the week or even each day didn't work either because it was too much and I had forgotten what stuff was. I'm like you. The bank account is a record so why do I have to retype it or worse, hand write it out? Bleh. What I ended up doing was divide my expenses into four categories: food (to include all medical) shelter, transportation, spending -- with the first three being needs and the last being wants. Eating out is spending. I have four checking accounts with four debit cards. I saved up some money. I put a paycheck's worth of money in each because I didn't know how much I spent each month in each category, but knew I didn't spend an entire paycheck in any one category per month. Voila. No more work. At the store you just put things in the basket by category. At Target you pay for the food and toothpaste with the medical card and the DVD with the spending card. The cashiers don't care that you pay separately. And if you are buying so much crap that separating items by category is a problem, why the heck are you buying so much crap? At the end of the month you will now have a record of how much you spend on transportation, housing (electricity would be paid online from this account for example), medical and fun. That's all anyone needs to help you get started. You can then see if your housing is 35% or less (or whatever percentage you feel is right). The person trying to help the author above is right. A Target charge doesn't indicate whether you bought some oil for the car or cold medicine or a lock for the cabinet door that broke. But when you pay for each of these things under the right account, you do know how the money is allocated. Doing it this way requires little discipline. Before you put the item in the basket, you just ask yourself, is this a want or a need (which is something you should be doing anyway). If it's a need, is it for my car, house, or body. The house is what I use if i can't figure it out (like paying for the renewal of my professional license). that's it! You have to stand at the register for longer but so what. If you are spending all your salary and you stop when you have no more money (assuming you've run through all of your savings, which you will soon if you don't change), then you have no more money to spend. So if you are honest when you put things in the basket(need vs want), you are going to run out of spending money real quick. Your spending money account will be empty but you will still have food money. Set your debit card up so that it denies your charge if you dont have enough money. Once you realize how much you truly spend for needs in each category, yoy will only put that much in each account. Therefore, You can't use the house card to just \"\"borrow\"\" from it till next month. If you do, you won't be able to pay your bills. If you have so little discipline that you knowingly spend your bill money, then there is a deeper issue going on than just finding the right budgeting/cash flow system for you. Something is seriously wrong and you need to seek professional help. When someone is trying to help you, the first step is to determine what category you are spending too much in. Then when you realize it's the house category, for example, you will need to figure out why you are spending so much in that category. A bank statement wont tell you that. So you can do what we did. On every receipt --before you walk out of the store-- write down what each purchase is on the receipt. Then you can hand over the receipts to whoever is helping you. Most items are easily recognizable on the receipt so you wont have to write everything down. you should be doing this for insurance purposes anyway. Again, if your receipt is so blooming long that this is onerous, probably everything you just spent is not a need and maybe you need to turn right around and return stuff. Maybe you need to go to the store more often so there are only a few purchases on each receipt. Groceries are groceries. You don't need to detail that out. For Ikea when you have to purchase pieces to a set, we get a separate receipts for each. So the brackets and shelving for the bedroom will be on one receipt and the brackets and shelving for the other room will be on another receipt. Even at the store I cant figure out what all the little pieces are! But really, if you are making a decent enough salary, then you are probably spending too much on wants and are calling the items needs. So really your problem is correctly identifying needs from wants. Define a NEED. YOU. Make up your own definition of need Dwell on it. Let it become meaningful for you. Oranges are a need. Chocolate is not (no, really it's not! Lol!). So when you are putting the stuff in the basket, you dont even have to think about whether it's a need or not after a while. Wants go in the child seat if at all possible (to keep the number of items smaller). When you are ready to check out, add up the items roughly in the want pile. Ask yourself if you really want all that stuff. Then put some stuff back! At this point ask yourself is the 8 hours I will have to work to pay for this worth it? Am I really going to use it? Will using the item make me happy? Or is it the actual buying of the item that makes me feel powerful? Where will I put it? How much time will I need to maintain it? Then put some stuff back! Get some good goals, a kayaking trip or whatever. Ask yourself if the item is worth delaying the trip. How will I feel later? Will I have buyers remorse? If so, put it back! These are controls you can put into place that don't take a lot of discipline. Writing the items down on the receipt is a more advanced step you can take later. If you are with friends, go first so that you can write down the items while they are checking out. If you are private and don't want to share your method with your friends, go to the bathroom and in the stall write it down while they wait. Writing the items on the receipt while in the store is sort of a trigger mechanism for remembering to do so. That pulling out of the card triggers your memory to get out your pen or ask the cashier for one. The side benefit is catching someone using a cloned copy of your card. In the medical account if you see an Exxon charge, you know it's not yours. Also, while that one account is shut down, you have three others to rely on in the meantime. My spouse hated fumbling for the right card. They all look the same. Color code your cards. We have blue cross blue shield so it feels natural to have the food/medical account with a blue sticker (just buy a little circle sticker and place it on the edge so half is on the front and half is on the back -- nowhere near the strip). I've never been given a hard time about it. Our car is red so the car card is red, etc. If you think four cards is a lot to carry, ask yourself if you would rather carry four cards or keep track of every little thing? Good luck. I know you will find a system that works for you if you keep trying.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ba6dfeb344202e59f5c6b285133567aa",
"text": "A couple of good books I enjoyed and found very understandable (regarding the stock market): As for investment information you can get lost for days in Investopedia. Start in the stock section and click around. The tutorials here (free) give a good introduction to different financial topics. Regarding theoretical knowledge: start with what you know well, like your career or your other interests. You'll get a running start that way. Beyond that, it depends on what area of finance you want to start with. If it's your personal finances, I and a lot of other bloggers write about it all the time. Any of the bloggers on my blogroll (see my profile for the link) will give you a good perspective. If you want to go head first into planning your financial life, take a look at Brett Wilder's The Quiet Millionaire. It's very involved and thorough. And, of course, ask questions here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3efd6b04f4c411da91108e1ba6a83ead",
"text": "\"Debt cripples you, it weighs you down and keeps you from living your life the way you want. Debt prevents you from accomplishing your goals, limits your ability to \"\"Do\"\" what you want, \"\"Have\"\" what you want, and \"\"Be\"\" who you want to be, it constricts your opportunities, and constrains your charity. As you said, Graduated in May from school. Student loans are coming due here in January. Bought a new car recently. The added monthly expenses have me concerned that I am budgeting my money correctly. Awesome! Congratulations. You need to develop a plan to repay the student loans. Buying a (new) car before you have planned you budget may have been premature. I currently am spending around 45-50% of my monthly (net)income to cover all my expenses and living. The left over is pretty discretionary, but things like eating dinner outside the house and expenses that are abnormal would come out of this. My question is what percentage is a safe amount to be committing to expenses on a monthly basis? Great! Plan 40-50% for essentials, and decide to spend under 20-30% for lifestyle. Be frugal here and you could allocate 30-40% for financial priorities. Budget - create a budget divided into three broad categories, control your spending and your life. Goals - a Goal is a dream with a plan. Organize your goals into specific items with timelines, and steps to progress to your goals. You should have three classes of goals, what you want to \"\"Have\"\", what you want to \"\"Do\"\", and who you want to \"\"Be\"\"; Ask yourself, what is important to you. Then establish a timeline to achieve each goal. You should place specific goals or steps into three time blocks, Near (under 3-6 months), medium (under 12 months), and Long (under 24 months). It is ok to have longer term plans, but establish steps to get to those goals, and place those steps under one of these three timeframes. Example, Good advice I have heard includes keeping housing costs under 25%, keeping vehicle costs under 10%, and paying off debt quickly. Some advise 10-20% for financial priorities, but I prefer 30-40%. If you put 10% toward retirement (for now), save 10-20%, and pay 10-20% toward debt, you should make good progress on your student loans.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "732b1d87850d18987f69ce516b933752",
"text": "\"This Stack Exchange site is a nice place to find answers and ask questions. Good start! Moving away from the recursive answer... Simply distilling personal finance down to \"\"I have money, I'll need money in the future, what do I do\"\", an easily digestible book with how-to, multi-step guidelines is \"\"I Will Teach You To Be Rich\"\". The author talks about setting up the accounts you should have, making sure all your bills are paid automatically, saving on the big things and tips to increase your take home pay. That link goes to a compilation page on the blog with many of the most fundamental articles. However, \"\"The World’s Easiest Guide To Understanding Retirement Accounts\"\" is a particularly key article. While all the information is on the free blog, the book is well organized and concise. The Simple Dollar is a nice blog with frugal living tips, lifestyle assessments, financial thoughts and reader questions. The author also reviews about a book a week. Investing - hoping to get better returns than savings can provide while minimizing risk. This thread is an excellent list of books to learn about investing. I highly recommend \"\"The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing\"\" and \"\"The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need\"\". The world of investment vehicles is huge but it doesn't have to be complicated once you ignore all the fads and risky stuff. Index mutual funds are the place to start (and maybe end). Asset allocation and diversification are themes to guide you. The books on that list will teach you.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dcf7b6129f6a8a9145f65dc426f9870e",
"text": "PocketSmith is another tool you might like to consider. No personal banking details are required, but you can upload your transactions in a variety of formats. Pocketsmith is interesting because it really focus on your future cash flow, and the main feature of the interface is around having a calendar(s) where you easily enter one off or repetitive expenses/income. http://www.pocketsmith.com/",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8f07af10bc00f54fb90c1694898806ea",
"text": "\"Both OP and the author of the newspaper article should have titled this \"\"When the media take the time to explain the true state of our economy, people are less optimistic about the future.\"\" A simple link to [this](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/UMCSENT) graph would show that consumer confidence has rebounded, but dipped during the debt crisis (as it should have) because the media were reminding people how utterly weak our economy is. The fact that average hourly earnings today are exactly where they were in 2008 is a disaster. But to state that Americans perception of the economy is worse is flat wrong. They actually perceive it as improving when in fact it's on extremely shaky ground.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
f664b19075265c4eedbd1ff7bdbaf00e
|
Is threatening to close the account a good way to negotiate with the bank?
|
[
{
"docid": "4ba84bfbdd386cc7be5016258b24fb99",
"text": "If this matters to you a lot, I agree you should leave. My primary bank account raised chequing account and transaction fees. I left. When I was closing my account the teller asked for the reason (they needed to fill out a form) and I explained it was the monthly fees. Eventually, if a bank gets enough of these, they will change. I want to get back those features for the same price it cost when I opened it They are in their rights to cancel features or raise prices. Just as you are in your rights to withdraw if they don't give you a deal. The reason why I mention this is that this approach is comical in some instances. A grocery store may raise the price of carrots. Typically you either deal with it or change stores. Prices rise occasionally. thus they will lose a lot of money from my savings From my understanding, a bank makes a large chunk of their money from fees. Very little is from the floating kitty they can have because of your savings. If you have an investment account with your bank (not recommended) or your mortgage, that would matter more. I've had friends who have left banks (and moved their mortgages) because of the bank not giving them a better rate. Does the manager have any pressure into keeping the account to the point of giving away free products to keep the costumer or they don't really care? Depends. I've probably say no. One data point is an anecdote; it is expected in a client base of thousands that a few will leave for seemingly random reasons. Only if mass amounts of clients leave or complain will the manager or company care. A note: some banks waive monthly account or service fees if you keep a minimal account balance. I have one friend who keeps X thousand in his bank account to save the account fee; he budgets a month ahead of time and savings account rates are 0% so this costs him nothing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6cf50dea973f3c1c32df7f35b342b1eb",
"text": "Take your business elsewhere, where the products and services are priced at a level you agree to pay. This does two things. First, you end a bad business relationship. Why bad? Because you're not happy with the deal. Second, it sends an unambiguous signal to the losing bank that you were unhappy with their service. If they offer an exit survey, complete it, and be sure to tell them what made you unhappy with their service. In a free market economy, if consumers all take their business where the terms are favorable, supply and demand would force the banks to compete for consumers' business.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5b187e51a67e4252cd8dd1661b597fed",
"text": "\"To avoid going on and on in the comments I'm going to add this point that seems to be missing from the other answers. \"\"Banks often offer me deals while negotiating to open an account (since they are under high pressure to open an account)\"\" Would these happen to be the regionally advertised account opening deals like a $200 new checking account bonus if you deposit at least $x and leave it for at least 90 days? This kind of deal is not unique to you. This is not offered to you because of your unique negotiating ability. You need to understand the authority of the person you're dealing with. Products are designed in the corporate arm of the bank. Once a product is ready, it's rolled out to branches to be sold; sometimes with some fancy sign-up bonus. A checking account is a product, just like an iPhone. Apple took the headphone jack out of the iPhone 7, no amount of negotiating with the Genius at the Apple store will put it back for you. Vote with your wallet, show the bank you're unhappy by leaving.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "090a7555df9f2da31550cbfdc1929cdb",
"text": "\"I would hold off on making that threat (closing your account). First, because as others have said, it's not likely to help. And second, assuming you're willing to make good on that threat, you should only play that card as a final absolute last resort, because if it fails, and you close your account, there is little to nothing else you can try to get what you want. First, talk one-on-one with a personal banker at your local BA branch. You might be surprised at how helpful they can be. Next, try talking to customer service on the phone. After that, you might try sending a letter to corporate HQ. A lot depends on the particular \"\"feature\"\" you are talking about and why they removed it. It could be that 1) the bank finds the feature is just too costly provide for free, 2) there may be a technical reason why they can no longer provide it, 3) it could be as simple as that few to none of their customers (excluding you) are actually using the feature, or 4) it could be that due to changing regulation, or market forces, no bank is offering that feature anymore. Also, while they may not care specifically about your business, the local branch has an incentive to not drive customers away if it can be reasonably avoided.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2fa6e938d11ef82ce12ac841a01fabd6",
"text": "\"From the bank's perspective, they are offering a service and within their rights to charge appropriately for that service. Depending on the size of their operation, they may have considerable overhead costs that they need to recoup one way or another to continue operating (profitably, they hope). Traditionally, banks would encourage you to save with them by offering interest growth on your deposits. Meanwhile they would invest your (and all of their customer's) funds in securities or loans to other patrons that they anticipate will generate income for them at a faster rate than the interest they pay back to you. These days however, this overly simplified model is relatively insignificant in consumer banking. Instead, they've found they can make a lot more profit by simply charging fees for the handling of your funds, and when they want to loan money to consumers they just borrow from a central bank. What this means is that the size of your balance (unless abnormally huge) is of little interest to a branch manager - it doesn't generate revenue for them much faster than a tiny balance with the same number of transactions would. To put it simply, they can live without you, and your threatening to leave, even if you follow through, is barely going to do anything to their bottom line. They will let you. If you DO have an abnormally huge balance, and it's all in a simple checking or savings account, then it might make them pause for thought. But if that's true then frankly you're doing banking wrong and should move those funds somewhere where they can work harder for you in terms of growth. They might even suggest so themselves and direct you to one of their own \"\"personal wealth managers\"\".\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "6eeebb604046b2dd9274a55dbadbaf4f",
"text": "Your credit score is definitely affected by the age of your credit accounts, so if you frequently close one card and open another new one, you're adversely affecting the overall average age of accounts. This is something to consider and whether it is worth what you're trying to achieve. Sometimes, if you're a good customer and are insistent enough, you can simply call your credit card company and use the threat of closing your account in favor of another card that offers something attractive to get your current bank to sweeten its incentives to keep your business. I know many people who've done this with real success, and they spare themselves the hassle of obtaining a new card and suffering the short term consequences on their credit report. This might be an avenue worth trying before you just close the account and move on. I hope this helps. Good luck!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "41faca718c8433eb62c37726c8cf2c99",
"text": "\"As far as the banker himself goes, it's a customer service issue. WF is not going to tell you about their internal discipline (or oughtn't, anyway), other than potentially to confirm that the banker does or does not still work there; that's the closest they should get to telling you about it. I'm a (very) former retail manager, and that's absolutely the most I'd ever do in a case like this; and trust me, even with good customer service reps, you get requests to fire someone a lot, sometimes valid, sometimes not. You did the correct thing from your end: you brought the issue to their attention. Despite the quota, it's (hopefully) not permitted to sign people up without their permission (since that's illegal!), and I can say that in my retail experience, with these promotions with great incentive to cheat in this manner, one of the main things our loss prevention department did was to monitor data to see if people were illicitly signing people up for cards or otherwise cheating the system. That could be a very bad thing from a customer service point of view and from a legal point of view. What you should have done (or possibly did, but it's not clear in your post) is, after you reported the issue, asked for a re-contact on a particular date in the future - not \"\"after you've looked into it\"\", but \"\"Next friday I would like to get a call from you to discuss the resolution.\"\" Again, they're not going to tell you the discipline, but they should tell you at least that they've investigated it and will make sure it doesn't happen again, or similar. It's possible they will want more information from you at this point, and this is a useful way to make sure that request doesn't fall off of their plate. They should be able to, at least, tell you if there was a perceived issue on their end - it might be something meaningless to you, like \"\"He thought you said to sign up\"\", or something more descriptive, like \"\"He pushed the button to send you a notice, but our computer system screwed that up and made it an application\"\". You never know these days how easy it is to screw these things up. Now, they certainly should have fixed the issues on your end. Hopefully they did whatever you needed them to do banking-wise, or else you withdrew your money and went somewhere else. If not, follow up with that supervisor's supervisor, or go up a level or two to a regional director or equivalent. They may not be able to cancel the card for you, but the other banking-related things they certainly should fix. The card you probably just have to cancel and be done with. As far as the misuse of personal information, one thing I'd consider doing is placing a freeze on your credit report. Then this could never have happened - you would have to lift it to have your report pulled to be given the card. This is not free, though, so consider this before doing this.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ef7a302d6f545466a18a1a390d344142",
"text": "JohnFx is right: banks hate visits and attention from the regulator (both positive and negative). I would not threaten to file, just file away and let them get in contact with you. The local branch is stalling you. Do not play their game. Since you already went through the first level of support (local branch, phone support), get the bank ombudsman contact and file a complain. It is a major bank, most of the time getting a high level complain will be routed from the upside down through their structure, and hit them. Remember I said they are stalling you? Probably something went wrong, and they are buying time to try and fix it. Also it is worth noting that the ombudsman is usually a line of support above the phone customer support. If going through the ombudsman does not work and/or if you are not willing to wait anymore, file a complain with the government central bank, or similiar institution (trying to be broad here, even if you tagged USA - JohnFx has the link in his answer for the USA's regulator). You can even file a small claims lawsuit, though I do not know the cost of doing it in the USA (in my country small claims court is free for private citizens). Do not report your money as stolen; banks are bureaucratic institutions by nature, and they can silver tongue out of this claim.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "79bd7c4f01712b2cf475a97e1c718284",
"text": "I am not a lawyer, but the big thing to consider would be how you would split the money should either of you decide you want to close the account (or, at least her/his portion of the account). I suspect you'd also need to determine how to split the capital gains/losses for tax purposes. I can't really see any benefit to a joint account, unless you needed her money to qualify for some of the lower cost funds, and even then the difference in cost would be fairly low, much lower than the cost of having to potentially hire a lawyer to sort out all the questions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4fa9a958bcecfdec736a47e992d6ebfd",
"text": "\"Bank of America has been selling off their local branches to smaller banks in recent years. Here are a few news stories related to this: Along with the branch buildings, the local customers' savings and checking accounts are sold to the new bank. It is interesting that you were told that your savings account is being sold, but that your checking account will remain with BofA. I guess it depends on the terms of the particular sale. Here are your options, as I see it: Let the savings account move to the new bank, and see what the new terms are like. You might actually like the new bank. If you don't, you can shop around and close your account at the new bank after it has been created. Close your account now, before the move. If you have a different bank you'd like to move to, there is no need to wait. Since your checking account is apparently staying with BofA, you could move all your money from your savings account to your checking account, closing your savings account. Then after \"\"mid August\"\" when the local branch switches to the new bank and everyone else's savings account has moved, you can call up BofA and tell them you want to move some of the money from your checking account into a new savings account. If you really have your heart set on staying with BofA, option 3 looks like a good, easy choice. To address your other concerns: Bank of America is a big credit card company, so I doubt that your credit card is being sold off. Your credit card account should stay as-is. Even if your savings account and checking account are at a different bank, there is no need to switch credit cards. Your savings and checking accounts have nothing to do with your credit report or score, so there is no concern there. If you end up wanting to switch to a new credit card with a different bank, there are minor hits to your credit score involved with applying for a new card and closing your current card, but if I were you I would not worry about your credit score in this. Switch credit cards if you want a change, and keep your credit card if you don't.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2fe5739bea1df0c4b5309e27ba46262f",
"text": "\"They close accounts to render them inoperative. They never delete accounts because they want to retain the data to inform any future decision to give you credit. Also, 99% of the time, if a customer demands their account be deleted, it's because of adverse credit marks and the angry customer wants this accurate information to stop burning their credit report. The answer in this case absolutely must be \"\"heck, no!\"\" That pretty much precludes any valid reason to delete an account. As such, their business systems are not built in a way to make account deletion really possible. Even if you got a job with the company's data-processing department and had direct query/write accesses to the databases, you would find it technically inachievable to surgically remove the specific data (without risking serious damage to the entire DB). And it would still be in transaction logs, so not gone forever. Another reason to keep your account alive is to give you online access to statements. After all, the IRS can audit you 5 years after the fact, so it's real nice to be able to go back that far. Most places the statue of limitations is 6-7 years, so again, defending yourself in a lawsuit, here's raw data from an independent third party that you couldn't have faked. Strictly from a customer service POV, that means you can self-serve on requests like that, instead of having to involve expensive staff time. I totally get the annoyance of having yet another login/password you don't want to have flapping out there in the breeze potentially exposed to a cracker... but given that the account is closed, it's probably not going to cause you much trouble. If anything, change the password to one outside your normal choices, perhaps even one you don't know (retain). As long as you retain the email you have tied to the account, you can always reset the password on the off chance you ever need to get back in. Speaking of that, don't rely on your ISP's ([email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected]), get a Gmail account. I have a dedicated gmail account just for stuff like that.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b8ffd10937ad4725784fd520c2d4d18a",
"text": "You should ask a customer service rep how much you'll net if you close the account. There will probably be a hefty surrender fee. What you get back shouldn't be taxable as its a return of your own money, not a gain.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c379054d9bb2f8f8e00c23276160b954",
"text": "Close your card, now. Let your credit card provider / bank know about the situation. Never, ever ever, give out your password. Not to a friend, not to your bank and not even to your cat.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d0e336eb05e4701401e2367555b6ec53",
"text": "Banks make money by charging fees on products and charging interest on loans. If you keep close to a $0 average balance in your account, and they aren't charging you any fees, then yes, your account is not profitable for them. That's ok. It's not costing them much to keep you as a customer, and some day you may start keeping a balance with them or apply for a loan. The bank is taking a chance that you will continue to be a loyal customer and will one day become profitable for them. Just be on the lookout for a change in their fee structure. Sometimes banks drop customers or start charging fees in cases like yours.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8ecf09c77fda7d3724775f9ae0e8d959",
"text": "\"This is unfortunately the truth, and I spend a lot of time with my clients trying to help them through this process. One of the key metrics that banks judge themselves on is \"\"products per household.\"\" The more things you have attached to them, the less likely you are to leave, and they deliberately tie you in with more and more services, e.g. direct deposit, billpay, debit cards, credit cards, etc. If you want to switch but are held back by the daunting task of all the stuff you need to do, it's easier than most people think, and bankers at those smaller banks who are getting your accounts should be more than happy to do about 80% of the work for you. *The other 20% can only be done by you personally due to privacy laws, but your banker can guide you through that too. A prime example: A customer of mine wanted to switch, but he didn't want to go to the old bank to actually wait in line and go through with the nonsense of actually closing the account. I see that anxiety over confrontation a lot, by the way. So I have saved on my desktop a form letter is a simple request by the customer to close their account at 2B2F bank. They sign it, I notarize it, and send it off to the branch. The branch of receipt has to close the account per the request. Before we send that letter, we get everything set up with the new bank, draw the old one down to $10 or so, and give instructions to the old bank to remit a check payable to the customer and mail it to me. Then the old account is closed, and I just deposit that nominal amount into the customer's account. The customer literally never has to set foot in the old bank again. The unfortunate thing is that not everyone knows that these kinds of things are even possible: that your banker should help you with this stuff, or that you can do pretty much everything remotely. Plus, if you look at the smaller banks and CUs these days, they have eliminated the need or ubiquity (i.e. \"\"but their ATMs are everywhere!\"\") because a good bank or CU will never allow you to get charged to get your money, they will give you the direct line and email address of your branch manager, and a lot of places have mobile apps that allow you to deposit checks remotely.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0cdbf1f4a40dcc629730439f9a65c531",
"text": "Disclaimer: I am not a banker nor a lawyer. I am unaware of the exact term in English, there is a process where you can ask for a reversal of a payment if it was made in error and your former employer should have made use of this. After a month though, I'm fairly sure the period of eligibility for this reversal has passed. As far as I am aware there is no point in time where it becomes ok for you to take this money. If you wish to close the account I would advise contacting the company and obtaining their payment details so you can transfer them the money and subsequently close the account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "530173b55d2d3ae04fe2050175e127b8",
"text": "If you are the main account holder I would try contacting your bank directly, some of them have very accommodating services for this kind of thing. You might even consider going in person if you have a local branch, this might just make communicating easier. They will probably go over your recent transactions with you to identify the fraudulent ones. You might do this first by yourself if you have an online account. Once you identify the fraudulent purchases they will probably take a week or two to investigate/process and reimburse you. But do NOT just close the account and forget about it- first off closing an account that is close to $2,000 in debt probably isn't even possible. Second, if you forgot about it for a long time and just let you credit take a hit you could end up really paying for it(in the form of higher interest payments) later in life when you try to get anything financed like car or house or even student loans for college. And make no mistake that can amount to *maaany* thousands of dollars more than you would otherwise pay over the course of a loan. So don't damage your credit if you can avoid it. Long story short, banks have special departments to handle this kind of thing, so work with your bank. See how that goes, if you run into hangups you may need to bring your parents into the loop. Good luck!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "677afd9ef329ac743ab987505762a37a",
"text": "I had a similar situation a while ago, and here's what I learned: What are our options here to ensure that this company can't retry to take our money again via ACH? Close existing account and create a new one that has different account number? Yes. As a temporary solution keep ~$0 balance in the account so that their request for $840 can't be fulfilled? However, would our bank incur any fees because of insufficient funds each time the other company tries to charge us again? Bad idea. You may incur penalties for returned payment, or the bank may honor the payment and charge you overdraft fees. Provide to our bank the service termination notice that proves that we are not in business with the other company anymore and effectively block them. However, termination notice has only our signature Bank doesn't care. ACH withdrawal is akin to a check. The assumption is that the other side has entitlement. You can put stop payment once its processed and try to reverse it claiming fraud, but the end result will be #1: you'll end up getting a new account set up, while they try to recover the money. This is one of the reasons I'm reluctant allowing standing ACH authorizations any more. Generally, the American banking system is very much geared against the consumers, and in many ways is very retarded. In a more advanced countries (which is almost any other country than the US), the standing withdrawal authorization goes through your bank and can be revoked.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "47b97a3b10add61924eca7c618d61e4e",
"text": "No Drawbacks. One day, the bank might decide to kick you out. Typically, they send you a letter and warn that they will close it if it stays unused, and then you have to decide if you move some money into it or have it cancelled.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "64145ff9c1322efb673cce526bb70180",
"text": "I'd suggest you contact the Office of the Controller of Currency, who regulates BOA and file a complaint. This whole deal seems shady. According to the OCC FAQ, the fact that they closed the account is in their prerogative. However, I would think they are obligated to quickly return your funds, but can't find anything specific to that. The banks are very sensitive to having complaints filed against them, so if nothing else this may encourage them to be more helpful, even if your complaint isn't actionable. OCC Complaint Process. This topic on how long a bank can hold a large deposit before making funds available may also be helpful.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
d236e2bbcbe052f0d18cb28f0cd2ed9d
|
How to keep control of shared expenses inside marriage?
|
[
{
"docid": "8018eefd837fd80fcc3c6bd9a4cb2eb5",
"text": "\"JoeTaxpayer's answer mentions using a third \"\"house\"\" account. In my comment on his answer, I mentioned that you could simply use a bookkeeping account to track this instead of the overhead of an extra real bank account. Here's the detail of what I think will work for you. If you use a tool like gnucash (probably also possible in quicken, or if you use paper tracking, etc), create an account called \"\"Shared Expenses\"\". Create two sub accounts under that called \"\"his\"\" and \"\"hers\"\". (I'm assuming you'll have your other accounts tracked in the software as well.) I haven't fully tested this approach, so you may have to tweak it a little bit to get exactly what you want. When she pays the rent, record two transactions: When you pay the electric bill, record two transactions: Then you can see at a glance whether the balances on \"\"his\"\" and \"\"hers\"\" match.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a0032f41609f12a0c1aab22a62a5e196",
"text": "\"Why not start a third account, the \"\"house\"\" account? However you decide to fund it, equally or in proportion to income, you both chip in, and the payments for all joint expenses come from there. Rent, utilities, food, phone, cable.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9a898839170eac251d76c0ad96338106",
"text": "Being new does not allow me yet to vote on your question, but what a good question it is. We share our opinion in separating finances in our very well going mariage. Currently I have found a sort of okay solution in two websites. These are http://www.yunoo.nl and http://www.moneytrackin.com/. You can actually tag spendings with multiple tags. I don't like the idea that the data is on a remote server, but since I have not found a proper local software solution, I just naively trust their promise that your data is save. Then again our financial situation is not that special.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "84624381b7624dde4f8ca75a69dde84c",
"text": "Websites like neobudget dot com or mint dot com can help you see where your money is going, especially if you use mostly checks, debit cards, or credit cards for your purchases. They are less useful if you use cash often.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c22272852da2e6c84646ec8f569de306",
"text": "I'd say its time to merge finances!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "76204033de2f58b69cede37525d3fd94",
"text": "Call me old fashioned, but that sounds less like a marriage and more like a business partnership. Maybe there are business tools that would be useful.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "8ecad338e1109d173bd965ba1f489795",
"text": "\"What I've found works best when working on my personal budget is to track my income and spending two different ways: bank accounts and budget categories. Here is what I mean: When I deposit my paycheck, I do two things with it: It goes into my checking account, so the balance of my checking account goes up by the amount of my paycheck. I also \"\"deposit\"\" the money from my checking account into my various budget category balances. This is separate from my bank account balances. Some of my paycheck money goes into my groceries category, some goes into clothing, some into car fuel, entertainment, mortgage, phone, etc. Some goes into longer range bills that only happen once or twice a year, such as car insurance, life insurance, property tax, etc. Some goes into savings goals of ours, such as car replacement, vacation, furniture, etc. Every dollar that we have in a bank account or in cash in our wallets is also accounted for in a budget category. If you add up the balances of our bank accounts and cash, and you add up the balances of our budget categories, they add up to the same number. When we make a purchase, this also gets accounted for twice: The appropriate bank account (or cash wallet) balance gets reduced by the purchase amount. The appropriate budget category gets reduced by the purchase amount. In this way, we don't really need to worry about having separate bank accounts for different purposes. We don't need to put our savings goal money in a separate bank account from our grocery money, if we don't want to. The budget category accounting keeps track of how much money is allocated to each purpose. Now, the budget category amounts are not spent yet; the money in them is still in our bank account, and we can move money around in the categories, if we change our mind on how to allocate them. For example, if we don't spend all of our gas money for the month, we can either keep that money in the gas category, or we can move it to a different category, such as the car replacement category or the vacation category. If the phone bill is more than we expect, we can move money around from a different category to cover it. Now, back to your question: We allocate some money from each paycheck into our furniture category. But the money is not really spent until we actually buy some furniture. When we do, the furniture category balance and bank account balance both go down by the amount of the purchase. All of this can be kept track of on the computer in a spreadsheet. However, it's not easy to keep track of so many categories and bank balances. An easier solution is custom budgeting software designed for this purpose. I use and recommend YNAB.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b2cf81c153c54c9234313f8aa4c5e512",
"text": "Get a lawyer to put this in contract form, with everything spelled out explicitly. What is fair is what the two of you agree upon. My own suggestion: Divide the property into things which are yours, his, and shared, then have each of you be responsible for all your costs plus half the shared costs, but get all the benefits of your half. That would mean that if he rents out his half, all the rental income is his; if you decide to live in your half, all the savings of not paying rent are yours. Each of you pays your half of mortgage, insurance, and other shared costs. Repairs to shared infrastructure should be done by someone both of you trust. If you agree the work is needed and he does it rather than your hiring someone, you owe him the appropriate percentage of the costs; the two of you will need to agree on whether you owe him for that percentage of his time as well. Make sure you agree on some mechanism for one person offering to buy the other out, or to sell their half to the other party... or potentially to someone else entirely. (Personally, I would try to do that at soonest opportunity, to avoid some of the ways this can go wrong -- see past comments about the hazards of guaranteeing a loan; this works or doesn't work similarly.) Does that address your question?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3230ced50890e9ff193c42bbecc20c96",
"text": "This would be my suggestion: I would approach the problem thinking about the loss of monthly income you (as a couple) will be facing due to your wife's change to a part time job and divide that loss between the two of you. This means that if she goes from 2200 to 1100 monthly, you'd be losing 1100 per month. To share this loss, you could repay your wife your part of the loss (550) so both of you are 550 euro down. However, this 550 loss is a bigger burden for your wife than it is for you, so this amount could be adjusted to make up for this inequality. To make calculations simple and avoid developing a complicated model, you could give the 800 euro above your 3k to your wife for as long as she has to work part time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3950f1ad4e77c82d99f9948bacb7260b",
"text": "These earnings will likely have tax implications, depending on where in the world you are. So, your budget concerns not nearly as important as having an honest conversation about money with your husband. Better for him to be mad about the truth than to continue the lie, and potentially have this become a much larger legal, not just marital, problem.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4f7f94e3e875f0372c59f6f6d08ac30f",
"text": "\"Before you are married, I recommend keeping your finances separate. However, once you are married, I recommend combining your finances completely. In my opinion, marriage works best when you work together as a team, a single unit. You no longer have \"\"his money\"\" and \"\"her money,\"\" or \"\"his income\"\" and \"\"her income.\"\" Nor is there \"\"his debt\"\" and \"\"her debt.\"\" There is only \"\"our money,\"\" \"\"our income,\"\" \"\"our debt,\"\" and \"\"our budget.\"\" Indeed, if you are the one with less debt, isn't it in your household's best interest to help eliminate your spouse's debt as fast as possible? If you are the one with more income/employment, how do you quantify the monetary value of the spouse who stays at home more and manages the household? You can't, and it is best not to try. Instead, pool together all income and expenses, and work together to meet common goals. To do this, open up a joint bank account and close your individual accounts. Meet on a regular basis to decide your household budget. If you do that, it doesn't matter who is responsible for the mechanics of paying the bills or balancing the budget. These tasks just get assigned to someone, just like any other household chore. Usually, one of you will be more financially minded than the other, and that person will take the lead in setting the budget, paying the bills, balancing the checkbook, etc. However, it is important that both people are aware of what is going on and have access to the financial information. In our house, I am the one who takes the lead on financial matters. I pay the bills (out of our joint accounts) and set the monthly budget using YNAB software. However, my wife has the ability to look at YNAB at any time to see the budget, and she can log into the bank website to see the transactions there as well. No secrets. To be clear, we each have a small amount of cash/fun money that we can spend without worrying about checking in with the spouse on every little thing. But this is a small percentage of our budget, and we talk to each other before spending any significant amount of money.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ff94a74f6bff825a00d09b2a42624887",
"text": "\"Have her chip in for the regular expenses, utilities, food, etc., and a bit for \"\"rent.\"\" Then tell her to be sure to deposit to her retirement account, preferably a matched 401(k). It's admirable to want her to build 'equity' but it's pretty convoluted. You can't actually give her ownership, and in the event you break up (I know you won't, but this is to help other readers) you'll have to pay her back a lump sum when she moves out. That might not be so easy.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6d7b6bb090df4748ab7fa0ddccdc38a7",
"text": "For example: Dinner together: DR Food 50 DR Spouse 50 CR Credit Card 100",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1f9ba9aa9426ce230ecdcf7d11dfdf82",
"text": "If it makes your finances easier, why not? My wife and I had his/hers/our since before we were married. I also have an account to handle transactions for my rental property, and one extra for PayPal use. I was paranoid to give out a checking account number with authorization for a third party to debit it, so that account has a couple hundred dollars, maximum. All this is just to explain that your finances should be arranged to simplify your life and make you comfortable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "590852108b061575c8815783e9c46e36",
"text": "\"My suggestion would be that you're looking at this the wrong way, though for good reasons. Once you are a family, you should - and, in most cases I've seen, will - think of things differently than you do now. Right now, your post above is written from a selfish perspective. Not to be insulting, and not implying selfish is a bad thing - I don't mean it negatively. But it is how you're defining this problem: from a self-interested, selfish point of view. \"\"Fair\"\" and \"\"unfair\"\" only have meaning from this point of view; something can only be unfair to you if you come from a self-centered viewpoint. Try to think of this from a family-centric viewpoint, and from your significant other's point of view. You're absolutely right to want both of you to be independent financially as far as is possible; but think about what that means from all three points of view (your family's, yours, and hers)? Exactly what it means will depend on the two of you separately and together, but I would encourage you to start with a few basics that make it likely you'll find a common ground: First of all, ensure your significant other has a retirement account of her own that is funded as well as yours is. This will both make life easier if you split up, and give her a safety net if something happens to you than if you have all of the retirement savings. I don't know how your country manages pensions or retirement accounts, but figure out how to get her into something that is as close to equal to yours as possible. Make sure both of you have similar quality credit histories. You should both have credit cards in your own names (or be true joint owners of the accounts, not just authorized users, where that is possible), and both be on the mortgage/etc. when possible. This is a common issue for women whose spouse dies young and who have no credit history. (Thanks @KateGregory for reminding me on this one) Beyond that, work out how much your budget allows for in spending money for the two of you, and split that equally. This spending money (i.e., \"\"fun money\"\" or money you can do whatever you like with) is what is fundamentally important in terms of financial independence: if you control most of the extra money, then you're the one who ultimately has control over much (vacations, eating out, etc.) and things will be strained. This money should be equal - whether it is literally apportioned directly (each of you has 200 a month in an account) or simply budgeted for with a common account is up to you, whatever works best for your personal habits; separate accounts works well for many here to keep things honest. When that money is accounted for, whatever it is, split the rest of the bills up so that she pays some of them from her income. If she wants to be independent, some of that is being in the habit of paying bills on time. One of you paying all of the bills is not optimal since it means the other will not build good habits. For example, my wife pays the warehouse club credit card and the cell phone bill, while I pay the gas/electric utilities. Whatever doesn't go to spending money and doesn't go to the bills she's personally responsible for or you're responsible for (from your paycheck) should go to a joint account. That joint account should pay the larger bills - mortgage/rent, in particular - and common household expenses, and both of you should have visibility on it. For example, our mortgage, day-care costs, major credit card (which includes most of our groceries and other household expenses) come from that joint account. This kind of system, where you each have equal money to spend and each have some household responsibilities, seems the most reasonable to me: it incurs the least friction over money, assuming everyone sticks to their budgeted amounts, and prevents one party from being able to hold power over another. It's a system that seems likely to be best for the family as a unit. It's not \"\"fair\"\" from a self-centered point of view, but is quite fair from a family-centered point of view, and that is the right point of view when you are a family, in my opinion. I'll emphasize here also that it is important that no one party hold the power, and this is set up to avoid that, but it's also important that you not use your earning power as a major arguing point in this system. You're not \"\"funding her lifestyle\"\" or anything like that: you're supporting your family, just as she is. If she were earning more than you, would you cut your hours and stay at home? Trick question, as it happens; regardless of your answer to that question, you're still at the same point: both of you are doing the thing you're best suited for (or, the thing you prefer). You're both supporting the family, just in different ways, and suggesting that your contribution is more valuable than hers is a great way to head down the road to divorce: it's also just plain incorrect. My wife and I are in almost the identical situation - 2 kids, she works part time in the biological sciences while spending plenty of time with the kids, I'm a programmer outearning her significantly - and I can tell you that I'd more than happily switch roles if she were the bread earner, and would feel just as satisfied if not more doing so. And, I can imagine myself in that position, so I can also imagine how I'd feel in that position as far as how I value my contribution.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "42316c01d24d3b14292c14cd4bcae9c8",
"text": "\"My answer will suck but it comes from someone who has been married: You can't control another person or convince them to do something. What you can do is identify what they value and show how saving money increases their opportunities in what they value, but understand that the person could see what you're saying as invalid too. If you're single and reading this, this is why you verify that the person has similar values to you. Think of it like someone who wants good gas mileage: you show them a car that gets 60MPG, and immediately they say, \"\"Well, but that's not a cool car.\"\" So their value isn't the miles per gallon, and you may find the same is true with your spouse. India is paying more interest than the US and Europe in their savings accounts (I believe the benchmark interest rate is 7.5%), so - assuming your spouse values more money - showing him how to use money in savings to passively earn money might be a technique that works. But it may mean nothing to him because it's (1) not his actual value or (2) isn't enough to matter in his mind. In other words, this is all sales and whatever you do (and this is regardless of gender), don't manipulate, as in the long run that tends to build resentment. If there is a specific problem that you know he sees as a major issue and saving money can help, I'd recommend showing how savings would help with that problem. People generally like solutions to problems; just remember, what you think he sees as a problem may not be what he sees as a problem. This is why I chuckle when I see single people give married people advice; you can't just \"\"convince the person enough\"\" because you are not that person; we have to speak their language and we should be careful to avoid creating resentment. The part that sucks (or doesn't depending on who you ask) is that if we can't convince others to do it, we should do it ourselves. Either (1) earn money independently yourself when applicable (realizing that you are about to have a child and may be limited), or (2) save the money that you and your spouse have agreed that you're allotted, if this applies to your situation (a few spouses divide income even when one is an earner).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "69f20bd44d5ef7300d1080dd2bf9ccce",
"text": "\"There are different approaches, but here is what we do and what I recommend. Now that you are officially a married couple, open a joint bank account, and eliminate your individual accounts. There are several reasons for this. Having a joint account promotes unity and teamwork. When you only have a joint account, you do not have \"\"your income\"\" and \"\"her income,\"\" or \"\"your expenses\"\" and \"\"her expenses.\"\" You work together in everything. You discuss your goals and set your household budget together. If one of you makes more money than the other, that person is no longer \"\"worth more,\"\" because your incomes are pooled together. If one person with a higher income has more in their account than the other person does, it can lead to envy, which you do not want in your marriage. Having a joint account is more efficient and makes more sense. With separate accounts, who pays the rent/mortgage? Who pays the utilities, or buys the food? If you have separate accounts, it takes a lot of work to worry about what is \"\"fair\"\" when deciding how to divide up the expenses. With a single household budget and a joint account, you decide together what the household expenses are, and they get paid from one account. If one of you has debt, you both have debt. You work together to get it paid off and strengthen your financial situation in the process. Having a joint account forces you to discuss your finances together. Working toward common financial goals together is crucial in a strong marriage, but if you maintain your separate accounts, you might be tempted to put off these discussions until you are forced to by life circumstances. It is better to work together from the start, and joining your finances facilitates that. You are intending your marriage to last. Live your financial life like you believe that you are a team for life. If you live in a community property state, separate accounts are a fiction anyway; everything is treated as if it was pooled together in the event of a divorce. I understand that if you are used to having your own money, it can be difficult to give up that sole control over your income, but in my opinion, it is worth it. You will certainly hear of examples from couples who maintain separate accounts and make it work. In my humble opinion, combining your finances completely is easier to do right.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a3ac3834ecfdcdd0f6bcca73ae4e4620",
"text": "First: great job on getting it together. This is good for your family in any respect I can think of. This is a life long process and skill, but it will pay off for you and yours if you work on it. Your problem is that you don't seem to know where you money goes. You can't decide how whacky your expenses are until you know what they are. Looking at just your committed expenses and ignore the other stuff might be the problem here. You state that you feel you live modestly, but you need to be able to measure it completely to decide. I would suggest an online tool like mint.com (if you can get it in your country) because it will go back for 90 days and get transactions for you. If you primarily work in cash, this isn't helpful, but based on your credit card debt I am hoping not. (Although, a cash lifestyle would be good if you tend to overspend.) Take the time and sort your transactions into categories. Don't setup a budget, just sort them out. I like to limit the number of categories for clarity sake, especially to start. Don't get too crazy, and don't get too detailed at first. If you buy a magazine at the grocery store, just call it groceries. Once you know what you spend, then you can setup a budget for the categories. If somethings are important, create new categories. If one category is a problem, then break it down and find the specific issue. The key is that you budget not be more than you earn but also representative of what you spend. Follow up with mint every other day or every weekend so the categorization is a quick and easy process. Put it on your iPhone and do it at every lunch break. Share the information with your spouse and talk about it often.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ee53d9a7fe08b101f6f574f62e7ee25e",
"text": "\"I think the best way to handle her fears is to explain the income and expenses of the household overall, then explain the savings and investment strategies, retirement projections, and then finally explain a concrete number for allowable monthly or annual discretionary expenses (including charity, entertainment, vacations, etc.). You may have delicate relationship reasons for not doing this, but if you want a reasonable discussion, I would leave it this way. Please do not open with the question \"\"how much do you think we make\"\" or anything similar because that comes off as a trick or a quiz. It sounds very condescending and highlights how much more you know about finances than she does. It also highlights subconsciously how little mental control she has over the finances, which is likely to make her feel greater anxiety. You should emphasize how secure things are and explain why all the savings and investments you're using are conservatively likely to keep her financially secure. This sets the ground for her to be comfortable with the fact that she now has money, in contrast to perhaps a less financially secure personal history. After that, charitable expenses come out of the expense budget, same as vacations, recreation, etc. If it does not implicate financial security, then it's not dangerous to spend on charity. The alternate approach is to avoid the big financial talk and just propose a few small contributions this year. Then increase it every year incrementally. That may be easier to swallow once there's a psychological track record of donating without incident. Please go into the discussion remembering three things: But above all, please do not open up with a quiz. Have a simple discussion with her. Give her time to consider the expenses budget relative to the savings budget as a proportion of income. And then allow for the fact that she may place a strong premium on savings and a strong discount on charity.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8cfb67b87411b8ab1a0a5d43f0907389",
"text": "In my view you are going through quite a bit of logistics to achieve this. Best is drop this idea. If all of you are paying equally, then there is virtually no gain. A better pact is not to gift each other on wedding. We want to open a joint fixed deposit account in name of each one of us which should be locked-in till 2020 Yes it is possible to have Joint Account with multiple names. Ideally all should be present or a Power of Attorney can be created to include names of people who are not present. We want our money to be risk free and secured. Risk free and secured will mean Fixed Deposits.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "81b2ae9f0162027b20065683189591a2",
"text": "Option three is our preferred method, and we never argue about money. First we did a budget to work out ALL monthly joint out-goings (mortgage, bills, grocery etc). Then we each agreed who would pay what into the joint or household account - at the moment, I earn more than my wife, so I pay more, but we sit down every three or four months, to see if it needs adjusting. This way, we each keep our own individual accounts private, but pay what is necessary into the household account. We also set up a joint savings account; often at the end of the month, we'll have a little extra left in the household acount, and we siphon that off into joint savings to cover future unexpected costs - looks like our tumble dryer is on its last spin cycle at the moment, for example, and the joint savings account will be able to cover the cost of replacement. it all takes a bit of administration - but, as I say, we've never had a cross word about money, so the system seems to work.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
d13173a47ff206af82dbb93a501ad169
|
Prize Money, Taxes and Foreign / International Students
|
[
{
"docid": "f41ce7e0d2fa9c6ff52ac387f7808299",
"text": "The committee folks told us Did they also give you advice on your medication? Maybe if they told you to take this medicine or that you'd do that? What is it with people taking tax advice from random people? The committee told you that one person should take income belonging to others because they don't know how to explain to you which form to fill. Essentially, they told you to commit a fraud because forms are hard. I now think about the tax implications, that makes me pretty nervous. Rightly so. Am I going to have to pay tax on $3000 of income, even though my actual winning is only $1000? From the IRS standpoint - yes. Can I take in the $3000 as income with $2000 out as expenses to independent contractors somehow? That's the only solution. You'll have to get their W8's, and issue 1099 to each of them for the amounts you're going to pay them. Essentially you volunteered to do what the award committee was supposed to be doing, on your own dime. Note that if you already got the $3K but haven't paid them yet - you'll pay taxes on $3K for the year 2015, but the expense will be for the year 2016. Except guess what: it may land your international students friends in trouble. They're allowed to win prizes. But they're not allowed to work. Being independent contractor is considered work. While I'm sure if USCIS comes knocking, you'll be kind enough to testify on their behalf, the problem might be that the USCIS won't come knocking. They'll just look at their tax returns and deny their visas/extensions. Bottom line, next time ask a professional (EA/CPA licensed in your State) before taking advice from random people who just want the headache of figuring out new forms to go away.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "9988d3b8411fc7579ae2b5955c69a7bc",
"text": "I'm guessing you're asking about the US. Please add a location tag to your question. Unfortunately you cannot claim expenses paid for someone other than yourself or your dependents. In IRS publication 970, that deals with education credits, they give the following guidance: Expenses paid by others. Someone other than you, your spouse, or your dependent (such as a relative or former spouse) may make a payment directly to an eligible educational institution to pay for an eligible student's qualified education expenses. In this case, the student is treated as receiving the payment from the other person and, in turn, paying the institution. If you claim an exemption on your tax return for the student, you are considered to have paid the expenses. Also, you should keep the gift tax in mind: your help to your friend is only exempt from gift tax if you pay the tuition directly (i.e.: you write the check to the school cashier, not to your friend). If you give the money to your friend, it is subject to gift tax (which you have to pay). In some cases, someone who is not family may in fact qualify to become your dependent. For that he must live with you (in the same household), and be supported by you and not have any significant income. If that's the case with you and your friend, you might be able to claim him as a dependent and get some significant tax benefits, including the education credits. Consult your tax adviser if its relevant to your situation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6824a94d1bb6405c0a1cb9c114b590e3",
"text": "Why limit yourself to $28K per year? If you pay the tuition directly to the institution, it does not count against your annual or lifetime gift-giving totals. You could pay the entire tuition each year with no tax consequences. The only thing you can't do if you want to go this route is give the money to your children; that's what causes the gift tax to kick in. The money must be paid directly to the school.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5a0be73b37eaf66482f7de3ea92ab463",
"text": "A stipend received for the specific purposes of studies is not taxable. It is not clear from your question as to whether there are any strings attached to the money you receive. If its not for specific purpose, then its taxable as income and tax need to be paid accordingly. Please consult a CA and he can go through the specifics of your case.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ead7105d38ca69bb114bef6a04725d95",
"text": "\"Your friend probably cannot deposit the check to your U.S. bank account. U.S. banks that I've worked with will not accept a deposit from someone who is not an owner of the account. I don't know why not. If some stranger wants to make unauthorized deposits to my account, why should I object? But that's the common rule. You could endorse the check, your friend could then deposit it to his own account or cash it, and then transfer the money to you in a variety of ways. But I think it would be easier to just deposit the check in your account wherever it is you live. Most banks have no problem with depositing a foreign check. There may be a fairly long delay before you can get access to the money while the check clears through the system. I don't know exactly what you mean by a \"\"prize check\"\", but assuming that this is taxable income, yes, I assume the U.S. government would want their hard-earned share of your money. These days you can pay U.S. taxes on-line if you have a credit card. If you have not already paid U.S. taxes for the year, you should make an \"\"estimated payment\"\". i.e. you can't wait until April 15 of the next year, you have to pay most or all of the taxes you will owe in the calendar year you earned it.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "62712910ba548e7e7754ca3867353705",
"text": "I have been a private tutor on and off for about 30 years, in three countries, so I understand your concerns! I always kept records as though it was a real business - even if I only had one student I kept records of dates/times/names, and also tracked where the money went (I never spent it straight up - it always got deposited to complete the paper trail; yes, this is paranoia on my part). I've never been asked to prove anything with regards this income (although I have no Canadian experience). It's always been a case of tell the tax folks and make sure my arse is covered if they come asking questions. Hope this helps.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4d8138041b3ccb69d73a2e767b142572",
"text": "\"Not sure I understood, so I'll summarize what I think I read: You got scholarship X, paid tuition Y < X, and you got 1098T to report these numbers. You're asking whether you need to pay taxes on (X-Y) that you end up with as income. The answer is: of course. You can have even lower tax liability if you don't include the numbers on W2, right? So why doesn't it occur to you to ask \"\"if I don't include W2 in the software, it comes up with a smaller tax - do I need to include it?\"\"?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "208437e9b3c9d9f5f24f75c994df7c54",
"text": "I can clear the Thailand side for you. These are the sale tax in Thailand: Don't forget to ask your bank in Thailand to issue an (FTFs). This document shows the money originated from abroad (before in came to your Thai account) from outside of Thailand. The land office will ask for the (FTFs).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bba32b796ac32de9786cc1594733b90f",
"text": "I filed all my tax returns when I was abroad so they know how much I made (just not how much I saved). I smell problems here. If you were compliant wrt to your filings, you must have filed FBAR forms and form 8938. Even if you were below the threshold for form 8938, you will probably be above it when you move back to the US - the threshold for people living in the US is much lower. Do I still need to declare it, even though I might not intend to use this money to help my kids through college? I believe so. Here's what they want: Nothing there suggests that it is only limited to the accounts in the US or to the money you intend to use to help your kids through college.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "83df4804f6d180c21f33a8fd8381fbf1",
"text": "You don't need to file or do anything. The bank will report all transfers over 10 000, but chances are slim that it will even be looked at, if you don't do this every week. Worst case, someone will ask you about the source, and you tell them exactly what you wrote above (I had multiple international transfers over 60k and nobody ever asked). You said you paid his tuition, and he is now paying you back, so in case someone asks, you should be able to produce the documentation on the tuition payment - a bill, or your bank statement showing you paid it; and the amount should be matching, so you have proof. Note that if he pays you interest, it is taxable income. You are obligated to list it on your next tax filing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9847e66640bcf30db81505f3092a1c1f",
"text": "\"What's the value of the scholarship, and is it administered by itself or by the university? If by itself, the financial return discussed above drives. If by the university, they create the tuition, so it gets more interesting. If this is something that is administered and backstopped by the university, then keep in mind that while it may be named the \"\"John Doe Memorial Scholarship\"\" with $30000 in it's account under the endowment, the university overall is likely to cut some number of students' tuition in financial aid packages anyway. Let's say they substitute a generic tuition adjustment in past years with this happens-to-be-named \"\"John Doe Memorial Scholarship\"\" moving forward: the university can do this as long as they are not constrained in pricing power by laws and financial aid customs. There's the finance answer, and there's the fact that a university can create a \"\"coupon\"\" indefinitely (Similar in concept to the price discrimination where Proctor and Gamble can launch a new flavor of Tide at a high price to maintain the market position, and flood marketing channels with coupons) Also the university might find it to be an inexpensive benefit to the faculty to create a ceremony around a valued, deceased professor; collecting funds from other professors or staff to partially pay for it at finance price or even a slight loss.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0a49390557b893a6699e8fafbf22181f",
"text": "Your wife doesn't need to file a 2014 tax return because she's a nonresident and she didn't have any U.S. income. Her visa is irrelevant; it only matters what her status was (if she was in the U.S., but she wasn't) and if she had U.S. income. Your child doesn't need to file a tax return because she didn't have any income. There's a certain income threshold below which she doesn't have to file. Children generally never file their own tax returns. I don't know who told you otherwise. You may have to file if you had income (maybe including fellowship income and stuff like that) in the U.S. during the year? Did you? If you didn't then you probably don't need to file a tax return. Also, you said you're nonresident for the year. Are you sure about that? Students are generally nonresident for the first 5 calendar years, and resident thereafter. So if you came in 2009 or before, you would be resident for all of 2014; but if you came in 2010 or after, you would be nonresident for all of 2014. If you were in the first 5 calendar years of being a student, you also need to file Form 8843 regardless of whether you need to file a tax return. Nonresidents generally can't claim dependents. Residents can, however. A dependent will provide you with an exemption (it reduces your taxable income by a certain amount). You can also get the Child Tax Credit if your income is low enough. There is a U.S.-Sweden tax treaty. It has a section covering students. It may exempt some or all of your income from U.S. tax. Most universities provide free international tax programs for their international students and scholars. You should look to see if your school offers this. Don't go to outside tax filing places because those generally don't know anything about how to file for nonresidents.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a53135d4d0a34b6633eb9a5c4dd30d7f",
"text": "From Kiplinger: Can the money be used at a foreign college? You can use the money at hundreds of foreign colleges, including the University of Toronto, McGill in Montreal and many other Canadian schools. If U.S. students at the school qualify for federal financial aid, you can use 529-plan or ESA money to pay the bills without worrying that you'll lose any of the tax benefits.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a886ceef7a2b1df5dea7661dbe307641",
"text": "If your dad would have won money on the slot machines(And the amount was high), the casino would have given him a W2G to fill out right there and taxes would have been deducted. However, table games including Poker does not have any such rule. You will have to account for your winnings(And losses) at the end of the year. So, it is ok if you sign that paper, as you do not owe the IRS any money yet. You will still need to file your taxes as a non resident alien at the end of the year and attach the form W2G with it and pay your dues.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "acc343e3f8b327a4ea13ba9a21c8bb90",
"text": "Since you worked as an RA, the university should send you a W2 form. The taxable wages line in that form would be the sum of both the direct salary and employer paid benefits that are taxable. As such you should not need to do anything than enter the numbers that they provide you.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "aa0af11b5c6e1591cfa75e3f1c01b9a5",
"text": "This might be useful http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/individuals/cash-controls_en As far as I am aware there should be no issues with anything below 10000. But anything after that you have to declare.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
8f470f53b5035e258000fc4b64a5d32f
|
Roth IRA - Vanguard or Fidelity? If a college student had to pick one?
|
[
{
"docid": "8351c7da0a66759c0c00f43e8b8cc80e",
"text": "The minimum at Schwab to open an IRA is $1000. Why don't you check the two you listed to see what their minimum opening balance is? If you plan to go with ETFs, you want to ask them what their commission is for a minimum trade. In Is investing in an ETF generally your best option after establishing a Roth IRA? sheegaon points out that for the smaller investor, index mutual funds are cheaper than the ETFs, part due to commission, part the bid/ask spread.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5390f71696cf24ff56cc70ff71c024be",
"text": "Well, a couple things to keep in mind: Even if you have enough to meet the minimum initial amount, you need to have at least that much income in the year you make the contribution. You'll probably be best served saving up in a savings account so that by the time you have an income (and can thus make contributions), you have enough cash to meet the minimum initial contribution.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "adcaaa179270d076ea0768d8715a2b95",
"text": "A Roth IRA is just an account wrapper. Inside a Roth IRA you can have a plain 0.1% savings account, or a brokerage account, or an annuity or whatever. There's no rate of return for a Roth IRA. That particular calculator seems to assume you'll be wrapping a brokerage account in a Roth IRA and investing in the stock market. Over a long period 6% is probably a reasonable rate of return considering the S&P 500 has returned about 7% over the last decade.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1bf0ea6249344325dfb4fe3bbd68350f",
"text": "If you want to invest in stocks, bonds and mutual funds I would suggest you take a portion of your inheritance and use it to learn how to invest in this asset class wisely. Take courses on investing and trading (two different things) in paper assets and start trading on a fantasy exchange to test and hone your investment skills before risking any of your money. Personally I don't find bonds to have a meaningful rate of return and I prefer stocks that have a dividend over those that don't. Parking some of your money in an IRA is a good strategy for when you do not see opportunities to purchase cashflow-positive assets right away; this allows you to wait and deploy your capital when the opportunity presents itself and to educate yourself on what a good opportunity looks like.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7b36a9fa350b686fb9c7b06ab41bacef",
"text": "One of the things to consider is that most Vanguard funds are very tax efficient, that is they don't throw off much in the way of cap gains or taxable dividends while they grow. So if you do it right you won't have to pay much in the way of taxes on your investments even if they are in taxable accounts until retirement when at the very least you will have a lot more flexibility in managing your money and very likely be in a lower tax bracket. Roth is better if you are planning other types of investments, but if you are planning to hold an efficient Vanguard fund the difference isn't that bit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bc0a612d4954ffa4610f1e64fa9e68b5",
"text": "\"A Roth IRA is simply a tax-sheltered account that you deposit funds into, and then invest however you choose (within the limits of the firm you deposit the funds with). For example, you could open a Roth IRA account with Vanguard. You could then invest the $3000 by purchasing shares of VOO, which tracks the S&P 500 index and has a very low expense ratio (0.04 as of last time I checked). Fidelity has a similar option, or Schwab, or whatever brokerage firm you prefer. IRAs are basically just normal investment accounts, except they don't owe taxes until you withdraw them (and Roth don't even owe them then, though you paid taxes on the funds you deposit). They have some limitations regarding options trading and such, but if you're a novice investor just looking to do basic investments, you'll not notice. Then, your IRA would go up or down in value as the market went up or down in value. You do have some restrictions on when you can withdraw the funds; Roth IRA has fewer than a normal IRA, as you can withdraw the capital (the amount you deposited) without penalty, but the profits cannot be withdrawn until you're retirement age (I won't put an actual year, as I suspect that actual year will change by the time you're that old; but think 60s). The reason not to invest in an IRA is if you plan on using the money in the near future - even as an \"\"emergency fund\"\". You should have some money that is not invested aggressively, that is in something very safe and very accessible, for your emergency fund; and if you plan to buy a house or whatever with the funds, don't start an IRA. But if this is truly money you want to save for retirement, that's the best place to start. **Note, this is not investment advice, and you should do your own homework prior to making any investment. You can lose some or all of the value of your account while investing.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fcf00c058fb795ee2b66e94a51bb9c79",
"text": "\"According to the FAFSA info here, they will count your nonretirement assets when figuring the EFC. The old Motley Fool forum question I mentioned in my comment suggests asking the school for a \"\"special circumstances adjustment to your FAFSA\"\". I don't know much about it, but googling finds many pages about it at different colleges. This would seem to be something you need to do individually with whatever school(s) your son winds up considering. Also, it is up to the school whether to have mercy on you and accept your request. Other than that, you should establish whatever retirement accounts you can and immediately begin contributing as much as possible. Given that the decision is likely to be complicated by your foreign income, you should seek professional advice from an accountant versed in such matters.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bf11a18f0b61c31cae4772b7d6a1112e",
"text": "Vanguard has low cost ETFs that track the S&P 500. The ticker is VOO, its expense ratio is 0.05%, which is pretty low compared to others in the market. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but you won't have to pay tax on the dividends if it's in a retirement account such as a Traditional(pay taxes when you withdraw) or Roth IRA(pay income/federal/fica etc, but no taxes on withdrawal)...",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3e91d72aa4f57b335799dc7de27d28f9",
"text": "You aren't in trouble yet, but you are certainly on a trajectory to be later. The longer you wait the more painful it will be because you won't have the benefit of time for your money to grow. You may think you will have more disposable income at some point later when things are paid off, but trust me you wont. When college tuition kicks in for that kid, you are going to LAUGH at those student loan amounts as paltry. The wording of your question was confusing because you say in one place that you have no savings, but in another you claim to be putting away around $5k/year. The important point is how much you have saved at this point and how much you are putting in going forward. Some rules of thumb from Fidelity: (Based on your scenario) Take a look at your retirement account. Are you on track for that? It doesn't sound like it. Can you get away with your current plan? Sure, lots of people do, but unless you die young, hit the jackpot in the stock market or lottery, you are probably going to have to live WELL below your current standard of living to make that happen.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "16ed6dab292e7202b621d0760d331256",
"text": "529 College Savings Plans exist, which allow for tax-free savings for educational expenses, but I think you expect to go back to school too quickly for them to be worth the hassle. (They're more designed for saving for college for your kids.) Other than an IRA, you don't have many options for tax-advantaged accounts. In addition, since you plan to return to school, you should keep money around for that. Don't put that money in anything too volatile or hard to access. Since you don't plan on doing anything with the 80k in CDs right now, you can get away with higher risk with that money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a9cf8e5f5697bedcbe661ed6bd92ffa3",
"text": "I was in a similar situation and my method was this: since I already had a fidelity 401k account it was pretty easy to open a individual account through the website. From there you can just put the money into a general market mutual fund or exchange traded fund. I prefer low expense ratio funds like passive indexed funds since studies show that there isn't much benefit to actively traded funds. So I just put my money into the popular, low fee fund SPY which tracks to the S&P 500. I plan on leaving the money there for at least a year, if not several years, so I can pay the lower capital gains tax rate on any gains and avoid paying the commissions too many times. In your situation you might want to consider using the extra cash to max out you and your wife's 401k this year, since you aren't already taking full advantage of that. Often people recommend saving 10% or 15% of gross income throughout their career for retirement, so you're on the low side and maybe have a small bit of catch up to do. Finally you could also start a 529 education saving plan to save for kid's future college cost.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3542140ac5e9dea0cfc935e2ec36c743",
"text": "Where is the money coming from? If you already have the money (inheritance, gifts or similar) sitting in your account, you can just buy e.g. index funds from Vanguard, Robinhood or other low-cost brokerages. But first you should estimate how much money you need for your studies - it is a bit of a gamble to invest money that you'll need to withdraw in a few years time. Even though the average return may be quite high (12% sounds like an overestimate, more commonly quoted figure is 7%), over short timespans your stocks will go up and down randomly. Once you actually have a job and have income from it, then the 401k and IRA and similar retirement accounts start to make sense. There is no need to have all your savings in the same account, so you can start saving now already.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1e3cdc7396f7f31fd63aa01e35c6083b",
"text": "\"Roth is currently not an option, unless you can manage to document income. At 6, this would be difficult but not impossible. My daughter was babysitting at 10, that's when we started her Roth. The 529 is the only option listed that offers the protection of not permitting an 18 year old to \"\"blow the money.\"\" But only if you maintain ownership with the child as beneficiary. The downside of the 529 is the limited investment options, extra layer of fees, and the potential to pay tax if the money is withdrawn without child going to college. As you noted, since it's his money already, you should not be the owner of the account. That would be stealing. The regular account, a UGMA, is his money, but you have to act as custodian. A minor can't trade his own stock account. In that account, you can easily manage it to take advantage of the kiddie tax structure. The first $1000 of realized gains go untaxed, the next $1000 is at his rate, 10%. Above this, is taxed at your rate, with the chance for long tern capital gains at a 15% rate. When he actually has income, you can deposit the lesser of up to the full income or $5500 into a Roth. This was how we shifted this kind of gift money to my daughter's Roth IRA. $2000 income from sitting permitted her to deposit $2000 in funds to the Roth. The income must be documented, but the dollars don't actually need to be the exact dollars earned. This money grows tax free and the deposits may be withdrawn without penalty. The gains are tax free if taken after age 59-1/2. Please comment if you'd like me to expand on any piece of this answer.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "710dc43da017a9d1b5c67adf4f498817",
"text": "Assuming this'll be a taxable account and you're an above-average wage earner, the following seem to be biggest factors in your decision: tax-advantaged income w/o retirement account protection - so I'd pick a stock/stocks or fund that's designed to minimize earnings taxable at income and/or short-term gains rates (e.g. dividends) declining risk profile - make sure you periodically tweak your investment mix over the 2-3 year period to reduce your risk exposure. You want to be near savings account risk levels by the end of your timeline. But make sure you keep #1 in mind - so probably don't adjust (by selling) anything until you've hit the 1-year holding mark to get the long-term capital gains rates. In addition to tax-sensitive stock & bond funds at the major brokerages like Fidelity, I'd specifically look at tax-free municipal bond funds (targeted for your state of residence) since those generally pay better than savings on after tax basis for little increase in risk (assuming you stick w/ higher-rated municipalities).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "81939bf394cf030c75d5ae0710f414b5",
"text": "Saving for school is [fundamentally] no different than saving for any other major purchase: in addition to some of the great answers already provided, here are a couple other thoughts: Just to have the [simplified] numbers handy: If you can increase that to $2000/yr, after 18 years: One final thought - I would personally avoid the 529 plans because if your child decides to not go to school (eg goes in the Coast Guard, decides to be a farmer, enters the Peace Corps, etc), you're penalized on withdrawal, whereas with any other savings/investment methodology, you won't have those penalties.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ee9ec3cf0e095eca0867b554e25a864e",
"text": "\"If you have wage income that is reported on a W2 form, you can contribute the maximum of your wages, what you can afford, or $5500 in a Roth IRA. One advantage of this is that the nominal amounts you contribute can always be removed without tax consequences, so a Roth IRA can be a deep emergency fund (i.e., if the choice is $2000 in cash as emergency fund or $2000 in cash in a 2015 Roth IRA contribution, choice 2 gives you more flexibility and optimistic upside at the risk of not being able to draw on interest/gains until you retire or claim losses on your tax return). If you let April 15 2016 pass by without making a Roth IRA contribution, you lose the 2015 limit forever. If you are presently a student and partially employed, you are most likely in the lowest marginal tax rate you will be in for decades, which utilizes the Roth tax game effectively. If you're estimating \"\"a few hundred\"\", then what you pick as an investment is going to be less important than making the contributions. That is, you can pick any mutual fund that strikes your fancy and be prepared to gain or lose, call it $50/year (or pick a single stock and be prepared to lose it all). At some point, you need to understand your emotions around volatility, and the only tuition for this school is taking a loss and having the presence of mind to examine any panic responses you may have. No reason not to learn this on \"\"a few hundred\"\". While it's not ideal to have losses in a Roth, \"\"a few hundred\"\" is not consequential in the long run. If you're not prepared at this time in your life for the possibility of losing it all (or will need the money within a year or few, as your edit suggests), keep it in cash and try to reduce your expenses to contribute more. Can you contribute another $100? You will have more money at the end of the year than investment choice will likely return.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "12af5a0013c778afa9b7314dc89d6493",
"text": "ETFs are a type of investment, not a specific choice. In other words, there are good ETFs and bad. What you see is the general statement that ETFs are preferable to most mutual funds, if only for the fact that they are low cost. An index ETF such as SPY (which reflects the S&P 500 index) has a .09% annual expense, vs a mutual fund which average a full percent or more. sheegaon isn't wrong, I just have a different spin to offer you. Given a long term return of say even 8% (note - this question is not a debate of the long term return, and I purposely chose a low number compared to the long term average, closer to 10%) and the current CD rate of <1%, a 1% hit for the commission on the buy side doesn't bother me. The sell won't occur for a long time, and $8 on a $10K sale is no big deal. I'd not expect you to save $1K/yr in cash/CDs for the years it would take to make that $8 fee look tiny. Not when over time the growth will overshaddow this. One day you will be in a position where the swings in the market will produce the random increase or decrease to your net worth in the $10s of thousands. Do you know why you won't lose a night's sleep over this? Because when you invested your first $1K, and started to pay attention to the market, you saw how some days had swings of 3 or 4%, and you built up an immunity to the day to day noise. You stayed invested and as you gained wealth, you stuck to the right rebalancing each year, so a market crash which took others down by 30%, only impacted you by 15-20, and you were ready for the next move to the upside. And you also saw that since mutual funds with their 1% fees never beat the index over time, you were happy to say you lagged the S&P by .09%, or 1% over 11 year's time vs those whose funds had some great years, but lost it all in the bad years. And by the way, right until you are in the 25% bracket, Roth is the way to go. When you are at 25%, that's the time to use pre-tax accounts to get just below the cuttoff. Last, welcome to SE. Edit - see sheegaon's answer below. I agree, I missed the cost of the bid/ask spread. Going with the lowest cost (index) funds may make better sense for you. To clarify, Sheehan points out that ETFs trade like a stock, a commission, and a bid/ask, both add to transaction cost. So, agreeing this is the case, an indexed-based mutual fund can provide the best of possible options. Reflecting the S&P (for example) less a small anual expense, .1% or less.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
7c5e6ae8ab42ff3548bcd0e792cabd56
|
Strategies for paying off my Student loans
|
[
{
"docid": "6e749d75baf01102ec18f7913553b5f3",
"text": "My advice is that if you've got the money now to pay off your student loans, do so. You've saved up all of that money in one year's time. If you pay it off now, you'll eliminate all of those monthly payments, you'll be done paying interest, and you should be able to save even more toward your business over the next year. Over the next year, you can get started on your business part time, while still working full time to pile up cash toward your business. Neither you nor your business will be paying interest on anything, and you'll start out in a very strong position. The interest on your student loans might be tax deductible, depending on your situation. However, this doesn't really matter a whole lot, in my opinion. You've got about $22k in debt, and the interest will cost you roughly $1k over the next year. Why pay $1k to the bank to gain maybe $250 in tax savings? Starting a business is stressful. There will be good times and bad. How long will it take you to pay off your debt at $250 a month? 5 or 6 years, probably. By eliminating the debt now, you'll be able to save up capital for your business even faster. And when you experience some slow times in your business, your monthly expenses will be less.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c4b02dc1399ac958d79cd4f2b20e5a4c",
"text": "Considering I'm in a nearly identical situation, I'll speak to my personal strategy and maybe there's some value for you as well. You have ~$22k in loans, which you say you could pay off today. So, what I read is that you're sitting there with a $22k investment and want to know which investment to make: pay down debt, invest in yourself/start up, or some variation between those options. Any investor worth his salt will ask a couple of questions: what is my risk, and what is my gain? Paying off your student loans offers no financial risk at the cost of opportunity risk, and gains you returns of 3.4%, 6.8%, 3.4%, 4.5%, and 6.8%. Those percentage gains are guaranteed and the opportunity risk is unknown. Investing in a startup is inherently risky, with the potential for big payoffs. But with this investment, you are accepting a lot of risk for potentially some gain (it could be the next Apple, it could also fail). So, with your situation (like mine), I'd say it's best to accept the easy investment for now and fully vet out your tech start up idea in the meantime.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "95a81e325d968cc68b3e4865abd6482b",
"text": "Starting up a company is fun, stressful, and exciting. It's also often a lot harder than you expect. Income, revenue, and cash flow are big concerns, and you need to be able to eat while you're hunting down your first paying customers. Don't pay off all the debt if that will leave you without any money for living expenses. Perhaps a compromise is in order? Pay off the high-interest loans first, and continue to make payments on the lower-interest loans while you start up. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "29922615ca4e1e72732efd362bcf2a41",
"text": "\"I don't have enough reputation in this community to comment yet, so this \"\"answer\"\" is really just a minor furtherance of JoeTaxpayer's comment... THe only thing I might add to this great answer - make all minimum payments, and send all extra available cash to the highest interest card. If OP will pay in full after 6 month, this may make little difference, but it will be a few dollars in his pocket instead of the bank. – JoeTaxpayer♦ Dec 2 at 17:42 ...on Ben Miller's excellent answer. Once you have taken JoeTaxpayer's advice and ordered your cards by interest rate and have paid off the highest interest card first, take that same payment and add it to your next-highest card's minimum payment. Once THAT is payed off, take the combined amounts that you were paying to cards one and two and apply it all to card three along with its minimum payment. You see where this is going. By aggregating your payments thusly, each card will get paid off successively more quickly than the previous one, without increasing your overall payments to the cards, and you are retiring the highest-interest debt first. Your last card will then be paid off in record time, because you have combined all of the payments for cards 1-4. One other amplification: Since we don't know which account has which interest rate, it may be more advantageous to order them by balance, with the smallest first. That way you retire the first card quickly, which gives you a sense of accomplishment, and by the time you reach your highest balance card, you have snowballed all of your payments and are now throwing boulders instead of pebbles at it. You'll have to do that math to see which method has the most benefit. Then roll it all into the car payment. Then roll it into your student debt. Etc.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "109e10e02e4805f60b4c8bff30f5dee2",
"text": "Finish off the student loans. If your absolute goal is saving as much as you possibly can for retirement, then you of course will be best off by maxing your IRA contribution every year. However, student loans are just another thing hanging over you, and nothing feels better than getting rid of a large debt. Pay them off, take yourself out to a nice dinner to celebrate, and tuck away what you have left over in your IRA. Paying off student loans is a great accomplishment - celebrate it! The difference long-term will be negligible.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ab0b002019998dadfd61f5d5231a3e07",
"text": "Excellent question and it is a debate that is often raised. Mathematically you are probably best off using option #1. Any money that is above and beyond minimum payments earns a pretty high interest rate, about 6.82% in the form of saved interest payments. The problem is you are likely to get discouraged. Personal finance is a lot about behavior, and after working at this for a year, and still having 5 loans, albeit a lower balance, might take a bit of fight out of you. Paying off such a large balance, in a reasonable time, will take a lot of fight. With the debt snowball, you pay the minimum to the student loan, save in an outside account, and when it is large enough, you execute option #2. So a year from now you might only have three loans instead of five. If you behaved exactly the same your balance would be higher after that year then using the previous method. However often one does not behave the same. Because the goals are shorter and more attainable it is easier to delay some gratification. The 8 dollars you are saving in your weekly gas budget, because of low prices, is meaningful when saving for a 4K goal, where it is meaningless when looking at it as a 74K goal. With the 4K goal you are more apt to put that money in your savings, where the 74K goal you might spend it on a latte. For me, the debt snowball worked really well. With either option make sure that excess payments actually go to a reduction in principle not a prepayment of interest. Given this you may be left with no option. For example if method #1 you only prepay interest, you are forced to use option #2.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1d7a72fc20efe28acab0c88c7cfe516f",
"text": "You are making close to 200 K a year which is great. The aggressive payments on loans takes out around 30K which is good. The fact that you are not able to save is bad. Rather than pushing off your savings to later, scale down the lifestyle and push the upgrade to lifestyle for later",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "152b637940a0aa25faccd23d12b3fb4e",
"text": "\"Place your savings into safe interest-bearing accounts. Take out the loans. Keep constant track of your net worth. Having 100,000$ and 80,000$ in interest free debt is better than having 20,000$. You can always convert money + debt into less money and less debt, but you cannot always convert less money and less debt into more money and more debt. Now, there are risks; that is why you want an interest-bearing account to place your savings in to offset the debt. This minimizes the risk. It also reduces the return. It is arguable that you should be at your most financially risky at a young age. I'd argue that your future earnings are your by far largest asset at this point, and as a high school student going into college those future earnings have extremely high variability. Your financial situation is extremely unpredictable; being conservative about your high-leverage student-loan + education investments is probably justified. The fact you can manage arbitrage here means you should; and if you are careful, you can eliminate risk and get almost risk-free profit from the maneuver. If your money is in less than perfectly safe accounts, you are now doing leveraged investing and magnifying the risk and return of said investments. If your money must be spent on college or you'll be financially punished, then you may want to consider pulling it out before the last possible legal point just in case something goes wrong. Apparently 529 plans may not treat \"\"paying off student loans\"\" as a valid way to spend the money. You may need to talk to a lawyer or accountant about the legality of using these plans to pay off student loans, and the tax/penalties involved.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ecd7676456c99f54acf9236555651deb",
"text": "Its almost always better to pay off loans sooner rather than later. Being debt free is amazingly liberating. However, in your case, I'd be reluctant to make significant headway on a loan repayment program. Here's why: The best investment you can make, right now, is in yourself. Completing your education should be the top priority. The next would be to meet the requirements of a job after received after school is complete. So what I would do is estimate the amount of money it would take to complete school. Add to that an estimate of an amount to move to a new city and setup a household. That amount should be held in reserve. Anything above that can used to pay down loans. Once you complete school and get settled into a job, you can then take that money and also throw it at your loans.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "493fd71559a53d5e00e75781492a9850",
"text": "Keep 3-6 months (or more if you need to, for me the number is 9 months) worth of expenses in an emergency fund. Put the rest against the student loan. The length of time depends on your situation. I have family, and work in IT. Changing jobs takes me longer, because ... reasons. Having less than 6-9 months of buffer means that I have to rush and possibly take a position that is not a good fit, or get behind on payments. So, set aside your emergency fund, add to it if you need to. Once it is fully funded, take the money you were using to fund the emergency fund and budget that to clearing student loans. Also, don't start new credit cards, and be sure to never carry a balance on them. I know it seems like a lot, but keep in mind that yours is small, and you'll likely be able to knock it out in a very short time. Edit (after OP listed expenses): Taking into account the expenses you listed, it looks like you have about 2000 per month in expenses (if you're in emergency fund mode, luxuries can wait, and you can tighten the belt on food, so go with the lower end of your estimate.) Lets say you have 600 a month to work with. My suggestion would be bring savings up to $6000. That will take you two months. Then pay 850 a month to student loans. You'll be paid off in a year, and still have 6000 for emergencies. Once you're done, you will have 850 a month to save and invest. With patience, persistence and care, you can start a nest egg that will allow you to remain financially independent. Search around for FIRE (financial independence, retire early) and other strategies for retirement savings and investing. Be sure to save for retirement. The worst inheritance to leave your loved ones would be to become financially dependent upon them in your later years. And watch out for credit, it's a trap.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "934d84cd728be42ec4f3f01466e993c3",
"text": "Please direct personal finance questions to /r/personalfinance However, my opinion is that you are unlikely to earn more than 7% annualized returns from any combination of asset offerings in your 401k over the next several years; therefore, you should pay off your student loans first. I am ignoring tax consequences, but /r/personalfinance may be able to provide a more quantitative answer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1ee79f89d2eccdf0d137f986fd276ece",
"text": "It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to save up and wait to make a payment on any of these loans. Any dollar you pay today works better than saving it and waiting months to pay it, no matter which loan it will be applied to. Since your lender won't let you choose which loan your payment is being applied to, don't worry about it. Just make as big a payment as you can each month, and try to get the whole thing out of your life as soon as possible. The result of this will be that the smaller balance loans will be paid off first, and the bigger balance loans later. It is unfortunate that the higher interest rate loans will be paid later, but it sounds like you don't have a choice, so it is not worth worrying about. Instead of thinking of it as 5 loans of different amounts, think of it as one loan with a balance of $74,000, and make payments as quickly and as often as possible. For example, let's say that you have $1000 a month extra to throw at the loans. You would be better off paying $1000 each month than waiting until you have $4000 in the bank and paying it all at once toward one loan. How the lender divides up your payment is less significant than when the lender gets the payment.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4b9b57c631289fcd2c862379e592700e",
"text": "Basically you have 4 options: Use your cash to pay off the student loans. Put your cash in an interest-bearing savings account. Invest your cash, for example in the stock market. Spend your cash on fun stuff you want right now. The more you can avoid #4 the better it will be for you in the long term. But you're apparently wise enough that that wasn't included as an option in your question. To decide between 1, 2, and 3, the key questions are: What interest are you paying on the loan versus what return could you get on savings or investment? How much risk are you willing to take? How much cash do you need to keep on hand for unexpected expenses? What are the tax implications? Basically, if you are paying 2% interest on a loan, and you can get 3% interest on a savings account, then it makes sense to put the cash in a savings account rather than pay off the loan. You'll make more on the interest from the savings account than you'll pay on interest on the loan. If the best return you can get on a savings account is less than 2%, then you are better off to pay off the loan. However, you probably want to keep some cash reserve in case your car breaks down or you have a sudden large medical bill, etc. How much cash you keep depends on your lifestyle and how much risk you are comfortable with. I don't know what country you live in. At least here in the U.S., a savings account is extremely safe: even the bank goes bankrupt your money should be insured. You can probably get a much better return on your money by investing in the stock market, but then your returns are not guaranteed. You may even lose money. Personally I don't have a savings account. I put all my savings into fairly safe stocks, because savings accounts around here tend to pay about 1%, which is hardly worth even bothering. You also should consider tax implications. If you're a new grad maybe your income is low enough that your tax rates are low and this is a minor factor. But if you are in, say, a 25% marginal tax bracket, then the effective interest rate on the student loan would be more like 1.5%. That is, if you pay $20 in interest, the government will then take 25% of that off your taxes, so it's the equivalent of paying $15 in interest. Similarly a place to put your money that gives non-taxable interest -- like municipal bonds -- gives a better real rate of return than something with the same nominal rate but where the interest is taxable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "080056d630bff8fef41c2b47594e2d9a",
"text": "I'd be tempted to pay off the 35k in student loans immediately, but if you have to owe money, it's hard to beat zero percent. So I don't think I would pay it all off. Maybe cut it in half to make it a more comfortable payment. Currently, you are looking at $6K a year to pay them off, which is about 20% of your income. Cut that in half and you will sleep better! Definitely pay off the medical and credit cards. You're probably paying 20% on that. Clean it up. If you need a car, buy yourself a car. You have no savings, so I would put the rest in some kind of money market savings account. You are at an age where many people go through frequent changes. Maybe you get your own place, and you'll need to furnish it. Maybe you go back to school. Maybe you get married or have kids. Maybe you take a year off and backpack through Europe or Asia. You have a nice little windfall that puts you in a nice position to enjoy being young, so I would not lock it up into a 401k or other long term situation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6236c533a709b202a826720071e1f5a7",
"text": "\"Although there is no single best answer to your situation, several other people have already suggest it in some form: always pay off your highest after-tax (!) interest loan first! That being said, you probably also have heard about the differentiation for good debt vs. bad debt. Good debt is considered a mortgage for buying your primary home or, as is the case here, debt for education. As far as I am concerned, those are pretty much the only two types of debt I'd ever tolerate. (There may be exceptions for health/medical reasons.) Everything else is consumer debt and my personal rule is, don't buy it if you don't have the money for it! Meaning, don't take on consumer debt. One other thing you may consider before accelerating paying off your student debt, the interest paid on it may be tax deductible. So you should look at what the true interest is on your student loan after taxes. If it is in the (very) low single digits, meaning between 1-3%, you may consider using the extra money towards an automatic investment plan into an ETF index fund. But that would be a question you should discuss with your tax accountant or financial adviser. It is also critical in that case that you don't view the money invested as \"\"found\"\" money later on, unless you have paid off all your debt. (This part is the most difficult for most people so be very cautious and conscious if you decide to go this route!) At any rate, congratulations on making so much progress paying off your debt! Keep it going.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7f4660e81b6cac0d44cedec2044272b9",
"text": "My recommendation would be to pay off your student loan debt as soon as possible. You mention that the difference between your student loan and the historical, long-term return on the stock market is one-half percent. The problem is, the 7% return that you are counting on from the stock market is not guaranteed. You might get 7% over the next few years, but you also might do much worse. The 6.4% interest that you will save by aggressively paying off your debt is guaranteed. You are concerned about the opportunity cost of paying your debt early. However, this cost is only temporary. By drawing out your debt payments, you have a long-term opportunity cost. By this, I mean that 4 years from now, you could still have 6 years of debt payments hanging over your head, or you could be debt free with all of your income available to save, spend, or invest as you see fit. In my opinion, prolonging debt just to try to come out 0.5% ahead is not worth the hassle or risk.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6dd9d2457e4a336bbf0ff70a00cdd6f6",
"text": "Should I use the profit to pay down student loans or just roll it into my next house in order to have a lower mortgage amount? Calculate the amount of interest in each scenario, where the two scenarios are: Use extra cash to pay down student loans, take out a full mortgage. Use extra cash to make a big down payment on the next house, keep paying down student loans at normal rate. In both scenarios the student loan rate will stay the same. However in the second scenario you may get a lower interest rate from making a larger down payment. So then calculate the total interest resulting from each scenario: student loan rateXremaining student loan balance=student loan interest new mortgage rateXnew mortgage balance=mortgage interest scenario 1 interest = student loan interest+mortgage interest student loan rateXstudent loan balance = student loan interest new mortgage rate with large down paymentXnew mortgage balance after large down payment = mortgage interest scenario 2 interest = student loan interest+mortgage interest Whichever scenario's interest is lower will save money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9bda4d0109e8e1b2b372413376670038",
"text": "Try to cash flow as much as you can. You can work and go to school, if you replace playing beer pong with a job you'll be in a lot better off at graduation, grade wise and debt wise. Make a budget, for each month and for each semester, plan cut cost accordingly. Used books, sometimes even the next to recent version. Read this book for more info Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching off My Parents",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
1d57d3f2a2ec5b3345a8f9a25b29ee23
|
Is there a White-list of Trusted Online Vendors?
|
[
{
"docid": "8c45ec28837ec110e437b539ed937129",
"text": "\"I'm going to go with \"\"ridiculous notion.\"\" :) The vast majority of businesses are legitimate, run by honest people trying to earn a living for themselves and their employees. These days, almost all of them accept credit cards. Crooked businesses are a very small minority. When a bad business over charges you, you dispute the charge, and you get your money back. But that's not all that happens. The bad merchant pays penalties for this, and if it happens more than a couple of times, the merchant loses their merchant account with their bank, which means that they lose their ability to accept credit card payments anymore. A crooked business is not able to rob people via credit card for very long at all. A whitelist would certainly not be able to include every legitimate business. And a blacklist would never be able to be kept up-to-date, as bad businesses come and go continuously; as soon as a business was added to the blacklist, they would lose their merchant account and would no longer need to be on the list. What you are describing is very rare. My brother once had a bad experience with a tech support company where they were repeatedly charging him for a service they never performed. But a credit card chargeback took care of it. If that company made a habit of that, I'm sure that they got in trouble with their bank. Instead, the most common credit card fraud happens when crooks use your credit card at perfectly legitimate businesses. But your whitelist/blacklist wouldn't help you with that at all.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "d855a6639f5e5496aa280c5cbeca1f5a",
"text": "I don't understand why businesses that supposedly offer a legitimate product decide to host 3rd party code. Is their actual product so worthless that they need the extra few cents from ad revenue? And there are open source analytic packages that tell you how many times people click on things on your web page and how they were referred. I don't see the reason behind relying on other packages unless you really need to compare yourselves to the competition-- which probably doesn't come up in boardroom meetings every day.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7cefa73cfa45f438cf139281ac832089",
"text": "No. Brokers and HFT are two different entities, mostly. No HFT shops have prior information about a client order. PM me if you want to discuss more in detail. Getting beyond the scope of this post.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bdfc7642df93ade5220c28e1d09e3f68",
"text": "This kind of thing is right up my ally. I am based in Australia so suggestions will be Australian based. I was looking at starting up a private consultancy. Basically use neto as your ERM and online website. link in to xero for accounts. Netos predictive inventory module tells you when to restock on raw materials.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "88de644e447bf7a91d1e7d0a69d2ff47",
"text": "Embrace the web. Let folks search for info while they're in your store. make the Salesmen do it. give your customer all the info they need to pull the trigger and buy the product. Just say we'll match Amazon or Newegg on this and the sale's a lock.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "21fe332df485ef839ba1dfa57f47ed91",
"text": "Have you considered a service that allows you to generate credit card numbers on the fly? DoNotTrackMe allows you to generate a CC number on the fly, for a specific amount. If the vendor tries to charge more, it will fail. If it gets stolen, it's useless. I don't know the specific fees off hand, but they have an annual fee for the feature. Still, for the protection, doesn't seem like a bad way to go. Note: I have no affiliation with DNTM, I'm just a very happy user of their email protection products. The Masked Cards faq is here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5ff0d2b58a0072ba0922d31010282b2d",
"text": "There are companies who sell data gleaned in aggregate from credit card providers to show how much of what category of product is sold online or offline, but that data is not cheap. 1010data is one such data aggregator we are talking to right now. Haven’t seen pricing yet but I expect 6 figures to access the data",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3387cda63d8029bd1e06eacb936a17bf",
"text": "The are legit, I have been a member for more than 15 years. I have used there services many many many times. I have never sold any, I have only been a customer. The friend who sold me the service did very well for himself selling and recruiting.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "69244fe41231d70ad9024bb0c7344d57",
"text": "It sounds like the items shipped directly from the vendor need to be recorded into your system when the order is confirmed, that way cost of goods sold and revenue don't get lost. You'll have a record of re-orders and cancels and other such things too.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2c682ef5283bb51dbcdf86854fba99e8",
"text": "Yes, but note that some credit card companies let you create virtual cards--you can define how much money is on them and how long they last. If you're worried about a site you can use such a card to make the payment, then get rid of the virtual number so nobody can do dirty deeds with it. In practice, however, companies that do this are going to get stomped on hard by the credit card companies--other than outright scams it basically does not happen. (Hacking is another matter--just pick up the newspaper. It's not exactly unusual to read of hackers getting access to credit card information that they weren't supposed to have access to in the first place.) So long as you deal with a company that's been around for a while the risk is trivial.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6b316b9df9a23a3168f27e058368574f",
"text": "Whether or not I trust them depends entirely on the personal finance application. In the cases of Mint and Quicken, I would trust both. Always make sure to do plenty of research before submitting any personal information to any source.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "94676d16248b873816005083aa338782",
"text": "Are you looking for a company that can help you get more website visitors? If yes, then get in touch with White Digital (NE) Ltd! This company offers search engine optimisation services that can help business websites attract potential customers. Such services include keyword and competitor research, full website SEO health check, Google set-up and directory citations, and so much more! Visit White Digital (NE) Ltd’s website, https://white.digital, for more information on web design and development services.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "356d0adb9f20c3d726d205d4fb67286f",
"text": "The closest thing to purchasing prospects we did was buy an email list that contained the names of several thousand people who fit our profile. Personally, I am not in favor of doing that. The companies you are buying from really don't understand what you want and you end up getting a hodge podge of information that never really gets you anywhere. Outside of that I am sure there are other services that provide prospecting, but the best lists are always developed internally. Good luck!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ee3f659b49268480e5c6e2a7b63b6b66",
"text": "Are you dropshipping (I'll have to tune my answer a bit if so)? Suggest you're probably looking for a supply chain consultant. As you've found, ecomm is a bit of a loaded term and will get you the wrong kinds of folks. Sounds like in your case, you're looking for more classical-style supply chain help and e-commerce just happens to be the vehicle with which the consumers place orders - though correct me if I'm off.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "035e03018aa1d2da9746f0c75cd7ad7f",
"text": "Seems like it's more dependent on who you want to be your supplier. The times I've been involved in requesting this, each company had its own application form. They usually need proof of business activity, which gets back to SpecKK's answer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c9ca73093da2b020403e5db113fab51c",
"text": "No. At least not in my case. Without divulging too much information. I don't tell any of my distributors how to sell my company's products our engage their customer base, but due to the nature of my business, I am frequently called on for product selection, marketing, quality, etc. Distributors often utilize their account reps and managers to help them push products on their customer base. The only way this could be seen as truthful, in my opion, is direct retail distribution. Because how are you going to track the product after it has been purchased by a consumer.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
4f0c891ee5211052bfe8ea10c12cc953
|
What does the settlement date of short interest mean?
|
[
{
"docid": "e1fdcd7e54bb83602f5e55c5b27dc940",
"text": "At the bottom of the page you linked to, NASDAQ provides a link to this page on nasdaqtrader.com, which states Each FINRA member firm is required to report its “total” short interest positions in all customer and proprietary accounts in NASDAQ-listed securities twice a month. These reports are used to calculate short interest in NASDAQ stocks. FINRA member firms are required to report their short positions as of settlement on (1) the 15th of each month, or the preceding business day if the 15th is not a business day, and (2) as of settlement on the last business day of the month.* The reports must be filed by the second business day after the reporting settlement date. FINRA compiles the short interest data and provides it for publication on the 8th business day after the reporting settlement date. The dates you are seeing are the dates the member firms settled their trades. In general (also from nasdaq.com), the settlement date is The date on which payment is made to settle a trade. For stocks traded on US exchanges, settlement is currently three business days after the trade.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "f4644d808e6ad59b2b32bb273f916605",
"text": "Just adding on a touch, when market participants refer to swaps they are talking about the fixed leg. So for example, if I said a 5y Receiver, it means I am receiving fixed, paying floating. Ie I want yields to fall. Opposite for a Payer. Swaption is just an option on these swaps, so basic swaptions: Long Payer Short Payer Long Receiver Short Receiver",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "274e727752ce9db03711d4dd8ccc5128",
"text": "No. You shorted the stock so you are not a shareholder. If you covered your short, again you are not a shareholder as you statement of account must show. You cannot participate in the net settlement fund.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "95c2adec4356b3c197307f57a31ce4a5",
"text": "Brokerage firms must settle funds promptly, but there's no explicit definition for this in U.S. federal law. See for example, this article on settling trades in three days. Wikipedia also has a good write-up on T+3. It is common practice, however. It takes approximately three days for the funds to be available to me, in my Canadian brokerage account. That said, the software itself prevents me from using funds which are not available, and I'm rather surprised yours does not. You want to be careful not to be labelled a pattern day trader, if that is not your intention. Others can better fill you in on the consequences of this. I believe it will not apply to you unless you are using a margin account. All but certainly, the terms of service that you agreed to with this brokerage will specify the conditions under which they can lock you out of your account, and when they can charge interest. If they are selling your stock at times you have not authorised (via explicit instruction or via a stop-loss order), you should file a complaint with the S.E.C. and with sufficient documentation. You will need to ensure your cancel-stop-loss order actually went through, though, and the stock was sold anyway. It could simply be that it takes a full business day to cancel such an order.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f1a0bab43fe7bd385d1f5b7263d5969a",
"text": "It's not compound interest. It is internal rate of return. If you have access to Excel look up the XIRR built-in function.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "91284308cba499b85643f7b82623a40f",
"text": "Underwriting manager here. It's not a big deal. Call your processor or loan officer tomorrow to make sure it's been cleared. My guess is that the underwriter or loan officer noted the discrepancy and corrected it in their systems. You'll have to sign a updated 1003 and 4506T at closing with correct info. In other words...no biggie, no worries. Not a show stopper at all.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "db92ce858b3591cf4d0933e4c1a1d624",
"text": "\"No, it means that is only the notional value of that underlying asset of that contract, generally. The contract specification itself is listed on the exchange's websites, and there are really no assumptions you can make about a particular contract. Where S&P futures have one set of specifications, such as what it actually represents, how many each contract holds, how to price profits and losses... a different contract, such as FTSE 100 stock futures have a completely different set of specifications. Anyway in this one example the s&p 500 futures contract has an \"\"initial margin\"\" of $19,250, meaning that is how much it would cost you to establish that contract. Futures generally require delivery of 1,000 units of the underlying asset. So you would take the underlying asset's price and multiple it by 1,000. (what price you use is also mentioned in the contract specification), The S&P 500 index is $1588 you mentioned, so on Jun2013 you would have to delivery $1588 x 1000, or $1,588,000. GREAT NEWS, you only have to put up 1.2% in principal to control a 1.5 million dollar asset! Although, if even that amount is too great, you can look at the E-Mini S&P futures, which require about 1/10th the capital and delivery. This answer required that a lot of different subjects be mentioned, so feel free to ask a new question about the more specific topics.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b6bd677c1e3ea129e086763705a7bdad",
"text": "\"The \"\"c.\"\" is probably circa, or \"\"about.\"\" Regulatory settlements is in blue because it's negative; the amount is in parentheses, which indicates a loss. WB and CB might be wholesale banking and commercial banking? BAU probably means \"\"business as usual\"\" or things that don't directly apply to the project. Incremental investment is the additional cash a company puts towards its long-term capital assets. FX is probably foreign exchange.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "557a6cad91cdbb47585518cd2448d807",
"text": "If they short the contract, that means, in 5 months, they will owe if the price goes up (receive if the price goes down) the difference between the price they sold the future at, and the 3-month Eurodollar interbank rate, times the value of the contract, times 5. If they're long, they receive if the price goes up (owe if the price goes down), but otherwise unchanged. Cash settlement means they don't actually need to make/receive a three month loan to settle the future, if they held it to expiration - they just pay or receive the difference. This way, there's no credit risk beyond the clearinghouse. The final settlement price of an expiring three-month Eurodollar futures (GE) contract is equal to 100 minus the three-month Eurodollar interbank time deposit rate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "962ea288290efde34f5522ca7d5171a9",
"text": "Michael gave a good answer describing the transaction but I wanted to follow up on your questions about the lender. First, the lender does charge interest on the borrowed securities. The amount of interest can vary based on a number of factors, such as who is borrowing, how much are they borrowing, and what stock are they trying to borrow. Occasionally when you are trying to short a stock you will get an error that it is hard to borrow. This could be for a few reasons, such as there are already a large amount of people who have shorted your broker's shares, or your broker never acquired the shares to begin with (which usually only happens on very small stocks). In both cases the broker/lender doesnt have enough shares and may be unwilling to get more. In that way they are discriminating on what they lend. If a company is about to go bankrupt and a lender doesnt have any more shares to lend out, it is unlikely they will purchase more as they stand to lose a lot and gain very little. It might seem like lending is a risky business but think of it as occurring over decades and not months. General Motors had been around for 100 years before it went bankrupt, so any lender who had owned and been lending out GM shares for a fraction of that time likely still profited. Also this is all very simplified. JoeTaxpayer alluded to this in the comments but in actuality who is lending stock or even who owns stock is much more complicated and probably doesnt need to be explained here. I just wanted to show in this over-simplified explanation that lending is not as risky as it may first seem.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "45f7684814dbac7f3eed5ce793c0413b",
"text": "The purpose of making sure you met the safe harbor was to avoid the penalty. Having achieved that goal the tax law allows you to wait until April 15th to pay the balance. So do so. Put enough money aside to make sure you can easily make that payment. I was in this exact situation a few years ago. I planned my w4 to make the safe harbor, and then slept easy even though the house settlement was in May and I didn't have to make the IRS payment unti 11 months later in April.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "29c773c8f73383cc694b0fada66b967a",
"text": "\"In India the Short is what is called in other markets call as \"\"Naked Short\"\" [I think I got the right term]. It means that you can only short sell intra day and by the end of the day you have to buy back the shares [at whatever price, if you don't; the exchange will do it by force the next day]. In other markets the Intra day shorts are not allowed and one can short for several days by borrowing shares from someone else [arranged by broker] India has a futures market, so you can sell/buy something today with the execution date of one month. This is typically a fixed day of the month [I think last Thursday]\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5f2843f0727becf25573f503842927fc",
"text": "On expiry, with the underlying share price at $46, we have : You ask : How come they substract 600-100. Why ? Because you have sold the $45 call to open you position, you must now buy it back to close your position. This will cost you $100, so you are debited for $100 and this debit is being represented as a negative (subtracted); i.e., -$100 Because you have purchased the $40 call to open your position, you must now sell it to close your position. Upon selling this option you will receive $600, so you are credited with $600 and this credit is represented as a positive (added) ; i.e., +$600. Therefore, upon settlement, closing your position will get you $600-$100 = $500. This is the first point you are questioning. (However, you should also note that this is the value of the spread at settlement and it does not include the costs of opening the spread position, which are given as $200, so you net profit is $500-$200 = $300.) You then comment : I know I am selling 45 Call that means : As a writer: I want stock price to go down or stay at strike. As a buyer: I want stock price to go up. Here, note that for every penny that the underlying share price rises above $45, the money you will pay to buy back your short $45 call option will be offset by the money you will receive by selling the long $40 call option. Your $40 call option is covering the losses on your short $45 call option. No matter how high the underlying price settles above $45, you will receive the same $500 net credit on settlement. For example, if the underlying price settles at $50, then you will receive a credit of $1000 for selling your $40 call, but you will incur a debit of $500 against for buying back your short $45 call. The net being $500 = $1000-$500. This point is made in response to your comments posted under Dr. Jones answer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "29051a1f78e6280e783af10934bd5ac1",
"text": "Purchases and sales from the same trade date will both settle on the same settlement date. They don't have to pay for their purchases until later either. Because HFT typically make many offsetting trades -- buying, selling, buying, selling, buying, selling, etc -- when the purchases and sales settle, the amount they pay for their purchases will roughly cancel with the amount they receive for their sales (the difference being their profit or loss). Margin accounts and just having extra cash around can increase their ability to have trades that do not perfectly offset. In practice, the HFT's broker will take a smaller amount of cash (e.g. $1 million) as a deposit of capital, and will then allow the HFT to trade a larger amount of stock value long or short (e.g. $10 million, for 10:1 leverage). That $1 million needs to be enough to cover the net profit/loss when the trades settle, and the broker will monitor this to ensure that deposit will be enough.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "604d6e6632bbe79b43c46d666b062db5",
"text": "TL;DR: The date they were granted. (Usually, this follows both an offer and acceptance.) It's not uncommon for a new vesting clock to start when there's a new round of funding coming in, because the investors want to make sure the key people are going to be engaged and incentivized going forward from that point. They don't lower their expectations for how long they want folks engaged based on the person having started earlier. Non-institutional investors may have the same concerns as institutional investors here and use the same vesting strategy to address them. Primary recognition of the benefits from having had people start earlier or be there longer (so long as it correlates with having gotten more done) is embedded in the valuation (which affects how much founders' shares are diluted in the raise).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0309fbecb80a3a101cb7c7470f46ecb8",
"text": "\"the way they explain it is this: say you contribute 1 million each month from july 2010 to june 2011, they wait for the 12 million at the end of the year and \"\"start to invest\"\" it at the start of the next financial year (july 2011 to june 2012). so after june 2012, they'll get the profit, subtract admin costs and all, then announce the balance as interest. the interest announced applies to the whole 12 million from 2010-11. i guess the excuse here is that since they announce interest per financial year, they wouldn't have enough time to properly invest money collected towards the end months of apr, may and june, if they were to announce interest in the following july.. so they'd need another year to properly do the investing for that money collected. how else would you handle giving interest for money collected in june? i can see their point but i just feel like there's something off there.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
0eda6ad84218ed45e1a054efe1a881ba
|
If earning as freelancer, is it better to be a Sole Trader or Limited Company?
|
[
{
"docid": "3ac188863937de2106c8c20b17e1bbb7",
"text": "As I understand it (please correct me if i'm wrong, i've looked at this before and i've been a sole trader briefly but I've never formed a LTD company) there are pros and cons to forming a limited company. Pros Cons",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2a8096fb4a4696fa026ea16948b8af0f",
"text": "Source Sole trader If you start working for yourself, you’re classed as a self-employed sole trader - even if you’ve not yet told HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). As a sole trader, you run your own business as an individual. You can keep all your business’s profits after you’ve paid tax on them. You can employ staff. ‘Sole trader’ means you’re responsible for the business, not that you have to work alone.You’re personally responsible for any losses your business makes. Tax responsibilities You must: You’re personally responsible for any losses your business makes. This is one condition which you would need to have a look. If you do some shoddy work and your client wants to recover the losses they can come after your personal money or property. LLPs have the same probelm too. And you pay NI and income tax on all of your profits. If you have a partner then both can take out the profits of a limited company, if both are directors. The tax hit will be less as compared to a single person.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "6f502d2bdee21a91a60a914580f1d61e",
"text": "You can find a lot of information at the HRMC website at http://hmrc.gov.uk. If you don't want to work as an employee, you can register as self-employed (basically a one-man band), which is quite simple, you can start your own company, which is more work but can have tax advantages, or you can find umbrella companies which will officially employ you while in reality you are a freelancer and only do your billing through them. Umbrella companies can be anywhere from totally legal to extremely dodgy. If they promise you that you pay only five percent tax on your income through ingenious tricks, that's only until the tax office finds out and they will make you pay. Between self-employed and your own company, the big difference is whether you are actually working independently or not. If you work like an employee (take someone else's orders) and claim you are a company, the tax office doesn't like that. And if you pay very little taxes, they don't like that either. So self-employed is the safer choice but you will pay more taxes, close to what a normal employee would pay. Obviously you will have to pay tax on your income and NHS insurance. Obviously you are required to tell the government (actually HMRC) about your income. Not doing so would be tax evasion and get you into deep trouble when you are caught. I don't think you have to tell them the source of your income, but not telling them might look very suspicious and might get your accounts checked carefully. And unless you design a website for the mafia, why wouldn't you tell them? The bill payer will try to deduct your bill from their profits anyway, so it's no secret. Most important to remember: When you send out a bill and receive payment, you'll have to pay tax on it. When self employed, as a rule of thumb put one third away into a savings account for your tax bill. Don't spend it all or you will find yourself in deep trouble when your taxes need paying. Plus put some more away for times when you can't find work.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f377bf8b7f5ca4193644635caed01974",
"text": "Firstly if you've formed a limited company you don't need to register as self-employed. You're an employee and shareholder of the company and your taxes will be handled that way. Registering as self-employed is only necessary if you're operating as a sole trader (i.e. without a company). Secondly you absolutely do want to get set-up correctly with HMRC as soon as possible, whether you're a company or a sole trader. Ignoring the legal question your worry about paying taxes when you have no income is groundless - if you're not making any money there won't be any tax to pay. Furthermore it seems likely that the business is currently losing money. Those losses, if correctly recorded, can be carried forward and offset against future profits so not only do you not have to pay tax now, but you can reduce the tax you pay later when the money does start rolling in.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "59c7fd30c8303ec146bf06020749ffcb",
"text": "The major reason to start an LLC for side work is if you want the additional personal liability protection afforded by one. If you're operating as a sole proprietor, you may be exposing yourself to liability: debts and judgments against your business can put your personal assets at risk! So, if you're intending to continue and grow your side work in the future, you ought to consider the LLC sooner than later. It's also an important legal decision and you should consider seeking a professional opinion. The Wall Street Journal has a brief guide titled How to Form an LLC. Here are some notable excerpts: A limited liability company, or LLC, is similar to a partnership but has the legal protections of personal assets that a corporation offers without the burdensome formalities, paperwork and fees. [...] Some states charge annual fees and taxes that can diminish the economic advantage of choosing to become an LLC. Among LLC advantages: pass-through taxation – meaning the profits and losses “pass through” the business to the individuals owning the business who report this information on their own personal tax returns. The result can be paying less in taxes, since profits are not taxed at both the business level and the personal level. Another plus: Owners aren’t usually responsible for the company’s debts and liabilities. [...] Also check out onstartups.com's Startup 101: Should You Form An Inc. or An LLC? Here are some additional articles that discuss the advantages / disadvantages of forming an LLC:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "14473f2ac55ef0a59cf823be7856e1de",
"text": "You will need to register as self-employed aka sole trader (that's the whole point: pay taxes on income that you're not getting as wages from an employer, who would arrange PAYE/NI contributions), or set up a limited company (in the last case you would have the option of either getting paid as wages or as dividends — which one is better is a complex issue which varies from year to year). You'll find lots of advice on the HMRC website.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fcea0195c525dd15d0979228c8159f02",
"text": "Use a limited company. Use the HMRC website for help on limited companies and get a good accountant for doing your taxes. Mixing your website income and personal income may make you pay a higher tax rate. You can take out expenses from the limited company, which are tax deductible. But if you group it in personal income it wouldn't be tax deductible. In a personal capacity you are 100% liable if your business goes bust and you owe debt. But for a limited company you are only liable for what you own i.e %age of shares. You can take on an investor if your business booms and it is easier if you do it through a limited company rather than through a personal endeavour.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fcaf54599e1643faabf88cf789396fb3",
"text": "I guess you are making quite a bit of assumptions without clarifying what you are trying to achieve. As a non-resident you cannot incorporate a sole proprietorship in Singapore. You have to be citizen. Alternatively you can register a company that has its own norms like minimum number of directors and some being Singapore national, etc. As you are paying dividend and not salary to yourself, the company will be required to pay taxes on gains. So all consulting money is gain as there is no expense. The balance when you transfer to Spain would potentially get taxed as income to you subject to DTAA",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2b20f947365127fa9960e94eccba69e3",
"text": "\"In simple terms, it is a business operation when it becomes a profit-making enterprise. It is a grey area, but there is a difference between selling occasional personal items on eBay and selling for profit. I would imagine the sort of considerations HM Revenue & Customs would take into account are the size of your turnover, the extent to which you are both buying and selling, and whether you are clearly specialising in one particular commodity as opposed of disposing of unwanted presents or clearing the loft. http://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/When-does-eBay-selling-become-taxable-/10000000004494855/g.html I don't believe that you selling your personal camera gear will be taxable, but as the link says, it is a grey area. They also recommend to do this It's far better than having to deal with an investigation a few years down the line. When it comes to completing your tax return, there is a section which is headed \"\"other income\"\", and it is here where you will enter the net earnings from the web business. \"\"Net\"\" here means your additional income, less all expenses associated with it. If you are still worried I would always encourage people to take a cautious approach and discuss their position with HMRC via its helpline on 08454 915 4515.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "83f92b50ccebdd89ecdfa9794d4be2f5",
"text": "I'm hearing that I should maybe wait and see how things go at first as it is only a very small operation. But if I moved into a side of the trade where I require staff, vehicles, and the likes then I would need to registed as a limited company.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "29bee6cf3c5e3539af8867ea50a27cef",
"text": "It is a bit of work and expense to form a LLC. In the long run it is the best approach because it shields your personal assets from business liability. In the short run, you can form as a sole proprietor and operate that way, and later convert to a LLC.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0e48693bde300c48d90869879df069e1",
"text": "\"I don't think it really matters, my understanding is that as a sole trader there is no distinction between your personal and business tax affairs. The distinction between your personal and business account is mainly for your own personal benefit to make it easier to differentiate between \"\"wages\"\" and retained earnings. If you want to maintain this distinction with regard to tax then you need to somehow differentiate between tax paid on your \"\"wage\"\" and tax paid on retained earnings. You could then either make two payments, or pay from either and transfer the difference from the other. Either way, it's just a matter of perspective rather than something with a physical difference.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "235931fe0d75e0b8eb16414243603e3a",
"text": "\"Here's a brief rundown: 1. You're not going to need a lot of capital or debt 2. You aren't in a high-liability or high (MM+) revenue industry unless you're making children's toys out of reclaimed dynamite or something 3. You are operating by yourself The first fact rules out S or C corp. The second fact dings LLC, and the third one rules out a LLP or GP by default, although you can always convert later if you get a partner. Benefits of sole proprietorship include very simple taxes! As a pass-through entity, the business's income is considered your own, and business expenses are tax deductible. You don't need separate tax returns for both. Additionally, if it's just your name, you might not even need a license depending on your state and municipality (figure this out). If you want a different name, you usually need to register \"\"doing business as [name]\"\" with your state or municipality. Lastly, you don't need to use business income in any special way, since you have no additional tax liability or general liability shield. With an LLC, there are a lot of rules and restrictions. Let me know if you have any specific questions.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e4d9f1267819d3b2b983b80baa1d1671",
"text": "You will be categorized as self employed. Will I have to register myself as a company or can go on unregistered and work You can register a company or can use an umbrella company or work as a sole trader. Remember as a sole trader you are legally responsible for you company's activities, an if a company sues you for your work he can take compensation from your personal assets. As a company your liability ends with the company, if your company is sued. Your personal assets are outside the purview of the lawsuit, but the court can attach that also but those are rare. This doesn't matter if you use an umbrella company. If you intend to be doing this for a short time(maybe a year or so), go for an umbrella company. Else register a company. will take you 5 minutes to form one. Depending on your earning you might need to register for VAT too. A comprehensive guide for self employed on HMRC. what would i need to be sound in uk and to be fit to work online as a freelancer? The same as above. Will it include paying any tax or paying any insurance Yes you have register for National Insurance(NI), before you can pay yourself a salary. The benefit of a company is you pay yourself a minimum salary, below the limit above which you have to contribute for NI, and take the rest as dividends. And pay no tax on it, till you don't exceed the limits. When the money comes in my account, will i be accountable to government of uk, to tell the source of income? If you are operating through a company, yes you would need to show your income(including source) and expenditure when you do your annual returns. What should i be knowing, like health insurance and things that are necessities in uk for a freelancer ? No health insurance as NHS exists. You can take out health insurance if you don't want to get into queues in NHS.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ceefd9186fbe63a649c1b841cd61d71d",
"text": "It makes no difference for tax purposes. If you are 1099, you will pay the same amount of taxes as if you formed a corporation and then paid yourself (essentially you are doing this as a 1099 contractor, just not formally). Legally, I don't know the answer. I would assume you have some legal protections by forming an LLC but practically I think this won't make any difference if you get sued.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a279ca195fb059cdc40775cca8a0e5d3",
"text": "As an LLC you are required to have a separate bank account (so you can't have one account and mix personal and business finances together as you could if you were a sole trader) - but there's no requirement for it to be a business bank account. However, the terms and conditions of most high street bank personal current accounts specifically exclude business banking, so unless you could find one that would allow it, you'd have to open a business bank account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3dc6474959e9d1c1a8874382d455188c",
"text": "From my experience it is much easier to start as a self-employed rather than a limited company. You almost have no paperwork and self assessment can be done online in as little as 20 minutes (from personal experience). On the other hand having a limited company grants you a pile of papers to fill in from the start and almost certainly needing an accountant to do your taxes. Regarding the income tax - if you have no profits, you will pay no tax. And that will leave you only with national insurance that is only about £70 for 3 month (better check with HMRC for the exact figure). So if you don't have a good enough reason to do a Ltd, start as a self-employed, you can always change to limited company later.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
7a10c24f58e88c125bc689905ccd34e9
|
Are stores that offer military discounts compensated by the government?
|
[
{
"docid": "5419b5d99a25ab6ee6fa2ee99b2fda05",
"text": "Company X located outside a military base offer discounts to military as a form of marketing. They want to encourage a group of potential customers to use their store/service. In some cases they are competing with subsidized store on the base. In other cases their only competition is other stores outside the base. The smart ones also understand the pay structure of military pay to make it easier for enlisted to stretch their money for the entire month. The government doesn't offer compensation to the business near bases. The businesses see their offer and discount as advertising expenses, and are figured into the prices they have to charge all customers. You will also see these types of discounts offered by some businesses in college towns. They are competing with the services on the campus and with other off-campus businesses. Some also allow the use of campus dollars to make it easier for the student to spend money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3ea4c5bd8120958f2633315894b70acd",
"text": "Nope, only base commissaries or BX/PX's are subsidized. The rest is just done for goodwill/marketing purposes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3cc88a19828747e9b42f464be2179a3d",
"text": "This story is about military grocery stores - i.e.: grocery stores for military personnel on military bases. There are no discounts for military personnel in a regular grocery store. But they may have subsidised prices in grocery stores located inside a military installation, and these are those stores that the story is talking about.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "3b36305cf5bd1204e47a99690160c354",
"text": "The vendor needs to do this using apportionment, according to the VAT rules for mixed supplies: If you make mixed supplies and the individual supplies are not liable to VAT at the same rate then you need to work out the tax value of each supply in order to calculate how much tax is due. If the tax value is based on the total price you charge (see paragraph 7.3) you do this by splitting that price between the supplies. This is called an apportionment ... There is no special method of apportionment ... However, your calculations must be fair and you must be able to justify them. It is usually best to use one of the methods shown in section 32. The section 32 referred to really relates to apportioning use between business and non-business purposes, but it implies that splitting up the total price in proportion to the original prices would probably be fair. So in your example the vendor might split the £5 discount equally between the spoon and the carrycot as they had the same gross cost, and pay VAT as if each had cost £7.50 gross. The vendor could also do it in proportion to their net (pre-VAT) prices and thus apportion a bit more of the discount to the carrycot than the spoon, but as this would lead to them paying slightly more tax overall they probably wouldn't choose to. However, none of this is likely to be too relevant to a consumer, since in the UK prices must be presented as the gross (VAT-inclusive) amounts and so the discounts will also apply to those amounts. It will of course affect how much of the purchase price the vendor ends up paying on to the government and thus might indirectly affect what discounts the vendor is willing to offer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "27c36d33072f1f3c03abebb2b95e40c9",
"text": "\"Yes. \"\"There is, ...no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services.\"\" Taken from the US Department of the Treasury.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "587515473167c699e207b1b0223ac9a7",
"text": "Some companies offer discounts for shareholders. I believe Disney used to do so, for example; if your family was doing the Disneyland-every-year routine that could be a significant benefit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c31a3227567e200c6833277d01c6a8c5",
"text": "Yeah, that's the problem fuck-0. Walmart makes tons of money in profit and their employees are using state benefits. This isn't a problem for you? The government is subsidizing walmarts employee benefits. In other words we are socializing walmarts losses and walmart is privatizing their gains.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e6d424c1dc7a5cfa5ecc510e1fd6c9c9",
"text": "\"Welcome to America! This country is not meant to be a free ride. I personally (single, \"\"native\"\" male) pay a significant amount each year to Uncle Sam and receive no benefits at all. Where do \"\"natives\"\" sign up for the free stuff?!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "90753069d6f5cf4ef352e28770c22fca",
"text": "I applaud all forms of tax evasion. Considering that taxation is nesesary for on-going war, it's highly immoral to pay your taxes. It will only lead to death. However, it sounds like they're paying lots of taxes. 46 + 11.7 = 57.7% How is that a loophole? Sounds like they're getting shellacked.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "aca17aa68b38ca7ef1beabd9752cf44b",
"text": "Maybe but would it be ruined if that 10% was merely moved from DoD money to funding local businesses or something? The downside of defense funding is that even if it provides jobs, it's not self sustainable, whereas if you used that money to fund startups/local businesses, those things could potentially eventually grow or at least not require additional funding. Then your city would not require outside funding to survive which is even better no?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fcbf762f2bd16440bc83a5320a6dfc65",
"text": "Lots of places in the US do it. Although the way that they usually phrase it is 'prices reflect a x.x% discount for cash' since most of the credit card companies have an agreement that says you cannot charge a surcharge if someone is using a credit card. So they get around it by giving a discount for cash. effect is the same, but it skirts the letter of the agreement",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0e151c1cbf2497a78b250d5bf908a283",
"text": "Stupid article. People on government assistance typically don't have a great deal of money to begin with, and there aren't exactly many items on Amazon that are at 'dollar store' level prices..and unless one is house-bound level of disabled, you really can't fill a whole grocery list by shopping at Amazon as you could running down to Walmart or Save a Lot.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "189af17bb561308c0e9af7c8c6b7990a",
"text": "\"Wireless capabilities see Nikola tesla every type of communication outside of the walkie talkie really was created without the government. So the fact that i was born here against my own free will automatically gives the government the right to seize the fruits of my labor? This is where this bullshit statist logic falls apart because the only rebuttal you have is \"\"well just leave then!\"\" Which is fucking stupid and in pretty sure I already gave you 1 way but I'll say it again cuz it's clear you're incapable of following along, federal sales tax. With federal sales tax there are no deductions or coercion. Also the more money individuals have in their pocket (disposable income) the more likely they are to spend and grow the economy. That's why you see countries like Sweden with insane tax rates seeing limited growth and in a lot of cases on the verge of an economic collapse. So if people have more disposable income causing them to have more purchasing power a federal sales tax would probably do better than an income tax and the people would receive something tangible instead of just losing 25% of their pay check. Btw don't ever say my income tax pays for roads because they don't that's what a gas tax is for. A majority of our infrastructure is paid for with revenue from other taxes not income. Income taxes pay mostly into military budget and social programs ie social security\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4238d8bca80b3137bfbbcc64c2c502c3",
"text": "So, the point of the article is that the taxpayers are making up for what Walmart isn't paying. But, walmart pays way more than what it's employees are using. Employees use government programs, Walmartpays more than double of the cost of those programs, so no cost at all is passed to the taxpayers. Walmart WOULD be evil if they didn't pay taxes. But they do. The article is nonsense. We get it. You don't like big business.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0895722089cb5cba4791e7a5430c58cc",
"text": "Sony has been doing this for years and nobody complains. But I do see the point, it keeps companies like WalMart and Best Buy from destroying small businesses. Ohio does the same thing with beer and cigarrette prices.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b85c369867a2a52513878d8ffb159c5c",
"text": "Most people have no problem paying for schools, millitary, or other socially optimizing externalities. People do have a problem with paying for free rides for others, where only the person receiving the benefits gains anything and everyone else has to pay the bill.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b77d828f6613f0ab429d1616150c616f",
"text": "They are entitled to a benefit for things for survival, This is not a UBI. If they have enough food to be giving it away, the system isn't working properly. You think because they're (the abusers of the system) are being a useless member of society that they are entitled to have these benefits, which legally they are, but this should not be a long term solution for millions of people, which it is. Are we talking about a small amount of people, from what google says its a pretty big issue. We have a military, start your own rant thread about that if you want to talk about that or better yet, go join the military and fix it from the inside out.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2b5c54ff120afef635a7ccc6d9a68fda",
"text": "\"I think often times the personality traits that make founders so successful are the same traits that keep them from giving up control. By the time you've made it to the top of the mountain you've proven everyone who ever said \"\"do this\"\" wrong. So people saying \"\"step aside\"\" isn't going to do anything but convince you that you can prove them wrong again. It's easy to say \"\"put your ego to the side\"\" but when your stubbornness and smarts helped get you where you are, it's not easy to look inside yourself and say \"\"I'm not the best guy for this.\"\"\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
af8dcb3e3ec29b019b5fe0d35395fc1c
|
Can I claim a tax deduction for working from home as an employee? I work there 90% of the time
|
[
{
"docid": "af94bde04c5e56fce68e17efd75ae0cc",
"text": "The short answer is yes you probably can take the deduction for a home office because the space is used exclusively and you are working there for the convenience of your employer if you don't have a desk at your employers office. The long answer is that it may not be worth it to take the home office deduction as an employee. You're deduction is subject to a 2% AGI floor. You can only deduct a percentage of your rent or the depreciation on your home. A quick and dirty example if you make $75k/year, rent a 1200 sqft 2 bedroom apartment for $1000/month and use one bedroom (120 sqft) regularly and exclusively for your employer. You can deduct 10% (120sqft/1200sqft) of the $12000 ($1000*12 months (assumes your situation didn't change)) in rent or $1200. However because you are an employee you are subject to the 2% AGI floor so you can deduct $1200-$1500 (75000*.02 (salary * 2% floor)) = -300 so in order to deduct the first dollar you need an additional $300 worth of deductible expenses. Depending on your situation it may or may not be worth it to take the home office deduction even if you qualify for it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f20fdd823286eba26d5f938c45710cd2",
"text": "Talk to a tax professional. The IRS really doesn't like the deduction, and it's a concept (like independent contractors) that is often not done properly. You need to, at a minimum, have records, including timestamped photographs, proving that: Remember, documentation is key, and must be filed and accessible for a number of years. Poor record keeping will cost you dearly, and the cost of keeping those records is something that you need to weigh against the benefit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "067252b5ff9ca4e62bf6ff506f4bd7cb",
"text": "The general rule is: Generally, in order to claim a business deduction for your home, you must use part of your home exclusively and regularly: Exclusively seems to be the toughest standard and I do not know exactly how strict the IRS's interpretation is. Working in your living room where you regularly watch TV and have people over on the weekends would seem to fail that test. A separate room with your computer in it would pass it. If it was your only computer and you regularly played online games with it, that would seem to be a grey area. The IRA booklet covering this area is here http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p587.pdf I know people that have rented rooms in other places or made use of rental offices for this purpose.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bb00d5b05640be0a5d62991982d1123f",
"text": "\"90% sounds like \"\"principal place of business\"\" but check these IRS resources to make sure.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "0a788c0d227d60e290dc71775c247243",
"text": "Yes, you've summarized it well. You may be able to depreciate your computer, expense some software licenses and may be home office if you qualify, but at this scale of earning - it will probably not cover for the loss of the money you need to pay for the additional SE tax (the employer part of the FICA taxes for W2 employees) and benefits (subsidized health insurance, bonuses you get from your employer, insurances, etc). Don't forget the additional expense of business licenses, liability insurances etc. While relatively small amounts and deductible - still money out of your pocket. That said... Good luck earning $96K on ODesk.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "039519230ab375aea3fdd45fc09a3a49",
"text": "\"The short answer is yes you can, but you have to make sure you do it correctly. If you are employed by a tech company that does contract work at a separate location and you don't get reimbursed by your employer for travel expenses, you can claim the mileage between your home and location B as a business expense, but there's a catch - you have to subtract the mileage between your home and location A (your employer). So if it's 20 miles from your house to your employer (location A), and 30 miles from your house to the business you're contracting at (location B), you can only claim 10 miles each way (so 20 miles total). Obviously if the distance to location B is closer than your employer (location A), you're out of luck. You will have to itemize to take this deduction, by filling out a Schedule A for itemized deductions and Form 2106 to calculate how much of a deduction for travel expenses you can take. Google \"\"should i itemize\"\", if you're unsure whether to take the Standard Deduction or Itemize. Sources:\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f4dba2c23b145778cc2cb1c1b0f88da9",
"text": "\"About deducting mortgage interest: No, you can not deduct it unless it is qualified mortgage interest. \"\"Qualified mortgage interest is interest and points you pay on a loan secured by your main home or a second home.\"\" (Tax Topic 505). According to the IRS, \"\"if you rent out the residence, you must use it for more than 14 days or more than 10% of the number of days you rent it out, whichever is longer.\"\" Regarding being taxed on income received from the property, if you claim the foreign tax credit you will not be double taxed. According to the IRS, \"\"The foreign tax credit intends to reduce the double tax burden that would otherwise arise when foreign source income is taxed by both the United States and the foreign country from which the income is derived.\"\" (from IRS Topic 856 - Foreign Tax Credit) About property taxes: From my understanding, these cannot be claimed for the foreign tax credit but can be deducted as business expenses. There are various exceptions and stipulations based on your circumstance, so you need to read the official publications and get professional tax advice. Here's an excerpt from Publication 856 - Foreign Tax Credit for Individuals: \"\"In most cases, only foreign income taxes qualify for the foreign tax credit. Other taxes, such as foreign real and personal property taxes, do not qualify. But you may be able to deduct these other taxes even if you claim the foreign tax credit for foreign income taxes. In most cases, you can deduct these other taxes only if they are expenses incurred in a trade or business or in the production of income. However, you can deduct foreign real property taxes that are not trade or business expenses as an itemized deduction on Schedule A (Form 1040).\"\" Note and disclaimer: Sources: IRS Tax Topic 505 Interest Expense, IRS Real Estate (Taxes, Mortgage Interest, Points, Other Property Expenses) , IRS Topic 514 Foreign Tax Credit , and Publication 856 Foreign Tax Credit for Individuals\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "967d750f818153d0e8c46e28e5bd0ae7",
"text": "Any deductable expense will reduce your taxable income not your tax payable. Your Example 1 above is correct and gives you 100% deduction. It is like having a business where your sales are $100,000 and your expenses in making the sales is $40,000. The expenses are your tax deductions and reduce your profits on which you pay tax on to $60,000. If your Example 2 was correct then the situation above would change that you would pay say $30,000 tax on $100,000 sales, then apply your deductions (or expenses) of $40,000 so that you would pay no tax at all and in fact get $10,000 back in your return. In this case the government would not be collecting any taxes but paying out returns to everyone. Your Example 2 is absolutly incorrect.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a57851d680f06d0d027cbc370f7c762e",
"text": "I contacted Stephen Fishman, J.D., the author of Home Business Tax Deductions, to let him know that this question was missing from his book. He was kind enough to send a reply. My original phrasing of the question: If your car is used for both business and personal use, and you deduct via the actual expense method, do trips to the mechanic, gas station, and auto parts store to service or repair the car count as business miles, personal miles, or part-business-part-personal miles? What about driving the newly-purchased car home from the dealership? And his response: Good question. I can find nothing about this in IRS publication or elsewhere. However, common sense would tell us that the cost of driving to make car repairs should be deductible. If you use your car for business, it is a business expense, just like transporting any other piece of business equipment for repairs is a business expense. This should be so whether you use the standard mileage rate or actual expense method. You should probably reduce the amount of your deduction by the percentage of personal use of the car during the year. The same goes for driving a car home from the dealer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3896f5c8a977bf07584f1f0f1d93cbd6",
"text": "\"Yes and no. You can not claim the maid service cleaning your \"\"home\"\" but you can cleaning your \"\"office\"\" or your office's facilities. For example, If you have a mother-in-law suite in the back that you converted to an office, AND you have a maid service cleaning just that, THEN you should be able to claim the expense. Another example would be if you have a room in your house set aside as an office (careful here) AND your maid services charges $20 per room, you should be able to claim that $20. Another example; if you have a maid service that charges you $100 to clean your house, AND you have a dedicated office in that house, THEN you may be claim a portion of your expenses as a business expense. HOWEVER!!!! This can be very subject to your situation. For example, your much more likely to meet the criteria if you have clients in your office. Much less likely if your the only person using the office. Also you need to be aware that what the IRS allows you to call an office is not as clear cut as it seems. Your best bet is to ask a tax consultant.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "15a68028202202a61ad5b69ba02c6f16",
"text": "Yes, you can deduct from your taxable profits (almost) any expenses incurred in the course of your business. See here for HMRC's detailed advice on the subject. The fact that you have salaried PAYE employment as well makes no difference.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5fb1034e13a97b1e3a37becc28ec0b0b",
"text": "No, it's not possible. Even if you had no deduction or credits, your federal tax on $16,604 would be: $9075 @ 10% = $907.50 + $7529 @ 15% = $1129.35 = $2036.85 That assumes you are filing as single. There must be more to the story. Typo in your income numbers? Also, what do you mean by a self-employment tax deduction? Maybe update your question to include a breakdown of everything you entered? Edit: As noted in Loren's answer, it seems that it is indeed possible in at least one case (self-employment taxes).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f06119600d3aea07f3eb0978ad02434e",
"text": "You would report it as business income on Schedule C. You may be able to take deductions against that income as well (home office, your computer, an android device, any advertising or promotional expenses, etc.) but you'll want to consult an accountant about that. Generally you can only take those kinds of deductions if you use the space or equipment exclusively for business use (not likely if it's just a hobby). The IRS is pretty picky about that stuff.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ce475229839fec15efb664cd7ad7ac50",
"text": "Your home doesn't belong to the partnership, it belongs to you. So you can (if qualified) deduct home office usage as a business expense on your individual tax return. Same goes to your partner. Similarly any other unreimbursed expense.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3a6c8b85bac2aa40c815d4671c636b1d",
"text": "Another thing to consider, however, is the deductibility of business expenses. Let's assume that the employer can legitimately hire you as a 1099 contractor. (Would you be able to telecommute? Would you have a high degree of control over when you worked and when you didn't? These factors also affect whether you're a true independent 1099 contractor or not.) As a legit 1099 contractor, you're able to deduct certain business expenses directly from your income. (You can find a list of the rules at irs.gov.) As a W2 employee, by contrast, can deduct only business expenses that exceed 2% of the your AGI (adjusted gross income). So, you also have to consider your personal circumstances in making the calculus and comparing whether a legitimate 1099 contractor job is or is not good for you. It's not just a comparison of what they'd pay W2 employees versus what they'd pay 1099 contractors.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c0ef4d13dfaa846438737e60324406ab",
"text": "Yes you can claim your business deductions if you are not making any income yet. But first you should decide what structure you want to have for your business. Either a Company structure or a Sole Trader or Partnership. Company Structure If you choose a Company Structure (which is more expensive to set up) you would claim your deductions but no income. So you would be making a loss, and continue making losses until your income from the business exceed your expenses. So these losses will remain inside the Company and can be carried forward to future income years when you are making profits to offset these profits. Refer to ATO - Company tax losses for more information. Sole Trader of Partnership Structure If you choose to be a Sole Trader or a Partnership and your business makes a loss you must check the non-commercial loss rules to see if you can offset the loss against your income from other sources, such as wages. In order to offset your business losses against your other income your business must pass one of these tests: If you don't pass any of these tests, which being a start-up you most likely won't, you must carry forward your business losses until an income year in which you do pass one of the tests, then you can offset it against your other income. This is what differentiates a legitimate business from someone having a hobby, because unless you start making at least $20,000 in sales income (the easiest test to pass) you cannot use your business losses against your other income. Refer to ATO - Non-commercial losses for more information.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "be257fcb0ae0253e58681c0f96f3d63a",
"text": "\"The answer is \"\"Yes\"\", You can deduct them. As long as you showed that you put in effort to make a profit then you can deduct business expenses.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b7e451ff517411ed28490bc8763abde4",
"text": "This is essentially a reimbursement of your expense. Since you can deduct the expense, the fact that the reimbursement is taxable doesn't affect you much. You deduct your home office expenses on your annual tax return using form 8829. See the IRS site for more details. If you're asking about the UK tax, there may be some other considerations, but from the US tax perspective it is (nearly) a wash.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0493d4f827147a296d9f105fe8748726",
"text": "They might be concerned with having to charge sales tax in California if they have a single employee in California, creating a nexus situation with CA. If that's the case, or even if there is some other issue, you might be able to switch from being a W2 employee to being a 1099 independent contractor. There's a host of additional issues this could cause, but it alleviate the nexus problem (if THAT is the problem). Here's a terrible solution you can bring up, but shouldn't do under any circumstances: offer to set up a mailing address in an allowed State, and give your company plausible deniability with regards to your legal residence. Obviously, this is a terrible idea, but exploring that option with your employer would help you suss out what the actual objection is. Ultimately, anything said here about the reason is just conjecture. You need to talk to the decision maker(s) about the real reason behind the denial. Then you can talk through solutions. Also - don't forget that you can get another job. If you are serious about a future with your girlfriend, you should put that relationship ahead of your current employment comfort and security. If you are willing to walk away from your position, you are in a much better situation to negotiate.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
44b0eb78eb8c072351a7cdf032648cc6
|
How should I record invoices in foreign currency in GNUCash?
|
[
{
"docid": "bc6e266b59ecc292bde5266b4226db53",
"text": "\"The solution I've come up with is to keep income in CAD, and Accounts Receivable in USD. Every time I post an invoice it prompts for the exchange rate. I don't know if this is \"\"correct\"\" but it seems to be preserving all of the information about the transactions and it makes sense to me. I'm a programmer, not an accountant though so I'd still appreciate an answer from someone more familiar with this topic.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "10578bd9fa925722e0c08f957486637d",
"text": "It depends upon in how many currencies your business is denominated. If your business is solely dependent upon this one payer, it's best to start up a new set of books in USD. All accounts should be translated from CAD from a date preceding the USD activity. The CAD books should be closed, and all should be done with the new USD books. If your business will continue to use both USD & CAD, it's best to have two sets of books, one for USD and one for CAD. Multi-currency books are a nightmare and should be avoided at all costs. Also, with the way you describe your situation, it appears as if you're also blending your household and business books. This should also be avoided for best practices.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "72b452624646db70ff1533aa27000710",
"text": "I haven't seen this answer, and I do not know the legality of it, as it could raise red flags as to money laundering, but about the only way to get around the exchange rate spreads and fees is to enter into transactions with a private acquaintance who has Euros and needs Dollars. The problem here is that you are taking on the settlement risk in the sense that you have to trust that they will deposit the euros into your French account when you deposit dollars into their US account. If you work this out with a relative or very close friend, then the risk should be minimal, however a more casual acquaintance may be more apt to walk away from the transaction and disappear with your Euros and your Dollars. Really the only other option would be to be compensated for services rendered in Euros, but that would have tax implications and the fees of an international tax attorney would probably outstrip any savings from Forex spreads and fees not paid.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d843bca1e943e85e1b0348c3812e7a6c",
"text": "\"GNUCash won't show 'Credit Card' type accounts in \"\"Process Payment\"\", as of v.2.6.1. A workaround is to create another account of type A/Payable. Then, transfer the operations you want to pay via \"\"Process Payment\"\" to this new account. It should be visible now. A drawback is that you have split your current Credit Card debt, which makes it harder to track. Alternatively you may wish to only use this new account for all your credit card related expenses. Another alternative is processing payments for these purchases manually to keep the 'credit card' accounts consistent.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ea5c5652e7b5488b676fca707598ad9b",
"text": "This started as a comment but then really go too long so I am posting an answer: @yarun, I am also using GnuCash just like you as a non-accountant. But I think it really pays off to get to know more about accounting via GnuCash; it is so useful and you learn a lot about this hundreds of years old double entry system that all accountants know. So start learning about 5 main accounts and debits and credits, imho. It is far easier than one can think. Now the answer: even without balancing amounts exactly program is very useful as you still can track your monthly outgoings very well. Just make/adjust some reports and save their configurations (so you can re-run quickly when new data comes in) after you have classified your transactions properly. If I still did not know what some transactions were (happens a lot at first import) - I just put them under Expenses:Unaccounted Expenses - thus you will be able to see how much money went who knows where. If later you learn what those transactions were - you still can move them to the right account and you will be pleased that your reports show less unaccounted money. How many transactions to import at first - for me half a year or a year is quite enough; once you start tracking regularly you accumulate more date and this becomes a non-issue. Reflecting that personal finance is more about behaviour than maths and that it is more for the future where your overview of money is useful. Gnucash wil learn from import to import what transactions go where - so you could import say 1 or 3 month intervals to start with instead of a while year. No matter what - I still glance at every transaction on import and still sometimes petrol expense lands in grocery (because of the same seller). But to spot things like that you use reports and if one month is abnormal you can drill down to transactions and learn/correct things. Note that reports are easy to modify and you can save the report configurations with names you can remember. They are saved on the machine you do the accounting - not within the gnucash file. So if you open the file (or mysql database) on another computer you will miss your custom reports. You can transfer them, but it is a bit fiddly. Hence it makes sense to use gnucash on your laptop as that you probably will have around most often. Once you start entering transactions into GnuCash on the day or the week you incur the expense, you are getting more control and it is perhaps then you would need the balance to match the bank's balance. Then you can adjust the Equity:Opening Balances to manipulate the starting sums so that current balances match those of your bank. This is easy. When you have entered transactions proactively (on the day or the week) and then later do an import from bank statement the transactions are matched automatically and then they are said to be reconciled (i.e. your manual entry gets matched by the entry from your statement.) So for beginning it is something like that. If any questions, feel free to ask. IMHO this is a process rather a one-off thing; I began once - got bored, but started again and now I find it immensely useful.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8b2553ca379034c58a9b65547529cb50",
"text": "\"Amount is the closest single word. \"\"Amount in dollars\"\" would be the easiest way to specify information you are requesting. \"\"Amount and currency\"\" if you ware in an area using multiple currencies. An accountant might be able to give you a more technical term, but it would be accountancy jargon. Amount due, credit amount, debit amount, amount deposited, amount credited, amount withdrawn, or amount included. If you're writing instructions and want to specify that the person following the instructions needs to indicate the currency, you'll probably have to simply state that requirement. Based on US centric thinking, inside the US, money is dollars, dollars is money. For US citizens outside the country, we would always tack on the currency. 100 dollars, or 100 Euro. There is a segment of Americans who do not understand geography, and that other countries exist, and that they use different currencies, might not realize that other countries have currencies named dollars, and that USD means US Dollars. So for U.S. citizens, be specific and clear. Bottom line, if this is written for US residents, and they need to specify the currency, you need to explicitly require them to \"\"List the amount and currency.\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c673ccd11ad9d1f7ff188d2f48f926e3",
"text": "How can I correctly account for having money in different currencies, without currency transfers or currency fluctuations ending up as gains or losses? In my view, your spreadsheet should be in multiple currencies. i.e. if you have gained some in specific currency, make a note of it in that specific currency. If you have spent something in a specific currency, then make a note accordingly. You can use an additional column for reporting this in a neutral currency say GBP. If you are transferring the money from account of one currency to account of another; change the balances as appropriate with the actual conversion rate. If you need this record keeping for tax purposes, then get a proper advise from accountant.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "97793b3a30e5346c88a4c290d48d8e81",
"text": "\"That's Imbalance-USD (or whatever your default currency is). This is the default \"\"uncategorized\"\" account. My question is, is it possible to get the \"\"unbalanced\"\" account to zero and eliminate it? Yes, it's possible to get this down to zero, and in fact desirable. Any transactions in there should be reviewed and fixed. You can delete it once you've emptied it, but it will be recreated the next time an unbalanced transaction is entered. Ideally, I figure it should autohide unless there's something in it, but it's a minor annoyance. Presumably you've imported a lot of data into what's known as a transaction account like checking, and it's all going to Imbalance, because it's double entry and it has to go somewhere. Open up the checking account and you'll see they're all going to Imbalance. You'll need to start creating expense, liability and income accounts to direct these into. Once you've got your history all classified, data entry will be easier. Autocomplete will suggest transactions, and online transaction pull will try to guess which account a given transaction should match with based on that data.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1f08ad36b6bbbb7fc99e5aa9a06f0376",
"text": "\"I'm no accountant, but I think the way I'd want to approach this kind of thing in Gnucash would be to track it as an Asset, since it is. It sounds like your actual concern is that your tracked asset value isn't reflecting its current \"\"market\"\" value. Presumably because it's risky it's also illiquid, so you're not sure how much value it should have on your books. Your approach suggested here of having it as just as expense gives it a 0 value as an asset, but without tracking that there's something that you own. The two main approaches to tracking an investment in Gnucash are: Of course, both of these approaches do assume that you have some notion of your investment's \"\"current value\"\", which is what you're tracking. As the section on Estimating Valuation of the concepts guide says of valuing illiquid assets, \"\"There is no hard rule on this, and in fact different accountants may prefer to do this differently.\"\" If you really think that the investment isn't worth anything at the moment, then I suppose you should track it at 0, but presumably you think it's worth something or you wouldn't have bought it, right? Even if it's just for your personal records, part of a regular (maybe annual?) review of your investments should include coming up with what you currently value that investment at (perhaps your best guess of what you could sell it for, assuming that you could find a willing buyer), and updating your records accordingly. Of course, if you need a valuation for a bank or for tax purposes or the like, they have more specific rules about how they are tracking what things are worth, but presumably you're trying to track your personal assets for your own reasons to get a handle on what you currently own. So, do that! Take the time to get a handle on the worth of what you currently own. And don't worry about getting the value wrong, just take your best guess, since you can always update it later when you learn new information about what your investment is worth.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7c12efadd7fee350ffa0bd773c7bcd8f",
"text": "Unfortunately, there is no facility to do bulk transaction edits in GnuCash, so you are out of luck for your existing hundred. (I don't know whether there is a way to initially import a transaction as split.) However, once you have entered this split once, it can be used as a template for new transactions, using autocomplete or by entering it in the Scheduled Transaction Editor.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3bbda03f837541c501058d5c2e9831a5",
"text": "Given your needs, GNUcash will do swimmingly. I've used it for the past 3 years and while it's a gradual learning process, it's been able to resolve most stuff I've thrown at it. Schedule bills and deposits in the calendar view so I can keep an eye on cash flow. GNUcash has scheduled payments and receipts and reconcilation, should you need them. I prefer to keep enough float to cover monthly expenses in accounts rather than monitor potential shortfalls. Track all my stock and mutual fund investments across numerous accounts. It pulls stock, mutual and bond quotes from lots of places, domestic and foreign. It can also pull transaction data from your brokers, if they support that. I manually enter all my transactions so I can keep control of them. I just reconcile what I entered into Quicken based on the statements sent to me. I do not use Quicken's bill pay There's a reconciliation mode, but I don't use it personally. The purpose of reconcilation is less about catching bank errors and more about agreeing on the truth so that you don't incur bank fees. When I was doing this by hand I found I had a terrible data entry error rate, but on the other hand, the bayesian importer likes to mark gasoline purchases from the local grocery store as groceries rather than gas. I categorize all my expenditures for help come tax time. GNUcash has accounts, and you can mark expense accounts as tax related. It also generates certain tax forms for you if you need that. Not sure what all you're categorizing that's helpful at tax time though. I use numerous reports including. Net Worth tracking, Cash not is retirement funds and total retirement savings. Tons of reports, and the newest version supports SQL backends if you prefer that vs their reports.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0e1634b86dc0379488255eb75820baf2",
"text": "\"I recently needed to compute a better balance that let us pick and choose what to include in the computed sum without losing information, so I revisited this topic and I'm pleased to say that I've found a solution that works (at least for our data - you may have transactions that this code doesn't recognize, but you can always modify it to match). My solution was written natively for MS SQL Server 2008 or later, it uses a scalar UDF, a VIEW, and a windowed aggregate (SUM OVER (ORDER BY ...) which means it should be almost-syntax compatible with PostgreSQL. MySQL does not support OVER but you can perform a running-sum using a variable with arithmetic addition directly in the SELECT clause. Create a database table with this schema (feel free to exclude columns you're not interested in, such as Option1Name): Create a UNIQUE index on TxnId - you could use it as a primary-key, I suppose. You might be tempted to create a Foreign-Key relationship between ReferenceTxnId and TxnId, however this will fail if you enforce it: we have many transactions where ReferenceTxnId points to a Transaction that doesn't exist. This is usually in the case of [Type] = 'Web Accept Payment Received' AND [Status] = 'Canceled'. We also have some TransactionId values longer than 17 characters: some TransactionIds start with \"\"U-\"\" - all pending money requests, I suspect this indicates the transaction is \"\"unfinished\"\". Re-download your entire PayPal History CSV files so that you have the latest retroactive updates. Import these CSV files into this PayPalHistory table. Do a simple test to see how bad PayPal's default data is: To find out where the differences are coming from, run this query: (The ORDER BY (...), RowId is to ensure consistent ordering when multiple transactions share the same timestamp) As you scroll through the results, you'll see how the naive SUM is thrown-off from the official PayPal-computed Balance column. So as you can see, the Net column value cannot always be trusted - what we need is to generate our own \"\"EffectiveNet\"\" value which is accurate - that is, the value is 0.00 for rows which do not affect the balance, instead of being what they are right now. The problem is, given a single row of data (such as any single row from the example table in my original Question) we have no way of inherently knowing what its \"\"EffectiveNet\"\" is. I have devised two functions to help solve this problem, the first function only looks at the ReferenceTxnId, Type and Status column values and generates accurate values for the vast majority of rows - indeed, in our dataset we only had one row for which this approach did not work. I recommend you try this one first and compare the running-sum value to ensure it works for your data: You can use this function in the query like so below, hopefully it should give you an accurate running-sum and balance figure at the end: 8. And here's the view that ties it all together: Used like so: I hope this helps anyone else wanting to do accurate bookkeeping with PayPal Transaction History files!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "500aba91d79281094dbadba775df5b7a",
"text": "I'm using iBank on my Mac here and that definitely supports different currencies and is also supposed to be able to track investments (I haven't used it to track investments yet, hence the 'supposed to' caveat).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0f8bff4246bf5e8c9e8ded7affa5caa8",
"text": "\"Gnucash is first and foremost just a general ledger system. It tracks money in accounts, and lets you make transactions to transfer money between the accounts, but it has no inherent concept of things like taxes. This gives you a large amount of flexibility to organize your account hierarchy the way you want, but also means that it sometimes can take a while to figure out what account hierarchy you want. The idea is that you keep track of where you get money from (the Income accounts), what you have as a result (the Asset accounts), and then track what you spent the money on (the Expense accounts). It sounds like you primarily think of expenses as each being for a particular property, so I think you want to use that as the basis of your hierarchy. You probably want something like this (obviously I'm making up the specifics): Now, when running transaction reports or income/expense reports, you can filter to the accounts (and subaccounts) of each property to get a report specific to that property. You mention that you also sometimes want to run a report on \"\"all gas expenses, regardless of property\"\", and that's a bit more annoying to do. You can run the report, and when selecting accounts you have to select all the Gas accounts individually. It sounds like you're really looking for a way to have each transaction classified in some kind of two-axis system, but the way a general ledger works is that it's just a tree, so you need to pick just one \"\"primary\"\" axis to organize your accounts by.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4911f9a1e0f23dca3556083c61350494",
"text": "\"Since you did not treat the house as a QBU, you have to use USD as your functional currency. To calculate capital gains, you need to calculate the USD value at the time of purchase using the exchange rate at the time of purchase and the USD value at the time of sale using the exchange rate at the time of sale. The capital gain / loss is then the difference between the two. This link describes it in more detail and provides some references: http://www.maximadvisors.com/2013/06/foreign-residence/ That link also discusses additional potential complications if you have a mortgage on the house. This link gives more detail on the court case referenced in the above link: http://www.uniset.ca/other/cs5/93F3d26.html The court cases references Rev. Rul 54-105. This link from the IRS has some details from that (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/0303021.pdf): Rev. Rul. 54-105, 1954-1 C.B. 12, states that for purposes of determining gain, the basis and selling price of property acquired by a U.S. citizen living in a foreign country should be expressed in United States dollars at the rates of exchange prevailing as of the dates of purchase and sale of the property, respectively. The text of this implies it is for U.S. citizen is living in a foreign country, but the court case makes it clear that it also applies in your scenario (house purchased while living abroad but now residing in the US): Appellants agree that the 453,374 pounds received for their residence should be translated into U.S. dollars at the $1.82 exchange rate prevailing at the date of sale. They argue, however, that the 343,147 pound adjusted cost basis of the residence, consisting of the 297,500 pound purchase price and the 45,647 pounds paid for capital improvements, likewise should be expressed in U.S. dollar terms as of the date of the sale. Appellants correctly state that, viewed “in the foreign currency in which it was transacted,” the purchase generated a 110,227 pound gain as of the date of the sale, which translates to approximately $200,000 at the $1.82 per pound exchange rate. ... However fair and reasonable their argument may be, it amounts to an untenable attempt to convert their “functional currency” from the U.S. dollar to the pound sterling. ... Under I.R.C. § 985(b)(1), use of a functional currency other than the U.S. dollar is restricted to qualified business units (\"\"QBU\"\"s). ... appellants correctly assert that their residence was purchased “for a pound-denominated value” while they were “living and working in a pound-denominated economy,” ... And since appellants concede that the purchase and sale of their residence was not carried out by a QBU, the district court properly rejected their plea to treat the pound as their functional currency.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1577e21bf4ad3391c4631197ed104014",
"text": "I would say when starting with Gnucash to start with the level of granularity you are comfortable with while sticking to the double entry bookkeeping practices. So going through each one: Refund for Parking Pass. Assuming you treat the Parking Pass as a sunk cost, i.e. an Expense account, its just a negative entry in the Expense account which turns into a positive one in your Bank account. Yes it may look weird, and if you don't like it you can always 'pay from Equity' the prior month, or your Bank Account if you're backfilling old statements. Selling physical items. If you sold it on eBay and the value is high enough you'll get tax forms indicating you've earned x. Even if its small or not done via eBay, treat it the same way and create a 'Personal Items/Goods' Income account to track all of it. So the money you get in your Bank account would have come from there. Found jacket money would be an Equity entry, either Opening Balances into Cash or Bank account. Remember you are treating Equity / Opening Balances as the state before you started recording every transaction so both the value going into Assets (Banks,Stock,Mutual Funds) and Liabilities (Mortgage, Student Debt, Credit Card Debt) originate from there.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "007befd38bcc226a277d23049f749057",
"text": "At every moving/yard/garage sale I have ever seen only cash is accepted. While the use of electronic payments is growing the big problem is that it is hard to verify the exchange at the time the goods are changing hands. Unless you have a card reader attached to your phone, you can't use a credit or debit card. Unless you can verify that they did transfer the money electronically why would you let them walk away with your stuff? If you knew them you could accept a check, but there are risks with the checks bouncing.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
04bab6584e92a3fc68826e20143d2669
|
Should I deduct or capitalize the cost to replace a water heater in my rental property? (details Below)
|
[
{
"docid": "884ddfb3e4e3765cfb75b301ff9dd45a",
"text": "If you're repairing an existing appliance - its an expense. If you're replacing an existing appliance with a new one - that's disposing of one capital asset and putting in service another. You depreciate the new one and you dispose of the old one (if not fully depreciated - talk to your tax adviser how to handle the remaining value). The additional costs of the fixes that are not related to the installation of the new appliance are regular maintenance expenses, so you have to get an itemized invoice from the plumber to know what to expense and what to capitalize.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6832d91bbae329fef6eced1aecf5ac9a",
"text": "Pub 527 my friend. It gets depreciated. Table 1-1 on page 5.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bb65dd7f717ccf993086167319f91fac",
"text": "You may be able to choose. As a small business, you can expense certain depreciable assets (section 179). But by choosing to depreciate the asset, you are also increasing the cost-basis of the property. Are you planning to sell the property in the next couple of years? Do you need a higher basis? Section 179 - Election to expense certain depreciable business assets",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "2f433e95de68c23d93cf4fae5295ecc2",
"text": "You will need to look at the 27.5 year depreciation table from the IRS. It tells you how you will be able to write off the first year. It depends on which month you had the unit ready to rent. Note that that it might be a different month from when you moved, or when the first tenant moved in. Your list is pretty good. You can also claim some travel expenses or mileage related to the unit. Also keep track of any other expenses such as switching the water bill to the new renter, or postage. If you use Turbo tax, not the least expensive version, it can be a big help to get started and to remember how much to depreciate each year.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fff2035f2cc2849e6eba49a486a61c8c",
"text": "\"Not sure what you are talking about. The house isn't part of a business so neither of you can deduct half of normal maintenance and repairs. It is just the cost of having a house. The only time this would be untrue is if the thing that you are buying for the house is part of a special deduction or rebate for that tax year. For instance the US has been running rebates and deductions on certain household items that reduce energy - namely insulation, windows, doors, and heating/cooling systems (much more but those are the normal things). And in actuality if your brother is using the entire house as a living quarters you should be charging him some sort of rent. The rent could be up to the current monthly market price of the home minus 50%. If it were my family I would probably charge them what I would pay for a 3% loan on the house minus 50%. Going back to the repairs... Really if these repairs are upgrades and not things caused by using the house and \"\"breaking\"\" or \"\"wearing\"\" things you should be paying half of this, as anything that contributes to the increased property value should be paid for equally if you both are expecting to take home 50% a piece once you sell it.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fd689b6def8ac021d8eadf33bbcd8b36",
"text": "Remember this when you rent. You may get 1,600 back - however, you have to provide insurance on the house still, 10% of that rent goes into a repair fund for things that break. You don't get compensated for months without a renter. You still pay property tax and income tax. If you have someone manage the house, you have to pay their fee (10%+ usually). Lots of variables when renting (I looked into doing the same thing)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "665da3fdf06fdca87eb1d54a26e426fb",
"text": "\"Bad areas are tough to value as a owner-occupied property, because the business model for being a slumlord is to rent apartments in absentia, usually to tenants receiving goverment subsidies such as Section 8 vouchers. The vouchers are based on a prevailing rent, which are often on par with nice suburban apartment complexes due to how that \"\"prevailing\"\" rate is calculated. So the value of the house is really an annuity calculation. You figure out the potential rental cash flow and apply whatever your local market premium is. The point is, doing an apples to apples comparison is going to be tough, and justifying the cost of repairs that aren't remediating health and safety issues probably won't be recoverable from a home valuation standpoint. A buyer would probably rip out your central air conditioner and sell it! If I were in your shoes, I'd look at the time horizon that you think you're going to be there and amortize the cost over that period. Assuming your mortgage is small and you're staying for about 5 years, spending $10k costs you about $170 a month. Your reward is a modern A/C and heating system. Compare that cost to the cost of moving and your desires and see if it's worth it to you.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "504db960177f3094e6a274c3880f6531",
"text": "The other thing that you may or may not be considering is the fact that when she moves or otherwise ceases to live in that condo, you could then rent the unit out to others at the inflation adjusted rent price for the area. You could continue to build equity in the property for a fraction of the cost, and it would continue to be a tax write-off once your mother is not living there. While you have more maintenance and repairs cost when renters live there (typically, anyway), if inflation continues to carry on at about 4-5%, then you would be potentially renting the unit out at between $2,500 and $2,850 by the 10th year from now. Obviously, there are other considerations to be made as well, but those are some additional factors that don't seem to have been addressed in any of the above comments.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9f47d532ee2ff1cd4da42aa86e7f3042",
"text": "Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) have different end of term dates but by less than a month. Both have summer sessions, but most students do not stay over the summer. You can rent over the summer, but prices fall by a lot. Thirty to forty thousand students leave over the summer between the two. Only ten to twenty thousand remain throughout the year and not all of those are in Oakland (the neighborhood in Pittsburgh where the universities are located). So many of the landlords in Oakland have the same problem. Your competitors will cut their rates to try to get some rent for the summer months. This also means that you have to handle eight, nine, and three month leases rather than year long and certainly not multiyear leases. You're right that you don't have to buy the latest appliances or the best finishes, but you still have to replace broken windows and doors. Also, the appliances and plumbing need to mostly work. The furnace needs to produce heat and distribute it. If there is mold or mildew, you will have to take care of it. You can't rely on the students doing so. So you have to thoroughly clean the premises between tenants. Students may leave over winter break. If there are problems, the pipes may freeze and burst, etc. Since they're not there, they won't let you know when things break. Students drop out during the term and move out. You probably won't be able to replace them when that happens. If you have three people in two bedrooms, two of them may be in a romantic relationship. Romantic relationships among twenty-year olds end frequently. Your three people drops back to two. Your recourse in that case is to evict the remaining tenants and sue for breach of contract. But if you do that, you may not replace the tenants until a new term starts. Better might be to sue the one who left and accept the lower rent from the other two. But you likely won't get the entire rent amount for the remainder of the lease. Suing an impoverished student is not the road to riches. Pittsburgh is expected to have a 6.1% increase in house prices which almost all of it is going to be pure profit. I don't know specifically about Pittsburgh, but in the national market, housing prices are about where they were in 2004. Prices were flat to increasing from 2004 to 2007 and then fell sharply from 2007 to 2009, were flat to decreasing from 2009 to 2012, and have increased the last few years. Price to rent ratios are as high now as in 2003 and higher than they were the twenty years before that. Maybe prices do increase. Or maybe we hit a new 20% decrease. I would not rely on this for profit. It's great if you get it, but unreliable. I wouldn't rely on estimates for middle class homes to apply to what are essentially slum apartments. A 6% average may be a 15% increase in one place and a 3% decrease in another. The nice homes with the new appliances and the fancy finishes may get the 15% increase. The rundown houses in a block where students party past 2 AM may get no increase. Both the city of Pittsburgh and the county of Allegheny charge property taxes. Schools and libraries charge separate taxes. The city provides a worksheet that estimates $2860 in taxes on a $125,000 property. It doesn't sound like you would be eligible for homestead or senior tax relief. Realtors should be able to tell you the current assessment and taxes on the properties that they are selling you. You should be able to call a local insurance agent to find out what kinds of insurance are available to landlords. There is also renter's insurance which is paid by the tenant. Some landlords require that tenants show proof of insurance before renting. Not sure how common that is in student housing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8458e6ebcc66911b291d37d15bc50a86",
"text": "To start, I hope you are aware that the properties' basis gets stepped up to market value on inheritance. The new basis is the start for the depreciation that must be applied each year after being placed in service as rental units. This is not optional. Upon selling the units, depreciation is recaptured whether it's taken each year or not. There is no rule of thumb for such matters. Some owners would simply collect the rent, keep a reserve for expenses or empty units, and pocket the difference. Others would refinance to take cash out and leverage to buy more property. The banker is not your friend, by the way. He is a salesman looking to get his cut. The market has had a good recent run, doubling from its lows. Right now, I'm not rushing to prepay my 3.5% mortgage sooner than it's due, nor am I looking to pull out $500K to throw into the market. Your proposal may very well work if the market sees a return higher than the mortgage rate. On the flip side I'm compelled to ask - if the market drops 40% right after you buy in, will you lose sleep? And a fellow poster (@littleadv) is whispering to me - ask a pro if the tax on a rental mortgage is still deductible when used for other purposes, e.g. a stock purchase unrelated to the properties. Last, there are those who suggest that if you want to keep investing in real estate, leverage is fine as long as the numbers work. From the scenario you described, you plan to leverage into an already pretty high (in terms of PE10) and simply magnifying your risk.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "79150c526f9587a5527db7e2fe6c664b",
"text": "\"I would not classify utilities (including electric) as additional fees. In many cases you interact directly with the utility (not the landlord) and pay for what you use. There are exceptions like when renting a room. The renter's insurance also is not part of the landlord's profit, it is simply there to protect you. In the case of loss, the landlord cannot insure your property. You have to provide your own insurance. Its pretty low costs, typically less than 20 per month. The application fee is typical. The move in fee is something that could be negotiated away and sounds pretty sketchy. You can always \"\"let your fingers do the walking\"\" and find out the fees before you look at the place.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d8aaee2278cffb583d47b047c320b68d",
"text": "First of all, Dilip's answer explains well how the business deductions generally work. For most (big) expenses you depreciate it. However, in some cases you need to capitalize it, which is another accounting method. When you capitalize your expense, it becomes part of the basis of the product you're creating. Since you're an engineer, this might be relevant for you. Talk to your tax adviser. How exactly you deduct/depreciate/capitalize things, and what expense goes which way depends greatly on the laws and jurisdictions. Even in the US, different states have different laws, and the IRS and State laws don't have to conform (unfortunately). For example, the limitations on Sec. 179 deduction in 2010-2011 were 20 times higher on Federal level than in the State of California. This could have lead to cases where you fully deducted your expense on your Federal tax return, but need to continue and depreciate it on your State return (or vice versa). Good tax adviser is crucial to avoid or manage these cases.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fc0807c84be4f0eee1f29b291d2316d6",
"text": "Either way, (lease or buy), it's likely going to be an expense, not a depreciation. You would expense the entire lease amount - whatever that is in the year it was paid. A $2k-$3k computer probably isn't worth the trouble of recording it as a Fixed Asset and depreciating it yearly. I work for a company that buys thousands of PCs a year for its employees and we have a hard rule: If it's under $3k, it's an expense not an asset. If you were buying $20k-$50k servers, this would be a different conversation both because of the price and the life of the item. Because it's such a small amount (unless you really are buying $20k PCs), it doesn't really matter whether it's your biggest expense or not, it's likely just an expense. Though, no one is preventing you from depreciating it over 5 years if you wanted to. See: https://www.irs.gov/help-resources/tools-faqs/faqs-for-individuals/frequently-asked-tax-questions-answers/sale-or-trade-of-business-depreciation-rentals/depreciation-recapture/depreciation-recapture In summary: I would say your question is more of a business sense question than a tax question. Is it worth it to you to lease instead of buying because you are getting a new PC so often? Btw: every 2 years is not that often. It's average. Whatever your decision, I think the answer for taxes is the same: Expense it all in the year it was incurred unless you really want to spread it out and depreciate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b2f4f176d71865e5de83356df202f85d",
"text": "Sticking strictly to the money aspects. I am also assuming United States. The lender will need to know before applying for the loan that the property will be a rental, they may even need to know the scope of the number of renters. Insurance. There are two types you will need to include Income taxes. If you do run a profit you will have taxes. The surprising thing for many first time landlords is that they don't realize that the principal of the loan payment is not considered a deductible expense. Of course there is a benefit to depreciation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3796346d54696bfa1a1766980aa57823",
"text": "Both of these terms do refer to your profit; they're just different ways of evaluating it. First, your definition of capitalization rate is flipped. As explained here, it should be: On the other hand, as explained here: So cap rate is like a reverse unit cost approach to comparing two investments. If house A costs $1M and you'll make $50K (profit) from it yearly, and house B costs $1.33M and you'll make $65K (profit) from it yearly, then you can compute cap rates to see that A is a more efficient investment from the point of view of income vs. amount-of-money-you-have-stuck-in-this-investment-and-unavailable-for-use-elsewhere. Profit margin, on the other hand, cares more about your ongoing expenses than about your total investment. If it costs less to maintain property B than it does to maintain property A, then you could have something like: So B is a more efficient investment from the point of view of the fraction of your revenue you actually get to keep each year. Certainly you could think of the property's value as an opportunity cost and factor that into the net profit margin equation to get a more robust estimate of exactly how efficient your investment is. You can keep piling more factors into the equation until you've accounted for every possible facet of your investment. This is what accountants and economists spend their days doing. :-)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "257c70a9f954a96a7657e3761647efee",
"text": "Think carefully about the added expenses. It may still make sense, but it probably won't be as cheap as you are thinking. In addition to the mortgage and property taxes, there is also insurance and building maintenance and repairs. Appliances, carpets, and roofs need to be replaced periodically. Depending on the area of the country there is lawn maintenance and now removal. You need to make sure you can cover the expenses if you are without a tenant for 6 months or longer. When tenants change, there is usually some cleaning and painting that needs to be done. You can deduct the mortgage interest and property taxes on your part of the building. You need to claim any rent as income, but can deduct the other part of the mortgage interest and taxes as an expense. You can also deduct building maintenance and repairs on the rental portion of the building. Some improvements need to be depreciated over time (5-27 years). You also need to depreciate the cost of the rental portion of the building. This basically means that you get a deduction each year, but lower the cost basis of the building so you owe more capital gains taxes when you sell. If you do this, I would get a professional to do your taxes at least the first year. Its not hard once you see it done, but there are a lot of details and complications that you want to get right.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4f9cb22a348d006122b9c1cb093de2e7",
"text": "You can't compare the different quotes unless they have the same numbers to work with. The big companies should use similar models to come up with values for the contents. In many cases they will assume some standard values for things like appliances. Yes you have a stove, but unless it is commercial grade they won't care when giving you a quote. If you have very expensive items you may need a rider to cover them. There is not relationship between the county assessment and the cost to rebuild. The insurance doesn't cover the land. You have to make sure that all quotes include the same riders: cost to put you in a motel, flood insurance... and the same deductibles. Your state may have an insurance office that can help answer your question. Here is the one for Virginia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5decb6a6d267bdd7e47d67861b736515",
"text": "The only card I've seen offer this on credit card purchases is Discover. I think they have a special deal with the stores so that the cash-over amount is not included in the percentage-fee the merchant pays. (The cash part shows up broken-out from the purchase amount on the statement--if this was purely something the store did on its own without some collaboration with Discover that would not happen). The first few times I've seen the offer, I assumed it would be treated like a cash-advance (high APR, immediate interest with no grace period, etc.), but it is not. It is treated like a purchase. You have no interest charge if you pay in full during the grace period, and no transaction fee. Now I very rarely go to the ATM. What is in it for Discover? They have a higher balance to charge you interest on if you ever fail to pay in full before the grace period. And Discover doesn't have any debit/pin option that I know of, so no concern of cannibalizing their other business. And happier customers. What is in it for the grocer? Happier customers, and they need to have the armored car come around less often and spend less time counting drawers internally.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
b6fcaf9cd49078416abea00dcdda39e3
|
What effect does a company's earnings have on the price of its stock?
|
[
{
"docid": "52d826b925842aa604e0b295fcd54608",
"text": "\"No, the stock market is not there for speculation on corporate memorabilia. At its base, it is there for investing in a business, the point of the investment being, of course, to make money. A (successful) business earns money, and that makes it valuable to its owners since that money can be distributed to them. Shares of stock are pieces of business ownership, and so are valuable. If you knew that the business would have profit of $10,000,000 every year, and would distribute that to the owners of each of its 10,000,000 shares each year, you would know to that each share would receive $1 each year. How much would such a share be worth to you? If you could instead put money in a bank and get 5% a year back, to get $1 a year back you would have to put $20 into the bank. So maybe that share of stock is worth about $20 to you. If somebody offers to sell you such a share for $18, you might buy it; for $23, maybe you pass up the offer. But business is uncertain, and how much profit the business will make is uncertain and will vary through time. So how much is a share of a real business worth? This is a much harder call, and people use many different ways to come up with how much they should pay for a share. Some people probably just think something like \"\"Apple is a good company making money, I'll buy a share at whatever price it is being offered at right now.\"\" Others look at every number available, build models of the company and the economy and the risks, all to estimate what a share might be worth, more or less. There is no indisputable value for a share of a successful business. So, what effect does a company's earnings have on the price of its stock? You can only say that for some of the people who might buy or sell shares, higher earnings will, all other thing being equal, have them be willing to spend more to buy it or demand more when selling it. But how much more is not quantifiable but depends on each person's approach to the problem. Higher earnings would tend to raise the price of the stock. Yet there are other factors, such as people who had expected even higher earnings, whose actions would tend to lower the price, and people who are OK with the earnings now, but suspect trouble for the business is appearing on the horizon, whose actions would also tend to lower the price. This is why people say that a stock's price is determined by supply and demand.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7604afb3ccde436812d42a15983537ec",
"text": "A common (and important) measure of a stock's value is the price/earnings ratio, so an increase in earnings will normally cause the stock price to increase. However, the price of the stock is based on a guess of the value of the company some time (6 months?) in the future. So an increase in earnings today probably makes a higher earnings more likely in the future, and puts upward pressure on the price of the stock. There are a lot of other factors in stock prices, such as publicity, dividends, revenue, trends, company stability, and company history. Earnings is a very important factor, but not the only factor determine the value (and so stock price) of a company.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "649ef789d568c6c872bfffbf1b6f17af",
"text": "Your autograph analogy seems relevant to me. But it is not just speculation. In the long run, investing in stocks is like investing in the economy. In the long run, the economy is expected to grow , hence stock prices are expected to go up. Now in theory: the price of any financial instrument is equal to the net present value today of all the future cash flows from the instrument. So if company's earnings improve, shareholders hope that the earnings will trickle down to them either in form of dividends or in form of capital gain. So they buy the stock, creating demand for it. I can try to explain more if this did not make any sense. :)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cbe185e1d074f6ebf2fe638058bf87b2",
"text": "Market price of a stock typically trades in a range of Price/Earnings Ratio (P/E ratio). Or in other words, price of a stock = Earnings * P/E ratio Because of this direct proportionality of stock price with earnings, stock prices move in tandem with earnings.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "3fb7e228563796fa46d65b6918fe1cd1",
"text": "I have heard that people say the greater earning means greater intrinsic value of the company. Then, the stock price is largely based on the intrinsic value. So increasing intrinsic value due to increasing earning will lead to increasing stock price. Does this make sense ? Yes though it may be worth dissecting portions here. As a company generates earnings, it has various choices for what it can do with that money. It can distribute some to shareholders in the form of dividends or re-invest to generate more earnings. What you're discussing in the first part is those earnings that could be used to increase the perceived value of the company. However, there can be more than a few interpretations of how to compute a company's intrinsic value and this is how one can have opinions ranging from companies being overvalued to undervalued overall. Of Mines, Forests, and Impatience would be an article giving examples that make things a bit more complex. Consider how would you evaluate a mine, a forest or a farm where each gives a different structure to the cash flow? This could be useful in running the numbers here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c1c2620e960c66a3465df030519f8644",
"text": "\"It is important to first understand that true causation of share price may not relate to historical correlation. Just like with scientific experiments, correlation does not imply causation. But we use stock price correlation to attempt to infer causation, where it is reasonable to do so. And to do that you need to understand that prices change for many reasons; some company specific, some industry specific, some market specific. Companies in the same industry may correlate when that industry goes up or down; companies with the same market may correlate when that market goes up or down. In general, in most industries, it is reasonable to assume that competitor companies have stocks which strongly correlate (positively) with each-other to the extent that they do the same thing. For a simple example, consider three resource companies: \"\"Oil Ltd.\"\" [100% of its assets relate to Oil]; \"\"Oil and Iron Inc.\"\" [50% of its value relates to Oil, 50% to Iron]; and \"\"Iron and Copper Ltd.\"\" [50% of its value relates to Iron, 50% to Copper]. For each of these companies, there are many things which affect value, but one could naively simplify things by saying \"\"value of a resource company is defined by the expected future volume of goods mined/drilled * the expected resource price, less all fixed and variable costs\"\". So, one major thing that impacts resource companies is simply the current & projected price of those resources. This means that if the price of Oil goes up or down, it will partially affect the value of the two Oil companies above - but how much it affects each company will depend on the volume of Oil it drills, and the timeline that it expects to get that Oil. For example, maybe Oil and Iron Ltd. has no currently producing Oil rigs, but it has just made massive investments which expect to drill Oil in 2 years - and the market expects Oil prices to return to a high value in 2 years. In that case, a drop in Oil would impact Oil Inc. severely, but perhaps it wouldn't impact Oil and Iron Ltd. as much. In this case, for the particular share price movement related to the price of Oil, the two companies would not be correlated. Iron and Copper Ltd. would be unaffected by the price of Oil [this is a simplification; Oil prices impact many areas of the economy], and therefore there would be no correlation at all between this company's shares. It is also likely that competitors face similar markets. If consumer spending goes down, then perhaps the stock of most consumer product companies would go down as well. There would be outliers, because specific companies may still succeed in a falling market, but in generally, there would be a lot of correlation between two companies with the same market. In the case that you list, Sony vs Samsung, there would be some factors that correlate positively, and some that correlate negatively. A clean example would be Blackberry stock vs Apple stock - because Apple's success had specifically negative ramifications for Blackberry. And yet, other tech company competitors also succeeded in the same time period, meaning they did not correlate negatively with Apple.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bbc616ead23979dbfb6b2f964398e6d1",
"text": "In order: A seller of the stock (duh!). You don't know who or why this stock was sold. It could be any reason, and is of no concern of yours. It doesn't matter. Investors (pension funds, hedge funds, individual investors, employees, management) sell stock for many reasons: need cash, litigation, differing objectives, sector rotation, etc. To you, this does not matter. Yes, it does affect stock market prices: If you were not willing to buy that amount of shares, and there were no other buyers at that price, the seller would likely choose to lower the price offered. By your purchase, you are supporting the price.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e0032eafca184fb6973d7d72b2f60f85",
"text": "If you believe in the efficient market hypothesis then the stock price reflects the information known to market participants. Consequently, if the 'market' expected earnings to rise, and they did, then the price won't change. Clearly there are circumstances, especially in the short term and for illiquid stocks, where this isn't true, but a lot of work points to this being the case on average.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fc1bf4de61c4935ba16ddaa14ac96f2f",
"text": "according to me it's the news about a particular stock which makes people to buy or sell it mostly thus creates a fluctuation in price . It also dependents on the major stock holder.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c6cb4a956263e8a41ee3791e633b372f",
"text": "Would you consider the owner of a company to be supporting the company? If you buy stock in the company you own a small part of that company. Your purchase also increases the share price, and thus the value of the company. Increased value allows the company to borrow more money to say expand operations. The affect that most individuals might have on share price is very very small. That doesn't mean it isn't the right thing for you to do if it is something you believe in. After all if enough people followed those same convictions it could have an impact on the company.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bd59a0d6be04b9e7ff8cc04436d98108",
"text": "\"What does it mean in terms of share price? Should the share price increase by 15 cents? No, but you're on the right track. In theory, the price of a share reflects it's \"\"share\"\" of time discounted future earnings. To put it concretely, imagine a company consistently earning 15 cents a share every year and paying it all out as dividends. If you only paid 25 cents for it, you could earn five cents a share by just holding it for two years. If you imagine that stocks are priced assuming a holding period of 20 years or so, so we'd expect the stock to cost less than 3 dollars. More accurately, the share price reflects expected future earnings. If everyone is assuming this company is growing earnings every quarter, an announcement will only confirm information people have already been trading based on. So if this 15 cents announcement is a surprise, then we'd expect the stock price to rise as a function of both the \"\"surprise\"\" in earnings, and how long we expect them to stay at this new profitability level before competition claws their earnings away. Concretely, if 5 cents a share of that announcement were \"\"earnings surprise,\"\" you'd expect it to rise somewhere around a dollar.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2179472f1459f1f7ec70b6aac3a9d3be",
"text": "You are right that Facebook really doesn't get impacted as they got their $38. However it would make it slightly more difficult for Facebook to raise more money in future as large investors would be more cautious. This can keep the price lowers than it actually needs to be. Quite a few companies try to list the IPO at lower price so that it keeps going up and have more positive effect overall there by making it easier for future borrowings. See related question Why would a company care about the price of its own shares in the stock market?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a025d389c97e33531f1be1392b2444c3",
"text": "\"When you buy a stock, you're really paying for a STREAM of earnings, from now till whenever. The job of an investor is to figure out how large that stream will be in the future. But if the stock price were the same as \"\"earnings\"\" (for one year), it would mean that you would get all future earnings for \"\"free.\"\" That's not likely to happen unless 1) the company is in liquidation,\"\" meaning \"\"no future\"\" and 2) it earned ALL of the money it ever earned in the past year, meaning \"\"no past.\"\" If there are likely to be any earnings in the future, you will have to pay for those future earnings, over and above what was earned in the most recent year.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d5607bef00056a09a17bce283bef755b",
"text": "Here are some significant factors affect the company stock price performance: Usually, profitability is known to the public through the financial statements; it won't be 100% accurate and people would also trade the stock with the price not matching to the true value of the firm. Still there are dozens of other various reasons exist. People are just not behaving as rational as what the textbook describes when they are trading and investing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "afc87e138f5ad7836364c72b04e864f2",
"text": "News about a company is not the only thing that affects its stock's price. There is also supply and demand. That, of course, is influenced by news, but it is not the only actor. An insider, with a large position in their company's stock, may want to diversify his overall portfolio and thus need to sell a large amount of stock. That may be significant enough to increase supply and likely reduce the stock's price somewhat. That brings me to another influence on stock price: perception. Executives, and other insiders with large positions in their company's stock, have to be careful about how and when they sell some of that stock as to not worry the markets. Many investors watch insider selling to gauge the health of the company. Which brings me to another important point. There are many things that may be considered news which is material to a certain company and its stock. It is not just quarterly filings, earnings reports and such. There is also news related to competitors, news about the economy or a certain sector, news about some weather event that affects a major supplier, news about a major earthquake that will impact the economy of a nation which can then have knock-on effects to other economies, etc... There are also a lot of investors with varying needs which will influence supply and demand. An institutional investor, needing to diversify, may reduce their position in a stock and thus increase supply enough that it impacts the stock's price. Meanwhile, individual investors will make their transactions at varying times during the day. In the aggregate, that may have significant impacts on supply and demand. The overall point being that there are a lot of inputs and a lot of actors in a complicated system. Even if you focus just on news, there are many things that fall into that category. News does not come out at regular intervals and it does not necessarily spread evenly. That alone could make for a highly variable environment.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0620cbca97d934750faaf78e76922855",
"text": "Aside from the market implications Victor and JB King mention, another possible reason is the dividends they pay. Usually, the dividends a company pays are dependent on the profit the company made. if a company makes less profit, the dividends turn out smaller. This might incite unrest among the shareholders, because this means that they get paid less dividends, which makes that share more likely to be sold, and thus for the price to fall.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ba22f2742f109ebad589fa5564b85d94",
"text": "1) What's the point of paying a dividend if the stock price automatically decreases? Don't the shareholders just break even? When the company earns cash beyond what is needed for expenses, the value of the firm increases. As a shareholder, you own a piece of that increased value as soon as the company earns it. When the dividend is paid, the value of the firm decreases, but you break even on the dividend transaction. The benefit to you in holding the company's shares is the continually increasing value, whether paid out to you, or retained. Be careful not to confuse the value of the firm with the stock price. The stock price is ever-changing, in the short-term driven mostly by investor emotion. Over the long term, by far the largest effect on stock price is earnings. Take an extreme, and simplistic example. The company never grows or shrinks, earnings are always the same, there is no inflation :) , and they pay everything out in dividends. By the reasoning above, the firm value never changes, so over the long-term the stock price will never change, but you still get your quarterly dividends.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fcba21aa3c74e9db304b5f7ec2423be7",
"text": "It is unlikely that buying 100 shares will have any effect on a stock's price, unless the stock's average trading volume is incredibly low. That being said, no matter how many share you buy, there's no way to know what the impact on the price will be, because that's only one factor in how shares are priced. If anyone could figure out the answer to your question then they'd be extremely rich, because they'd simply watch for big share trades and then buy those stocks on the way up. The market makers who actually execute the trades are the ones who set the prices, and most stocks have multiple market makers trading the stock, so the bid/ask you see is the highest bid and lowest ask. The market makers set the price based on what the trend of the stock is. If, for instance, there's a large number of sell orders against a stock, the market makers will start dropping the bid prices as they fill execution orders, and as they see buy orders increase, they'll raise ask prices as they fill execution orders. The market makers earn the difference between what they paid to buy someone's stock who was selling and what they get from someone else who buys it. This is a simplified explanation, so pro traders, don't beat me up! (grin) So, basically, it takes quite a bit of share volume in one direction or another to affect a stock's price. I can guarantee a 100-share trade wouldn't even be noticed by market makers. I hope this helps. Good luck!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ed0f4a15ea7b5f4c0e208feb408df841",
"text": "\"I have some experience with this. I have had fraudulent charges appear on my credit card statement and had to change my card number several times, despite (I believe) no carelessness on my part. Every time that this has happened, I have never lost a penny due to fraud on my credit card. The bank has ultimately removed the fraudulent charges in every instance. Given this, you'd think the consumer doesn't need to worry about this at all. But it seems like credit card companies beg to differ. Yes, because although I have never lost a penny to fraud, the bank (or the merchant) loses money every time it happens. The $0 liability protects you; the card security measures protect the bank. But... why should a consumer ever bother worrying about these in the first place, when he knows he legally can't be held responsible for fraudulent charges? What exactly is this new \"\"peace of mind\"\" that he supposedly gets by (say) using features like virtual account numbers that he doesn't already have? Although you shouldn't end up out any money when this happens, it is an inconvenience. The bank will cancel your card and issue you a new number. It may take a few days for you to receive your new card. If you have another card to use, this isn't a big deal. If you are out of state the day before you need to check out of a hotel and return a rental car with no backup credit card (as I have been), it is a big deal. (In my case, I had to have the credit card company talk to the hotel to give them the new card number, and they were able to overnight me a new credit card so I could get home. I now make sure I carry a backup credit card.) Should a consumer put any effort into worrying about this at all? (Why?) In my opinion, it makes sense to be careful what you do with your credit card number, if only to avoid the inconvenience. Don't type your credit card number into an e-mail message, for example, and only use it on websites that you trust. That having been said, it is not worth it to be paranoid about it, either. No matter how careful you are, eventually you will probably use it at a store that gets hacked, or your card will get skimmed somewhere, and you'll need to get a new credit card number. The best way to protect yourself is to make sure that you go over your credit card statement each month and look for any fraudulent charges that the bank didn't catch.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
4773203adaedb494ffe5b33c046ab4d2
|
What U.S. banks offer two-factor authentication (such as password & token) for online banking?
|
[
{
"docid": "b1ebfc2c86a395f575eb6475a8596391",
"text": "\"StasM, It's taken a while but many banks offer tokens - although they tend to limit the accounts for which they will be issued. All of the following issue tokens, but there are many more: CitiBank JP Morgan Union Bank Wells Fargo Callaway Bank Wachovia Bank of North Dakota The River Bank of Wisconsin Metcalf Bank, Kansas Stonebridge Bank In 2005 federal regulators stipulated that banks needed to get better with security for online banking customers, but they did not endorse a particular technology. Tokens (aka fobs) were endorsed. The news was negatively received by the banks because putting more steps in the way of a customer drives the customer away. See this 2005 report for more info: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2005-11-02-cybercrime-prevention_x.htm My guess is a tipping point was reached since then, where customers became savvy of the risks, and that the \"\"extra steps\"\" became less an issue than the \"\"extra security\"\".\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ba2f94e4f4a3b3116dbe2dd98d409f72",
"text": "There are very few banks which offer two-factor authentication. Part of the reason is cost. Providing a token to every account-holder is expensive, not just in the device or system, but in providing support and assistance to the millions of people who won't have the faintest idea how it works and complain that they no longer have access to their accounts. That said, it is sometimes available on request for personal accounts and many banks require it for their business clients. My HSBC Business account comes with two-factor as default and it works extremely well. There is also the pseudo-two-factor security offered by Visa and MasterCard (3-D secure) which performs a similar function.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6c3c5e2804a3f4ff19c1a1293a007deb",
"text": "E*Trade offers banking services, and will provide you with a security token free if you have sufficient assets there ($50,000). Otherwise they'll charge you a $25 fee.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a8ec95e7608405e25bee1e62d62ef0dc",
"text": "Bank of America supports two-factor authentication using SMS messages, similar to PayPal. You can enable the feature from Online Banking under Customer Service -> SafePass Settings. Update: Over the weekend of July 28th, 2012, the SafePass control on the authentication page was updated to simple HTML + JavaScript instead of Flash, so that it is now possible to login from Safari on iOS, among others.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "42c72db8ab6854be3d6437c02d71e83a",
"text": "Some credit unions also offer them and support Business banking as well. First Tech Credit Union is a great example. They also have the most security-oriented banking website I've seen to date. https://www.firsttechfed.com/ As a side note I've found that Credit Unions are a MUCH better deal for personal and business banking.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a41c9f182f2aa4a77e16a1f6c6a69eb4",
"text": "USAA does - that's my bank. Wells Fargo tries to determine whether the online activity is a risk; if it is, they'll require an SMS code or phoned code be entered. You can get a fairly definitive list of online companies at twofactorauth.org.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "fcea2b8b571f1859139d2c628ccf500a",
"text": "I have USAA and the home loan process was a nightmare. My account was also compromised but I caught it immediately because they sent me an alert of a large sum of money being transferred to my checking account, so there is that. I just found out that Navy Federal finally accepts Army veterans (it hadn't up until a couple of years ago) so I have an account with them just so I can get different loan options and credit card rates. Navy Federal has minimums for getting ATM refunds while USAA doesn't, so for now I just have a savings account with them.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "31fc9c275253a8a25056530c6bdd76d5",
"text": "I read an article where this website did an interview with them and concluded its very sketchy and possibly illegal. They refused to give out their FDIC number and they got the high interest rate by selling personal customer information to third parties",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "807a92ad542d215ad05806d41571e244",
"text": "When I went on vacation to London a few years ago, I looked around at banks with ATM deals with UK banks. I found that B of A had a deal with a UK bank that you could use their ATMs to take out money from your US account for practically no fees. So the week or so before I left, I opened an account at B of A, put a bunch of money in it, and used the B of A debit card during my trip as much as possible.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fd5a1b84940c079a7c2f75cafa6f8904",
"text": "Buxfer is a personal-finance web app which you might like. It's not open-source. But at least none of your complaints about financeworks.intuit.com apply to Buxfer. Buxfer offers a piece of software you can download to your own PC, called Firebux. This macro-recording software provides automation that helps you download statements and upload them to Buxfer. So you never have to give Buxfer any of your bank or brokerage usernames or passwords. Buxfer and Firebux are both free of charge. Wesabe, another personal-finance web app, also used to offer data-uploader software, but Wesabe has now gone out of business.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "44309cd550236d0b4bb90aa00c1efe11",
"text": "I use online banking and bill pay for all accounts where I can control when and how much is paid, where I push the funds out. The bills from those companies that want to be allowed to reach into my account and pull money automatically (e.g. my Chase mortgage) I simply will not enroll - they get a paper check in the mail. There is no way I am giving these cocksucker criminals *permission* to take money out of my accounts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2bcc07d2a1ecf891d4e6b74729d40f57",
"text": "In addition to the other answers, Harris Bank (now owned by BMO) allows Canadians living in Canada to open accounts, perhaps they consider other countries as well. They have excellent customer service.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7f27667221cca30f0a98511cc22f04d9",
"text": "I'm always hesitant to use local credit unions because I love accessing all atms fee free, having services available 24/7, having robust, safe and audited online services, and having a big enough bank that all major third party tools interface with it. Joe Schmo Local Credit Union has a lot of good services, but audited and secure online banking? No fee nationwide ATMs? Native interfacing to major tools? I just don't see it often. I shudder to think of the security at small bank websites, frankly.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "af1e66be7a0e8c8af69736054273ebf8",
"text": "I'm working on some banking-related research, and have run into a problem: financial data switches between using RSSDIDs and FDIC certs to identify individual banks. I'm looking for an efficient way to convert between ID types or include both, as I am merging large financial data sets that each use different ID types. I have found [this](https://www.ffiec.gov/nicpubweb/nicweb/searchform.aspx), which allows for conversion one-by-one. However, I'm working with a very large set of bank data, and would really appreciate a more efficient way to do this. Does anyone know of a data set that matches certs to RSSDIDs? edit: just in case someone else needs it, the call report bulk downloads on the ffiec site have both the CERTs and RSSDIDs, so you can use those.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7dc7abd96a4232b1049975ebf8aa602f",
"text": "Capital One 360. No minimums balance, no fees. Everything's online. Make deposits using an app or an image of the check. ATMs are free almost everywhere.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "38a1e558bd7d0f7595a41143e9be2a8f",
"text": "Personal finance startup BillGuard has raised $10 million in second-round financing, and it’s using it to expand its service that helps protect accounts from fraudulent activity, the company said Tuesday. BillGuard protects users by registering their credit and debit cards and keeping an eye out for questionable and fraudulent charges. The company uses a crowdsourced approach to identifying unauthorized charges, by not only providing its own detection but also incorporating users’ billing complaints to track and analyze payments. BillGuard’s big second round of funding comes from a powerhouse group, including Khosla Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. “At Khosla Ventures we love entrepreneurs who dare to tackle large problems with disruptive, bottom-up methods,” said Vinod Khosla, founding partner of Khosla Ventures, in a statement. At present, BillGuard is free to use for anyone who wants to sign up. So how is it going to make money? The company is talking to large banks that could act as partners and incorporate BillGuard on a per-customer basis for a small fee. BillGuard is also exploring the idea of a merchant certification program that would let merchants have access to some its data, and follow up with customers who end up with fraudulent or questionable charges. New York-based BillGuard previously raised $3 million in its first round of funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and IA Ventures. BillGuard made its public debut on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in May 2011.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fbb67d40032f4f89b5d23f90cb3caa17",
"text": "I've had good experiences with a regional bank. All the perks of Wells but without the bullshit fees (except ATMs unfortunately but I just get cash back in the rare instance that a card / my phone won't cut it).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "35521eafb32f55645fbcfd314a99e5f0",
"text": "While it's wise, easier and safer to check your transactions online a few times a month, I opt to receive and file paper statements as a hard copy back up of account history. Any reconciliation I perform is a quick glance to make sure the numbers sound right. It's probably a small waste of time and space, but it settles some of my paranoia (due to my training as a computer engineer) about failure of electronic banking systems. If someone tampers with bank records or a SAN explodes and wipes out a bunch of account data, then I will have years worth of paper statements to back up my numbers. Having years worth of statements printed on the banks stationary will have better credibility in court than a .pdf or printout thereof that could have been doctored, in case I ever needed to take my bank to court. A little piece of mind for the price of a letter opener, a square foot file box and a couple of minutes a month.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "51fc55d0608b3e0ebf101e5489f185cb",
"text": "\"Much of what you're asking will not be disclosed for obvious security reasons, so don't be surprised when call center people say they \"\"don't know\"\". They may actually not know, but even if they did, they'd be fired if they were to say anything. Nothing could be a touchier subject than online security for the financial institutions. I don't know of reliable sources for the data you're asking about, and I don't know the banks or other firms would release it. For a bank to talk about its incidence rates of fraud would be unusual, because none of these institutions wants to appear \"\"less safe\"\" than their competitors. If there's any information out there then it's going to be pretty vague. None of these institutions wants the \"\"bad guys\"\" to know what their degree of success is against one bank versus any other. I hope that makes sense. The smaller banks usually piggyback their data on the networks of the larger financial institutions, so they are as secure (as a general rule) as the larger banks' networks they're running on. Also, your transactions on your credit cards are not generally handled directly by your bank anyway, unless it's one of the big heavyweights like Chase or Bank of America. All transactions run through merchant processors, who act as intermediaries between merchants and the banks, and those guys are pretty damned good at security. I've met some of the programmers, and they're impressive to me (I've been a programmer for 35 years and can't put a finger on these guys!). Most banks require that you must provide proof of identity when opening an account, and that ID must me the standards of the \"\"USA Real ID Act\"\". Here's an excerpt from the Department of Homeland Security website on what Real ID is: Passed by Congress in 2005, the REAL ID Act enacted the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that the Federal Government “set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver's licenses.” The Act established minimum security standards for state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards and prohibits Federal agencies from accepting for official purposes licenses and identification cards from states that do not meet these standards. States have made considerable progress in meeting this key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission and every state has a more secure driver’s license today than before the passage of the Act. In order for banks to qualify for FDIC protection, they must comply with the Real ID standards when opening accounts. As with any business (especially online), the most effective way to minimize fraud is vigilant monitoring of data. Banks and other online financial entities have become very adept at pattern analysis and simply knowing where and what to look for when dealing with their customers. There are certainly sophisticated measures which are kept carefully out of the public eye for doing this, and obviously they're good at it. They have to be, right? There's no way to completely eliminate fraud -- too much incentive exists for the \"\"bad guys\"\" to not constantly search for new ways to run their schemes, and the good guys will always be at the disadvantage, because there's no way to anticipate everything anyone might come up with. Just look at online viruses and malware. Your antivirus software can only deal with what it knows about, and the bad guys are always coming up with some new variant that gets past the filters until the antivirus maker learns of it and comes up with a way to deal with it. Your question's a good one to ponder, and I wouldn't want to be the chief of internet security for a bank or online institution, because I'd lay awake at night pondering when the call's going to come that we finally ran out of luck! (grin) I hope this was helpful. Good luck!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "638947ae1029dd877c240c92506276e6",
"text": "Are there banks where you can open a bank account without being a citizen of that country without having to visit the bank in person? I've done it the other way around, opened a bank account in the UK so I have a way to store GBP. Given that Britain is still in the EU you can basically open an account anywhere. German online banks for instance allow you to administrate anything online, should there be cards issued you would need an address in the country. And for opening an account a passport is sufficient, you can identify yourself in a video chat. Now what's the downside? French banks' online services are in French, German banks' services are in German. If that doesn't put you off, I would name such banks in the comments if asked. Are there any online services for investing money that aren't tied to any particular country? Can you clarify that? You should at least be able to buy into any European or American stock through your broker. That should give you an ease of mind being FCA-regulated. However, those are usually GDRs (global depository receipts) and denominated in GBp (pence) so you'd be visually exposed to currency rates, by which I mean that if the stock goes up 1% but the GBP goes up 1% in the same period then your GDR would show a 0% profit on that day; also, and more annoyingly, dividends are distributed in the foreign currency, then exchanged by the issuer of the GDR on that day and booked into your account, so if you want to be in full control of the cashflows you should get a trading account denominated in the currency (and maybe situated in the country) you're planning to invest in. If you're really serious about it, some brokers/banks offer multi-currency trading accounts (again I will name them if asked) where you can trade a wide range of instruments natively (i.e. on the primary exchanges) and you get to manage everything in one interface. Those accounts typically include access to the foreign exchange markets so you can move cash between your accounts freely (well for a surcharge). Also, typically each subaccount is issued its own IBAN.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b404a0a65abf25390f0c7079320447eb",
"text": "Australia has a massive housing bubble (one of the last in the world to pop), no productivity growth (lots of investment in mining which hasn't yet payed off, though we'll do well if commodities pick up), and relies on China and India buying lots of coal and steel at historically high prices.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
46aa6170a96de7ecf6b9250ec7af702b
|
Are there any regulations regards end of loan payment procedures?
|
[
{
"docid": "180891a9e29d7ad7a96a15eaec0e7bc2",
"text": "There are federal regulations that state that: As a result it can be assumed that when a loan is paid off, notification should be given to the borrower. There is not a penalty since schools are pretty good about recovering their money. It could be due to a simple human error or glitch in the system. I would email them again confirming that your Perkins Loan had been paid in full, just so you have documentation of it.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "40ae70712ee0d2fee4c95c13d1d2069d",
"text": "If the loan is for a car, or mortgage there is specific paperwork that is processed when the loan payments have been completed. For other types of loans ask the lender, what will they give you regarding the payoff of the loan. Keep this paperwork, in hard copy and electronic form forever.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fa333059fd11e1523cf382938d912982",
"text": "\"Let me give you some advice from someone who has experience at both ends - had student loan issues myself and parents ran financial aid department at local university. Quick story of my student loan. I graduated in debt and could not pay at first due to having kids way too early. I deferred. Schools will have rules for deference. There are also federal guidelines - lets not get specific on this though since these change every year it seems. So basically there is an initial deferment period in which any student can request for the repayments to be deferred and it is granted. Then there is an extended deferment. Here someone has to OK it. This is really rather arbitrary and up to the school/lender. My school decided to not extend mine after I filled out a mound of paperwork and showed that even without paying I had basically $200 a month for the family to live off past housing/fixed expenses. Eventually they had to cave, because I had no money so they gave me an extended deferment. After the 5 years I started paying. Since my school had a very complex way to pay, I decided to give them 6 months at a time. You would think they would love that right? (On the check it was clearly stated what months I was paying for to show that I was not prepaying the loan off) Well I was in collections 4 months later. Their billing messed up, set me up for prepayment. They then played dumb and acted like I didn't but I had a picture of the check and their bank's stamp on the back... They couldn't get my loan out of collections - even though they messed up. This is probably some lower level employee trying to cover their mistake. So this office tells creditors to leave me alone but I also CANNOT pay my loan because the credit collection agency has slapped a 5k fee on the 7k loan. So my loan spent 5 years (kid you not) like this. It was interest free since the employee stopped the loan processing. Point being is that if you don't pay the lender will either put your loan into deferment automatically or go after you. MOST (not all) schools will opt for deferment, which I believe is 2 years at most places. Then after that you have the optional deferment. So if you keep not paying they might throw you into that bucket. However if you stop paying and you never communicate with them the chances of you getting the optional deferment are almost none - unless school doesn't know where you live. Basically if you don't respond to their mail/emails you get swept into their credit collection process. So just filling out the deferment stuff when you get it - even if they deny it - could buy you up to 10 years - kid you not. Now once you go into the collection process... anything is game. As long as you don't need a home/car loan you can play this game. What the collection agency does depends on size of loan and the rules. If you are at a \"\"major\"\" university the rules are usually more lax, but if you are at the smaller schools, especially the advertised trade/online schools boom - better watch out. Wages will be garnished very soon. Expect to go to court, might have to hire an attorney because some corrupt lenders start smacking on fees - think of the 5k mine smacked on me. So the moral of the story is you will pay it off. If you act nice, fill out paperwork, talk to school, and so on you can probably push this off quite a few years. But you are still paying and you will pay interest on everything. So factor in that to the equation. I had a 2.3% loan but they are much higher now. Defaulting isn't always a bad thing. If you don't have the money then you don't have it. And using credit cards to help is not the thing to do. But you need to try to work with the school so you don't incur penalties/fees and so that your job doesn't have creditors calling them. My story ended year 4 that my loan was in collection. A higher up was reviewing my case and called me. Told her the story and emailed her a picture of their cashed check. She was completely embarrassed when she was trying to work out a plan for me and I am like - how about I come down tomorrow with the 7k. But even though lender admitted fault this took 20+ calls to agencies to clear up my credit so I could buy a house. So your goal should be:\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0a2e54e542bab264da2cf0c2dc3f09b7",
"text": "There are different options here. Either way, ensure that you have a paper trail of all your payments. When in doubt, speak to a lawyer, there are many who offer free consultations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "55a4f389f97a24cc60821597a105d24a",
"text": "In the EU, you might be looking for Directive 2000/35/EC (Late Payment Directive). There was a statutory rate, 7% above the European Central Bank main rate. However, this Directive was recently repealed by Directive 2011/7/EU, which sets the statutory rate at ECB + 8%. (Under EU regulations, Directives must be turned into laws by national governments, which often takes several months. So in some EU countries the local laws may still reflect the old Directive. Also, the UK doesn't participate in the Euro, and doesn't follow the ECB rate)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b9300c42e6ddab9c79fd61d14d4cb061",
"text": "You should also be aware that there are banks that do business in the US that do not deal with Fannie Mae, and thus are not subject to the rules about conforming loans. Here is an example of a well-known bank that lists two sets of rates, with the second being for loans of $750,000 or more (meaning the first covers everything up to that) https://home.ingdirect.com/orange-mortgage/rates",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "60b52ce239d29324e0aacd35c82de6e3",
"text": "It depends on the type of loan. Fully amortized loans have a schedule of payments don't recalculate as you pay. If you want to make an additional payment you need to contact the lender to apply your payment toward principle and reamortize the loan. Otherwise all your additional payment will do is change the amount due on your next payment, or push out your next payment due date. Regarding interest calculation, you owe interest on the principle outstanding. Say you have a 10 year loan (120 Months), at 5% APR, and a $1,000 payment (this means you borrowed roughly $94,000) Each month the amount of interest owed reduces because there is less principle outstanding. The reason loans are amortized like this is so the borrower has a predictable, known, monthly amount due.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1cee712904c22253683819c081aae7fc",
"text": "I've been an F&I Manager at a new car dealership for over ten years, and I can tell you this with absolute certainty, your deal is final. There is no legal obligation for you whatsoever. I see this post is a few weeks old so I am sure by now you already know this to be true, but for future reference in case someone in a similar situation comes across this thread, they too will know. This is a completely different situation to the ones referenced earlier in the comments on being called by the dealer to return the vehicle due to the bank not buying the loan. That only pertains to customers who finance, the dealer is protected there because on isolated occasions, which the dealer hates as much as the customer, trust me, you are approved on contingency that the financing bank will approve your loan. That is an educated guess the finance manager makes based on credit history and past experience with the bank, which he is usually correct on. However there are times, especially late afternoon on Fridays when banks are preparing to close for the weekend the loan officer may not be able to approve you before closing time, in which case the dealer allows you to take the vehicle home until business is back up and running the following Monday. He does this mostly to give you sense of ownership, so you don't go down the street to the next dealership and go home in one of their vehicles. However, there are those few instances for whatever reason the bank decides your credit just isn't strong enough for the rate agreed upon, so the dealer will try everything he can to either change to a different lender, or sell the loan at a higher rate which he has to get you to agree upon. If neither of those two things work, he will request that you return the car. Between the time you sign and the moment a lender agrees to purchase your contract the dealer is the lien holder, and has legal rights to repossession, in all 50 states. Not to mention you will sign a contingency contract before leaving that states you are not yet the owner of the car, probably not in so many simple words though, but it will certainly be in there before they let you take a car before the finalizing contract is signed. Now as far as the situation of the OP, you purchased your car for cash, all documents signed, the car is yours, plain and simple. It doesn't matter what state you are in, if he's cashed the check, whatever. The buyer and seller both signed all documents stating a free and clear transaction. Your business is done in the eyes of the law. Most likely the salesman or finance manager who signed paperwork with you, noticed the error and was hoping to recoup the losses from a young novice buyer. Regardless of the situation, it is extremely unprofessional, and clearly shows that this person is very inexperienced and reflects poorly on management as well for not doing a better job of training their employees. When I started out, I found myself in somewhat similar situations, both times I offered to pay the difference of my mistake, or deduct it from my part of the sale. The General Manager didn't take me up on my offer. He just told me we all make mistakes and to just learn from it. Had I been so unprofessional to call the customer and try to renegotiate terms, I would have without a doubt been fired on the spot.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "743fe6aa7cf121a0fcb74e4e50c1c1b2",
"text": "Writing a promissory note will be sufficient. Presumably the money will be transferred on or near the date that the loan is signed, and the repayments will follow the pattern prescribed in the note. The IRS is only skeptical of family loans if there is no documentation to support the claim.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "02e05f5235a7d8057f0aed641c5c7262",
"text": "You may need to specifically state that your extra payments should go towards principal, and should not be considered early payments of future months.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3f619a6f40638cb8a9ed76badeb58cb7",
"text": "\"Paperwork prevails. What you have is a dealer who get a kickback for sending financing to that institution. And the dealer pretty much said \"\"We only get paid our kickback at two levels of loan life, 6 and 12 months.\"\" You just didn't quite read between the lines. This is very similar to the Variable Annuity salespeople who tell their clients, \"\"The best feature about this product is that the huge commissions I get from the sale fund my kid's college tuition and my own retirement. You, on the other hand, don't really do so well.\"\" Car salesmen and VA sellers.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1ad8afd66a346863ad67ec813bbba710",
"text": "The mortgage I got last year through Wells Fargo explicitly indicates in its terms that excess payment will be considered against future payments (i.e., pay $500 extra in January and you owe $500 less in February) unless indicated otherwise. It goes on to state that with electronic payments you do not get to specify where excess payment goes, so excess payment made electronically always goes toward future payments. If you want to make excess payments toward principal, you must actually send them a check and your payment stub, with the appropriate box ticked. This won't be very different for other major banks, I wouldn't imagine.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f3fd5c9c209bfbf5883680b43d728caf",
"text": "You will be best to cancel the original instruction first, as you will have to wait for any pending payments to be received, as the banks will not entertain multiple refunds. After this can be confirmed the account will simply show a credit which you ask for. Many lenders/banks process these type of transactions after a period of time ie 30 days and there will be no way to speed this up, so the sooner you act the better. When you contact the bank have bank details for the payment(they might transfer externally fingers crossed), or you may receive a cheque in the post. Try to avoid complicating the matter with changes of address and ringing before you have cancelled the instruction etc if possible.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5694e32c676d48aaca4d8e2f863eaf4d",
"text": "If you selected a mortgage that allows additional payments to be credited against the principal rather than as early payment of normal installments, them yes, doing so will reduce the actual cost of the loan. You may have to explicitly instruct the bank to use the money this way each time, if prepay is their default assumption. Check with your lender, and/or read the terms of your mortgage, to find out if this is allowed and how to do it. If your mortgage doesn't allow additional payments against the principal, you may want to consider refinancing into a mortgage which does, or into a mortgage with shorter term and higher monthly payments, to obtain the same lower cost (modulo closing costs on the new mortgage; run the numbers.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0cdbf1f4a40dcc629730439f9a65c531",
"text": "Disclaimer: I am not a banker nor a lawyer. I am unaware of the exact term in English, there is a process where you can ask for a reversal of a payment if it was made in error and your former employer should have made use of this. After a month though, I'm fairly sure the period of eligibility for this reversal has passed. As far as I am aware there is no point in time where it becomes ok for you to take this money. If you wish to close the account I would advise contacting the company and obtaining their payment details so you can transfer them the money and subsequently close the account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "97346439b9bda6cb87eaf6f87a228137",
"text": "Keep in mind that lenders will consider the terms of any loans you have when determining your ability to pay back the mortgage. They'll want to see paperwork, or if you claim it is a gift they will require a letter to that effect from your relative. Obviously, this could effect your ability to qualify for a loan.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
44d497047792dbc1e14fac6511176b06
|
What is a trade exchange and are they reputable or not?
|
[
{
"docid": "40360b49e289a7118e858513501b2fb8",
"text": "I think this is off topic, but here is a stab: So these are cashless. It could be a way to smooth out the harsh reality of capitalism (I overproduced my product, I have more capacity than I can sell) and I can trade those good to other capitalists who similarly poorly planned production or capacity. Therefore the market for a system like is limited to businesses that do not plan well. Business that plan production or capacity to levels they can already sell for cash do not need a private system to offload goods. Alternatives to such a system include: (I don't know how many businesses are really in this over production / over capacity state. If my assumption that it isn't many is wrong, my answer is garbage.) This is a bartering system with a brokerage. I think we have historically found that common currencies create more trade and economic activity because the value of the note in your pocket, which is the same type of note in my pocket, is common and understood. Exchange rates typically slow down trade. (There are many other reasons to have different currency or notes on a global sale, but the exchange certainly is a hurdle to clear.) This brokerage is essentially adding a new currency (in a grand metaphor). And that new currency is only spendable on their brokerage, which is of limited use to society as a whole, assuming that society as a whole isn't a participating member of that brokerage. I can't really think of why this type of exchange is better than the current system we have now. I wouldn't invest in this as a business, or invest in this as a person looking for opportunity.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "0c2c9c130645d49832b4a83c7a1b772d",
"text": "I don't know if vanilla beans are traded on any organized exchange, and if they are, it's probably extremely obscure and very hard to access without having both of a lot of money and in-country connections. Edit: no, they're not. So there is no real way to short them. https://www.ft.com/content/e0e2fc16-28db-11e7-bc4b-5528796fe35c?mhq5j=e2",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1bc83aba8d1e3c106be922149a80c466",
"text": "This guy is literally proposing a bucket shop. Trades against customers and copy their trades. No centralized clearing (it's not executing trades at all). And he thinks these are good things that customers should get him for. Scam. And a very old one at that.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a1f971e5df4506e6bc1077d7753c9161",
"text": "\"No, I'm sorry, but the fact that exchanges allow \"\"pay to play\"\" privelege to scalp orders is fairly well established at this time. It's skirts law simply because the exchanges don't profit *directly* from it. I understand that folks are upset that SEC is looking into turning off this free money faucet, but harranguing Katsayuma for opening a fair exchange that shuns the practice is a point of contention for me.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ce47a05f533def8a477949d494e2707e",
"text": "Have you looked at OptionsHouse? They charge $2.95 per trade and are one of the lowest when it comes to fees. Bare bones interface, but fast execution.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "728e392d990ee0646c3ba5fc4c399afe",
"text": "\"You might consider learning how the \"\"matching\"\" or \"\"pairing\"\" system in the market operates. The actual exchange only happens when both a buyer and a seller overlap their respect quotes. Sometimes orders \"\"go to market\"\" for a particular volume. Eg get me 10,000 Microsoft shares now. which means that the price starts at the current lowest seller, and works up the price list until the volume is met. Like all market it trades, it has it's advantages, and it's dangers. If you are confident Microsoft is going to bull, you want those shares now, confident you'll recoup the cost. Where if you put in a priced order, you might get only none or some shares. Same as when you sell. If you see the price (which is the price of the last completed \"\"successful\"\" trade. and think \"\"I'm going to sell 1000 shares\"\". then you give the order to the market (or broker), and then the same as what happened as before. the highest bidder gets as much as they asked for, if there's still shares left over, they go to the next bidder, and so on down the price... and the last completed \"\"successful\"\" trade is when your last sale is made at the lowest price of your batch. If you're selling, and selling 100,000 shares. And the highest bidder wants 1,000,000 shares you'll only see the price drop to that guys bid. Why will it drop (off the quoted price?). Because the quoted price is the LAST sale, clearly if there's someone still with an open bid on the market...then either he wants more shares than were available (the price stays same), or his bid wasn't as high as the last bid (so when you sale goes through, it will be at the price he's offering). Which is why being able to see the price queues is important on large traders. It is also why it can be important put stops and limits on your trades, een through you can still get gapped if you're unlucky. However putting prices (\"\"Open Orders\"\" vs \"\"(at)Market Orders\"\") can mean that you're sitting there waiting for a bounce/spike while the action is all going on without you). safer but not as much gain (maybe ;) ) that's the excitement of the market, for every option there's advantages...and risks... (eg missing out) There are also issues with stock movement, shadowing, and stop hunting, which can influence the price. But the stuff in the long paragraphs is the technical reasons.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "aa201189bdfec5bd9d4e1380f29f863d",
"text": "Most investors vote with their wallets. I expect ZERO glitches from a trading platform. If someone was actually causing trades to fail maliciously, their reputation would immediately suffer and their business would dry up over night. You can't just play dumb and not respond to a button click. I can watch and replay the traffic I'm sending out to their server and see if they are responding to verify this. If their system goes down and has no redundancy, that is their fault and opens them to lawsuits. No trading platform could withstand scrutiny from its users if it was dishonest in the scenario you imagine.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "746fadc47e6606d3a1730a15c59391f2",
"text": "I just finished a high frequency trading project. Individuals can do it, but you need a lot of capital. You can get a managed server in Times Square for $1500/month, giving you access to 90% of the US exchanges that matter, their data farms are within 3 milliseconds of distance (latency). You can also get more servers in the same building as the exchanges, if you know where to look ;) thats all I can divulge good luck",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b20c6a5a5c7ade576e954c164b0a7253",
"text": "How easy is it to take out your money? To they offer any trading? Do you have to put more money up on your own to trade with? This seems pretty sketchy. I am currently working at a prop trading firm and although some sketchy firms require you to make a deposit, most legit ones do not. Not to mention their commissions are incredibly high (I interviewed at another sketchy firm but only charges a couple cents for commission). >most of the time you get rebates on them If it is not explicitly stated in the contract of how they decide your rebates than don't expect much. Most of the trading industry is build around taking advantage of people where people's word soon becomes meaningless unless it is in writing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "41734e5f71ad45eb45327676b3ef67da",
"text": "\"The success rate is terrible. At the same time, what are the success rate for any business endeavor? Isn't it something like 80% of startups fail in the first 5 years? That's not far off for the success of traders. Just like all the success cliches say, it comes down to how bad you want it. What will you sacrifice to be a successful trader? How much will you work to be a successful trader? Will you accept the pain and failure it takes to be a trader? Who cares if \"\"soandso\"\" can do it? If you want it, you should be saying, \"\"I will do it because I say so\"\". Only you know if you're willing to take the risk. At the same time, you're a college student, what's the worst that will happen if it doesn't work out? Check out /r/getmotivated...\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3a5c671699b2c194916502a7a365a692",
"text": "\"I think you're right that these sites look so unprofessional that they aren't likely to be legitimate. However, even a very legitimate-looking site might be a fake designed to separate you from your money. There is an entire underground industry devoted to this kind of fakery and some of them are adept at what they do. So how can you tell? One place that you can consult is FINRA's BrokerCheck online service. This might be the first of many checks you should undertake. Who is FINRA, you might ask? \"\"The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States.\"\" See here. My unprofessional guess is, even if a firm's line of business is to broker deals in private company shares, that if they're located in the U.S. or else dealing in U.S. securities then they'd still need to be registered with FINRA – note the \"\"all securities firms\"\" above. I was able to search BrokerCheck and find SecondMarket (the firm @duffbeer703 mentioned) listed as \"\"Active\"\" in the FINRA database. The entry also provides some information about the firm. For instance, SecondMarket appears to also be registered with the S.E.C.. You should also note that SecondMarket links back to these authorities (refer to the footer of their site): \"\"Member FINRA | MSRB | SIPC. Registered with the SEC as an alternative trading system for trading in private company shares. SEC 606 Info [...]\"\" Any legitimate broker would want you to look them up with the authorities if you're unsure about their legitimacy. However, to undertake any such kind of deal, I'd still suggest more due diligence. An accredited investor with serious money to invest ought to, if they are not already experts themselves on these things, hire a professional who is expert to provide counsel, help navigate the system, and avoid the frauds.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f98342a46aadd4f3c7192e8b9415206c",
"text": "For starters, that site shows the first 5 levels on each side of the book, which is actually quite a bit of information. When traders say the top of the book, they mean just the first level. So you're already getting 8 extra levels. If you want all the details, you must subscribe to the exchange's data feeds (this costs thousands of dollars per month) or open an account with a broker who offers that information. More important than depth, however, is update frequency. The BATS site appears to update every 5 seconds, which is nowhere near frequently enough to see what's truly going on in the book. Depending on your use case, 2 levels on each side of the book updated every millisecond might be far more valuable than 20 levels on each side updated every second.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d410df70f15fa6b3c0b7476264502873",
"text": "Yeah, it can be a scam. Lots of unscrupulous companies try to generate commissions by encouraging frequent trading - I can't recall the term they use right now, but I don't like to use these people for advice. My bank has 100 free trades per year for each account, which is more than enough for me to never pay a commission.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1cf001967728581cbc9cf897c10f6944",
"text": "\"I've never used them myself, but Scottrade might be something for you to look at. They do $7 internet trades, but also offer $27 broker assisted trades (that's for stocks, in both cases). Plus, they have brick-and-morter storefronts all over the US for that extra \"\"I gotta have a human touch\"\". :-) Also, they do have after hours trading, for the same commission as regular trading.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b047dc87c3ad4c48201382f49eba180a",
"text": "Oanda.com is a very respectable broker. They don't offer ridiculous leverage options of 200 to 1 that prove the downfall of people starting out in Forex. When I used them a few years back, they had good customer service and some nice charting tools.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b8bc5ac6fc7eafb3ec03c29d82e651ec",
"text": "\"The London Stock Exchange offers a wealth of exchange traded products whose variety matches those offered in the US. Here is a link to a list of exchange traded products listed on the LSE. The link will take you to the list of Vanguard offerings. To view those offered by other managers, click on the letter choices at the top of the page. For example, to view the iShares offerings, click on \"\"I\"\". In the case of Vanguard, the LSE listed S&P500 ETF is traded under the code VUSA. Similarly, the Vanguard All World ETF trades under the code VWRL. You will need to be patient viewing iShares offerings since there are over ten pages of them, and their description is given by the abbreviation \"\"ISH name\"\". Almost all of these funds are traded in GBP. Some offer both currency hedged and currency unhedged versions. Obviously, with the unhedged version you are taking on additional currency risk, so if you wish to avoid currency risk then choose a currency hedged version. Vanguard does not appear to offer currency hedged products in London while iShares does. Here is a list of iShares currency hedged products. As you can see, the S&P500 currency hedged trades under the code IGUS while the unhedged version trades under the code IUSA. The effects of BREXIT on UK markets and currency are a matter of opinion and difficult to quantify currently. The doom and gloom warnings of some do not appear to have materialised, however the potential for near-term volatility remains so longs as the exit agreement is not formalised. In the long-term, I personally believe that BREXIT will, on balance, be a positive for the UK, but that is just my opinion.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
1ae93ea5a0faf70577f9cbda14991afa
|
American living abroad and not working for an American company - tax reporting and bank accounts
|
[
{
"docid": "cc041b18ffe6b806ba4fbcb0c963b9b0",
"text": "\"The IRS taxes worldwide income of its citizens and green card holders. Generally, for those Americans genuinely living/working overseas the IRS takes the somewhat reasonable position of being in \"\"2nd place\"\" tax-wise. That is, you are expected to pay taxes in the country you are living in, and these taxes can reduce the tax you would have owed in the USA. Unfortunately, all of this has to be documented and tax returns are still required every year. Your European friends may find this quite surprising as I've heard, for instance, that France will not tax you if you go live and work in Germany. A foreign company operating in a foreign country under foreign law is not typically required to give you a W-2, 1099, or any of the forms you are used to. Indeed, you should be paying taxes in the place where you live and work, which is probably somewhat different than the USA. Keep all these records as they may be useful for your USA taxes as well. You are required to total up what you were paid in Euros and convert them to US$. This will go on the income section of a 1040. You should be paying taxes in the EU country where you live. You can also total those up and convert to US$. This may be useful for a foreign tax credit. If you are living in the EU long term, like over 330 days/year or you have your home and family there, then you might qualify for a very large exemption from your income for US tax purposes, called the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. This is explained in IRS Publication 54. The purpose of this is primarily to avoid double taxation. FBAR is a serious thing. In past years, the FBAR form went to a Financial Crimes unit in Detroit, not the regular IRS address. Also, getting an extension to file taxes does not extend the deadline for the FBAR. Some rich people have paid multi-million dollar fines over FBAR and not paying taxes on foreign accounts. I've heard you can get a $10,000 FBAR penalty for inadvertent, non-willful violations so be sure to send those in and it goes up from there to $250k or half the value of the account, whichever is more. You also need to know about whether you need to do FATCA reporting with your 1040. There are indeed, a lot of obnoxious things you need to know about that came into existence over the years and are still on the law books -- because of the perpetual 'arms race' between the government and would be cheaters, non-payers and their advisors. http://www.irs.gov/publications/p54/ http://americansabroad.org/\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1a03d16b327d83f757ce1680c3a11d3f",
"text": "\"I'll add a bit to Paul's excellent write up. Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (form 2555): notice the earned there. It doesn't exclude capital gains, interest, dividends, and basically everything that is not salary. You pay US taxes on it from the first cent. Foreign tax credit - foreign tax credit (form 1116) doesn't reduce your US tax dollar for dollar (even though it may appear that it does from the generic explanations). By using this form you may end up accumulating unused credit while still paying double taxes at the same time. Happened to me. Thank Congress for the logical and reasonable US tax laws. New FATCA form 8938: as opposed to FBAR (that goes to the FinCEN in the Treasury), this one goes to the IRS. it contains very similar info, but the threshold requirements are different. You may have to file FBAR, but not these, or you may have to file both. Being an American citizen, some European banks will refuse to provide services to you. Again, thank Congress for FATCA. It requires foreign banks to enforce US tax regulations on US citizens, and banks that won't will get penalized in the US. Many banks refuse to provide services to Americans because of that because what IRS requires is illegal in most countries. Some countries (like UK and some other EU countries) have signed treaties with the US to resolve this, but many haven't. Currency conversion - as I commented to Paul, you convert the amounts when you receive them, which may have your fixed EUR salary be converted to different dollar amounts every time. You need to make sure you do it right. Pensions, savings, investments - if you're doing these in non-US instruments prepare to be penalized. US taxes foreign investments much more aggressively than domestic. If you're investing in indexes/mutual funds, or you're a principle in a corporation, or you create a pension account - you'll get hit by additional reporting requirements and tax. Tax treaties - the US has tax treaties with many EU countries, and equalization treaties with some. The tax treaties affect the standard tax treatment by the US and some of the \"\"generic\"\" info you got here may not apply because of a tax treaty, and some other rules may apply. Equalization treaties work similarly with regards to the Social Security. Bottom line, and I know Paul disagrees with me on this - talk with a US-licensed adviser in the country you're going to. It is very important for your tax adviser to know the relevant treaty (and not read it the first time when you call him), and to understand each and every financial instrument in your country. Missing piece of paper in your tax return can cost you thousands of dollars in penalties (not exaggerating, not filing form 3520 triggers a $10000 penalty, even if there's no tax) and additional taxes.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "94c39b345a0eb3878d903cb081e28da2",
"text": "Are you planning to not pay taxes? Any time someone has income in the U.S., it is subject to U.S. taxes. You must file tax returns (and pay taxes if necessary) if you have income above a certain threshold, regardless of whether you're not authorized to work or not. If you plan to intentionally not pay taxes, then that's a whole other matter from working without authorization. Working without authorization is an immigration issue. It probably violates the conditions of your status, which will make you to automatically lose your status. That may or may not affect when you want to want to visit, immigrate to, or get other immigration benefits in the U.S. in the future; and at worst you may be deported. It's a complicated topic, but not really relevant for this site.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6448d72794b93dcc59f4c095e6589e8a",
"text": "One other consideration. If you are a US citizen or Resident Alien, you are going to owe US income taxes regardless of where you earn the money. Here it is straight from the horse's mouth: Tax guide for US Citizens living abroad",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "35c5605589b6b4dbdea21675a10af603",
"text": "There might be a problem. Some reporting paperwork will have to be done for the IRS, obviously, but technically it will be business income zeroed out by business expense. Withholding requirements will shift to your friend, which is a mess. Talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA) about these. But the immigration may consider this arrangement as employment, which is in violation of the visa conditions. You need to talk to an immigration attorney.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b28cb9a3b4e58993ea23f5b610229cd3",
"text": "You're asking three different questions... Q1: What's to stop people not reporting income earned in this manner? A: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The IRS doesn't have the means to keep track of your cash flow and your reported taxes on the fly. Q2: How could the IRS possibly keep track of that? A: When you get audited. If it ever did come up that things didn't balance you would end up owing back taxes, with interest and possibly fines. Q3: Moral obligations aside... why report? A: Since you've dismissed 'doing your duty as a citizen' as a moral obligation, the only other real one is that it's a pain in the butt to get audited and it is expensive if you lie and get caught.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "20453d9084fa515d30f1251b55b7f57e",
"text": "it just depends on your situation and sometimes accounting can't fix that. by mentor pays 35% even though he only goes back to the USA to visit. I go back less than 30 days a year so I can claim I'm a foreign resident but if all my income is in the USA I'm screwed. I can't even route my income through my wife who has never stepped foot in the USA because we must claim whatever she makes. US tax laws are so bad that it takes a lot just to get an account with HSBC in Hong Kong",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3952f02414674a677415876312af53fe",
"text": "First, yes, your LLC has to file annual taxes to the US government. All US companies do, regardless of where their owners live. Second, you will also probably be liable to personally file a return in the US and unless the US has a tax treaty with India (which I don't believe it does) you may end up paying taxes on your same income to both countries. Finally, opening a US bank account as a foreign citizen can be very tricky. You need to talk to a US accountant who is familiar with Indian & US laws.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fdca9791c5848e431531ab00a32076f7",
"text": "Generally speaking, if you have significant revenue outside the US, then you're better off incorporating out of the US. The US has significantly higher corporate tax rates, and taxes on worldwide income not just revenue in the US. Setting up in an offshore country would have no corporate tax but would cost about $1000 a year in fees. For any non-US company, your US partner would need to file a 5471 form with his US personal tax which reports the company's finances. That costs about $1000 a year for an accountant to prepare. So you still need accounting on the company, even if you are not paying corporate tax. Setting up the company is reasonably easy, you just use a broker. The bank account may be more difficult but they can help with that too. You may find that your optimal personal tax strategy and your US partner's strategy are different. For example, if your partner is living overseas, then they are not taxed on salary in the US, but are taxed on dividends. So they would prefer to take any money out of the company as salary, resulting in no corporate profits. You, on the other hand, might prefer dividends.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5a285a126c4ec7591bb3e03afcd6adc6",
"text": "I agree with Joe, having the money deposited to the US bank account may land you in trouble. Technically, a US business paying a foreigner must withhold 30% of the payment, unless a tax treaty says otherwise. The US business should do that based on your W8-BEN/W8-ECI form that you should have given to the business before being paid. I'm guessing, that by paying to your US bank account, you (and your American counterpart) are trying to avoid this withholding. That may cause trouble for both of you. I would suggest you talking to a professional (EA/CPA licensed in the State where the business is located) and having the situation resolved ASAP. You may not be liable for the US taxes at all, but because of incorrectly reporting the income/expense - you and the US business may end up paying way more than the $0 you otherwise would have, in penalties.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "05e8c53b517407752eec922e013273d9",
"text": "The US requires its (tax) residents to report foreign accounts if the balances (on all the accounts together) are $10K or more at any given day during the year. This is done through the FBAR system. In addition, you obviously need to report this income on your US tax return and pay taxes. If the balances on your foreign accounts exceed specific threshold, your tax return should also include form 8938. If you report everything and pay the taxes due - you can keep the money wherever you want and transfer it between your accounts as you may see fit. If you don't - the US government may come after you with huge penalties, and the Dubai bank may freeze your account. Its easy to become US tax resident. Stay in the US for more than half a year in a row - and here you are. Subject to the US taxation. Even if you're not a US citizen or green card holder, or at all illegal. Some immigration statuses may grant you an exemption, but none that allows you working for your Dubai employer, so I'm assuming you're a US tax resident.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2948cd0e63af02de801485656a7996bc",
"text": "\"Tax US corporate \"\"persons (citizens)\"\" under the same regime as US human persons/citizens, i.e., file/pay taxes on all income earned annually with deductions for foreign taxes paid. Problem solved for both shareholders and governments. [US Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad - Filing Requirements](https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-citizens-and-resident-aliens-abroad-filing-requirements) >If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien living or traveling outside the United States, **you generally are required to file income tax returns, estate tax returns, and gift tax returns and pay estimated tax in the same way as those residing in the United States.** Thing is, we know solving this isn't the point. It is to misdirect and talk about everything, but the actual issues, i.e., the discrepancy between tax regimes applied to persons and the massive inequality it creates in tax responsibility. Because that would lead to the simple solutions that the populace need/crave. My guess is most US human persons would LOVE to pay taxes only on what was left AFTER they covered their expenses.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fca1cb8601eadb6feb1e8883e0dfa401",
"text": "It makes no difference (to the UK) what country a bank account is in. What matters is whether you are resident in the UK or not while employed locally in a foreign country. You're taxed on where you are tax resident (which could be either country, both, or neither), not where the money is earned or banked. You can assume, with modern exchange of information agreements, that all money you put in bank accounts anywhere in the world will eventually be known to the UK authorities. The rules for when you are a UK tax resident changed recently, there is now a statutory test for residence (pdf). The rules are complex, but in general if you are outside the UK for less than one full tax year you're still resident, and in many cases where you're gone longer than that you may still be, depending on the length of your trips back to the UK and the ties you have there. So a 6-month winter job in Thailand teaching English as a foreign language will be subject to UK tax if you come back after, even if you leave all the money there or in a third country. If you pay local tax as well there are agreements between countries to avoid double taxation, but these do vary. What you do about National Insurance payments while gone for a short time is another complex area.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "20c142df943348a0135a62c9553986d0",
"text": "\"I don't see why you would need an \"\"international tax specialist\"\". You need a tax specialist to give you a consultation and training on your situation, but it doesn't seem too complicated to me. You invoice your client and get paid - you're a 1099 contractor. They should issue you a 1099 at the end of the year on everything they paid you. Once you become full-time employee - you become a W2 employee and will get a W2 at the end of the year on the amounts paid as such. From your perspective there's nothing international here, regular business. You have to pay your own taxes on the 1099 income (including SE taxes), they have to withhold taxes from your W2 income (including FICA). Since they're foreign employers, they might not do that latter part, and you'll have to deal with that on your tax return, any decent EA/CPA will be able to accommodate you with that. For the employer there's an issue of international taxation. They might have to register as a foreign business in your state, they might be liable for some payroll taxes and State taxes, etc etc. They might not be aware of all that. They might also be liable (or exempt) for Federal taxes, depending on the treaty provisions. But that's their problem. Your only concern is whether they're going to issue you a proper W2 and do all the withholdings or not when the time comes.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3d0c97675c2f6fdd54208ed1b33c5fdf",
"text": "Banks do not report transactions within accounts except as required by law, usually as part of anti-money-laundering efforts. Generally those involve tracking large cash transactions. As far as large payments go, there are two reasons they might be reported to the government: taxes, and criminal investigations. For tax purposes, if the payment is considered a salary or wage (that is, you are an employee of the company and the payment is for your time working there), then the company paying you is responsible for reporting the wage and withholding applicable taxes from your salary. If you are considered an independent contract employee, then you yourself will be responsible for reporting the income to the IRS and paying the applicable taxes yourself. In the second case, unless you are already under investigation, I wouldn't worry about it. Banks are very touchy about financial records being kept private, and won't release them without a subpoena. One caveat is that this is under US law. Banks which maintain branches in multiple countries must, of course, comply with all local laws in the jurisdiction where they do business. The take away from this is that Bank of America is unlikely to report a single deposit of $75,000 into your account to anyone on their own. If it is a paper check being deposited they will probably place a hold on it to make sure it clears, but that is all.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "11940f67a7adc7d7446a2b9884f2bcc6",
"text": "My concern is if I need to report and pay extra taxes for the part of the company that will be under my name Yes, d'uh. Of course. It's actually quite complicated when it comes to foreign companies owned by US people, and you'll need a good tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) who's fluent in that area. Citizenship has nothing to do with this, from tax perspective there's no difference between a green card holder and a citizen (except that green card holder cannot claim non-resident exemptions and certain tax treaties' exemptions).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6930ffd3459df51d2e594465b3b8a9f1",
"text": "There's nothing wrong with your reasoning except that you expect the tax laws to make perfect sense. More often than not they don't. I suggest getting in touch with a professional tax preparer (preferably with a CPA or EA designation), who will be able to understand the issue, including the relevant portions of the French-US tax treaty, and explain it to you. You will probably also need to do some reporting in France, so get a professional advice from a French tax professional as well. So, in my tax return, can I say that I had no US revenue at all during this whole year? I doubt it.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
2d0f9919e5cc38c8e9f9f6e8f234d9cc
|
Paid credit card bill, but money didn't leave my checking account [duplicate]
|
[
{
"docid": "460dca0b3e5b5f08a08830116926fea6",
"text": "The fact that your credit card has seen the payment is strong evidence that the transaction did in fact take place. But it's not unusual for there to be a delay of one or two business days before transactions show up in your online banking records. Saturday and Sunday are not business days. I bet you will see it on Monday. If it's not there by Tuesday, you could call the bank.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fc4458560c98f0bde72d8260c85fd17d",
"text": "You probably don't need to call the bank. Today is Sunday, so three days ago was probably Friday (or Thursday depending on how you count the days). Banks normally don't post transactions on weekends - and transactions that do happen on the weekend sometimes don't get posted until Tuesday. I would give it till Tuesday and then call them if you still don't see it show up on your account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e035cf8095b7f043254c4e5ead6f0785",
"text": "This is normal for credit cards. As long as you make the credit card company's cutoff time, they will make the funds available on your credit card rather than make you wait for them to actually get the funds from your bank. The amount of time this takes actually can vary significantly from bank to bank. You do want to make sure funds are available in your bank account for them to withdraw when they do take them though. If not, the payment would get returned and can set red flags on your credit card account that take a while to drop off.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "fd38139ef1ff50c0c080ab457dd92245",
"text": "How about finding a friend with Paypal and sending them the money so they can pay your bill using a card? Withdrawals from Paypal are typically instant now.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6a45bf0e2322aebf82b61762e7d69c82",
"text": "\"As with many questions here, while littleadv is correct, the real answer is \"\"each bank may handle this differently.\"\" In my case, I was experimenting with my balance to see the impact of utilization, and I overpaid the current bill before the bill was issued. The prior balance was paid, but then I sent a payment to bring my account to a credit balance. Further down the statement appears the line - Your account has a credit balance. We can hold and apply this balance against future purchases and cash advances, or refund it. If you would like a check mailed to you in the amount of the credit balance, simply call us and speak to a representative. You can also see that the \"\"revolving credit available\"\" is above the line of credit, implying that someone with a $5000 credit line wanting to charge a $6000 engagement ring can send a higher payment to the account and then make that charge.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "44309cd550236d0b4bb90aa00c1efe11",
"text": "I use online banking and bill pay for all accounts where I can control when and how much is paid, where I push the funds out. The bills from those companies that want to be allowed to reach into my account and pull money automatically (e.g. my Chase mortgage) I simply will not enroll - they get a paper check in the mail. There is no way I am giving these cocksucker criminals *permission* to take money out of my accounts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ccc83c20986bc4ce66ffc6f1c1bd529f",
"text": "Most merchants (also in Europe) are reasonable, and typically are willing to work with you. credit card companies ask if you tried to work with the merchant first, so although they do not enforce it, it should be the first try. I recommend to give it a try and contact them first. If it doesn't work, you can always go to the credit card company and have the charge reversed. None of this has any effect on your credit score (except if you do nothing and then don't pay your credit card bill). For the future: when a transaction supposedly 'doesn't go through', have them write this on the receipt and give it to you. Only then pay cash. I am travelling 100+ days a year in Europe, using my US credit cards all the time, and there were never any issues - this is not a common problem.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a0262e62400a430bc8aa3b783e8b4e84",
"text": "Maybe his accountant not taking care of things meant that there was a miscommunication about his debts. He could've had outstanding loans, back taxes, etc and he didn't have a clear enough picture about what his cash balance would be after his transaction.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3bf1cfcfad220756d3e5d8255f98729a",
"text": "I actually did this once. I wrote a large check along with a letter indicating that I would not be around to receive the next bill so I was prepaying. Not only did they credit the entire check, they didn't send that bill and listed the charges on the next month's bill. They must have done that by hand because there's no way the machines would have understood.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5ffeb4e741fb823d17a81aa85e8c2ea3",
"text": "Once, back when I had a bank account, I tried to pay a large emergency dental bill with my debit card. It rejected it as it turned out the bill was less than a dollar over what I had in the account. I thought there was enough money so I tried again, 3 times. They charged me an overdraft for each attempt even though the debit never went through. This was without overdraft protection, as overdraft protection would have allowed the debit and charged me one overdraft. I don't know the details but federal regulations have changed how they do this. To me overdraft protection rejects any debit that attempts to overdraft my account and doesn't charge me with an overdraft that didn't actually occur as a result of the charge being rejected, but that's not how it works.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5fa31bc1e67933188329a7f3d31e7b99",
"text": "Most bank accounts offer automatic bill pay as well. They don't rely on support from the bill you're paying, I think they basically just mail a check with your account number on it",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f7a396f4f01017517d2af9035b684198",
"text": "Using the bank's bill pay always seemed like a hassle to me. There are lots of mistakes to be made by me that can result in late payments and not too many benefits other than some convenience, and being able to pay bills online for accounts that require paper payment. (Although the banking systems often screw up those payments) Plus, there is usually a fee associated with bill pay, at least to some extent. I generally use the websites of my credit cards or other entities to pay bills. Then again, maybe I'm a bit of a weirdo here... I don't see mailing a check 3 days ahead of the due date as a particular hassle.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3324341128f77a61d22d572bfaca98f0",
"text": "Is this the time of year this board attracts question regarding the law and how to skirt it? I've done as you suggested. I happened to have a month that I was going to blow through the $12000 limit I had on my credit card. So as the balance crossed $8000, I paid that amount, and when the bill was cut, it was just $4000 or so. Scrutiny would show the reason for partial payments was obvious, I wanted to avoid going over limit. I wouldn't have done so just to avoid the $10,000 transaction. Since then, I've asked that the limit be raised in case I have another wild month.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "794789e2f0d5bff964cb0e03e8c4bdd6",
"text": "Things are generally fine. A credit balance is not a horrible thing. The argument against maintaining a credit balance is that you are essentially loaning the credit card issuer money at 0% interest. You probably have alternative investments that would pay better interest, so it's usually better to park your money there. All that said, it's unlikely that the interest on whatever balance you have is enough to be more than pennies. The way that a credit card works, you run up a balance in one period. Then there is a grace period. If you don't pay off the balance during the grace period, they start charging you interest. You also may have a minimum payment to make. If you don't make that payment, they'll charge you a late fee. The typical period to rack up charges is from the first to the last day of a month. The typical grace period is through the 20th or 25th of the next month. Your card may be different. So check the documentation (user agreement) for your card if you want the real data. It sounds like you paid off some purchases while you were still in the period where you rack up charges. While those purchases were posted to the account, they may not be counted in the balance calculation. If your credit balance exactly matches the payment you made, that's probably what happened. It's also possible that you overpaid the balance. If your credit balance is just a small amount, that's probably what happened. If you really want to be sure, you should call the credit card issuer and ask them. At best we can tell you how it normally works. Since this is your first month, you could just wait for your first bill and respond to that. So long as you pay off the entire balance shown there by the deadline, everything should be fine. Don't wait until the last day to pay. It's usually best to pay a week or so early so as to leave time for the mail to deliver the check and for them to process it. You can wait longer for an online payment, but a few business days early to give you a chance to handle potential problems is still good.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c8f7a3ce6a223974c1913148af62ded8",
"text": "\"To avoid nitpicks, i state up front that this answer is applicable to the US; Europeans, Asians, Canadians, etc may well have quite different systems and rules. You have nothing to worry about if you pay off your credit-card statement in full on the day it is due in timely fashion. On the other hand, if you routinely carry a balance from month to month or have taken out cash advances, then making whatever payment you want to make that month ASAP will save you more in finance charges than you could ever earn on the money in your savings account. But, if you pay off each month's balance in full, then read the fine print about when the payment is due very carefully: it might say that payments received before 5 pm will be posted the same day, or it might say before 3 pm, or before 7 pm EST, or noon PST, etc etc etc. As JoeTaxpayer says, if you can pay on-line with a guaranteed day for the transaction (and you do it before any deadline imposed by the credit-card company), you are fine. My bank allows me to write \"\"electronic\"\" checks on its website, but a paper check is mailed to the credit-card company. The bank claims that if I specify the due date, they will mail the check enough in advance that the credit-card company will get it by the due date, but do you really trust the USPS to deliver your check by noon, or whatever? Besides the bank will put a hold on that money the day that check is cut. (I haven't bothered to check if the money being held still earns interest or not). In any case, the bank disclaims all responsibility for the after-effects (late payment fees, finance charges on all purchases, etc) if that paper check is not received on time and so your credit-card account goes to \"\"late payment\"\" status. Oh, and my bank also wants a monthly fee for its BillPay service (any number of such \"\"electronic\"\" checks allowed each month). The BillPay service does include payment electronically to local merchants and utilities that have accounts at the bank and have signed up to receive payments electronically. All my credit-card companies allow me to use their website to authorize them to collect the payment that I specify from my bank account(s). I can choose the day, the amount, and which of my bank accounts they will collect the money from, but I must do this every month. Very conveniently, they show a calendar for choosing the date with the due date marked prominently, and as mhoran_psprep's comment points out, the payment can be scheduled well in advance of the date that the payment will actually be made, that is, I don't need to worry about being without Internet access because of travel and thus being unable to login to the credit-card website to make the payment on the date it is due. I can also sign up for AutoPay which takes afixed amount/minimum payment due/payment in full (whatever I choose) on the date due, and this will happen month after month after month with no further action necessary on my part. With either choice, it is up to the card company to collect money from my account on the day specified, and if they mess up, they cannot charge late payment fees or finance charge on new purchases etc. Also, unlike my bank, there are no fees for this service. It is also worth noting that many people do not like the idea of the credit-card company withdrawing money from their bank account, and so this option is not to everyone's taste.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7d8c99e9bac67a591e86e04fbf077c19",
"text": "The answer is - the money got bounced back to their account :(",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9c94d24ea670df4c1baf45394ac352fa",
"text": "some of that article is misleading, some of it is just plain wrong. Very wrong... like you end up drawing an incorrect conclusion type wrong. Corporate transaction accounts, whose balances are up recently due to TAG (expires 12/31), are subject to reserve requirements. When you purchase something with a credit card, the bank's asset of your credit increases and the bank's asset of cash decreases (it goes wherever you purchased). There is no change to your deposit account and no change to reserves. The incoming bank's cash account and liability account associated with that business transaction account increase, and it is trivial to transfer the % of cash necessary to reach minimum reserve requirements to the Fed. Secondly, anyone with a smidgen of accounting can tell that his balance sheet won't balance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6ce8759db51b2ce834797cbbd3ed6464",
"text": "\"IMHO It is definitively not too early to start learning and thinking about personal finances and also about investing. If you like to try stock market games, make sure to use one that includes a realistic fee structure simulation as well - otherwise there'll be a very unpleasant awakening when switching to reality... I'd like to stress the need for low fees with the brokerage account! Sit down and calculate how much fees different brokers take for a \"\"portfolio\"\" of say, 1 ETF, 1 bond, 1 share of about $500 or $1000 each (e.g. order fee, annual fee, fee for paying out interest/dividend). In my experience, it is good if you can manage to make the first small investing steps before starting your career. Real jobs tend to need lots of time (particularly at the beginning), so time to learn investing is extremely scarce right at the time when you for the first time in your life earn money that could/should be invested. I'm talking of very slowly starting with a single purchase of say an ETF, a single bond next time you have saved up a suitable amount of toy money, then maybe a single share (and essentially not doing anything with them in order to avoid further fees). While such a \"\"portfolio\"\" is terrible with respect to diversification and relative fees*, this gives you the possibility to learn the procedures, to see how the fees cut in, what to do wrt taxes etc. This is why I speak about toy money and why I consider this money an investment in education. * An order fee of, say, $10 on a $500 position are terrible 4% (2 x $10) for buying + selling - depending on your local taxes, that would be several years of dividend yield for say some arbitrary Dow Jones ETF. Nevertheless, purchase + sale together are less than 3 cinema tickets.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
5d07c2bdeaf965341def439360948ce2
|
Why Are Credit Card Rates Increasing / Credit Limits Falling?
|
[
{
"docid": "52feda2bfa5b003fa24d3ee131ed0895",
"text": "Because people are going deeper into debt and filing for bankruptcy more often, there is more risk on behalf of the credit company. Therefore, they limit their risk by lower limits and increasing interest. For every person that goes bankrupt, there might be 10 that pay that new higher interest rate, thereby netting a profit even though they lost out completely on the one customer. The recent legislation limited how and under what circumstance rate are adjusted and raised, but not forbidden. As for the fact that these banks took tax money under the idea (we all thought) I see two points of view. We never should have had the credit we did, so they are correcting and you (like me and millions of others) are suffering for their prior mistakes. It is an honest attempt to correct the system for long term stability even if we suffer in the short term. We gave them tax money, they need to not screw us over. In response to the still frozen credit markets I would suggest penalty taxes to companies that do not lend. Penalties to companies that do not modify mortgages. The second you take government money is the last second a you are entitled to a profit of anything. Furthermore, we the people bought you and we the people get to decide your salary. The bottom line is there is truth in both statements. Things are totally screwed up right now because we ALL made mistakes in the past trying to get a bigger profit or own a bigger house. There are those among us who didn't make a mistake, and those among us who made nothing but mistakes. As a society, we have to pay the piper either way. The best thing you can do now is pay down your debts, live simply and spend your money wisely.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b7d475ac985236303a07bffee976baea",
"text": "Of course your situation is very hurtful at a personal level, and I sympathize. I just don't get your point about being driven further into debt? It would seem that with a lower credit score you are prevented from taking on more debt. That can absolutely be hurtful especially to someone who runs a business that relies on short term credit. As for why they do this, they do it to reduce their risk - they don't want to lend more money, they are afraid that you will lose your job and default. Of course it is not as personal as I am writing it, not for you (they don't target you personally - they target your credit profile) and not for them (it is a matter of how the market views the debt and how much they can trade on such debt, not what they want to do personally). As for the TARP bailouts not releasing enough credit - this is reality. Goverment always thinks it can influence the situation more than it actually can. In order to unfreeze credit there needs to be a growing economy that makes the risk look acceptable. No amount of Goverment nudging will really change that more than marginally. By the way, legislation like this (forcing credit card companies to not raise their rates) can lead to credit restrictions. By artifically forcing the rates down the risk has to be ballanced somewhere - so it will be ballanced by lowering credit lines or by other means. Like any price control, if you restrict the price, it causes shortages. Intrest rates are the price of credit.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "055049ff07087e73c9e065bffc2b48a0",
"text": "\"On a longer time scale, the plot thickens: It almost looks random. A large drop in real rates in the mid-70s, a massive spike in the early 80s, followed by a slow multi-decade decline. The chaos doesn't seem to be due to interest rates. They steadily climbed and steadily fell: All that's left is inflation: First, real rates should be expected to pay a moderate rate, so nominal rates will usually be higher than inflation. However, interest rates are very stable over long time periods while inflation is not. Economists call this type of phenomenon \"\"sticky pricing\"\", where the price, interest rates in this case, do not change much despite the realities surrounding them. But the story is a little more complicated. In the early 1970s, Nixon had an election to win and tried to lessen the impacts of recession by increasing gov't spending, not raising taxes, and financing through the central bank, causing inflation. The strategy failed, but he was reelected anyways. This set the precedent for the hyperinflation of the 1970s that ended abruptly by Reagan at the beginning of his first term in the early 1980s. Again, interest rates remained sticky, so real rates spiked. Now, the world is not growing, almost stagnating. Demand for equity is somewhat above average, but because corporate income is decelerating, and the developed world's population is aging, demand for investment income is skyrocketing. As demand rises, so does the price, which for an investor is a form of inverse of the interest rate. Future demand is probably best answered by forecasters, and the monetarist over and undertones still dominating the Federal Reserve show that they have finally learned after 100 years that inflation is best kept \"\"low and stable\"\": But what happens if growth in the US suddenly spikes, inflation rises, and the Federal Reserve must sell all of the long term assets it has bet so heavily on quickly while interest rates rise? Inflation may not be intended, but it is not impossible.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "312d32a49042514a7405bb87a35c97c5",
"text": "I disagree with the reply. Your both impressions are correct. - Do not close old credit cards because they keep your credit rating high (fico score) - Also low utilization that credit cards report to credit rating companies, improves your rating.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3324341128f77a61d22d572bfaca98f0",
"text": "Is this the time of year this board attracts question regarding the law and how to skirt it? I've done as you suggested. I happened to have a month that I was going to blow through the $12000 limit I had on my credit card. So as the balance crossed $8000, I paid that amount, and when the bill was cut, it was just $4000 or so. Scrutiny would show the reason for partial payments was obvious, I wanted to avoid going over limit. I wouldn't have done so just to avoid the $10,000 transaction. Since then, I've asked that the limit be raised in case I have another wild month.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c7b991de97e591aec303c936350c676c",
"text": "\"So basically, the bar has been lowered due to the fact that so many people don't qualify for credit. The medical debt issue is one thing, but the fact that only 28% of home purchases these days are first time home buyers instead of 40% says more about our unaffordable higher educational system, labor market and people's ability to earn decent income than it does about credit being \"\"too tight\"\". If anything this is a loosening of standards since the banks have no alternative in order to drum up new sales. They're 12% off the mark and they're finding ways to close the gap. Wages probably won't get better, so they're better off accepting lower quality customers and rolling the dice on their ability to pay off debts over the life of the loans they issue. Sounding familiar?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c08db17711eb452e35317801bdf55f13",
"text": "There is one massive catch in this which I found out when I went to Nationwide to ask for a loan. I've got a credit card which they kept increasing my credit limit, it's now at something ridiculous - nearly £10,000 but they keep increasing it. I never use that card, when I went to Nationwide though they said they couldn't give me a loan because I had £10,000 credit already and if I reduced this credit this would affect my credit rating and they could potentially give me a loan. I then realised what MBNA had craftily done. I have two cards with this bank, one with really low interest and the other with really high interest (and a high credit limit) - even though the other card has a zero balance loan companies still see it as money I could potentially go and spend, it doesn't matter to them that I've not spent any money on that card in about 12 months, to them it's the fact that they could give me a loan and then I could go and spend another £10,000 on that card (as you can see extremely risky). Of course this means that what MBNA are craftily doing is giving me such a high credit, knowing full well that I'm not going to use it, but it also prevents their competitors from offering me a loan, even at a lower rate, because I've already got too much credit available. So yes there is a catch to giving you a high credit limit on your cards and it's to prevent you from either leaving that bank or getting a lower interest rate loan out to clear the debt.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "42929083c698a48194e5d581fc766706",
"text": "Most of the bankruptcy is due to taking [or building over a period of time] a loan that one cannot service, if the interest rates rise, then the amount of money to repay the loan increases, when one doesnt pay the revised amount and keeps paying less, the over all debt keeps shooting through the roof ... a lower interest rate means that one can continue to pay the same amount ... and few missed payments do not cause as much as damage as it does when the rates are high.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b4da24f321fb782c3eadaf9e189c1c90",
"text": "Is my understanding okay ? If so, it seems to me that this system is rather error prone. By that I mean I could easily forget to make a wire some day and be charged interests while I actually have more than enough money on the check account to pay the debt. Which is where the credit card company can add fees so you pay more and they make more money. Don't forget that in the credit case, you are borrowing money rather than using your own. Another thing that bothers me is that the credit card apparently has a rather low credit limit. If I wanted to buy something that costs $2500 but only have a credit limit of $1500, can I make a preemptive wire from my check account to the VISA account to avoid facing the limit ? If so, what is the point for the customer of having two accounts (and two cards for that matter...) ? If you were the credit card company, do you believe people should be given large limits first? There are prepaid credit cards where you could put a dollar amount on and it would reject if the balance gets low enough. Iridium Prepaid MasterCard would be an example here that I received one last year as I was involved in the floods in my area and needed access to government assistance which was given this way. Part of the point of building up a credit history is that this is part of how one can get the credit limits increased on cards so that one can have a higher limit after demonstrating that they will pay it back and otherwise the system could be abused. There may be a risk that if you prepay onto a credit card and then want to take back the money that there may be fees involved in the transaction. Generally, with credit cards the company makes money on the fees involved for transactions which may come from merchants or yourself as a cash advance on a credit card will be charged interest right away while if you buy merchandise in a store there may not be the interest charged right away.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a81fcec8b06a16d323ca49071561d6e7",
"text": "My first thought was that it must be due to inflation, which causes such differences in many cases since a creditor needs to make back more than the rate of inflation in order not to effectively lose money. But it seems that Paraguay currently has only a very modest rate of inflation, about 3%. Other possible reasons for different credit rates: The latter is most likely. It means that if debtors are generally poor and are often completely unable to pay back the loan, or if there is no effective way to force uncooperative debtors to pay (e.g. when there are weak laws or overworked courts), then creditors will lose a lot of money to defaults and have to raise rates to compensate for this.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e9fadccb388697eef8e9da6cb7fdfe97",
"text": "I'm not sure what raising your credit limit would do to your score in the short term. I don't think it's a clear win, though. Your percent utilization will go down (more available credit for the same amount of debt) but your available credit will also go up, which may be a negative, since potentially you can default on more debt. If you're interested in monitoring your score, Credit Karma will let you do that for free.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7d87c699d1503768a304fa752a29f7e3",
"text": "Your score is real-time, updating every time new data hits the reporting agencies. Dilip is correct, go over 20%, and it will hit the report, but then the score returns to normal after the next bill shows a sub-20% utilization. Say your average spending is $1000, but your limit is $5000. There's no harm in asking for a small increase in the limit, or simply pay a bit toward the bill before the statement is cut. The bill and reported balance will be lower and your score, unaffected.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bbff14d0604cfd236b9c40dcd9f54084",
"text": "\"A credit card is basically a \"\"revolving\"\" loan, in which you're allowed to borrow up to a certain amount (the limit), and any time you borrow, you pay interest. If you were to *borrow* $100 to pay for something via a credit card, you'd have a $100 balance on the card. If you then pay $70 cash to the card, there would be $30 remaining. That $30 balance could accrue interest. The timing of that interest charge could vary. The 20% you've quoted is almost certainly \"\"APR,\"\" of which the \"\"A\"\" stands for \"\"annual,\"\" so that 20% would be an annual rate. It makes the most sense, mind you, to keep a minimal balance on a credit card, as the interest rate is higher than most other loans.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8751321bca0cdc9b78979f64f7c8f2b7",
"text": "Unfortunately, this is a customer service issue. The bank has a set of term and conditions (Ts and Cs) which you received with the card or when you applied. It included your limit, and what happens when you go over, likely, a penalty for going over the limit. At the very least, they expect you to pay the overage or you'll see an over-limit charge next cycle too. In the future, I'd suggest checking your account on line to monitor your balance. Some accounts offer an alert email, mine will let me set an alert for when my balance goes over $xxx, which is helpful, as I can send in an early payment to bring that balance down. It still never hurts to ask. They might waive fees if any, if this is your first time. You can still try calling them, explain the odd timing, and see if you can get a temporary increase in credit line. In the end, you need to review your finances. Carrying balances month to month at 12-18% is no way to have a successful financial future. It's one of the first things to getting your situation under control. After that, a small savings account, an emergency fund, is the next step. One month of charges should never put you in this bad situation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "59e5ecb0fe258452782762d4a7e06459",
"text": "Even if you can get a credit card with a $0 limit, that doesn't necessarily mean that the charges won't succeed. Some of my credit cards have gone over limit by a significant amount (e.g. 140% of limit) without any transactions being declined. The limit just means that the bank is allowed to decline the transaction, but they are also allowed to approve it anyway. So basically what you would have is a credit card where any transaction can always be declined or approved.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9803f597eb3d7a5ba67d66094d3a4d74",
"text": "Imagine that your normal mode of using credit gets you a score of X. As time goes by your score trends upward if the positive items (length of credit) outweigh your negative items. But there are no big increases or decrease in your score. Then you make a one time change to how you use credit. If this is a event that helps your score, there will be a increase in your score. If it is bad thing your score will drop. But if you go back to your standard method of operating your score will drift back to the previous range. Getting a car loan for a few months to get a bump in your credit score, will not sustain your score at the new level indefinitely. Overtime the impact will lessen, and the score will return your your normal range. Spending money on the loan just to buy a temporary higher credit score is throwing away money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3a5e579b13be145ba602a0f1c0448c12",
"text": "\"It can be pretty hard to compute the right number. What you need to know for your actual return is called the dollar-weighted return. This is the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_rate_of_return computed for your actual cash flows. So if you add $100 per month or whatever, that has to be factored in. If you have a separate account then hopefully your investment manager is computing this. If you just have mutual funds at a brokerage or fund company, computing it may be a bunch of manual labor, unless the brokerage does it for you. A site like Morningstar will show a couple of return numbers on say an S&P500 index fund. The first is \"\"time weighted\"\" and is just the raw return if you invested all money at time A and took it all out at time B. They also show \"\"investor return\"\" which is the average dollar-weighted return for everyone who invested in the fund; so if people sold the fund during a market crash, that would lower the investor return. This investor return shows actual returns for the average person, which makes it more relevant in one way (these were returns people actually received) but less relevant in another (the return is often lower because people are on average doing dumb stuff, such as selling at market bottoms). You could compare yourself to the time-weighted return to see how you did vs. if you'd bought and held with a big lump sum. And you can compare yourself to the investor return to see how you did vs. actual irrational people. .02, it isn't clear that either comparison matters so much; after all, the idea is to make adequate returns to meet your goals with minimum risk of not meeting your goals. You can't spend \"\"beating the market\"\" (or \"\"matching the market\"\" or anything else benchmarked to the market) in retirement, you can only spend cash. So beating a terrible market return won't make you feel better, and beating a great market return isn't necessary. I think it's bad that many investment books and advisors frame things in terms of a market benchmark. (Market benchmarks have their uses, such as exposing index-hugging active managers that aren't earning their fees, but to me it's easy to get mixed up and think the market benchmark is \"\"the point\"\" - I feel \"\"the point\"\" is to achieve your financial goals.)\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
b7ff5fcebd6148a70b4d5327187506d8
|
Why an inner suburbs small apartment considered a risky investment
|
[
{
"docid": "219825e9f65a262e7eeab06b83097b17",
"text": "The banks see small apartments as a higher risk because usually very small apartments are harder to sell, especially during a falling market when there is an oversupply of these apartments. The price of small apartments will also fall a lot quicker in a falling market. Regarding yield vs capital growth - the emphasis here is manly on high yielding properties in small country towns with small populations. How many properties can you buy with cash? Properties with good growth will enable you to build equity quicker and enable you to build a larger portfolio. In my opinion you need a combination of good yield and reasonable growth, because without yield you cannot replace your earned income with passive income, but without growth you can't expand your portfolio. So a combination of good yield with reasonable growth will give the best outcome.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "4d9f05f39288a85e40d0d2571f7e15c5",
"text": "\"You are in your mid 30's and have 250,000 to put aside for investments- that is a fantastic position to be in. First, let's evaluate all the options you listed. Option 1 I could buy two studio apartments in the center of a European capital city and rent out one apartment on short-term rental and live in the other. Occasionally I could Airbnb the apartment I live in to allow me to travel more (one of my life goals). To say \"\"European capital city\"\" is such a massive generalization, I would disregard this point based on that alone. Athens is a European capital city and so is Berlin but they have very different economies at this point. Let's put that aside for now. You have to beware of the following costs when using property as an investment (this list is non-exhaustive): The positive: you have someone paying the mortgage or allowing you to recoup what you paid for the apartment. But can you guarantee an ROI of 10-15% ? Far from it. If investing in real estate yielded guaranteed results, everyone would do it. This is where we go back to my initial point about \"\"European capital city\"\" being a massive generalization. Option 2 Take a loan at very low interest rate (probably 2-2.5% fixed for 15 years) and buy something a little nicer and bigger. This would be incase I decide to have a family in say, 5 years time. I would need to service the loan at up to EUR 800 / USD 1100 per month. If your life plan is taking you down the path of having a family and needed the larger space for your family, then you need the space to live in and you shouldn't be looking at it as an investment that will give you at least 10% returns. Buying property you intend to live in is as much a life choice as it is an investment. You will treat the property much different from the way something you rent out gets treated. It means you'll be in a better position when you decide to sell but don't go in to this because you think a return is guaranteed. Do it if you think it is what you need to achieve your life goals. Option 3 Buy bonds and shares. But I haven't the faintest idea about how to do that and/or manage a portfolio. If I was to go down that route how do I proceed with some confidence I won't lose all the money? Let's say you are 35 years old. The general rule is that 100 minus your age is what you should put in to equities and the rest in something more conservative. Consider this: This strategy is long term and the finer details are beyond the scope of an answer like this. You have quite some money to invest so you would get preferential treatment at many financial institutions. I want to address your point of having a goal of 10-15% return. Since you mentioned Europe, take a look at this chart for FTSE 100 (one of the more prominent indexes in Europe). You can do the math- the return is no where close to your goals. My objective in mentioning this: your goals might warrant going to much riskier markets (emerging markets). Again, it is beyond the scope of this answer.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "52dfd7c00f4651032be5d7f3fdf3a5a6",
"text": "Kiyosaki says his methods of actions are not suitable for the average investor. They are meant for those wanting to excel at investing, and are willing to work for it. Personally, I wouldn't want to own ten apartments, because it sounds like a terrible headache. I would much rather have a huge portfolio of index funds. I believe that Kiyosaki's method allegedly perform better than the passive 'invest-diversify-hold' strategy, but would require a new mindset and dedication, and are risky unless you are willing to invest a lot of time learning the fine details. I prefer to dedicate my time elsewhere.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f11efb8a075ef99cef40110adf99057a",
"text": "\"Because the returns are not good. One of the big drivers in Australia is \"\"negative gearing\"\": if your investment loses money you can offset losses against your tax on other income. Institutional investors and corporations are in the business of making money: not losing it. Housing market investors are betting that these year to year revenue losses will ultimately be made up in a big capital gain: for which individuals get a huge tax break that is also not available to corporations. Capital gains are not guaranteed. Australia has benefited from 25+ years of economic, employment and wages growth: a result of good government planning, strong corporate governance and a fair slice of luck. If this were to end housing prices would plateau at best and crash at worst. A person who has negative cash flow investments has to sell them urgently if they lose their job. A glut of mortgagee sales and property prices could easily come off 20-30%. Rental yields on residential property in Sydney are about 4% with a capital gain of currently 10% but this has been flat or negative within the last 5 years and no doubt will be again within the next 5. Rental yields for residential property are constrained by mortgage rates: if it significantly cheaper to buy then to rent, why would anyone rent? In contrast, industrial and commercial property gets a yield of about 7% and gets exactly the same capital gain. This is because land is land and if the price of industrial land doesn't grow at the same rate as the residential land next door eventually one will be converted into the other. Retail rentals are even higher. In addition commercial tenants are responsible for more outgoings and have fewer legal rights than residential tenants. Further, individual residential properties are horribly illiquid and have large transaction costs. While it is possible to bundle them up into property trusts so that units can be sold on the stock exchange it is far more common to do this with office and retail buildings. This is what companies like Westfield and AMP Capital do. Notwithstanding, heavily geared property trusts can get into deep water because of the illiquid nature of property as the failure of Centro illustrates. That said, there are plenty of companies that develop residential houses and units for sale to owner occupiers or investors because that's where the money is.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9bf6f4f6b37e19854675b9535de8de01",
"text": "\"Historically that 'divide by 1000' rule of thumb is what many people in Australia have thought of as normal, and yes, it's about a 5.2% gross yield. Net of expenses, perhaps 3-4%, without allowing for interest. If you're comparing this to shares, I think the right comparison is to the dividend yield, not to the overall PE. A dividend yield of about 3-5% is also about typical: if you look at the Vanguard Index Australian Shares Fund as a proxy for the ASX the yield last year was about 4%. Obviously a 4% return is not very competitive with a term deposit. But with both shares and housing you can hope for some capital growth in addition to the income yield. If you get 4% rental yield plus 5% growth it is more attractive. Is it \"\"good\"\" to buy at what people have historically thought was \"\"normal\"\"? Perhaps you are better off looking around, or sitting out, until you find a much better price than normal. \"\"Is 5% actually historically normal?\"\" deserves a longer answer.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "09e78ce34f595a619c5e4668338748ef",
"text": "\"Leverage means you can make more investments with the same amount of money. In the case of rental properties, it means you can own more properties and generate more rents. You exchange a higher cost of doing business (higher interest fees) and a higher risk of total failure, for a larger number of rents and thus higher potential earnings. As with any investment advice, whenever someone tells you \"\"Do X and you are guaranteed to make more money\"\", unless you are a printer of money that is not entirely true. In this case, taking more leverage exposes you to more risk, while giving you more potential gain. That risk is not only on the selling front; in fact, for most small property owners, the risk is primarily that you will have periods of time of higher expense or lower income. These can come in several ways: If you weather these and similar problems, then you will stand to make more money using higher leverage, assuming you make more money from each property than your additional interest costs. As long as you're making any money on your properties this is likely (as interest rates are very low right now), but making any money at all (above and beyond the sale value) may be challenging early on. These sorts of risks are magnified for your first few years, until you've built up a significant reserve to keep your business afloat in downturns. And of course, any money in a reserve is money you're not leveraging for new property acquisition - the very same trade-off. And while you may be able to sell one or more properties if you did end up in a temporarily bad situation, you also may run into 2008 again and be unable to do so.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "04222a44c6726ee87bd6ae80436e1e2e",
"text": "Before investing, absolutely follow the advice in mbhunter's answer. There is no safe investment (unless you count your mattress, and even there you could find moths, theives, or simple inflation taking a chunk out of your change). There is only maximizing your reward for a given level of risk - and there is always risk. This question should be enshrined somewhere on the Q&A site for its comprehensive list of sources for information on asset allocation. The tag is also going to have tons of good information for you. To answer your question on what slice of the pie is devoted to what, you can check out some common portfolios given by U. S. experts for U. S. investors - these should be convertible into Australian funds. Another portfolio that is, like all those above, loosely based on Modern Portfolio Theory for maximizing reward for a given level of risk is the Gone Fishin' Portfolio. A common denominator amongst these portfolios is that they emphasize index funds over mutual funds for their long-term performance and preference lazy management (yearly rebalancing is a common suggestion as the maximum level of involvement) over active management. You can see more Lazy Portfolios.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d006258069669f318941d0f314281530",
"text": "Your experience is anecdotal (outside Australia things are different). There are many companies and real estate investment trusts (REITs) that own residential properties (as well as commercial in many cases to have a balanced portfolio). They are probably more common in higher-density housing like condos, apartment buildings, flats, or whatever you like to call them, but they are certainly part of the market for single family units in the suburbs as well. What follows is all my own opinion. I have managed and rented a couple of properties that I had lived in but wasn't ready to sell yet when I moved out. In most cases, I wish I would have sold sooner, rather than renting them out. I think that there are easier/less risky ways to get a good return on your money. Sometimes the market isn't robust enough to quickly sell when it's time to move, and some people like the flexibility of having a property that a child could occupy instead of moving back in at home. I understand those points of view even if I disagree with them.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "25642445db62867fabedea609cea9f71",
"text": "Long-term bonds -- any bonds, really -- can be risky for two main reasons: return on principal, or return of principal. The former is a problem if interest rates are low (which they are now in the US) because existing bonds will fall in price if interest rates rise. The second is a problem if the lender defaults: IOU nothing. No investment is riskless. Short-term bonds command a lower interest rate than long-term bonds (usually) because of their quicker maturity, but short-term bonds carry risk just like long-term bonds (though the interest rate risk is lower, sometimes quite a bit lower, than for long-term bonds).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f954722876bfa4acb9331c336341e5db",
"text": "As other answers have pointed out, professional real estate investors do own residential investment properties. However, small residential units typically are not owned by professional real estate investors as your experience confirms. This has a fairly natural cause. The size of the investment opportunity is insufficient to warrant the proper research/due diligence to which a large investment firm would have to commit if it wanted to properly assess the potential of a property. For a small real estate fund managing, say, $50 MM, it would take 100 properties at a $500K valuation in order to fully invest the funds. This number grows quickly as we decrease the average valuation to reflect even smaller individual units. Analogously, it is unlikely that you will find large institutional investors buying stocks with market caps of $20 MM. They simply cannot invest a large enough portion of total AUM to make the diligence make economic sense. As such, institutional real estate money tends to find its way into large multi-family units that provide a more convenient purchase size for a fund.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0b74ae43593376c509c0450f1ca4c0e7",
"text": "A good quick filter to see if a property is worth looking at is if the total rent for the property for the year is equal to 10% of the price of the property. For example, if the property is valued at $400,000 then the rent collected should be $40,000 for the entire year. Which is $3,333.33 per month. If the property does not bring in at least 10% per year then it is not likely all the payments can be covered on the property. It's more likely to be sinking money into it to keep it afloat. You would be exactly right, as you have to figure in insurance, utilities, taxes, maintenance/repair, mortgage payments, (new roof, new furnace, etc), drywall, paint, etc. Also as a good rule of thumb, expect a vacancy rate of at least 10% (or 1 month) per year as a precaution. If you have money sitting around, look into Real Estate Investment Trusts. IIRC, the average dividend was north of 10% last year. That is all money that comes back to you. I'm not sure what the tax implications are in Australia, however in Canada dividends are taxed very favourably. No mortgage, property tax, tenants to find, or maintenance either.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "be18dd25573348ca2dd5f1fd1b884d88",
"text": "Diversification is just one aspect in an investment portfolio. The other aspects in Investment are Risk Taking Ability, Liquidity, Local Regulations, Tax benefits, Ease & Convenience, Cost of carrying out transactions etc. Investing in other regions is prone FX risk and other risks depending on the region of investment. For example investing in Emerging markets there is a risk of Local Regulations being changed, additional tax being levied, or Political instability and host of such risks. Investing in local markets give you better understanding of such changes and the risk associated is less plus the Ease of carrying out transactions is great, less expensive compared to cost of transactions in other markets. Diversification in Investment should also be looked upon how much you invest in; Equities Debt Bullion Real Estate Once you have a sizeable amount of investment in Equities or Debt, it would then make more sense to diversify this portion more to include funds from other regions. Unless you are an Running your own business, it makes sense to invest in your line of business if that is performing well. The reason being that the benefit / returns from the equities is much greater than the salary rise / bonus. For example I am in Information Technology and yet invest in all leading IT companies because the returns from companies in these segments have been good.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e058a9c9c6fcfe1a68a04d3b3487bba3",
"text": "\"All other factors being equal, owning your primary residence is almost always a good investment over the long haul. Why? Because you have to live somewhere, and rentals, especially long-term leases that are important when you have kids in school, etc., are generally in the same ballpark as a mortgage in most markets. Giving $1,500 to a landlord gets me 30 days of living somewhere. Giving $1,500 to the bank gets me a place to live and equity in an asset which requires maintenance, but always has intrinsic value. Detroit is one extreme, Manhattan or Silicon Valley is another real estate extreme... everywhere else is somewhere in the middle. What isn't always a good investment is speculating in highly elastic \"\"investment property\"\" like vacation condos as an amateur. It's a cyclical market, but our attention spans are too short to realize that. As most of the other answers to this question indicate, people tend to be down in the dumps and see all of the problems with real estate when the market is not very good. Conversely people only see the upside and are oblivious to problems when the market is high.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3bd43884a9d185524af6a2230f569e8c",
"text": "Your question may have another clue. You are bullish regarding the real estate market. Is that for your city, your state, your nation or for the whole world? Unless you can identify particular properties or neighborhoods that are expected to be better than the average return for your expected bull market in real estate, you will be taking a huge risk. It would be the same as believing that stocks are about to enter a bull market, but then wanting to put 50% of your wealth on one stock. The YTD for the DOW is ~+7%, yet 13 of the 30 have not reached the average increase including 4 that are down more than 7%. Being bullish about the real estate segment still gives you plenty of opportunities to invest. You can invest directly in the REIT or you can invest in the companies that will grow because of the bullish conditions. If your opinion changes in a few years it is hard to short a single property.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0ce624b0a62f54657bca647d8d3f3c8e",
"text": "The safest place to put money is a mixture of cash, local municipal bond funds with average durations under two years and US Treasury bond funds with short durations. Examples of good short term US municipal funds: I'm not an active investor in Australian securities, so I won't recommend anything specific. Because rates are so low right now, you want a short duration (ie. funds where the average bond matures in < 2 years) fund to protect against increased rates. The problem with safety is that you won't make any money. If your goal to grow the value of your investment while minimizing risk, you need to look at equities. The portfolios posted by justkt are a great place to start.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7d5f5db10c52065135ec4d901d3cadec",
"text": "None of the previous answers calls out an important factor to residential property ownership bias towards individual investors. The amount of time spent managing (leasing, maintenance and rent collection) on single properties is much higher, per property, than larger investments. But what is mentioned in passing is the bias towards smaller investments. Fewer individuals have the capital to purchase and engage in the leasing of multi-tenant properties, but they are more likely to have the funds for smaller investments. So the smaller investor can both afford the entry costs, and the time investment, while the larger corporate entities benefit from the opposite proposition.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
51f0c58e7381e7be6fa11b281a240c95
|
How should we organize our finances to effectively plan and prepare for an retirement in next 10 years?
|
[
{
"docid": "af0b1df1287ed9403409abff8d5d9e1c",
"text": "Wow! First, congratulations! You are both making great money. You should be able to reach your goals. Are we on the right track ? Are we doing any mistakes which we could have avoided ? Please advice if there is something that we should focus more into ! I would prioritize as follows: Get on the same page. My first red flag is that you are listing your assets separately. You and your wife own property together and are raising your daughter together. The first thing is to both be on the same page with your combined income and assets. This is critical. Set specific goals for the future. Dreaming and big-picture life planning will be the foundation for building a detailed plan for reaching your goals. You will see more progress with more sacrifice. If you both are not equally excited about the goals, you will not both be equally willing to sacrifice lifestyle now. You have the income now to be able to set yourselves up to do whatever you want in 10 years, if you can agree on what you want. Hire a financial planner you trust. Interview people, ask someone who is where you want to be in 10 years. You need someone with experience that can guide you through these questions and understands how to manage your income stream. Start saving for retirement in tax-advantaged accounts. This should be as much as 10%-15% of your income combined, so $30k-$45k per year. You need to start diversifying your investments. Real estate is great, but I would never recommend it as this large a percentage of net worth. Start saving for your child's education. Hard to say what you need here, since I don't know your goals. A financial planner should assist you with this. Get rid of your debt. Out of your $2.1M of rental real estate and land, you have $1.4M of debt. It will be difficult to start a business with that much additional debt. It will also put stress on your retirement that you don't need. You are taking on lots of risk here. I would sell all but maybe one of the properties and let it cash flow. This will free up cash to start investing for retirement or future business too. Buy more rental in the future with cash only. You have plenty of income to do it this way, and you will be setting yourself up for a great future. At this point you can continue to pile funds into any/all your investments, with the goal of using the funds to start a business or to live on. If all your investments are tied up in real estate, you wont have anything to draw on if needed for a business opportunity. You need to weigh this out in your goal and planning. What should we do to prepare for a comfortable retirement and safety You cannot plan for or see all scenarios. However, good planning will give you more options and more choices. Investing driven by fear will set you up for failure. Spend less than you make. Be patient. Be generous. Cheers!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "04dbc3d8c973ff716a1a53823f0aa77e",
"text": "The biggest issue is your lack of diversification. Your real estate investments have performed quite well so far, but you have also likely enjoyed a period of unprecedented growth that is not sustainable. In the long term, stocks have always outperformed real estate investments, which tend to track more closely to the inflation rate. You need more balance for when when the real estate market cools off. You don't mention tax-deferred retirement savings accounts. You should prioritize your attention to these to keep your income tax low. Consider selling one of your investment properties if you can't adequately fund the 401k.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "9260b267d593f6be555fafa6752bc74e",
"text": "Part of the difficulty in this sort of planning is that you are also betting on future tax rates and comparing them with current taxes. If you are in a low tax bracket now, but expect to be in a higher one when you take the money out, it is better to pay the taxes now. If you are in a high tax bracket now, but expect to be in a lower one when you retire/take the money out, then it is better to defer the taxes until then. If you think that future sessions of Congress will decide to tax withdrawals from Roth accounts, then you should contribute to traditional accounts. The problem is that you don't know with certainty what the future will bring. So you have to make educated guesses about what might happen, and what you can do now to protect yourself from it. Ideally, plan so that even if the bad things happen, you will be reasonably comfortable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "883e13003661c691b6adae423ffef8b1",
"text": "\"A diversified portfolio (such as a 60% stocks / 40% bonds balanced fund) is much more predictable and reliable than an all-stocks portfolio, and the returns are perfectly adequate. The extra returns on 100% stocks vs. 60% are 1.2% per year (historically) according to https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/saving-investing/model-portfolio-allocations To get those average higher stock returns, you need to be thinking 20-30 years (even 10 years is too short-term). Over the 20-30 years, you must never panic and go to cash, or you will destroy the higher returns. You must never get discouraged and stop saving, or you will destroy the higher returns. You have to avoid the panic and discouragement despite the likelihood that some 10-year period in your 20-30 years the stock market will go nowhere. You also must never have an emergency or other reason to withdraw money early. If you look at \"\"dry periods\"\" in stocks, like 2000 to 2011, a 60/40 portfolio made significant money and stocks went nowhere. A diversified portfolio means that price volatility makes you money (due to rebalancing) while a 100% stocks portfolio means that price volatility is just a lot of stress with no benefit. It's somewhat possible, probably, to predict dry periods in stocks; if I remember the statistics, about 50% of the variability in the market price 10 years out can be explained by normalized market valuation (normalized = adjusted for business cycle and abnormal profit margins). Some funds such as http://hussmanfunds.com/ are completely based on this, though a lot of money managers consider it. With a balanced portfolio and rebalancing, though, you don't have to worry about it very much. In my view, the proper goal is not to beat the market, nor match the market, nor is it to earn the absolute highest possible returns. Instead, the goal is to have the highest chance of financing your non-financial goals (such as retirement, or buying a house). To maximize your chances of supporting your life goals with your financial decisions, predictability is more important than maximized returns. Your results are primarily determined by your savings rate - which realistic investment returns will never compensate for if it's too low. You can certainly make a 40-year projection in which 1.2% difference in returns makes a big difference. But you have to remember that a projection in which value steadily and predictably compounds is not the same as real life, where you could have emergency or emotional factors, where the market will move erratically and might have a big plunge at just the wrong time (end of the 40 years), and so on. If your plan \"\"relies\"\" on the extra 1.2% returns then it's not a reasonable plan anyhow, in my opinion, since you can't count on them. So why suffer the stress and extra risk created by an all-stocks portfolio?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "965d9616ee586392bf3c15fe87b224a4",
"text": "Buy low and sell high. Right now stocks are cheap (or at least cheapish). If you wait for better forecasts, the price will be higher. They might go down still farther, but no one knows for sure when that will happen, or where the bottom is -- despite what the talking heads on TV say. Remember that what you really care about is sell price minus purchase price (plus dividends, but I'll ignore that). What happens between the time you buy and the time you sell is irrelevant financially, but can be important psychologically. If it was me, and you are sure you won't need the money for at least 10 years, or better still 15-20, I would buy some index funds. Pick something that you are comfortable with (some are more aggressive/risky than others), and then only look at it a few times a year, if that much. Only do this as long as you are sure that you won't sell if the market drops further. That is a guaranteed way to lose money. This is what I've been doing for my retirement funds for 15 years, and its worked well so far.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f7776d8529615f03d3a1ff066204e2e5",
"text": "I have a similar plan and a similar number of accounts. I think seeking a target asset allocation mix across all investment accounts is an excellent idea. I use excel to track where I am and then use it to adjust to get closer (but not exactly) to my target percentages. Until you have some larger balances, it may be prudent to use less categories or realize that you can't come exactly to your percentages, but can get close. I also simplify by primarily investing in various index funds. That means that in my portfolio, each category has 1 or 2 funds, not 10 or 20.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8ca5a07dbc9252168d91b1abc00a1885",
"text": "Great questions -- the fact that you're thinking about it is what's most important. I think a priority should be maximizing any employer match in your 401(k) because it's free money. Second would be paying off high interest debt because it's a big expense. Everything else is a matter of setting good financial habits so I think the order of importance will vary from person to person. (That's why I ordered the priorities the way I did: employer matching is the easiest way to get more income with no additional work, and paying down high-interest debt is the best way to lower your long-term expenses.) After that, continue to maximize your income and savings, and be frugal with your expenses. Avoid debt. Take a vacation once in a while, too!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b7db85a99ebe1994875cee8e6b6cc37f",
"text": "The metric I prefer is net worth, minus the value of your home, then divide by your annual expenses. The house is subtracted because you need to live somewhere, so its worth isn't part of retirement savings. I divide by expenses to create result that really answers how close one is to being able to retire. The target is to have 25X your required spending gap. Note, as you close in on retirement, and social security is still in place, you can use it in your planning. If I were in my 20s or 30s today, I wouldn't use it in my numbers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eb86b8366e07682b4dbd0b23f812c833",
"text": "First priority is to set up an emergency fund of 6 months expenses. If you're going to be making ~30k a year, then that means you'll probably want to put away about 10k of it in a savings account or something else similarly liquid. After that, paying off your student loans probably makes the most sense depending on the rate. My general rule of thumb (and I'm sure others will disagree with me) is to pay off debts that are >=6.0% first before investing. Paying off debt is a risk-free return on your money, which makes it pretty valuable. It'll let you direct more of your monthly income into retirement savings, too. After that, open up a Roth IRA. You can put a maximum of $5500 in it for this year. I like Betterment, but Wealthfront has a similar service.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "103d0790419c515f5130b810367cdce0",
"text": "It's tough to avoid the discussion of taxes. Matthew's answer was excellent but of course, tax was part of the discussion. In an article I wrote a while back, The 15% solution, I described how one can optimize taxes paid by using Roth (401 or IRA) while at a marginal 15%, and carefully transition to pretax to avoid the 25% bracket. It's possible to effectively save money from a 25% rate and withdraw it at 0%. (Zero is what one pays for the first $20K of a couple's income, this is the combined standard deduction and personal exemptions.) It would take $500K at retirement to produce the $20,000 withdrawal at a 4% rate. Keep in mind, this is a moving target as the numbers edge up each year. With no match, I'd consider the Roth IRA. But I also agree, paying higher interest debt first is a wise priority.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b784ec1dea306580bf823cccf1b7d1b8",
"text": "\"Your retirement plan shouldn't necessarily be dictated by your perceived employment risks. If you're feeling insecure about your short-term job longevity and mid-career prospects, you will likely benefit from a thoughtful and robust emergency fund plan. Your retirement plan is really designed to fund your life after work, so the usual advice to contribute as much as you can as early as you can applies either way. While a well-funded retirement portfolio will help you feel generally more secure in the long run (and worst case can be used earlier), a good emergency fund will do more to address your near-term concerns. Both retirement and emergency fund planning are fundamental to a comprehensive personal finance plan. This post on StackExchange has some basic info about your retirement options. Given your spare income, you should be able to fully fund an IRA and your 401K every year with some left over. Check the fees in your 401K to determine if you really want to fully fund the 401K past employer matching. There are several good answers and info about that here. Low-cost mutual funds are a good choice for starting your IRA. There is a lot of different advice about emergency funds (check here) ranging from x months salary in savings to detailed planning for each of your expenses. Regardless of which method you chose, it is important to think about your personal risk tolerance and create a plan that addresses your personal needs. It's difficult to live life and perform well at work if you're always worried about your situation. A good emergency plan should go a long way toward calming those fears. Your concern about reaching mid-life and becoming obsolete or unable to keep up in your career may be premature. Of course your mind, body, and your abilities will change over the years, but it is very difficult to predict where you will be, what you will be doing, and whether your experience will offset any potential decrease in your ability to keep up. It's good to think ahead and consider the \"\"what-ifs\"\", but keep in mind that those scenarios are not preordained. There isn't anything special about being 40 that will force you into a different line of work if you don't want to switch.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "56290eb39d292df78b8af33f4e308903",
"text": "Mostly you nailed it. It's a good question, and the points you raise are excellent and comprise good analysis. Probably the biggest drawback is if you don't agree with the asset allocation strategy. It may be too much/too little into stocks/bonds/international/cash. I am kind of in this boat. My 401K offers very little choices in funds, but offers Vanguard target funds. These tend to be a bit too conservative for my taste, so I actually put money in the 2060 target fund. If I live that long, I will be 94 in 2060. So if the target funds are a bit too aggressive for you, move down in years. If they are a bit too conservative, move up.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8e464172e7f74d337e511ec0d5a64b47",
"text": "For a more philosophical way to approach this, consider money saved as the opposite of money owed: This philosophy works for things which you may be able to borrow for (computer, car, house), but also for things you can't borrow for (retirement, giving to your kids, etc.). As others have mentioned, the 10% suggestion is for retirement, but the actual number depends on your lifestyle. As you can see in this chart, saving 10% of your income means you'll need to work for 51.4 years.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5a920cb7e7d5d27b8b43bfecb5f41516",
"text": "The 10K in savings and money market is equal to about 1.5 months of income for emergency funds. You should add additional funds to this account over the next few years to let that increase to 3 to 6 months of monthly expenses. This money should be kept secure so that it will be there when you need it. Growth is not the primary function for this account. Investment at this stage should be for retirement. This means take advantage of 401K matching if it is available. You will have to determine if Roth or regular makes the most sense for you. In general the lower your current tax bracket the more sense Roth makes for you. If you want an IRA again decide which type. Also remember that you have until the tax deadline to make a contribution so you can decide to use a refund to fund the IRA. IRAs and 401Ks are just account types with some rules attached. They can be invested in everything from CD's to individual stocks depending on how aggressive you want to be.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2af54e9f869b44c4f65083b7c30d1f2d",
"text": "Though I do think it is important to have a diversified portfolio for your retirement, I also think it's more important to make sure you are at no point touching this money until you retire. Taking money out of your retirement early is a sure fire way to get in a bad habit of spending this money when you need a little help. Here's a tip: If you consider this money gone, you will find another way to figure out your situation. With that said, I also would rather not put a percentage on this. Start by building your emergency fund. You'll want to treat this like a bill and make a monthly payment to your savings account each month or paycheck. When you have a good nine times your monthly income in here, stop contributing to this fund. Instead start putting the same amount into your IRA instead. At this point you should no longer have to add to your emergency fund unless there is a true emergency and you are replacing that money. Keep in mind that the amount of money in your emergency fund changes significantly in each situation. Sit down with your bills and think about how much money you would need in the event you lost your job. How long would you be out of work? How many bills do you have each month that would need to be covered?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5c44b08854a031354dbe1f6080139836",
"text": "A Budget is different for every person. There are families making $40K/yr who will budget to spend it all. But a family making $100K of course will have a different set of spending limits for most items. My own approach is to start by tracking every cent. Keep a notebook for a time, 3 months minimum. Note, for homeowners, a full year is what it takes to capture the seasonal expenses. This approach with help you see where the money is going, and adjust accordingly. The typical goal is to spend less than you make, saving X% for retirement, etc. The most important aspect is to analyze how much money is getting spent on wasteful items. The $5 coffee, the $10 lunch, the $5-$7 magazines, etc. One can decide the $5 coffee is a social event done with a friend, and that's fine, so long as it's a mindful decision. I've watched the person in front of me at the supermarket put 4 magazines down on the counter. If she has $20 to burn, that's her choice. See Where can I find an example of a really basic family budget? for other responses.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f6b490195aee0c5351658b1edfd90ba3",
"text": "If you're referring to investment hedging, then you should diversify into things that would profit if expected event hit. For example alternative energy sources would benefit greatly from increased evidence of global warming, or the onset of peak oil. Preparing for calamities that would render the stock market inaccessible, the answer is quite different. Simply own more of things that people would want than you need. A list of possibilities would include: Precious metals are also a way to secure value outside the financial markets, but would not be readily sellable until the immediate calamity had passed. All this should be balanced on an honest evaluation of the risks, including the risk of nothing happening. I've heard of people not saving for retirement because they don't expect the financial markets to be available then, but that's not a risk I'm willing to take.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
21ad90087a78e70ca43479e5b1545d6d
|
How to properly collect money from corporate sponsors?
|
[
{
"docid": "0559a5f8e99aaed4115bf99f13583c7b",
"text": "http://www.legalzoom.com/business-management/starting-your-business/turn-your-calling Answering this, but I expect an expert to give an answer with some insight too There are many more steps, but not having done them personally I suggest you read the legalzoom.com site.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ac8916af592d24f229674bf1f89c93c2",
"text": "If this is something you plan to continue doing it would make sense to create it as it's own business entity and then to get non-profit status eg: 501c3. Otherwise I'm pretty sure you have to think of it as YOU receiving the money as a sole proprietor - and file a couple more tax forms at the end of the year. I think it's a Schedule C. So essentially if you bring in $10,000, then you spend that $10,000 as legit business expenses for your venture your schedule C would show no profit and wouldn't pay taxes on it. BUT, you do have to file that form. Operating this way could have legal implications should something happen and you get sued. Having the proper business entity setup could help in that situation.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "159ebc98bb6fd24aa4857ed919b18228",
"text": "Do I report it as income? Is it subject to just the same amount of taxes (~30%) as regular income? Are there any restrictions on how it can be used? It is income. You can deduct the costs of maintaining the web page and producing the software from it (have an accountant do that for you, there are strict rules on how to do that, and you can only deduct up to the income if its a hobby and not a for-profit business), but otherwise it's earned income like any other self employment income. It is reported on your schedule C or on line 21 of your 1040 (miscellaneous income), and you're also liable for self-employment taxes on this income. There are no restrictions, it's your money. Technically, who is the donation even being made to? Me, just because I own the webpage? Yes. This is for the United States, but is there any difference if the donations come from overseas? No, unless you paid foreign taxes on the money (in which case you should fill form 1116 and ask for credit). If you create an official 501(c) organization to which the donations are given, instead of you getting it directly, the tax treatment will be different. But of course, you have to have a real charitable organization for that. To avoid confusion - I'm not a licensed tax professional and this is not a tax advice. If in doubt - talk to a EA/CPA licensed in your State.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a8bf89a0d530f2ee38e176a9f9378954",
"text": "You can have a way for people to pay, i.e. some kind of payment gateway. Run as Business: Best create a company and get the funds there. This would be treated as income of the website and would be taxed accordingly. One can deduct expenses for running the website, etc. Run as Charity: Register as one, however the cause should be considered as charitable one by the tax authorities. Only then the donations would be tax free.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "079146be252b00916828b6842bbca0da",
"text": "A public company should have a link for investor relations, which should help provide a trail of basis if this is a matter of company buyout, takeover, etc. This gets you close, but if you don't have an exact date, it will just be close, not exact. One clean way out of this, assuming the goal is to get rid of the stock and move on, is to donate the shares to charity. You will take the present value as a deduction, and be done. You can use a charitable gift fund such as those offered by Schwab or Fidelity, so if say, the shares are worth $20K, and you typically donate $5K per year, the fund lets you do this transaction at once, then send to the charities you wish over the next few years.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d3a07db7134b4aabb36326eddcc577d8",
"text": "\"I'd suggest you to separate \"\"doing good\"\" from \"\"earning profit\"\". Look at the guys like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (or Carnegie and Ford for that matters). They understand that you can't reconcile the two goals, so they donate for free what they earned for profit. If you want to make a social impact with your money, you can check the charity programs that have a confirmed record of a positive impact on people's lives. Non-profits that studied such programs publish their results extensively: AidGrade compiles this research and suggests direct donations to the programs that demonstrated best outcomes per dollar invested:\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "94f593b5521152a87c5459a25f4a9088",
"text": "\"In the US you are not required to have a corporation to use business expenses to offset your income. The technical term you need is \"\"deducting business expenses\"\", and in matters of taxes it's usually best to go straight to the horse's mouth: the IRS's explanations Deducting Business Expenses Business expenses are the cost of carrying on a trade or business. These expenses are usually deductible if the business operates to make a profit. What Can I Deduct? Cost of Goods Sold, Capital Expenses, Personal versus Business Expenses, Business Use of Your Home, Business Use of Your Car, Other Types of Business Expenses None of this requires any special incorporation or tax arrangements, and are a normal part of operating a business. However, there is a bit of a problem with your scenario. You said you \"\"invested\"\" into a business, but you mentioned buying specific things for the business which is not generally how one accounts for investment. If you are not an owner/operator of the business, then the scenario is not so straight-forward, as you can't simply claim someone else's business expenses as your own because you invested in it. Investments are taxed differently than expenses, and based upon your word choices I'm concerned that you could be getting yourself into a bit of a pickle. I would strongly advise you to speak with a professional, such as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), to go over your current arrangement and advise you on how you should be structuring your ongoing investment into this shared business. If you are investing you should be receiving equity to reflect your ownership (or stock in the company, etc), and investments of this sort generally cannot be deducted as an expense on your taxes - it's just an investment, the same as buying stock or CDs. If you are just buying things for someone else's benefit, it's possible that this could be looked upon as a personal gift, and you may be in a precarious legal position as well (where the money is, indeed, just a gift). And gifts of this sort aren't deductible, either. Depending on how this is all structured, it's possible that you should both consider a different form of legal organization, such as a formal corporation or at least an official business partnership. A CPA and an appropriate business attorney should be able to advise you for a nominal (few hundred dollars, at most) fee. If a new legal structure is advisable, you can potentially do the work yourself for a few hundred dollars, or pay to have it done (especially if the situation is more complex) for a few hundred to a few thousand. That's a lot less than you'd be on the hook for if this business is being accounted for improperly, or if either of your tax returns are being reported improperly!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2b4d51623e06f6f39d4a88f52f500ac1",
"text": "First of all, I've raised VC money before so I have experience in this area. The other commenter who said they'll only cause trouble is wrong, as a general statement. Some may, but that just means you've chosen your investors poorly. Choosing an investor is a very important decision and you should choose someone who you think will be able truly add value to your business, rather than just someone who is willing to write a check. Cultural alignment is important, and having a shared set of goals and timelines for the business is important. That said, no one here is going to be able to tell you how to structure your deal because it varies so much based on the business. In general I think it's a good idea to only take money when you need it and have a solid plan for how you're going to use it. Every time you take money you're diluting your ownership and reducing your long-term upside. Keep in mind that, as the other commenter said, if you take a deal now that means that you maintain 51% and then you take more money in the future, that 51% will be diluted further. That said with more investors in the mix you still are likely to be the largest shareholder, but again, that depends on how the deals are structured. My advice: seek out as much advice from as many sources as you can. And hire a good law firm to handle your financing transaction because their advice is invaluable as you negotiate terms. Finally, you should have more conditions than just retaining 51% ownership -- there are a lot of terms that get baked into these deals that have an impact on the long-term upside. Learn those terms. Do a bunch of googling and a bunch of reading. And ask for more advice. :)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3ce0cded958ab5152aa0e84fd01f463f",
"text": "I know in the UK at least, 99% of the time even legitimate collectors don't work directly for the charity. They work for independent for-profit companies. The companies collect a large comission (around £50-£70) for every direct debit signup. The guy that knocks on your door will see very little of it. Have a look at this: http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2005/08/just-6-for-eight-days-work-for.html The bags you get through your door for clothing donations are run on a similar basis - the clothes and profit go to a private company, which makes a donation to the charity out of their profits. Sometimes as little as 0.1% of your donation will go the charity. Always go direct to your chosen charity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a06bd6c760994cbcb0a5f5e853084331",
"text": "As you own a company, you need to know what your role is. You can never just move money into or out of the company, you have to identify the role in which you are doing it, and do it properly. There is Company, and there is You, in three different roles. You are the sole shareholder and director of Company. You are the sole employee of Company. You are also just a private person. You need to keep these three roles separate. As the sole shareholder, you own the company. However, you don't own any assets of the company. The company is yours, but the money in its bank account isn't. As a private person, you give a loan to your company. You write on a sheet of paper that You personally, give a loan to the company, how much a loan is, what interest is paid, and when the loan will be paid back (that could be 'whenever You demands the money paid back'). Then you move the money from your private bank account to the company bank account, and the company has the money it needs to fund its operation. Assume it wasn't you who loaned the money, but I gave the loan to the company. You can imagine that I would have this loan written down and signed before I hand over the cash. And you must have exactly the same papers that I would have. How do you get money from the company? The company can pay back your loan. That should be written down again, in the same way as the loan itself was written down. Other than that, there are three ways how you can get money out of the company: The company can pay You, in your role as its employee, a salary, which it can deduct from its profits. The company can pay money into a pension of the company director (that's You in your role as company director) up to £40,000 or so a year; that money is deducted from its profits again. The company pays 20% tax on its remaining profits. Then the company can pay You, in your role as company director, a dividend, usually twice a year. Each of these payments has to be written down and given to HMRC properly. Best by far to use an accountant to do all the paper work for you and advice you what to do. You can lose a lot of money by just not getting the paperwork right, by filing late etc., which the accountant will get right. The accountant will also tell you what are the optimal amounts for salary and dividend (best is a small salary, about £10,000 a year, dividend of about £30,000 a year, pension as much as the company can afford, which is then all tax free to you). You can't pay more dividend then the company can afford (paying a dividend and then not being able to pay your suppliers is criminal), and if you want higher dividends, then you will have to pay taxes on them.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fb7429f700bf206a2c989ac07d7b563b",
"text": "From the employer side there are A LOT of legal duties attached to sponsoring a 401(k). If you are asking this question I would not suggest attempting to meet all of the regulations related to handling employee money internally. There are certain annual filings, periodic notices, accounting etc related to these kinds of plans, and the fines for non-compliance are extraordinary. You would be far better off seeking a separate vendor, in my opinion.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b48b96a62ca738ac2d397121a24ed968",
"text": "\"Note: I have no experience of attempting what is described below (neither am I a lawyer nor an accountant). The process may range from a \"\"small bureaucratic hurdle\"\" to a \"\"complex legal nightmare\"\". If it seems a plausible approach, you would probably be well-advised to reach out to others that have established CASCs for help and guidance. According to this HMRC page the two ways a body can claim Gift Aid is if either it is a recognised charity or if it is a Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC). So one option may be to try and establish a CASC. I suspect that this is unlikely to be an easy process, but may be a more likely approach than trying to get the council to establish a charity. The Register as a community amateur sports club (CASC) page on the HMRC site (very) briefly describes the steps; as you can see from their eligibility criteria, to register as a CASC, you would first have to create a \"\"Sports Club\"\" of some form that: has a formal constitution is open to the whole community and has affordable membership fees is on an amateur basis provides facilities in the UK is managed by \"\"fit and proper persons\"\" You would probably need the co-operation of the local council to allow the proposed sports club the use of the local park. One of the (several) requirements of becoming a CASC is that it must: So it could, in theory, be possible to spend money raised (through both membership fees and Gift-Aid-qualifying donations) on the improving the facilities of the park (tennis courts, bowling green etc.). However, note that How to Register page mentions (among many other requirements) the need to provide \"\"accounts from the last 12 months\"\" and \"\"bank statements from the last 3 months\"\". It doesn't (as far as I can see) explicitly state that the club must have been in existence for 12 months before applying for CASC status (it might be possible to send only what you have), but be aware that you may need to establish the club – and let it operate under its own steam – for a period before applying.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "daaa039e808d165597234fd11e103a13",
"text": "Large and small universities have procedures in place regarding the use of the universities name, logo, facilities, and budget. They should have in place guidelines regarding the collection and use of funds from members, and participants. These guidelines are what allows you to have an account with the university. Generally these are not kept in the credit union but are with the university treasurer. I would approach this as if I knew nothing about how to get an officially recognized club or organization started. They should then provide you with all the rules and policies regarding money for student organizations. These policies may also discuss how to collect cash, checks, and credit cards. Some universities also allow the use of special card readers to process the special debit card attached to your university ID. The 10% fee charged by the university is typical. They will need to account for your funds, while maintaining their tax exempt status. If you get fully inline with their policies that will allow you to avoid tax issues.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b96288340f7a74edaf5cd6401bbece0e",
"text": "All of this assumes that this relationship isn't as employer-employee relationship, which would require you to withhold taxes. If you send them a small token of appreciation, and you are unable to record it as a business expense, or some other deductible expense, you don't have to be concerned about how they claim it. They decide if they want to risk claiming it was a gift, or if they want to record it as an expense. Even if you say some magic phrase that you think will impress the IRS, the recipient can still decide declare it as income. To have any hope of being able to treat it as a gift they would have to be able to demonstrate that there is a non-business relationship. If you can claim it as a business expense, or a deductible expense, they will have to also claim it as income; because your documentation could point the IRS to their lack of documentation. Giving them a check or sending the payment electronically will require them to claim it as an income, since an audit could require them to explain every line on their bank statements.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a0b4faa62bdcfa18c2e8cb9c42b88f0e",
"text": "\"You are correct that, barring an equity capital raise, your money doesn't actually end up in the company. However, interest in their stock can help a company in other ways; Management/board members hopefully own shares or options themselves, thus knowing that \"\"green\"\" policies are favorable for the stock price (as your fund might buy shares) can be quite an incentive for them to go green(er). Companies with above average company share performance are also often viewed as financially healthy and so creditors tend to charge lower interest for companies with good share performance. Lastly, a high share price makes a company difficult to take over (as all those shares have to be acquired) and at the same time makes it easier for the company to perform takeovers themselves as they can finance such acquisitions by issuing more of their own shares. There is also the implication that money flowing towards such green companies is money flowing out of/away from polluting companies, for these \"\"dirty\"\" companies the inverse of the previous points can hold true. Of course on the other hand there is quite an argument to be made that large enough \"\"green\"\" funds should actually buy substantial positions in companies with poor environmental records and steer the company towards greener policies but that might be a hard sell to investors.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e12650dde63327e43859e62268b8e470",
"text": "What does this have to do with capitalism? To me, this seems like the obvious move when the corporate tax rate is much lower in other countries. Politicians can only steal from you for so long before you start realizing you have other options. Maybe nike doesn't want to fund neverending war in the middle east? I know I don't. Yet my money is taken from me every year to fund it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5ea83557af9a5d48e3d8b1794e9161bd",
"text": "If this is a business expense - then this is what is called reimbursement. Reimbursement is usually not considered as income since it is money paid back to you for an expense you covered for your employer with your after-tax money. However, for reimbursement to be considered properly executed, from income tax stand point, there are some requirements. I'm not familiar with the UK income tax law specifics, but I reason the requirements would not differ much from places I'm familiar with: before an expense is reimbursed to you, you should usually do this: Show that the expense is a valid business expense for the employer benefit and by the employer's request. Submit the receipt for reimbursement and follow the employer's procedure on its approval. When income tax agent looks at your data, he actually will ask about the £1500 tab. You and you'll employer will have to do some explaining about the business activity that caused it. If the revenue agent is not satisfied, the £750 that is paid to you will be declared as your income. If the required procedures for proper reimbursement were not followed - the £750 may be declared as your income regardless of the business need. Have your employer verify it with his tax accountant.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
da5a21fc8b05954eaccf4b92aab5a0d6
|
What could a malicious party potentially achieve by having *just* a name, account number, and sort code?
|
[
{
"docid": "f0eb89b0e9bf01c21aaade926811a1db",
"text": "I think the answer to this must differ from country to country. I have lived in several countries where the normal everyday way of making a payment is to instruct my bank to transfer the money to the recipient's account. Of course this means I must know his name, SC and account number – but this is an accepted part of the system; businesses routinely display that information on invoices and correspondence. It is simply not regarded as confidential. DumbCoder's comment suggests that if he has that information he can take money from my account without my permission – in other words, my bank will pay money out of my account on someone else's request, without my authority. Is this correct? In which country or countries can this happen? (I must go there quickly and begin stealing people's money.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b80ed39ad62f15207fc29041b47cdf25",
"text": "When you want to pay a bill on line there are several ways to do it. You can give them your credit card details: Name on Card, zip code, credit card number, and 3 or 4 digit security code on the back. Most of the information is available on the card or via an easy Google search. If the crook has your card they can use it to buy something. You can contact your bank's website and establish a one time or recurring transfer. You provide the information about the person/company. Your bank knows who you are because you used a secure system and your password. Their bank accepts the money because who would refuse money, they don't care who you are. You can provide the company with your bank info (bank number, your account number, and your name). If your bank limits their transactions via this method only to legitimate organizations, then your money will only be sent to legitimate organizations. But if the organization has no way of knowing who is on the other end of the phone or webpage, they may be withdrawing money from a bank account without the account owners permission. In the example article a person found a charity that had lax security standards, they were recognized by the bank as a legitimate organization, so the bank transferred the money. The charity will point to the form and say they had permission from the owner, but in reality they didn't. The subject of the article was correct, all the info required is on every check. It is just that most people are honest, and the few security hurdles that exist do stop most of the fraud.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "44afc87202a16f7f76991138c5fdf24c",
"text": "I disagree with Dumbcoder's response. Setting up a DD is not easily approved by the banks as you must prove a existing business cash flow. And secondly you cannot empty someone's account via DD as they are protected by the DD mandate. (Money goes out, complaint is made, money goes back in, the registered business with the DD facility has some serious explaining to do to the bank and FCA). Dumbcoder you likely work in a middle position of a company..",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "1106f53035aa74ff20d51f8c9d233ccc",
"text": "\"No, the best you can do is (probably) determine the bank, from the sort code. using an online checker such as this one from the UK payments industry trade association. Revealing the name of an account holder is something the bank would typically require a warrant for, I'd expect, or whatever is covered in the account T&Cs under \"\"we provide all lawfully required assistance to the authorities\"\" Switching to what I suspect is your underlying problem - if this is a dispute that's arisen at the end of your tenancy, relating to the return of the deposit, then there are plenty of people to help you, for free. Use those rather than attempting your own detective work. Start with the UK government How to Rent guide, which includes links on to Shelter's pages about deposits. The CAB has lots of good info here too. Note that if your landlord didn't put your deposit in a deposit protection scheme, then as a professional landlord they could be penalised four times (I think) the deposit amount by a court, so stick to your guns on this.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "860266c5f091ca5d690561f10b47edb1",
"text": "\"Here are a handful of measures I take myself: I check my credit reports once in a while and look for anything out of the ordinary. If somebody calls me on the telephone claiming to be from my bank or credit card company, utility, etc. I ask for their number, check it, and call them back. I don't give personal information to people merely claiming to be from a place I do business with. I never fill out ballots for free contests. Most of the time these are scams. When I get a call telling me \"\"you won a free cruise\"\" for a ballot I supposedly filled out at the mall, I say they're lying through their teeth. For excitement, I'll sometimes buy a lotto ticket instead. I'm careful when I surf the web. I don't give my personal information to web sites I can't trust. If they look the least bit shady, I'm out. Also, I use different passwords at different web sites. I avoid using a password from a public terminal, but when I must, I change my password soon after. I'm careful when I download software. I don't install anything I didn't get from a trusted source. I pay for software when necessary, so finding a trusted source is not hard. But, I've heard of people who – to save a buck – would download a pirated application from a shady warez site only to be \"\"gifted\"\" a trojan horse key logging or other spyware along with it. When I no longer need a bill, receipt, statement, etc. or any document containing personal information, I shred it, and I use a shredder that does a micro-cut, not just a strip- or cross-cut. The micro-cut remains go in the green bin with wet and yucky organic waste. When I no longer need a hard drive, I use a secure wiping tool like Darik's Boot & Nuke before reusing. If the drive isn't worth reusing, I'll wipe first then take apart with my Torx screwdriver. Once I have the drive platter, I scratch the heck out of it. Remains go to the community recycling depot. That's all I can think of right now; I probably missed a few :-) So, what do others do? I'm curious, too.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c94c26639d33108d45b4df3e1118d66c",
"text": "\"You've touched on a very abstract concept that exist partly due to fractional-reserves and directly due to currency having no base (ex. not backed by gold), money can and does just pop into existence. To answer your question, we have to understand that the criminal is irrelevant. \"\"Can't a cyber criminal increase/decrease a bank's holdings just by changing a number in a computerized ledger book?\"\" The bank wouldn't need the cyber criminal's aid, they could change their own holdings. They have their own computers after all. Money's value is derived from trust. A bank that would change its own books would be black-balled. Similarly, a bank that un/consciously allows a cyber criminal change their holdings would lose trust. If this was a small transaction, they bank bottom line is unaffected. If these scandal is large enough to affect a bank's bottom line, the difference would be noticeable and raise suspicion.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8e9e89ee49bbbee7ded9f41224cb3f05",
"text": "With Mint you are without a doubt telling a third party your username and password. If mint gets compromised, or hires a bad actor, technically there isn't anything to stop shenanigans. You simply must be vigilant and be aware of your rights and the legal protections you have against fraud. For all the technical expertise and careful security they put in place, we the customers have to know that there is not, nor will there ever be, a perfectly secure system. The trade off is what you can do for the increased risk. And when taken into the picture of all the Other* ways you banking information is exposed, and how little you can do about it, mint.com is only a minor increase in risk in my opinion. *See paypal, a check's routing numbers, any e-commerce site you shop at, every bank that has an online facing system, your HR dept's direct deposit and every time you swipe your debit / credit card somewhere. These are all technically risks, some of which are beyond your control to change. Short of keeping your money in your mattress you can't avoid risk. (And then your mattress catches fire.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "66f6cd9c8932841386497823161fcfe0",
"text": "The reason people like Mint is because it allows you to see all of your financial details in one place. When you create an account, you’re able to link all of your bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts. This linking enables Mint to update your transactions automatically. The catch is that you have to provide the username and password you use for each one, which can certainly make you feel jittery if you’re worried about a security breach. Mint is designed to be a read-only service, which means you can’t transfer money back and forth between accounts. If someone were to get their hands on your Mint login, all they’d be able to do is view your balances and transactions. Your full account numbers aren’t displayed, nor are your bank account or credit card usernames and passwords. The only thing that would be visible would be your email address. If a hacker was interested in taking things a step further, there’s always the possibility that they could physically steal the information from Mint’s secure servers – but that’s really a long shot. That would require knowing where the servers are located, bypassing the physical security measures that are in place, and cracking the code on how the data is encrypted. If that were to happen, then your personal information might be at risk, but so far, there’s no record of it being attempted. I was very skeptical of Mint and how secure it truly was. I did my fair share of research. Try looking at:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3e987107dbb4125793c6317940aa88a4",
"text": "\"It's anonymous/automated. They don't know who you are, just that customer x1a bought y. If your name isnt given to employees \"\"your\"\" privacy isnt being volated because the dont know its \"\"you.\"\" I imagine the government justifies their intrusions on our digital privacy the same way.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7f267f8d8189cd55408b9a859789047c",
"text": "Yes. It is a scam. The story makes no sense. They just want your info to steal your money. regarding requests to know how it works: the scammer is requesting: username, password, routing number, checking account number, and security question/answers. they now have access to your bank account. they will have access until you are able to shut it down. Once they have your password, they can change it to whatever they want. it can be used to launder money, steal money from other accounts you have, proof of identity...",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bbbbb498e32b3999a3b4d25aeb30d42e",
"text": "I would worry more about identity theft than your credit score at first. I would want an explanation of how it happened and confirm that no one has used it. I don't think it will be too big of a deal on your credit in the longer term.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "48f3bd9101698cd08d0ebd81dfffb549",
"text": "Aside from the fact that you could now get spam calls and mailings, nothing negative at all. With your account number, anyone can send you money (which you probably wouldn't mind), but otherwise, no access is possible. In Germany, every company and many people publish their account number, so they can receive payment. Every invoice contains address, phone number, and account numbers of the company that bills you, so you are able to send them money to pay the invoice. Nobody can access the money or details of your account with only the name and number; it needs your online login user id and password, or your (government issued) ID to do so. You don't need to worry at all.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3179e94f6575f62b120ad585ad7631fc",
"text": "\"Answers to your questions: (1) Do bank account numbers have a checksum. NO. (2) Is it plausible that they found out your number after sending you the money by \"\"accident\"\". NO. There is no way to find out who possesses a particular bank account just by the number. Also, how they even know they made a mistake? They targeted you and knew who you were and your bank account number before the \"\"money\"\" was sent. (3 and 4) Is this a scam? YES. They never paid you any money. They forged a check for a large amount and deposited it in an account. Then divided it up, wiring pieces to multiple people, all of whom they investigated beforehand. Since it is a bank to bank transfer it clears. Once the forgery is discovered, all the transfers will be unwound. If you had sent them money, you would have lost that money. Other things to note: There is zero chance of a wire transfer going to the wrong person because the sender has to list the name and address on the account as well as the number. You basically did the right thing which is to notify your bank that you received an unauthorized transfer into your account. Never accept money into your account from someone you don't know. If money \"\"appears\"\" in your account tell the bank it is an error and probably proceeds from a forgery and they will take care of it.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "882cbd406a8b1849647272257c95b90e",
"text": "\"Unfortunately, Australian bureocrats made it impossible to register a small business without making the person's home address, full name, date of birth and other personal information available to the whole world. They tell us the same old story about preventing crime, money laundering and terrorism, but in fact it is just suffocating small business in favour of capitalistic behemoths. With so many weirdos and identity thieves out there, many people running a small business from home feel unsafe publishing all their personal details. I use a short form of my first name and real surname for my business, and reguraly have problems cashing in cheques written to this variation of my name. Even though I've had my account with this bank for decades and the name is obviously mine, just a pet or diminitive form of my first name (e.g. Becky instead of Rebecca). This creates a lot of inconvenience to ask every customer to write the cheque to my full name, or make the cheque \"\"bearer\"\" (or not to cross \"\"or bearer\"\" if it is printed on the cheque already). It is very sad that there is protection for individual privacy in Australia, unless you can afford to have a business address. But even in this case, your name, date of birth and other personal information will be pusblished in the business register and the access to this information will be sold to all sorts of dubious enterprises like credit report companies, debt collectors, market researchers, etc. It seems like Australian system is not interested in people being independent, safe, self-sufficient and working for themselves. Everyone has to be under constant surveliance.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7140611637ffc227408550e614481205",
"text": "As far as I understand, equifax collects data about individuals and scores their credit worthiness. The ceo did Jack shit about keeping all that private data safe, so they got hacked and all that data is now in someone else's hands. The possible implications? Large scale identify fraud of anyone whose details got stolen, since it encompasses everything that is needed for that. And that is besides the privacy violation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7b93e0783a91335c0418e313471690db",
"text": "\"Mostly ditto to @grade'eh'bacon, but let me add a couple of comments: Before I did anything, I'd find out more about what's going on. Anytime someone tells me that there's a problem with \"\"security codes or something\"\", I get cautious. Think about what the possibilities are here. Your relative is being scammed. In that case, helping him to transfer his money to the scammer is not the kind of help you really want to give. Despite your firm belief in your relative's integrity, he may have been seduced by the dark side. If he's doing something illegal, I'd be very careful about getting involved. My friends and relatives don't ask me to commit crimes for them, especially not in a way that leaves me holding the bag if things go wrong. Assuming that what is going on here is all legal and ethical, still there is the possibility that you could be making yourself liable for taxes, fees, whatever. At the very least I'd want to know what those are up front. As @Grade'eh'bacon, if he really has a problem with a lost password or expired account, by all means help him fix that problem. But become someone else's financial intermediary has many possible pitfalls.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cdab6762751912456eb59e1b21dac3ad",
"text": "If its JavaScript-based you can check the source code to see if any messages are being sent, again this doesn't mean the code's malicious. if there's any type of form submission you can't tell. You could always implement it yourself, SHA1 is publicly accessible although not the easiest algorithm to build.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a84f16ada81922d72884f228646ce307",
"text": "I spoke to HMRC and they said #1 is not allowable but #2 is. They suggested using either their published exchange rates or I could use another source. I suggested the Bank of England spot rates and that was deemed reasonable and allowable.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
78cc8f07814199ac73765cfec0f27580
|
Return of value to shareholders in an ISA
|
[
{
"docid": "87f8e0738c74836e43eeeb1cf7f36494",
"text": "\"You will receive a combination of Verizon shares and cash whether you chose option B or C. Option B means that your \"\"Return of Value\"\" will be treated as capital - ie: as a capital gain. Option C means that your \"\"Return of Value\"\" will be treated as income - ie: as a dividend. As your ISA has favourable tax status, you don't end up paying any capital gain tax or income tax on dividend income. So it won't matter which option you chose.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "5a9a5dcc1532513df50baedcb611b3ce",
"text": "Thanks for the answer/comments! The time-based method was something we mooted and something I almost went with. But just to wrap this up, the method we settled on was this: Every time there is an entry or exit into the fund, we divvy out any unrealised market profits/losses according to each person's profit share (based on % of the asset purchased at buy-in) JUST BEFORE the entry/exit. These realised profits are then locked in for those particpants, and then the unrealised profits/loss counter starts at zero, we do a fresh recalculation of shareholding after the entry/exit, and then we start again. Hope this helps anyone with the same issue!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "686c79bee148b44dfd8d5893636b200c",
"text": "Does this make sense? I'm concerned that by buying shares with post tax income, I'll have ended up being taxed twice or have increased my taxable income. ... The company will then re-reimburse me for the difference in stock price between the vesting and the purchase share price. Sure. Assuming you received a 100-share RSU for shares worth $10, and your marginal tax rate is 30% (all made up numbers), either: or So you're in the same spot either way. You paid $300 to get $1,000 worth of stock. Taxes are the same as well. The full value of the RSU will count as income either way, and you'll either pay tax on the gains of the 100 shares in your RSU our you'll pay tax on gains on the 70 shares in your RSU and the 30 shares you bought. Since they're reimbursing you for any difference the cost basis will be the same (although you might get taxed on the reimbursement, but that should be a relatively small amount). This first year I wanted to keep all of the shares, due to tax reasons and because believe the share price will go up. I don't see how this would make a difference from a tax standpoint. You're going to pay tax on the RSU either way - either in shares or in cash. how does the value of the shares going up make a difference in tax? Additionally I'm concerned that by doing this I'm going to be hit by my bank for GBP->USD exchange fees, foreign money transfer charges, broker purchase fees etc. That might be true - if that's the case then you need to decide whether to keep fighting or decide if it's worth the transaction costs.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ae148a4b9aca1e2103a1c57a04f56f16",
"text": "This is great, thank you. Can you think of any cases where expected return is greater than interest payments (like in #2) but the best choice would still be raise money through equity issuing? My intuition tells me this may be possible for an expensive company.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7357993aa3e3e8e6d746463fbc6fefa2",
"text": "Shares often come associated with a set of rights, such as ability to vote in the outcome of the company. Some shares do not have this right, however. With your ability to vote in the outcome of the company, you could help dictate that the company paid dividends at a point in time. Or many other varieties of outcomes. Also, if there were any liquidity events due to demand of the shares, this is typically at a much higher price than the shares are now when the company is private/closely held.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4e4095d42a193b554e513a451e5dc91b",
"text": "The company's value (which should be reflected in the share price) is not how much money it has in the bank, but something along the lines of 'how much money will it make between now and the end of times' (adjusted for time value of money and risk). So when you purchase a share of a company that has, say, little money in the bank, but expects to make 1M$ profit this year, 2M$ for the following 3 years, and say, nothing after, you are going to pay your fraction of 7M$ (minus some discount because of the risk involved). If now they announce that their profits were only 750k$, then people may think that the 2M$ are more likely to be 1.5M$, so the company's value would go to ~ 5M$. And with that, the market may perceive the company as more risky, because its profits deviated from what was expected, which in turn may reduce the company's value even further.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "37c2382b45e55c431fdc9686dd772e26",
"text": "Firstly 795 is not even. Secondly - generally you would pay tax on the sale of the 122 shares, whether you buy them back or not, even one minute later, has nothing to do with it. The only reason this would not create a capital gains event is if your country (which you haven't specified) has some odd rules or laws about this that I, and most others, have never heard of before.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7073c8abdac940794381ca8c2ea69bbd",
"text": "You are comparing apples and oranges: the charts show the capital appreciation excluding dividends. If you include dividends and calculate a total return over that period you see VSMAX up 132% vs. FSEVX up 129%, i.e. quite close. That residual difference is possibly due to a performance difference between the two benchmarks.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a11b5b0f914084e7fe0ca39051dd3794",
"text": "Here's a different take: Look through the lists of companies that offer shareholder perks. Here's one from Hargreaves Lansdown. See if you can find one that you already spend money with with a low required shareholding where the perks would actually be usable. Note that in your case, being curious about the whole thing and based in London, you don't have to rule out the AGM-based perks, unlike me. My reason for this is simple: with 3 out of 4 of the companies we bought shares in directly (all for the perks), we've made several times the dividend in savings on money we would have spent anyway (either with the company in which we bought shares or a direct competitor). This means that you can actually make back the purchase price plus dealing fee quite quickly (probably in 2/4 in our case), and you still have the shares. We've found that pub/restaurant/hotel brands work well if you use them or their equivalents anyway. Caveats: It's more enjoyable than holding a handful of shares in a company you don't care about, and if you want to read the annual reports you can relate this to your own experience, which might interest you given your obvious curiosity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "924ec97e56ea4c56464f722c7914e103",
"text": "Need help with a finance problem I'm currently facing in my business. My company might be going through an acquisition and I need to understand how the dilution works out for shareholders. They currently have large shareholder loans (debt), and will be converting to equity pre-transaction. For this case, if the original company value = $1 MM and the SHL value = $1 MM, I'm assuming that'd dilute equity by 50% for all shareholders if converted to equity at original company value. Correct? However, what if the $1 MM in shareholder loans were converted at the market value of the company, say $4 MM? I might be confusing myself, but just want to confirm.. thanks!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "66b78ec6a2bc58a7f7fcd823363ec278",
"text": "\"You are missing the fact that the company can buy back its own shares. For simplicity, imagine the case that you own ALL of the shares of XYZ corporation. XYZ is very profitable, and it makes $1M per year. There are two ways to return $1M to you, the shareholder: 1) The company could buy back some fraction of your shares for $1M, or 2) The company could pay you a $1M dividend. After (1) you'd own ALL of the shares and have $1M. After (2) you'd own ALL of the shares and have $1M. After (1) the total number of shares would be fewer, but saying you owned less of XYZ would be like complaining that you are shorter when your height is measured in inches than in centimeters. So indeed, a buyback is an alternative to a dividend. Furthermore, buybacks have a number of tax advantages over dividends to taxable shareholders (see my answer in Can I get a dividend \"\"free lunch\"\" by buying a stock just before the ex-dividend date and selling it immediately after?). That said, it is important to recognize the shareholders who are less savvy about knowing when to accept the buyback (by correctly valuing the company) can get burned at the profit of the savvy shareholders. A strategy to avoid being burned if you aren't price savvy is simply to sell a fraction in order to get your pro rata share of the buyback, in many respects simulating a dividend but still reaping some (but not all) of the tax advantages of a buyback.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "46cc17c4ec1ccbf1b920fc7420ab3ade",
"text": "You're overthinking it. The ISA limit applies to the amount you invest into the ISA. In your example, £10,000. Whether that then fluctuates with performance is irrelevant. Even if you realise aprofit or a loss, nobody is watching it. You merely count the amount you originally contributed into the ISA wrapper. When they add up to £15,000; that's the limit reached. (And by the way, remember that only money going into the ISA is counted. It doesn't matter if you -let's say - put £15k in, then remove 10k. You've reached the limit. You don't again have the chance to put £10k 'back in'.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "396521793f12b66d59c2c86a671360b7",
"text": "Ignoring taxes, a share repurchase has exactly the same effect on the company and the shareholders' wealth as a cash dividend. In either case, the company is disbursing cash to its shareholders; in the former, in exchange for shares which shareholders happen to be selling on the market at the time; in the latter, equally to all shareholders. For those shareholders who do not happen to be selling their shares, a share repurchase by a company is equivalent to a shareholder's reinvestment of a cash dividend in additional shares of the same company. The only difference is the total number of shares left outstanding. Your shares after a share buyback represent ownership of a greater fraction of the company, since in effect the company is buying out other shareholders on your behalf. Theoretically, a share buyback leaves the price of the stock unchanged, whereas a cash dividend tends to reduce the price of the stock by exactly the amount of the dividend, (notwithstanding underlying earnings.) This is because a share buyback concentrates your ownership in the company, but at the same time, the company as a whole is devalued by the exact amount of cash disbursed to buy back shares. Taxwise, a share buyback generally allows you to treat your share of the company's profits as capital gains---and quite possibly defer taxes on it as long as you own the stock. You usually have to pay taxes on dividends at the time they are paid. However, dividends are sometimes seen as instilling discipline in management, because it's a very public and obvious sign of distress for a company to cut its dividend, whereas a share repurchase plan can often be quietly withdrawn without drawing that much attention. A third alternative to a dividend or a share repurchase is for the company to find profitable projects to reinvest its earnings in, and attempt to grow the company as a whole (in the hopes of even greater earnings in the future) rather than distribute current earnings back to shareholders. (A company may alse use its earnings to pay down or repurchase debt, as well.) As to your second question, the SEC has certain rules that regulate the timing and price of share repurchases on the open market.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2533e2232a029cd05746361beff5378a",
"text": "\"I've been wondering the same thing - I can't find any \"\"official\"\" information from the banks, but there is the following info: So, if it's all with the same bank - try it! The worst that can happen is that the bank won't credit your ISA and will refund you.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5e73b6a2824db353b01b641ce28e18f7",
"text": "See my answer here What is the dividend tax rate for UK stock The only tax from US stocks you'd need to worry about would be dividend withholding tax of 30%. If you contact your ISA provider they should be able to provide you with a W8-BEN form so that you can have this rate reduced to 15%. Just because there's a tax treaty does not mean you will automatically be charged 15% - you must provide a W8-BEN form and renew it when it expires. That last 15% is unfortunately unavoidable. If you were paying any UK taxes you could claim that 15% as a discount against your UK dividend tax liability, but as your US stock would be wrapped in an ISA there's no UK tax to pay which means no tax to reclaim from the tax treaty. Other than DWT though, you will pay absolutely no tax on US stocks held in an ISA to either the US or UK government.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f047a86a26ffe9decad612ab2b5ed4e0",
"text": "Note the above is only for shares. There are different rules for other assets like House, Jewellery, Mutual Funds, Debt Funds. Refer to the Income Tax guide for more details.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
e37395b0759c47f1512aa39b026d0bee
|
How much cash on hand should one have?
|
[
{
"docid": "6b804ef09f486798a3503be8d5ce1a1e",
"text": "You seem to have a grasp of the basic principles involved, but your estimation of the risk you are taking seems a bit low. Your non-investment reserves are unlikely to cover your expenses for more than a month, so the chance that you would need to sell investments to cover additional expenses is high. You mention that I am flexible with the 'cash on hand' amount. For instance, for about three months I put a very tight spending/investing freeze on my life because I knew I'd be leaving jobs and moving (I already had the other job lined up). Those savings presumably went toward moving expenses, as your usual savings were insufficient. In the event that you are laid off suddenly, you might find yourself in the same position again, with added unplanned expenses like fees for breaking a lease. Your current plan involves selling investments to cover the gap. Based on your age you have probably only invested in a predominantly positive market, so the chance that you might need to sell investments for cash seems like a reasonable trade-off for the added potential gains. Your perception might change if the markets go south and you are forced to sell into a down market, possibly at a significant loss. You also don't indicate if your investments are currently sufficient to cover an extended period of unemployment. You are taking on a lot of risk under your current plan. Essentially you are trading possible investment gains for flexibility and time. By making small changes like saving at least enough to move as you did previously, you can give yourself time to react to job loss or other unexpected financial need. Rather than give the traditional emergency funds advice, I suggest you look at the broader picture. The total amount of savings/risk is up to you, but you should consider your current savings as insufficient to rely on as a safety net.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1279c055dc6a2e7145425d6b25103af9",
"text": "There are two or three issues here. One is, how quickly can you get cash out of your investments? If you had an unexpected expense, if you suddenly needed more cash than you have on hand, how long would it take to get money out of your Scott Trade account or wherever it is? I have a TD Ameritrade account which is pretty similar, and it just takes a couple of days to get money out. I'm hard pressed to think of a time when I literally needed a bunch of cash TODAY with no advance warning. What sudden bills is one likely to have? A medical bill, perhaps. But hey, just a few weeks ago I had to go to the emergency room with a medical problem, and it's not like they demanded cash on the table before they'd help me. I just got the bill, maybe 3 weeks after the event. I've never decided to move and then actually moved 2 days later. These things take SOME planning. Etc. Second, how much risk are you willing to tolerate? If you have your money in the stock market, the market could go down just as you need the cash. That's not even a worst case scenario, extreme scenario. After all, if the economy gets bad, the stock market could go down, and the same fact could result in your employer laying you off. That said, you could reduce this risk by keeping some of your money in a low-risk investment, like some high-quality bonds. Third, you want to have cash to cover the more modest, routine expenses. Like make sure you always have enough cash on hand to pay the rent or mortgage, buy food, and so on. And fourth, you want to keep a cushion against bookkeeping mistakes. I've had twice in my life that I've overdrawn a checking account, not because I was broke, but because I messed up my records and thought I had more money in the account than I really did. It's impossible to give exact numbers without knowing a lot about your income and expenses. But for myself: I keep a cushion of $1,000 to $1,5000 in my checking account, on top of all regular bills that I know I'll have to pay in the next month, to cover modest unexpected expenses and mistakes. I pay most of my bills by credit card for convenience --and pay the balance in full when I get the bill so I don't pay interest -- so I don't need a lot of cushion. I used to keep 2 to 3 months pay in an account invested in bonds and very safe stocks, something that wouldn't lose much value even in bad times. Since my daughter started college I've run this down to less than 1 months pay, and instead of replacing that money I'm instead putting my spare money into more general stocks, which is admittedly riskier. So between the two accounts I have a little over 2 months pay, which I think is low, but as I say, I'm trying to get my kids through college so I've run down my savings some. I think if I had more than 6 months pay in easily-liquidated assets, then unless I expected to need a bunch of cash for something, buying a new house or some such, I'd be transferring that to a retirement account with tax advantages.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "58888b5f58ffd36b094b03d47933d2d5",
"text": "Less than 2 1/2% of all US currency actually exists. The rest is digital entries. In a financial crisis you'll need lots of rare cash. Twenty dollar bills are the best choice. Stash as many as you can afford to. Best to stash in a anchored security safe. And for goodness sakes, don't tell anyone.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "559926fa2f62e66aaf0c0144d3b5aabb",
"text": "Find a good commercial bank in the us, or almost any bank in Canada, and exchange cash. Or use an ATM card in Canada; the surcharge is often minimal. (Check with your bank before traveling). You may or may not get a good exchange rate from your hotel desk; some view it as a courtesy, others as a service. You may be able to simply pay with American cash, near the border, but check the exchange rate. Or, for small amounts, you can simply not worry about whether you're getting the best possible exchange rate or not. I visit Canada periodically, and I use a mix of these solutions. Including that last one.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4fdc0c096584047dd029d2407e86289d",
"text": "With a lot excess cash you eventually have two goals: Since interest on cash bank deposits does not exceed inflation and you have currency risk, you may want to get into other asset classes. Options that might be, but not limited to are:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "08735a3e09b704995ed935887b845a0f",
"text": "I usually get a cashiers check to cover about 90% - 95% of the expected amount (whatever I think is just below my wet-dream-price), and bring the rest in cash. That doesn't require so much cash to be carried. Alternatively you can write a personal check for the exact reminder, or go to the bank for the reminder after the deal is made - with the majority already paid in a cashiers check nobody would disagree.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2ad51e8c65e69992273de0ca51db38e6",
"text": "I had great difficulty buying my $17,000 truck for cash. One TD Canada Trust branch only let me have $5,000, the other branch down the street only $3,000. They both said they were low on cash. They kept trying to convince me to use a bank draft, but I didn't have a name or total amount as I was still shopping around. I don't think banks carry much cash and it wouldn't take much to clean them out.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "62769608f166b86eac37da984ac5e9f8",
"text": "\"Nobody has mentioned your \"\"risk tolerance\"\" and \"\"investment horizon\"\" for this money. Any answer should take into account whether you can afford to lose it all, and how soon you'll need your investment to be both liquid and above water. You can't make any investment decision at all and might as well leave it in a deposit-insured, zero-return account until you inderstand those two terms and have answers for your own situation.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "71f3d288c088c22004fbb25fa1ba1cb1",
"text": "(in response to last comment to me) Ok. I understand now. Forgive me if I appeared to be splitting hairs. When it comes to understanding, exact wording is important. I keep money at home, enough to not be a frequent ATM user, not enough to imply any distrust of the banking system or preparation for Armageddon. You last comments implies the brochure said 13% keep all their money at home, i.e. have no banking relationship. A recent poll concluded 25% of people had less than $2500 available if they had an issue, such as the need to repair a car, or furnace. From that factoid, it wouldn't surprise me that half of those people have no bank acount at all. Not for lack of trust, but lack of money to deposit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "de1c3f369648d07b5b08720b0545286d",
"text": "\"The above answers are great. I would only add to the \"\"rainy day\"\" part, that even though the cash provides a good cushion, \"\"a stormy day\"\" could mean even losing those emergency savings to the unignorable randomness that governs the world economy. Though unlikely, what happened to the russian ruble and the latest decision of the swiss cental bank are just two recent reminders that uncertainty must be treated as a constant. I would therefore advise you to invest some of the money in land capable of agriculture. How expensive is land over there in the UK?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f7cad9c1053fcf874abf482261d9e85c",
"text": "\"It's a real pain in the rear to get cash only from a bank teller (the end result of cutting the card as suggested). There is a self control issue here that, like weight loss, should ultimately be addressed for a psychologically healthy lifestyle. You don't mention a budget here. A budget is one of the first tools necessary for setting spending limits. Categorizing your money into inviolable categories, such as: will force you to look at any purchase in context of your other needs and goals. Note that savings is at the top of the list, supporting the aphorism to, \"\"Pay yourself first.\"\" Make realistic allowances for each budget category, then force yourself to stick to this budget by whatever means necessary. Cash in several envelopes labeled with each category can physically reinforce your priorities (the debit card is usually left at home for now). Roll remaining funds from each month over into the next month to cover irregular larger expenses, such as auto repairs. What sort of investing are we talking about? If you are just talking about retirement savings, an automatic deduction of just $50 to a Roth IRA account at a discount brokerage every pay check is a good start. An emergency fund of 6 months expenses is also common financial advice, and can likewise be built from small automatic deductions. In defense of wise use of plastic, a debit card can be a great retroactive budgeting tool because it records all spending for you. It takes a lot more effort to save and enter receipts for cash, and a compulsive spender without a budget is just as likely to run out of money whether or not he uses plastic. You could keep receipts in the envelope you take the cash out of when you're getting started. If you are so addicted to spending that you must cut your debit card to enforce your budget, at least consider this a temporary measure to get yourself under control. When the bank issues you a new card, re-evaluate this decision and the self control measures you've implemented to see if you've grown enough to keep the card.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bd29431b9fd6786487aa9b028a61c3fe",
"text": "\"Coming from an area that is hurricane prone, and seeing what happens to local businesses during evacuations/power outages/gas shortages, I think what you already have on hand should be sufficient. And it sounds like that's exactly what you're budgeting for. I'd say 2 weeks worth of fuel and food costs, with the budget for each in line with riding out a natural disaster. True \"\"Preppers\"\" would say keep your money in gold buried in the backyard surrounded by land mines, but that's not perhaps what you're looking for. It is not uncommon for gas stations and grocery stores to revert to cash only sales, especially if they're not big chain operations. If the internet is out, or power is spotty, they may not be able to process CCs. Again, think smaller or more rural businesses. I have seen gas stations switch to cash only during gas shortages as well to help limit how much fuel people were buying. $250 should get you through fine unless you drive a tank and need steak every night. You could probably go with less, but it's entirely dependent on your needs. As Joe rightly stated in his answer, if it's desperate enough times that you can't use a CC or debit card, cash may not even be useful to you.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "af8082def21f44a1b9f418f3c16c3302",
"text": "\"Trying to figure out how much money you have available each day sounds like you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. Unless you're extremely tight and you're trying to squeeze by day by day, asking \"\"do I have enough cash to buy food for today?\"\" and so on, you're doing too much work. Here's what I do. I make a list of all my bills. Some are a fixed amount every month, like the mortgage and insurance premiums. Others are variable, like electric and heating bills, but still pretty predictable. Most bills are monthly, but I have a few that come less frequently, like water bills in my area come every 3 months and I have to pay property taxes twice a year. For these you have to calculate how much they cost each month. Like for the water bill, it's once every 3 months so I divide a typical bill by 3. Always round up or estimate a little high to be safe. Groceries are a little tricky because I don't buy groceries on any regular schedule, and sometimes I buy a whole bunch at once and other times just a few things. When groceries were a bigger share of my income, I kept track of what I spent for a couple of months to figure out an average per month. (Today I'm a little richer and I just think of groceries as coming from my spending money.) I allocate a percentage of my income for contributions to church and charities and count this just like bills. It's a good idea to put aside something for savings and/or paying down any outstanding loans every month. Then I add these up to say okay, here's how much I need each month to pay the bills. Subtract that from my monthly income and that's what I have for spending money. I get paid twice a month so I generally pay bills when I get paid. For most bills the due date is far enough ahead that I can wait the maximum half a month to pay it. (Worst case the bill comes the day after I pay the bills from this paycheck.) Then I keep enough money in my checking account to, (a) Cover any bills until the next paycheck and allow for the particularly large bills; and (b) provide some cushion in case I make a mistake -- forget to record a check or make an arithmetic error or whatever; and (c) provide some cushion for short-term unexpected expenses. To be safe, (a) should be the total of your bills for a month, or as close to that as you can manage. (b) should be a couple of hundred dollars if you can manage it, more if you make a lot of mistakes. If you've calculated your expenses properly and only spend the difference, keeping enough money in the bank should fall out naturally. I think it's a lot easier to try to manage your money on a monthly basis than on a daily basis. Most of us don't spend money every day, and we spend wildly different amounts from day to day. Most days I probably spend zero, but then one day I'll buy a new TV or computer and spend hundreds. Update in response to question What I do in real life is this: To calculate my available cash to spend, I simply take the balance in my checking account -- assuming that all checks and electronic payments have cleared. My mortgage is deducted from my checking every month so I post that to my checking a month in advance. I pay a lot of things with automatic charges to a credit card these days, so my credit card bills are large and can't be ignored. So subtract my credit card balances. Subtract my reserve amount. What's left is how much I can afford to spend. So for example: Say I look at the balance in my checkbook today and it's, say, $3000. That's the balance after any checks and other transactions have cleared, and after subtracting my next mortgage payment. Then I subtract what I owe on credit cards. Let's say that was $1,200. So that leaves $1,800. I try to keep a reserve of $1,500. That's plenty to pay my routine monthly bills and leave a healthy reserve. So subtract another $1,500 leaves $300. That's how much I can spend. I could keep track of this with a spreadsheet or a database but what would that gain? The amount in my checking account is actual money. Any spreadsheet could accumulate errors and get farther and farther from accurate values. I use a spreadsheet to figure out how much spending money I should have each month, but that's just to use as a guideline. If it came to, say, $100, I wouldn't make grandiose plans about buying a new Mercedes. If it came to $5,000 a month than buying a fancy new car might be realistic. It also tells me how much I can spend without having to carefully check balances and add it up. These days I have a fair amount of spending money so when, for example, I recently decided I wanted to buy some software that cost $100 I just bought it with barely a second thought. When my spending money was more like $100 a month, lunch at a fast food place was a big event that I planned weeks in advance. (Obviously, I hope, don't get stupid about \"\"small amounts\"\". If you can easily afford $100 for an impulse purchase, that doesn't mean that you can afford $100 five times a day every day.) Two caveats: 1. It helps to have a limited number of credit cards so you can keep the balances under control. I have two credit cards I use for almost everything, so I only have two balances to keep track of. I used to have more and it got confusing, it was easy to lose track of how much I really owed, which is a set up for getting in trouble.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9f239e57d65de3a84a8b005dbfba96d6",
"text": "It just takes a decent power outage to make it worth having some cash on hand. It's possible that worse things can happen as well -- things that would shut the financial system down or cause bank runs. It is an assumption that you'll always be able to (a) access your money at your bank, either via teller transaction or ATM, and (b) pay with a debit card or credit card. If either (or both) of these abilities are taken away, you'll be glad you have some cash. The amount that you have on hand (how much you want to hedge against these possibilities) is up to you.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7252370787b0eb06f8699bd008627e83",
"text": "\"Most of your money doesn't exist as physical cash, but simply as numbers in a ledger. At any given time, banks expect their clients to withdraw a certain percentage of their balances... For instance, checking accounts are frequently drawn down to zero, savings accounts might be emptied once our twice a year, CDs are almost never withdrawn, etc. To cover those withdrawals, banks keep a certain amount of physical cash on hand, and an additional amount remains on the ledgers. The rest gets loaned out to their customers for use in buying homes, cars, credit cards,etc. Anything they can't loan out directly gets deposited with the federal reserve or loaned directly to other institutions who need it. However, those last two options tend to be short term (ie overnight) loans. With debit cards functioning 24/7, you could get cash at an atm or make a purchase anytime of the day our night. The weekend has nothing to do with it. Which is a long way of saying \"\"No, they do it all the time, not just on weekends\"\" ;)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2909bd6926ceb9028f6b06402e3604f7",
"text": "\"It's like the lady said, \"\"It's not the size that counts, honey -- it's the wiggle behind it.\"\" Or to be more precise in application of metaphor, it's not the amount of money but *where it goes* that matters. Currency is like blood: It's supposed to circulate, but when it pools into large pockets, well, that's a good sign you're dead.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d6c65aeccd0683c60a76071f66ac8b74",
"text": "Depending on the country, nothing. For example, the US has about $1.3 trillion dollars of cash in circulation. Which means that if you were to burn a million dollars of it, that would be 0.000077% of the circulating cash. But cash is a small portion of the actual money in the US. Only about 8% of all money is in cash, the rest is in other forms of value, which means that you'd only be destroying 0.0000062% of the US's money if you burned a full $1,000,000.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e7db32c122c398bf485a5c10a221af9d",
"text": "Generally, I consider it bad etiquette to inconvenience others. I would recommend cash for small purchases. Try to offer as close to the required amount as possible. Don't pay with several dollars worth of change if you can avoid it. You shouldn't need to carry a lot of cash. When you do don't make it obvious.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
f5f6d1d0953b60ccc708e014f5fa5ca8
|
Will my current employer find out if I have a sole proprietarship/corporation?
|
[
{
"docid": "44196971486774a06269824b9d7d37f4",
"text": "Tell your employer during your initial contract Terms of Service discussions. Ordinarily, this is boilerplate but you should ask for a rider in your contract which says - in some form - I already have IP, I will continue to work on this IP in my own time, and any benefit or opportunity derived from this IP will continue to be entirely mine. I requested exactly such a rider when I took up a new job just over a year ago and my employer was extremely accommodating. That I already had a company in which that IP could reside actually made the process easier. As @JohnFX has already mentioned, not telling your employer is both unethical as well as storing up potential legal hassles for you in the futre.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7ae4882f94023fc8c07cb062938cb787",
"text": "I can see why you'd be reluctant to tell them, but I think you need to be open and honest with them about what you're doing and where you see it going. If the roles were reversed, what would you want your employee to do in this situation? If it were me, I'd be much happier to be told up front than to find out some other way later. If I found out later, I'd feel somewhat betrayed and angry. With the Internet, it seems unlikely that they wouldn't find out eventually, so I think being up front about it is your best option. I also suggest you have a backup plan in case they say no. Perhaps you'd need to find another full-time job that is more tolerant (or even encouraging) of side businesses.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "75edeb9ae4536f263a50f02fb5a2f556",
"text": "I would have thought that if you are doing it in your own time using your own resources it really has nothing to do with your current employer, so there is really no need at all to keep it from them. By being open and transperant you might even get some business from your work mates.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "90a80872e5049f98aaa0e251e2320590",
"text": "Some governments offer business information search for corporations in their jurisdiction. The search results may show the director information for the company. If this information is made publicly available, keep in mind there are websites that make money from indexing publicly available information to show in Google search results. I don't mean to scare you as this is a likely a slim possibility. It really depends on the privacy practices in place at the jurisdiction you're in. But do keep in mind if you're planning on doing business on the side for a few years policies may change. I would call Service Ontario (or whichever province you're incorporating in) or Corporations Canada if federally incorporating and ask them if they offer a business search service and exactly what information they make public. You might be able to reach a Privacy Officer and find out what exactly their policy is.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "268e69dc5931c26a823eba881d202228",
"text": "Conceptually, the entries are: Yes. And since you're the sole owner, your basis will equal to the equity balance on the balance sheet. Keep in mind the book and tax basis will probably be different, so you may want to keep a separate calculation to track the tax basis. There is no journal additional journal entry for this. If you're using bookkeeping software, be sure to research its book-closing/closing entries feature, as it is handled differently depending on the software. For example Quickbooks doesn't explicitly close its books, but re-computes the balance sheet dynamically depending on the selected date range.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ae5066c9a5bc07ef196332219cdba89b",
"text": "\"I'm no lawyer and no expert, so take my remarks as entertainment only. Also see this question. If you have a U.S. SSN which is eligible for work, they may be able to pay you on 1099 basis with your SSN as a sole proprietor, unless they have some personal reason for avoiding that. So perhaps try asking about that specifically. HR policies can be weird and tricky, maybe a nudge in the right direction will help. Not What You Asked: regardless, I might recommend you register as an LLC and get an EIN (sort of SSN for companies) for a variety of reasons. It's called a \"\"limited liability\"\" company for a reason. You may also have an easier time reaping various business-related rewards, like writing off expenses. If you do so, consider a state with no income tax like Wyoming. (Or, for convenience sake, WA if you live in BC, or maybe NH if you live in Ontario.. etc.)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b3f0ca1c55796d246ab3a301c04a4176",
"text": "More than likely you have signed an NDA with your employer with a non-compete clause within it. From what I have seen this clause would be in place for two years following the date you left your firm. So, leaving your firm and consulting as a 1099 for your current client is more than likely a violation of your NDA for 2 years or some period of time. With that being said, there is nothing keeping you from going off on your own as an independent and finding work, so long as that work isn't from one of the current clients of your firm. I am not a lawyer and everything above is what I have seen in my personal experience.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "202023489078ad72c57b4565606684c3",
"text": "\"Interesting as I am in the exact same situations as yourself. I, in fact, just incorporated. You will be able \"\"save\"\" more in taxes in the end. The reason I put \"\"save\"\" in quotes, is that you don't necessarily save on taxes, but you can defer taxes. The driving factor behind this is that you specify your own fiscal calendar/year. Incorporating allows you to defer income for up to 6 months. Meaning that if you make your fiscal year starting in August or September, for example, you can claim that income on the following year (August + 6 months = February). It allows you to keep the current year taxes down. Also, any income left over at year end, is taxed at 15% (the Corporation rate) rather than the 30-40% personal rate you get with a sole-proprietorship. In a nutshell, with sole-proprietorship, all income is taxable (after write-offs)... in a corporation, you can take some of that income and keep it in the corporation (gives your company a \"\"value\"\"), and is only taxed at 15% - big saving there. I primarily work with US businesses. I am, however, a dual-citizen, US and Canadian, which allowed me as a sole-proprietor, to easily work with US companies. However, as a sole-proprietor or a Corporation, you simply need to get an EIN from the IRS and any US company will report earnings to that number, with no deductions. At year end, it is your responsibility to file the necessary tax forms and pay the necessary taxes to both countries. Therefore you can solicit new US business if you choose, but this is not restricted to corporations. The real benefit in incorporating is what I mentioned above. My suggestion to you is to speak with you CA, who can outline all benefits. Revenue Canada's website had some good information on this topic as well. Please let me know if you need anything else explained.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a149fdf1285ac4fb30373ca3b82c5b40",
"text": "\"Would my (new) landlord even be aware of the fact that I'm his guarantor? Does that show up on a credit report or would there be another indication of it somewhere? It may come up during background checks, and it may not come up. You're expected to disclose material information on the rental application, and withholding it may lead to voiding the rental contract and eviction. But the problem is slightly different. Can you afford paying two rents? By being the guarantor you take the responsibility of paying the rent \"\"in the case if...\"\". You need to treat it as a real liability that you will be expected to pay. With all the respect to your brother, if something unexpected happens - you will be on the hook. You have to account for that.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e23eda4b8b64a62749c8eb12447ab724",
"text": "\"Generally if you're a sole S-Corp employee - it is hard to explain how the S-Corp earned more money than your work is worth. So it is reasonable that all the S-Corp profits would be pouring into your salary. Especially when the amounts are below the FICA SS limits when separating salary and distributions are a clear sign of FICA tax evasion. So while it is hard to say if you're going to be subject to audit, my bet is that if you are - the IRS will claim that you underpaid yourself. One of the more recent cases dealing with this issue is Watson v Commissioner. In this case, Watson (through his S-Corp which he solely owned) received distributions from a company in the amounts of ~400K. He drew 24K as salary, and the rest as distributions. The IRS forced re-characterizing distributions into salary up to 93K (the then-SS portion of the FICA limit), and the courts affirmed. Worth noting, that Watson didn't do all the work himself, and that was the reason that some of the income was allowed to be considered distribution. That wouldn't hold in a case where the sole shareholder was the only revenue producer, and that is exactly my point. I feel that it is important to add another paragraph about Nolo, newspaper articles, and charlatans on the Internet. YOU CANNOT RELY ON THEM. You cannot defend your position against IRS by saying \"\"But the article on Nolo said I can not pay SE taxes on my earnings!\"\", you cannot say \"\"Some guy called littleadv lost an argument with some other guy called Ben Miller because Ben Miller was saying what everyone wants to hear\"\", and you can definitely not say \"\"But I don't want to pay taxes!\"\". There's law, there are legal precedents. When some guy on the Internet tells you exactly what you want to hear - beware. Many times when it is too good to be true - it is in fact not true. Many these articles are written by people who are interested in clients/business. By the time you get to them - you're already in deep trouble and will pay them to fix it. They don't care that their own \"\"advice\"\" got you into that trouble, because it is always written in generic enough terms that they can say \"\"Oh, but it doesn't apply to your specific situation\"\". That's the main problem with these free advice - they are worth exactly what you paid for them. When you actually pay your CPA/Attorney - they'll have to take responsibility over their advice. Then suddenly they become cautious. Suddenly they start mentioning precedents and rulings telling you to not do things. Or not, and try and play the audit roulette, but these types are long gone when you get caught.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d86b13bd601e7df442d84da6045192f9",
"text": "\"This is going to vary tremendously from country to country (and even from state to state, in some cases). In general, though: Sole proprietorship: LLC: There are a lot of permutations depending on local law. One thing that isn't actually much of an advantage is the \"\"limited liability\"\" component of the LLC. Simply put: for a really small company the majority shareholders are usually going to be \"\"forced\"\" to stand surety for the company in their personal capacity. Limited liability only becomes available once the company has quite a lot of cash/assets (or the illusion of a lot of cash/assets). Update - noticed two further questions that appear very similar: Should all of these be merged?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ea9f9fc82183c4ddab03dc9c66889e9f",
"text": "Can he use an existing credit card in his name for all his business expenses, or does that pierce the corporate veil? That would be a question to a lawyer, since there's no definitive answer but rather circumstantial. Generally it is safer to separate the finances completely than to try and guess what the court would rule if it comes to that. It is not hard to get a separate card for a LLC (especially if it is a sole proprietorship). We are going to buy a house soon, so I don't want any extra inquiries. I guess it depends on the bank and the type of card. My Citi business card doesn't show up on my personal credit report.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "91b639f038d29486bfe83e57212810c9",
"text": "In the UK is perfectly acceptable to use your personal bank account as a business account if your a sole trader, although it can be messy. Just record and keep all relevant transaction invoices etc documents for self assessment time. At self assessment time they will tell you the amount of tax you need to pay when you fill out the forms. Not sure how it is Canada. If you get bigger get an accountant.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4bf9c168d813c28cba490998fef20d5e",
"text": "\"Be careful of the other answers here. Many are wrong or partially wrong. The question implies that you knew this, but for everyone else's benefit, you can keep you LLC organization and still elect to be treated as a S-Corp by the IRS just for tax purposes. You do this by filing Form 2553 with the IRS. (You can also, by the way, elect to be taxed as a \"\"regular\"\" C-Corp if you want, although that's probably not advantageous. See Form 8832.) The advantage of electing to be treated as an S-Corp is that income beyond what constitutes a \"\"reasonable salary\"\" are not subject to social security and medicare taxes as they would when paid was wages or counted as self-employment income on Schedule C. Depending on what you need to pay yourself to meet the \"\"reasonable salary\"\" test, your overall income, and other factors about your business, this could result in tax savings. Contrary to other answers here, making this election will not force you to create a board of directors. You are still an LLC for all purposes except taxes, so whatever requirements you had in organization and governance at the state level will not change. You will have to file a \"\"corporate\"\" tax return on Form 1120S (and likely some corresponding state tax form), so that is additional paperwork, but this \"\"corporate\"\" return does not mean the S-Corp pays taxes itself. With a couple of exceptions, the S-Corp pays no taxes directly (and therefore does not pay at the corporate tax rate). Instead the S-Corp apportions its income, expenses, and deductions to the owner(s) on Schedule K. The owners get their portion reported from the S-Corp on Schedule K1 and then include that on their personal Form 1040 to pay tax at their personal rate. In addition to filing Form 1120S, you will have to handle payroll taxes, which will create some additional administrative work and/or cost. Using a payroll service for this will likely be your best option and not terribly expensive. You've also got the issue of determining your reasonable salary within the rules, which is the subject of other questions on this site and other IRS guidance.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4e5c747746142c0d25d8674c0f3044c0",
"text": "\"They are basically asking for the name of the legal entity that they should write on the check. You, as a person, are a legal entity, and so you can have them pay you directly, by name. This is in effect a \"\"sole proprietorship\"\" arrangement and it is the situation of most independent contractors; you're working for yourself, and you get all the money, but you also have all the responsibility. You can also set up a legal alias, or a \"\"Doing Business As\"\" (DBA) name. The only thing that changes versus using your own name is... well... that you aren't using your own name, to be honest. You pay some trivial fee for the paperwork to the county clerk or other office of record, and you're now not only John Doe, you're \"\"Zolani Enterprises\"\", and your business checks can be written out to that name and the bank (who will want a copy of the DBA paperwork to file when you set the name up as a payable entity on the account) will cash them for you. An LLC, since it was mentioned, is a \"\"Limited Liability Company\"\". It is a legal entity, incorporeal, that is your \"\"avatar\"\" in the business world. It, not you, is the entity that primarily faces anyone else in that world. You become, for legal purposes, an agent of that company, authorized to make decisions on its behalf. You can do all the same things, make all the same money, but if things go pear-shaped, the company is the one liable, not you. Sounds great, right? Well, there's a downside, and that's taxes and the increased complexity thereof. Depending on the exact structure of the company, the IRS will treat the LLC either as a corporation, a partnership, or as a \"\"disregarded entity\"\". Most one-man LLCs are typically \"\"disregarded\"\", meaning that for tax purposes, all the money the company makes is treated as if it were made by you as a sole proprietor, as in the above cases (and with the associated increased FICA and lack of tax deductions that an \"\"employee\"\" would get). Nothing can be \"\"retained\"\" by the company, because as far as the IRS is concerned it doesn't exist, so whether the money from the profits of the company actually made it into your personal checking account or not, it has to be reported by you on the Schedule C. You can elect, if you wish, to have the LLC treated as a corporation; this allows the corporation to retain earnings (and thus to \"\"own\"\" liquid assets like cash, as opposed to only fixed assets like land, cars etc). It also allows you to be an \"\"employee\"\" of your own company, and pay yourself a true \"\"salary\"\", with all the applicable tax rules including pre-tax healthcare, employer-paid FICA, etc. However, the downside here is that some money is subject to double taxation; any monies \"\"retained\"\" by the company, or paid out to members as \"\"dividends\"\", is \"\"profit\"\" of the company for which the company is taxed at the corporate rate. Then, the money from that dividend you receive from the company is taxed again at the capital gains rate on your own 1040 return. This also means that you have to file taxes twice; once for the corporation, once for you as the individual. You can't, of course, have it both ways with an LLC; you can't pay yourself a true \"\"salary\"\" and get the associated tax breaks, then receive leftover profits as a \"\"distribution\"\" and avoid double taxation. It takes multiple \"\"members\"\" (owners) to have the LLC treated like a partnership, and there are specific types of LLCs set up to handle investments, where some of what I've said above doesn't apply. I won't get into that because the question inferred a single-owner situation, but the tax rules in these additional situations are again different.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "907c06c0b11341ee4ff7f1ae8fad9493",
"text": "Having an EIN does not make the LLC a corporation -- your business can have an EIN even when treated like a sole proprietorship. An EIN is required to have a Individual 401(k), for example. But you can still be an LLC, taxed as a sole proprietor, and have a 401(k). You would need to file a Form 2553 with the IRS to elect S Corporation status. If you don't do that, you're still treated as a disregarded LLC. Whether or not you should make the election is another question.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0e48693bde300c48d90869879df069e1",
"text": "\"I don't think it really matters, my understanding is that as a sole trader there is no distinction between your personal and business tax affairs. The distinction between your personal and business account is mainly for your own personal benefit to make it easier to differentiate between \"\"wages\"\" and retained earnings. If you want to maintain this distinction with regard to tax then you need to somehow differentiate between tax paid on your \"\"wage\"\" and tax paid on retained earnings. You could then either make two payments, or pay from either and transfer the difference from the other. Either way, it's just a matter of perspective rather than something with a physical difference.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "04bbc88a939792d7bc92dd48454f2d87",
"text": "\"Paying yourself through a corporation requires an analysis of a variety of issues. First, a salary paid to yourself creates RRSP contribution room as well as CPP contributions. Paying yourself a dividend achieves neither of those. By having a corporation, you will have to file a corporate (T2) tax return. The corporation is considered a separate legal entity from you. As an individual, you will still need to file a personal (T1) tax return. Never just \"\"draw\"\" money out of a corporation. This can create messy transactions involving loans to shareholders. Interest is due on these amounts and any amounts not paid within one calendar year are considered as wages by Canada Revenue and would need to be reported as income on your next T1 return. You should never withhold EI premiums as the sole owner of a corporation. You are considered exempt from these costs by CRA. Any amounts that have been remitted to CRA can be reclaimed by submitting a formal request. The decision on whether to take a salary or dividends normally requires some detailed analysis. Your accountant or financial advisor should be able to assist in this matter.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "25c3c0fedb487bda03a9b386cba5a700",
"text": "As 'anonymous' already mentioned, I think the correct answer is to go see an accountant. That said, if you are already have to fill in a tax return anyway (ie, you're already a high rate taxpayer) then I don't see why it should be an issue if you just told HMRC of your additional profit via your tax return. I never was in the situation of being employed with a side business in the UK, only either/or, but my understanding is that registering as self employed is probably more suitable for someone who doesn't PAYE already. I might be wrong on this as I haven't lived in the UK for a couple of years but an accountant would know the answer. Of course in either case, make sure that you keep each an every scrap of paper to do with your side business.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
6c526b004a7393dd0a8075b3ee90243d
|
What should I consider when factoring fluctuating exchange rates into risk/return of overseas stock trading?
|
[
{
"docid": "7e2700c8f97122b868a4a0ebfbcc9257",
"text": "Which of these two factors is likely to be more significant? There is long term trend that puts one favourable with other. .... I realise that I could just as easily have lost 5% on the LSE and made 5% back on the currency, leaving me with my original investment minus various fees; or to have lost 5% on both. Yes that is true. Either of the 3 scenarios are possible. Those issues aside, am I looking at this in remotely the right way? Yes. You are looking at it the right way. Generally one invests in Foreign markets for;",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "db7a27bf0afb30d12a004f760578f6a8",
"text": "\"is there anything I can do now to protect this currency advantage from future volatility? Generally not much. There are Fx hedges available, however these are for specialist like FI's and Large Corporates, traders. I've considered simply moving my funds to an Australian bank to \"\"lock-in\"\" the current rate, but I worry that this will put me at risk of a substantial loss (due to exchange rates, transfer fees, etc) when I move my funds back into the US in 6 months. If you know for sure you are going to spend 6 months in Australia. It would be wise to money certain amount of money that you need. So this way, there is no need to move back funds from Australia to US. Again whether this will be beneficial or not is speculative and to an extent can't be predicted.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3200217e7939b7c9eb0a82e4a1124feb",
"text": "Here is the technical guidance from the accounting standard FRS 23 (IAS 21) 'The Effects of Changes in Foreign Exchange Rates' which states: Exchange differences arising on the settlement of monetary items or on translating monetary items at rates different from those at which they were translated on initial recognition during the period or in previous financial statements shall be recognised in profit or loss in the period in which they arise. An example: You agree to sell a product for $100 to a customer at a certain date. You would record the sale of this product on that date at $100, converted at the current FX rate (lets say £1:$1 for ease) in your profit loss account as £100. The customer then pays you several $100 days later, at which point the FX rate has fallen to £0.5:$1 and you only receive £50. You would then have a realised loss of £50 due to exchange differences, and this is charged to your profit and loss account as a cost. Due to double entry bookkeeping the profit/loss on the FX difference is needed to balance the journals of the transaction. I think there is a little confusion as to what constitutes a (realised) profit/loss on exchange difference. In the example in your question, you are not making any loss when you convert the bitcoins to dollars, as there is no difference in the exchange rate between the point you convert them. Therefore you have not made either a profit or a loss. In terms of how this effects your tax position; you only pay tax on your profit and loss account. The example I give above is an instance where an exchange difference is recorded to the P&L. In your example, the value of your cash held is reflected in your balance sheet, as an asset, whatever its value is at the balance sheet date. Unfortunately, the value of the asset can rise/fall, but the only time where you will record a profit/loss on this (and therefore have an impact on tax) is if you sell the asset.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6ee5094a258ae0377d39f8cdcfb21087",
"text": "\"Tricky question, basically, you just want to first spread risk around, and then seek abnormal returns after you understand what portions of your portfolio are influenced by (and understand your own investment goals) For a relevant timely example: the German stock exchange and it's equity prices are reaching all time highs, while the Greek asset prices are reaching all time lows. If you just invested in \"\"Europe\"\" your portfolio will experience only the mean, while suffering from exchange rate changes. You will likely lose because you arbitrarily invested internationally, for the sake of being international, instead of targeting a key country or sector. Just boils down to more research for you, if you want to be a passive investor you will get passive investor returns. I'm not personally familiar with funds that are good at taking care of this part for you, in the international markets.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e0f0da2c0e5a4bfa04bda19efad7eb01",
"text": "There are some ETF's on the Indian market that invest in broad indexes in other countries Here's an article discussing this Be aware that such investments carry an additional risk you do not have when investing in your local market, which is 'currency risk' If for example you invest in a ETF that represents the US S&P500 index, and the US dollar weakens relative to the indian rupee, you could see the value if your investment in the US market go down, even if the index itself is 'up' (but not as much as the change in currency values). A lot of investment advisors recommend that you have at least 75% of your investments in things which are denominated in your local currency (well technically, the same currency as your liabilities), and no more than 25% invested internationally. In large part the reason for this advice is to reduce your exposure to currency risk.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "90b990119812669ab920916a9ac08514",
"text": "\"When you invest in an S&P500 index fund that is priced in USD, the only major risk you bear is the risk associated with the equity that comprises the index, since both the equities and the index fund are priced in USD. The fund in your question, however, is priced in EUR. For a fund like this to match the performance of the S&P500, which is priced in USD, as closely as possible, it needs to hedge against fluctuations in the EUR/USD exchange rate. If the fund simply converted EUR to USD then invested in an S&P500 index fund priced in USD, the EUR-priced fund may fail to match the USD-priced fund because of exchange rate fluctuations. Here is a simple example demonstrating why hedging is necessary. I assumed the current value of the USD-priced S&P500 index fund is 1,600 USD/share. The exchange rate is 1.3 USD/EUR. If you purchase one share of this index using EUR, you would pay 1230.77 EUR/share: If the S&P500 increases 10% to 1760 USD/share and the exchange rate remains unchanged, the value of the your investment in the EUR fund also increases by 10% (both sides of the equation are multiplied by 1.1): However, the currency risk comes into play when the EUR/USD exchange rate changes. Take the 10% increase in the price of the USD index occurring in tandem with an appreciation of the EUR to 1.4 USD/EUR: Although the USD-priced index gained 10%, the appreciation of the EUR means that the EUR value of your investment is almost unchanged from the first equation. For investments priced in EUR that invest in securities priced in USD, the presence of this additional currency risk mandates the use of a hedge if the indexes are going to track. The fund you linked to uses swap contracts, which I discuss in detail below, to hedge against fluctuations in the EUR/USD exchange rate. Since these derivatives aren't free, the cost of the hedge is included in the expenses of the fund and may result in differences between the S&P500 Index and the S&P 500 Euro Hedged Index. Also, it's important to realize that any time you invest in securities that are priced in a different currency than your own, you take on currency risk whether or not the investments aim to track indexes. This holds true even for securities that trade on an exchange in your local currency, like ADR's or GDR's. I wrote an answer that goes through a simple example in a similar fashion to the one above in that context, so you can read that for more information on currency risk in that context. There are several ways to investors, be they institutional or individual, can hedge against currency risk. iShares offers an ETF that tracks the S&P500 Euro Hedged Index and uses a over-the-counter currency swap contract called a month forward FX contract to hedge against the associated currency risk. In these contracts, two parties agree to swap some amount of one currency for another amount of another currency, at some time in the future. This allows both parties to effectively lock in an exchange rate for a given time period (a month in the case of the iShares ETF) and therefore protect themselves against exchange rate fluctuations in that period. There are other forms of currency swaps, equity swaps, etc. that could be used to hedge against currency risk. In general, two parties agree to swap one quantity, like a EUR cash flow, payments of a fixed interest rate, etc. for another quantity, like a USD cash flow, payments based on a floating interest rate, etc. In many cases these are over-the-counter transactions, there isn't necessarily a standardized definition. For example, if the European manager of a fund that tracks the S&P500 Euro Hedged Index is holding euros and wants to lock in an effective exchange rate of 1.4 USD/EUR (above the current exchange rate), he may find another party that is holding USD and wants to lock in the respective exchange rate of 0.71 EUR/USD. The other party could be an American fund manager that manages a USD-price fund that tracks the FTSE. By swapping USD and EUR, both parties can, at a price, lock in their desired exchange rates. I want to clear up something else in your question too. It's not correct that the \"\"S&P 500 is completely unrelated to the Euro.\"\" Far from it. There are many cases in which the EUR/USD exchange rate and the level of the S&P500 index could be related. For example: Troublesome economic news in Europe could cause the euro to depreciate against the dollar as European investors flee to safety, e.g. invest in Treasury bills. However, this economic news could also cause US investors to feel that the global economy won't recover as soon as hoped, which could affect the S&P500. If the euro appreciated against the dollar, for whatever reason, this could increase profits for US businesses that earn part of their profits in Europe. If a US company earns 1 million EUR and the exchange rate is 1.3 USD/EUR, the company earns 1.3 million USD. If the euro appreciates against the dollar to 1.4 USD/EUR in the next quarter and the company still earns 1 million EUR, they now earn 1.4 million USD. Even without additional sales, the US company earned a higher USD profit, which is reflected on their financial statements and could increase their share price (thus affecting the S&P500). Combining examples 1 and 2, if a US company earns some of its profits in Europe and a recession hits in the EU, two things could happen simultaneously. A) The company's sales decline as European consumers scale back their spending, and B) the euro depreciates against the dollar as European investors sell euros and invest in safer securities denominated in other currencies (USD or not). The company suffers a loss in profits both from decreased sales and the depreciation of the EUR. There are many more factors that could lead to correlation between the euro and the S&P500, or more generally, the European and American economies. The balance of trade, investor and consumer confidence, exposure of banks in one region to sovereign debt in another, the spread of asset/mortgage-backed securities from US financial firms to European banks, companies, municipalities, etc. all play a role. One example of this last point comes from this article, which includes an interesting line: Among the victims of America’s subprime crisis are eight municipalities in Norway, which lost a total of $125 million through subprime mortgage-related investments. Long story short, these municipalities had mortgage-backed securities in their investment portfolios that were derived from, far down the line, subprime mortgages on US homes. I don't know the specific cities, but it really demonstrates how interconnected the world's economies are when an American family's payment on their subprime mortgage in, say, Chicago, can end up backing a derivative investment in the investment portfolio of, say, Hammerfest, Norway.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5d0b360de7d5745d006ae345e6072492",
"text": "The value of the asset doesn't change just because of the exchange rate change. If a thing (valued in USD) costs USD $1 and USD $1 = CAN $1 (so the thing is also valued CAN $1) today and tomorrow CAN $1 worth USD $0.5 - the thing will continue being worth USD $1. If the thing is valued in CAN $, after the exchange rate change, the thing will be worth USD $2, but will still be valued CAN $1. What you're talking about is price quotes, not value. Price quotes will very quickly reach the value, since any deviation will be used by the traders to make profits on arbitrage. And algo-traders will make it happen much quicker than you can even notice the arbitrage existence.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9c7b4c73d0cfa05f6db8ec14315332e2",
"text": "Suppose you're a European Company, selling say a software product to a US company. As much as you might want the US company to pay you in Euros they might insist (or you'll lose the contract) that you agree pricing in USD. The software is licensed on a yearly recurring amount, say 100K USD per year payable on the 1st January every year. In this example, you know that on the 1st Jan that 100K USD will arrive in your USD bank account. You will want to convert that to Euros and to remove uncertainty from your business you might take out an FX Forward today to remove your currency risk. If in the next 9 months the dollar strengthens against the Euro then notionally you'll have lost out by taking out the forward. Similarly, you've notionally gained if the USD weakens against the EURO. The forward gives you the certainty you need to plan your business.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "83d9ae6ad60870a09c431cbe4c9498a1",
"text": "\"I suggest that you're really asking questions surrounding three topics: (1) what allocation hedges your risks but also allows for upside? (2) How do you time your purchases so you're not getting hammered by exchange rates? (3) How do you know if you're doing ok? Allocations Your questions concerning allocation are really \"\"what if\"\" questions, as DoubleVu points out. Only you can really answer those. I would suggest building an excel sheet and thinking through the scenarios of at least 3 what-ifs. A) What if you keep your current allocations and anything in local currency gets cut in half in value? Could you live with that? B) What if you allocate more to \"\"stable economies\"\" and your economy recovers... so stable items grow at 5% per year, but your local investments grow 50% for the next 3 years? Could you live with that missed opportunity? C) What if you allocate more to \"\"stable economies\"\" and they grow at 5%... while SA continues a gradual slide? Remember that slow or flat growth in a stable currency is the same as higher returns in a declining currency. I would trust your own insights as a local, but I would recommend thinking more about how this plays out for your current investments. Timing You bring up concerns about \"\"timing\"\" of buying expensive foreign currencies... you can't time the market. If you knew how to do this with forex trading, you wouldn't be here :). Read up on dollar cost averaging. For most people, and most companies with international exposure, it may not beat the market in the short term, but it nets out positive in the long term. Rebalancing For you there will be two questions to ask regularly: is the allocation still correct as political and international issues play out? Have any returns or losses thrown your planned allocation out of alignment? Put your investment goals in writing, and revisit it at least once a year to evaluate whether any adjustments would be wise to make. And of course, I am not a registered financial professional, especially not in SA, so I obviously recommend taking what I say with a large dose of salt.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4339890815d1bd9b8804bd8772f1081f",
"text": "Although not technically an answer to your question, I want to address why this is generally a bad idea. People normally put money into a savings account so that they can have quick access to it if needed, and because it is safe. You lose both of these advantages with a foreign account. You are looking at extra time and fees to receive access to the money in those australian accounts. And, more importantly, you are taking on substantial FX risk. Since 2000 the AUD exchange rate has gone from a low of 0.4845 to a high of 1.0972. Those swings are almost as large as the swings of the S&P. But, you're only getting an average return of 3.5%, instead of the average return people expect with stocks of 10%. A better idea would be to talk to a financial adviser who can help you find an investment that meets your risk tolerance, but gives you a better return than your savings account. On a final thought, the exception to this would be if you plan on spending significant time in Australia. Having money in a savings account there would actually allow you to mitigate some of your FX risk by allowing you to decide whether to convert USD when you are travelling, or using the money that you already have in your foreign account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "19e63ae5bc64b1b6708549f389a6c615",
"text": "International exchange rates are arbitraged. If I exchange A for B for C and then back to A again, I'll end up with the same amount ex trade fees. Assume this isn't the case. Clearly if I'd gain, someone else loses and I'd make millions by rapidly exchanging. Now assume that I'd lose money on that route. That must be because the reverse route, A->C->B->A gains money. (Again, assuming no fees) So in this case you'd just look at fees. (And as Ganesh points out, that may include future fees)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eda543db876b5d150a730688db867bef",
"text": "This is called currency speculation, and it's one of the more risky forms of investing. Unless you have a crystal ball that tells you the Euro will move up (or down) relative to the Dollar, it's purely speculation, even if it seems like it's on an upswing. You have to remember that the people who are speculating (professionally) on currency are the reason that the amount changed, and it's because something caused them to believe the correct value is the current one - not another value in one direction or the other. This is not to say people don't make money on currency speculation; but unless you're a professional investor, who has a very good understanding of why currencies move one way or the other, or know someone who is (and gives free advice!), it's not a particularly good idea to engage in it - while stock trading is typically win-win, currency speculation is always zero-sum. That said, you could hedge your funds at this point (or any other) by keeping some money in both accounts - that is often safer than having all in one or the other, as you will tend to break even when one falls against the other, and not suffer significant losses if one or the other has a major downturn.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "93ed9100864a8c4146441b8c7bc0dab5",
"text": "Now, is there any clever way to combine FOREX transactions so that you receive the US interest on $100K instead of the $2K you deposited as margin? Yes, absolutely. But think about it -- why would the interest rates be different? Imagine you're making two loans, one for 10,000 USD and one for 10,000 CHF, and you're going to charge a different interest rate on the two loans. Why would you do that? There is really only one reason -- you would charge more interest for the currency that you think is less likely to hold its value such that the expected value of the money you are repaid is the same. In other words, currencies pay a higher interest when their value is expected to go down and currencies pay a lower interest when their value is expected to go up. So yes, you could do this. But the profits you make in interest would have to equal the expected loss you would take in the devaluation of the currency. People will only offer you these interest rates if they think the loss will exceed the profit. Unless you know better than them, you will take a loss.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ac0ce3b2e0c026f80b68a29b373f2481",
"text": "Any time you are optimizing a portfolio, the right horizon to use for computing the statistics you will use for optimization (expected return, covariance, etc.) will be the same as your rebalance/trading frequency. If you expect your trading strategy to trade once a day, you should use daily data for optimization. Ditto for monthly or quarterly. If at all possible you should use statistics across the board that are computed at the same frequency as your trading. Regarding currency pricing, I see no reason you can't take the reported prices and convert them to whatever currency you want using that day's foriegn exchange rate. Foreign exchange rates are available for free at the Fed and elsewhere. Converting prices from one currency to another is not rocket science. Since you are contemplating putting actual money behind this, note that using data to compute statistics is less reliable for lower statistical moments. The mean (expected return) is the first moment, so using historical returns is extremely unreliable at predicting future returns. The variances and covariances are second moments, they are better. Skewness and kurtosis, yet better. The fact that the expected return can't reliably be estimated from past returns is the major downfall of the Markowitz method (resulting portfolios are often very crazy and will depend critically on the data period you use to set them up). There are approaches to fixing this, such as Black-Litterman's (1992) method, but they get complicated fast.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f8a85fd74968db82a68d08b94722c7d6",
"text": "There are short-term and long term aspects. In the long term, if you live and work in Australia and plan to continue doing both indefinitely, you might as well move all your cash investments there. There would be no point bearing the exchange rate risks. It may be worth keeping the account open with just enough credit to stop it being shut down. There is no point needing to (think about) filing foreign tax returns just because you have an account earning a small amount of interest. In the short term, I think the more important question is practicality rather than exchange rate risk. You want to have enough cash in both countries that if you suddenly have to pay say an apartment deposit or a bill, you won't be caught short. So I would leave at least a few thousands dollars in a US bank account until at least a couple of months after the move, when I was sure everything was settled. Good luck.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f37da9c64177f790479271443715f132",
"text": "\"It is not clear to me why you believe you can lose more than you put in, without margin. It is difficult and the chances are virtually nil. However, I can think of a few ways. Lets say you are an American, and deposit $1000. Now lets say you think the Indian rupee is going to devalue relative to the Euro. So that means you want to go long EURINR. Going long EURINR, without margin, is still different than converting your INRs into Euros. Assume USDINR = 72. Whats actually happening is your broker is taking out a 72,000 rupee loan, and using it to buy Euros, with your $1000 acting as collateral. You will need to pay interest on this loan (about 7% annualized if I remember correctly). You will earn interest on the Euros you hold in the meantime (for simplicity lets say its 1%). The difference between interest you earn and interest you pay is called the cost of carry, or commonly referred to as 'swap'. So your annualized cost of carry is $60 ($10-$70). Lets say you have this position open for 1 year, and the exchange rate doesnt move. Your total equity is $940. Now lets say an asteroid destroys all of Europe, your Euros instantly become worthless. You now must repay the rupee loan to close the trade, the cost of which is $1000 but you only have $940 in your account. You have lost more than you deposited, using \"\"no margin\"\". I would actually say that all buying and selling of currency pairs is inherently using margin, because they all involve a short sale. I do note that depending on your broker, you can convert to another currency. But thats not what forex traders do most of the time.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
92233c2f364561c403d7475a07d95881
|
How to send money from europe to usa EUR - USD?
|
[
{
"docid": "9e7ade037d44f4b9595d38d7ea099389",
"text": "The website http://currencyfair.com/ provides a service which gives you both a decent exchange rate (about 1% off from mid-market rate) and a moderately low fee for the transfer: 4 USD for outgoing ACH in the US, 10 USD for same-day US wire. For the reverse (sending money from the US to EU) the fees are: 3 EUR for an ACH, 8 EUR for a same-day EUR wire. It has been online for quite a while, so I assume its legit, but I'd do a transfer for a smaller sum first, to see if there are any problems, and then a second transfer for the whole sum.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d253535002bfac9d7d58b0e7474d6d61",
"text": "PayPal. Or even Western Union or MoneyGram. Despite their fees, there is a reason those companies are still in business.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "7402ad5fe06144d975d78da88844f93d",
"text": "If you are a Russian citizen a much easier and common solution would be a USD or EUR withdrawal from your Webmoney account to your Cyprus bank account. You will need to create a Webmoney account (www.webmoney.ru), get a primary certificate in your local Webmoney office in Russia (The list is available at the website), create WMZ (for USD) and WME (for EURO) accounts in Webmoney (done online). Then you can easily top up your Webmoney WMR (Rubles) account (created automatically) with Rubles, convert the sum into USD (According to the Webmoney rate, which is only slightly different from the official central bank rate) and then withdraw the money from your USD Webmoney account to your Cyprus bank account. The money will be transfered to your Cyprus bank account from UK Webmoney dealer. The transaction description would say that this sum is transfered according to the contract of sale of securities. This method prevents any Russian regulatory authorities from seeing your transactions. And the best thig in Webmoney is that they have stable exchange rates and they use classic currencies such as USD, RUR, EUR, etc. Webmoney also has WMG accounts (Gold) and WMX accounts (Bitcoin). Non-Russian residents can also open a Webmoney accounts. You can get one even in Cyprus, by the way:)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "12c783ab58e622f4b75a45d00cc7d18a",
"text": "There is a way I discovered of finding the current exchange rate before committing to buy, go to send payments, put in your own second email, pay 1gbp as the amount and it will give you the exchange rate and fees in your own currency, in my case euro, before you have to click on send payment",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ffdf27fb9f7077c4a6d7ea0ba512f87f",
"text": "Three ideas: PayPal is probably the best/cheapest way to transfer small/medium amounts of money overseas.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "28e02a87e6118dfc2685339589467995",
"text": "The best way to do this would be to exchange the funds into USD and wire the funds to your bank account in the US. It is up to you whether you want to hold USD or Euros. Depends if you plan to invest money in the US.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a41efbee5c826099835787e354a813b0",
"text": "I just tried doing that on my PP which is in the Netherlands, I have added a USD bank account (from my dutch bank) and they sent the verification amount in Euros, I called the bank and wonder why they didn't let me choose account currency they said it's not possible and if I cashout Dollars that I have in my PP (cause we usually do international business so we set it to dollars) it will be changed to Euros, So we decided to keep the dollars in account to pay our bills instead of getting ripped off by PayPal in xchange rates.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d80dc46153b70c74eb54261f370d06aa",
"text": "My current favorite service for this kind of transfer is Transferwise. The fees are quite low when compared to the 2.5-3% by high-street banks for currency conversion, to which you need to add the international wire transfer fee, and it's often a lot faster, as they split it into two domestic transfers while the international part + currency conversion happens internally to Transferwise.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "52d5eb834909fe217fc1de584ecdacbd",
"text": "The best way is to approach your bank and fill out a transfer form to send USD to your US account (if you are visiting India). They will require quite a number of proof (AADHAR, PAN, Passport) copies. Otherwise speak to your bank about how to do a wire transfer from your India A/C to US; after de-moitization regulations have tightened, the best course of action would be to speak to your bank directly.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "311332c16f52022baed996f2c7cdfc26",
"text": "You could use paypal to transfer money. You can pay with paypal and your UK contact could transfer the money to his bank account through paypal. I just received money this way from the US and paid 9 EUR for this. Receiving the funds is as quickly as clicking a button on the paypal site. Transfering it (without costs) took 1-3 days). It is by far the easiest way. If you are uncomfortable using paypal, the other option would be through your own bank account, where you would transfer using IBAN/SWIFT. The SWIFT bank account is usually the IBAN code plus a branch code. Often it is difficult to find the branch code, in that case you can use the IBAN+XXX. In the latter things might be delayed, but I actually haven't noticed the delay yet, since international transfer always seem to take between 1 and 10 days. The international transfering of money costs, except if it is within the EU region. The way to transfer money through Internet banking differs, from bank to bank. They keywords you need to look for are: SEPA, SWIFT, IBAN or international transfer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5d5612af7d495b352eeb63110fcfde9a",
"text": "He can send you a check. This will move the burden of GBP->USD conversion to him (unless the GBP amount is preset, then you'll be the one to pay for conversion either way). You can then deposit the USD check in any Israeli bank (they'll charge commission for the deposit and the USD->ILS conversion). Another, and from my experience significantly cheaper, option would be to wire transfer directly to your account. If you have a USD account and he'll transfer USD out - it will be almost at no cost to you, if you don't have a USD account check with your bank how to open it, or pay for USD->ILS conversion.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "95027669f9c35e4703223ae15a60e31e",
"text": "A quick search shows that https://www.westernunion.com/de/en/send-money/start.html says they will transfer €5,000 for a cost of €2.90. Assuming you can do a transfer every week, that would be six weeks at a cost of €17.40. €17.40 is slightly less than €1,500.00. I'm sure there are more ways.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ba62c505f4d6f363fe60f7ca52e607cf",
"text": "I regularly transfer money from the US to Europe, and have found a simple US check a pretty useful way (if you are not in a hurry): you write a US dollar based check to yourself, and deposit it to a bank in your new location (which implies you open an account in France, yes). It takes some days (somedays 7 days), and then the money will be deposited. The local bank will convert it (so you can walk around and pick a bank that has a rate concept that pleases you, before you open the account), and there will be no fees on the US side (which means you can get every last dollar out of the account). Also, you have the control over how much you pull when - you can write yourself as many checks as you like (assuming you took your checkbook). This was the best rate I could get, considering that wire transfers cost significant fees. There are probably other options. If you are talking serious money (like 100 k$ or more), there will better ways, but most banks will be eager to help you with that. Note that as long as you make interest income in the US, you are required to file taxes in the US; your visa status and location don't matter.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8aa4745955d3eeaef5710f6980b26d55",
"text": "You could buy a money order with your cash, then mail the money order to Deutsche Bank Germany for deposit into your account. You could also buy a prepaid debit card (like a Visa/AMEX giftcard) with your cash. Then, open a new Paypal account and add this prepaid card. Finally, send money to yourself using the prepaid card as the funding source. You could use a money transfer service, like Western Union, to transfer the cash to a friend/family in Germany. Then ask them to deposit it for you at Deutsche Bank Germany.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "14a8a916279398241896fc0082a61796",
"text": "I don't see how Paypal can stop you from transferring USD funds from your paypal account to a USD account held with a bank. Just tell them to do the transfer to your account. The issue could be around USD onshore / offshore regulation. Is the US government preventing EU citizens from taking USD income offshore? If that's the case then you need a correspondent bank. So in other words, like using your friend. But what you can do is ask your bank who is their correspondent bank in the US, and whether they have the license required to transfer USD funds offshore. So you shift the regulation issues to your bank, and then you have to accept your bank's exchange rate - which is going to be better than paypal, who charges too much for FX transactions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "324db0b73ebde0b9908675aaec81ed4f",
"text": "I'm travelling to the US soon and will transfer to a US $ account from either an € account or £ account. My dad recommends transferring € because it's strong at the moment compared to previously. The £ is weak compared to what it was, but still stronger than €. Which is the best option at the moment?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "27ad062be6239cd491e4f3ad3e523df9",
"text": "Yes. According to the IRS website, see #2: Whether a need is immediate and heavy depends on the facts and circumstances. Certain expenses are deemed to be immediate and heavy, including: (1) certain medical expenses; (2) costs relating to the purchase of a principal residence; (3) tuition and related educational fees and expenses; (4) payments necessary to prevent eviction from, or foreclosure on, a principal residence; (5) burial or funeral expenses; and (6) certain expenses for the repair of damage to the employee's principal residence. Expenses for the purchase of a boat or television would generally not qualify for a hardship distribution. A financial need may be immediate and heavy even if it was reasonably foreseeable or voluntarily incurred by the employee. (Reg. §1.401(k)-1(d)(3)(iii))",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
4aee3383ae3da8c096303c30452512a6
|
Good book-keeping software?
|
[
{
"docid": "eac19c1373a32c96cbcee5fa90b8b640",
"text": "You can try Wave Accounting. Its a free software for Small Business and web-based. http://waveaccounting.com/",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b32304b701b8d58dafd682346da54418",
"text": "The short answer is that there are no great personal finance programs out there any more. In the past, I found Microsoft Money to be slick and feature rich but unfortunately it has been discontinued a few years ago. Your choices now are Quicken and Mint along with the several open-source programs that have been listed by others. In the past, I found the open source programs to be both clunky and not feature-complete for my every day use. It's possible they have improved significantly since I had last looked at them. The biggest limitation I saw with them is weakness of integration with financial service providers (banks, credit card companies, brokerage accounts, etc.) Let's start with Mint. Mint is a web-based tool (owned by the same company as Quicken) whose main feature is its ability to connect to nearly every financial institution you're likely to use. Mint aggregates that data for you and presents it on the homepage. This makes it very easy to see your net worth and changes to it over time, spending trends, track your progress on budgets and long-term goals, etc. Mint allows you to do all of this with little or no data entry. It has support for your investments but does not allow for deep analysis of them. Quicken is a desktop program. It is extremely feature rich in terms of supporting different types of accounts, transactions, reports, reconciliation, etc. One could use Quicken to do everything that I just described about Mint, but the power of Quicken is in its more manual features. For example, while Mint is centred on showing you your status, Quicken allows you to enter transactions in real-time (as you're writing a check, initiating a transfer, etc) and later reconciles them with data from your financial institutions. Link Mint, Quicken has good integration with financial companies so you can generally get away with as little or as much data entry as you want. For example, you can manually enter large checks and transfers (and later match to automatically-downloaded data) but allow small entries like credit card purchases to download automatically. Bottom line, if you're just looking to keep track of where you are at, try Mint. It's very simple and free. If you need more power and want to manage your finances on a more transactional level, try Quicken (though I believe they do not have a trial version, I don't understand why). The learning curve is steep although probably gentler than that of GnuCash. Last note on why Mint.com is free: it's the usual ad-supported model, plus Mint sells aggregated consumer behaviour reports to other institutions (since Mint has everyone's transactions, it can identify consumer trends). If you're not comfortable with that, or with the idea of giving a website passwords to all your financial accounts, you will find Quicken easier to accept. Hope this helps.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d7b4f03d1e0956ca87f51146a917da16",
"text": "I like Quicken for personal use, and they have a small business edition if you don't want to move into QuickBooks.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1094d051d0888469d5c8772a8afb6621",
"text": "Best Linux software is PostBooks. It is full double entry, but there is definitely a learning curve. For platform-agnostic, my favorite is Xero, which is web-based. It is full double entry balance sheet, the bank reconciliation is a pleasure to use, and they are coming out with a US version this summer. Easy to use and does everything I need.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dcdc56495aaab112d02642395551384d",
"text": "I like using Mint.com to track my expenses. It makes it very easy to watch my budget and monitor my spending.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1bd97258d1b20e9f8a7ebe78e6c47401",
"text": "I think Peachtree is a double entry system",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5b8225a226cca95fffba690e478dac98",
"text": "\"Xero and WaveAccounting can make things easy, but they also have their limitations. I've used both for short periods of time but found both of them to be lacking. While the \"\"ease\"\" is appealing, the ability to drill into the details and get good reports is the downfall of both of these accounting systems. QuickBooks may seem like the easy answer here, but it really is the best for getting the power you want without getting too complicated.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2ccda6b515f09fe101f3d7e6ccb0150d",
"text": "You should consider Turbocash. It's a mature open-source project, installed locally (thick client).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eaa2180e94ca419c10d2db37381389b7",
"text": "I'm not directly affiliated with the company (I work for one of the add-on partners) but I can wholeheartedly recommend Xero for both personal and business finances. Their basis is to make accounting simple and clean, without sacrificing any of the power behind having the figures there in the first place.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "83d6c28d4622fb508060d7800e780c4a",
"text": "You can try manager.io. It has a desktop, cloud and server edition that should fit your needs.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "6227665539adcf4ff59654255a8cf00c",
"text": "\"You Need A Budget is a nice budgeting tool that works on the desktop. It is more focused on manual entry and budgeting over auto-downloading and categorizing. It does support downloading transactions from banks and then importing the transaction files. You mentioned having \"\"trust issues\"\" with a bank and this would be safe as you don't enter your credentials into the app. It also has a mobile app that works well. Not exactly what you are looking for, but it would work in India and be safe if you have an untrustworthy bank and it would allow you to import transactions.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c3d454d4eac15d202c95e8a03bd20526",
"text": "I use GNUCash. It's a bit more like Quickbooks than plain Quicken, but it's not all that complicated. Probably the most difficult part is understanding the idea of income accounts. Benefits: For short term planning, I use scheduled transactions. If I'm spending more than I have, it'll show up here. Every paycheck and dollar spent or invested is recorded with the exact date I anticipate it will happen, 30 days in advance. If that would overdraw my checking account, the Future Minimum Balance field will go negative and red. This lets me move float to higher interest savings and retirement funds, and avoids overdraft fees or other mishaps. By looking 30 days ahead in detail, I have enough time to transfer from illiquid assets. For longer term planning, I keep a spreadsheet around that plans out annual expenses. If I'm spending more than I earn, it shows up here. I estimate everything: expenses, savings, taxes, and income. I need this because I have a lot of expenses that are far less frequent than monthly or paycheck-ly. The beauty of it is that once I've got it in place, I can duplicate the sheet and consider tweaks for say taking a new job or moving, or even just changing an insurance plan (probably less relevant for those with access to NHS). Especially when moving to take a new job, it's not as straightforward as comparing salaries, and thus having a document for the status quo to start from lets you focus on the parts that changed.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bf7662a065b8944e12c197ad5175fda5",
"text": "\"A few practical thoughts: A practical thing that helps me immensely not to loose important paperwork (such as bank statements, bills, payroll statement, all those statements you need for filing tax return, ...) is: In addition to the folder (Aktenordner) where the statements ultimately need to go I use a Hängeregistratur. There are also standing instead of hanging varieties of the same idea (may be less expensive if you buy them new - I got most of mine used): you have easy-to-add-to folders where you can just throw in e.g. the bank statement when it arrives. This way I give the statement a preliminary scan for anything that is obviously grossly wrong and throw it into the respective folder (Hängetasche). Every once in a while I take care of all my book-keeping, punch the statements, file them in the Aktenordner and enter them into the software. I used to hate and never do the filing when I tried to use Aktenordner only. I recently learned that it is well known that Aktenordner and Schnellhefter are very time consuming if you have paperwork arriving one sheet at a time. I've tried different accounting software (being somewhat on the nerdy side, I use gnucash), including some phone apps. Personally, I didn't like the phone apps I tried - IMHO it takes too much time to enter things, so I tend to forget it. I'm much better at asking for a sales receipt (Kassenzettel) everywhere and sticking them into a calendar at home (I also note cash payments for which I don't have a receipt as far as I recall them - the forgotten ones = difference ends up in category \"\"hobby\"\" as they are mostly the beer or coke after sports). I was also to impatient for the cloud/online solutions I tried (I use one for business, as there the archiving is guaranteed to be according to the legal requirements - but it really takes far more time than entering the records in gnucash).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "373453bfdda9cd829423f219990f07f2",
"text": "I see that at work too. People too ignorant to use Excel to store financial information so they hand you a sheet of paper with 20 ticker tape receipts from a ticker tape calculator showing how they added up numbers as support for a transaction...really? How much money is this costing the company on an annual basis?! Ticker tape fades, our soft documents are backed up off site nightly... EDIT: There are a lot of jobs (private and public sector) that are simply obsolete but people cling to them anyway because of politics and general organizational-disorganization.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "810435c5809639511389c5fc99eb133e",
"text": "\"While Googling answers for a similar personal dilemma I found Mvelopes. I already have a budget but was looking for a digital way for my husband and I to track our purchases so we know when we've \"\"used the envelope\"\". It's a free app.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "446d9213a8f4ea94a44d0e75bf123e7b",
"text": "\"Mint is one alternative. If you want the raw data in CSV format, you can use \"\"Export\"\" feature under\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6ab84a4012b949349f3fa5c4f201402e",
"text": "I use iBank for Mac to keep track of my expenses. I also use the iPhone version since they can sync over Wi-Fi and I can capture expenses right on the spot instead of trying to remember what I spent on when I turn on my laptop.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5f4c85a0ec524834a22e73607839809b",
"text": "I wrote a small Excel-based bookkeeping system that handles three things: income, expenses, and tax (including VAT, which you Americans can rename GST). Download it here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8d50c2156d049c162fca11446aa0de00",
"text": "If held in one savings account, how can I easily manage what percentage is planned for which purpose? I used a spreadsheet for some years, but found it clumsy for everyday use. Thus I wrote some software which my wife and I use for our short-term as well as long-term planning, available at http://budgeter.sourceforge.net. It specifically helps with splitting the money in one or several accounts into logical categories. (The software is not the most user-friendly ever, so there may be better suggestions that follow, but it works well for us. Please feel free to suggest improvements to it as well.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f30604cdaf6d233b808313a4423f3974",
"text": "I currently use Moneydance on my Mac. Before that I had used Quicken on a PC until version 2007. It is pretty good, does most simple investment stuff just fine. It can automatically download prices for regular stocks. Mutual funds I have to input by hand.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e2762d545460a22c939b7c8db3bd238a",
"text": "\"Uh, have you tried google docs? Start off simple. Other than that, for the moment I use GNUCash. Some day I might try to write my own, but for now it works well enough. I have a number of scheduled transactions in GNUCash, and it records them days in advance. You talk about \"\"I should have how much money\"\", but GNUCash offers a slightly better format: Future Minimum Balance. If you want to know whether you can spend money in an account without triggering a chain reaction, that's the number you want. Being web-based so that it can be accessed from any OS. GNUCash is cross platform, with Windows, OSX and Linux clients. It also supports mysql/postgres database backends, so while it's not \"\"Web based\"\", you can keep your data \"\"in the cloud\"\".\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9e3aeb1e220e254a1b835e73c9e24e8b",
"text": "\"Since this is a cooperative I'm guessing your partners may want to be able to view the books so another key point you may want to consider is collaboration. QuickBooks desktop has all of these same issues because it is meant to be used on a single desktop. We're in an age of mobile devices, and especially in a business like landscaping it would be nice if certain aspects of record keeping could be done at the point and time where they are incurred. I'd argue you want a Software as a Service (SaaS) accounting package as opposed to \"\"accounting software\"\" which might come on a CD in the form of QuickBooks, Sage and others. Additionally, most of these will also have guides to help make sure you are properly entering your records. Most of these SaaS products also have customer success teams to help you along should you need assistance. Depending on the level of your subscription you may get more sophisticated handling of taxes, customized invoices or integrated payroll. Your goal is to keep accurate records so you can better run your business and maintain obligations like filing taxes. You're not keeping the records just to have them. Keep them in a place where they will work for you and provide the insights and functionality that will help your business grow and become successful. Accounting software will always win in this scenario over a spreadsheet. FULL DISCLAIMER: I work for Kashoo, a simple cloud accounting product designed for small businesses. But the points I mention above are true for Xero, QuickBooks Online and Wave as well as Kashoo. And if you really want expertise to go with the actual software consider service providers with a platform like: Indinero, Bench, easyrecordbooks or Liberty Accounting.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3bbda03f837541c501058d5c2e9831a5",
"text": "Given your needs, GNUcash will do swimmingly. I've used it for the past 3 years and while it's a gradual learning process, it's been able to resolve most stuff I've thrown at it. Schedule bills and deposits in the calendar view so I can keep an eye on cash flow. GNUcash has scheduled payments and receipts and reconcilation, should you need them. I prefer to keep enough float to cover monthly expenses in accounts rather than monitor potential shortfalls. Track all my stock and mutual fund investments across numerous accounts. It pulls stock, mutual and bond quotes from lots of places, domestic and foreign. It can also pull transaction data from your brokers, if they support that. I manually enter all my transactions so I can keep control of them. I just reconcile what I entered into Quicken based on the statements sent to me. I do not use Quicken's bill pay There's a reconciliation mode, but I don't use it personally. The purpose of reconcilation is less about catching bank errors and more about agreeing on the truth so that you don't incur bank fees. When I was doing this by hand I found I had a terrible data entry error rate, but on the other hand, the bayesian importer likes to mark gasoline purchases from the local grocery store as groceries rather than gas. I categorize all my expenditures for help come tax time. GNUcash has accounts, and you can mark expense accounts as tax related. It also generates certain tax forms for you if you need that. Not sure what all you're categorizing that's helpful at tax time though. I use numerous reports including. Net Worth tracking, Cash not is retirement funds and total retirement savings. Tons of reports, and the newest version supports SQL backends if you prefer that vs their reports.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2c77381fb773ed6ce8484d1c26dc4212",
"text": "\"There are tonnes, and tonnes of things out there, but you have to be careful what you search for. Be specific about what you want. If you search for \"\"time sheet\"\" for example, you'll just get a bucket of stuff having to do with stylesheets, because there's more of that around. The most common type of small tool for tracking time is usually a timer-type thing that runs as a widget, gadget, or System Tray tool. You have to click it on, then off again, and the nice ones produce a usable output file. CSV, or XLS, or some such. There are tools that track what documents you have open, when you opened them, and when you closed them, and you can sort it out from there. They're a bit resource-heavy, so be careful if you have a low power system. Quickbooks has a little utility that will make file which can be imported into your accounting. Quickbooks is NOT for the average business person. You almost have to be a bookkeeper to get the most out of it. On the other hand, you can have a bookkeeper set it up for you, and at the end of the year your taxes are a one button affair. For Windows software I like to use the site snapfiles.com. It's always been reliable, the rating systems are pretty accurate, they mostly maintain their own copies of the software, they test for viruses, and the let you specify a \"\"freeware only\"\" search ;-) For Mac software I like versiontracker.com. If you're a massive freeware user, like me, sign up for an account, so you can receive alerts regarding updates, and such. Currently I do most of my computer-based organization on a Mac with piece of software by CircusPonies.com called NoteBook. There's a command to insert the time, date, or both, and I just use that when I have a need to record elapsed time. I have even run across (and I forget the name) a piece of software for tracking time on Windows, which had multiple timers which you could set so either they were allowed to run concurrently (lawyers), or only one would run at a time. Anyway… Personally I think freeware is fun, but be careful. It's still the wild frickin west out there. If you don't trust the site you're downloading from, scan it with your anti-virus software before you install it, create a Restore Point, do a full, offsite backup of all your hard drives, unplug your computer from the Internet, send your wife to her mother's, lock the kids in the basement, cross your fingers, and phone the local bishop for a dispensation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensation_(Catholic_Church)).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b6f9d20330413449160f7a9aee60bbfa",
"text": "If you can set up automatic payments (like direct debits in the UK) and you can be disciplined enough to not spend the money on something else then this can be a good way of building/improving your credit rating. Banks / Lenders like it when they see you have previously taken, and repaid, credit. This can help you get better finance deals etc. in the future. Update: as noted in the comments France had a different financial system and people do not have credit ratings, so this point isn't valid in France",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
8cecc82357637ad8c45c92c515d27b41
|
Can I write off time I spent working on my business?
|
[
{
"docid": "77ab62b35ae2e993a581105bd61da212",
"text": "To expand a little on what littleadv said, you can only deduct what something cost you. Even if you had done volunteer work for a charity as a sole prop you could only deduct your actual costs. If you paid an employee to do charity work or to learn something related to the business that would be deductible as a normal business expense. Some common sense would show that if you could deduct something that didn't cost you anything (your time) you could deduct away all of your income and avoid paying taxes altogether. Back to your more nuanced question could 2 businesses you own bill each other for services? Yes, but you will still have to pay taxes for money earned under each of them. You will also need to be careful that the IRS does not construe the transactions as being done solely to lower your tax bill.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "856563741371412a4b5259527b8f3a72",
"text": "No, you cannot write off time, period. You should price the time spent into your product. I, occasionally, work on side projects of my own and forgo the possibility of earning direct income for that time. Income not earned is income not taxed, so there's nothing to deduct.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "2b3eb961fe4796f80757fdd694888379",
"text": "IRS Publication 463 is a great resource to help you understand what you can and can't deduct. It's not a yes/no question, it depends on the exact company use, other use, and contemporaneous record keeping.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e3cd89c0d64142d65db6089237dac981",
"text": "How do I account for this in the bookkeeping? Here is an example below: This is how you would accurately depict contributions made by an owner for a business. If you would want to remove money from your company, or pay yourself back, this would be called withdrawals. It would be the inverse of the first journal entry with cash on the credit side and withdrawals on the debited side (as it is an expense). You and your business are not the same thing. You are two different entities. This is why you are taxed as two different entities. When you (the owner) make contributions, it is considered to be the cash of the business. From here you will make these expenses against the business and not yourself. Good luck,",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a36ebec5f995e73425f1d8eab546d735",
"text": "Only if your work on the side is making you at least £60,000 profit a year. The overheads are just not worth it if you make less. Working as a sole trader, you can still claim for expenses incurred in the course of your business. You can also claim a percentage of your computer costs, even though you may use the computer for gaming. This is not unreasonable as the computer is necessary for your work. The Inland Revenue accept the fact that some assets are part work-related. In your case, as a web and mobile phone developer, I expect the percentage to be at least half, if not a lot more. If you need to travel in the course of your work you can claim a percentage for your car. You can include other small expenses such as telephone, stationery, electricity etc but don't go overboard. The important point to remember is that you must be able to defend the expenses claimed as work-related, so long as you can do this there is no problem. Remember to keep good records of all your expenses. This is on-going throughout the year and is much more work than filling out your tax return. The software on the IR self-assessment site is excellent, so it's conceivable that you may not need an accountant if you are prepared to do your own tax return. However, if you feel unsure employ an accountant initially and take it from there.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "63d32e4de166dcc48e42eab047a253bd",
"text": "\"That works for something like consulting where you are advising the client on specific things but for accounting jobs like Tax and Audit work which have been very commoditized it's expected to only bill the client for \"\"productive hours\"\" because the project only has a set budget and we need to get the work done. My work hours is seen as a cost to my team because my project needs to make money which the partner/manager/senior are all responsible for keeping man hours down. (Again that's hours chargeable to the client wasted hours in the day don't count). And then on top of that we need to hit a certain number of chargeable client hours per week. It's an annoying balance\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4cae8238f6e26c4d379e57e9b1da0a6c",
"text": "How much is your time worth This has been useful for me, judging things based on how much their time value is worth to me, weighted more heavily than their actual worth. For instance, there was a time when I used to work on the weekends and pay to have my laundry done. Doing the laundry myself would have cost 25 cents, but taken two hours at least. Since I was making $45 an hour, I would have lost $90 dollars by doing my laundry, instead of paying specialists $28 to do it for me, much better than I would. Your own capital should begin growing at a rate that makes many MANY things worth less than the time it takes for you to entertain it. So in your cable bill example, you shouldn't have argued for a $5 credit for two hours, unless you make $2.25 an hour, after tax. This is simplistic, as you would extrapolate how much this would cost you over a year or two, but such cost benefit analysis' become easy with this simple concept. This can also be used to rationalize your lavish expenditures. Such as not really comparing the costs for a flight, because its a 2 hour flight for $400 and you've found yourself making at least $200 an hour with your $416,000 annual earnings and capital gains. This will cure your frugality while retaining safe guards on your spending.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eb5e9815faf7113e06c057aa15dd3c3e",
"text": "\"As long as the losing business is not considered \"\"passive activity\"\" or \"\"hobby\"\", then yes. Passive Activity is an activity where you do not have to actively do anything to generate income. For example - royalties or rentals. Hobby is an activity that doesn't generate profit. Generally, if your business doesn't consistently generate profit (the IRS looks at 3 out of the last 5 years), it may be characterized as hobby. For hobby, loss deduction is limited by the hobby income and the 2% AGI threshold.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7b7bf351cd2a799c09043b696a6fae8e",
"text": "\"I did this a couple of years ago, and boy do I regret it. After many months of delayed, and new faces coming onto the team for a short period before leaving, there wasn't much hope to ever complete the project. I ended up accumulating debt (About 4.5 grand) that I am still paying off because I chased my dream. Unfortunately, anything can happen when you choose to pursue a goal. It can get delayed, stopped, or outright fail. At the bare minimum, you would best be prepared to deal with delays, competing products, and outright failures. If you say \"\"I have enough money to last me 12 months and I expect to take 7 months\"\", then you best be prepared to answer: These are just a handful of ideas, and there are plenty more that would need to be addressed. Probably the best thing that I have seen a few friends do is to ask for reduced hours. Working part time allows you more time while reducing, but not eliminating, the pay. Even better is that depending on your company, you could ask to go back to full time if your startup didn't work out. Another option is to do what I'm doing currently: Find a job with lots of downtime. My job is critical and the market here is starved of good techs. Even then, I have a solid 2-4 hours of work each day. The other 4-6 hours I can spend on my personal projects that may eventually lead into a startup. If you plan to do this though, make sure to read your agreements carefully. There may be restrictions on copyright and the likes by working on a personal project on company property. If you do plan to go this route, you might want to consult a lawyer (like I did) to make sure you won't get screwed later.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0c509b1b72a4cbf876193786938eb9a1",
"text": "Use one journal entry, and split the expenses into the appropriate accounts. This can happen even if you never mix business and personal on the same receipt: say you order office supplies (which where I live are immediately deductible as an expense) and software or hardware (which must be depreciated because they are assets) on the same order. We have an account called Proprietors Loan which represents money the company is lending to the humans who own it, or that the humans are lending to the company. Were I to pay for my personal lunch on a business credit card, it would go through that account, increasing the amount the company has lent me or decreasing the amount I have lent it. Similarly if I made a business purchase with a personal card it would go through that account in the other direction. Where I live, I can lend my company all the money I want any time, but if the company lends me money there can't be an outstanding balance over the corporate year end. If you make two credit card entries of 5 and 10 when you go to reconcile your accounts it will be harder because you'll have to realize they together match the single 15 line on your statement. Making a single entry (your A option) will make reconciling your statement much easier. And that way, you'll probably reconcile your statements, which is vital to knowing you actually recorded everything.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f06119600d3aea07f3eb0978ad02434e",
"text": "You would report it as business income on Schedule C. You may be able to take deductions against that income as well (home office, your computer, an android device, any advertising or promotional expenses, etc.) but you'll want to consult an accountant about that. Generally you can only take those kinds of deductions if you use the space or equipment exclusively for business use (not likely if it's just a hobby). The IRS is pretty picky about that stuff.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f81ad22890ccc28b8d5635a494d7570b",
"text": "\"The government thought of that a long time ago, and has any loophole there plugged. Like if you set up a company to buy a car and then allow you to use it ... You can use the car for company business, like driving to a customer's office to make a sales call or delivery, and the cost of the car is then tax deductible. But the company must either prohibit personal use of the car, or keep a log of personal versus business use and the personal use becomes taxable income to you. So at best you'd get to deduct an expense here and then you'd have to add it back there for a net change in taxable income of zero. In general the IRS is very careful about personal use of business property and makes it tough to get away with a free ride. I'm sure there are people who lie about it and get away with it because they're never audited, but even if that causes you no ethical qualms, it's very risky. I don't doubt that there are people with very smart lawyers who have found loopholes in the rules. But it's not as simple as, \"\"I call myself a business and now all my personal expenses become tax deductible business expenses.\"\" If you could do that, everybody would do it and no one would pay taxes. Which might be a good thing, but the IRS doesn't see it that way.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2759de95b6e4abc47e93cbccb708395a",
"text": "\"There are way too many details missing to be able to give you an accurate answer, and it would be too localized in terms of time & location anyway -- the rules change every year, and your local taxes make the answer useless to other people. Instead, here's how to figure out the answer for yourself. Use a tax estimate calculator to get a ballpark figure. (And keep in mind that these only provide estimates, because there are still a lot of variables that are only considered when you're actually filling out your real tax return.) There are a number of calculators if you search for something like \"\"tax estimator calculator\"\", some are more sophisticated than others. (Fair warning: I used several of these and they told me a range of $2k - $25k worth of taxes owed for a situation like yours.) Here's an estimator from TurboTax -- it's handy because it lets you enter business income. When I plug in $140K ($70 * 40 hours * 50 weeks) for business income in 2010, married filing jointly, no spouse income, and 4 dependents, I get $30K owed in federal taxes. (That doesn't include local taxes, any itemized deductions you might be eligible for, IRA deductions, etc. You may also be able to claim some expenses as business deductions that will reduce your taxable business income.) So you'd net $110K after taxes, or about $55/hour ($110k / 50 / 40). Of course, you could get an answer from the calculator, and Congress could change the rules midway through the year -- you might come out better or worse, depending on the nature of the rule changes... that's why I stress that it's an estimate. If you take the job, don't forget to make estimated tax payments! Edit: (some additional info) If you plan on doing this on an ongoing basis (i.e. you are going into business as a contractor for this line of work), there are some tax shelters that you can take advantage of. Most of these won't be worth doing if you are only going to be doing contract work for a short period of time (1-2 years). These may or may not all be applicable to you. And do your research into these areas before diving in, I'm just scratching the surface in the notes below.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "aa6ac06db3552d08eda4e4d6ff3339b3",
"text": "Your freelance income will not qualify you for the work-from-home deductions, for that you would need a T2200 form signed by your employer. But, you are allowed to be self employed as a sole-proprietorship while still being an employee of another company. If you take that route, you'll be able to write-off even more expenses than those you linked to. Things like a portion of your internet bill can be claimed, for example. But note that these deductions would only apply to offset the self-employment income, so if you're not earning very much from the freelance work, it might not be worth all the hassle. Filing taxes when self-employed is definitely more complicated, and many people will get professional tax preparation help - at least for the first time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "97c49e6547ad8640d2b8e83b0f8209ea",
"text": "You should check several things: How your business can deduct your child care expenses is beyond me. If your mother-in-law starts a business as a neighborhood babysitter, she might get some deductions for her related expenses though.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "be257fcb0ae0253e58681c0f96f3d63a",
"text": "\"The answer is \"\"Yes\"\", You can deduct them. As long as you showed that you put in effort to make a profit then you can deduct business expenses.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f44b20011b4c0ef83ce99bfe19e6e1ca",
"text": "It's not quite clear what you are asking, so I'll answer a few possible interpretations. Businesses pay taxes on their profits. So if your business took a million pounds in revenue (e.g. sold a million pounds worth of stuff) then you would subtract (roughly speaking) everything the business spent on making and selling that stuff, and pay taxes only on the profit. VAT however is a different matter, and you would have to pay VAT on all of that income (technically the VAT portion isn't even income - it's tax you are forced to collect on behalf of the government). If your business made a million pounds pounds profit, it would pay tax on all of that million (subject to what a tax accountant can do to reduce that, which ought to be considerable). You can't subtract your personal living expenses like that. However the company can pay you a salary, which counts as an expense and the company doesn't pay tax on that. You might also take some money from the company as dividends. Both salary and dividends count as personal income to yourself, and you will need to pay personal income tax on them. As for the Ferrari, it depends on whether you can justify it as a business expense. A lot of companies provide cars for their employees so that they can use them for business - however you have to be able to show that IS for business, otherwise they are taxed like salary. The rules for company cars are quite complicated, and you would need an accountant. If this is a real rather than hypothetical situation, definitely get a tax accountant involved.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
4677af8847450916dac0d3933f4f46cd
|
How should I report earning from Apple App Store (from iTunes Connect) in Washington state?
|
[
{
"docid": "3e29685e4fc19ff48e0634c8621dfe68",
"text": "If you're waiting for Apple to send you a 1099 for the 2008 tax season, well, you shouldn't be. App Store payments are not reported to the IRS and you will not be receiving a 1099 in the mail from anyone. App Store payments are treated as sales commissions rather than royalties, according to the iTunes Royalty department of Apple. You are responsible for reporting your earnings and filing your own payments for any sums you have earned from App Store. – https://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/01/app-store-lessons-taxes-and-app-store-earnings The closest thing to sales commissions in WA state seems to be Service and Other Activities described at http://dor.wa.gov/content/FileAndPayTaxes/BeforeIFile/Def_TxClassBandO.aspx#0004. When you dig a little deeper into the tax code, WAC 458-20-224 (Service and other business activities) includes: (4) Persons engaged in any business activity, other than or in addition to those for which a specific rate is provided in chapter 82.04 RCW, are taxable under the service and other business activities classification upon gross income from such business. - http://apps.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=458-20-224 I am not a lawyer or accountant, so caveat emptor.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "6bd9d272d2c1f443beb8f7f2851e50c7",
"text": "\"(Selling apps is AFAIK business, not freelancing - unless the type of app you produce is considered a freelancing subject. The tax office will give you a questionnaire and then decide). As Einzelunternehmer, you can receive the payments for the apps to the same account where your wages go. However, there are lots of online accounts that do not cost fees, so consider to receive them on a separate account so you have the business and private kind of separate (for small Einzelunternehmer, there is no legal separation between business and private money - you have full liability with your private money for the business). The local chamber of commerce can tell you everything about setting up such a business, ask them (you'll probably have to become a member there anyways). They have information as well on VAT (Umsatzsteuer, USt) which you need to declare unless you get an exemption (probably possible), and about Gewerbesteuer (the income tax of the business) etc. For the tax, you have \"\"subforms\"\" for the income tax e.g. for wages and for business income, so you just submit both with the main form. You'll get an appropriate tax number when registering the business. Social security/insurance: as long as the app selling is only a side business, the social insurance payments for your main job completely cover the side job as well. You need to make sure that your employment contract is compatible with the app business, though. A quick search indicates that there is a tax treaty between Germany and the Ukraine, Wikipedia says there are no contracts about social insurance in effect (yet).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6c41fac766a5f69eeb5e8152d9c4ca30",
"text": "iTunes U has a wealth of content from highly respected universities including Yale, Harvard, Wharton, MIT, etc. If I were fifteen and looking to build some business acumen and savvy, that is where I would start. In particular, I find Harvard business review idea casts to be thought provoking and very timely. In addition, they generally focus on disruptive business models. Good luck.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5b76302ffffe9f7cb6178113837b4c9e",
"text": "\"Yeah, I'll take the challenge...:) How trustworthy these are and what are their sources of income? These are in fact two separate questions, but the answers are related. How trustworthy? As trustworthy as they're clear about their own sources of income. If you cannot find any clue as to why, what for and how they're paying you - you probably should walk away. What's too good to be true usually is indeed too good to be true. For those of the sites that I know of their sources of income, it is usually advertisements and surveys. To get paid, you have to watch advertisements and/or answer surveys. I know of some sites who are legit, and pay people (not money, but gift cards, airline miles, etc) for participating in surveys. My own HMO (Kaiser in California) in fact pays (small amounts) to members who participate in enough surveys, so its legit. Are these sites worthwhile to consider for extra income? Not something you could live off, but definitely can get you enough gift cards for your weekly trip to Starbucks. What do I need to consider tax wise? Usually the amounts are very low, and are not paid in cash. While it is income, I doubt the IRS will chase you if you don't report the $20 Amazon gift card you got from there. It should, strictly speaking, be reported (probably as hobby income) on your tax return. Most people don't bother dealing with such small amounts though. In some cases (like the HMO I mentioned), its basically a rebate of the money paid (you pay your copays, deductibles etc. Since the surveys are only for members, you basically get your money back, not additional income). This is in fact similar to credit card rebates. Is there a best practice for handling the income? If we're talking about significant amounts (more than $20-30 a year), then you need to keep track of the income and related expenses, and report it as any other business income on your taxes, Schedule C. Is there a good test to determine what is and isn't a scam? As I said - if it looks too good to be true - it most likely is. If you're required to provide your personal/financial information without any explanation as to why, what it will be used for, and why and what for you're going to be paid - I'd walk away. Otherwise, you can also check Internet reviews, BBB ratings, FTC information and the relevant state agencies and consumer watchdogs (for example: http://www.scamadviser.com) whether they've heard of that particular site, and what is the information they have on it. A very good sign for a scam is contact information. Do they have a phone number to call to? Is it in your own country? If its not in your own country - definitely go away (for example the original link that was in the question pointed to a service whose phone number is in the UK, but listed address is in Los Angeles, CA. A clear sign of a scam). If they do have a phone number - try it, talk to them, call several times and see how many different people you're going to talk to. If its always the same person - run and hide. Do they have an address? If not - walk away. If they do - look it up. Is it a PMB/POB? A \"\"virtual\"\" office? Or do they have a proper office set up, which you can see on the map and in the listings as their office? And of course your guts. If your guts tell you its a scam - it very likely is.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d6a8e9b812dee0861eded0b48d1a0846",
"text": "\"Your employer appears to be stealing from you. I know, Canada -- but I'm assuming you have the distinct pleasure of getting paid in local currency. I know it's easier said than done, but if you can code decently in something like Ruby, just look online for local hackathons and Startup Weekend events. Every single on I have attended, one or more professional speakers ends their presentation with \"\"and we're hiring developers\"\". Even if that doesn't happen, you'll get some great opportunities for networking and you will have a rudimentary public project to share with potential leads. Plus they are fun.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "07d96288f612a95c2bbec1db71f046b7",
"text": "The store keeps track of what you buy. It is all part of their big data. The knowledge of what you buy helps them project future sales. It allows them to target their marketing. But maybe even more importantly they can sell this knowledge to outside companies. They aren't going to give away that information to another company that would love to have that data, just so they could sell it. Stores use those loyalty cards to be able to link your household to those purchases. Those discounts, or free products, are what they use to entice you to give up your privacy. The fact that in your town young adults love caramel apples, even more than the town next door, makes them confident that your town will love caramel apple scented shampoo. Thus they send you coupons when it become available. They will also sell this knowledge to the shampoo companies. Do some stores make it possible for you to download the data? Yes they do. Apple stores send all receipts via email. Kohls allows me to see detail information about my transactions on line. There must be others. I don't know if any are grocery stores.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1154baf84454ded433044779cbbcfec8",
"text": "You're charging service fees as a conduit entity for these tickets. While the service fee is not a fixed rate, but a percentage, you would need to record each purchase at dollar amount. To illustrate, it would look like: Now, to your question: How do I report this on my taxes? You would first start out by filing your Schedule C from the eyes of the business (the money you earn at your job, and the money you earn as a business are different). Just keep a general journal with the above entry for each sale and close them down to a simple balance sheet and income statement and you should be fine. Of course, read the instructions for your Schedule C before you begin. As always, good luck.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "71cc81f950ab08f4457fb8f094df23fa",
"text": "\"Donate buttons are meaningless with regards to taxes. This is payment for something you provided, and you cannot claim that you've received a gift. Any money you receive in this way is payment for your software. Remember, for gifts - no consideration should have been provided to the donor. Anything for which a consideration was provided - cannot be a gift. In your case the consideration is the software, and it's value is the amount you were paid. Since every person can decide how much to pay you on his own - any payment is for the software, not a gift. Any money you get is taxable to you, and you cannot claim it as \"\"gifts\"\" without exposing yourself to risks of making fraudulent claims. Consult a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) for a qualified tax advice.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bae6e8d76b98b2ba96a5520be36c2c8f",
"text": "I believe moving reimbursement has to be counted as income no matter when you get it. I'd just put it under miscellaneous income with an explanation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ccbc20034b475506fd64d7f07b3989cf",
"text": "There are a few methods you can use to estimate your taxes. On the results screen, the app will show you your estimated tax burden, your estimated withholding for the year, and your estimated overpayment/refund or shortfall/tax due. It may also have recommendations for you on how to adjust your W-4 (although, this late in the year, I think it only tells you to come back next year to reevaluate). Your state might also have income tax, and if you are curious about that, you can find the state tax form and estimate your state income tax as well. My guess is that you will be getting a refund this year, as you have only worked half of the year. But that is only a guess.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a931863acc83ad4edff1752ec43df94f",
"text": "www.earnings.com is helpful thinkorswim's thinkDesktop platform has a lot of earnings information tied with flags on their charts they are free.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e0d17415eded90e62972b593b0bcd960",
"text": "\"Your employer should send you a statement with this information. If they didn't, you should still be able to find it through E*Trade. Navigate to: Trading & Portfolios>Portfolios. Select the stock plan account. Under \"\"Restricted Stock\"\", you should see a list of your grants. If you click on the grant in question, you should see a breakdown of how many shares were vested and released by date. It will also tell you the cost basis per share and the amount of taxes withheld. You calculate your cost basis by multiplying the number of released shares by the cost basis per share. You can ignore the ordinary income tax and taxes withheld since they will already have been included on your W2 earnings and withholdings. Really all you need to do is report the capital gain or loss from the cost basis (which if you sold right away will be rather small).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d2ecbf066a9813b931081dcaab948ad7",
"text": "\"Source?? Let me see all your evidence. What apps are you downloading and giving info too without permission? They have to request data and you have to click on \"\"allow\"\"-- its baked into the API. Please show me your sources that show Apple knowingly allows apps to have and distribute my personal information without asking for permission. These apps have access to all the encrypted data on my phone without my knowledge?? Please show me sources.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0dde42cb2eb328499f4a02f6e692de0e",
"text": "You report each position separately. You do this on form 8949. 7 positions is nothing, it will take you 5 minutes. There's a tip on form 8949 that says this, though: For Part I (short term transactions): Note. You may aggregate all short-term transactions reported on Form(s) 1099-B showing basis was reported to the IRS and for which no adjustments or codes are required. Enter the total directly on Schedule D, line 1a; you are not required to report these transactions on Form 8949 (see instructions). For Part II (long term transactions): Note. You may aggregate all long-term transactions reported on Form(s) 1099-B showing basis was reported to the IRS and for which no adjustments or codes are required. Enter the total directly on Schedule D, line 8a; you are not required to report these transactions on Form 8949 (see instructions). If the 1099B in your case shows basis for each transaction as reported to the IRS - you're in luck, and don't have to type them all in separately.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3231c7537fb00691c38e465d9885fe0c",
"text": "Um really, you expect US to know the answer? Why not ask Wells Fargo? Unless someone here happens to work for WF and has access to the right people, this is more likely a question to send to their support people than to get an answer here that is anything other than a SWAG (and in that line of reasoning, and as a software tester by trade, my money is on the already offered reasoning that it's doing some kind of primative 'bad word' search (probably a regular expression match) and getting a hit on tit. ) In the meantime I suggest an alternative term, how about 'offering'",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fe924b06b4f744985a5c1a50c6871e3b",
"text": "\"In your words, you want to \"\"easily determine whether an item was purchased as part of our individual accounts, or our combined family account.\"\" It's not clear exactly to me what kind of reporting you're trying to get. (I find a useful approach here to be to start with the output you're trying to get from a system, and then see how that maps to the input you want to give the system.) Here's some possibilities:\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
7bea26a08ccd1aaf5e5f02e5f3e8a9cf
|
Washington State tax filing extension?
|
[
{
"docid": "7691b04c045df57a892e781356f4004f",
"text": "Washington State doesn't have a state income tax for individuals, so unless you've got a business there's nothing to file. Find out more on their website.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "0dbe615376361cbe5aee13c01dac142b",
"text": "\"Hearing somewhere is a level or two worse than \"\"my friend told me.\"\" You need to do some planning to forecast your full year income and tax bill. In general, you should be filing a quarterly form and tax payment. You'll still reconcile the year with an April filing, but if you are looking to save up to pay a huge bill next year, you are looking at the potential of a penalty for under-withholding. The instructions and payment coupons are available at the IRS site. At this point I'm required to offer the following advice - If you are making enough money that this even concerns you, you should consider starting to save for the future. A Solo-401(k) or IRA, or both. Read more on these two accounts and ask separate questions, if you'd like.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cfbe958f8ed0a8af91bbfb143871a2cb",
"text": "The obligation is contractual, so you need to read the contract to answer your question. However, since you paid for the service provided, I see no way they can force you buy any other service from them. They cannot file your tax returns without your explicit consent (on a form dedicated to that, dated and having the numbers matching the return filed - not something you can sign before the actual return is ready). Worst case they can claim you owe them more money, but since you paid for the services provided, I can't see how they can have that stand in court as well. Bottom line - even if the contract has such an obligation, I cannot see how it can be enforced. As to the mistake they noted... I wouldn't rely on H&R Block advice in any matter. Very likely, the person you were talking to was not even licensed to provide tax advice. You're lucky if the person has passed CRTP exams (in California they're legally required), but I seriously doubt their clerks are EAs or CPAs (the only designations other than a lawyer legally allowed to provide tax advice). Tax preparers (CRTPs included) are only allowed to provide advice pertaining to the preparation of the tax return they're currently engaged to prepare. Claiming income is sourced or not sourced in NY is borderline, IMHO. If they got it wrong (and to me it sounds as they did) you can sue them for damages. If your situation is tricky and it is too late to get an appointment with a proper adviser - file an extension (form 4868) and deal with it after the April busy season.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6e823a2231fe80ac405b0c2fe35a9cf4",
"text": "You can file a revised W-4 with your employer claiming more allowances than you do now. More allowances means less Federal tax and (if applicable and likely with a separate form) less state tax. This doesn't affect social security and Medicare with holding, though. That being said, US taxes are on a pay-as-you-go system. If the IRS determines that you're claiming more allowances than you're eligible for and not paying the proper taxes throughout the year, they will hit you with an underpayment penalty fee, which would likely negate the benefits of keeping that money in the first place. This is why independent contractors and self-employed people pay quarterly or estimated taxes. Depending on the employer, they may require proof of the allowances for adjustment before they accept the revised W-4.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "91f4c060b9360b9405745f9a6e20c852",
"text": "File a 2nd amended return that corrects the mistake I made on the 1st amended return This. Pay the $500 before April 27th and try to get it back later This.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0a9bcaa84bf501af4ebd583840d4264a",
"text": "Your best bet is going to be contacting TaxAct directly for their information. If you do enter your spouses information and choose to purchase their deluxe product, I would think you might end up paying for the second efile. I have used their deluxe version for many years now, but choose it mostly because of the free state efiling and not for the ability to determine whether or not to file separately. In my case, it makes sense to file jointly and not file separately. The deluxe version allows you to portion out your deductions and see which method of filing gives you the lowest total tax bill. Here's the link directly to TaxAct's support: https://www.taxact.com/tsupport/support_request.asp",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0df54c4fd766fcffc01e0aaeb445237d",
"text": "The IRS allows filers to attach a statement explaining the reason for late filing. I have had clients do this in the past, and there has never been an issue (not that that guarantees anything, but is still good to know). Generally, the IRS is much more lenient when a taxpayer voluntarily complies with a filing requirement, even if it's late, than if they figure it out themselves and send a notice.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6c6506ac79cb6824fd2b472b524cba0f",
"text": "Since you both are members of the LLC - it is not a single-member LLC, thus you have to file the tax return on behalf of the LLC (I'm guessing you didn't elect corporate treatment, so you would be filing 1065, which is the default). You need to file form 4868 on behalf of yourselves as individuals, and form 7004 on behalf of the LLC as the partnership. Since the LLC is disregarded (unless you explicitly chose it not to be, which seems not to be the case) the taxes will in fact flow to your individual return(s), but the LLC will have to file the informational return on form 1065 and distribute K-1 forms to each of you. So you wouldn't pay additional estimated taxes with the extension, as you don't pay any taxes with the form 1065 itself. If you need a help understanding all that and filling the forms - do talk to a professional (EA or CPA licensed in your state). Also, reconsider not sending any payment. I suggest sending $1 with the extension form even if you expect a refund.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "28d9aa347dd6586e63001086f0a889da",
"text": "California is very aggressive when it comes to determining residency. While you have a legitimate defense, I suggest talking with a California-licensed CPA or EA practicing in California, which are experienced in dealing with the FTB residency audits.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4d8e6721496b0d8ad288f2a00eb81a13",
"text": "It matters because that is the requirement for the 83(b) selection to be valid. Since the context is 83(b) election, I assume you got stocks/options as compensation and didn't pay for them the FMV, thus it should have been included in your income for that year. If you didn't include the election letter - I can only guess that you also didn't include the income. Hence - you lost your election. If you did include the income and paid the tax accordingly, or if no tax was due (you actually paid the FMV), you may try amending the return and attaching the letter, but I'd suggest talking to a professional before doing it on your own. Make sure to keep a proof (USPS certified mailing receipt) of mailing the letter within the 30 days window.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bfef03612efdf6839e7a6e282ba702e6",
"text": "Based on these dates in your question: Going back over my records, I was able to recall the following: Maryland realized recently that on the 2009 Federal 1040 Form you stated that on December 31 2009 you liven in Maryland. They are wondering where the state tax form is. DC, MD and VA due to reciprocity collect income tax based on where you live not where you work. So when you moved in August 2009 and again in August 2010 you needed to file new state versions of the W4. The fact you did or didn't submit to your employer a correct state W-4 is not directly related, because you would owe the tax regardless. The W-4 just makes sure that something close to the correct amounts are withheld and sent to the appropriate state capital. I seem to remember something about not having to pay Maryland state taxes since I not only lived in the state for less than 6 months but also did not work in the state. The reciprocity between DC, MD and VA says that Maryland gets the money because that is where you lived. The last time I had to do a part year the law was that they would forgive a half a month. In other words if you move in late December or early January you could ignore that small time period and avoid having to file in two states. In some cases people argue that some short term moves were never meant to be permanent. You might be able to claim that except the fact that your 2009 federal tax form you most likely claimed you lived in Maryland. The next issue is time and money. If Maryland says you owe them money for that time period, and if they still have the ability to force you to pay it; This is where the issue of correct state W-4 comes in. If the money during the period you lived in Maryland was sent to Virginia, you should have had that money refunded by Richmond in the spring of 2010. But if there was no W-4 filed with your employer that would mean that Maryland didn't get any money for 2009. If you didn't tell Richmond you moved in 2009 they may not have refunded everything because they thought you lived there all year. Because of the time that has passed it may be too late to fix your Virginia filing, so they may not refund you excess payment to them. Maryland is interested in calculating how much you should have paid them in 2009. They are only looking at what you told the feds you made, and they may be assuming that you lived there the whole year. But until you file correctly that have no ability to calculate what you really owe. You need professional advice. You need to know what they can and can't collect. You also need to know what you can and can't get back from Richmond. And since it also may impact your filings for 2010 you will want to get that resolved at the same time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "871f4a0f6ba8fb25bd8237f7f9bc9b15",
"text": "I'd be surprised if this ended in a materially-damaging final settlement. It may take more than 5 years to resolve, unless a smoking gun is produced. If PWC and outside counsel really issued written opinions, it could get a lot messier. Especially when we tip over into another recession, the IRS will come under intense Congressional pressure to cut a nominal deal.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "00b3c587b025b5ae800f89468ba7f5d0",
"text": "To be on the safe side - you'll want to get the full invoice. You don't need to actually print them, you can save it as a PDF and make sure to make your own backups once in a while. Only actually print them when the IRS asks you to kill some trees and send them a paper response, and even then you can talk to the agent in charge and check if you can email the digital file instead. The IRS won't ask for this when you file your taxes, they will only ask for this if you're under audit and they will want to actually validate the numbers on your return. You'll know when you're under audit, and who is the auditor (the agent in charge of your case). You'll also want to have some representation when that happens.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "45f7684814dbac7f3eed5ce793c0413b",
"text": "The purpose of making sure you met the safe harbor was to avoid the penalty. Having achieved that goal the tax law allows you to wait until April 15th to pay the balance. So do so. Put enough money aside to make sure you can easily make that payment. I was in this exact situation a few years ago. I planned my w4 to make the safe harbor, and then slept easy even though the house settlement was in May and I didn't have to make the IRS payment unti 11 months later in April.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1d70c66d71539d742252756e37426e4d",
"text": "If you took advantage of options like a home buyers plan (HBP) you definitely need to file since you must designate how much of the plan to repay. Your employer does not know about what you do with your money so cannot take this into account for the withheld taxes. If you do not report repayment of the HBP it will be treated as a withdrawal from your RRSP i.e. additional income for that tax year.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e39a1801cbfa777e2fda516c1822da31",
"text": "\"It's not quite as bad as the comments indicate. Form 1040ES has been available since January (and IME has been similarly for all past years). It mostly uses the prior year (currently 2016) as the basis, but it does have the updated (2017) figures for items that are automatically adjusted for inflation: bracket points (and thus filing threshhold), standard deductions, Social Security cap, and maybe another one or two I missed. The forms making up the actual return cannot be prepared very far in advance because, as commented, Congress frequently makes changes to tax law well after the year begins, and in some cases right up to Dec. 31. The IRS must start preparing forms and pubs -- and equally important, setting the specifications for software providers like Intuit (TurboTax) and H&RBlock -- several months ahead in order to not seriously delay filing season, and with it refunds, which nearly everyone in the country considers (at least publicly) to be worse than World War Three and the destruction of the Earth by rogue asteroids. I have 1040 series from the last 4 years still on my computer, and the download dates mostly range from late September to mid January. Although one outlier shows the range of possibility: 2013 form 1040 and Schedule A were tweaked in April 2014 because Congress passed a law allowing charitable contributions for Typhoon Haiyan to be deducted in the prior year. Substantive, but relatively minor, changes happen every year, including many that keep recurring like the special (pre-AGI) teacher supplies deduction (\"\"will they or won't they?\"\"), section 179 expensing (changes slightly almost every year), and formerly the IRA-direct-to-charity option (finally made permanent last year). As commented, the current Congress and President were elected on a platform with tax reform as an important element, and they are talking even more intensely than before about doing it, although whether they will actually do anything this year is still uncertain. However, if major reform is done it will almost certainly apply to future years only, and likely only start after a lag of some months to a year. They know it causes chaos for businesses and households alike to upend without advance warning the assumptions built in to current budgets and plans -- and IME as a political matter something that is enacted now and effective fairly soon but not now is just as good (but I think that part is offtopic).\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
9f630f6fe3006193207f7c682f2d18df
|
Freehold and Leasehold for Pub/Bar?
|
[
{
"docid": "f401316bf718c79216a5e715b1ea07d1",
"text": "\"In the strictest sense of the words, Freehold and leasehold mean what you think they do. Freehold is that you own it outright and leasehold is a rental situation. That being said, there are scenarios like what Peter K. mentioned in his comment, where you're purchasing the building and business outright, but the land it sits on is actually being leased from a separate land-owner. You may also be seeing the business itself being offered as freehold or leasehold. In this case, you may be purchasing the business of the pub from a pub company, but the building the pub resides in is leased from a property owner. The \"\"pub\"\" would be the business plan, decor, alcohol partnerships, etc. but not the physical structure in which it resides. You should really look into hiring an Estate Agent to help you find what you're looking for. They will be able to assist in narrowing down your list, and may know of opportunities you're not seeing in ads.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "268885bbade6eaf5bbb7e23b4c7c07be",
"text": "You should be aware that many pubs in the London (indeed, the UK as a whole) are sold as a leasehold with a beer tie. This typically means you pay less rent for the building and premises, but must enter a contract with the Pub Company to buy their beer and day-to-day supplies. You have the legal option to instead pay market rent for some (but not all) Pub Cos, under certain conditions. If you go with leasehold, the landlord can usually close your pub at their will. This is becoming a quite common occurrence in the booming real estate market of London. While your interest will be in running a pub, the Pub Co's interest will be in getting change of use planning permission and selling it to a real estate developer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7e108f84f34d9b14d5f4853877b84669",
"text": "Freehold is simple - it's when you own the building and the land it's on. There's no rent to pay (but you will still have to pay taxes!). Leasehold is when the property is leased - rented out for a fixed period that could be anything from 6 months to 199 years. There will be a rent to pay. The person who owns the property is still the freeholder. There may be some confusion caused by what is being sold. You can buy out a lease from the current leaseholder. It's also possible to buy the freehold of a property that is currently leased to someone else. It is also possible to have a freehold building on leasehold land.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "3b4a71f1757cedfab7de46ccf168bda1",
"text": "Alas, institutions do not always act rationally, and being an outlier by never having debt may be bad enough. Therein is your problem. The question, then, is do you want to do business with institutions that are not acting rationally? While I cannot specifically speak to Canadian business practices, I have to imagine that in terms of credit history as a prerequisite to a lease, it can't be too different than America. It is possible to live without a credit score. This is typically done by those with enough resources that do not need to borrow money. To make transactions that commonly use credit scores, such as a lease, they will provide personal financial statements (balance sheets, personal income statements, bank statements, pay stubs, tax returns, etc...) to show that they are credit-worthy. References from prior landlords may also be beneficial. Again, the caveat is to elect to only conduct business with those individuals and institutions that are intelligent and rational enough to be able to analyze your financial position (and ability to pay) without a credit score. Therefore, you'll probably have better luck working with individual landlords, as opposed to corporate-owned rental complexes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7a3b5dba9f57e8cd65d2b20b9781823e",
"text": "\"Frequently selling and buying properties is generally not advisable in Germany due to the high cost for property purchase tax (\"\"Grunderwerbssteuer\"\") and land registration fees (\"\"Grundbucheintrag\"\"). You can generally assume that ever time you trade homes, you pay about 10% extra. So it is likely a good idea to keep your property and rent it out while you don't need it so you can use the rent to pay for your new room. That's especially true if you expect the property to increase in value. Also, due to the low interest rate right now, real estate is practically the only good capital investment. A 85k asset which makes you 4.8k each year is a return of investment of 5.6%*. Any financial asset promising you that kind of dividend at the moment is likely equivalent to gambling. * yes, I ignored maintenance costs, but it's still a really good deal. If you want to rent out your flat as stress-free as possible, give it to a property management company (\"\"Hausverwalter\"\"). In exchange for a percentage of the monthly rent they will take care of all the small stuff (like hiring handymen to fix broken toilets). You might still have to pay for really expensive investments, though (like replacing a leaking roof). But when something like that happens, you should have no issue to finance it with a loan because you have a real estate as a security. However, keep in mind that the German tenancy law might make it difficult (but not impossible) to get rid of the tenant in case you want to move back into the apartment. Google \"\"Mietrecht Eigenbedarf\"\" for more details. Should you decide after your study that you don't want to move back, you can always sell the flat with the tenant. But rented properties usually get far lower prices on the real estate market than empty ones. Regarding covering your cost of living besides rent during your studies: If you are eligible for BAföG (state-sponsored student loan), you should take it, because it's an offer simply too good to refuse. It's literally free money. But unfortunately you are not, because you own too much real estate wealth you are not living in. But you should ask your bank for a loan backed by said property. That way you will likely pay far less interest than with a regular private student loan which isn't backed by anything except the hope for a relevant degree.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9440b484bb97504f5e7bf8dfd994246b",
"text": "If you can get the health ratios based off of the total sales the tenant does divided by their rent plus nets. I know a quite a few big firms look at that to determine the health of the tenant. Another item would be a surrounding market overview. Occupancy rates, average rent, big clients, future developments. The information on existing competitive properties are easy to find, just type in the name of their property plus the word leasing on the end. To find future development information, the city they submit to has to approve the plans. Some cities have it set up on their website over a Google maps type of link. Edit: spelling Good luck! Edit 2: example of competition link. http://properties.brixmor.com/cre/commercial-real-estate-listings/frisco/texas/preston-ridge/overview/",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ef064ae7e68cf30d539f1a7323d318ef",
"text": "\"In addition to Alex B's excellent overview, I'd like to add a few more bits of advice. First of all, one term you should know is \"\"commercial real estate\"\" - which is precisely what this is. There is a business element, but it is strictly (and almost entirely) intertwined to the underlying real estate, which makes this a special category of business which is generally considered simply \"\"commercial real estate\"\" (just like office buildings, shopping malls, etc). All real estate and businesses value are based on alternatives - what other options are there? In appraisal, these are generally called \"\"comparables\"\". A professional appraiser is generally available for commercial real estate of this type. While a full, official commercial appraisal can run into the thousands, many/most (all?) appraisers are willing to sell you a simplified version of their service, which can be called a \"\"letter of opinion\"\" and can help you get an idea for the market price (what other similar commercial properties are running for). A loan company would strictly require this, but if you are thinking of an all cash or form of seller-financing this would technically be optional. Your best bet is to read about some of what is involved in commercial real estate appraisal and evaluation, and you may even want to speak with commercial loan officers - even if you don't know that you want to get a loan to acquire the property! It's their job to help inform you about what is required and what they look for, so they can be a potential resource beyond your own research as well. With this said, the only way to estimate value (and, conveniently, the best way) is to look at other properties! And by \"\"others\"\", I mean that you should really not consider buying absolutely anything until you've viewed at least 6-10 other options in some depth - and you probably want to double or triple that number if you are looking to make this the last big business transaction of your life. If you don't you'll be relying on little more than dumb luck to carry you through - which in this area of business, you don't want to do because the dollar amounts and liabilities involved can bankrupt you in no time flat. With that general advice out of the way, here's a tiny nutshell version of valuation of commercial real estate. There are a few key parts involved in commercial real estate: land, improvements (buildings, docks, stuff like that), income, and wages. Land: the value of the land is based upon what you could sell it for, as-is. That is to say - who else might want it? This alone has many important factors, such as zoning laws, the neighborhood (including your neighbors), water/utilities, pacts on the land (someone may have insisted the land not be paved into a parking lot, or really anything like that), alternative uses (could you put a golf course on it, or is the land suitable for a big building or farming?), etc. And is this in a growing area, where you might hope the value will increase over the next decade, or decrease, or basically stay flat (and possibly cause losses compared to inflation)? Improvements: anything on the land is both an asset and a liability. It's an asset because it could add to the value of the land, but it might also reduce the land value if it interferes with alternate land uses. It's a liability, both in the legal sense and in that it requires maintenance. If you want to rent them out, especially, that means concern about any foundations involved, termites, roofs, sewage/septic tanks, utilities that are your responsibility (pipes, poles, wires), as well as any sort of ac/heating you may have, docks, and so on. These things are rarely free and absolutely can eat you alive. Income: Ah, the best part, the constant influx of cash! But wait, is it a constant influx? Some businesses are purely seasonal (summer only, winter only), some are year-round but have peak times, and others don't really have a \"\"peak\"\" to speak of. If you are renting, are there issues collecting, or with people over-staying? How about damage, making a mess, getting rowdy and disturbing others? Regardless, there is obviously some income, and this is usually the most dangerous part of the equation. I say \"\"dangerous\"\", because people absolutely lie like dogs on this part, all the time. It's easy to cook the books, assuming they even attempt to keep proper books in the first place! Businesses of this form often have a lot of cash business that's easy to hide (from Uncle Sam, or sometimes even the owners themselves if there are employees involved) - and fake! And some people are just shoddy bookkeepers and the info is just wrong. But, there will clearly be some kind of yearly income involved. What does this matter? Well...how much is there? How much is tied to the owners (personal friends do business and they will leave if the ownership/management changes)? In commercial real estate the income will be calculated for a fiscal year, and then there is something called a \"\"multiple\"\", which is market dependent. Let's say the whole place takes in $100k in rent a year. As part of buying this business, you are buying not just assets, but expected future income. In some commercial areas the multiple is as little as .5 to 2 - which means that the going rate is about 6-24 months worth of income, as part of the purchase price. So with 100k rent a year, that means 50k-200k of the purchase price is attributable to the income of the business. And if business is half of what you thought it would be? That means the net value of the whole enterprise decreases by 25k-100k - on top of the reduced income every year you own it! Income provides cash flow, which should pay all the expenses (cleaning up from wind storms, replacing windows that are broken, hauling off trash, replacing a well that ran dry), and then the extra that remains is positive cash flow. If you take out a loan, then ideally the cash flow would also pay that completely so long as you don't have any big unexpected expenses in the year - and still have some left over for yourself. Wages: Well, that money doesn't collect itself! There's sales, keeping the books, collecting the rent, performing maintenance, customer service, cleaning, paying the bills, keeping the insurance people happy, handling emergencies, and everything else involved with running the business. Someone is going to do it, and the biggest error people make here is not to put any value on their time - and to make it so they can never afford to take a vacation again! Pay yourself, and give yourself the flexibility to pay others when you can't (or don't want) to do it all yourselves. So, what's the point of all this? How do you actually make any money? In two ways: 1) selling the whole thing later, and 2) cash flow. For 1, it's important that you not be in a situation where you are betting that in the future there will be a \"\"person richer, and dumber, than I am now\"\". If the current owner wanted 2 million, then 1 mil, then less, over multiple years...this suggests either he is delusional about the value of his place (and most property owners are), or that its actually hard to find a buyer for such a business. You are going to want to make sure you understand why that is, because most of the value of real estate is...well, in the real estate itself! For 2, you need cash coming in that's considerably more than the cost of running the place. Also, cash flow can strongly change the value of the business for resale (depending on the multiple, this can make a huge difference or prevent you from selling the thing at all). You mentioned you want to put in more cabins, more marketing/sales efforts, etc. That's great, but first, that would mean added investment beyond the purchase price. Is it legally and physically practical to add more cabins, and what is their current utilization rate? If they are only renting 10% of their current capacity, increasing capacity may be premature. This will also vary through the year, so you may find there is a problem with being sold out sometimes...but only for a small percentage of the time. Which means you'll be adding buildings only to have them used for a fraction of the year, which will be very hard to make a profit from. If cash flow is good, ideally even being enough to cover a loan payment to help cover the purchase price (and remember that commercial real estate loans are much smaller loan-to-value ratios than in residential real estate), there is one final barrier to making money: the damn non-regular maintenance! Roofs, wells, and wooden walls all have a sad tendency to cost you nothing right up until the point they cost you $30k+ on a single day. Is there enough cash flow to make these sort of certainties (and if you plan to be there for years, they are a certainty) not put you in the poor house? This was rather long, but I hope this overview helps you appreciate all that you'll need to look into and be cautious of during your future en-devour! Commercial real estate is generally costly and high-risk, but also can be high reward. You'll need to compare many opportunities before you can get a \"\"feel\"\" for what is a good deal and what is a terrible one. You'll need to consider many factors, such as resale value and cash flow/income (which they will have to tell you and you can assume is not true, due to ignorance or malice), as well as maintenance and liabilities, before you can begin to really estimate the value of an enterprise of this sort. There are people who can help you, like appraisers and commercial brokers, but ultimately you'll need to do a lot of research and comparisons yourself to help you make a good decision. Finally, there is no very simple method for evaluating commercial real estate value. You need a variety of information, and you must be skeptical of what you are told because of the very large sums of money involved. It is doable (lots of people do it), but you must take care and do your due diligence so you don't get bankrupted by a single bad purchase.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f75f8ce42dab41e68a46486e1897351d",
"text": "A large part of the cost seems to be that he created the physical space from scratch: > Because Tortosa chose a brand-new building that had never been occupied, every single thing had to be built in. The upside is that he was able to create his dream space from scratch. The downside: That it cost him much more time and money. He spent approximately $500,000 doing that, and he received $100,000 from the landlord for doing it. So he's out $400k. The landlord will get a furnished space if he folds.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2aa4ecf74cd550e0692cb04b5fde014c",
"text": "\"Well, that's good and bad more regulation, but your not an agency your something better(IMHO) If the lawyer says yes, I'd scrub all mention of the word \"\"agency\"\". Being an \"\"employment business\"\" is part of your USP. You will presumable have to educate on why this is better, but you may as well use the protected words your entitled too and report any UK agencies calling themselves an employment business to try and undercut you. Check with your branding/marketing advisors this could be key (Oh and please PM, your launch page/teaser when you get to it)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "df6f1b9d8e1eafea0e9b04a076b95774",
"text": "Usually if the property is part of a strata then the water rates get sent to the owner each quarter to pay and the usage for the whole complex is paid by the strata. So in this type of situation your tenant would not have to pay any water usage. If for some reason, as you mentioned, your unit, although part of a strata complex, is individually metered and you receive a water bill for both water rates and water usage, then the tenant would be liable to pay the water usage portion. This can usually be arranged by either giving the tenant a copy of the water bill with the amount of usage payable, or organising with the water company to separately sending the tenant the usage part of the bill. As you had a real estate agent (managing agent) looking after your property at the time when the water usage was not being paid by the tenant, it would have been their responsibility to either recoup this money from the tenant or organise with the water compony to send the usage part of the bill to the tenants. That is part of the service you were paying them for. You may need to check with Fair Trading in your state to find out who you should be going after for this money, the tenant or the real estate agent. In NSW you have 6 months after the lease has ended to take the tenants to tribunal to recoup owing money, I don't know how long it is after end your agreement with the real estate agent to pursue them. The case may be that you start with the tenant and if that doesn't work then try with the real estate agent. Of course you may want to contact your old tenants first to see if they are reasonable and agree to back pay the water usage (after you showing them copies of the water bills). The tribunal will ask if you have tried to mediate the matter first anyway. Then there is the matter of how much the water usage amounts to and whether it is worth chasing both the tenants and the real estate agent, paying the tribunal application fees and taking time off work to attend the tribunal.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c478ce517a23b24c5fa2356c7eeac393",
"text": "They are two different animals. When you rent you are purchasing a service. The landlord, as your service provider, has to make a profit, pay employees to do maintenance, and buy materials. The price of these things will increase with inflation, and that rolls into your rent price. Taxes also are passed to the tenant, and those tend to only go upward. Market forces of supply/demand will drive fluctuation of prices as well, as other posts have described. When you buy, you are purchasing just the asset - the home. This price will also be driven by supply/demand in the market, but don't try to compare it to buying a service. Cheers!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "55ecdda1e229a73cd562b64220076832",
"text": "As user14469 mentions you would have to decide what type of properties you would like to invest in. Are you after negatively geared properties that may have higher long term growth potential (usually within 15 to 20km from major cities), or after positive cash-flow properties which may have a lower long term growth potential (usually located more than 20km from major cities). With negative geared properties your rent from the property will not cover the mortgage and other costs, so you will have to supplement it through your income. The theory is that you can claim a tax deduction on your employment income from the negative gearing (benefits mainly those on higher tax brackets), and the potential long term growth of the property will make up for the negative gearing over the long term. If you are after these type of properties Michael Yardney has some books on the subject. On the other hand, positive cash-flow properties provide enough rental income to cover the mortgage and other costs. They put cash into your pockets each week. They don't have as much growth potential as more inner city properties, but if you stick to the outer regions of major cities, instead of rural towns, you will still achieve decent long term growth. If you are after these type of properties Margaret Lomas has some books on the subject. My preference is for cash-flow positive properties, and some of the areas user14469 has mentioned. I am personally invested in the Penrith and surrounding areas. With negatively geared properties you generally have to supplement the property with your own income and generally have to wait for the property price to increase so you build up equity in the property. This then allows you to refinance the additional equity so you can use it as deposits to buy other properties or to supplement your income. The problem is if you go through a period of low, stagnate or negative growth, you may have to wait quite a few years for your equity to increase substantially. With positively geared properties, you are getting a net income from the property every week so using none of your other income to supplement the property. You can thus afford to buy more properties sooner. And even if the properties go through a period of low, stagnate or negative growth you are still getting extra income each week. Over the long term these properties will also go up and you will have the benefit of both passive income and capital gains. I also agree with user14469 regarding doing at least 6 months of research in the area/s you are looking to buy. Visit open homes, attend auctions, talk to real estate agents and get to know the area. This kind of research will beat any information you get from websites, books and magazines. You will find that when a property comes onto the market you will know what it is worth and how much you can offer below asking price. Another thing to consider is when to buy. Most people are buying now in Australia because of the record low interest rates (below 5%). This is causing higher demand in the property markets and prices to rise steadily. Many people who buy during this period will be able to afford the property when interest rates are at 5%, but as the housing market and the economy heat up and interest rates start rising, they find it hard to afford the property when interest rate rise to 7%, 8% or higher. I personally prefer to buy when interest rates are on the rise and when they are near their highs. During this time no one wants to touch property with a six foot pole, but all the owners who bought when interest rates where much lower are finding it hard to keep making repayments so they put their properties on the market. There ends up being low demand and increased supply, causing prices to fall. It is very easy to find bargains and negotiate lower prices during this period. Because interest rates will be near or at their highs, the economy will be starting to slow down, so it will not be long before interest rates start dropping again. If you can afford to buy a property at 8% you will definitely be able to afford it at 6% or lower. Plus you would have bought at or near the lows of the price cycle, just before prices once again start increasing as interest rates drop. Read and learn as much as possible from others, but in the end make up your own mind on the type of properties and areas you prefer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "24d27d57f0294cef060793e5d19c2702",
"text": "NO Even worse, most BTL(buy to let) lenders will not lend if you are going to be living in the property. There are very few lenders that will touch something like this. It is likely you will also need to use bridging for the time the building work takes at something like 1.5% per month! Try posting the question to http://www.propertytribes.com/ as there are a few UK mortgage experts on that site.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b2cf81c153c54c9234313f8aa4c5e512",
"text": "Get a lawyer to put this in contract form, with everything spelled out explicitly. What is fair is what the two of you agree upon. My own suggestion: Divide the property into things which are yours, his, and shared, then have each of you be responsible for all your costs plus half the shared costs, but get all the benefits of your half. That would mean that if he rents out his half, all the rental income is his; if you decide to live in your half, all the savings of not paying rent are yours. Each of you pays your half of mortgage, insurance, and other shared costs. Repairs to shared infrastructure should be done by someone both of you trust. If you agree the work is needed and he does it rather than your hiring someone, you owe him the appropriate percentage of the costs; the two of you will need to agree on whether you owe him for that percentage of his time as well. Make sure you agree on some mechanism for one person offering to buy the other out, or to sell their half to the other party... or potentially to someone else entirely. (Personally, I would try to do that at soonest opportunity, to avoid some of the ways this can go wrong -- see past comments about the hazards of guaranteeing a loan; this works or doesn't work similarly.) Does that address your question?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2522edeebfaa3c5b63906725e1ca5c2b",
"text": "I believe he was recommended by one of the investors. After digging a little deeper, it seems the person who invested the most (I believe they own 40%) has his wife doing the taxes and paperwork. We've tried to get them to show us the paperwork and they always seem reluctant. They claim that they're not getting anything either, but they're more of a mutual partner that was introduced to us by the third investor. Basically I invested with a friend, who introduced a third investor (who bought in at the majority). I think it was my friend who knew this manager and hired him due to a past relationship they had. For more insight, my friend actually owns another 2 bars that are quite successful, but it seems he's completely not invested in this one despite owning 30%.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b0583fd50b3c20ae13a401c553cac3d1",
"text": "\"The Solicitor involved up front should be able to place constrictions as your suggesting. I think you should look carefully at the desired wording. You deserve a return on your £100k. Say, the day after you buy (this is hypothetical, please bear with me) a developer says he needs the property and will give you £460k. Your wording here says you get £100k, and then, after the mortgage split £230k, but it seems more reasonable that your deposit doubles to £200k, the remaining £260k pays the mortgage, and the £130k left is split, £65k each. My method accounts for the value of your £100k. Some would ask, why not apply the mortgage rate to that deposit? Because the home value may grow at a different rate. In my opinion, it's fair to apply the home value growth to the £100k deposit. \"\"Fair\"\" means different things to different people. This is my opinion, and a suggestion. Consider it, and do what you and your partner wish. Use a solicitor. Put it in writing.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "47da880d880f5f3868723b4ae4aee77f",
"text": "It is through a vendor leasing to a provider(99% coverage lol). Our municipality does not allow private entities to attach to the fixtures so that puts me in the cats seat. They will be metering their own electric so that is not a problem. You seem to be pretty knowledgeable, would it benefit me to argue for yearly payments instead of monthly?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "92e9ecee4cfbe3d7f5e2c7f590b1635b",
"text": "\"Edit #2 My whole answer was based on my misunderstanding that you were renting out a totally separate property to your girl friend. I finally understand now that you're renting out a room in YOUR apartment flat to your gf. So, based on my new understanding, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea. The answer below is my answer to a different question ;) Original Answer My answer has nothing to do with business, but is totally relationship based. If you care about her in a \"\"we might be together a long time\"\" way, then I wouldn't do this. I don't care what arrangements you setup before hand, at some point, you're bound to feel like she owes you something at some point. Let alone the easiest of situations to imagine (she's late on the rent, she loses her job and can't pay, etc) you'll be forced to make decisions about how much your desire to love and care for her outweighs your need to pay your mortgage. You can argue how magnanimous your are all day long, but is this something you want to bring into your relationship? Now, if you don't really care to stay with her that long and you could do life with or without her, then go for it. I think the big question is, is your relationship worth £200? Edit In the interest of supporting my opinion, here are a few articles I found on the subject: Unfortunately, the way renting to friends or family often works out is far from what would be expected between people who care about one another. For the most part, friends and family members will actually make bad renters, because they’ll expect more from you than a tenant who doesn’t know you. You may get a lot of requests for maintenance and repairs, even for minor things, and you may also find that family members and friends think they should be entitled to perks because of your personal relationship with them. When they don’t get special treatment, they can get angry with you, and that hurts both your professional relationship and your personal relationship. American Apartment Owners Association \"\"In my experience, landlords renting to relatives doesn't work out perfectly,\"\" said Ceyhun Doker, a REALTOR® associate at Keller Williams Realty in Burlingame, CA. \"\"When you don't know each other, there are fewer problems.\"\" realator.com\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
d603d7dde3aa7adbc08c0bfa4224d6ac
|
I'm 13. Can I buy supplies at a pet store without a parent/adult present?
|
[
{
"docid": "8ee780dd1a6ef64417b8857af8fb420c",
"text": "As long as your money is green and you aren't buying something prohibited to youngsters (booze, cigarettes, etc.) I doubt any store is going to refuse your business.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f511c3683463a075319f88336ebbc10e",
"text": "My 12 year old routinely makes purchases with cash or a gift card (either a store's card or a Visa/Amex card that acts like credit card but is a gift card) and has never had an issue. Clothing, make-up, bath items, etc. I understand in some areas you need to be over 18 to buy certain markers, spraypaint, or other propellant items that can be fatal if inhaled. I see little issue with buying pet supplies, but it wouldn't hurt to have your sibling nearby if you think there will be an issue.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3e5dfe901f951e979eebb46132d0d825",
"text": "I had a cat growing up--most of the time I was the one who got her supplies. It was never an issue.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "78c3c281bc43a0ee800cf0ed3fa83b0c",
"text": "Perhaps a technicality, but minors do not have the legal capacity to bind a contract. Making a purchase from a store is a contract. I'm not a lawyer and there may be case law to the contrary or that creates exceptions, but my understanding is that purchases made by a minor may be void if later challenged. JohnFx's answer is true from a practical sense. But if you get turned away at a store, understand that they're probably just being careful to avoid headaches later.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "f0f03a51195c7a3e05197239cbb59377",
"text": "Buy something from Nordstrom, then return it and ask for cash. They may ask for your ID. Nordstrom's return policies are very lax and they will almost always give cash when asked for, sometimes even if you don't have the receipt.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b6ae13b427fba3e6897c8e3f4b0c6203",
"text": "We were members at costco, but decided not to renew. Meat was a definite cost savings, and laundry detergent as well. Diapers used to be a huge savings, but loblaws seems to be pricing things better now. We did by a bunch of Kirkland brand diapers and wipes before the membership ended. The problem we had was that you just get too much stuff - you save a bunch on that laundry detergent that you buy once every two years, or the chicken you have in your freezer forever. In Canada, the basic membership is $55 and we could not be certain we made that back, nor that we weren't over consuming as we walked the aisles. I have heard that the more expensive membership ($100) which gives you 2% back on purchases is a good way to gauge your usage and determine if it is worth it. It also costs nothing to give it a try - their policy is a full refund at any time, so in theory you could go in on your 364th day and get a refund.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5589bc8e25b7c082c1dc2a97a160968e",
"text": "The last thing I bought there was a barbecue for my dad. I needed two accessories that were on display with it as well, but they didn't carry them instore. So I had to go online to order them... from two different places. And one of the part numbers I was given didn't match anything, so I had to call on the phone and spend about 15 minutes with someone figuring it out. It was a less than stellar experience.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ca9af8ae6ec87a10fb8408774f33346f",
"text": "I don't know if BJ's or Costco is by you, but sharing a membership can make sense. Not just the annual fee, but splitting certain items that are just too big. The 20 pack of batteries, the 30lb sacks of potatoes, etc. Anything you look at and realize you won't use it before it goes bad or have no place to store it. Size is one objection I hear regarding the warehouse stores and a splitting buddy can help. To James' point - Yes, kids are cruel. We live in a nice area, and I pride myself on driving the cheapest car on the street. In the last two years, two neighbors (of 8 of us on this cul-de-sac) have downsized. They needed to take the difference and use it for college tuition. I explained to my daughter, when you see a kid in a big house, you don't know two key things: how big their mortgage is, and how much have they saved for college/retirement.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f4f12914ef0cf724285d65f57f5c65ee",
"text": "I shop at Sears because of the enormous section of hardware parts. You can find almost any bolt,screw,connector, etc for any DIY project. Nothing online compares to being able to go to the hardware section only with an idea and piecing it together with the parts at hand. Also, I'm 35.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9d1a7f1944348ed00e9367a5fcb54ad7",
"text": "\"Well, I'd probably need to buy a lot more [Tide](http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1) to hide any purchases I don't want Uncle Sam to know about (not just drugs, either - When's the last time you paid sales tax at a yard sale?). Other than that, I doubt it would matter much. 99.9% of my financial transactions are *already* on plastic, and I regularly keep the same \"\"emergency $20 bill\"\" in my wallet for months at a time.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a7fd9f08c7784ffafdfbec03796c03d1",
"text": "Your parents are troopers (pooper troopers?). Nothing in our area was affordable for those services so we tried the clean-your-own kind - they were really nice and probably would help potty train but seriously a few months of scraping poop into the trash and washing a bucket of smelly diapers got old quiiiiiick! I will say this - the kind you clean yourself is the absolute cheapest option. It was like $300 for a half week supply of cloth diapers so you're doing diaper laundry twice a week and the only other added cost is the special detergent which was pretty cheap and lasted a long time... Then we sold them used on eBay for $200 and bought the next size up when it was time which was like 2 months later (they snap to multiple sizes)... Rinse and repeat - works out pretty well if you're willing to commit to washing poop cloth twice a week. And 3 months of honest diapers is around $300 I think.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3b77d8502335f3b8b8ed6d68bb3669ea",
"text": "Make sure your handling the legal side of things. At your age, at least in the US usually, your parents are the one responsible for things like contracts and such. You can't legally get into contracts on your own and if your going to go into business, even at your age, a contract of work should be a must.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b88f011e80981c6d7b69bdd61da050e6",
"text": "\"If you're under 18 there's not much you can do. As a minor, your kinda just stuck. There are routes to go, but not many. If you're over 18, here's what you can do. Now these steps won't help you not anger your mother. They're \"\"what you can do\"\" but it doesn't mean you \"\"should\"\". Keep in mind that it might be better just to have a conversation. In that conversation, if you think you need to say, \"\"I will file a complaint with the FBI, and have you arrested if you don't stop! You're breaking the law and invading my privacy.\"\" Again these are drastic steps to take. More moderate steps may be advisable.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eca1589f556ec5c6b248b677962048d5",
"text": "I can deal with the sometimes human trash that shops there, the screaming and running kids...and even the somewhat messy isles. For me, it comes down to two things: 1. Language barrier. If you are going to have staff on the floor, they need to be able to speak and understand English. This is an uncomfortable criticism, I know, but it is real. 2. Staff lack of knowledge of the products they sell. Reading the description on the tag of two different items does not help me.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eaab9bd2b0cb3f917a3cf78a945a3545",
"text": "Our Website : http://www.inglewoodarena.com/ The Forum loves children, but asks that you check the age minimum on the event you are attending prior to buying tickets. If children are allowed, those under two attend for free but must remain on a ticket-holders lap. Any strollers must be collapsible and stored beneath seat. Service Pets are happily accepted but must remain in the seating area with their human, harnessed or leashed. The Forum Inglewood strongly encourages Animal Access card photo IDs.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e96a248e0185b8c754ebc2925ba34621",
"text": "\"If you're in the US then no. You cannot enter a binding contract therefore you will not get a loan from a bank. Cosigner or no cosigner, anything to do with a loan and a bank will not involve you. Your parents can get a loan, then they can give you the money, then you can pay them for their payments, but none of that means the loan has anything to do with you. It's their loan, if they default it's on them. Given your age, you probably will ignore everyone else's advice here about this trip being a bad idea if you can't afford it, but you should reconsider it. You will be paying for this trip long after the fun and excitement has worn off. This is the cycle that sends alot of families into bankruptcy, and it's a horrible habit to learn so young. \"\"Loan\"\" shouldn't even be in your vocabulary dealing with anything other than a library book.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "51c59aa3d9076346ca2df12daa9c1422",
"text": "Fair enough, do what you want, but the issue is that the physical store is providing you with valuable services that you are taking advantage of (you get to see the shoes before you buy them, try them on, get advice from employees, etc.) without paying for.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ede77e1d457e70fd95473a2bf510101c",
"text": "Customers also have different needs and the more extreme the need, the more likely they're going to rate you. So even if you completely fulfill a customer's need, unless it was an extreme need or they were in a predefined emotional state, you're not likely to get a review. As an example, we used to actually fix things at our Radio Shack, with solder and such. In store. A FEW people would give us feedback about that. We were also allowed leeway on what we could take for returns (receipt, 30 day limit, etc.). So if the customer came in and started telling me how our products sucked, and they were calling the BBB it's unlikely they would receive the queen bee treatment. They also gave reviews (Yelp wasn't around at the time). In short, despite the fact we gave the vast majority of our customers way above par treatment, the people most likely to give reviews were self-entitled pissants. Despite what people say about turning customers around (from angry to nice), this only happened with maybe 1 out of every 5 pissy customers. Another two would probably be shown to be attempting to scam the store in some manner and a fourth would likely have to be shown the door.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1f688eb3dbae48ce79d34ffed10bd9a9",
"text": "It's never too early, but age 3 is when we started a piggy bank. Age 4 is when we opened a bank account. When you go shopping with your children, discuss what items cost (such as bread, milk, books, etc.) Start teaching them that everything has a value...then relate it to how much they have saved. Kids need to learn 3 basic things from their parents: how to save/invest, how to spend wisely, how to share/donate",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
7db4a3cc86788445c3d7f8b76b6cd414
|
Is This A Scam? Woman added me on LinkedIn first, then e-mailed offering me millions of dollars [duplicate]
|
[
{
"docid": "1d6996c28689896be1cbbb0f340c6a87",
"text": "Yes. If you reply back, they'll confirm that Uncle Alex did indeed leave you $7 million, and you just need to send them a few thousand dollars for taxes and estate fees and then they'll wire you the money. And then there'll be customs fees. And then more taxes. And of course, there will be separate import fees. And so on until you run out of money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "988c6575e4ce64a92a839e7605009f72",
"text": "It is absolutely a scam. Anyone who tells you they can give you a large amount of money for free is trying to scam you. Additional warning signs include:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a5f1b4d0114213b9543fd6dd74832667",
"text": "\"This is totally a scam. I didn't read the whole thing. Didn't need to after I read \"\"abandoned sum of 22.5 million\"\" which implied part of it was yours to take after you do something for them.. Logically speaking.. No stranger would disclose this to you.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "04e09df8643a9e9bf56221aeef4741af",
"text": "\"In general, if you think something even MIGHT be a scam, the answer is\"\"yes\"\".\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "cf189bbfcf5cd1c6c0ed854c5b9c2ee9",
"text": "\"This is definitely a scam. My husband was inquiring with a \"\"company\"\" that was offering him to be. Representative for them. He got the same job details but the company was called Ceneo. I did due diligence and found that the real Ceneo has no problems receiving money directly from buyers around the world. The fake company mirrored their website, posted jobs on the net,hoping to \"\"employ\"\" unsuspecting people in the U.S. This is their reply to my husband when he asked the job details. DO NOT GET SCAMMED and held accountable for money laundering.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8b568bf322198a4fc02e3bc71ce3e14b",
"text": "\"Thank you for the response, no they didn't ask for anything from anyone, and I certainly didn't give them any information. I was very skeptical but I don't want to be close minded. They claim that they never charge anyone for their mentorship. And the fact they talked so much about pyramid schemes really put me on edge. I guess I just would like to know if anyone else knew about this \"\"$10 billion in revenue private company.\"\" I read the article you posted and I didn't get that impression. The speaker said he was donating time because he felt like that was important for himself and his wife, to give back to the community. Anyways I will give it a chance, cautiously, and worst case scenario it's an opportunity to network. Thanks for the insight!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6656967ba487892e9921b4bb5f12ca72",
"text": "\"I believe no-one who's in a legal line of business would tell you to default voluntarily on your obligations. Once you get an offer that's too good to be true, and for which you have to do something that is either illegal or very damaging to you - it is probably a scam. Also, if someone requires you to send any money without a prior written agreement - its probably a scam as well, especially in such a delicate matter as finances. Your friend now should also be worried about identity theft as he voluntary gave tons of personal information to these people. Bottom line - if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is probably a duck. Your friend had all the warning signs other than a huge neon light saying \"\"Scam\"\" pointing at these people, and he still went through it. For real debt consolidation companies, research well: online reviews, BBB ratings and reviews, time in business, etc. If you can't find any - don't deal with them. Also, if you get promises for debtors to out of the blue give up on some of their money - its a sign of a scam. Why would debtors reduce the debt by 60%? He's paying, he can pay, he is not on the way to bankruptcy (or is he?)? Why did he do it to begin with?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f30a17be73a412245a9ab918311722d7",
"text": "Yes, it is a scam. There is no doubt about it. Never give your bank password to anyone, especially strangers. You will lose your money if you fall for this.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c931860195065d9558dc966e8eae2e83",
"text": "\"Short answer: Yes this is a scam. I see three different possibilities how they get you. I will rank them from \"\"best\"\" to worst Scammer A sends 100$ to you. You then follow his instructions and send back 50$ through WU (this is untraceable). He then contacts his bank and tells them he never intended to send that 100$ to you, then bank will then reverse that transaction and give him back his money, leaving you 50$ short. Scammer A hacks or scams innocent person B and either sends B:s money to you or tricks person B to do it. When person B reports this to the police it will look like you were behind the whole thing. The transaction will be reversed leaving you 50$ short and with unwanted police attention (see this article for an extreme example: https://www.wired.com/2015/10/online-dating-made-woman-pawn-global-crime-plot/) The nice person A wants to send money to a criminal syndicate or terrorist organization but don't want to be associated with it. Leaving you 50$ up (hurray) and possibly on a bunch of terrorist watch lists (ouch!). The extra info you provide wouldn't be necessary for any of these scams but I guess it could be nice to have for some regular identity theft. This is by no means an exhaustive list of all that the scammers could do. It's just a short list to show you how dangerous it would be to play along. To state the obvious, don't walk from this person, RUN!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bae6825690a6c31017606cb7d6fd6596",
"text": "Admins can often be the face (or voice) of a firm that leaves the first impression. You're totally right, you can usually tell what kind of place it is by the way they are treated and the way they treat clients and others. Hopefully she lives up to her impression and not her username!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "56bc6d95b268336280b39839bab6321e",
"text": "it's not a scam. it's not even too good to be true. frankly it's the lowest sign up bonus i've ever seen for a credit card. you would be better off signing up for a flagship card from one of the major banks (e.g. chase sapphire, citi double cash, discover it, amex blue). those cards regularly offer sign up bonuses worth between 400$ and 1000$. however, you can't get all the cards at once. noteably chase has a fairly firm limit of 5 new cards per 24 month. the other banks have similar, less publicized limits on who they will approve for a new card. so, by applying for this amazon card you are hurting your chances of getting far more lucrative sign up bonuses. it is however worth noting that those larger bonuses usually come with a minimum spending requirement (e.g. spend 1k$-3k$ in the first 3 months)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "06dcdb3f6eb90ca6d5b0273dfd74d91e",
"text": "What is she actually doing? Is it illegal? She is running some kind of scam and it is illegal. Quite often these are fronts. Generally people get suspicious if they haven't seen anyone. So you social engineer and someone like this girl would boost in her circle. The fact that she is making $6500 a day is unverified claim. I can say I make 1 million a day :) There is no free money. It is wise of you not to share your Bank details. Stay away as far as possible. Note depending on the country and regulation you could be in trouble with authorities for even knowing / suspecting that someone is committing fraud and not informing authorities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "338231cbc70b8a243b50a393e02af534",
"text": "\"Here we go again! Why, oh why, would someone just open a bank account in your name with that much money for no good reason? Unless there's a very rich relative in your family tree, this can not come to a good ending. Besides, if this was money being left to you by someone as part of an inheritance, you'd hear from attorneys from the estate. Notwithstanding everything @NickR posted about the details of what makes it suspicious, ask yourself why a banker would contact you by email about an account with this much money in it. The bank would, at the very least, send you a registered/certified letter on official stationery. So what happens here is when you give them your banking information, whoever it is that's doing this will clean out your account, and that's for starters. They will ask for enough information to steal your identity too, and if you have good credit, that'll be gone in a heartbeat. The best scams (meaning the most successful ones) always appeal to peoples' greed, using large amounts of money that just miraculously belong to the victim, if only they'd give a little information to \"\"transfer\"\" the money. Worse yet, most of these scams will come up with some kind of \"\"fee\"\", \"\"tax\"\" or other expense that you have to pre-pay in order to make the transfer happen, so this just adds insult to injury when you find out (the hard way!) you've been scammed. DO NOT reply to the email you received or, if you already have, don't send any more responses. If they think they may have you on the hook then they won't stop trying, and it will become very messy very quickly. THIS IS NOT REAL MONEY! It isn't yours, it doesn't really exist, and all it will do is come to no good end if you go any further with it. Stay safe, my friend.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9989b76b4407475d54478507be66a0d5",
"text": "Michael Pryor is 100% correct here. This is almost certainly a scam. If you want confirmation, look at the feedback of the buyers and of folks who buy stuff from them. You'll typically find that they run through a bunch of low value auctions, build up some feedback, then all of the sudden buy and sell lots of laptops or other high-value items. It's a big scam that has been going on for a decade or more. If you are actually trying to sell things like computers overseas, particularly to third world countries, the sign of a legitimate buyer is usually someone who will have you ship to an import-export company who handles the customs stuff and the bureaucratic nonsense required to deal with government on the other side. I had a bunch of Sun equipment in the late 90's that was purchased by folks in Latin America via EBay. They bought from EBay because the local resellers had a monopoly on the products or couldn't get sufficient quantities. All of them used companies, mostly in Miami, which handled the actual export at the customer's expense.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ec456909c2d1c75c5820e40e811a5ee4",
"text": "\"The answers here are all correct. This is 100% scam, beyond any reasonable doubt. Don't fall for it. However, I felt it valuable to explain what would happen were you to fall for this. It's not all that hard to understand, but it involves understanding some of the time delays that exist in modern banking today. The most important thing to understand is that depositing a check does not actually put dollars in your account, even though it appears to. A check is not legal tender for debts public and private. It's a piece of paper known as a \"\"bill of exchange.\"\" It's an authorization for a payee (you), to request that their bank pay you the amount on the check. A transaction made with a check does not actually draw to a close until your bank and their bank communicate and cause the actual transfer of funds to take place. This process is called \"\"clearing\"\" the check. Despite living in the modern times, this process is slow. It can take 7-10 days to clear a check (especially if it is an international bank). This is not good for the banking business. You can imagine how difficult it would be to tell a poor client, who is living paycheck to paycheck, that he can't have his pay until the check clears a week later. Banks have an interest in hiding this annoying feature of the modern banking system, so they do. When you deposit a check, the bank will typically advance you the money (an interest free loan, in effect) while the check \"\"floats\"\" (i.e. until it clears). This creates the illusion that the money is actually in your account for most intents and purposes. (presumably a bank would distinguish between the floating check and a cleared check if you tried to close out your account, but otherwise it looks and feels like the money is in your hands). Of course, if the check is dishonored (because the payer had insufficient funds, or the account simply did not exist), your bank will not get the money. At this moment, they will cancel any advances you received and notify you that the check bounced. Again, this happens 7-10 days later. The general pattern of this scam is that they will pay you by a method which clears slowly, like a check. They will then ask you to withdraw the money using a faster clearing method (like a wire transfer or withdrawing the cash). Typically they will be encouraging you to move quickly (they are on a timetable... when their check bounces, the game is up!) At this time, it will appear as though the account has a positive balance, but in fact it has a negative balance plus an advance on the check. This looks great until 7-10 days later, when the check bounces. At that time, the bank will cancel the advance, and reality will set in. You will now have an open bank account, legally opened by you in your own name, which is deeply in debt. Meanwhile, the scammer walks away with all the money that you sent them (which cleared quickly). There are many variants which can hide the details. Some can play games with check kiting to try to make your first check clear (then try to rope you in for a more painful hit). Some will change the instruments they use (checks are the easy ones, so they're simply most common). Don't try to think \"\"maybe this one is legit.\"\" These scammers literally make a living off of making shady transactions look legit. Things I would recommend looking out for:\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5ce583345d3b1edc1a00356f0e5996be",
"text": "This is a scam. There is no soldier, no money ... This is a story to gain sympathy and make one part with Bank account and other details so that the scammer can make away with your money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "456c1399b8629f00c658ad7617c2ead5",
"text": "It's got every sign of a scam. Signatures are needed on contracts, so you should only place them on below one. Free money sounds too good to be true. Money evading banks is a typical sign of money laundering; why are they trying to avoid paper trails? The normal way to gift money is to just hand it over or pay it to a bank account. If anything, you sign a tax declaration, but you would send that to the taxman yourself.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2a0262bed023fcc3be14a38a1572465b",
"text": "I wonder if your rational thinking is getting confused by the prospects of getting some deposit from that person? He needs, amongst other things : •online access username •online access password Ok, so you have 1000 in your account. They deposit 500 and you are happy. Then they take out all 1500 and you're done :) How can you not think it is a scam when you're giving them your login as well. Here is an analogy. Some stranger asks you for keys of your home (while you're away) and tells you he will just go in place a gift inside your door and go away. Would you give him your keys and come home later expecting a gift to be there and nothing taken away? Is it a scam if the person only wants to deposit into my account, not make a withdrawal? Who is to tell? P.S: Sorry, please don't mind the rest of this answer but from it could also be related to a new relationship that you are in. Going ahead with this might cause you a lot of emotional harm as well. You seemingly trust that person when there are obvious signs that you are being defrauded, possibly in the name of love.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "91b5aa73a2814feb10523862666ae38a",
"text": "> Finally, she found notice from PayPal that a new e-mail address had been successfully added to her account! As far as she can tell, nothing was stolen, and she's changed and increased security for all her passwords. What's really weird is that PayPal looked into it, and reported that the request to add the new address came from (or had been well spoofed to look that way) our ISP, and our address. PayPal could say to within a few seconds when it happened, and it was at a time when all the humans here were asleep. The cats disclaim any interest in the computers Any hackers out there? If this was the doings of the insurance company, how would they have done this?",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
722457e44afbdd6cc0a4236392812457
|
What forms of payment am I compelled to accept?
|
[
{
"docid": "f92d29b145907a0e067d913ff84eeed4",
"text": "\"The confusion comes from ambiguity in popular belief -- that businesses are required to accept x_y_x as payment. In reality, a business can state the terms of a transaction to their pleasure. On the other hand, debt is different -- no lender can refuse cash or other legal tender for repayment of debt. Sometimes, people try to split hairs and argue \"\"Well, if I eat a steak and I owe the restaurant $100, they should have to accept my $100 as tender for the debt of my meal.\"\" Not true. The restaurant isn't giving you a line of credit, they're billing you after services rendered, and your payment is due on their terms.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8ae5ee4dee30d3f64c7745fc56b20495",
"text": "I think cash, travelers checks (little iffy about this one: they're legal tender cash equivalents), and money orders are the only ones that you'd be a little weird to not accept. You certainly don't have to accept regular checks, credit cards, or barter. In the end though, you don't HAVE to accept anything. Accept only small bills, accept only checks from certain banks, accept only the diners card. Your sale, your rules.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "12b40e074513538ce68402423a6b9317",
"text": "I just listened to a podcast on this topic this week, and Satanicpuppy is pretty much correct. If you are interested, here is a link to the podcast on Legal Lad: Can Businesses Refuse to Accept Cash?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4ad08fc0ab8ad1ece6c26bf0a5529da4",
"text": "When you're selling something through a provider, like Craig's List or newspapers, the only thing that may limit your choices is the provider. They may refuse your post if it's against their rules or the law. But luckily they usually don't limit or enforce certain payment choices. These private business providers have the right to do so if they want. You don't need to be their customer. They may state their terms for using the service and even refuse service (before any payment is made). The fun part is that you may do so as well. Just remember to state your terms in your post so the prospective buyers are aware of them. I've found it best to put payment and delivery terms in separate lines so that they are easily noticeable, for example: Nice victorian handbasket with gold embroidery, only used once. Signed by the original author. Comes with a certificate of authenticity. No delivery, only cash payments.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "6deab0b0a73d54fc96fce6a32d886ccb",
"text": "I'm not a lawyer, and am certainly not familiar with your jurisdiction, but the general guidelines I've seen around this kind of situation are: If all else fails, you could just cancel the card, though I'm not sure what liability you have to honour the contract. I cancelled a card once to stop being charged by a particularly annoying company and had no problems, but I'm not sure if that is a good way to deal with it in general.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a46e30f4bc33d0e7cd964393fe909451",
"text": "Beg, plead, whimper, and hope they take pity on you. Sorry, but there's no way to force someone to take less than you legitimately owe them except to declare bankrupty, and even that may not do it. If they aren't interested in throwing away $3000, your best bet really is to try to arrange a payment plan, or to get a loan from somewhere and pay that back over time. Of course either of those options is likely to cost you interest, but that's what happens... I wish I could say something else, but there really isn't any good news here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "efc61f4ca2cbf4747a962aacb18f1111",
"text": "There are two separate cases here that people are not separating. Any card will allow you to pay an amount not exceeding the actually posted charges. Some cards will allow you to pay more than this, some will not. My parents have deliberately overpaid as a means of having a higher credit limit, I've been denied (different card) when trying to do the same thing and the website wouldn't even allow me to pay temporary charges that hadn't yet become real. (A human operator would allow paying those, though.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8bb67dbef75bc0e21447b957487b2d92",
"text": "You can split payments, and nobody judges you because most prepaid cards are actually gift cards. They just think you have generous friends. When you use Visa/MC at a vendor, they get dinged around 2-3% plus 35 cents flat-rate. So when you ask them to charge 77 cents to the card, you're essentially asking they give half of it to Visa/MC. Which is unfair. A charity won't turn it down, but it's wasted. So how do you solve this problem? If you see a small merchant using Square or PayPal Here, their merchant agreements charge a flat rate (2.75% and 2.70% respectively) with no flat rate per transaction. If you see they are on PayPal/Square, go for it. Obviously PayPal itself doesn't have that problem, because they have a really, really good deal with Visa and Mastercard. So feel free to buy yourself credit on your PayPal account with these residual values. Amazon probably has a similar deal. You are getting these small amounts because you aim to pay a $22.69 bill with a card that has $25 on it. Reasonable, but it causes this. Flip it around: pay a $22.69 bill with a card that has $20 on it, consume the $20 value, and pay the $2.69 in cash. You may need to tell the cashier exactly the amount to charge (e.g. $20.00) especially if it is a Visa/MC card. It will certainly go faster if you do. The cashier may be able to pull up the balance, but it's an extra procedure, and an inexperienced cashier may struggle with it / have to call the manager etc. - not worth it in my book.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b1b626a6a93f933925f5e3d6ad2d08dd",
"text": "\"I bought a car a few years ago. The salesman had the order, I knew the car I wanted and we had a price agreed on. When I refused the payment plan/loan, his manager came over and did a hard sell. \"\"99% of buyers take the financing\"\" was the best he could do. I told him I was going to be part of the 1%. With rates so low, his 2 or 3% offer was higher than my own cost of money. He went so far as to say that I could just pay it off the first month. Last, instead of accepting a personal check and letting me pick up the car after it cleared, he insisted on a bank check to start the registration process. (This was an example of one dealer, illustrating the point.) In other cases, for a TV, a big box store (e.g. Best Buy) isn't going to deal for cash, but a small privately owned \"\"mom and pop\"\" shop might. The fees they are charged are pretty fixed, they don't pay a higher fee cause I get 2% cash back, vs your mastercard that might offer less.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0f7cc2ac0ed54ac2c5192299ce554b1a",
"text": "I have a PayPal account that I have linked to my bank account. My PayPal balance is always $0. When I make a purchase with PayPal, PayPal will automatically withdraw the funds from my bank account to make the purchase. PayPal does not ask my permission for each purchase. I probably gave them permission to do this when I linked my bank account. Or perhaps the PayPal purchase process includes this permission. I don't read the text closely. Or I should add, that I probably read it at one point, but since I do it on a regular basis, I don't read it now, and I don't recall what is on the checkout page.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2254fe416d8e60c86d1f4473f3238fe0",
"text": "Update: it looks like this may no longer be a requirement. I was able to withdraw from TreasuryDirect into another bank account without issue.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f1ff502edeca8b9aa55cce01a654cb0e",
"text": "\"A business can refuse cash (paper currency) payment pretty much in all cases provided it's a reasonable policy and/or notified during/in advance of contracting. Details in this link. \"\"all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services.\"\" Even if the payment is being made to settle a debt or other obligation, the creditor may refuse payment if their rationale is reasonable (as determined by the courts).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "36320d5d3ef4f2c73640925da28ba1b3",
"text": "Generally, credit card networks (as opposed to debit/ATM cards that may or may not have Visa/MC logos) have a rule that a merchant must accept any credit card with their logo. Visa rules for merchants in the US say it explicitly: Accept all types of valid Visa cards. Although Visa card acceptance rules may vary based on country specific requirements or local regulations, to offer the broadest possible range of payment options to cardholder customers, most merchants choose to accept all categories of Visa debit, credit, and prepaid cards.* Unfortunately the Visa site for China is in Chinese, so I can't find similar reference there. You can complain against a merchant who you think had violated Visa rules here. That said, its not a law, its a contract between the merchant processor and the Visa International organization, and merchants are known to break these rules here and there (most commonly - refusing to accept foreign cards, including in the US). Also, local laws may affect these contracts (for example, in the US it is legal to set minimum amount requirements when accepting credit cards). This only affects credit card processing, and merchants that don't accept credit cards may still accept debit cards since those work in different networks, under a different set of rules. Those who accept credit cards, are also required to accept debit cards (at least if used as credit).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "93e9804405a65dd7514e7995151eec43",
"text": "You have to take legal tender to settle a debt. If your business model doesn't involve the customer incurring a debt that is then settled, you don't have to take cash. For example, in a restaurant where you pay after eating, you can insist on paying cash, because you're settling a debt. But in McDonald's they can refuse your cash at the counter, because you've not received your food yet and so no debt has been incurred.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "842264f7e67962cdd9820c15a852e5f3",
"text": "The Federal Reserve website notes that creditors must accept cash for debts on services already rendered, but that businesses may refuse cash for services not yet rendered unless prohibited by local law. The Treasury website includes examples of businesses limiting what cash they will accept: For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "df04bf973dfc980c682ed0adc5d14843",
"text": "It sounds cold, but the law has to hold people to their agreements. There are exceptions for unconscionable terms, but I don't think this gets close to that level. This is certainly audacious, but not quite shocking to the conscience. Maybe there's an argument to be made regarding whether a reasonably prudent person in the party's position would have known what they were agreeing to under the circumstances (depending upon how the provision was presented), but without a lot more information we can't say whether that angle has a snowball's chance in hell. You should read the terms governing every important agreement you enter into. It sounds like a huge burden, but for any major undertaking you really do need to grit your teeth and trawl through the whole thing. If you don't like what you find, ask for a second look from a lawyer to confirm your suspicions, or just walk away. Bank service agreements, loan/mortgage applications, major venue reservations, and employment contracts (ESPECIALLY employment contracts!) all deserve that much time. Typically the terms you might not like are address circumstances that, as a practical matter, don't really concern you, but you might be surprised at how often you find deal-breakers like this crawling around in the woodwork.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3eafc311a47898fc86cd2c0adc1a07ff",
"text": "Legal Tender means you have to accept that money as payment for a legal (as in not illegal) debt. If I'm in country X, and we go to court over a dispute of a debt, the law in most places is that the court will insist the debt be paid in the local legal tender at a specific amount. As others already said below - taxes, etc -those are debts. Eating at a restaurant is a debt (you ate it already) Filling up with gas without paying first is a debt. Employees work for you build up debt. But in any private transaction where there is no debt, people are free to do whatever they want (let's ignore discrimination laws and whatnot for this discussion, mmkay?). You can come into my store and I can insist that today I'll only accept euros. Or jelly beans. Or I can choose to simply not do business with you. We are two free people who are under no obligation to do business with each other, and if we choose to, how we choose to remunerate each other for that business is completely up to us. (How I pay the sales tax on that transaction, though, well, thats' between me and the tax authorites, and will be in the local legal tender)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f3c332fbce2b61f308b02c595062977e",
"text": "Ok so this is the best information I could get! It is a guarantee from a financial institution that payment will be made for items or services once certain requirements are met. Let me know if this helps! I'll try to get more info in the meantime.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9ad235adbc365a7f267a915eb6b63ab2",
"text": "Per their merchant agreements, Visa and MasterCard say that the signature on the back of the card is the proper way to identify the card holder. If a card is not signed, the merchant is supposed to check your ID and make you sign the card before accepting it for payment. Merchants are not allowed the require an ID for paying with a signed card. Of course, store employees rarely know all these things. Some will gladly accept an unsigned card. Some will try to make you show your ID.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
8475ebe13c509823a70a3162fc5b6ea3
|
What happens if a purchase is $0.02 in Canada?
|
[
{
"docid": "ed7216d70ae4bad46de9d20e5d88ca18",
"text": "As someone who works for a company that deploys POS systems in Canada, I can tell you that your best bet would be to have a configuration option that lets the client decide what to do. If they have a business practice that would allow for a sale total to be $0.01 or $0.02, they should first evaluate their business practice. If you're building a POS system to deploy in Canada, I'm sure you have access to resources (potential clients) who would already know how they would want to handle this. Ask them.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8e35e549848daf278c5eebdd3e1c4201",
"text": "The rounding should always follow the same rule. If the value ends in .01 or .02 then you round to .00. Doesn't matter if it's 10.01 rounding to 10.00 or 0.01 to 0.00. The decision on what a company wants to do if an invoice total is $0.01 or $0.02 would be up to the company. The POS system should follow the rule and round to $0.00 if the method of payment is cash, but the company has the right to not give things away for free. They can impose a minimum cash invoice amount of $0.05. But you would do this by requiring the customer to add more items to their purchase. You couldn't just round the invoice up to $0.05 and to charge them $0.05 for a $0.01 item It would be similar to companies having a minimum purchase amount when paying by credit card. If their minimum amount is $10.00 and you want to buy something that's $5.00, you either pay cash or add something to your order. They don't just charge you $10.00 for your $5.00 item. I think this would be a extreme edge case where you have an invoice with a total of $0.01 or $0.02, without any discounts, partial payments, etc. If the customer's total was $10.01 and they paid with a $10.00 gift card, the final amount owing of $0.01 would round down to $0.00 and they wouldn't owe any more. If they had paid cash, the total would have rounded to $10.00 anyway. Similarly, if the customer returned an item and bought a new item, or used coupons, and the total owing was $0.01 or $0.02, then you would round down to $0.00 and they wouldn't pay anything. As BobbyScon said, you can implement some options to allow the company to decide how they want to handle this. You could have an option that doesn't allow a sale to be processed if the total amount is less than $0.03 and the sale doesn't include any discounts, returned items, coupons, etc. The option could be to completely block the sale, require a supervisor override, or just display a warning to the cashier. Best bet is to talk to as many of your current or potential clients as you can to see how they would like this edge case handled. For many, it's probably a mute case since they wouldn't have items that have a unit price less than $0.03. Maybe a place like a hardware store that sells individual nuts, bolts, and washers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c9a42e8d6987481747c2211d779c067c",
"text": "I'd imagine in this extreme edge case it would round down to $0. I can't fathom what makes $10.02 or $153.02 any different from $0.02.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a4370d67184d731bc7e118aca47f90f9",
"text": "I think it should be free. Why? I had a coupon for 35, I bought something for 35.01 including taxes and total to pay was 0.01, rounded to 0.00. I think it's almost the same scenario.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "1a404654ead22b2255f0566d521035db",
"text": "\"@sdg's answer is spot-on with the advice to avoid repeated conversions, but I'd like to provide some specifics on the fees involved: Each time you round-trip Canadian dollars (CAD) through a U.S.-dollar (USD) priced security at TD Waterhouse and leave your proceeds in CAD, you're paying a total foreign exchange fee – implied in their rate spread – of about 3%, give or take. That's ~3% per buy & sell combination, or ~1.5% on each end. You can imagine if you trade back & forth frequently, you can quickly lose a lot of money. Do it back and forth ten times in a year and you're out ~30% on the fees alone! The TD U.S. Money Market Fund (TDB166) that TD Waterhouse is referring to has no direct commission to buy or sell, but it does have a Management Expense Ratio (MER) of 0.20% per year – basically a fee which is deducted from the fund's returns (which, today, are also close to zero.) Practically speaking, that's a very slim fee to hold some USD in your Canadian dollar TFSA. While 0.20% is cheap, a point to keep in mind is if you maintain a significant USD balance, you are maintaining currency risk: You can lose money in CAD terms if the CAD appreciates vs. USD. Additional references: Canadian Capitalist describes TD Waterhouse and the use of TDB166 and \"\"wash trades\"\" at How to \"\"Wash\"\" Your Trade? He's referring to RRSPs, but the same applies to TFSAs, which came out after the post was written. Canadian Couch Potato has two relevant articles: Are US-listed ETFs Really Cheaper? and Lowering Your Currency Exchange Fees.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5158f026ede7c9b5abeba327ca1c33c0",
"text": "So in your screenshot, someone or some group of someones is willing to buy 3,000 shares at $3.45, and someone or some group of someones is willing to sell 2,000 shares at 3.88. Without getting in to the specific mechanics, you can place a market buy order for 10 (or whatever number) shares and it will probably transact at $3.88 per share because that's the lowest price for which someone will currently sell their shares. As a small fish, you can generally ignore the volume notations in the bid/ask quotes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c12bc3175fa0e13e7583371e1891a8ba",
"text": "In theory, when you obtained ownership of your USD cash as a Canadian resident [*resident for tax purposes, which is generally a quicker timeline than being resident for immigration purposes], it is considered to have been obtained by you for the CAD equivalent on that date. For example if you immigrated on Dec 31, 2016 and carried $10k USD with you, when the rate was ~1.35, then Canada deems you to have arrived with $13.5k CAD. If you converted that CAD to USD when the rate was 1.39, you would have received 13.9k CAD, [a gain of $400 to show as income on your tax return]. Receiving the foreign inheritances is a little more complex; those items when received may or may not have been taxable on that day. However whether or not they were taxable, you would calculate a further gain as above, if the fx rate gave you more CAD when you ultimately converted it. If the rate went the other way and you lost CAD-value, you may or may not be able to claim a loss. If it was a small loss, I wouldn't bother trying to claim it due to hassle. If it's a large loss, I would be very sure to research thoroughly before claiming, because something like that probably has a high chance of being audited.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b5e4f3d6fb848aeba5ab9dc132673cca",
"text": "\"Occassionaly a trader will make a blatant mistake. A customer calls to buy 100 shares at $10, and the trader by mistake enters \"\"10 shares at $100\"\". You get one very happy seller :-) In the USA, it doesn't happen often for sales, because if the trader offers to sell 10 shares at $100, there will be nobody accepting the other. In Japan, with one dollar equal to 120 Yen, the same mistake would mean that someone wanted to sell 100 shares at 1200 Yen, and the trader enters 1200 shares for 100 Yen, then you will get a happy buyer, and a massive loss.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8c924f196d6c4d0c392a1e94967d8ebd",
"text": "You should start a dispute with the credit card company, and they might be able to recover some/all of the money. Usually, if you act fast enough, credit companies (on the merchant's side) have enough of the deposits not yet disbursed to the merchant, and they'll just reverse the charge. The earlier you start the process - the more chances you have. Otherwise you'll have to sue, I'm not familiar with the Canadian legal system.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e0a671734512500e733a71357cfd6b3b",
"text": "If you aren't familiar with Norbert's Gambit, it's worth looking at. This is a mechanism using a Canadian brokerage account to simultaneously execute one stock trade in CAD and one in USD. The link I provided claims that it only starts potentially making sense somewhere in the 10,000+ range.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "302477bcb2eda09a78915b86bcdbb8b0",
"text": "Could you not just say that you had bought it when it was pennies on the dollar and made the millions that way? There isn't much of a transaction record, is there? I also just realized that I don't understand how taxes work in that situation. If you have a different currency from the U.S. Dollar, and it increases in value greatly, do you have to pay tax on that increased value relative to the U.S. dollar? They don't when it's minimal increases.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9c7b4c73d0cfa05f6db8ec14315332e2",
"text": "Suppose you're a European Company, selling say a software product to a US company. As much as you might want the US company to pay you in Euros they might insist (or you'll lose the contract) that you agree pricing in USD. The software is licensed on a yearly recurring amount, say 100K USD per year payable on the 1st January every year. In this example, you know that on the 1st Jan that 100K USD will arrive in your USD bank account. You will want to convert that to Euros and to remove uncertainty from your business you might take out an FX Forward today to remove your currency risk. If in the next 9 months the dollar strengthens against the Euro then notionally you'll have lost out by taking out the forward. Similarly, you've notionally gained if the USD weakens against the EURO. The forward gives you the certainty you need to plan your business.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "26e287a091fd702c5e5f6a22d8b26381",
"text": "If you want to convert more than a few thousand dollars, one somewhat complex method is to have two investment accounts at a discount broker that operations both in Canada and the USA, then buy securities for USD on a US exchange, have your broker move them to the Canadian account, then sell them on a Canadian exchange for CAD. This will, of course, incur trading fees, but they should be lower than most currency conversion fees if you convert more than a few thousand dollars, because trading fees typically have a very small percentage component. Using a currency ETF as the security to buy/sell can eliminate the market risk. In any case, it may take up to a week for the trades and transfer to settle.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a0a837bb59550e224a7b7b583c1f7dc1",
"text": "You shouldn't be charged interest, unless possibly because your purchases involve a currency conversion. I've made normal purchases that happened to involve changes in currency. The prices were quoted in US$ to me. On the tail end, though, the currency change was treated as a cash advance, which accrues interest immediately.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9e424bb3b0e7f90e3c589ee4b3890f1e",
"text": "\"When you hold units of the DLR/DLR.U (TSX) ETF, you are indirectly holding U.S. dollars cash or cash equivalents. The ETF can be thought of as a container. The container gives you the convenience of holding USD in, say, CAD-denominated accounts that don't normally provide for USD cash balances. The ETF price ($12.33 and $12.12, in your example) simply reflects the CAD price of those USD, and the change is because the currencies moved with respect to each other. And so, necessarily, given how the ETF is made up, when the value of the U.S. dollar declines vs. the Canadian dollar, it follows that the value of your units of DLR declines as quoted in Canadian dollar terms. Currencies move all the time. Similarly, if you held the same amount of value in U.S. dollars, directly, instead of using the ETF, you would still experience a loss when quoted in Canadian dollar terms. In other words, whether or not your U.S. dollars are tied up either in DLR/DLR.U or else sitting in a U.S. dollar cash balance in your brokerage account, there's not much of a difference: You \"\"lose\"\" Canadian dollar equivalent when the value of USD declines with respect to CAD. Selling, more quickly, your DLR.U units in a USD-denominated account to yield U.S. dollars that you then directly hold does not insulate you from the same currency risk. What it does is reduce your exposure to other cost/risk factors inherent with ETFs: liquidity, spreads, and fees. However, I doubt that any of those played a significant part in the change of value from $12.33 to $12.12 that you described.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3b449602794cc259348a97fddc5cf7f8",
"text": "From a purely financial standpoint, you should invest using whatever dollars get you the best rate. The general rule of thumb that I've come across is that if you are making another person/company change your money into another nation's currency, they will likely charge a higher exchange rate than you could get yourself. However, it really depends on your situation, how easy it is for you to exchange money, what your exchange rate is, and what your broker is charging you to exchange to USD (if on the off chance this is truly nothing, then stick with CAD). Don't worry about the strength of the USD to CAD too much because converting your money before you make purchases doesn't allow you to buy more shares. For the vast majority of people, trying to work with national currency exchange rates makes things unnecessarily complex.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2daeb39af8f1c38b1ba1698a8be000ea",
"text": "* They have to accept some responsibility for submitting the order multiple times. * If the price had gone up, would UBS be offering to return the shares they didn't mean to purchase? * It hasn't cost them anything yet. Not unless they sell the shares before the prices goes back up (which it likely will eventually).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c4b740c53cd6ff4f2ff8b29ed3c99642",
"text": "I want to shop in the currency that will be cheapest in CAD at any given time. How do you plan to do this? If you are using a debit or credit card on a CAD account, then you will pay that bank's exchange rate to pay for goods and services that are billed in foreign currency. If you plan on buying goods and services from merchants that offer to bill you in CAD for items that are priced in foreign currency (E.g. buying from Amazon.co.uk GBP priced goods, but having Amazon bill your card with equivalent CAD) then you will be paying that merchant's exchange rate. It is very unlikely that either of these scenarios would result in you paying mid-market rates (what you see on xe.com), which is the average between the current ask and bid prices for any currency pair. Instead, the business handling your transaction will set their own exchange rate, which will usually be less favorable than the mid-market rate and may have additional fees/commission bolted on as a separate charge. For example, if I buy 100 USD worth of goods from a US vendor, but use a CAD credit card to pay, the mid-market rate on xe.com right now indicates an equivalent value of 126.97 CAD. However the credit card company is more likely to charge closer to 130.00 CAD and add a foreign transaction fee of maybe $2-3, or a percentage of the transaction value. Alternatively, if using something like Amazon, they may offer to bill the CAD credit card in CAD for those 100 USD goods. No separate foreign transaction fee in this case, but they are still likely to exchange at the less favorable 130.00 rate instead of the mid-market rates. The only way you can choose to pay in the cheapest equivalent currency is if you already have holdings of all the different currencies. Then just pay using whichever currency gets you the most bang for your buck. Unless you are receiving payments/wages in multiple currencies though, you're still going to have to refill these accounts periodically, thus incurring some foreign transaction fees and being subject to the banker's exchange rates. Where can I lookup accurate current exchange rates for consumers? It depends on who will be handling your transaction. Amazon will tell you at the checkout what exchange rate they will apply if you are having them convert a bill into your local currency for you. For credit/debit card transactions processed in a different currency than the attached account, you need to look at your specific agreement or contact the bank to see which rate they use for daily transactions (and where you can obtain these rates), whether they convert on the day of the transaction vs. the day it posts to your account, and how much they add on ($ and/or %) in fees and commission.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1b56332284074941947f1f4196a9f43a",
"text": "\"I don't know Canada very well, but can offer some general points when considering where to park your emergency fund. Savings rates are currently low, but then so is inflation. Always bear in mind that inflation decreases the value of your money, so if you're getting 4% interest and inflation is 2%, you're making 2% gross in real terms. If you're getting 2% and inflation is close to zero, you're actually earning a similar amount, it's just the numbers are going up more slowly. Obviously when and how much tax you pay affects the actual return, it's just worth bearing in mind that low interest and low inflation are actually not that bad a savings environment as they first appear. For an emergency fund the key thing is ease of access, consider keeping some portion of your savings in an instant access account for those emergencies that happen when the banks are closed. In the UK there are various tax-free savings options, I'm guessing Canada has a few too, if so you should explore those options. While these may not have attractive headline rates, you don't pay tax on the interest, this can make them much more competitive (4% tax free is the same as 5% gross if you would have to pay tax at 20%). Normally tax free investments have caps so once you've invested a set amount you can't add anymore. This may be a consideration if you regularly dip into your emergency fund as you might not easily be able to build it up again. My approach is to have about 90% of my \"\"rainy day\"\" fund in easily accessible but tax free savings. This discourages me from spending it unless I really need to. I then keep a slush fund sufficient to cover every day disasters (boiler packing up, needing a hire car for a week etc) in instant access accounts .\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
31536700d8e8e02e59f46cfa10931c51
|
Is a website/domain name an asset or a liability?
|
[
{
"docid": "7b8f26b9c664f83164a67fe7323ab686",
"text": "\"This depends on your definitions of assets and liabilities. The word \"\"asset\"\" has a fairly straight forward definition. Generally speaking, an asset in finance is something that you own/control that has economic value. The asset has value because it is generating income for you or because you expect that it will be worth something to someone in the future. \"\"Liability\"\" is tougher to define, and depends on context. In accounting, a liability is a debt or obligation that is owed. It is essentially the opposite of an asset; where an asset represents something of value that you own, increasing your balance sheet, a liability is a value that you owe, decreasing your balance sheet. In that sense, a website or domain name that you own is an asset, not a liability, because it is something you own that has some value. It is not a debt. Many people use the word \"\"liability\"\" informally to refer to a bad asset: something that is losing value or is causing more in expenses than it is generating in income. (See definition #5 on Wiktionary.) With this definition, you might consider a website or a domain name a liability if it is losing money. Alternatively, depending on your business, you might not consider it an asset or a liability, but an expense instead. An expense is a cost of doing business. For example, if your business is selling something, you might need a website to make that happen. The website isn't purchased as an investment, and it might not have any value apart from your business. It is simply a necessary expense for your business.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "418d1c8eb7b3bcbfe3ed9d3b91e0f720",
"text": "In an accounting position, a domain name would fall under an intangible asset. Copyrights and patents are intangible, while tangible assets would be buildings or land (also known as property, plant, and equipment). Noting above, you can list it as an expense for personal reasons, but that would be poor classification. Tangible and intangible assets come with expenses such as legal fees and design. In these instances, you would expense the cost, or fee, but add back that value to the tangible or intangible as it would be considered maintenance. Please read here for tax treatment of a domain name. Please read here for what an intangible asset is. Also read here on page 11 for more clarification by IFRS.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "f83e907fd4c969acb36a4db865744b4d",
"text": "I've read over these responses like a dozen times. It's really cool hearing from a business owner who has experienced things first-hand. Nobody in my family has ever been or known anything about business/stocks/Anything. I'm learning everything from the internet, friends, and now reddit. I'll certainly seek true legal advice but you have no idea how helpful you and every other person on this thread has been. Thank you! I'm all ears to anything else",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a25b57209b7b65d9120b4099816dbf27",
"text": "Generally, the answer is as follows: If there is a legal obligation to pay cash flow (including the possibility of court determined restructuring), then it is debt. If the asset owner is not guaranteed any cash flow, but instead owns the *residual* cash flow from the operations of the business (I.e. the cash flow left-over), then it is equity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "84fc8436480e8a494420b0c68ea08c25",
"text": "\"I think you misunderstand the purpose of the liability account. I would suggest you review the standard accounting model, but to give you a brief overview: Income and expenses are money coming into and out of your possession. They are the pipes flowing into and out of your \"\"box\"\". Inside your box, you have assets (bank, savings, cash, etc) and liabilities (credit cards, unpaid debts, etc). Money can flow into and out of either asset or liability accounts, for example: deposit a payment (income to asset), buy office supplies with cash (asset to expense), pay a bill with credit card (liability to expense), customer pays one of your debts directly (income to liability). Paying off a debt with an asset does not affect your overall net worth, so paying a check to your credit card bill (asset to liability) doesn't decrease your total balance, it merely moves the value from one bucket to another. Now to your question: Mandatory payments, such as taxes or insurance (or for that matter, utilities, rent, food- all things that \"\"must\"\" be bought occasionally) are not liabilities, instead they are all expenses. They might be paid FROM a liability account, if they are paid on credit for example, but the money still flows from liability to expense. In my own records I have Expense:Taxes and Expense:Insurance, with sub-accounts in each. Where the money comes from depends entirely on how I pay my bills, whether from cash or banks (asset) or whether it's a charge (liability). Sometimes you receive payments back from an insurance company. I find that rather than treating insurance premiums as a positive balance in a liability (with eventual payments as debits to the liability account), it is better to treat any payment from the insurance as income. Hope that helps!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "771ef6ae92da14c94bcd4eba78e1270b",
"text": "\"Technical people on Reddit who have dealt with Oracle or similar web sites & systems (myself included) seem to believe that Oregon's claims come down to whether it was Oracle or the state government who was worse at planning the creation and maintenance of Oregon's healthcare web site. I tend to think that government entities are often worse at managing & planning things, and therefore believe that Oracle would be less likely to blame, but this doesn't necessarily mean that all of the more than dozen claims for damages will all be thrown out either. One key claim is that Oracle asserted that ~95% of the web site's functionality would work \"\"out of the box\"\", thus leaving only 5% of the web site's functionality requiring third party (potentially custom) integration. The burden is on Oregon to prove that the failures of the web site were the result of more than that 5%, and that Oracle was contractually obligated to fix issues with the \"\">5%\"\" at no additional charge. Failure to prove that would result in Oracle being justified in asking for more $ to fix the web site, such that the alleged racketeering and much of the fraud did not actually take place.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "558f752b8e4d53038da7f1fad1c7b577",
"text": "One company owns majority of popular freelancing websites (elance included) Aside from the race to the bottom pricing happening for projects; customer is always right. Lots of stories of even a pip from a client freezing accounts -- not even just a project, your whole account with any ongoing projects. Everything gone. Thousands lost. Not worth it. No recourse.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3e89abafad08bda7125659f6655dfd39",
"text": "Assets with zero value, perhaps. Unless you can prove that they have resale value. Good luck with that. In other words, not worth spending time on.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ebebc5c60545ce9fcf8ba4c35d204b25",
"text": "Fellow dirty jerz resident here. I would highly recommend going the llc route. If, god forbid, anything ever happened and you were sued, the llc will contain all losses and your personal assets will not be at risk. I'm not sure about the timing of clients. Better to ask a lawyer - cheap to use online services like rocketlawyer (sp?)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8378244dc29df4226efa9ea00b22aaf4",
"text": "Yes, you do. Unless you actually donate it, the loan will be repaid and as such - is an asset for you. On your taxes you report the interest you got paid for the loan. You can claim the interest as a charitable deduction, if you don't effectively charge any (IRS dictates minimum statutory interests for arm-length loan transactions).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9797c3ae43e312e7a4e29c26a0f28f57",
"text": "If i am not wrong, any business activities such should be declared on Year End Tax filing. If your friend is going to own that website either it is commercial or nonprofit, he has to declare in the year end taxation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f89ed67b5f0774d7905ab336c87cbb9a",
"text": "REITs can be classified as equity, mortgage, or hybrid. A security that sells like a stock on the major exchanges and invests in real estate directly, either through properties or mortgages. Trades like equity but the underlying is a property ot mortgage. So you are investing in real estate but without directly dealing with it. So you wouldn't classify it as real estate. CD looks more like a bond.If you look at the terms and conditions they have many conditions as a bond i.e. callable, that is a very precious option for both the buyer and seller. Self occupied house - Yes an asset because it comes with liabilities. When you need to sell it you have to move out. You have to perform repairs to keep it in good condition. Foreign stock mutual fund - Classify it as Foreign stocks, for your own good. Investments in a foreign country aren't the same as in your own country. The foreign economy can go bust, the company may go bust and you would have limited options of recovering your money sitting at home and so on and so forth.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "90064678db84cc09897194a1ff7108ba",
"text": "\"Maybe not the official solution satisfying int'l convention / legislation, but at least has some logic to it (though I myself am not 100% convinced as yet): Liabilities ! ... but is it really a liability? Rationale: And simultaneously ups my liabilities: since what difference does it make if I borrow some money (to use it or not use it, repay later) or if someone just wants to \"\"store\"\" some money with me: w.r.t. balance sheet I'd say: zero... ... with the one caveat that it might make a difference w.r.t. taxation ?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4ea38d521dc9ddf679ca1260bc44b9d4",
"text": "You mean sites like prosper.com? I see that they are growing but is this really substainable when the novely wears off? Also I find the low volatility claim interesting since I thought low vol portfolios would be a hard sell. How have you experienced this?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "13ab27f6adec8293954d5fffd3caaefc",
"text": "Quite a bit as in, $100K+? If you're a sole operator, not sure what constitutes a real likelihood that a risk of liability will materialize, and in need of a lot of up front financing, I am genuinely concerned that you're going to a lay a giant egg on this one. What is it your business is going to be doing? I don't really want to give a free consultation, but I'm worried you're either misunderstanding something or about to make a mistake, and I don't want to see that happen.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "37e2d6eedafa33632362dc3b7976108c",
"text": "The difference is downside risk. Your CD, assuming you are in the US and the CD is purchased from a deposit bank, will be FDIC insured, your $10,000 is definitely coming back to you. Your stock portfolio has no such guarantee and can lose money. Your potential upside is theoretically correlated to the risk that some or all of your money may not be returned to you.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8d72a2287e6187ab29b5c58818cd1e8f",
"text": "\"Alternatively you could exercise 12000 shares for $36000 and immediately sell 7200 shares to recover your exercise price. Then you use the remaining 4800 share to pay the exercise price of the remaining 8000 options. Both scenarios are equivalent but may have different fees associated, so it's worth checking the fine print. Tax wise: The above example is \"\"cash neutral before taxes\"\". The taxes associated with these transaction are substantial, so it's highly recommended to talk with a tax adviser. \"\"cash neutral after taxes\"\" depends highly on your specific tax situation.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
c90a610ca490a15bcf44c0ffa6959715
|
Uncashed paycheck 13 years old
|
[
{
"docid": "bbf0bca0b4f5691d503ffa0bcb7eaca7",
"text": "Under US law, a bank is not obligated to honor a check that is more than six months old. § 4-404. BANK NOT OBLIGED TO PAY CHECK MORE THAN SIX MONTHS OLD. A bank is under no obligation to a customer having a checking account to pay a check, other than a certified check, which is presented more than six months after its date, but it may charge its customer's account for a payment made thereafter in good faith. Note the law says the bank is not OBLIGATED to honor the check, but they are not forbidden from doing so. I don't have a survey on this, but I think most banks won't honor a check after more than 6 months to a year. I've had a few occasions where early in the year someone accidentally wrote the previous year on a check, like on January 10, 2017 they dated the check January 10, 2016, and the bank has given me a hard time about cashing it. The statute of limitations to challenge payment or non-payment of a check is 6 years: § 3-118. STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS. (b) Except as provided in subsection (d) or (e), if demand for payment is made to the maker of a note payable on demand, an action to enforce the obligation of a party to pay the note must be commenced within six years after the demand. I understand your frustration about being denied money that you presumably worked for and earned. But look at it from the other side. Suppose you wrote a check to someone, and years later they still had not cashed it. At some point you'd want to be able to clear this off your bank account. What if you want to close the account? What happens when you die? Would your heirs have to keep this account open for years ... decades ... centuries ... on the possibility that someday someone will cash this check? Realistically, there has to be SOME time limit. 6 months should be plenty of time for someone to make it to the bank with a check. If the company still exists then you could argue they have a MORAL obligation to pay you. If they have records that show that they did indeed give you this check and you never cashed it there'd be no question that you were trying to cheat them. But a moral obligation and a legal obligation are two different things. Legally, they paid you, and it's your problem that you failed to cash the check. You could talk to a lawyer, but if you live in the US, I think you are out of luck. (Of course other countries have different laws.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a10fe96aca42c4058c474f1aea797326",
"text": "Even going to small claims court the burden would be on you to prove that they never paid you. The 13 year gap would be the core of the argument by the company that they have no obligation to keep records from 13 years ago. That is far longer than they need to keep them for tax purposes. Even if they sent you a replacement check the next year, that happened to me once, the record of that transaction would have been 12 years ago. The bank will not cash it because of the date being 13 years ago. As we move forward with more and more of the checks being deposited via phone/scanner the banks will be even less likely to handle stale checks because the fact you have the check in your hand doesn't mean it wasn't cashed.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5ea513054d54b867e7794c67e2ed4338",
"text": "\"If this is in the United States, there are laws governing business behavior when they have recorded expenses (checks, bills, etc) which are never withdrawn or deposited. A business is required to turn over these funds after a certain time frame to the state government as a part of their business tax cycle. (One caveat- these laws vary in age by state, and 13 years is a long time. You might still be out of luck for an amount so old..) There are even businesses which have cropped up to search for \"\"lost money\"\" (for a fee, of course) that your great uncle might have left behind and which now sits in a government holding account somewhere. It's not necessary to go through the third parties though, because the United States posts this information for the world to see. A good starting place is: USA.gov Unclaimed Money Tool Do as much legwork there as you can. You could even attempt to contact the former employer (you said the business accounts still exist) and in a very friendly, non-confrontational manner ask them what their procedures are and would have happened to your paycheck funds. As others have stated, they are under no legal obligation whatsoever to fix your problem for you, but who knows, you could get lucky and they might voluntarily help you out! You're looking for information not cash, so politeness, patience and understanding are your tools. If all else fails, you could try one of these 3rd party services. Here you run into diminishing returns as paying fees to search for money which might not exist just puts you further in the red.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "a3cfcbf32f2dfe015d7fbd95f4506a79",
"text": "I wish I could up vote your comment more. I think that a lot of people do not understand that kids held minimum wage jobs that paid minimum wages, but adults received more money. At some point kids stopped working as much and adults kept or took over what was traditionally a kids first job. Those first jobs like working at McDonald's were never meant to be the only job a person had.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ede5ee05e12555948d4b99b7e4d4e0c8",
"text": "\"Well, primarily because that's fraud and fraud prevents a debtor from receiving a discharge in bankruptcy court. Fraud would be pretty easy to prove if you didn't have an income change and you have several lines of credit opened on and around the same day with almost no payments made toward them. Additionally, thanks to the reforms of the bankruptcy code, if your income exceeds the median income of your state you'll be forced in to a Chapter 13 and committed to a repayment plan that allocates all of your \"\"disposable income\"\" to your creditors. Now if whoever posted that will attempt to simply not pay then negotiate repayment plans with their creditors the process will last far longer than 7 years. It takes a long time to be in default for enough time that a consumer creditor will negotiate the debt and this is assuming the creditor doesn't sue you and get a judgement which could apply liens to any property you may own. The judgment(s) will likely cause you to pursue bankruptcy anyway; only now you're at least a few years beyond the point at which you ruined your credit.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e56cdc6054207dc13936e466cdbf7d33",
"text": "\"Bankruptcy should be your last option, and you will find that BK will not resolve most of your problems, and create many more problems. There are two kinds of BK that are available to the average person, Ch13 debt repayment and Ch7 liquidation. Both have severe repercussions and lasting effects on your credit (7-10 years, after discharge). And the calculations required under the 2005 BAPCPA are complex and may require help to understand. Ch7 liquidation is the more severe course, and the trustee would liquidate assets that exceed exemptions (vary by state) to pay your creditors. Ch13 debt repayment is hard, and only 20-25% of those who pursue that route complete the debt repayment plan. Your credit score for either course would suffer greatly (200-250 points) and would remain reduced for years, especially since you would have to rebuild credit. And the law is flawed both in design and execution as there is no reward for successful debt repayment, few finish their repayment plan (20-25%), the mean recovery for unsecured creditors in repayment is zero (thus does not help creditors), and leaves the debtor with damaged credit for years (not a fresh start). Although you may have made some decisions that have placed you in a difficult position, you can find solutions to resolve these problems. You may find that simply learning to make better choices will improve your situation. Take a financial education course (such as the Dave Ramsey course), and learn how to budget, and make better choices. The LearnVest website offers a simple way to budget by dividing budgeting into only three (3) categories with suggested percentages for each, essentials (<50%), financial priorities (>20%), and lifestyle (<30%). The damage to your credit from the derogatory effects of BK would linger for years, but the damage from poor payment history declines much quicker, and loses most of the effect after 2 years (and should you keep the accounts open, leaves you with good history and longer account history), thus the effects decline to minimal after as little as 2 years of good behavior/payment history. Make a plan that prioritizes the debts, and how you will resolve the problem, and work the plan. Based upon the income and debts you mention, the situation you have may not be as bad as it appears. You may be getting bad advice, especially from a debt settlement company that might be more interested in their fees than in your problem. Since you \"\"want to play fair and continue with payments, but when people start to get greedy like this I am ready to just stop caring\"\", you really need two things, a plan, and a friend, someone who you can talk to honestly and openly, and who can support you as you work through the plan you make. Since you \"\"would prefer the option that will give me the most peace of mind and allow me to start saving money as soon as possible\"\", you need to find an approach that fits your goals. Your statement that you \"\"don't plan on ever using credit again\"\", fits with the Dave Ramsey philosophy and resonates with many of us who have learned that those who grant credit are often harsh masters. Now that you have provided more information, the advice below expands upon the above reflecting upon your specific situation. Since you make $62K/year, you may be close to the median income, and the BAPCPA (Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005) has a presumption of abuse for filing Ch7 when you have above median income (for your state, check the law). As you may be pushed into Ch13 debt repayment anyway, examine what you could do to repay the debt (over 5 years, 60 months, as that would be a Ch13 repayment duration). Since you have $8K of revolving (unsecured?) debt, that would be repaid in Ch13 over 60 months at about $133/month (no interest), but you would also be paying 10% to the trustee. There might be some portion of your auto debt which is unsecured, and also be repaid unsecured, suppose that is $3000. That would add another $50/month to the plan. The car could be repaid over 60 months (including interest), so you might be repaying $300/month for the car (estimate), although the payment could be higher or lower depending upon how much of the value of the car is unsecured. The trustee might object that the car is too expensive (depends upon the value, and the trustee), and require be liquidated. Since BK excludes relief for student loans, you might find yourself paying the student loans at the same payment. Your $62K income suggests that you have about $4200/month (guess, after taxes). The mortgage payment is higher than 25% ($1050-1100 would be ideal for your income). But after your mortgage payment you should still have about $3900. Even with $300 for credit card debt, $500 for car, and $400 for student loans (guessing), that leaves $2700 for essentials (utilities, food), lifestyle (cellphone, entertainment), and savings. You might find a friend who is good at budgeting who would be willing to help you craft a budget and be your \"\"responsibility partner\"\" to help you stick to the budget. Here is a sample plan (your mileage may vary), Essentials (50%, $2100): $2180 Financial (30%, 1230): $1250 Lifestyle (20%, 840): $500 (pick up slack here, as you have high debt load)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b56c8472893ae0327d62a950e9e7ea4f",
"text": "When I was 18 in 1983, someone making $3.35 minimum wage full-time also could not afford a 2-bedroom apartment in any state. This is why most young people making minimum wage get roommates or live in some sort of communal housing or just live at home with their parents. If you are in your 40s and still making minimum wage, then there are other problems at play.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bc445ca3f7b768e3442f89ed633a5da6",
"text": "Why don't you get a better serving job? If you have all those years of experience why not bartend at a local or try for PF changs or Cheesecake Factory or something? I'm not trying to be snarky, I've got 13 years in the trenches myself. I just wouldn't work at a tgichilibees at my age or with my experience unless I was on some real hard times.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3956c2c86f057f543b46d9dd0818fbc8",
"text": "The solution is clear: You need to find a second job and work on the weekends and use that to pay off your debt. You're only 25, you need to scrimp every ounce of your extra energy and pay off your debts by age 30. You can do it by working a second job, and by working harder at your current job and getting promotions and raises.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eb01e3bf3c9f21fe05fb12e9e05fe780",
"text": "The two do not imply that they are connected. The statement above states that there are plenty of people who graduated and are around 21-25. Then the next statement explains that people who graduated make 100k+ - it doesnt mean they are 21-25.....it just means they achieved two objectives at separate times.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9247ac42cea1b677ef3ad6d03ff47937",
"text": "A fourteen-year-old can invest a few thousand into commuting to a part-time job or an education. If you can wait five years for a couple hundred you can wait two to four years for a car (or gas money) or a class (or some textbooks.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f4896f11a944f6d57641a6383c67637c",
"text": "This is not your problem and you should not try to fix it. If your employer paid money into someone else's account instead of yours they should ask their bank to reverse it and should pay you your wages while they are waiting for this to be done. No bank will let you do anything about money paid by someone else into an account that is not yours, or give you details of someone else's account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c3ab9966a76b7e5083e98d3517707b29",
"text": "I wouldn't be too concerned, yet. You're young. Many young people are living longer in the family home. See this Guardian article: Young adults delay leaving family home. You're in good company. Yet, there will come a time when you ought to get your own place, either for your own sanity or your parents' sanity. You should be preparing for that and building up your savings. Since you've got an income, you should – if you're not already – put away some of that money regularly. Every time you get paid, make a point of depositing a portion of your income into a savings or investment account. Look up the popular strategy called Pay Yourself First. Since you still live at home, it's possible you're a little more loose with spending money than you should be – at least, I've found that to be the case with some friends who lived at home as young adults. So, perhaps pretend you're on your own. What would your rent be if you had to find a place of your own? If, say, £600 instead of the £200 you're currently paying, then you should reduce your spending to the point where you can save at least £400 per month. Follow a budget. With respect to your car, it's great you recognize your mistake. We're human and we can learn from our mistakes. Plan to make it your one and only car mistake. I made one too. With respect to your credit card debt, it's not an insurmountable amount. Focus on getting rid of that debt soon and then focus on staying out of debt. The effective way to use credit cards is to never carry a balance – i.e. pay it off in full each month. If you can't do that, you're likely overspending. Also, look at what pensions your employer might offer. If they offer matching contributions, contribute at least as much to maximize the tax free extra pay this equates to. If you have access to a defined benefit plan, join it as soon as you are eligible. Last, I think it's important to recognize that at age 23 you're just starting out. Much of your career income earning potential is ahead of you. Strive to be the best at what you do, get promotions, and increase your income. Meanwhile, continue to save a good portion of what you earn. With discipline, you'll get where you want to be.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4092581e5dfc9f3941908358653b8cde",
"text": "With a credit card debt at 17%, you should basically not eat in order to pay the balance off. This should be gone within the month. That being said, I would have a hard time reducing my contributions below the 4%, but would certainly do it to the 4%. However, I would also deliver pizzas on nights and weekends and work all available overtime. Coincidentally the pizza place by my home is hiring delivery drivers however, they did not disclose how much they typically make. Only that they make min wage plus tips. Make sure you stop borrowing first, then try to have this knocked out in 4 weeks or less.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7be13fa59cf116fba48f6e48a8d156b8",
"text": "\"First off learn from this: Never cosign again. There are plenty of other \"\"tales of woe\"\" outlined on this site that started and ended similarly. Secondly do what you can to get off of the loan. First I'd go back to her dad and offer him $1000 to take you off the loan and sign over the car. Maybe go up to $3000 if you have that much cash. If that doesn't work go to the bank and offer them half of the loan balance to take you off. You can sign a personal loan for that amount (maybe). Whatever it takes to get off the loan. If she has a new BF offer him the same deal as the dad. Why do you have to do this? Because you owned an asset that was once valued at 13K and is valued at (probably) less than 4K. Given that you have a loan on it the leverage works against you causing you to lose more money. The goal now is to cut your losses and learn from your mistakes. I feel like the goal of your post was to make your ex-gf look bad. It's more important to do some self examination. If she was such a bad person why did you date her? Why did you enter a business transaction with her? I'd recommend seeking counseling on why you make such poor choices and to help you avoid them in the future. Along these lines I'd also examine your goals in life. If your desire is to be a wealthy person, then why would you borrow money to buy a car? Seek to imitate rich people to become rich. Picking the right friends and mates is an important part of this. If you do not have a desire to be a wealthy person what does it matter? Losing 13K over seven months is a small step in the \"\"right\"\" direction.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e74a34907bbd9a96c944e1b07530a98a",
"text": "\"I disagree with BrenBran, I don't think this is qualified as unreimbursed employee expense. For it to qualify, it has to be ordinary and necessary, and specifically - necessary for your employer. This is not the case for you, as there's no such necessity. From employer's perspective, you can work from your home just as well. In fact, the expense is your personal, as it is your choice, not \"\"unreimbursed employee expense\"\" since your employer didn't even ask you to do it. You should clarify this with a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in New York).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "df4a0faa381737651673d571cb03dcf9",
"text": "\"My education on this topic at this age range was a little more free-form. We were given a weeklong project in the 6th grade, which I remember pretty clearly: Fast forward 6 years (we were 12). You are about to be kicked out of your parents' house with the clothes on your back, $1,000 cash in your pocket, your high school diploma, and a \"\"best of luck\"\" from your parents. That's it. Your mission is to not be homeless, starving and still wearing only the clothes on your back in 3 months. To do this, you will find an apartment, a job (you must meet the qualifications fresh out of high school with only your diploma; no college, no experience), and a means of transportation. Then, you'll build a budget that includes your rent, estimated utilities, gasoline (calculated based on today's prices, best-guess fuel mileage of the car, and 250% of the best-guess one-way distance between home and job), food (complete nutrition is not a must, but 2000cal/day is), toiletries, clothing, and anything else you want or need to spend your paycheck or nest egg on. Remember that the laundromat isn't free, and neither is buying the washer/dryer yourself. Remember most apartments aren't furnished but do have kitchen appliances, and you can't say you found anything on the side of the road. The end product of your work will be a narrative report of the first month of your new life, a budget for the full 3 months, plus a \"\"continuing\"\" budget for a typical month thereafter to prove you're not just lasting out the 3 months, and all supporting evidence for your numbers, from newspaper clippings to in-store mailers (the Internet and e-commerce were just catching on at the time, Craigslist and eBay didn't exist yet, and not everyone had home Internet to begin with). Extra Credit: Make your budget work with all applicable income and sales taxes. Extra Extra Credit: Have more than your original $1000 in the bank at the end of the 3 months, after the taxes in the Extra Credit. This is a pretty serious project for a 12-year-old. Not only were we looking through the classified ads and deciphering all the common abbreviations, we were were taking trips to the grocery store with shopping lists, the local Wal-Mart or Target, the mall, even Goodwill. Some students had photos of their local gas station's prices, to which someone pointed out that their new apartment would be on the other side of town where gas was more expensive (smart kid). Some students just couldn't make it work (usually the mistakes were to be expected of middle-class middle-schoolers, like finding a job babysitting and stretching that out full-time, only working one job, buying everything new from clothes to furniture, thinking you absolutely need convenience items you can do without, and/or trying to buy the same upscale car your dad takes to work), though most students were able to provide at least a plausible before-tax budget. A few made the extra credit work, which was a lot of extra credit, because not only were you filling out a 1040EZ for your estimated income taxes, you were also figuring FICA and Social Security taxes which even some adults don't know the rates for, and remember, no Internet. Given that the extra-extra credit required you to come out ahead after taxes (good luck), I can't remember that anyone got that far. The meta-lesson that we all learned? Life without a college education is rough.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7d0f62e24e4ac2cecb3d95ed1baf9dba",
"text": "\"If you earn $160 a week for 26 weeks, are unable to claim yourself, have no other income at all, you will earn $4,160, which falls under the standard deduction, in your case a bit over $4,500; per publication 17, it is $350 above your earned income, to a maximum of $6300 as of 2016. (H/t Hart CO for the reminder.) In that case, if you paid no taxes (at all) last year (either did not file or filed and had 0 tax paid, so got a 100% refund), you could legitimately claim \"\"exempt\"\" by writing that on line 7. However, you would be very close to owing taxes, so if you have any unearned income (interest from bank accounts, dividends from your non-sheltered college fund, etc.), you would possibly owe taxes. You're also going to owe taxes if you have another ~$2150 of earned income from any other source (including things like mowing lawns, tutoring, etc.). Keep all of that in mind if you have any other sources of income other than the above.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
515878210bfb9735281b3cd2bcbb7be1
|
Tax benefits of recycling
|
[
{
"docid": "6d7a39e18fe7359a500344b8b5016f82",
"text": "If they charge a fee to accept an item, it's reasonable to assume the item has insignificant value, so the only tax-deductible bit would be the money you donated to their charity. What you describe sounds like a fee for service, not a charitable donation. The organization should provide a fee breakdown to show what percentage (if any) of the fee is a deductible contribution. There could be some additional PA-only tax benefit, but I didn't come across anything in my brief search.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e61c8109a1e48bc8a6820e7f65ba1659",
"text": "They are certainly only suggesting that the money you pay to recycle the bulbs is tax deductible as a donation, assuming that they are indeed a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Donations of goods are only deductible at fair market value. Light bulbs that no longer light up have no market value, so only the payment could possibly be deductible.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d56026a893ddab464ed4c737bcc2dcdd",
"text": "If a business incurs expenses in the process of its trading, generally those expenses are deductible. Disposing of waste is generally held to be a deductible expense.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "2b56498bf511fe7fa1d202fb2eff296a",
"text": "This will always be the case unless the tax relief is more than the expenditure, which it never is. There are some ways in which this can become worth it: if the thing you are spending the money on would actually be useful, of it you might be able to sell it for more than four dollars later - or if you can claim a government grant or similar for more than four dollars. And at the level of corporate finance it can get more complicated. But otherwise, No.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a5280605812e2385284b2802e8d5a509",
"text": "Do Alice and Bob have to figure out the fair market value of their services and report that as income or something? Yes, exactly that. See Topic 420. Note that if the computer program is for Bob's business, Bob might be able to deduct it on his taxes. Similarly, if the remodeling is on Alice's business property, she might be able to deduct it. There might also be other tax advantages in certain circumstances.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "690a6d2d2c6751e41efe65b56e1a5876",
"text": "Most items used in business have to be depreciated; you get to deduct a small fraction of the cost each year depending on the lifetime of the item as per IRS rules. That is, you cannot assume a one-year life for an electronic item even if it will be obsolete in three months. Some items can be expensed; you get to deduct the entire cost in the first year but then if you don't stay in business, e.g. you get a job paying wages and are no longer self-employed, you have to recapture this and pay taxes on the amount recaptured in the later year. With respect to consumer-type electronics such as an iPad or laptop, it helps to have a separate item for personal use that you can show in case of an audit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cfcbc865e377e9eed35445892b998966",
"text": "You're last paragraph sums up what I mean exactly. Businesses will continue to make investments that try think make sense. Taxes have an pact on what makes sense. This combo is what we should be discussing. Thanks for adding to the conversation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1c7beebb3549c75c9dd76f80232f5e9c",
"text": "What you are looking for is a 1031 exchange. https://www.irs.gov/uac/like-kind-exchanges-under-irc-code-section-1031 Whenever you sell business or investment property and you have a gain, you generally have to pay tax on the gain at the time of sale. IRC Section 1031 provides an exception and allows you to postpone paying tax on the gain if you reinvest the proceeds in similar property as part of a qualifying like-kind exchange. Gain deferred in a like-kind exchange under IRC Section 1031 is tax-deferred, but it is not tax-free. You may also sell your house for bitcoin and record the sales price on the deed with an equal or lesser amount that you bought it for.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9dadcaf1b7aff5c3555a19c51de29974",
"text": "The CPA's mention of $2,500 is probably referring to the recently increased de minimis safe harbor under the final tangible property regulations (used to be $500) without an applicable financial statement. The IRS will not challenge your choice of expense or capitalization on amounts on or below $2500 if you elect the de minimis safe harbor election on your return. However, you must follow whatever you're doing for your books. (So if you are capitalizing your laptops for book purposes, you would also need to capitalize for tax purposes). Section 179 allows you to expense property that you would have otherwise have had to capitalize and depreciate. Section 179 can be annoying, especially if your LLC is treated as a passthrough, because there are recapture provisions when you dispose of the asset too early. For the tax return preparer, it makes the return preparation much more simple if there are no fixed assets to account for in the first place, which is quite possible if you are expensive all items/invoices less than $2,500.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dfa6cd1c8ac900289f0601b56e554dc8",
"text": "They do give tax breaks for efficient furnaces, tankless water heaters, even LED lights. Homeowners can use their interest deduction to buy such items. There have been huge tax breaks for electric cars too. Are you serious right now?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6108ef904d7a74b2cc7775255c47bb06",
"text": "I ran a plastic recycling plant with my dad about 10 years ago and the techniques or operations are still the same. The beauty of the plastic industry is that the market is extremely under served. The market is so under served that many of the big processors across the country will lease the machinery to you to process the material they send to you and let you pay for the machinery by processing some of their inventory for them. Recycling is a lucrative industry. I still have my old business plan if you are interested. You have a major player there in Northern Cali. Let's talk [email protected]",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1e4586a0d2adf51d94c2a45d74c1ad2d",
"text": "My dad owned a steel Drum / barrel recycling company where we would get barrel from food companies and recondition them. Sometimes we would get drums from one company for free and they would call us to buy drums, many times we would sell them the same drums that we got from them for FREE. That's the beauty of recycling. After some time we started doing plastic drums and we had to find a way to salvage the plastic drums that we were not able to refurbish. So we started contacting plastic companies and started talking to a company in Middle Tennessee. He was a huge plastic processor that was shipping hundreds of thousands tons of plastic regrind every week. He was from India and had a huge plant about 70 miles from Memphis were I was living. He would process the plastic rods or shanks here in the U.S. and ship them too be made into products in India. I was in the process of securing a processing machine from him, one from a company in Northern California, and one from a company in Florida. All three where going to place a processing machine in my dads plant in Memphis and create a coast to coast pipeline with Memphis as the center point. They where going to let us pay for the machinery by paying us to process a percentage of their plastic since much of it was coming through Memphis. That way all they had to do was ship the material once it arrived from our plant. Since Memphis is the gateway to the west and a main truck route it was perfect. This type of arrangement is easy to make if you can convince the major players that you can deliver their product as promised. I also made arrangements with the processor close to me to relocate 2 of his employees to Memphis to manage the equipment until we got failure with the equipment and act as liaison for him. He was agreeing to everything I asked because it would have relieve production pressure off his employees and help him with his bottom line. Make sure you investigate the type of machines you need to process the many types of plastics your processor needs or wants. There are different types of plastics and different ways of processing it. #1 – PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) ... #2 – HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene) ... #3 – PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) ... #4 – LDPE (Low-Density Polyethylene) ... #5 – PP (Polypropylene) ... #6 – PS (Polystyrene) I also know that California has a lot of air quality laws. What I would do is get to know your local EPA reps and run your plans by them, they will be able to tell you all you can and can't do. Also you processor is going to want to see your Feasibility Study and business plan before he does this type of arrangement. Once you let me know if this is something that you are still interested in doing I will send you my old business plan. Here is a video to really get an idea of what's involved https://youtu.be/vAr4BZM_Tzk",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "598447d7fc5f43f2a053c5c29cf3c2a4",
"text": "It's called bartering and the IRS has a page titled Four Things to Know About Bartering. The summary is - The bottom line is this is taxable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "76b55af2775772c8110da4c1f45acab8",
"text": "Yeah, the VAT adds more fairness between who gets the taxes, but is only offset by it being more complicated and needing more bureaucracy. I think it's an interesting idea. If I were a policy analyst I'd like to see what costs are vs. benefit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "145d8cf762769c52f00716bde4c9129a",
"text": "There is a positive not being mentioned above: the depreciation vs your regular earned income. Disclaimer: I am not a tax attorney or an accountant, nor do I play one on the internet. I am however a landlord. With that important caveat out of the way: Rental properties (and improvements to them) depreciate in value on a well-defined schedule. You can claim that depreciation as a phantom loss to lower the amount of your taxable regular income. If you make a substantial amount of the latter, it can be a huge boon in the first few years you own the property. You can claim the depreciation as if the property were new. So take the advice of a random stranger on the internet to your accountant/attorney and see how much it helps you.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c736826887aa913f0544388ca51db098",
"text": "If the building has no income, it also probably has minimal expenses. The heat, water and electricity costs are nearly zero. They are letting the value depreciate, and taking it off the taxes. I also suspect the condition of the building is poor, so any effort to make the building productive would be very costly. Many cities combat this by setting the tax on empty buildings or empty lots at a much higher rate. Or they set the value of the property at a high valuation based on what it could generate. Sometimes this is only targeted at some sections of the city to encourage development. They also offer tax breaks when the owner of a house has the house as their principal residence.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "460d9b7f54847c2d1d61cf029e7a866c",
"text": "\"If this is an issue of opportunity cost then there is a benefit. Mortgage interest rates are extremely low, low enough that they can effectively be used to indirectly fund investments. If one stores equity in a house, ie \"\"pays it off\"\", then that wealth returns only the rate of growth of the house less expenditures. If one borrows against the house to fund investments, then the above stated returns which on average exceed the mortgage interest rate can be augmented by the investments, yielding a greater return. The tax benefit is more of a cherry on top. If one is using this as a justification to spend then it is frivolity.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "69979e52c592f1b1dfeb64442c298034",
"text": "I wrote a detailed article on Tax Loss Harvesting to show the impact on returns. For my example, I showed a person in the 15% bracket. In years with no loss, they trade to capture gains at 0% long term rate, thus bumping their basis up. In years with losses, they tax harvest for a 15% effective 'rebate' on that loss. I showed how for the lost decade 2000-2009, a buy and hold would have returned -1% CAGR, but the tax loss harvester would have gained 1% (just 1% for the decade, not CAGR), ending the decade with no loss. As one's portfolio grows, the math changes. You can only take $3000 capital loss against ordinary income, and my example relies on the difference between taking a gain for free but using a loss to offset income. Note, the higher earner would take gains at 15%, but losses at 25%, but only for the relatively small portfolio. The benefit for them is to use loss harvesting to offset gains, less so for ordinary income. As the other answer state, Wealthfront can aid you to do this with no math on your part.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
e92c69de6712690a238ab5b1c880ec59
|
If a country can just print money, is global debt between countries real?
|
[
{
"docid": "b12b0aabd80cb5c2609e5f39ae7a7ad3",
"text": "The debt is absolutely real. China loans money to US via buying the US treasury bonds. The bond is essentially a promise to pay back the money with interest, just like a loan. As you point out, the US can print money. If this were to happen, then the USD that the owner of a treasury bond receives when the bond matures are worth less that than the USD used to purchase the bonds. There are lots of reasons why the US doesn't want to print lots of money, so the purchaser of the bond is probably confident it won't happen. If for some reason they think it is possible, then they will want to cover that risk by only purchasing bonds that have a higher interest rate. The higher interest offsets the risk of the USD being worth less. Of course, there are lots more details, e.g., the bonds themselves are bought and sold before maturity, but this is the basic idea.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9ce931d868b678112c38d510efe1c7d3",
"text": "\"I think the important fact here is that all of our currencies are Fiat Currencies. So currency technically means nothing, because (as you mentioned) the country could print more any time it wants. Now what makes it useful is the combination of two big things: So I would say, we know they owe us 100 \"\"dollars\"\", and the dollar is just a word we use to represent value. It is not technically worth anything, beyond the fact that the government controls the amount of that currency in circulation and you trust that people still want more of that currency.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "45185420c394230f6ea4c738968825fd",
"text": "To understand this fully one would need to understand quite a few things. Not in scope here. In short, whenever China sells goods to US, it gets USD as most of the trades are in USD. China uses this money to buy other things it needs like Oil etc. After this they still have quite a bit of USD left with them. The money is left with them because US is buying more things from China and selling less things to China. This creates a surplus USD with China. So if US were to borrow money from China or any other country, it would be this excess money. Ofcourse how money gets created in first place is a different topic altogether.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b6b44c3e9f0f7b02c284a23f945e7de1",
"text": "This is a extremely complicated subject, but I assume you want a very simple answer (otherwise I'm not qualified to answer). The value of most currencies is closely tied to the economy of the county, so if China were to print a huge amount of yuan, then since the value of their economy has not really changed, the international currency markets would devalue the yuan to compensate. (This is rather like, if have shares in, say Apple, and they were to issue an extra billion shares, then the value of your shares would fall (by half), rather than for Apple to be suddenly be worth twice as much) Print too many notes and your currency basically becomes almost worthless, which is what happened to the Zimbabwean dollar. I like the idea of China skipping crate loads of actual yuan or dollars notes to America, but in practice, the borrowing is just a paper exercise, rather like an IOU. As to whether America owes Yuan or dollars, the answer is whatever has been agreed. Assuming the currencies are fairly stable, then since each country has more control over their own currency, it is natural for them to prefer their own currency. However, if America believes the value of the dollar will increase, they may prefer to pay back in Yuan (costing them less dollars), and if China believes the value of the dollar will decrease they may agree to that.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "db76c8b2fee1cabf362f8e88da5c5936",
"text": "The main driver behind countries not printing themselves out of debt is the fact that it will cripple the economy, destroy citizens savings, asset valuations and piss all the countries trade partners off so much that they may stop doing business with them. You will have a few different extremes, look at Zimbabwe as an example of a country that just prints money like no ones business. America is essentially devaluing its currency to compete with China. That annoys the Chinese because their holdings are devalued and as such you then see people moving away from US treasuries into more stable commodities and currencies.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a6e444f254d171aade7bf0b62c90b74d",
"text": "\"Debt can be denominated either in a currency the country controls or a currency the country doesn't control. If the debt is denominated in a currency the country controls then they have the option of \"\"printing their way out of it\"\". That option doesn't come for free, it will devalue their currency on the global market and hurt savers in their country but it is an option. If the debt is denominated in a currency the country does not control then they don't have that option. As I understand it the US debt is in the first category. It's denominated in US dollars so the US government could if they so wished print their way out of it. On the other hand greece's debt is denominated in euros putting them at the mercy of european bankers.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "9a6362547ac6859733c2e74e823f56da",
"text": "Japan printed 11 trillion yen on Monday. They do this by monetizing their own debt. The increase in the supply of yen affects the value of the currency. Strange thought, I know. Greece has an economic crisis because they were borrowing at rates that AAA rated countries do. Someone noticed that they weren't exactly a AAA country when they needed to ask for bailout money. Since all government debt is considered risk free and same as cash, this came as a shock to most 'investors' hence the 'crisis' edit: my bad, was 11 trillion, not 9 trillion",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ef900298081d52c0b7a1e22a0c5c2834",
"text": "You don't understand government financing at all. Gov'ts earn revenue, aka, taxes. They also spend money. The different between the money they spend and they money they earn is the deficit. If you run a deficit for a long period of time, you incur a very large national debt. Now, you can finance (aka, pay for) a deficit by borrowing money. This means you can sell bonds, and instead of pay off the debt each year, you just pay the interest. If your spending balloons out of control, your the likely hood of you paying your debt decreases. If you are very unlikely to payback your debt, people won't buy any more of your bonds, and you no longer have the income (from borrowing) to pay off your interest from other debt you owe, or what ever other obligations you own (think mortgage payments, or teachers salaries, etc). Here's were Europe and USA differ: European nations can't just print money. They can issue more debt, but they can't just create more euros. IF you can print money, you can pay off your debt with money you literally created out of thin air (at the expense of your people, this is called inflation). But this is a form of cheating, eventually people won't trust you, and won't buy your debt either. So where do the banks come in? if the government is SOUND and the banks are NOT, the government can backstop the banks. This is what the US and UK did. Greece, Spain, Ireland all had to back stop their banks also. However, Greece, Spain, and Irelany ( and Italy, and Portugal) also have 1) A lot of debt 2) Structurally high deficits 3) Extremely high borrowing costs (high interest rates...because people don't trust them...because...) 4) Weak underlying economies The fourth point gets you in real trouble. if you have high entitlements, lots of poeple out of work, who the hell is paying taxes and what are they going to? You have no revenue! Remember, a govt works just like a household. It is easy for a good household to support one member, but it is difficult for a member to support an irresponsible household.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "65a545ad655f7500a92ec4ec4f1f0f4f",
"text": "\"**Japan Has Entered The Next Phase: Unlimited Money Printing** Investors have been watching Japan for over a decade now, wondering what happens to a country that has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 234%--too big to realistically pay off. We are starting to get the answer. For review, Japan was the first country in the modern central banking era to begin a policy of quantitative easing--an unconventional form of monetary policy that is used when interest rates have already been lowered to the zero bound. Quantitative easing, which involves the purchase of \"\"printed\"\" money to buy government bonds, was widely viewed in Japan as a failure, but what most people don't understand about Japan's early QE experiments is that they were very small--less than $20 billion a month. It took Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda to ramp up asset purchases significantly in what was called \"\"Abenomics.\"\" Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister. Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg The results of Abenomics have been mixed, but the stock market is certainly higher and the yen is certainly lower, although it's not clear that either of those two developments have really helped. Japan's stock market is mostly foreign-owned, and the weaker yen didn't materially help the balance of trade. Still, there are a lot of people who said that Japan's endless debt deflation would have been worse without Abenomics, so it has remained firmly in place for five years. Abenomics rapidly began to cause distortions, as accelerated asset purchases caused the Bank of Japan to hold a huge percentage of outstanding government bonds, at 40% and rising, as well as being the majority holder of index ETFs. Investors who traffic in JGBs have remarked that the market now functions very poorly, since so much of the market is held by the BOJ. It seems that will get worse, not better. Last year the BOJ implemented a policy of yield curve targeting (ostensibly to help the banks), keeping the overnight rate negative but targeting a 10 year rate at zero percent. The BOJ has been buying longer-dated bonds for years, but this was the first time it ever explicitly capped a rate at longer maturities. Some people wondered how committed the BOJ would be to maintain that cap in the event that JGBs were caught up in a global duration selloff, which we experienced in the last two weeks. As 10-year JGB yields rose above 0.10% last week, the BOJ announced that it was prepared to buy an unlimited amount of bonds to keep yields close to zero percent. As you can imagine, buying an unlimited amount of 10-year JGBs involves printing a theoretically unlimited amount of yen, so the yen weakened significantly on the news. It still remains about ten percent stronger than it was in 2015. We are getting closer to the endgame for Japan. What happens if yields rise further? What happens if the yen depreciates significantly? How much could it depreciate? Could Japan have a currency crisis? What happens if the BOJ ends up owning the entire bond market? These are the questions that investors are asking, and nobody really knows the answers. We are in uncharted territory. I believe that a currency crisis isn't just possible--it's inevitable. And it probably happens at about the time that the BOJ owns all or nearly all of the JGB market, and has to resort to canceling the debt. This sounds like a neat magic trick to make the debt go away, but the laws of economics are not to be conned. Anything is possible--a currency crash, a bond market crash--anything. This is the very definition of debt monetization that resulted in hyperinflation in places like Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe. Is Japan different? We shall see. We will find out soon, as Japan has taken a major step in that direction. Jared Dillian is the author of All the Evil of This World, and the editor of the 10th Man newsletter for Mauldin Economics. Subscribe here. *Forbes articles have 8 tracking cookies and 9 tracking scripts. This comment has none.*(https://www.reddit.com/r/raws/comments/68xk37/about/)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "768afd430beaddf843064787b4537b0f",
"text": "If we postulate that there is at least some element of truth to the phrase 'A leopard does not change his spots' and then consider this tidbit He conveniently forgets to mention his 1.5 million dollar fraud fine from the SEC over investment “advice” he sold through a news letter. The SEC claimed and the judge agreed that the report was “replete with lies”. I think that gives you just about all you might need to know regarding the man behind the video, and the nature of it's content. Oh, and it's purpose? To SELL YOU the same said newsletter. I guess it's natural for Stansberry to feel as he does. After all if the US gov had just busted me for conning and lying to folks, and fined ME 1.5Mill, I'd be having some pretty intense lurid fantasies about it going down in flames, and trying to hide any money I had left offshore also. A huge amount of his argument hinges on the US no longer being the world's reserve currency. Firstly, while I'll admit I'm none too happy with the way the national debt has been managed for oh, around 30 years how, (which includes I will note going from a pretty much balanced budget, to around an 80% increase in the debt from 2001 through 2008, when 'times were good' and there was little need to spend money we didn't have), when compared to a lot of other countries, we still don't look that bad. You have to ask yourself this first, if not the US, then WHO? are the governments of the world going to trust China? could the Yen handle the load? Is the Euro any better off especially considering problems in Greece, Ireland, etc. Do countries like Switzerland have enough liquidity and available ways to invest there? In order for the US to STOP being the world's reserve currency, you must have something to replace it with, and really, can we realistically think of one country/currency with the capability to become a new 'world reserve currency'??? Secondly, even then should such a shift actually happen, it doesn't mean people will ALL just magically stop buying US debt. Yes the demand would go down, but it would not go to zero. There are after all a worldfull of other countries who's money is right now NOT the world reserve currency, and yet they are able to sell bonds and people and even other countries invest there. (China for example does not invest exclusively in the US), so yeah we might have to start paying more interest to get people to buy US debt, but it's not like the demand will go away. Save your money, save your time, don't buy into this dung.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e4ee281926e6a79e88acbe72e41096f9",
"text": "\"First of all, just for the sake of clarity, the Federal Reserve doesn't actually \"\"print\"\" money - that's the job of the BEP. What they do is they buy US Treasury bonds - i.e., loan money to the US government. The money they do it with are created \"\"from thin air\"\" - just by adding some numbers in certain accounts, thus it is described as \"\"printing money\"\". The US government then spends the money however it wishes to. The idea is that this money is injected into the economy - since the only way the US government can use the money from these loans is to spend them on buying something or give it to some people that would spend them. As it is a loan, sometime in the future the US government would pay these loans back, and in this moment the Fed would decide - if they want to \"\"contract\"\" the supply of money back, they just \"\"destroy\"\" the money they've got, by erasing the numbers they created before. They could also do it by selling the bonds they hold on the open market and then again \"\"destroy\"\" the money they got as proceeds, thus lowering the amount of money existing in the economy. This way the Fed can control how much money is out there and thus supposedly influence inflation and economic activity. The Fed could also inject money in the economy by buying any assets after creating the money - for example, right now they own about a trillion dollars worth of various mortgage-based securities. But since buying specific security would probably give unfair advantage to the issuers and owners of this security, usually US treasury bonds if what they buy. The side effect of increased supply of money denominated in dollars would be, as you noted, devaluation of dollars compared to other currencies.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fe6aa5920172d01e15ecd2a8c400c64e",
"text": "\"Bankruptcy is a way to the fiat currency system to regulate itself. The current system assume that there will always be more debts than money available. Since money is created with debt already attached to it, the difference between \"\"real\"\" money, and \"\"on paper\"\" money build up over time. When this disparity become to big, bankruptcies need to occur to bring those two number closer to each other. It's like earthquakes if you like, the tectonic plates build up tension that need to be released in many small shocks, or a few big shocks. The everyday bankruptcies represent the small quakes, and big recession represent too much build up that need to be released in one big shocks. It's a very high level explanation and it doesn't go into details, but it's roughly why it happens. EDIT: I wasn't saying that it was bad or not, I was simply explaining bankruptcy and why it's bound to happen. If you don't like the analogy, it's no reason for downvote. I know it may not be clear for everyone, but if you do not agree, please explain yourself.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "119a3ad16226b55f87fc67344cc171f8",
"text": "\"> but the buying power of that money can be significantly reduced to the point where it's fundamentally useless, i.e. inter-war Germany and many countries in South and Central America. That's true, but *how* does that come about? The effect on buying power stems from the level of spending in the present period. Too little leaves you anywhere from outright deflation and contraction to weaker growth falling short of capacity. Too much reaches capacity and keeps spending, bidding up prices and driving down purchasing power. It has nothing to do with debt:GDP or interest payments. > Germany managed to skate by by creating a new Deutschmark in a confidence trick, and it worked because Germany is a solid, iron clad manufacturing powerhouse of a lot of stuff. There are two important differences between inter-war Germany and the US. First is that inter-war Germany *lost a war*. This real shock is kind of important. When you're talking about buying power of money, one side of it is the amount of money in circulation but the other side of it is how much real output there is to buy and German real output capacity collapsed after the war. Their most productive regions were occupied territory and they were no longer a powerhouse manufacturing a lot of stuff, driving down the value of their currency. So lesson number one from Germany: real output collapse harms your currency. The second problem is that losing a war left Germany saddled with war reparations denominated in foreign currency. When you're on the hook for something you don't print you're in a situation where you can run out of money and that's exactly what happened to them. They tried printing more of their own currency to buy the foreign stuff with but that quickly drove down the value of German currency. So lesson number two from Germany is you don't want to be on the hook for a currency you don't issue. Put the two together and you have a real supply shock + foreign-denominated debt eviscerating the buying power of German currency. It wasn't debt:GDP but the real basis for their economy collapsing out from under them pushed along by a need for foreign currency. >My question is, at what point do we engage Washington's unlimited money printing presses until we reach that point? In answer to your question, the printing presses are what funds the real economy. The worry in terms of avoiding \"\"that point\"\" is in making sure we keep that real economy productive and fully funded. Ironically, taking our eye off the ball to focus on budget balance at the expense of real output pushes the economy in the direction you're afraid of going. See also: the euro zone today.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fdf71bd9c994ed091173b092c7fda40f",
"text": "> Story printed literally as the only thing that can hold on value to the currency.. Japan has huge current account and trade surplus. they have to print money or else Yen will shoot up to the moon. Japan cannot afford over valued currency.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2393a44dc0901577a7086d3f55c7bdc7",
"text": "\"Sovereign states borrow money explicitly in a two primary ways: A sovereign cannot be compelled to repay debt, and there isn't a judicial process like bankruptcy to erase debt. When sovereigns default, they negotiate new terms with creditors and pay back some fraction of the actual debt owed. They can also print money to repay debt, which has other nasty consequences. But, while a state cannot be compelled to repay a debt, creditors cannot be compelled to loan money to the state either! Any enterprise of sufficient size needs access to capital via loans to meet daily obligations in anticipation of revenue -- even when times are good. Defaulting makes borrowing impossible or expensive, and is avoided. Regarding using your military to avoid repaying debt... remember what Napoleon said: \"\"An army travels on its stomach\"\". Military campaigns are expensive... no borrowing ability means the soldiers don't get paid and the food, fuel and ammo don't get delivered. Smaller countries have other risks as well. Many nations are essentially forced to use US Dollars as a reserve currency, or are forced by the market to borrow money in a foreign currency. This creates a situation where any risk of non-payment results in a deep devaluation of the local currency. When your debt is denominated in dollars, these shifts can dramatically increase your debt obligations from a local currency point of view. You also run the risk that a larger or richer company will park warships in your harbor and seize assets as payment -- the US and Britain engaged in this several times during the 19th and 20th centuries. In general, not paying the bills has a cascading effect. Bad situations get worse, and they do so quickly.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b56622ebc3733c8796be7e12c241770e",
"text": "Yes, and heres some pretty scary stats. Global debt went from about 200% of GPD in 2007 to 325% of GDP today. Global Debt is about 2.5x more than the value of global broad money (all the money in the world). The value of the derivatives market has increased to 6x the value of all global debt. Meaning a global market of packaging and trading debt exists that is 6x the value of the debt being traded, and 15x the value of all the money in the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fefb2bebc863d73f23a0dfeed3af1802",
"text": "Question: So basically the money created in this globalized digital world where capital is free to roam, it is referring to digital money and not actual physical cash. So the goldbugs that talk about america becoming weimar republic is delusional, since there isn't enough physical cash in relations to how big the economy is. And it is actually the debt lending that acts as a derivative of cash money that goes around posing as the money supply or the blood supply of an economy, and that feels like inflation, but when the debt is defaulted on or destroyed, underwritten or even paid back closing the circuit then it's deflationary? But does defaulting on ones debt create inflation since that money is still in the system and not being paid off? You know, when debts are paid off they are taken out of the system.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "90bde0cc066745cdff7035c91c4165a8",
"text": "\"[There's about 10 trillion in gold](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve) and about [2.8 trillion of US cash](http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/the-value-of-united-states-currency-in-circulation/) in the world. Neither of these is anywhere large enough to be used for all the transactions in the world. For example, about [4 trillion a **day**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market) changes hands in the currency markets alone - if that were required to be cash or gold it would be impossible to do so, and you'd suffer from more poorly priced goods since markets could not adjust as quickly, so vendors would charge more premium to handle the risk. Yes, there is not (and has not been) enough cash in circulation to run the world economy. There is also vastly too little gold, unless you want to strangle commerce due to not being enough money to trade. > \"\"posing as the money supply\"\" All money is debt, and always has been. Money is a placeholder that you can trade for goods *later* meaning someone owes you a thing. The value of that money is the debt they (or society) owes you for something you already did to get that money. So there is no posing, just most don't understand money, how it originated, why it exists, or why it works. They never ask the question \"\"how does money come into existance\"\". > Does defaulting on ones debt create inflation since that money is still in the system and not being paid off? Probably not much. Loans are made expecting some default, so the interest others pay on their loans helps offset the defaulted ones. If loans become riskier, the interest demanded increases, so the lender still (if they do their risk analysis well and no external events break their expectations) makes money. When you pay off a debt, that money, as you're paying it, is likely being lent in other loans, so paying it off does not do much. If you could pay off about 100 trillion in debt into the US economy in one payment you might break some things :)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "57904482f79435e2e4f514c6c20f95a3",
"text": "They're not going to do anything about it. Washington needs the debt wheel to keep spinning, or the Dollar will lose its position as the Reserve Currency. Then all hell would break loose. Powerful countries like Japan are going to have to take the initiative. And apparently they are starting to. It has to be countries like Japan because if a weak country tries this, they'll get invaded.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "39430e9e2b7e42a65b94a9ad0d7d55bf",
"text": "\"Correct! But this is only true when a central bank is involved. So if there's a single institution that has a territorial monopoly on the production of money (and competing currencies aren't allowed via \"\"legal tender laws\"\"), then the debt-based money system OP describes isn't actually the system being used. That's the problem with his post: he's trying to make it seem like our current system of fiat currencies is somehow natural or emergent. It's not. What we have now is the result of a legal monopoly.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4b239353cfdc455d5b2bc50df36c11c4",
"text": "\"Are you working for a company that offers a Dependent Care Account? You may be able to withhold up to $5000/yr pre tax for care for you child. If you cover more than half her expenses, she is your dependent. You can't \"\"double dip.\"\" If she is your dependent, she cannot be the care provider for purposes of the DCAS, see Pub 503 top of p7 \"\"Payments to Relatives or Dependents.\"\" How do you think a business would change your situation? The DCA is a small tax break, if you have no business now, this break isn't something that should drive this.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
b64683f2e01788d90f6dd6137c938f5e
|
How are investment funding valued when invested in a company before it goes public?
|
[
{
"docid": "87b5c999ab6c956258894265f2a2b654",
"text": "This is a question of how does someone value a business. Typically, it is some function of how much the company owns, how much the company owes, how risky is the company's business, and how much the company makes in profit. For example if a company (or investment) make $100/year, every year no matter what, how much would you pay for that? If you pay $1,000 you'll make 10% each year on your investment. Is that a good enough return? If you think the risk of the company requires a 20% payoff, you shouldn't pay more than $500 for the company.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "b77ce1eda52bbf046d67670793dc2e8d",
"text": "You have a lot of different questions in your post - I am only responding to the request for how to value the ESPP. When valuing an ESPP, don't think about what you might sell the shares for in the future, think about what the market would charge you for that option today. In general, an option is worth much less than the underlying share itself. For the simplest example, assume you work at a public company, and your exercise price for your options is $.30, and you can only exercise those options until the end of today, and the cost of the shares on the public stock exchange is also $.30. You have the same 'strike price' as everyone else in the market, making your option worth nothing. In truth, holding that right to a specific strike price into the future does give you value, because it means you can realize the upside in share price gains, without risking any money on share losses. So, how do you value the options? If it's a public company with an active options market, you can easily compare your $.30 strike price with the value of call options in the market that have a $.30 strike price. That becomes the value to you of the option (caveat: it is unlikely you can find an exact match for the terms of your vesting period, but you should be able to find a good starting point). If it's a public company without an active options market, you will have to do a bit of estimation. If a current share is worth $.25 (so, close to your strike price), then your option is worth a little bit, but not much. Compare other shares in your industry / company size to get examples of the relative value between an option and a share. If the current share price is worth $.35, then your option is worth about $.05 [the $.05 profit you could get by immediately exercising and selling, plus a bit more for an option on a share that you can't buy in the open market]. If it's a private company, then you need to be very clear on how shares are to be valued, and what methods you have available to sell back to the company / other individuals. You can then consider as per above, how to value the option for a share, vs the share itself. Without a clear way to sell your shares of a private company [ideally through a sale directly back to the company that you are able to force them to agree on; ie: the company will buyback shares at 5x Net income for the previous year, or something like that], then the value of a small number of shares is very nebulous. There is an extremely limited market for shares of private companies, if you don't own enough to exert control. In your case, because the valuation appears to be $2/share [be sure that these are the same share classes you have the option to buy], your option would be worth a little more than $1.70, if you didn't have to wait 4 years to exercise it. This would be total compensation of about $10k, if you were able to exercise today. Many people don't end up working for an early job in their career for 4 years, so you need to consider whether how much that will reduce the value of the ESPP for you personally. Compared with salary of 90k, 10k worth of stock in 4 years may not be a heavy motivating compensation consideration. Note also that because the company is not public, the valuation of $2/share should be taken with a grain of salt.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5467dcadbea676578ee66dca23e951b4",
"text": "\"I think it's easiest to illustrate it with an example... if you've already read any of the definitions out there, then you know what it means, but just don't understand what it means. So, we have an ice cream shop. We started it as partners, and now you and I each own 50% of the company. It's doing so well that we decide to take it public. That means that we will be giving up some of our ownership in return for a chance to own a smaller portion of a bigger thing. With the money that we raise from selling stocks, we're going to open up two more stores. So, without getting into too much of the nitty gritty accounting that would turn this into a valuation question, let's say we are going to put 30% of the company up for sale with these stocks, leaving you and me with 35% each. We file with the SEC saying we're splitting up the company ownership with 100,000 shares, and so you and I each have 35,000 shares and we sell 30,000 to investors. Then, and this depends on the state in the US where you're registering your publicly traded corporation, those shares must be assigned a par value that a shareholder can redeem the shares at. Many corporations will use $1 or 10 cents or something nominal. And we go and find investors who will actually pay us $5 per share for our ice cream shop business. We receive $150,000 in new capital. But when we record that in our accounting, $5 in total capital per share was contributed by investors to the business and is recorded as shareholder's equity. $1 per share (totalling $30,000) goes towards actual shares outstanding, and $4 per share (totalling $120,000) goes towards capital surplus. These amounts will not change unless we issue new stocks. The share prices on the open market can fluctuate, but we rarely would adjust these. Edit: I couldn't see the table before. DumbCoder has already pointed out the equation Capital Surplus = [(Stock Par Value) + (Premium Per Share)] * (Number of Shares) Based on my example, it's easy to deduce what happened in the case you've given in the table. In 2009 your company XYZ had outstanding Common Stock issued for $4,652. That's probably (a) in thousands, and (b) at a par value of $1 per share. On those assumptions we can say that the company has 4,652,000 shares outstanding for Year End 2009. Then, if we guess that's the outstanding shares, we can also calculate the implicit average premium per share: 90,946,000 ÷ 4,652,000 == $19.52. Note that this is the average premium per share, because we don't know when the different stocks were issued at, and it may be that the premiums that investors paid were different. Frankly, we don't care. So clearly since \"\"Common Stock\"\" in 2010 is up to $9,303 it means that the company released more stock. Someone else can chime in on whether that means it was specifically a stock split or some other mechanism... it doesn't matter. For understanding this you just need to know that the company put more stock into the marketplace... 9,303 - 4,652 == 4,651(,000) more shares to be exact. With the mechanics of rounding to the thousands, I would guess this was a stock split. Now. What you can also see is that the Capital Surplus also increased. 232,801 - 90,946 == 141,855. The 4,651,000 shares were issued into the market at an average premium of 141,855 ÷ 4,651 == $30.50. So investors probably paid (or were given by the company) an average of $31.50 at this split. Then, in 2011 the company had another small adjustment to its shares outstanding. (The Common Stock went up). And there was a corresponding increase in its Capital Surplus. Without details around the actual stock volumes, it's hard to get more exact. You're also only giving us a portion of the Balance Sheet for your company, so it's hard to go into too much more detail. Hopefully this answers your question though.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "235d9911f024b3047fa915c0789caa18",
"text": "There are different ways to determine the value of a company: When an entrepreneur starts a new company himself and owns 100% of the company, the Fair Market value is unknown. He has put his own money into the company, so it has a high Investment value to him, meaning he has a lot at stake in the company. The Asset value is probably less than the Investment value, meaning if he closed the company, he would lose some of the money he invested. Now, using your example, a Venture Capitalist comes along and takes a look at the company. She believes that the company has a great future potential to make money, which means that she believes that the Intrinsic value is very high. She decides to invest $1 Million in the company for a 10% stake, and the founder agrees. The Fair Market value of the company at that moment is $10 Million. The VC believes that the Intrinsic value of the company is more than $10 Million and that she is making a good investment. The Asset value of the company just went up by $1 Million. To answer your question, the $1 Million is not the founder's to spend on a new house. It is the company's money. However, the founder owns 90% of the company. The new capital will allow the company to buy whatever assets the company needs to meet the potential that the founder and the VC see in it, and make the company grow and earn money for the two investors. A crooked founder could, theoretically, close down the company immediately and pocket 90% of the new cash, but there are certainly legal protections in the contract they signed when the investment was made that prevent him from doing that.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "821e3eecf2857fc1405d1f4b33e8d359",
"text": "The value of a company is, simplified, the sum of the value of the equity and the value of the debt. There are some other things to add/subtract to that, but just think about those for now. You could also say the value of a company is the value of its assets, or more precisely the value of the net cash flows those assets will generate in the future. So let's say you want to start a company, so you want to buy some assets. Maybe you want to buy a $200 asset. Well, you only have $100, so you take out a loan (debt) for $100 for the remainder. You buy the asset and start generating income. Let's say after a month you get bored and decide to sell the company. Let's assume the value of the assets hasn't changed. Your equity is worth $100, and you find a buyer who is willing to pay $100 for your company. Great! Right? Well there's still the $100 loan you owe, so you have to pay that back. And suddenly you now have $0. So in fact, you should have negotiated $200 with the buyer, because that's what the assets are actually worth. Then you can pay back the loan and still have the $100 in equity you deserve. (Alternatively, you could have negotiated the buyer to assume responsibility for the loan; same outcome for you.) Did that help?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c4bef758a078cff5aded80dbc6fc24be",
"text": "\"Matt explains the study numbers in his answer, but those are the valuation of the brand, not the value of the company or how \"\"rich\"\" the company is. Presuming that you're asking the value of the company, the usual way for a publicly traded company to be valued is by the market capitalization (1). Market capitalization is a fairly simple measure, basically the total value of all the shares of stock in that company. You can find the market cap for any publicly traded company on any of the usual finance sites like Google Finance or Yahoo Finance. If by rich you mean the total value of assets (assets being all property, including cash, real property, equipment, and licenses) a company owns, that information is included in a publicly traded company's quarterly SEC filing and investor releases, but isn't usually listed on the popular finance sites. An example can be seen at Duke Energy's Investor Relation Site (the same information can be found for all companies on EDGAR, the SEC's search tool). If you open the most recent 8-K (quarterly filing), and go to page 8, you can see that they have $33B+ in assets, and a high level breakdown of those. Note that the numbers are given in millions of dollars For a privately held company this information may or may not be available and you'd have to track it down if it is available. I picked Duke Energy because it's the first thing that popped into my mind. I have no affiliation with Duke, and I don't directly own any of their stock.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c214d560ed54ea4495c8526b2894adf6",
"text": "The worth of a share of stocks may be defined as the present cash value of all future dividends and liquidations associated therewith. Without a crystal ball, such worth may generally only be determined retrospectively, but even though it's generally not possible to know the precise worth of a stock in time for such information to be useful, it has a level of worth which is absolute and not--unlikely market price--is generally unaffected by people buying and selling the stock (except insofar as activities in company stock affect a company's ability to do business). If a particular share of stock is worth $10 by the above measure, but Joe sells it to Larry for $8, that means Joe gives Larry $2. If Larry sells it to Fred $12, Fred gives Larry $2. The only way Fred can come out ahead is if he finds someone else to give him $2 or more. If Fred can sell it to Adam for $13, then Adam will give Fred $3, leaving Fred $1 better off than he would be if he hadn't bought the stock, but Adam will be $3 worse off. The key point is that if you sell something for less than it's worth, or buy something for more that it's worth, you give money away. You might be able to convince other people to give you money in the same way you gave someone else money, but fundamentally the money has been given away, and it's not coming back.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "34bbcb90aefee6b1b90f85ab10a1b6d5",
"text": "While there are many very good and detailed answers to this question, there is one key term from finance that none of them used and that is Net Present Value. While this is a term generally associate with debt and assets, it also can be applied to the valuation models of a company's share price. The price of the share of a stock in a company represents the Net Present Value of all future cash flows of that company divided by the total number of shares outstanding. This is also the reason behind why the payment of dividends will cause the share price valuation to be less than its valuation if the company did not pay a dividend. That/those future outflows are factored into the NPV calculation, actually performed or implied, and results in a current valuation that is less than it would have been had that capital been retained. Unlike with a fixed income security, or even a variable rate debenture, it is difficult to predict what the future cashflows of a company will be, and how investors chose to value things as intangible as brand recognition, market penetration, and executive competence are often far more subjective that using 10 year libor rates to plug into a present value calculation for a floating rate bond of similar tenor. Opinion enters into the calculus and this is why you end up having a greater degree of price variance than you see in the fixed income markets. You have had situations where companies such as Amazon.com, Google, and Facebook had highly valued shares before they they ever posted a profit. That is because the analysis of the value of their intellectual properties or business models would, overtime provide a future value that was equivalent to their stock price at that time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "98ec745c6a8e74d555e9e026298ed9a2",
"text": "It is difficult to value a private company. Most of the valuations is based on how one feels the idea would translate into revenue in some future time. The VC firms take into account various factors to determine the price, but more often then not, its their hunch. Even VC don't make money on all picks, very few picks turn out to be stars, most picks lose money they have invested. Few picks just return their money. So if you feel that the idea/product/brand/people are great and would someday make good money, invest into it. Else stay away.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e656547f1bc1d937b6442ccc45a63ab2",
"text": "When a stock is going to become public there's a level of analysis required to figure out the range of IPO price that makes sense. For a company that's somewhat mature, and has a sector to compare it to, you can come up with a range that would be pretty close. For the recent linkedin, it's tougher to price a somewhat unique company, running at a loss, in a market rich with cash looking for the next great deal. If one gives this any thought, an opening price that's so far above the IPO price represents a failure of the underwriters to price it correctly. It means the original owners just sold theirvshares for far less than the market thought they were worth on day one. The day of IPO the stock opens similar to how any stock would open at 9:30, there are bids and asks and a price at which supply (the ask) and demand (bid) balance. For this IPO, it would appear that there were enough buyers to push the price to twice the anticipated open and it's maintained that level since. It's possible to have a different system in which a Dutch auction is used to make the shares public, in theory this can work, it's just not used commonly.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "718c94c2f02d2b07d82175dba8776ff6",
"text": "\"The company gets the proceeds from the sales of shares on the open market. If a company is selling 1,000,000 shares at $12/share then they will receive $12,000,000 from the underwriter minus some fees that the underwriter will collect. The part that ties into valuation is to consider what percentage is the company selling of itself that is coming from its own holdings. If the company is putting out 10% of its shares in the IPO from treasury holdings on a $10B valuation then it will get $1B minus the fees I'd suspect. Where I worked in late 1990s/early 2000s had an IPO where the underwriter did a bridge loan and the IPO so that the company didn't get all the money raised but did get enough to run operations for a while before ending operations. Public Offering notes that after an IPO other offerings would be called \"\"seasoned equity offering\"\" that may or may not be dilutive as they could come from new or existing shares.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "145a5decacc13be14030121db03b4578",
"text": "The (assets - liabilities)/#shares of a company is its book value, and that number is included in their reports. It's easy for a fund to release the net asset value on a daily basis because all of its assets (stocks, bonds, and cash) are given values every day by the market. It's also necessary to have a real time value for a fund as it will be bought and sold every day. A company can't really do the same thing as it will have much more diverse assets - real estate, cars, inventory, goodwill, etc. The real time value of those assets doesn't have the same meaning as a fund; those assets are used to earn cash, while a fund's business is only to maximize its net asset value.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1343c7ed17d2c9d9ea47022e828c951c",
"text": "Not sure of the question here if by IPO(initial public offering) you mean private company then: A company can invest its excess money into other companies, to earn returns. Also a company that is private can attract private investment if the sector is doing well on publicly traded markets. Finally a company can diversify away risk, by holding shares of a company that would benefit in the event of a disruption in their own industry.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e30c1a9481ded4a26c6feb5502718faa",
"text": "My understanding is you can create a company 0 value. Then you need to either loan the company the money to buy the building (it will still have 0 value as it will have a debt equal to it's assets) or sell share to investors at any price you like to raise the money to buy the building. Once shares have value (as valued by a chartered accountant - not anyone can do this) then anyone recieving shares will have to pay income tax. This is why keeping the shares as no value for as long as possible can be preferable. Also a benefit of using share options. talk to your investors, see what they require.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a3f2365912ad92fdb6806f5009bb20a8",
"text": "As far as I know, the AMT implications are the same for a privately held company as for one that is publicly traded. When I was given my ISO package, it came with a big package of articles on AMT to encourage me to exercise as close to the strike price as possible. Remember that the further the actual price at the time of purchase is from the strike price, the more the likely liability for AMT. That is an argument for buying early. Your company should have a common metric for determining the price of the stock that is vetted by outside sources and stable from year to year that is used in a similar way to the publicly traded value when determining AMT liability. During acquisitions stock options often, from what I know of my industry, at least, become options in the new company's stock. This won't always happen, but its possible that your options will simply translate. This can be valuable, because the price of stock during acquisition may triple or quadruple (unless the acquisition is helping out a very troubled company). As long as you are confident that the company will one day be acquired rather than fold and you are able to hold the stock until that one day comes, or you'll be able to sell it back at a likely gain, other than tying up the money I don't see much of a downside to investing now.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "59c4d3ea50aad7d39d3a7495aa8e3924",
"text": "Book value = sell all assets and liquidate company . Then it's the value of company on book. Price = the value at which it's share gets bought or sold between investors. If price to book value is less than one, it shows that an 100$ book value company is being traded at 99$ or below. At cheaper than actually theoretical price. Now say a company has a production plant . Situated at the most costliest real estate . Yet the company's valuation is based upon what it produces, how much orders it has etc while real estate value upon which plant is built stays in book while real investors don't take that into account (to an extend). A construction company might own a huge real estate inventory. However it might not be having enough cash flow to sustain monthly expense. In this scenario , for survival,i the company might have to sell its real estate at discount. And market investors are fox who could smell trouble and bring price way below the book value Hope it helps",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
39c87d91d52668d6dafc4f59ae9dadf1
|
How to manage 20 residential apartments
|
[
{
"docid": "4947e3208e0f0fd6a510771e77a0b9e3",
"text": "If he can't manage, best is he sells it off. Its easier to manage cash. Not sure what tax you are talking about. He should have already paid tax on fair market value of the 20 flats. If the intention of Mr X is to gift to son by way of death, then yes the tax will be less. Else whenever Mr X sells there will be tax. how to manage these 20 apartments? Hire a broker. He may front run quite a few things like showing the place etc. There is a risk if he is given a free hand, he may not get good quality tenant. There are quite a few shark brokers [its unregulated] who may arm twist seeing the opportunity of an old man with 20 flats. See if you can do long term lease with companies looking for guest house etc, or certain companies who run guest house. They would like the scale, generally 3-5 years contracts are done. The rent is good and overall less hassle. The risk is most would ask to invest more in furnishing and contracts can be terminated in months notice. If the property is in large metro [Delhi/Bangalore/Chennai/etc] These places have good property management companies. Ensure that you have independent lawyer; there are certain aspects of law that may need to be studied.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c5a6e5ffd6b132189f7b39f5213d9725",
"text": "I have no idea about India, but in many countries there are companies that specialize in property management. This means they will take on the business of maintaining the properties, finding tenants, doing paperwork and background checks, collecting rents and evicting tenants if necessary. Obviously for this they require a fee, but essentially the owner gets to sit back and do nothing except collect a cheque every month. In my country some real estate agents are in this business as well, though for 20 apartments I would be looking for a specialized firm.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8daccb4c7d1963417fafccde3f1149a4",
"text": "There are many property management companies are available in India. You can easily find trusted companies just searching on the google. They manage all these things legally. You just try this",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "4ac2c64ce70259bde39978411a151518",
"text": "\"with 150K € to invest to \"\"become a landlord\"\" you have several options: Pay for 100% of one property, and you then will make a significant percentage of the monthly rent as profit each month. That profit can be used to invest in other things, or to save to buy additional properties. At the end of the 21 years in your example, you can sell the flat for return of principal minus selling expenses, or even better make a profit because the property went up in value. Pay 20% down on 5 flats, and then make a much a smaller profit per flat each month due to the mortgage payment for each one. At the end of the 21 years sell the flats. Assuming that a significant portion of the mortgage is paid off each flat will sell for more than the mortgage balance. Thus you will have 5 nice large profits when you sell. something in between 1 and 5 flats. Each has different risks and expenses. With 5 rental properties you are more likely to use a management company, which will add to your monthly cost.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "32f65fc97fd635d2e2758c4e3e51da9d",
"text": "I owned and managed a few residential properties. At one time the net cash flow was on the order of $1000 per month. But it was work. Lots of work. I was managing about 7 units. This does not count the gains in capital appreciation which were significant. Using a management company would have put the cash flow at 0 or in the negative and would have lowered the quality of management IMO. Nothing comes for free...",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "186949c06eb488b98bb884fff413d4d4",
"text": "Renting a house out using a management company is mostly passive income. Earning affiliate income from companies that pay on a recurring basis is closer to passive income.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d0255b03e9b26ac7886bc7db1ca7075a",
"text": "\"I agree with Joe Taxpayer that a lot of details are missing to really evaluate it as an investment... for context, I own a few investment properties including a 'small' 10+ unit apartment complex. My answer might be more than you really want/need, (it kind of turned into Real Estate Investing 101), but to be fair you're really asking 3 different questions here: your headline asks \"\"how effective are Condo/Hotel developments as investments?\"\" An answer to that is... sometimes, very. These are a way for you-the investor-to get higher rents per sq. ft. as an owner, and for the hotel to limit its risks and access additional development funding. By your description, it sounds like this particular company is taking a substantial cut of rents. I don't know this property segment specifically, but I can give you my insight for longer-term apartment rentals... the numbers are the same at heart. The other two questions you're implying are \"\"How effective is THIS condo/hotel development?\"\" and \"\"Should you buy into it?\"\" If you have the funds and the financial wherewithal to honestly consider this, then I am sure that you don't need your hand held for the investment pros/cons warnings of the last question. But let me give you some of my insight as far as the way to evaluate an investment property, and a few other questions you might ask yourself before you make the decision to buy or perhaps to invest somewhere else. The finance side of real estate can be simple, or complicated. It sounds like you have a good start evaluating it, but here's what I would do: Start with figuring out how much revenue you will actually 'see': Gross Potential Income: 365 days x Average Rent for the Room = GPI (minus) Vacancy... you'll have to figure this out... you'll actually do the math as (Vacancy Rate %) x GPI (equals) Effective Potential Income = EPI Then find out how much you will actually pocket at the end of the day as operating income: Take EPI (minus) Operating expenses ... Utilities ... Maintenace ... HOA ... Marketing if you do this yourself (minus) Management Expenses ... 40% of EPI ... any other 'fees' they may charge if you manage it yourself. ... Extra tax help? (minus) Debt Service ... Mortgage payment ... include Insurances (property, PMI, etc) == Net Operating Income (NOI) Now NOI (minus) Taxes == Net Income Net Income (add back) Depreciation (add back) sometimes Mortgage Interest == After-tax Cash Flows There are two \"\"quickie\"\" numbers real estate investors can spout off. One is the NOI, the other is the Cap Rate. In order to answer \"\"How effective is THIS development?\"\" you'll have to run the numbers yourself and decide. The NOI will be based on any assumptions you choose to make for vacancy rates, actual revenue from hotel room bookings, etc. But it will show you how much you should bring in before taxes each year. If you divide the NOI by the asking price of your unit (and then multiply by 100), you'll get the \"\"Cap Rate\"\". This is a rough estimate of the rate of return you can expect for your unit... if you buy in. If you come back and say \"\"well I found out it has a XX% cap rate\"\", we won't really be qualified to help you out. Well established mega investment properties (think shopping centers, office buildings, etc.) can be as low as 3-5 cap rates, and as high as 10-12. The more risky the property, the higher your return should be. But if it's something you like, and the chance to make a 6% return feels right, then that's your choice. Or if you have something like a 15% cap rate... that's not necessarily outstanding given the level of risk (uncertain vacancies) involved in a hotel. Some other questions you should ask yourself include: How much competition is there in the area for short-term lodging? This could drive vacancies up or down... and rents up or down as well How 'liquid' will the property (room) be as an asset? If you can just break even on operating expense, then it might still make sense as an investment if you think that it might appreciate in value AND you would be able to sell the unit to someone else. How much experience does this property management company have... (a) in general, (b) running hotels, and (c) running these kinds of condo-hotel combination projects? I would be especially interested in what exactly you're getting in return for paying them 40% of every booking. Seasonality? This will play into Joe Taxpayer's question about Vacancy Rates. Your profile says you're from TX... which hints that you probably aren't looking at a condo on ski slopes or anything, but if you're looking at something that's a spring break-esque destination, then you might still have a great run of high o during March/April/May/June, but be nearly empty during October/November/December. I hope that helps. There is plenty of room to make a more \"\"exact\"\" model of what your cash flows might look like, but that will be based on assumptions and research you're probably not making at this time.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9f47d532ee2ff1cd4da42aa86e7f3042",
"text": "Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) have different end of term dates but by less than a month. Both have summer sessions, but most students do not stay over the summer. You can rent over the summer, but prices fall by a lot. Thirty to forty thousand students leave over the summer between the two. Only ten to twenty thousand remain throughout the year and not all of those are in Oakland (the neighborhood in Pittsburgh where the universities are located). So many of the landlords in Oakland have the same problem. Your competitors will cut their rates to try to get some rent for the summer months. This also means that you have to handle eight, nine, and three month leases rather than year long and certainly not multiyear leases. You're right that you don't have to buy the latest appliances or the best finishes, but you still have to replace broken windows and doors. Also, the appliances and plumbing need to mostly work. The furnace needs to produce heat and distribute it. If there is mold or mildew, you will have to take care of it. You can't rely on the students doing so. So you have to thoroughly clean the premises between tenants. Students may leave over winter break. If there are problems, the pipes may freeze and burst, etc. Since they're not there, they won't let you know when things break. Students drop out during the term and move out. You probably won't be able to replace them when that happens. If you have three people in two bedrooms, two of them may be in a romantic relationship. Romantic relationships among twenty-year olds end frequently. Your three people drops back to two. Your recourse in that case is to evict the remaining tenants and sue for breach of contract. But if you do that, you may not replace the tenants until a new term starts. Better might be to sue the one who left and accept the lower rent from the other two. But you likely won't get the entire rent amount for the remainder of the lease. Suing an impoverished student is not the road to riches. Pittsburgh is expected to have a 6.1% increase in house prices which almost all of it is going to be pure profit. I don't know specifically about Pittsburgh, but in the national market, housing prices are about where they were in 2004. Prices were flat to increasing from 2004 to 2007 and then fell sharply from 2007 to 2009, were flat to decreasing from 2009 to 2012, and have increased the last few years. Price to rent ratios are as high now as in 2003 and higher than they were the twenty years before that. Maybe prices do increase. Or maybe we hit a new 20% decrease. I would not rely on this for profit. It's great if you get it, but unreliable. I wouldn't rely on estimates for middle class homes to apply to what are essentially slum apartments. A 6% average may be a 15% increase in one place and a 3% decrease in another. The nice homes with the new appliances and the fancy finishes may get the 15% increase. The rundown houses in a block where students party past 2 AM may get no increase. Both the city of Pittsburgh and the county of Allegheny charge property taxes. Schools and libraries charge separate taxes. The city provides a worksheet that estimates $2860 in taxes on a $125,000 property. It doesn't sound like you would be eligible for homestead or senior tax relief. Realtors should be able to tell you the current assessment and taxes on the properties that they are selling you. You should be able to call a local insurance agent to find out what kinds of insurance are available to landlords. There is also renter's insurance which is paid by the tenant. Some landlords require that tenants show proof of insurance before renting. Not sure how common that is in student housing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "de2f8020f2afe5a02fa537ebb9f85250",
"text": "\"To be completely honest, I think that a target of 10-15% is very high and if there were an easy way to attain it, everyone would do it. If you want to have such a high return, you'll always have the risk of losing the same amount of money. Option 1 I personally think that you can make the highest return if you invest in real estate, and actively manage your property(s). If you do this well with short term rental and/or Airbnb I think you can make healthy returns BUT it will cost a lot of time and effort which may diminish its appeal. Think about talking to your estate agent to find renters, or always ensuring your AirBnB place is in good nick so you get a high rating and keep getting good customers. If you're looking for \"\"passive\"\" income, I don't think this is a good choice. Also make sure you take note of karancan's point of costs. No matter what you plan for, your costs will always be higher than you think. Think about water damage, a tenant that breaks things/doesn't take care of stuff etc. Option 2 I think taking a loan is unnecessarily risky if you're in good financial shape (as it seems), unless you're gonna buy a house with a mortgage and live in it. Option 3 I think your best option is to buy bonds and shares. You can follow karancan's 100 minus your age rule, which seems very reasonable (personally I invest all my money in shares because that's how my father brought me up, but it's really a matter of taste. Both can be risky though bonds are usually safer). I think I should note that you cannot expect a return of 10% or more because, as everyone always says, if there were a way to guarantee it, everyone would do it. You say you don't have any idea how this works so I'd go to my bank and ask them. You probably have access to private banking so that should mean someone will be able to sit you down and talk you through. Also look at other banks that have better rates and/or pretend you're leaving your bank to negotiate a better deal. If I were you I'd invest in blue chips (big international companies listed on the main indeces (DAX, FTSE 100, Dow Jones)), or (passively managed) mutual funds/ETFs that track these indeces. Just remember to diversify by country and industry a bit. Note: i would not buy the vehicles/plans that my bank (no matter what they promise, and they promise a lot) suggest because if you do that then the bank always takes a cut off your money. TlDr, dont expect to make 10-15% on a passive investment and do what a lot of others do: shares and bonds. Also make sure you get a lot of peoples opinions :)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a66f38ae2cba550a0b1745a99f4782ac",
"text": "Approach property management companies. I work for one with hundreds of properties and we need plumbers all the time. On the business side it simplifies your marketing and repeat business. We get potted flowers and candy from vendors all the time. Or they bring in pizza for lunch once a quarter to keep the relationship up.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8ad92aef2db18e00c11a34e335a8493c",
"text": "Well for starters you want to rent it for more than the apartment costs you. Aside from mortgage you have insurance, and maintenance costs. If you are going to have a long term rental property you need to make a profit, or at a bare minimum break even. Personally I would not like the break even option because there are unexpected costs that turn break even into a severe loss. Basically the way I would calculate the minimum rent for an apartment I owned would be: (Payment + (taxes/12) + (other costs you provide) + (Expected annual maintenance costs)) * 100% + % of profit I want to make. This is a business arrangement. Unless you are recouping some of your losses in another manner then it is bad business to maintain a business relationship that is costing you money. The only thing that may be worth considering is what comparable rentals go for in your area. You may be forced to take a loss if the rental market in your area is depressed. But I suspect that right now your condo is renting at a steal of a rate. I would also suspect that the number you get from the above formula falls pretty close to what the going rate in your area is.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1e912dbff135225ac31d53bff72a6ff8",
"text": "\"I am surprised at the amount of work this contract wants done. I'd question if it's even legal given the high costs. I suspect it's only there to remind abusive tenants of responsibilities they already have in law for extraordinary abuse beyond ordinary wear-and-tear: they are already on the hook to repaint if they trash the paint (think: child writing on walls, happens a lot), and already need to fumigate (and a lot more) if they are a filth-type hoarder who brings in a serious infestation (happens a lot). The landlord can already go after these people for additional money beyond the deposit. But that's not you. So don't freak out about those clauses, until you talk to the landlord and see what he's really after. Almost certainly, he really wants a \"\"fit and ready to rent\"\" unit upon your departure, so he doesn't have to take the unit off the market for months fixing it. As long as that's done, there's no reasonable reason for further work -- a decent landlord wouldn't require that. Nor would a court, IMO. The trouble with living in a place for awhile is you become blind to its deficiencies. What's more, it's rather difficult to \"\"size up\"\" a unit as ready when it's still occupied by your stuff. A unit will look rather different when reduced to a bare room, without furniture and whatnot distracting you. Add to it a dose of vanity and it becomes hard to convince yourself of defects others will easily see. So, tread carefully here. If push comes to shove, first stop is whether it's even legal. Cities and states with heavy tenant populations tend to have much more detailed laws, and as a rule, they favor the tenant. Right off the bat, in most states the tenant is not responsible for ordinary wear-and-tear. In my opinion, 6 years of ordinary, exempt wear would justify a repaint, so that shouldn't be on the tenant at all. As for the fumigation, I'm not in Florida so I don't know the deal, maybe there's some special environmental issue there which somehow makes that reasonable, it sure wouldn't fly in CA. Again that assumes you're a reasonable prudent tenant, not a slob or hoarder. As for the pro carpet cleaning, that's par for the course in any of the tough rent control areas I've seen, so that's gotten a pass from the legislators. Though $600 seems awfully high. Other than that, you can argue the terms are \"\"unconscionable\"\" -- too much of a raw deal to even be fair. However, this will depend on the opinion of a judge. Hit or miss. I'm hoping your landlord will be happy to negotiate based on the good condition of the unit (which he may not know; landlords rarely visit tenant units unless they really need to.) You certainly should make the case that you make here; that the work is not really needed and it's prohibitive. Your best defense against unconscionable deals is don't sign them. Remember, you didn't know the guy when you initially signed... the now-objectionable language should have been a big red flag back then, saying this guy is epic evil, run screaming. (even if that turned out not to be true, you should't have hung around to find out.) You may have gotten lucky this time, but don't make that mistake again. Unless one of the above pans out, though... a deal is a deal. You gave your word. The powerful act here is to keep your word. Forgive me for getting ontological, but successful people say it creates success for them. And here's the thing. You have to read your contracts because you can't keep your word if you don't know what word you gave. It's a common mistake: thinking good business is trust, hope, faith, submission or giving your all. No. In business, you take the time to hammer out mutually beneficial (win-win) agreements, and you set them on paper to eliminate confusion, argument and stress in the future as memories fade and conditions change. That conflict resolution is how business partners remain friends, or at least professional colleagues.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4d2dca01d9cfa77aa73046505321e972",
"text": "\"I see two important things missing from your ongoing costs: maintenance and equipment. I also don't see the one-time costs of buying and moving. Maintenance involves doing some boring math like \"\"roofs go every 20 years or so and a new roof would cost $20k, so I need $1000 a year in the roof fund. Furnaces go every 20 years and cost $5k, so I need $250 a year in the furnace fund.\"\" etc etc. Use your own local numbers for both how long things last and how much they cost to replace. One rule of thumb is a percentage of the house (not house and land) price each year keeping in mind that while roof, furnace, carpet, stove, toilets etc all need to get replaced eventually, not everything does - the walls for example cost a lot to build but don't wear out - and not all at a 20 year pace. Some is more often, some is less often. I've heard 5% but think that's too high. Try 3% maybe? So if you paid $200,000 for a $100,000 house sitting on $100,000 of land, you put $3000 a year or about $250 a month into a repair fund. Then ignore it until something needs to be repaired. When that happens, fund the repair from the savings. If you're lucky, there will always be enough in there. If the house is kind of old and on its last legs, you might need to start with a 10 or 20k infusion into that repair fund. Equipment means a lawnmower and trimmer, a snow shovel, tools for fixing things (screwdriver, hammer, glue, pliers, that sort of thing.) Maybe tools for gardening or other hobbies that house-owners are likely to have. You might need to prune back some trees or bushes if nothing else. Eventually you get tools for your tools such as a doo-dad for sharpening your lawnmower. Well, lots of doo-dads for sharpening lots of things. One time expenses include moving, new curtains, appliances if they don't come with the house, possibly new furniture if you would otherwise have a lot of empty rooms, paint and painting equipment, and your housewarming party. There are also closing costs associated with buying a house, and you might need to give deposits for some of your utilities, or pay to have something (eg internet) installed. Be sure to research these since you have to pay them right when you have the least money, as you move in.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2f433e95de68c23d93cf4fae5295ecc2",
"text": "You will need to look at the 27.5 year depreciation table from the IRS. It tells you how you will be able to write off the first year. It depends on which month you had the unit ready to rent. Note that that it might be a different month from when you moved, or when the first tenant moved in. Your list is pretty good. You can also claim some travel expenses or mileage related to the unit. Also keep track of any other expenses such as switching the water bill to the new renter, or postage. If you use Turbo tax, not the least expensive version, it can be a big help to get started and to remember how much to depreciate each year.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5a1293a666b8079d199978def4663f03",
"text": "Getting the first year right for any rental property is key. It is even more complex when you rent a room, or rent via a service like AirBnB. Get professional tax advice. For you the IRS rules are covered in Tax Topic 415 Renting Residential and Vacation Property and IRS pub 527 Residential Rental Property There is a special rule if you use a dwelling unit as a personal residence and rent it for fewer than 15 days. In this case, do not report any of the rental income and do not deduct any expenses as rental expenses. If you reach that reporting threshold the IRS will now expect you to to have to report the income, and address the items such as depreciation. When you go to sell the house you will again have to address depreciation. All of this adds complexity to your tax situation. The best advice is to make sure that in a tax year you don't cross that threshold. When you have a house that is part personal residence, and part rental property some parts of the tax code become complex. You will have to divide all the expenses (mortgage, property tax, insurance) and split it between the two uses. You will also have to take that rental portion of the property and depreciation it. You will need to determine the value of the property before the split and then determine the value of the rental portion at the time of the split. From then on, you will follow the IRS regulations for depreciation of the rental portion until you either convert it back to non-rental or sell the property. When the property is sold the portion of the sales price will be associated with the rental property, and you will need to determine if the rental property is sold for a profit or a loss. You will also have to recapture the depreciation. It is possible that one portion of the property could show a loss, and the other part of the property a gain depending on house prices over the decades. You can expect that AirBnB will collect tax info and send it to the IRS As a US company, we’re required by US law to collect taxpayer information from hosts who appear to have US-sourced income. Virginia will piggyback onto the IRS rules. Local law must be researched because they may limit what type of rentals are allowed. Local law could be state, or county/city/town. Even zoning regulations could apply. Also check any documents from your Home Owners Association, they may address running a business or renting a property. You may need to adjust your insurance policy regarding having tenants. You may also want to look at insurance to protect you if a renter is injured.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2b3f26a15ae57922ab21582901c89a67",
"text": "You may have to ask each tenant to provide copies of bank statements or copied of deposited checks indicating what was paid, to whom and when. Using a spreadsheet is a good idea. It doesn't have to be complicated. If everyone co-operates then this exercise might not be too much of a hassle. But if anyone is combative or unwilling to produce these records, I would recommend reminding them that their other choice is to take each other to court where these records would be required anyway - or face eviction if the landlord doesn't get paid.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1e78a7689dc55077eb13c694a60c5654",
"text": "\"When you say \"\"apartment\"\" I take it you mean \"\"condo\"\", as you're talking about buying. Right or no? A condo is generally cheaper to buy than a house of equal size and coondition, but they you have to pay condo fees forever. So you're paying less up front but you have an ongoing expense. With a condo, the condo association normally does exterior maintenance, so it's not your problem. Find out exactly what's your responsibility and what's theirs, but you typically don't have to worry about maintaining the parking areas, you have less if any grass to mow, you don't have to deal with roof or outside walls, etc. Of course you're paying for all this through your condo fees. There are two advantages to getting a shorter term loan: Because you owe the money for less time, each percentage point of interest is less total cash. 1% time 15 years versus 1% times 30 years or whatever. Also, you can usually get a lower rate on a shorter term loan because there's less risk to the bank: they only have to worry about where interest rates might go for 15 years instead of 30 years. So even if you know that you will sell the house and pay off the loan in 10 years, you'll usually pay less with a 15 year loan than a 30 year loan because of the lower rate. The catch to a shorter-term loan is that the monthly payments are higher. If you can't afford the monthly payment, then any advantages are just hypothetical. Typically if you have less than a 20% down payment, you have to pay mortgage insurance. So if you can manage 20% down, do it, it saves you a bundle. Every extra dollar of down payment is that much less that you're paying in interest. You want to keep an emergency fund so I wouldn't put every spare dime I had into a down payment if I could avoid it, but you want the biggest down payment you can manage. (Well, one can debate whether its better to use spare cash to invest in the stock market or some other investment rather than paying down the mortgage. Whole different question.) \"\"I dont think its a good idea to make any principal payments as I would probably loose them when I would want to sell the house and pay off the mortgage\"\" I'm not sure what you're thinking there. Any extra principle payments that you make, you'll get back when you sell the house. I mean, suppose you buy a house for $100,000, over the time you own it you pay $30,000 in principle (between regular payments and any extra payments), and then you sell it for $120,000. So out of that $120,000 you'll have to pay off the $70,000 balance remaining on the loan, leaving $50,000 to pay other expenses and whatever is left goes in your pocket. Scenario 2, you buy the house for $100,000, pay $40,000 in principle, and sell for $120,000. So now you subtract $60,000 from the $120,000 leaving $60,000. You put in an extra $10,000, but you get it back when you sell. Whether you make or lose money on the house, whatever extra principle you put in, you'll get back at sale time in terms of less money that will have to go to pay the remaining principle on the mortgage.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4ca1b59e45e7dd98ad3c7f6ba8724c30",
"text": "They call you because that is their business rules. They want their money, so their system calls you starting on the 5th. Now you have to decide what you should do to stop this. The most obvious is to move the payment date to before the 5th. Yes that does put you at risk if the tenant is late. But since it is only one of the 4 properties you own, it shouldn't be that big of a risk.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
408261340dbd7bb14145fd4b69dccf5b
|
What types of careers consistently make the most money entering with no background or social skills?
|
[
{
"docid": "de739c66d71c43b7ed7b810b9d702bc1",
"text": "\"You may think it sucks to have learned a crap ton of category theory, which is seemingly useless outside of academia, but have you considered picking up a \"\"functional\"\" programming language, e.g. Haskell? How about Java or, more recently, Scala? I would bet that you would love Haskell. And then you can make a fortune working at Jane Street Capital, which uses OCaml, another functional programming language. Time to get your hands dirty with some programming experience. Minimal social skills required, as you had wished for, plus maximal compensation, plus you get to keep using math that was sort of close to your research area. Good luck.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bce48e2907397d3a7870a47c5e64fbfa",
"text": "\"It sounds like you're massively under-selling yourself. You presumably have a degree to get into the PhD program, and you now have work experience as well. But you're applying for jobs in fast food restaurants. You may struggle to get a job because they will expect you to only be there a few weeks until you find a \"\"proper\"\" job.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "d8215c6954706a094273f3a834a35d61",
"text": "I went through a very self damaging phase in my teens and wound up having to get a GED. I eventually followed it up with a punt for college and got a 2yr Assoc in Business. When I finally got my head out of my ass around my 30s, I realized how much I was stuck in the ~$25-30k bracket. I got an entry level job doing computer repair and started hitting the books & web. Soon, I was taking on web design and basic server admin duties. I got downsized and wound up looking again. Wound up in an entry level again doing first level support & inventory for a local ISP. I took an interest in networking and self studied for and got my Net+ and Sec+. I was acting as their local level network engineer but they weren't willing to change my pay or title so I began looking. I wound up getting picked up by a recruiter who helped me land a job that over doubled my pay and got me into a position where I'd get a lot of experience with high demand technologies and they'd sponsor my security clearance. I'm now closing in on the magical 6 digits but it's all about self motivation on constant education and learning. It should also be said that patience must be remembered. I knew I had dug a hole for myself and it wouldn't be overnight... I'm now in my early 40s so it's been a full decade of effort and just getting by.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "706fc4c602a14d6d7a58d167df266569",
"text": "Florida. Piece work. Gutters. Oh and the industry is in such demand you can company hop all day all over the country. It's not much just climbing a ladder all day in the sun in 110 heat index 100% humidity hardly able to move after work. Oh that's also if you don't mind basically working minimum wage for the first year until you get good. Yeah no medical but no one seems to care if you're a junkie or alcoholic. Or call out every day. Or show up late because you can't be fired because there is no one to replace you.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "66dd66bcab65f67540b450c111ddba7b",
"text": "Everything in life is a combination of luck and skill. Startups are no different. The risks are higher and most sensible people know and understand that. You know why we worship the successes? Because against all odds, those startups stood up to your salaried buddies who work for faceless large corporations and have tons of people and kicked their asses. At some point, they deserve it. You see startups as gambling, others see it as betting on yourself. Especially founding or joining an early stage startup. It's also taking on huge responsibility. In a mega-corp your failures and shortcomings will be covered and almost certainly won't tank the company. Your creativity probably won't flourish and their is an incentive to do just well enough. Why should you work your ass off for a company that you're not invested in other than a paycheck? Startups aren't for everyone. Hell, startups probably aren't for most people. But there are some people, those select few, who simply can't imagine not working for themselves, creating things, tinkering, trying to change the world. It's not even gambling to them, it's a way of life.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b8b8662496d3ff734aa0b957108abe71",
"text": "\"This quote has it almost backwards. Thomas J. Stanley's recent book (he's one of the duo who researched and wrote about The Millionaire Next Door) claims that the top occupation of millionaires is \"\"business owner / self-employed\"\" (28%). \"\"Real estate investor\"\" is lumped in with \"\"other\"\" (9%), and if the ordering is correct in the list, it's no more than 2% of the total. (source)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d5afca16ee485c9157d01ff29ff09333",
"text": "Hey OP, Don't listen to the negative comments, they don't know what they're talking about. I just got hired as an associate i-banker at the top investment bank in my country , which is roughly at the level of American bulge bracket banks. I'm an introvert. Yes, I like to drink and socialize, and part of the interview process involved cocktails and dinner with other candidates and several ibankers at all levels . But I-bankers are just geeks in suits. As long as you are comfortable in social settings , you don't need to be an alpha male or frat jock. I recommend meeting as many ibankers as possible. Have coffee chats and learn about the people that work in the industry. Good luck.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "31cc1b414ce9879753cb345ab95d2af5",
"text": "\"Even the Wall Street jobs require skill, knowing how the stock market work, knowing how people work, etc. Even saying \"\"that luck is the main factor in the majority of cases of great wealth\"\" is still wrong. Really the only time luck is the real reason is non skill based gambling games (lottery, slots, etc), inheritance, and finding a wallet on the side of the road/street\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f16eb5e1d56ec6965130ccdeaf8313ae",
"text": "70 isn't all that bad. And being a fund manager at a top fund is not the highest paying job per se. What's critical is to be a partner, or found your own fund, or have some ownership stake. There are sales people and lawyers who make more than PMs because they own/run the firm. And I would say it's impossible to do anything in finance anymore without a degree.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b80363c7a594c079da8718c39651df41",
"text": "It's all really personal preference and dependent on how your lifestyle/hobbies are. I have a friend who majored in Marketing and is now making 80k/yr out of college as he is also into web design. However, in my opinion, Finance would be the most exhilarating and Accounting would be the most stable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d92328b094a5df3c5d586bf8a4e5f54f",
"text": "\"In finance What kind of amorphous bullshit is that? There are literally hundreds of different things that can varyingly be termed \"\"in finance\"\". If you want the traditional big bank job working as a spreadsheet monkey, very fucking difficult right now. Masters in finance doubling down on a BS: if it's from Princeton, great, if it's from Blue Mountain State, whatever. A CFA is getting common but it might help - it probably won't hurt at least. If you mean \"\"as a big shot trader for a hedge fund\"\" the answer is precisely impossible with only that on your resume. If you mean entry corporate finance, it's certainly possible (although you should not listen to anything I say in this regard as I've successfully avoided learning much about the subject thus far and have no intention of changing that, thus am as roughly as reliable on that as a wet paper towel).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a8b3c91cd485070546d4ccdae881febf",
"text": "Yes it is! You don't need the candidate waving a university diploma to find out in 5 minutes if they can read, write or understand. As someone who work with many interns, some of them from ivy league universities, I can confirm that many of them, 30%, have terrible attitudes, immaturity, spoiled, disorganized, and it all goes together with being not so smart, despite the degree. In the past, to be a teller in a bank, you did not have to finish high school. Just needed to be good with basic math.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9f3cd600693eeed79ee84d83fd546f80",
"text": "I work in marketing. Finance is probably the safest route with regards to opportunity and stability. Marketing can be expendable. Finance usually can't. That being said, it really depends on your personality type. Marketing people and Finance people are two different breeds. If you're the type that likes a very linear, matter-of-fact field, stick to finance where numbers don't lie. If your more of an extrovert who likes to think creatively in a field of a lot of unknowns, marketing may be the way to go.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "370abae7f82206dca7db05458d1152bf",
"text": "Yeah, I've heard of actual people, like Jim-down-the-hall, making 1M due to those beautiful, god damned, golden handcuffs known as RSUs. This was at a valley tech giant though, so common, no. But in the realm of possibility without autism level natural abilities, yes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cbfd1c4095aaa7fb7d8ce00026bad72a",
"text": "One overarching thing to keep in mind is that wherever you go with Finance if you work hard enough and climb the ladder, you can make decent money. I know CIO's, Market Stragesits and even CFO's, Portfolio Managers and CPA's that all live extremely comfortably, and all of them work outside of the IB industry, basically, IB isn't the end-all for making large sums of money. The main reason why it pays so much upfront is that of the hours you have to work if you look at their salary at an hourly rate, it's around 10-12 bucks an hour. Definitely think about the Double major thing though, or potentially just doing a minor. It would definitely look good on a resume, especially if it's something you also enjoy, but you've gotta keep that GPA high, and getting a 4.0 in CS is quite a challenge, to begin with. Pretty much any of the Series certifications can help you depending on where you want to go career-wise, obviously for some positions have certain series certifications won't be useful at all. It's also worth looking into the CFA program if you plan on doing Financial Analysis, but you'll need a sponsor for this, just like the Series certifications. Happy to help man, if you've got any other questions feel free to reach out. I'm in the same boat just trying to figure out what I want to do with my life to make decent money so I can take care of my friends and family, and live life to the fullest.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3074a94094ff46b32f84a6d94a0651eb",
"text": "Another way to do this is go to work for that company. Companies in this situation normally offer low pay, long hours, and stock options. Given a sufficient grant, it could be all very lucrative or worthless. Even if you have no electronics background you might be able to work in a different capacity. There were secretaries at various companies that became wealthy off of their stock options.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bab1f2c4e07d0694af1c5867122fa73b",
"text": "\"I used to run a telecommunications construction company and left to go back to school so that I could find a job in a \"\"white collar\"\" industry. Trade work is great when the money flows, but it's so cyclical that the downturns can rip your company/bank account apart. My sister that stayed in it is making 85k a year and I'm about to start a 45k a year job out of college. I guess I'll know in 5 years if I made the right choice, but I at least have a lot more job mobility than she does.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
5a5f8ad3288f2cb621f7ca5831446fbe
|
Is it possible to get life insurance as a beneficiary before the person insured dies?
|
[
{
"docid": "32fc43e946560f7aece913aec3c0d849",
"text": "I recall the following business from the AIDS crisis: viatical settlement But because there were life-extending treatments developed in the 1990s, many third parties which engaged in these took a bath and it's not as common.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b2c799c21cbf7e9fc6f2c8ab23de5d35",
"text": "If the insurance policy is a whole-life (or variable life) policy, it might have a surrender value that the owner of the policy might be able to get by surrendering the policy in whole; if it is a term life policy, it has no surrender value. In many cases, the owner of the policy is also the insured and so ask Uncle Joe whether he would be willing to surrender the life insurance policy and give you the proceeds now instead of making you wait till he passes away. If it is a term life policy, ask him to consider not renewing the policy and from now on, just give you the premium he would have been paying to the insurance company. Whether he will pay you increasing amounts in later years (as a renewable five-year level term policy might require) is a more delicate matter that you can negotiate with him. On the other hand, if the policy owner is Aunt Annie but the insured is Uncle Joe (and you are the beneficiary), talk to Aunt Annie instead; she is the one who can cancel the policy, not Uncle Joe. And for heaven's sake, don't grease the skids to facilitate Uncle Joe's first step onto the stairway to heaven; there are, depending on where you live, various laws prohibiting payments to beneficiaries who have had a hand in arranging for the happy event to occur.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "328e79ef60ec002d959f06cda2b2b17a",
"text": "Generally no. It does not make sense for insurance company to alter terms and if there are such rules it can be subject to misuse.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b1234f8cb5c80b9ebe1fd888e157d3d7",
"text": "\"The short answer is \"\"No\"\". There a 2 ways to get cash from a life insurance policy. If the policy has cash value greater than the surrender value, then the difference can be borrowed, but will generally increase premiums in the future. The other method, available on many term policies allows the owner to receive part of the death benefit if the insured has a physician willing to certify that he/she will probably pass away within a 12 month period. Several carriers also offer cash benefits for critical care.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "3393f7c349cd30df4749a2c59947f9ae",
"text": "To add to JoeTaxpayer's answer, the cost of providing (term) life insurance for one year increases with the age of the insured. Thus, if you buy a 30-year term policy with level premiums (the premium is the same for 30 years) then, during the earlier years, you pay more than the cost to the insurance company for providing the benefit. In later years, you pay somewhat less than the cost of providing the insurance. The excess premiums that the insurance company charged in earlier years and the earnings from investing that money covers the difference between the premium paid in later years and the true cost of providing the coverage. If after 20 years you decide that you no longer need the protection (children have grown up and now have jobs etc) and you cancel the policy, you will have overpaid for the protection that you got. The insurance company will not give you backsies on the overpayment. As an alternative, you might want to consider a term life insurance policy in which the premiums increase each year (or increase every 5 years) and thus better approximate the actual cost to the insurance company. One advantage is that you pay less in early life and pay more in later years (when hopefully your income will have increased and you can afford to pay more). Thus, you can get a policy with a larger face value (150K for your wife and 400K for yourself is really quite small) with annual premium of $550 now and more in later years. Also if you decide to cancel the policy after 20 years, you will not have overpaid for the level of coverage provided. Finally, in addition to a policy with larger face value, I recommend that you include the mortgage (if any) on your house in the amount that you decide is enough for your family to live on and to send the kids to college, etc., or get a separate (term life insurance) policy to cover the mortgage on your home. Many mortgage contracts have clauses to the effect that the entire principal owed becomes immediately due if either of the borrowers dies. Yes, the widow or widower can get a replacement mortgage, or prove to the lender that the monthly payments will continue as before, (or pay off the mortgage from that $150K or $400K which will leave a heck of a lot less for the family to survive on) etc., but in the middle of dealing with all the hassles created by a death in the family, this is one headache that can be taken care of now. The advantage of including the mortgage amount in a single policy that will support the family when you are gone is that you get a bit of a break; the sum of the annual premiums on ten policies for $100K is more than the premiums for a single $1M policy. There is also the consideration that the principal owed on the mortgage declines over the years (very slowly at first, though) and so there will be more money available for living expenses in later years. Alternatively, consider a special term life insurance policy geared towards mortgage coverage. The face value of this policy reduces each year to match the amount still due on the mortgage. Note that you may already have such a policy in place because the lender has insisted on you getting such a policy as a condition for issuing the loan. In this case, keep in mind that not only is the lender the beneficiary of such a policy, but if you bought the policy through the lender, you are providing extra profit to the lender; you can get a similar policy at lower premiums on the open market than the policy that your lender has so thoughtfully provided you. I bought mine from a source that caters to employees of nonprofit organizations and public sector employees; your mileage may vary.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4f1a6600c7d5167d1c80460f44dc3060",
"text": "You have asked this question but provide very little information. As others have stated, what country are you in? Was there a will or any other agreement? Basically any estate will go to the beneficiaries once all debtors have been paid off. How this is done will largely depend on which country/state/region you are in and what documentation was in place at the time of death. You might want to check out this website for details on passing away without a will: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-estate-settled-if-theres-32442.html",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d3e80c45ba965e888546e407bc8bf122",
"text": "Life insurance is not an investment -- by definition, since the companies need to take a profit out of it, the average amount paid in exceeds the amount paid out, yielding a negative rate of return. Get life insurance if your death would cause severe financial hardship for someone. If you have sufficient savings that your wife could recover and move on with her life without hardship, and your kids are grown, you probably DO NOT need life insurance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cbe60d47428c4fd61da728a2ede6e83f",
"text": "I just went through this and life insurance money generally does not go into Probate. However, since there was no beneficiary, you will have to ask the probate court. I would advise you not to spend any of the money yet. Make a meeting with the probate court in the county where they lived. You will need the death certificate and the will. If you do not have a will, the estate generally does not need to go into probate. But if it does, then they will definitely let you know what to do with the insurance money. Just make sure you use the estate accounts to pay off all of his debts before you distribute the left over money. The entire process should take an absolute minimum of 6 months.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2d29f10957e2b14100a27d8ab2ce1cbd",
"text": "\"There are two types of insurance: whole life and term. I don't recommend whole life insurance, because you are insuring against something that will happen, your death. Maybe you could buy it if members of your family have a history of outliving the averages. This is called \"\"adverse selection.\"\" Term is different: it insures against your UNTIMELY death. Many people I know take term insurance for the X years until their last child leaves college, or some other well defined \"\"term.\"\" They don't want to die before this term but will be satisfied with the insurance as a \"\"consolation\"\" prize.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fa80e2066fab165e86db3de8af6d86ac",
"text": "Does such insurance make any sense or is it just wasting money for passengers? As with most insurance, it depends. If you just look at the probability of a payout, the cost of the insurance, and the payout amount, then statistically it will always be better to avoid buying insurance. This is because there is a certain amount of overhead in an insurance company, like the commissions and salaries you mentioned. The goal when buying insurance should be to avoid a cost that you cannot afford or is inconvenient to be able to afford. For example, if your family would be devastated financially by your death then it would make sense for you to buy some sort of life insurance. Whether or not this particular insurance makes sense for you depends on your financial situation and risk tolerance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5e37f85cd922fdb9702e05ac45d345b6",
"text": "So far all insurances start from the perspective of the insurance taker. However, I find it much more intuitive to look from the perspective of the insurance giver: Note that the exact amount may differ, but management fees of a few dozen percent are quite realistic. Note that it is not as unreasonable as it may sound at first, some costs: And of course most insurance companies will want to keep some profit as well. If you are completely risk averse, typically it is only financial beneficial to get insurance if you have a significantly higher risk profile. Examples of this (not an expert on boats): Note that piece of mind may also be worth getting the insurance for, for instance if you frequently put others in the position to crash your boat, and don't want to create an awkward financial discussion when they do.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "730ad7c986ba008c4a3dfbaf3aed190d",
"text": "At their age, the likely did not even need the coverage anymore unless they were doing some major estate planning. If that's the case then it sound like they purchased the wrong policy to begin with since OP's account of the information makes it sound like a term policy. If it is a term policy, the term was also probably about to end as well. In the end, this will likely not be a bog deal.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a5345be7d605b0afce14d92988730fc0",
"text": "Here's the issue with LTC and, really, underwritten insurance in general; no one has a crystal ball. Based on today's available rates where's the sweet spot to buy LTC? Probably right around the mid-60s, because you probably won't pay much in before you start gutting the carrier (assuming you can make it through underwriting in your mid-60s). The issue is, what happens when some life event changes your underwriting status? Would you rather buy prematurely or be excluded entirely? Those are generally your two options when it comes to individual LTC. The underwriting eligibility window on LTC is very narrow. There's a very very small space between the best possible underwriting and being flatly declined. Look for an LTC agent in your area. Likely someone in your circle of friends and family will know a reputable/knowledgeable insurance agent who can run up some quotes at various underwriting classes. Try to avoid looking at quotes for your age + 10 years to see what the quote will look like 10 years from now. 10 years from now the rate tables will be significantly different. Whether or not you should buy LTC now rather than waiting will depend on a whole host of other criteria. Personally, if I was 50 and my biggest health concern was improving my run time and LTC is on my mind, I'd just pick up a policy now while I will likely be in a preferred underwriting class rather than waiting and hoping my health doesn't betray me. Obviously I'm a stranger on the internet and none of this is actual advice. You should find an agent local to you and talk about your options and situation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d446846369a78284f7692921324ee4c6",
"text": "\"Careful with saying \"\"no need\"\". Look careful at the cost of life insurance. That cost depends obviously on the amount, but also on the age when you start paying into the insurance. If you take out a $100,000 insurance at 20, and someone else takes it out at 30, and a third person at 50, they will pay hugely different amounts when you reach the same age. You will pay less when you are 50 then the person taking out insurance at 30 when they reach the age of 50, and less again than the person who just started with their life insurance. And as mhoran said, once you have insurance you can keep it even if you get an illness that would make you uninsurable.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "caf48708dcdc273ce87c8acb2d58e838",
"text": "I think the chances of them changing the rules without grandfathering in people of retirement age (pun intended) are pretty small. The general rule of thumb on this issue seems to be to wait to get the full amount if you have sufficient resources that you don't expect to need the money earlier. That is, unless you have some reason to not expect much longevity (family history of dying young, current medical condition, etc.) Ultimately, however, this is a big financial decision that is best made with the help of a good financial adviser/actuary. There are a large number of variables to be considered.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fc5200a551eb8da86019269ffc0be7db",
"text": "Here's a good rule of thumb. In any situation where you are required to purchase insurance (Auto Liability, Property Mortgage Insurance, etc.) you can safely assume that you aren't the primary beneficiary. You are being required to buy that insurance to protect someone else's investment.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "43bfcb307ebfd5d196bfaafbe1c6da53",
"text": "If someone recommends a particular investment rather than a class of investments, assume they are getting a commission and walk away. If someone recommends whole life insurance as an investment vehicle, walk away. Find someone whose fiduciary responsibility is explicitly to you as their client. That legally obligated them to consider your best interests first. It doesn't guarantee they are good, but it's done protection against their being actively evil.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "af02b3b52407fb1095c82f3e24c29f34",
"text": "If there are no dependents, there is no need for life insurance. You mention getting insurance when it is not needed, to protect you against some future risk. If you have a policy and a disease crops up that would normally make you un-insurable, you can keep your insurance for the rest of the term. The cost for this would be very high. You would have to have a term that would last decades to cover you until some future child is out of college. If you never have somebody that depends on you for income, there never is a need for life insurance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e29bc8c9c4d905e2a43a95cbb0da7cc1",
"text": "\"As others have said, if you don't have dependents, there's little need for life insurance. If you can't think of any obvious beneficiary for an insurance policy, than you probably don't need one. \"\"Dependents\"\" here should be understood broadly. It wouldn't necessarily be limited to wife and children. If you're the only support for your handicapped cousin, for example, you might want to provide for him. But I take it from your question that you have no such special case. Of course even if you have no dependents now, you might pick some up in the future. And if and when that does happen, your medical situation may have changed, making it difficult to get life insurance. But if you have no immediate plans so that any such even is likely to be far away, a serious alternative to consider would be to invest the money you would have paid in insurance premiums. Then if someday you do acquire dependents, you have a pot of money set aside to provide for them in case something happens to you. If it's not enough and you can get insurance at that time, then great, but if you can't get insurance, at least there's something. If you never do acquire dependents, you can consider that pot of money part of your retirement fund.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
061c0dc2a613e931658f0fd7d66b3abe
|
Is Bitcoin a commodity or a currency [duplicate]
|
[
{
"docid": "85e79ba38e7a9b761ad1d0665011ddf6",
"text": "It has properties of both. Tax authorities will eventually give their opinion on this. Through its properties of finite quantity, fungibility, and resistance to forgery/duplication, it acts as a commodity. It can be sent directly between any two parties anywhere on Earth, without regard for the quantity transacted or physical distance, to act as a currency. By the way, establishing trust in a trust-free environment through cryptographic proof-of-work is a remarkable invention. Sending economic value, cheaply and securely, around the world in minutes, not days/weeks, is a remarkable invention. This is where the value comes from.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "79add24a8545fda941b3158fea0c6d65",
"text": "\"Its neither. Its a scam. there's no value underlying it, and it has proven to be the most speculative and untrustworthy investment there is. The scam works like a pyramid scam, so the more people come later on the more people who came in earlier on gain, so that is why you see so much hype around it encouraged and fueled by those early adopters who'll cash out at your expense. Imagine people who jumped on the bandwagon when each coin was worth a mere fraction of a dollar - they want you to \"\"invest\"\" at the current price of hundreds of dollars per unit so that they could cash out. You'd be better off with tulips, really. (And don't be discouraged by the downvotes on this answer, of course those scamers will try to shut me down. That will just prove the point.)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5e6d821a8993439b77890a01220e2930",
"text": "I would classify Bitcoin as a hybrid. Currency : It is accepted by e-businesses as a form of payment Commodity : Chart illustrating the volatility and speculative nature of Bitcoin",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "4f64ef46bb0260c8b78aaf58038bcb06",
"text": "Mining is income at the value at time of earning, I would use an index like XBX to determine price. Asset appreciation is capital gains. These aspects of crypto-assets are not a gray area in the US financial sector, and have been addressed for almost half a decade now.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1b6e0840c6ca3acfeab6d19c999c5c21",
"text": "\"A perfectly-implemented fiat currency, printed and ordained by a perfectly omniscient, perfectly competent, and perfectly benevolent central bank (let's call it God money\"\"), is the ideal. \"\" Guess I had to come out of the woodwork here. Sounds like you just described bitcoin. :) Plus it is nice because it is much cheaper and easier to digitally transfer than heavy metal. Since bitcoin has a very finite supply, and probably upsets Keynesian economics, I could see an alt-coin that would have an automatic calculation built in to create more money based on inflation.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "41d1adf0e83406848f9a4b39a7f698c4",
"text": ">$1,000 worth of electricity to generate The cost of Bitcoin always tracks the price of Bitcoin. There is a fixed amount of Bitcoin available to be mined every day. The cost to mine bitcoin rises because of competition (they increase the difficulty of the problems to maintain a fixed supply of Bitcoin). The electricity cost to mine Bitcoin is directly related to the amount of miners, which is directly related to the current cost of Bitcoin. More people want to mine when the price is high. If you really think about it, what you are really saying is that the intrinsic value of bitcoin is the value of Bitcoin. Its a completely circular mirage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "95849db2b91d8a1f2973c952c3b7651a",
"text": "Part of the value of bitcoin is indeed in speculation about its future. Will it be a store of value, like gold is? Will it be *the* medium of exchange for online and offline transactions? Will it be a representation and insurance for services (to be) rendered? It currently most resembles the first, but don't forget that bitcoin is still in its infancy. There's a lot of room for it to grow, and the technology behind it *can* grow.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bb9d15f23da11e1c1e89effd602bfcec",
"text": "Can someone please explain how this is not the definition of a Ponzi scheme? Bitcoin has a $100B market cap. This is a financial instrument with very little real value to either consumers or businesses. However, Bitcoin has experienced a meteoric rise in value as more and more people buy in. Is the bottom not going to fall out here?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9320140934a24403d41e217d806ab81a",
"text": "I know I'm late to the party, but a couple of rebuttals as a recent bitcoin advocate. I may be out of place in this subreddit as I come from a primarily technological background, not a financial one. > Bittcoin is not a currency, it's a store of value, because it is not widely accepted as tender by most people. Bitcoin is not a currency *yet*, but because it does not have widespread adoption *yet*. Like other revolutionary technologies, there is an [inflection point](https://medium.com/@mcasey0827/speculative-bitcoin-adoption-price-theory-2eed48ecf7da) where adoption goes from hardly anyone to almost everyone very quickly. [Example chart](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*E4eb7wxHinGNdYQq.) >Even as a store of value, it's not very good. It's volatile and the fact that there is a limited supply of bitcoin is not a good thing. Sure, in the short run it results in speculation that drives up the price of a coin and makes it all the rage among gamblers but I don't think anyone can explain how, if used on a larger scale, wouldn't lead to deflation in the price of goods. To me, this is basic supply and demand, and it would in theory become less volatile and more stable following mass adoption. Bitcoin has virtually no inflation, and I agree that this could lead to the deflation of goods, but only insofar as that valuation is determined in bitcoin. For example, milk is still $2, but as the value of bitcoin fluctuates, I may pay .001 BTC or .0005 BTC for that milk. It's important to remember we're dealing with a digital asset in an increasingly more digitized world, a point-of-sale device like we use for credit cards could certainly tackle that conversion in the future. >Also, at the end of the day, fiat currencies are based on trust and accountability of the government. How does Bitcoin or any other online currency solve that problem? There's no accountability, and it effectively acts as as an anti-currency, fueled by mistrust in the establishment. This is the best part of bitcoin, understanding the incentives. If you follow that supply and demand logic, then it is in the best interest of *everyone who uses bitcoin* that the bitcoin software and the system itself be reliable and secure. The software is open source so anyone can see how it works and where its flaws and weaknesses are - and it is still standing strong after 8 years. The biggest weakness so far has been in software updates and changes to the core protocol. Without any central structure (i.e. accountability) it can be slow to reach a democratic consensus is such a way that doesn't split the blockchain or fracture the network. This has led to some of the recent extreme volatility. Bitcoin (and some other cryptocurrencies) have tremendous potential to disrupt existing financial institutions. The private blockchains peddled by banks are at this point [just databases](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMEOKDVXlUo&index=2&list=LL7mI3EyFeE83Ac-VtxNUhxA). At some point, these institutions will realize that they can't create their own Facebook, they need to find ways to become part of the new Facebook market.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f39d6047af5c4f9ebfafb0c99c198907",
"text": "\"Bittcoin is not a currency, it's a store of value, because it is not widely accepted as tender by most people. Even as a store of value, it's not very good. It's volatile and the fact that there is a limited supply of bitcoin is not a good thing. Sure, in the short run it results in speculation that drives up the price of a coin and makes it all the rage among gamblers but I don't think anyone can explain how, if used on a larger scale, wouldn't lead to deflation in the price of goods. Also, at the end of the day, fiat currencies are based on trust and accountability of the government. How does Bitcoin or any other online currency solve that problem? There's no accountability, and it effectively acts as as an anti-currency, fueled by mistrust in the establishment. What do you mean, \"\"cryptocurrencies are growing hundreds of times faster than the market as a whole\"\"?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a9a36dad5328565bc5ddca2e2b3bcdb6",
"text": "\"The relative value of Gold (or any other commodity) as measured against any given currency (such as the USD), is not a constant function either. If you have inflationary pressure, the \"\"value\"\" of an ounce of gold (or barrel of oil, etc) may \"\"double\"\", but it's really because the underlying comparator has lost \"\"half\"\" its value.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b5e06ae5797a21d78982d8329f0a8175",
"text": "\"A good reference to what encompasses \"\"securities\"\" are detailed in the Securities Act of 1933, which was enacted by the United States federal government. One main exception, which I would still consider securities for your purposes, would be \"\"commercial paper\"\". These are exempt from the securities act because they mature in 270 days of less, but they function much like bonds or promissory notes Therefore though, it would not encompass currencies and commodities. It really comes down to the structure of the agreement for transferring or holding the particular kind of underlying asset.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ab8e2c4f62e90b429e52348b090e65d3",
"text": "\"First of all, metals are commodities. So if you're phrasing that as metals and/or commodities, then that's poorly worded. If you're phrasing that as \"\"metal commodity reports\"\" then say as such. Second, and more importantly: what commodities? Power is very different than coffee. Different places specialize in different things, all banks are good in some and weak in others. There's no generic \"\"commodity\"\" market but rather a huge range of specifically different products traded in the future.You learn more than a small fraction of this universe so pick one or two specific products from the macro buckets (i.e. energy, grains, metals) and focus on those.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0020f28be04149c2e9ad46da4ab8aaa7",
"text": "This isn't an article discussing the business aspects of bitcoin. It's a comment on the price movement of bitcoin. Do we regularly comment about the gyrations of commodities and currencies on this thread? I tend to find talk of those things on subs like /r/finance and /r/investing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "379efa836cc7a4c7502ea05e87ecfafc",
"text": "Currencies don't have intrinsic value. Just because you have to pay taxes in USD does not mean it has intrinsic value. The government could theoretically switch currency every second, not that that will ever happen. But yes the USD is supported by the US government and that's like a safety net for the value of the USD. Bitcoin doesn't have a government accepting bitcoin in taxes (except maybe liberland or something) so BTC doesn't have that safenet. But with such a liquid market and millions of buyorders bitcoin doesn't really need a safenet. There will always be demand. I prefer a scarce currency with growing demand than an inflationary currency backed by a corrupt government that loses value over time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d2cac70eed45ceaa9d24925004cef85f",
"text": "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/07/strategist-tom-lee-weighs-sees-bitcoin-going-as-high-as-55000.html) reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The strategist&#039;s case for bitcoin is a basic supply-and-demand story, similar to the argument other proponents of bitcoin use when playing up its future as &quot;Digital gold.\"\" > While the lack of regulation is what has attracted many buyers, many consider bitcoin the &quot;Wild West.&quot; Three years ago, Mt. Gox, the largest bitcoin exchange then, filed for bankruptcy and said it lost 750,000 of its users bitcoins and 100,000 of the exchange&#039;s own. > Lee acknowledged bitcoin&#039;s volatility in his report, noting that annualized bitcoin volatility is 75 percent, &quot;Substantially higher than gold&#039;s 10%. But as noted, gold&#039;s volatility approached 90% from 1971 to 1980 as the U.S. abandoned the gold standard - hence, we expect this to improve over time.\"\" ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6lved5/first_major_wall_street_strategist_weighs_in_on/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~161687 tl;drs so far.\"\") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr \"\"PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.\"\") | *Top* *keywords*: **bitcoin**^#1 **Lee**^#2 **currency**^#3 **digital**^#4 **gold**^#5\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "51a6ca6a32a72b6063be3ac0e7c42d47",
"text": "\"Alright, so this is all out of the way. As a further note, I have a degree in computer science so I'm not oblivious to the technical aspects of bitcoin. I reject the idea that banning bitcoin is akin to banning the internet - in fact, I reject the notion that bitcoin is anywhere as revolutionary as \"\"the internet\"\" was (which itself, as a construct, is far older than most people let on). I've always acknowledged that there are many innovative technical aspects to bitcoin which are likely to find their way into our current system of money and transactions. The reality, however, goes back to my original contentions - that bitcoin is difficult (if not nearly impossible) to track, and thus serves as a black-market vehicle for those who wish to transact outside the power of the government. Whether or not you see this as \"\"good\"\" or \"\"bad\"\" doesn't matter; \"\"the government\"\" within any defined national border is the plenary power - period - and thus (for lack of a better phrase) \"\"resistance is mostly futile.\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "98327dbb386c1a738abe97f050ef7ca7",
"text": "There are forums online (Wall Street Oasis, Poets and Quants) that cover what you need to know for a Wall Street interview. That's the most efficient way. But it's also important to research the company that you're interviewing for. Do they invest in equity or debt? Are they in a specialized industry (e.g., real estate, oil & gas)? A model for a equity research firm is going to have different priorities from a LBO model for a private equity firm or a cash flow model for a bank/lending company.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
845ab8934380957a988f8a0aae7842aa
|
When filing a US 1065 as a General Partnership, do we combine our expenditures for a home office?
|
[
{
"docid": "ce475229839fec15efb664cd7ad7ac50",
"text": "Your home doesn't belong to the partnership, it belongs to you. So you can (if qualified) deduct home office usage as a business expense on your individual tax return. Same goes to your partner. Similarly any other unreimbursed expense.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "122f3058c852e263c160735fb876b210",
"text": "No. The equipment costs are not necessarily a direct expense. Depending on the time of purchase and type of the expenditure you may need to capitalize it and depreciate it over time. For example, if you buy a computer - you'll have to depreciate it over 5 years. Some expenditures can be expensed under Section 179 rules, but there are certain conditions to be made, including business revenue. So if your business revenue is $3K - your Sec. 179 deduction is limited to $3K even if more purchases can qualify. Not every purchase qualifies for Sec. 179 treatment, and not all the State tax rules conform to the Federal treatment. Get a professional advice from a CPA/EA licensed in your State.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9fd632a34c4689f4fcdbfb85bb386537",
"text": "You have to file and issue each one of them a 1099 if you are paying them $600 or more for the year. Because you need to issue a 1099 to them (so they can file their own taxes), I don't think there's a way that you could just combine all of them. Additionally, you may want to make sure that you are properly classifying these people as contractors in case they should be employees.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2226740c96f085d39471c7c914edee3f",
"text": "If you are paid by foreigners then it is quite possible they don't file anything with the IRS. All of this income you are required to report as business income on schedule C. There are opportunities on schedule C to deduct expenses like your health insurance, travel, telephone calls, capital expenses like a new computer, etc... You will be charged both the employees and employers share of social security/medicare, around ~17% or so, and that will be added onto your 1040. You may still need a local business license to do the work locally, and may require a home business permit in some cities. In some places, cities subscribe to data services based on your IRS tax return.... and will find out a year or two later that someone is running an unlicensed business. This could result in a fine, or perhaps just a nice letter from the city attorneys office that it would be a good time to get the right licenses. Generally, tax treaties exist to avoid or limit double taxation. For instance, if you travel to Norway to give a report and are paid during this time, the treaty would explain whether that is taxable in Norway. You can usually get a credit for taxes paid to foreign countries against your US taxes, which helps avoid paying double taxes in the USA. If you were to go live in Norway for more than a year, the first $80,000/year or so is completely wiped off your US income. This does NOT apply if you live in the USA and are paid from Norway. If you have a bank account overseas with more than $10,000 of value in it at any time during the year, you owe the US Government a FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR). This is pretty important, there are some large fines for not doing it. It could occur if you needed an account to get paid in Norway and then send the money here... If the Norwegian company wires the money to you from their account or sends a check in US$, and you don't have a foreign bank account, then this would not apply.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "28485e0d5f2e225bab5d6de3d6a31d45",
"text": "Definitely get a lawyer to write up all the details of the partnership in a formal agreement. If your ex does not want to do this, that is a bad sign. You both need to be clear about expectations and responsibilities in this partnership, and define an exit strategy in the case one of you wants out. This is the most fair to both parties. Generally, what is common is that property is split cleanly when the relationship ends. I would strongly recommend you both work towards a clean split with no joint property ownership. How this looks depends on your unique situation. To address your questions 2 and 3: You have two roles here - tenant and owner. As a 50% owner, you are running a business with a partner. That business will have assets (home), income, expenses, and profit. You basically need to run this partnership as a simple business. All the rent income (your rent and the other tenant's) should go into a separate account. The mortgage and all other housing expenses are then paid from only this account. Any excess is then profit that may be split 50/50. All expenses should be agreed upon by both of you, either by contract or by direct communication. You should see a financial professional to make sure accounting and taxes are set up properly. Under this system, your ex could do work on the house and be paid from the business income. However, they are responsible to you to provide an estimate and scope of work, just like any other contractor. If you as a joint owner agree to his price, he then could be paid out of the business income. This reduces the business cash flow for the year accordingly. You can probably see how this can get very complicated very fast. There is really no right or wrong answer on what both of you decide is fair and best. For the sake of simplicity and the least chance of a disaster, the usual and recommended action is to cleanly split all property. Good Luck!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "839decb72a043b2574f664f4caef55df",
"text": "How is the business organized? If as a General Partnership or LLC that reports as a partnership, you will be getting distributed to you each year your % ownership of the earnings or loss. But note, this is a paperwork transfer on the form K-1, which must then carryover to your tax return, it does not require the transfer of cash to you. If organized as an S-Corp, you should be holding shares of the company that you may sell back to the S-Corp, generally as outlined in the original articles of incorporation. The annual 'dividend' (earnings remaining after all expenses are paid) should be distributed to you in proportion to the shares you hold. If a C-Corp and there is only one class of stock that you also hold a percentage of, the only 'profits' that must be distributed proportionally to you are declared dividends by the board of directors. Most family run business are loosely formed with not much attention paid to the details of partnership agreements or articles of incorporation, and so don't handle family ownership disputes very well. From my experience, trying to find an amicable settlement is the best...and least expensive....approach to separation from the business. But if this can't be done or there is a sizable value to the business, you may have to get your own legal counsel.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6c6506ac79cb6824fd2b472b524cba0f",
"text": "Since you both are members of the LLC - it is not a single-member LLC, thus you have to file the tax return on behalf of the LLC (I'm guessing you didn't elect corporate treatment, so you would be filing 1065, which is the default). You need to file form 4868 on behalf of yourselves as individuals, and form 7004 on behalf of the LLC as the partnership. Since the LLC is disregarded (unless you explicitly chose it not to be, which seems not to be the case) the taxes will in fact flow to your individual return(s), but the LLC will have to file the informational return on form 1065 and distribute K-1 forms to each of you. So you wouldn't pay additional estimated taxes with the extension, as you don't pay any taxes with the form 1065 itself. If you need a help understanding all that and filling the forms - do talk to a professional (EA or CPA licensed in your state). Also, reconsider not sending any payment. I suggest sending $1 with the extension form even if you expect a refund.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d8901ebcbe588b9b70a36bb5f84f71a5",
"text": "\"You're a partnership. You should ask the money to be paid to the partnership. You'll have to fill partnership income tax return (form 1065) and each of you will get a K-1 schedule with your own personal portion of the income. For example, you're Adam, Ben and Clara. You work together on a project and are being paid. You get a check for $300 issued to \"\"Adam, Ben and Clara, DBA ABC Partnership\"\". You don't have to have a DBA, it just makes it easier to show you as a single entity. You then deposit the check to an account you set up for your partnership, and from that account you transfer $100 to each of you. Year end, you file form 1065, showing $300 income, and attach K-1 for each of the partners showing $100 income. That $100 income will flow to your individual tax returns. The overhead here is setting up a partnership account, potentially making a DBA, and filing the extra tax return. That's the proper way to do it, especially if it is something you're going to do regularly. For a one-time thing, one of you can get paid, report it as income on his/her Schedule C, and issue 1099 to the rest of you for your parts, and deduct the amount as his/her expense. Here, the overhead is Schedule C for each of you (instead of Schedule E if handling it as a partnership), extra 1099 forms (instead of 1065 and K-1s), and a risk of one partner defrauding the others (depends on how much you trust each other). With proper documentation, each of these is equally legal, and tax-wise the costs are the same (i.e.: either way you pay the same taxes). With partnership the overhead is a bit more expensive (DBA+1065 extra cost), but in the long term it will make your life easier if you do this kind of thing regularly. You may want to consider setting up your partnership as a LLC/LLP (depending on what your State allows), but that would require State paperwork and potentially more fees.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7b9e65e73e1d2ee9ac596a33ff6295d8",
"text": "Since from the question it seems that you're talking about the US taxation, I'll assume that. You can definitely continue filing jointly. Being members of a partnership has no bearing on how you file your own tax return. The partnership will distribute K-1 to each of you separately, but you'll report both of them on the same return.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a0032f41609f12a0c1aab22a62a5e196",
"text": "\"Why not start a third account, the \"\"house\"\" account? However you decide to fund it, equally or in proportion to income, you both chip in, and the payments for all joint expenses come from there. Rent, utilities, food, phone, cable.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "067252b5ff9ca4e62bf6ff506f4bd7cb",
"text": "The general rule is: Generally, in order to claim a business deduction for your home, you must use part of your home exclusively and regularly: Exclusively seems to be the toughest standard and I do not know exactly how strict the IRS's interpretation is. Working in your living room where you regularly watch TV and have people over on the weekends would seem to fail that test. A separate room with your computer in it would pass it. If it was your only computer and you regularly played online games with it, that would seem to be a grey area. The IRA booklet covering this area is here http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p587.pdf I know people that have rented rooms in other places or made use of rental offices for this purpose.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "32637ccc9962c2adcab62d05df912a25",
"text": "The short answer is you are not required to. The longer answer depends on whether you are referring to your organization as a sole proprietorship in your state, or for federal taxation. For federal tax purposes, I would suggest filing each side job as a separate Sch C though. The IRS uses the information you provide about your sole proprietorship to determine whether or not your categorization of expenses makes sense for the type of business you are. This information is used by the IRS to help them determine who to audit. So, if you are a service based business, but you are reporting cost of goods sold, you are likely to be audited.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f9a15d4ecc758b477a3b68fb24dd21a4",
"text": "\"You can hire a good CPA for a really low price. They can advise you on how to do exactly what you said and many other aspects of your business. Mine does this as a courtesy with the filing of my taxes. And the filing of my taxes is not all that much. It is great value for the money. Recently I had to make a decision that is a potential audit situation and can go badly if not properly documented. It was not hard to document (with the CPA's help), but now that it is so I don't lose mental energy on if I am going to get \"\"caught\"\" by the IRS. Let them come, I have the necessary documentation. Beyond the IRS, I really like the documentation that you are trying to put behind this loan. Having this in writing helps smooth this potentially bad situation between you and the BIL. I would go above and beyond writing conditions and contingencies down in order to keep this relationship happy. With these kinds of things, cover the applicable 5 \"\"Ds\"\" of partnership agreements: However, I would add another: Boom. What happens if your business takes off? Perhaps there should be a clause to retire the loan prior to you expanding beyond a certain level. Please understand I am not suggesting that any of these bad things are going to happen to you (except the Boom, I really hope that happens to you), but it is a way to communicate contingent actions if one of the risks of small business materializes. Having agreements ahead of time helps avoid crisis.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7455319de0de59050f5b59e53c48bbe1",
"text": "\"I am not a lawyer nor a tax accountant, so if such chimes in here I'll gladly defer. But my understanding is: If you're romantically involved and living together you're considered a \"\"household\"\" and thus your finances are deemed shared for tax purposes. Any money your partner gives you toward paying the bills is not considered \"\"rent\"\" but \"\"her contribution to household expenses\"\". (I don't know the genders but I'll call your partner \"\"her\"\" for convenience.) This is not income and is not taxed. On the off chance that the IRS actually investigated your arrangement, don't call any money she gives you \"\"rent\"\": call it \"\"her contribution to living expenses\"\". If you were two (or more) random people sharing a condo purely for economic reasons, i.e. you are not a family in any sense but each of you would have trouble affording a place on your own, it's common for all the room mates to share the rent or mortgage, utilities, etc, but for one person to collect all the money and write one check to the landlord, etc. Tax law does not see this as the person who writes the check collecting rent from the others, it's just a book-keeping convenience, and so there is no taxable transaction. (Of course the landlord owes taxes on the rental income, but that's not your problem.) In that case it likely would be different if one person outright owned the place and really was charging the others rent. But then he could claim deductions for all the expenses of maintaining it, including depreciation, so if it really was a case of room mates sharing expenses, the taxable income would likely be just about zero anyway. So short answer: If you really are a \"\"couple\"\", there are no taxable transactions here. If the IRS should actually question it, don't refer to it as \"\"collecting rent\"\" or any other words that imply this is a business arrangement. Describe it as a couple sharing expenses. (People sometimes have created tax problems for themselves by their choice of words in an audit.) But the chance that you would ever be audited over something like this is probably remote. I suppose that if at some point you break up, but you continue to live together for financial reasons (or whatever reasons), that could transform this into a business relationship and that would change my answer.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5d86ebab266bf0a5d9f55be7a5222389",
"text": "I am assuming this is USA. While it is a bit of a pain, you are best off to have separate accounts for your business and personal. This way, if it comes to audit, you hand the IRS statements for your business account(s) and they match your return. As a further precaution I would have the card(s) you use for business expenses look different then the ones you use for personal so you don't mess another one up.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cc944b121bd06b9a75a12eae2177827d",
"text": "It actually depends on the services provided. If you're renting through AirBnB, you're likely to provide much more services to the tenants than a traditional rental. It may raise it to a level when it is no longer a passive activity. See here, for starters: Providing substantial services. If you provide substantial services that are primarily for your tenant's convenience, such as regular cleaning, changing linen, or maid service, you report your rental income and expenses on Schedule C (Form 1040), Profit or Loss From Business, or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040), Net Profit From Business. Use Form 1065, U.S. Return of Partnership Income, if your rental activity is a partnership (including a partnership with your spouse unless it is a qualified joint venture). Substantial services do not include the furnishing of heat and light, cleaning of public areas, trash collection, etc. For information, see Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business. Also, you may have to pay self-employment tax on your rental income using Schedule SE (Form 1040), Self-Employment Tax. For a discussion of “substantial services,” see Real Estate Rents in Publication 334, chapter 5",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
d7bd264b364d26af0addde05bf39811a
|
ACH processing time of day
|
[
{
"docid": "9f62569be9b7c332637d6eeed835ddb2",
"text": "It depends on the bank and network. Banks are to provide outgoing data at the certain time for the processing by the central clearing house (the Federal Reserve system, for ACH), which then distributes incoming data back to the banks. All this has to be done between the closing of the business day and the opening of the next one. If the transaction hasn't completed the full path during that time - it will wait at the position it was stuck at until the next cycle - next night. That's why sometimes ACH transactions take more than 1 day to complete (if, for example, multiple Fed banks have to be involved).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f0d913bff1f30277e52a1968d3a25cb5",
"text": "Each bank is different, so your question needs to be more specific. For instance, I believe Paypal and Chase settles at 7pm EST on business days. Bank of America at 5PM.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "1c4a0bcd6ec884cb4e38e9035f7e5ffb",
"text": "I haven't used it in years, but look at GnuCash. From the site, one bullet point under Feature Highlights:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3c36672b381c86276903fa1f9237200e",
"text": "I was recently at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK and discussing exactly this. By January 2018 financial institutes will be legally required to time stamp all transactions (including high frequency trades) with a UTC time code. Today this is almost exclusively done using GPS satellite time and as the OP states - these can be spoofed but also are vulnerable to certain weather conditions. One of the many innovations of NPL in their recent diversification includes sending ‘time’ into the city by optical fibre which is ‘gold standard and cannot be tampered with’. Very interesting topic ( I thought )!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e48d0443319cd49f9c32c2c8fba88553",
"text": "TARGET2 is a high value realtime settlement system across Europe and for this to be open on weekends would mean all the Banks including Central Banks in the Euro Zone work. Quite a few times to manage intra day liquidity, banks borrow from each other, hence there is an active monitering of the liquidity by Banks. The borrowing happens over phone and fax and the lending bank sending a high value transaction that credits the borrowing banks. These is the day to day job of treasury group [highly paid individuals] to manage liquidity. Now if on weekends the volume is less, it does not make sense to keep these people, the cost of supporting this for very insiginificant business gain is not driving to build such systems. On the other hand on retail transactions, say Cards [Debit / Credit], ATM, the value is not high and hence there is no treasury function involved and there is a huge need, everything is automated. So no issues.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "aa91763d3069df0a5cadff629dfd558f",
"text": "\"The second part of your question is the easiest to answer, how much manual work is involved in settlement processes? Payment systems which handle low value (i.e. high volume) transactions work on the basis of net settlement. Each of the individual payments are netted across all of the participant banks, so that only one \"\"real\"\" payment is made by each bank. Some days banks will receive money, others they will pay money. This is arbitrary and depends on whether their outbound payments exceed their inbound payments for that day. The payment system will notify each Bank how much it owes/will receive for the day. The money is then transferred between all of the banks simultaneously by the payment system to remove the risk that some pay and others don't. If you're going to make or receive a very large payment, you're going to want to make certain that its correct. This means that if there's a discrepancy, you need operations people available to find out why its wrong. When dealing with this many payments, answering that question can be hard. Did we miss a payment? Is there a duplicate? Etc. The vast majority of payments will process without any human involvement, but to make the process work, you always need human brains there to fix problems that occur. This brings me to your first question. On every day that settlement happens, a bank will receive (or pay) a very large sum of money. As a settlement bank you must settle that money - the guarantee that every bank will pay is one of the main reasons these systems exist. For settlement to happen, every bank has to agree to participate, and be ready to verify the data on their side and deliver the funds from their account. So there is no particular reason that this doesn't happen on weekends and holidays other than history. But for any payment system to change, it would require the support of (at least) a majority of participants to pay staff to manage the settlement process on weekends. This would increase costs for banks, but the benefits would only really be for you and me (if at all). That means it's unlikely to happen unless a government forces the issue.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5e0b6f7861785caa8fbf307787905843",
"text": "\"We have a local bank that changed to a bill pay service. The money is held as \"\"processing\"\" when the check is supposed to be cut and shows as cleared on the date the check is supposed to be received. Because our business checking is with the same bank, we discovered recently that the although the check shows cleared from our account, the recipient has not received the paper check yet - and may not for 2-3 days. We discovered this because the payroll checks we write this way (to ourselves) never arrive on the due date but clear the business account. It appears to be a new way for banks to ride the \"\"float\"\" and draw interest on the money. It happens with every check processed through the bill pay system and not with electronic transfers.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a4ea222c46b78da5d98cec42d6f91562",
"text": "I use XE.com for almost the same purpose. They have free transfer options, such as ACH withdrawals and deposits. I normally do a online bill payment through my international bank to XE, and have them deposit it in the US via ACH. It takes 1-3 business days, and there's no fee beyond their small percentage (about 1.25%) on top of the exchange rate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8fe5999d61e2c4421932f9a2e290acf0",
"text": "When I place an order with Scottrade I also have to specify if I am wanting to trade outside of normal hours.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f67397e8aa4882f62733d4d80aaabdf3",
"text": "They need to spread the work for all customers over the whole month, and they don't work on weekends. Combine the two, and the rule becomes clear - if months have minimum of N working days, 1/N of all customers gets set on each day. You seem to be on day 5: If the month starts with a Monday, the fifth working day is the 5. (Friday); if there is a Sat or Sun in between, it will be the 6th, and if there is both a Sat and a Sun in there, it will be the 7th. However, the statement itself is not very important at all. It is just the day where they print it on paper (or even only on a PDF). You can see your bank account activity every day 24/7 by checking online, and nothing keeps you from printing it on every 1st of the month if you want (or every day, or whenever you prefer).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7798a497f460a1874486ef14357ec956",
"text": "There are banks and credit unions that don't charge fee for incoming wire transfer. You most likely won't get that from big brick and mortar banks like BofA, Citi but if you are doing it regularly, using another bank that offers it free would save you a lot. Since ACH are free, you can transfer money between those banks to your regular bank (e.g. BofA) for free. There would be delay involved in this process due to additional ACH. You could also use one these banks as your primary bank to avoid that delay. Credit unions are also generally fee friendly and many would offer free incoming wire transfer. However you are limited to what is available to you as all of them would have some membership criteria.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2a6fc6409486bd64dced6e09bdc81cf5",
"text": "From Chase FAQ it looks like this is a regular ACH transfer. ACH transactions can be reversed under certain conditions. I haven't been able to find some authoritative link on this, so I suggest this (thenest.com budgeting blog) instead: Allowed Reasons You can have ACH transactions reversed for one of three reasons under the rules: wrong money amount, wrong account or duplicated transactions. For example, if your mortgage bill is for $756.00, but your lender's website messes up and you're charged $856.00, the transaction is reversible it because it's the wrong dollar amount. If the website charges you $756.00 twice, the second duplicated transaction is reversible. Reversal Procedures You might have to bring a mistake to the originator's attention to get it fixed. Only the originator -- the person or company taking or sending money -- can ask for a reversal. For example, if you have a transaction for a wrong dollar amount from your lender's website, the originator is the lender. An originator is supposed to send the reversal within 24 hours of the error's discovery and within five banking days of the original transaction. When a reversal is required because of a wrong amount or wrong account, the originator must send a correcting entry with the right information. Bank's Responsibility A bank should honor an ACH reversal, even if it means debiting a customer's account again because of a correcting transaction. However, the bank doesn't have to debit your account if you closed it or the new transaction would overdraw it. Your bank does have to tell you if a correcting entry is going to take money out of your account, but the bank doesn't need your permission to do it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b256309a1cab2e6951e4eb89c9b56c33",
"text": "8 am EDT happens when this comment is 5 hours and 51 minutes old. You can find the live countdown here: https://countle.com/424159rwH --- I'm a bot, if you want to send feedback, please comment below or send a PM.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d65931bcdd9257af1f8355851a61b1f3",
"text": "A day is a long time and the rate is not the same all day. Some sources will report a close price that averages the bid and ask. Some sources will report a volume-weighted average. Some will report the last transaction price. Some will report a time-weighted average. Some will average the highest and lowest prices for the interval. Different marketplaces will also have slightly different prices because different traders are present at each marketplace. Usually, the documentation will explain what method they use and you can choose the source whose method makes the most sense for your application.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4059ea0037fe601d67bfb083947ecd6d",
"text": "Shop around for a bank that offers lower/no fees for this operation and move your account there... or, yes, change where the direct deposit is routed... or move these accounts into a single bank so it's an internal transfer rather than ACH. Or ask the bank whether there is another way to arrange this which doesn't cost you money. (It costs me nothing to move money within my credit union, whether manually or on a scheduled basis. It costs me nothing to have them send funds to another entity from my checking account. Specific example: Pay comes into my savings account. On the 27th, an automatic transfer moves the cost of a mortgage payment from savings to checking. On the 30th, an automatic payment sends that to my mortgage in another bank. No fees on any of this, 100% reliable.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "585dcbe697a32ef9df12931509c5c79f",
"text": "A couple ways, but its not a guarantee. You have to have special charts. Instead of each tick being 1 min, 5 min, or whatever, it is a set number of trades. Say 2000. Since retail investors only buy and sell in small amounts, there will be small volume per tick. An institutional investor, however, would have a much much higher trade lot size, even if using an algo. Thus, large volume spikes in such a chart would signal institutional activity over retail. Similarly, daily charts showing average trade size can help you pick out when institutional activity is highest, as they have much larger trade sizes. You could also learn how the algos work and look for evidence one is being used. ie every time price hits VWAP a large sell order goes through would indicate an institutional investor is selling, especially if it happens multiple times in a row.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3f2d02333fab4076506ce124c981619d",
"text": "If you're talking about just Theta, the amount of decay due to the passage of time (all else being equal), then theoretically, the time value is a continuous function, so it would decay throughout the day (although by the day of expiry the time value is very, very small). Which makes sense, since even with 15 minutes to go, there's still a 50/50 shot of an ATM option expiring in-the-money, so there should be some time value associated with that one-sided probability. The further away from ATM the option is, the smaller the time value will be, and will be virtually zero for options that are deep in- or out-of-the-money. If you're talking about total time value, then yes it will definitely change during the day, since the underlying components (volatility, underlying price, etc.) change more or less continuously.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
f5a93c1bafe0831a70b23d6c123b5339
|
Is it possible to borrow money to invest in a foreign country?
|
[
{
"docid": "230984d1dc54df5eba50d8d40e9b1046",
"text": "Most likely, this will not work they way you think. First things first, to get a loan, the bank needs to accept your collateral. Note that this is not directly related to the question what you plan to do with the loan. Example: you have a portfolio of stocks and bonds worth USD 2 million. The bank decides to give you a loan of USD 1 million against that collateral. The bank doesn't care if you will use the loan to invest in foreign RE or use it up in a casino, it has your collateral as safety. So, from the way you describe it, I take it you don't have the necessary local collateral but you wish to use your foreign investments as such. In this case it really doesn't matter where you live or where you incorporate a company, the bank will only give you the loan if it accepts the foreign collateral. From professional experience with this exact question I can tell you, there are very few banks that will lend against foreign property. And there are even less banks, if any, that will lend against foreign projects. To sum it up: Just forget banks. You might find a private lender to help you out but it will cost you dearly. The best option you have is to find a strategic partner who can cough up the money you need but since he is taking the bigger risk, he will also take the bigger profit share.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a7b97f8d1e7cef7a371db32488ca1d52",
"text": "Yes it is possible. It would depend on Banks policies whether they would lend. Quite a few large corporations borrow money in one country for business needs in other country",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "10ac79d2ac6be5c20574e7d20547be22",
"text": "\"You have a few correlated questions here: Yes you can. There are only a few investment strategies that require a minimum contribution and those aren't ones that would get a blanket recommendation anyway. Investing in bonds or stocks is perfectly possible with limited funds. You're never too young to start. The power of interest means that the more time you give your money to grow, the larger your eventual gains will be (provided your investment is beating inflation). If your financial situation allows it, it makes sense to invest money you don't need immediately, which brings us to: This is the one you have to look at most. You're young but have a nice chunk of cash in a savings account. That money won't grow much and you could be losing purchasing power to inflation but on the other hand that money also isn't at risk. While there are dozens of investment options1 the two main ones to look at are: bonds: these are fixed income, which means they're fairly safe, but the downside is that you need to lock up your money for a long time to get a better interest rate than a savings account index funds that track the market: these are basically another form of stock where each share represents fractions of shares of other companies that are tracked on an index such as the S&P 500 or Nasdaq. These are much riskier and more volatile, which is why you should look at this as a long-term investment as well because given enough time these are expected to trend upwards. Look into index funds further to understand why. But this isn't so much about what you should invest in, but more about the fact that an investment, almost by definition, means putting money away for a long period of time. So the real question remains: how much can you afford to put away? For that you need to look at your individual situation and your plans for the future. Do you need that money to pay for expenses in the coming years? Do you want to save it up for college? Do you want to invest and leave it untouched to inspire you to keep saving? Do you want to save for retirement? (I'm not sure if you can start saving via IRAs and the like at your age but it's worth looking into.) Or do you want to spend it on a dream holiday or a car? There are arguments to be made for every one of those. Most people will tell you to keep such a \"\"low\"\" sum in a savings account as an emergency fund but that also depends on whether you have a safety net (i.e. parents) and how reliable they are. Most people will also tell you that your long-term money should be in the stock market in the form of a balanced portfolio of index funds. But I won't tell you what to do since you need to look at your own options and decide for yourself what makes sense for you. You're off to a great start if you're thinking about this at your age and I'd encourage you to take that interest further and look into educating yourself on the investments options and funds that are available to you and decide on a financial plan. Involving your parents in that is sensible, not in the least because your post-high school plans will be the most important variable in said plan. To recap my first point and answer your main question, if you've decided that you want to invest and you've established a specific budget, the size of that investment budget should not factor into what you invest it in. 1 - For the record: penny stocks are not an investment. They're an expensive form of gambling.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "638947ae1029dd877c240c92506276e6",
"text": "Are there banks where you can open a bank account without being a citizen of that country without having to visit the bank in person? I've done it the other way around, opened a bank account in the UK so I have a way to store GBP. Given that Britain is still in the EU you can basically open an account anywhere. German online banks for instance allow you to administrate anything online, should there be cards issued you would need an address in the country. And for opening an account a passport is sufficient, you can identify yourself in a video chat. Now what's the downside? French banks' online services are in French, German banks' services are in German. If that doesn't put you off, I would name such banks in the comments if asked. Are there any online services for investing money that aren't tied to any particular country? Can you clarify that? You should at least be able to buy into any European or American stock through your broker. That should give you an ease of mind being FCA-regulated. However, those are usually GDRs (global depository receipts) and denominated in GBp (pence) so you'd be visually exposed to currency rates, by which I mean that if the stock goes up 1% but the GBP goes up 1% in the same period then your GDR would show a 0% profit on that day; also, and more annoyingly, dividends are distributed in the foreign currency, then exchanged by the issuer of the GDR on that day and booked into your account, so if you want to be in full control of the cashflows you should get a trading account denominated in the currency (and maybe situated in the country) you're planning to invest in. If you're really serious about it, some brokers/banks offer multi-currency trading accounts (again I will name them if asked) where you can trade a wide range of instruments natively (i.e. on the primary exchanges) and you get to manage everything in one interface. Those accounts typically include access to the foreign exchange markets so you can move cash between your accounts freely (well for a surcharge). Also, typically each subaccount is issued its own IBAN.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0f61c2688a2b82bdbad6909bab943faf",
"text": "\"Yes, definitely. Many municipalities and local governments issue bonds to fund various projects (schools, hospitals, infrastructure, etc). You can buy these bonds and in that way invest in these things. In the US these kinds of bonds are tax-free, i.e.: the income they provide is not taxed (by the US government, may be taxed by your State, check local tax laws). There are also dedicated mutual funds that that is all they invest in, if you don't want to deal with picking individual bonds. As to mom-and-pop stores - that would not be as easy, as mom-and-pop stores are by definition family owned and you can invest in them only if you are personally acquainted with them. Instead, you can invest in small regional/local chains, that while not being mom-and-pop, still small enough to be considered \"\"local\"\", but are publicly traded so that you can easily invest in them. You'll have to look for these. You can also use social lending platforms, like Lending Club, which I reviewed on my blog, or others, where you can participate in a lending pool to other people. You can invest in a credit union by opening an account there. Credit unions are owned by their account holders.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d98a1a97eb6179caef1f1e5c9c6958c7",
"text": "\"Not at all impossible. What you need is Fundamental Analysis and Relationship with your investment. If you are just buying shares - not sure you can have those. I will provide examples from my personal experience: My mother has barely high school education. When she saw house and land prices in Bulgaria, she thought it's impossibly cheap. We lived on rent in Israel, our horrible apartment was worth $1M and it was horrible. We could never imagine buying it because we were middle class at best. My mother insisted that we all sell whatever we have and buy land and houses in Bulgaria. One house, for example, went from $20k to EUR150k between 2001 and 2007. But we knew Bulgaria, we knew how to buy, we knew lawyers, we knew builders. The company I currently work for. When I joined, share prices were around 240 (2006). They are now (2015) at 1500. I didn't buy because I was repaying mortgage (at 5%). I am very sorry I didn't. Everybody knew 240 is not a real share price for our company - an established (+30 years) software company with piles of cash. We were not a hot startup, outsiders didn't invest. Many developers and finance people WHO WORK IN THE COMPANY made a fortune. Again: relationship, knowledge! I bought a house in the UK in 2012 - everyone knew house prices were about to go up. I was lucky I had a friend who was a surveyor, he told me: \"\"buy now or lose money\"\". I bought a little house for 200k, it is now worth 260k. Not double, but pretty good money! My point is: take your investment personally. Don't just dump money into something. Once you are an insider, your risk will be almost mitigated and you could buy where you see an opportunity and sell when you feel you are near the maximal real worth of your investment. It's not hard to analyse, it's hard to make a commitment.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6470741c89540d9d5adea1af37740f9b",
"text": "\"I don't follow the numbers in your example, but the fundamental question you're asking is, \"\"If I can borrow money for a low cost, and if I think I can invest it and receive returns greater than that cost, should I do it?\"\" It doesn't matter where that money comes from, a mortgage that's bigger than it needs to be, a credit card teaser rate, or a margin line from your stock broker. The answer is \"\"maybe\"\" - depending on the certainty you have about the returns you'd receive on your investments and your tolerance for risk. Only you can answer that question for yourself. If you make less than your mortgage rates on the investments, you'll wish you hadn't! As an aside, I don't know anything about Belgian tax law, but in US tax law, your deductions can be limited to the actual value of the home. Your law may be similar and thus increase the effective mortgage interest rate.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4e6b3c3d49316238ac8a589d1dd171d9",
"text": "\"The problem here can be boiled down to that fact you are attempting to obtain a loan without collateral. There are times it can be done, but you have to have a really good relationship with a banker. Your question suggests that avenue has been exhausted. You are looking for an investor, but you are offering something very speculative. Suppose an investor gives you 20K, what recourse does he have if you do not pay the terms of the loan? From what income will this be paid from? What event will trigger the capability to make a balloon payment? Now if you can find a really handy guy that really needs a place to live could you swap rent for repairs? Maybe. Perhaps you buy the materials, and he does the roof in exchange for 6 months worth of rent or whatever. If you approached me with this \"\"investment\"\", the thing that would raise a red flag is why don't you have 20K to do this yourself? If you don't how will you be able to make payments? For example of the items you mentioned: That is a weekend worth of work and some pretty inexpensive materials. Why does money need to be borrowed for this? A weekend worth of demo, and $500 worth of material and another weekend to build something serviceable for a rental. Why does money need to be borrowed for this? 2K? Why does money need to be borrowed for this? This can be expensive, but most roofing companies offer financing. Also doing some of the work yourself can save a ton of money. Demoing an old roof is typically about 1/3 of the roofing cost and is technically simple, but physically difficult. So besides the new roof, you could have a lot of your list solved for less than 3K and three weekends worth of work. You are attempting to change this into a rental, not the Taj Mahal.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "478cdde040cedfb6e01af7f6e8296744",
"text": "I looked into the investopedia one (all their videos are mazing), but that detail just was not clear to me, it also makes be wonder, if a country issues bonds to finance itself, what happens at maturity when literally millions of them need to be paid? The income needs to have grown to that level or it defaults? Wouldn't all the countries default if that was the case, or are bonds being issued to being able to pay maturity of older bonds already? (I'm freaking myself out by realizing this)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7526af225add390d4ab164b8fd1d35e2",
"text": "The best would be to find someone in that country to make a payment on behalf of you. Other option is to use remittance services like Western union. It allows transfers to bank Account in Poland. You can fund by debiting your Card or Bank Account in US. If you debit your Card, there may be some fees as it would be treated as Cash Advance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "74b29da71765c7cbe5d01f3f964e4834",
"text": "That's a broad question, but I can throw some thoughts at you from personal experience. I'm actually an Australian who has worked in a couple of companies but across multiple countries and I've found out first hand that you have a wealth of opportunities that other people don't have, but you also have a lot of problems that other people won't have. First up, asset classes. Real estate is a popular asset class, but unless you plan on being in each of these countries for a minimum of one to two years, it would be seriously risky to invest in rental residential or commercial real estate. This is because it takes a long time to figure out each country's particular set of laws around real estate, plus it will take a long time to get credit from the local bank institutions and to understand the local markets well enough to select a good location. This leaves you with the classics of stocks and bonds. You can buy stocks and bonds in any country typically. So you could have some stocks in a German company, a bond fund in France and maybe a mutual fund in Japan. This makes for interesting diversification, so if one country tanks, you can potentially be hedged in another. You also get to both benefit and be punished by foreign exchange movements. You might have made a killing on that stock you bought in Tokyo, but it turns out the Yen just fell by 15%. Doh. And to top this off, you are almost certainly going to end up filling out tax returns in each country you have made money in. This can get horribly complicated, very quickly. As a person who has been dealing with the US tax system, I can tell you that this is painful and the US in particular tries to get a cut of your worldwide income. That said, keep in mind each country has different tax rates, so you could potentially benefit from that as well. My advice? Choose one country you suspect you'll spend most of your life in and keep most of your assets there. Make a few purchases in other places, but minimize it. Ultimately most ex-pats move back to their country of origin as friends, family and shared culture bring them home.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e21d4c1386c08c5618e49b4a77c233f2",
"text": "\"Hmm... Maybe I somewhat misunderstood your question then. Yes, trade deficits/surpluses are really the core of the country-level \"\"investment\"\". But yes, it maters what they *do* with it, which is **why** so many countries put any excesses into US treasuries. Going back to \"\"personal\"\" finance, if they pay down higher interest debt with their trade surplus, *great*; if they have no debt and can issue local currency (in PF land, \"\"take out a loan\"\") for under 2%, *great*; If not... **Not** so great. \"\"Saving\"\" money that costs over 2% isn't an investment, it's nothing but a loan disguised as one.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3e3d6a2ce2c219ca85fe488f106792ae",
"text": "\"While you have asked for general principles, I am going to seize onto a specific example you gave in order to illustrate the difficulties here: Argentina. Argentina's bonds are probably not safer than US treasuries. Argentina is presently in the business of seizing foreign oil businesses (Repsol YPF) while championing leftist causes. At the very least this indicates an elevated level of political risk: S&P, which affirmed Argentina's ratings five notches into junk territory at B, said policies such as those enacted since the country's October presidential election could also weaken Argentina's macroeconomic framework and external liquidity... \"\"Actions of this type continue to shorten the economic planning horizon in the country and contribute to Argentina's deteriorating economic and political links with the international community.\"\" -- \"\"S&P Lowers Argentina Outlook To Negative\"\". The Wall Street Journal, 23 April 2012 You're not going to be able to capture that sort of a risk with raw budget numbers. It's hard enough to figure out creditworthiness for a business; for an entire nation it's even harder. That's why credit-rating firms, as faulty as they may be, employ dozens of people to try and figure this sort of thing out. Additionally, there is a currency risk associated with buying bonds denominated in foreign currencies. It doesn't matter much if $nation repays all its bonds if they have so much inflation that the repayment is worth half of what it used to be (nor is it much help if your own nation's currency rises in value while your investment's value is stable elsewhere). Ultimately the value of a bond is \"\"how much money am I actually going to get back?\"\" and while operating a budget surplus isn't a bad sign in and of itself, it's hardly the complete picture. A fair accounting of the relative creditworthiness of any two nations needs to unite two massive fields of study: Macroeconomics and Politics. It is possible that the right sort of degree in economics, risk management, or a similar field of study could prepare you to know exactly what sort of research is necessary to make a meaningful analysis. :) Now, if you just want some commentary on which bonds are safe to buy, ask a credit-rating agency -- for example, read Standard and Poor's sovereign ratings - or find a mutual fund which may invest in international bonds at its own discretion and have someone else make the decisions.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6fa8022f1a94860b18f850167f8bedd5",
"text": "\"Average return on the S&P500 over the last 10 years has been 1.6 %; so if you'd invested in that with money borrowed at 3 % you would have lost (so far). Investing with borrowed money implies you think you can beat the market: that you're a cleverer investor than whoever decided to lend you the money. Whoever decided to lend you the money decided that you are the best (return/risk ratio) investment for their money. It might make sense to invest borrowed money if you don't need to pay it back if things go wrong: if you're an investment professional whose bonus depends on the profit you make, but who won't need to repay any loss. It might also makes sense to borrow money if you're going to 'add value', e.g. sweat equity: for example if you use it to renovate a house or (if you're a business) to hire more staff. But the question was \"\"What guidelines do you use\"\" and the answer is, \"\"I don't make passive investments with borrowed money.\"\" My Dad did it, i.e. didn't repay his mortgage as soon as he could have: but that was because (back in the '70s) he had a long-term (government-sponsored) mortgage for about 1.5 % (designed to help first-time buyers or something like that), at a time when banks were paying higher interest rates on (ultra-safe) deposits.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8a1eeb8bc084a1d378814a548ab4109a",
"text": "Usually, you can buy ETFs through brokerages. I looked at London to see if there's any familiar brokerage names, and it appears that the address below is to Fidelity Investments Worldwide and their site indicates that you can buy securities. Any brokerage, in theory, should allow you to invest in securities. You could always call and ask if they allow you to invest in ETFs. Some brokerages may also allow you to purchase securities in other countries; for instance, some of the firms in the U.S. allow investors to invest in the ETF HK:2801, which is not a U.S. ETF. Many countries have ETF securities available to local and foreign investors. This site appears to help point people to brokers in London. Also, see this answer on this site (a UK investor who's invested in the U.S. through Barclays).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "752e054a65d930d5a2efae595a2d3d62",
"text": "Are there any laws against doing this? so long as you are truthful in your application for the loan, none that I know of - technically you could use the loan to pay for school and the cash that you would have used instead to invest. Are there other reasons why this is a very bad idea? I think you've already identified the biggest one, but here are my reasons: Will you go broke or go to jail? Likely not, but there is significant risk in investing with borrowed money. You might come out ahead, but you might also lose a bundle. If you're willing to take that risk, that's your right, but I would not call it a good idea under any circumstances.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b1622d00b8e5930ff7cf8b02cd26ee96",
"text": "the best thing to do is file bankrupt. your credit will be shot for 7 to 10 years. however usually 3 years after the bankrupt people will give you small lines of credit. then you rebuild on the small credit lines. and never get into a bad loan again you learn from mistakes. there is no shame in a mistake if you learned from it. I rebuilt my credit by using fingerhut. small credit limit on a cap 1 credit card 300 dollars unsecured card. personal loan of 1500 dollars to buy a old clunk for a car as I did not want to have five years of car payments. you can also get a secured credit card. and build credit with that. the bank will explain how to build credit using your own money. also you should know a lot of banks like your bankrupt stat. because they no you cant file for several more years. meaning if you don't pay your loan they can garnish you and you cant file bankrupt. you can get a new car loan with good interest rate. by taking 5000 dollars of your 15000 dollars savings down on the new loan. making your new car loan have better payments cheaper and better interest. and get a secured credit card of 2000 to build towards a unsecured credit card. keep all your new credit tabs small and pay on time.i would not use all your nest egg savings. that is not smart. get a lawyer and file. stay in school you will have a fresh start and you learned about upside down loans. don't listen to people trying to tell you bankruptsy is bad. it in a lot of ways gives you the upper hand in a no win debt or debts.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
30bdb0a25e6ed8589cf83decfaec8d3c
|
If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
|
[
{
"docid": "91ed2d056035a79ad74f3396e1a59ddc",
"text": "When you operate outside of the law, you bear the risks of that decision. When you operate within the law, you have a number of avenues, such as the courts and police to mediate disputes or other problems.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "39a4cb00a0a621b7836cb43948f36ad5",
"text": "If you get counterfeit money, then you're dealing with the criminal who is going to be punished by the law for doing that. The portion of the total sum that was paid with the counterfeit currency is considered unpaid and you can claim the money from the criminal and sue him, while he's in jail. He'll work hard on those license plates to pay you off. However, making false statements and assisting in a tax evasion scheme compromises your ability to go to the law enforcement in case of any wrongdoing, and then you should worry about the counterfeit money, because the law won't be on your side to help you. And you don't even get anything out of it... Why on earth are you willing to take this risk? Just so you know, it may also be money laundering, which may get you in trouble even more with the law.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "61c84c0c060ff124671df330fe85ec54",
"text": "I'd not do business under these terms. A bill of sale needs a signature, right? Your signature is your word, and your word is your bond. I wouldn't participate in such a fraud, nor would I accept this sum of cash, who knows its origins?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6a6835a11954cc0f37afcd219db475c0",
"text": "I'd worry more about falsifying documents of sale. No good reason at all to do that. Detecting counterfeit bills is easy if they're all new bills. Hold them up to the light and look for the watermark and the numbered tape in the bill. Refuse any bad ones.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a267f88078a1e0814649c590faee225f",
"text": "I'd be a bit concerned about someone who wanted to transact that large of a transaction in cash. Also consider what you are going to do with the funds, if you deposit it, you will need to tell the bank where it comes from. Why does the bank want to know, because most legal businesses don't transact business with large sums of currency.. What does that tell you about the likelihood the person you are about to do business with is a criminal or involved in criminal affairs? The lower bill of sale price might be more than just to dodge taxes, it could be part of money laundering.. If they can turn right around and 'sell' the boat for $10K, or trade it in on a bigger boat for the same amount, and have a bill than says $4K, then they have just come up with a legal explanation for how they made 6 grand. and you could potentially be considered an accomplice if someone is checking up on their finances. Really, is it worth the risk.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f4c9effc9b9bc9ac895d359b72a771fd",
"text": "\"Paying tax is a Good Thing. However, warren has made good point and I would like you to consider this other thing: Go into your payees bank with the payee, get the money withdrawn from the teller and take it with you. Unless I am missing something, or the teller handed your payee fake notes, you are \"\"safe\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f66e25bacedbdcc71660c7a8b122bb2e",
"text": "The only issue I can see is that the stranger is looking to undervalue their purchase to save money on taxes/registration (if applicable in your state). Buying items with cash such as cars, boats, etc in the used market isn't all that uncommon* - I've done it several times (though not at the 10k mark, more along about half of that). As to the counterfeit issue, there are a couple avenues you can pursue to verify the money is real: *it's the preferred means of payment advocated by some prominent personal financial folks, including Dave Ramsey",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e9fcbd976aafe88126a61f50631e4a8e",
"text": "I would not do a bill of sale for less, but a legal and safe way to reduce the taxes is to write separate bills for the boat, motor and trailer. The taxes are paid at different rates and will represent to full sale price.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "d4acc1a9edb2c7a9f30e843af3b6bbcf",
"text": "I wouldn't say this is a lie. Person 2 just made themselves the offer of 38k. If it sells then they were outbid. If it doesn't sell then they're stuck with the asset as if they had bid themselves. They're paying themselves, or they're representing a party that is paying themselves. That balances out to a $0 profit/loss + ownership of the asset. I think something like this would be unethical: Person 1: I'll buy your car for 30k Person 2: Okay Person 3:That's my car!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bb31aa53139708b7c3827e7e98a67dc2",
"text": "\"As others have noted, US law says that if you have over half the bill, it's worth the full value, under half is worth nothing. I presume if it is very close to half, if even careful measurements show that you have 50.5%, you'll have difficulty cashing it in, precisely because the government and the banking system aren't going to allow themselves to be easily fooled by someone cutting bills in half and then trying to redeem both halves. I've seen several comments on here about how you'd explain to the bank how so many bills were cut in half. What if you just told them the truth? Not the part about killing someone, of course, but tell them that you made a deal, neither of you wanted to bother with complex contracts and having to go to court if the other side didn't pay up, so your buddy cut all the bills in half, etc. As you now have both halves and they clearly have the same serial number, this no real evidence of fraud. Okay, this is technically illegal -- 18 US Code Section 333, \"\"Whoever mutilates, CUTS, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.\"\" But you didn't do it, the other guy did. I presume the point of this law is to say that you can't get a hold of currency belonging to someone else and mutilate it so as to make it worthless. As he's now given you both halves, I doubt anyone would bother to track him down and prosecute him. Just BTW, while checking up on the details of the law, I stumbled across 18 USC 336, which says that it's illegal to write a check for less than $1, with penalties of 6 months in prison. I just got a check from AT&T for 15 cents for one of those class action suits where the lawyers get $100 million and the victims get 15 cents each. Apparently that was illegal.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5b9b2e9c08ae7722a8693d06c547ed4d",
"text": "\"The US Customs and Border Protection website states that there is no limit to the amount of currency that can be brought into or taken out of the US. There is no limit on the amount of money that can be taken out of or brought into the United States. However, if a person or persons traveling together and filing a joint declaration (CBP Form 6059-B) have $10,000 or more in currency or negotiable monetary instruments, they must fill out a \"\"Report of International Transportation of Currency and Monetary Instruments\"\" FinCEN 105 (former CF 4790). The CBP site also notes that failure to declare currency and monetary instruments in excess of $10,000 may result in its seizure. Further, the site states that the requirement to report currency on a FinCEN 105 does not apply to imports of gold bullion. However, the legal website The Law Dictionary includes details of how money laundering laws may come into play here : As part of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, U.S. law enforcement agencies have significantly increased their vigilance over money laundering. To this effect, travelers who carry large amounts of cash without supporting documentation of its legitimate source may be subject to secondary inspections and seizure of funds. In some cases, law enforcement may confiscate cash in excess of $10,000 until supporting documents are produced. So far, I have described the \"\"official\"\" position. However, reading between the lines, I think it is fair to say that in the current climate if you show up at an entry point with a suitcase full of a large amount of cash you would face considerable scrutiny, regardless of any supporting documentation you may present. If you fail to present supporting documentation, then I think your cash would certainly be seized. If you are a US resident, then you would be given the opportunity to obtain satisfactory documentation. If you did present documentation, then I think your cash would be held for as long as it would take to verify the validity of the documentation. Failure to present valid documentation would result in money laundering charges being brought against you and the matter would rest before the courts. If you are not a US resident, then failing to produce supporting documentation would mean your cash being seized and entry into the US would almost certainly be denied. You would then have to deal with the situation from outside of the US. If you did produce supporting documentation, then again I suspect the cash would be held for as long as it takes to verify the validity of the documentation. Whether or not you were allowed to enter the US would depend on what other documentation you possess.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fe070ea6ae198fc4f3e308f45d363088",
"text": "If you sell counterfeit goods by claiming that they are real, you're no better than people that just straight up steal money without the pretense of 'business' If you sell counterfeit goods and acknowledge that they are counterfeit, you're in ethically better territory... but you're still taking an enormous legal risk that can't possibly be worth your middling profits.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "289a45ffb14c8b0c60c33176908a22e0",
"text": "The reason this sort of question gets asked over and over again is because it's initially difficult to comprehend how you can possibly be scammed if you have no money in your bank account. Perhaps this would make it easier to understand: Someone approaches you in the parking lot of a mall and says, Excuse me, complete stranger, please take this $100 bill and go buy me a pair of $50 shoes at the shoe store. Then go buy whatever you'd like with the rest of the money. Sounds like a good deal, right? The $100 bill is counterfeit. If it were not, the person would buy the shoes themselves. It doesn't get any simpler than that.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b271a049ae22fd6bdb2c111d0e1dc938",
"text": "\"Here's what's going to happen: At the last minute, he's going to \"\"discover\"\" that for some reason first you must send him $10,000. He'll tell you not to worry, as he's still going to send you $40,000... now $50,000. In fact, he's going to tell you that he'll send you $60,000 and tell you to keep the $10,000 as a \"\"finders fee\"\". Then you will send him, $10,000 and he will walk away with your $10,000. You'll never hear from him again. This is a very common scam. The best way to avoid it is not to tell him you won't do it for IRS reasons. The best thing to do is to stop accepting email from him and (optionally) report him to law enforcement.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "456c1399b8629f00c658ad7617c2ead5",
"text": "It's got every sign of a scam. Signatures are needed on contracts, so you should only place them on below one. Free money sounds too good to be true. Money evading banks is a typical sign of money laundering; why are they trying to avoid paper trails? The normal way to gift money is to just hand it over or pay it to a bank account. If anything, you sign a tax declaration, but you would send that to the taxman yourself.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4611b10dcda9bdcf2a448ddfd061e57b",
"text": "http://www.consumerismcommentary.com/buying-house-with-cash/ It looks like you can, but it's a bad idea because you lack protection of a receipt, there's no record of you actually giving the money over, and the money would need to be counted - bill by bill - which increases time and likelihood of error. In general, paying large amounts in cash won't bring up any scrutiny because there's no record. How can the IRS scrutinize something that it can't know about? Of course, if you withdraw 200k from your bank account, or deposit 200k into it then the government would know and it would certainly be flagged as suspicious.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "45ffc7734227178f09bd70790a4af370",
"text": "Probably more if the interest rate is above 0%. If it's too much, just pay span the payments longer, or get a cheaper car. Nice thing, assuming you keep it bone stock (or even tastefully modded, or even fully modded), you'll have no problem selling to some rich teenager. They hold their value.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1db55aaa59f167ad133ccc4f13460d5f",
"text": "According to this study put out this year by Judson and Porter, the face value of counterfeit currency relative to the total amount in circulation is about 0.01%: We conclude that the total value of counterfeits in circulation at any moment is on the order of $60 to $80 million, or less than $1 for every $10,000 outstanding, and is highly unlikely to exceed $220 million, or less than $3 for every $10,000 in circulation. Further, we conclude that the incidence of counterfeits is roughly the same inside and outside the United States ... Actual numbers from five years ago suggest about the same: Out of the approximately $759 billion in U.S. dollars held in U.S. currency in the form of banknotes (paper currency) in circulation outside the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve at the end of 2005, the Secret Service reported that about $61 million in counterfeit currency was passed on the public worldwide. Of the counterfeit currency passed, the majority, $56.2 million, was passed in the United States, with the remainder passed abroad. As to why they're checking: Would you want to receive a counterfeit bill? Costco checks my cash when I check out. The guy I got a buggy ride from up in upstate New York checked my bill. It's easy to check certain things on the bill. Why not?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9cecaef577bdf6b7e09a8f6da5ee2d11",
"text": "The $10,000 mark is not a ceiling in importing cash, but rather a point where an additional declaration needs to be made (Customs Form 4790). At 1 million, I suspect you might be in for a bit of an interview and delay. Here's an explanation of what happens when the declaration isn't made: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/failure-declare-results-seizure-24000-arrest-two",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6cec0fbc02f791ad8baf221e975ecc00",
"text": "Bank-to-Bank wire transfer would be the best option. Dollar is going up nowadays, so if he brought the money not so long ago he might even earn the cost of the transfers back through the difference of the exchange rates. Re the IRS - they don't care. Same goes to the Israeli Tax Authority. What you and your friend need to show, if asked, is the paper trail. I.e.: if he brought you the $10K in cash - that may be an issue unless he kept all the receipts for getting it. But for such a low amount you can always resort to claiming it is a gift from you, in this case.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b8e66b2d15e7441db3f126594aa65b42",
"text": "In the US, the bank is legally required to report any cash transactions over 10k$ to the government. This normally has no consequences, and you will never hear about it. No need to worry about it. If the amount is very high, or you do it repeatedly, or the government has other (pre-existing) reasons to look at your finances sharply, they might ask you where the money came from and what you did with it, but your explanation is perfectly fine (assuming it is true). The idea is to catch money-launderers that try to get large illegal cash incomes into the banking system. Classic example is the drug lord who makes a million a month in cash from selling drugs, and needs to get this million into the banks (as you can't buy houses or luxury cars or yachts with cash without getting FBI attention right away).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b3ccba376cef3f12a8bad4fc3558abc8",
"text": "This may sound a little crazy but I would take $5K of that money and buy whiskey with it (Jack Daniel's would be my preference). My guess is that in 5 years that whiskey will be worth more than the $10K you put in the bank. I just can't see how the dollar survives the next 5 years without a major downward adjustment. If I'm wrong then you have a nice party and give whiskey for Christmas gifts. If I'm right at least you will have some savings instead of $15K of useless dollars. Here is my justification for converting your US dollars into tangible assets. Do you really think the money printing will ever stop?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ccad5df003233c9e6cdffdce3837c9a4",
"text": "\"Speculation is when someone else makes an investment you don't like. The above is tongue in cheek, but is a serious answer. There are several attempts at separating the two, but they turn into moral judgements on the value of a pure \"\"buy and hold\"\" versus any other investment strategy (which is itself doubtful: is shorting an oil stock more \"\"speculation\"\" than buying and holding an alternative energy stock?). Some economists take the other route and just argue that we should remove the moral judgement and celebrate speculation as we celebrate investment.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
f612eb51ee229c7d190a5c583f9e2616
|
How does a Non US citizen gain SEC Accredited Investor Status?
|
[
{
"docid": "8730be753a1406fab4444dcbb40296f3",
"text": "Here are the SEC requirements: The federal securities laws define the term accredited investor in Rule 501 of Regulation D as: a bank, insurance company, registered investment company, business development company, or small business investment company; an employee benefit plan, within the meaning of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, if a bank, insurance company, or registered investment adviser makes the investment decisions, or if the plan has total assets in excess of $5 million; a charitable organization, corporation, or partnership with assets exceeding $5 million; a director, executive officer, or general partner of the company selling the securities; a business in which all the equity owners are accredited investors; a natural person who has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person’s spouse, that exceeds $1 million at the time of the purchase, excluding the value of the primary residence of such person; a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000 for those years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year; or a trust with assets in excess of $5 million, not formed to acquire the securities offered, whose purchases a sophisticated person makes. No citizenship/residency requirements.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "6e9ebc57e4df203c6ab584cc9e5ec0ed",
"text": "\"First of all, the annual returns are an average, there are probably some years where their return was several thousand percent, this can make a decade of 2% a year become an average of 20% . Second of all, accredited investors are allowed to do many things that the majority of the population cannot do. Although this is mostly tied to net worth, less than 3% of the US population is registered as accredited investors. Accredited Investors are allowed to participate in private offerings of securities that do not have to be registered with the SEC, although theoretically riskier, these can have greater returns. Indeed a lot of companies that go public these days only do so after the majority of the growth potential is done. For example, a company like Facebook in the 90s would have gone public when it was a million dollar company, instead Facebook went public when it was already a 100 billion dollar company. The people that were privileged enough to be ALLOWED to invest in Facebook while it was private, experienced 10000% returns, public stock market investors from Facebook's IPO have experienced a nearly 100% return, in comparison. Third, there are even more rules that are simply different between the \"\"underclass\"\" and the \"\"upperclass\"\". Especially when it comes to leverage, the rules on margin in the stock market and options markets are simply different between classes of investors. The more capital you have, the less you actually have to use to open a trade. Imagine a situation where a retail investor can invest in a stock by only putting down 25% of the value of the stock's shares. Someone with the net worth of an accredited investor could put down 5% of the value of the shares. So if the stock goes up, the person that already has money would earn a greater percentage than the peon thats actually investing to earn money at all. Fourth, Warren Buffett's fund and George Soros' funds aren't just in stocks. George Soros' claim to fame was taking big bets in the foreign exchange market. The leverage in that market is much greater than one can experience in the stock market. Fifth, Options. Anyone can open an options contract, but getting someone else to be on the other side of it is harder. Someone with clout can negotiate a 10 year options contract for pretty cheap and gain greatly if their stock or other asset appreciates in value much greater. There are cultural limitations that prompt some people to make a distinction between investing and gambling, but others are not bound by those limitations and can take any kind of bet they like.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2a8733d681a4084e4ea7750776f7b865",
"text": "you dont need any permits or be inside the US to trade the exact same securities on US exchanges. you can literally move your bitcoin from a chinese exchange to us exchange in seconds. i don't see how you can possibly run into legal issues if anyone from outside the country can trade bitcoins on an exchange inside the country without any permit. a lot of these exchanges dont ask for ID or social security number anyways. none of it is government regulated. also trading anything is never a passive income. theres no such thing as an easy or obvious investment. there are always risks- and the actual risk is often deceivingly low",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2343c02755c49de7b8008466b7274762",
"text": "You don't need a visa to invest in US equity. You don't need a visa to profit from US equity. There may be other legal considerations, but they aren't visa related, hope that helps",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "aad964023bfe20997bec03f865987ce6",
"text": "\"Given that such activities are criminal and the people committing them have to hide them from the law, it's very unlikely that an investor could detect them, let alone one from a different country. The only things that can realistically help is to keep in mind the adage \"\"If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is\"\", and to stick to relatively large companies, since they have more auditing requirements and fraud is much harder to hide at scale (but not impossible, see Enron). Edit: and, of course, diversify. This kind of thing is rare, and not systematic, so diversification is a very good protection.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2068ef56056bfdd3913276260dcb0db7",
"text": "As far as I know, with ADRs you're essentially trading by proxy -- a depository bank is holding the actual stock certificate, and must provide you with the actual stock on demand. The one thing that is different is that in the event that the ADR is terminated (which sometimes happens with mergers), you have a limited period of time to sell the shares -- otherwise, you get the actual foreign stock that you may or may not be able to trade without transferring to a different broker.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7e71aab4db2eebd2a6cc2e519ded63c7",
"text": "\"Life would be nicer had we not needed lawyers. But for some things - you better get a proper legal advice. This is one of these things. Generally, the United States is a union of 50 different sovereign entities, so you're asking more about Texas, less about the US. So you'd better talk to a Texas lawyer. Usually, stock ownership is only registered by the company itself (and sometimes not even that, look up \"\"street name\"\"), and not reported to the government. You may get a paper stock certificate, but many companies no longer issue those. Don't forget to talk to a lawyer and a tax adviser in your home country, as well. You'll be dealing with tax authorities there as well. The difference between \"\"unoted\"\" (never heard of this term before) and \"\"regular\"\" stocks is that the \"\"unoted\"\" are not publicly traded. As such, many things that your broker does (like tax statements, at source withholding, etc) you and your company will have to do on your own. If your company plans on paying dividends, you'll have to have a US tax ID (ITIN or SSN), and the company will have to withhold the US portion of the taxes. Don't forget to talk to a tax adviser about what happens when you sell the stock. Also, since the company is not publicly traded, consider how will you be able to sell it, if at all.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3a4108de7a8c8f8819cef2931d529cda",
"text": "There is a measure of protection for investors. It is not the level of protection provided by FDIC or NCUA but it does exist: Securities Investor Protection Corporation What SIPC Protects SIPC protects against the loss of cash and securities – such as stocks and bonds – held by a customer at a financially-troubled SIPC-member brokerage firm. The limit of SIPC protection is $500,000, which includes a $250,000 limit for cash. Most customers of failed brokerage firms when assets are missing from customer accounts are protected. There is no requirement that a customer reside in or be a citizen of the United States. A non-U.S. citizen with an account at a brokerage firm that is a member of SIPC is treated the same as a resident or citizen of the United States with an account at a brokerage firm that is a member of SIPC. SIPC protection is limited. SIPC only protects the custody function of the broker dealer, which means that SIPC works to restore to customers their securities and cash that are in their accounts when the brokerage firm liquidation begins. SIPC does not protect against the decline in value of your securities. SIPC does not protect individuals who are sold worthless stocks and other securities. SIPC does not protect claims against a broker for bad investment advice, or for recommending inappropriate investments. It is important to recognize that SIPC protection is not the same as protection for your cash at a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured banking institution because SIPC does not protect the value of any security. Investments in the stock market are subject to fluctuations in market value. SIPC was not created to protect these risks. That is why SIPC does not bail out investors when the value of their stocks, bonds and other investment falls for any reason. Instead, in a liquidation, SIPC replaces the missing stocks and other securities when it is possible to do so.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8a1eeb8bc084a1d378814a548ab4109a",
"text": "Usually, you can buy ETFs through brokerages. I looked at London to see if there's any familiar brokerage names, and it appears that the address below is to Fidelity Investments Worldwide and their site indicates that you can buy securities. Any brokerage, in theory, should allow you to invest in securities. You could always call and ask if they allow you to invest in ETFs. Some brokerages may also allow you to purchase securities in other countries; for instance, some of the firms in the U.S. allow investors to invest in the ETF HK:2801, which is not a U.S. ETF. Many countries have ETF securities available to local and foreign investors. This site appears to help point people to brokers in London. Also, see this answer on this site (a UK investor who's invested in the U.S. through Barclays).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "27fcc343ed9d01eac9eb28343ef02044",
"text": "\"The IRS W-8BEN form (PDF link), titled \"\"Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding\"\", certifies that you are not an American for tax purposes, so they won't withhold tax on your U.S. income. You're also to use W-8BEN to identify your country of residence and corresponding tax identification number for tax treaty purposes. For instance, if you live in the U.K., which has a tax treaty with the U.S., your W-8BEN would indicate to the U.S. that you are not an American, and that your U.S. income is to be taxed by the U.K. instead of tax withheld in the U.S. I've filled in that form a couple of times when opening stock trading accounts here in Canada. It was requested by the broker because in all likelihood I'd end up purchasing U.S.-listed stocks that would pay dividends. The W-8BEN is needed in order to reduce the U.S. withholding taxes on those dividends. So I would say that the ad revenue provider is requesting you file one so they don't need to withhold full U.S. taxes on your ad revenue. Detailed instructions on the W-8BEN form are also available from the IRS: Instruction W-8BEN (PDF link). On the subject of ad revenue, Google also has some information about W8-BEN: Why can't I submit a W8-BEN form as an individual?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3b0513ea719821872a14f80eda6c8c71",
"text": "ACWI refers to a fund that tracks the MSCI All Country World Index, which is A market capitalization weighted index designed to provide a broad measure of equity-market performance throughout the world. The MSCI ACWI is maintained by Morgan Stanley Capital International, and is comprised of stocks from both developed and emerging markets. The ex-US in the name implies exactly what it sounds; this fund probably invests in stock markets (or stock market indexes) of the countries in the index, except the US. Brd Mkt refers to a Broad Market index, which, in the US, means that the fund attempts to track the performance of a wide swath of the US stock market (wider than just the S&P 500, for example). The Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index, the Wilshire 5000 index, the Russell 2000 index, the MSCI US Broad Market Index, and the CRSP US Total Market Index are all examples of such an index. This could also refer to a fund similar to the one above in that it tracks a broad swath of the several stock markets across the world. I spoke with BNY Mellon about the rest, and they told me this: EB - Employee Benefit (a bank collective fund for ERISA qualified assets) DL - Daily Liquid (provides for daily trading of fund shares) SL - Securities Lending (fund engages in the BNY Mellon securities lending program) Non-SL - Non-Securities Lending (fund does not engage in the BNY Mellon securities lending program) I'll add more detail. EB (Employee Benefit) refers to plans that fall under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which are a set a laws that govern employee pensions and retirement plans. This is simply BNY Mellon's designation for funds that are offered through 401(k)'s and other retirement vehicles. As I said before, DL refers to Daily Liquidity, which means that you can buy into and sell out of the fund on a daily basis. There may be fees for this in your plan, however. SL (Securities Lending) often refers to institutional funds that loan out their long positions to investment banks or brokers so that the clients of those banks/brokerages can sell the shares short. This SeekingAlpha article has a good explanation of how this procedure works in practice for ETF's, and the procedure is identical for mutual funds: An exchange-traded fund lends out shares of its holdings to another party and charges a rental fee. Running a securities-lending program is another way for an ETF provider to wring more return out of a fund's holdings. Revenue from these programs is used to offset a fund's expenses, which allows the provider to charge a lower expense ratio and/or tighten the performance gap between an ETF and its benchmark.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e7b7c93adacde6bc4f0f5a51f59f48c9",
"text": "All securities must be registered with the SEC. Securities are defined as (1) The term “security” means any note, stock, treasury stock, security future, security-based swap, bond, debenture, evidence of indebtedness, certificate of interest or participation in any profit-sharing agreement, collateral-trust certificate, preorganization certificate or subscription, transferable share, investment contract, voting-trust certificate, certificate of deposit for a security, fractional undivided interest in oil, gas, or other mineral rights, any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege on any security, certificate of deposit, or group or index of securities (including any interest therein or based on the value thereof), or any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege entered into on a national securities exchange relating to foreign currency, or, in general, any interest or instrument commonly known as a “security”, or any certificate of interest or participation in, temporary or interim certificate for, receipt for, guarantee of, or warrant or right to subscribe to or purchase, any of the foregoing. thus currencies are not defined as securities. While OTC transactions of securities is not outright forbidden, there are numerous regulations issued by the SEC as a result of the 1943 Exchange Act and others that make this difficult and/or costly. Many other securities are exempted from registration thus trade in a way that could be called OTC. Different countries have variances upon US law but are very similar. Any security could be traded OTC, but law prohibits it expressly or in such a way to make it relatively expensive; further, stock options are so tightly regulated that expiration dates, expiration intervals, strike intervals, and minimum ticks are all set by the authorities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6d9303a97a7532a9f39858d68b75bf2a",
"text": "Without knowing the specifics it is hard to give you a specific answer, but most likely the answer is no. If they limit the participation in the site to accredited investors, this is probably not something they are doing willingly, but rather imposed by regulators. Acredited investors have access to instruments that don't have the same level of regulatory protection & scrutiny as those offered to the general public, and are defined under Regulation D. Examples of such securities are 144A Shares, or hedgefunds.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ba94b1b00e70a6501fe7dbcae3af0781",
"text": "The UK has historically aggressive financial law, inherited from Dutch friendship, influence, and acquisitions by conquest. The law is so open that nearly anyone can invest through the UK without much difficulty, and citizens have nearly no restrictions on where to invest. A UK citizen can either open an account in the US with paperwork hassles or at home with access to all world markets and less paperwork. Here is the UK version of my broker, Interactive Brokers. Their costs are the lowest, but you will be charged a minimum fee if you do not trade enough, and their minimum opening balance can be prohibitively high for some. If you do buy US products, be sure to file your W-8BEN.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "19c215406af14db05a1acffe9423ae75",
"text": "Nothing. Stockbrokers set up nominee accounts, in which they hold shares on behalf of individual investors. Investors are still the legal owners of the shares but their names do not appear on the company’s share register. Nominee accounts are ring-fenced from brokers’ other activities so they are financially secure.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7fd6d379a23acdd8369d63e87fb51d0e",
"text": "You're not physically present in the US, you're not a US citizen, you're not a green card holder, and you don't have a business that is registered in the US - US laws do not apply to you. You're not in any way under the US jurisdiction. Effectively connected income is income effectively connected to your business in the US. You're not in the US, so there's nothing to effectively connect your income to. Quote from the link: You usually are considered to be engaged in a U.S. trade or business when you perform personal services in the United States. You ask: If I form an LLC or C corp am I liable for this withholding tax? If you form a legal entity in a US jurisdiction - then that entity becomes subjected to that jurisdiction. If you're physically present in the US - then ECI may become an issue, and you also may become a resident based on the length of your stay.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
2601205e830a2a1f70f1325bac738058
|
How can I find a lost 401K from a past employer?
|
[
{
"docid": "4217f4b58b17bf01e6deb8e2a43bf894",
"text": "The Employee Benefits Security Administration within the US Department of Labor is tasked with keeping track of pension and 401K programs. The even have a website to search for abandoned plans: it helps participants and others find out whether a particular plan is in the process of being, or has been, terminated and the name of the Qualified Termination Administrator (QTA) responsible for the termination. The Employee Benefits Security Administration discuss all types of details regarding retirement programs. This document What You Should Know About Your Retirement Plan has a lot of details including this: If your former employer has gone out of business, arrangements should have been made so a plan official remains responsible for the payment of benefits and other plan business. If you are entitled to benefits and are unable to contact the plan administrator, contact EBSA electronically at askebsa.dol.gov or by calling toll free at 1-866-444-3272. There are also EBSA offices spread thought the United States",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "7ce5540b10329f97641f466f7f7df5df",
"text": "If they leave the extra funds in the account the IRS will consider it as employer match. They weren't funds from your paycheck, they were from the employers profits. Because they don't have a formal matching program the extra funds will still keep then under the max match. There is one other explanation that needs to be considered. If the last paycheck from 2011 was near the end of the year (the last Friday of 2011 was December 30th) the 401K funds from that final paycheck may not have been deposited into your 401K until early January 2012. If you count contributions when looking at your 401K statement it will look like one two many for 2012; but the IRS only cares when it was deducted from your paycheck, not when it was deposited into your account. The Department of Labor only requires they be deposited by the 15th of the following month.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2cb94464a77b00425f9ce06a9382f6db",
"text": "Reinvestment creates a nightmare when it comes time to do taxes, sadly. Tons of annoying little transactions that happened automatically... Here's one article trying to answer your question: http://www.smartmoney.com/personal-finance/taxes/figuring-out-your-cost-basis-when-youve-lost-the-statements-9529/ You could also try this thing: http://www.gainskeeper.com/us/BasisProIndividual.aspx But I couldn't tell you if it would help. If it makes you feel better, brokerages are now required by the IRS to track your basis for you, so for new transactions and assets you shouldn't end up in this situation. Doesn't help with the old stuff ;-)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9b0c3b43773c3ba34fd6b29c828b25c1",
"text": "\"The IRS has a FAQ page about Hardship Distributions from a 401(k). The IRS defines a hardship in this case as \"\"an immediate and heavy financial need of the employee and the amount must be necessary to satisfy the financial need.\"\" Included in the list of examples is \"\"certain expenses for the repair of damage to the employee's principal residence.\"\" However, whether your former employer allows this particular reason is up to their plan documents. It sounds like, from what you described on the website, that your plan does include this reason as a possibility for you. Next, you need to decide if the projects you have in mind qualify as \"\"repair of damage.\"\" This uses the same rules as the deductible casualty rules found in IRS Publication 547, which defines a casualty this way: A casualty is the damage, destruction, or loss of property resulting from an identifiable event that is sudden, unexpected, or unusual. A sudden event is one that is swift, not gradual or progressive. An unexpected event is one that is ordinarily unanticipated and unintended. An unusual event is one that is not a day-to-day occurrence and that is not typical of the activity in which you were engaged. Examples are given in Pub 547. If the projects you have in mind are necessary due to an event (like a flood or a fire), it might be allowed. But most \"\"home improvement\"\" projects would not qualify for this. If you'd like a way to simplify your financial profile, an option for you, since you no longer work at this employer, is to roll over this 401(k) into a Rollover (traditional) IRA. This way, you won't have to deal with your former employer anymore. You could pick an IRA custodian that you already have another account with, if you like, and reduce the number of statements that you get. But the IRA will not let you take money out without penalty for home improvement projects, either.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "65005c7763f5008da5d62afca405c5cc",
"text": "Yes, there are checks and balances. Employers can be, and have been, prosecuted for failing to pay super before the statutory timeline, which is three months from the pay date. However, it is still in your interests to check for yourself. The most common point for missing super to be discovered is when the company goes broke, at which point it's too late for you. What you should do is Check on your payslips that the right amount is allocated to super. It should be 9% of gross, plus any salary sacrifice or additional component. Check your super fund's half-yearly statements line up the deductions given on your payslip. Consider getting online access to your super account so you can check more quickly. If something is missing, call your super fund and/or payroll office. Resources:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "da3bb20b815bd711a1d70bb82fd9fd3f",
"text": "In general you cannot. Once the security is no longer listed on the exchange - it doesn't have to provide information to the exchange and regulators (unless it wants to be re-listed). That's one of the reasons companies go private - to keep their (financial and other) information private. If it was listed in 1999, and is no longer listed now - you can dig through SEC archives for the information. You can try and reach out to the company's investors' relations contact and see if they can help you with the specific information you're looking for.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "559e3242a47e027a1305f24643f9a308",
"text": "No, unvested money returns to the employer, its not yours. They should send you W2 which will only show the actual (vested) monies you got.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "801ea4db2047b367902c7cdc3ab51f4b",
"text": "You are already doing everything you can. If your employer does not have a 401(k) you are limited to investing in a Roth or a traditional IRA (Roth is post tax money, traditional IRA gives you a deduction so it is essentially pre tax money). The contribution limits are the same for both and contributing to either adds to the limit (so you can't duplicate). CNN wrote an article on some other ways to save: One thing you may want to bring up with your employer is that they could set up a SEP-IRA. This allows them to set a % (up to 25%) that they contribute pre-tax to an IRA for everyone at the company that has worked there at least 3 years. If you are at a small company, maybe everyone with that kind of seniority would take an equivalent pay cut to get the automatic retirement contribution? (Note that a SEP-IRA has to apply to everyone equally percentage wise that has worked there for 3 years, and the employer makes the contribution, not you).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "84a5feca8c5035f6b1cf0e7cf1f8e6ee",
"text": "A company as large as Home Depot will have a fairly robust Human Resources department and would probably be able to steer you in the right direction: odds are they know the name of the brokerage and other particulars. I did some googling around, their # is (1-866-698-4347). Different states have different rules about how long an institution can have assets abandoned before turning them over to the state. California, as an example, has an abandoned property search site that you can use. That being said, I had some penny stocks sitting in a brokerage account I never touched for about 20 years and when I finally logged back in there they were, still sitting there.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "35d7b7bfa64a908279a2976bd2f45da3",
"text": "The old school way would have been to identify some wealthy zip codes and cold call like a mofo. At present I would prefer to find some retiring advisor and buy his book (that may mean leaving your current firm).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "180e87b8bc2cab1c42dd460fd98a8b67",
"text": "\"I'm not sure what you mean by \"\"receive retirement benefits\"\". If the company had a 401k, that probably is the retirement plan. Few companies have both a 401k and an old-style pension plan, you typically have one or the other. So if your 401k was rolled over into some other account, you have already received your retirement benefits. If you mean that the 401k was rolled over into an IRA and you are asking if you can now start withdrawing from the IRA, see Excel Strategies answer. Short answer: Yes you can, but there's a 10% penalty unless you meet one of the exceptions.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5571f9036e7c42555e0de2cabec4d54d",
"text": "I work for a hedge fund, not wealth management, but I assume that client information is treated similarly. Misplacing it is a huge deal. The company will probably need to formally investigate it and inform all the clients involved. Even if they can prove that no one looked at the information it's going to make clients question the company's procedures. I could see it being a firing offense,depending on how many clients were affected and the nature of the data. Sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f7ca42754f8dbcf566f746c495e6325d",
"text": "Take The 20k and transfer it to the new employer 401k. You then can take a loan and accomplish the same thing. By the time you pay the tax and 10% penalty, that withdrawal will be worth just over half. The same half you can borrow out, pay yourself the interest and not lose out on 50 years of growth.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d2c894ede59d3edcf779c575c9a3ed0a",
"text": "Most companies put the company match in your account each paycheck, but your are not generally vested for the match. If you leave before the specified time period then they pull back part of the matching funds. I knew somebody who did something similar back in the 1980's with their 401K. They put in 8% of their paycheck after taxes; a 100% match was deposited; then they pulled out the employees contribution every quarter. They did this for the 10 years I knew them. It avoided any tax implications, and they were still saving 8% of their pay for retirement.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d4dfcb04dd8e29c61194e90ca80b4cde",
"text": "\"(Insert usual disclaimer that I'm just a random guy on the Internet, not any kind of certified tax professional.) But once I withdraw the money, how is that money taxable? If I'm understanding your situation correctly, you want to look at the instructions for form 8889, under Excess Employer Contributions. It simply says, \"\"If the excess was not included in income on Form W-2, you must report it as 'Other income' on your tax return.\"\" There doesn't look to be any particular wording beyond that, so I'd just put it on Form 1040 Line 21 Other Income, and label the line really specifically like \"\"Excess Employer Contributions distributed from HSA\"\". Also there is no mention of whether any FICA taxes (social security and Medicare) apply to these amounts. You say that this was entirely contributed by the employer. But even for cases where one contributes directly through payroll with an optional pre-tax deduction, this is usually implemented as a \"\"salary reduction agreement\"\" where the company is actually paying less money in salary (and thus less showing up on the W-2) and just contributing to the HSA account instead. It's listed on the 8889 as an \"\"Employer Contribution\"\", even if in fact one sees it as a deduction on one's pay stub. In either case, since the company didn't pay you the money as salary (and merely contributed to the HSA instead), I wouldn't expect any FICA taxes to be owed on it. The fact that the IRS wants it listed under \"\"Other income\"\" instead of \"\"Wages\"\" also implies to me that it doesn't count as salary that needs FICA taxes. Presumably, if people abused this in some way (like getting their employer to deliberately over-contribute each year and getting a refund in some sort of crazy scheme to try to reduce their SS taxes) the government would get rather upset and probably call it some sort of tax evasion. But for the amounts involved here, particularly as you're following the instructions listed, I just wouldn't worry about it. Assuming that I withdraw excess contribution and report everything on Form 8889 and Form 1040, is there any further action required from my previous employer? It's your HSA, so I wouldn't think so. Since the eligibility for HSAs is based on what you do, and not what they do (you could, for instance, get covered by a different HDHP and they wouldn't be notified nor really care), I don't think they have anything more to do with it. Also I am not sure how to calculate amount of interest attributable to excess contribution. I have only around $0.20 of total interest this year. The bank holding the HSA could probably help with that, as I'd expect it to be a normal part of the excess contribution withdrawal process. If not, I'd just make a reasonable effort based on the interest rate, amount involved, and number of days that the excess was in the account. Also keep in mind that in general when filing taxes, anything under $0.49 can round to $0. At some point, one can only be \"\"as honest as the law allows\"\".\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0644bea83d844d62f2f2ef527c2c4574",
"text": "In the long run the drivers are getting pulled from the equation. I don't care how much regulatory pressure the self driving car industry faces, they'll have it figured out in 5 years. You are talking about an interest group that includes Google, Tesla, Uber, Lyft, Ford, GM and probably Apple. They are all spending billions on the technology and want a return on that investment.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
fac503b6fec088897ba8c0b188ea100d
|
How can small children contribute to the “family economy”?
|
[
{
"docid": "f6565dd0aa33decf3ce5cdb619b40921",
"text": "Another suggestion I heard on the radio was to give the child the difference between the name brand they want, and the store brand they settle on. Then that money can be accumulated as savings. Saving money is as important a feature of the family economy as earning money. Be careful with what you have a child do for reward vs what you have them do as a responsibility. Don't set a dangerous precedent that certain work does not need to be done unless compensation is on the table. You might have a child who relies on external motivations only to do things, which can make school work and future employment hard. I would instead have my child do yard work, but while doing it explain opportunity costs of doing the work yourself vs hiring out. I would show my kid how saving money earns interest, and how that is essentially free money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "80a7baf28f607ad43f866848dbc4e9dd",
"text": "Similar to the lawn care you mentioned: if you have space, you could have the kids create a mini-farmstand. They could grow flowers for cutting, some vegetables, etc. It would be a different twist on the classic lemonade stand. If the kids are into animals and space and zoning allows, you could keep chickens and add eggs to your mini-farmstand. Upfront costs for the garden would be small enough that they can learn about how investing in a business works at a very small scale. Along with learning about money, they also learn responsibility because it requires commitment and daily attention. It's also seasonal in a way that meshes well with school (though having animals is a constant year-round responsibility).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7ba5c8e77be27b5bbb0c9e0ac99adff3",
"text": "\"@MrChrister - Savings is a great idea. Coudl also give them 1/2 the difference, rather than the whole difference, as then you both get to benefit... Also, a friend of mine had the Bank of Dad, where he'd keep his savings, and Dad would pay him 100% interest every year. Clearly, this would be unsustainable after a while, but something like 10% per month would be a great way to teach the value of compounding returns over a shorter time period. I also think that it's critical how you respond to things like \"\"I want that computer/car/horse/bike/toy\"\". Just helping them to make a plan on how to get there, considering their income (and ways to increase it), savings, spending and so on. Help them see that it's possible, and you'll teach them a worthwhile lesson.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "af1efed33cbdfe6f3177ff25c1e7d909",
"text": "There is also babysitting, dog walking and house sitting. Depending on their age of course. You should also investigate what is required to get them the ability to setup their own Roth IRA. I know one of the requirements is you can't put more into the Roth then was earned in income in the year. They might also have to file an income tax return (not sure about that one). Just think of how far ahead of the game they will be if they can get a couple of grand or more in a Roth account while in their early teens.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3048767f63dd94d3d400c5ef3cc67c92",
"text": "If you're trying to teach them the value of money and quantifying the dollar difference between prices, one very effective way to do this is by using bar charts. For instance, if a toy is $5, and movie they really want to see is $10, and a vacation they want to go on costs $2000, it can be a useful tool to help explain how the relative costs work.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "11605d7412377e6438ee6df9971add7f",
"text": "\"(Although I disagree with the idea of getting a child working a real job to early, (I think kids should learn at school, learn manners, learn what the world offers and have responsibility) Here is a list of ideas that a small child can do. This is all assuming the child is to young for a work permit and a \"\"normal\"\" job. I am assuming your live in the United States. Comedy Answer: Amway. But forget about getting invited to birthday parties.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "4cda418d37f637ca634dd67e846e44ef",
"text": "We are a pretty average (professional, used to be fully two-income) family. I have gone part-time (plus a total career change) to be more involved at home - that's minus 50K from our family budget a year. Montessori for the younger one is - 10K. Violin (-5K) and piano (-5K) lessons for each kid... summer science camps... summer golf/tennis plus equipment... dance/sports all year round are around 10K too. We are looking at an 80K hole in our budget (compared to what we could have had). Plus by now I would have been probably more advanced in my previous career had I stayed there, so the hole is potentially even greater.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "691ec3d827e205e1bde8360d73f464b0",
"text": "It's simple. Look, children are basically an 18-year debt, and if a couple is poor, they can't adequately pay that debt AND their own lifestyle costs. If those who can't afford that debt simply... delayed or abstained from reproducing... that would very easily solve the poverty problem permanently, so long as the next generation followed the same. This next generation would also have more of a surplus since their parents had to have had a surplus before having kids. Ad infinitum. This is exactly what happened in my own family so I know it's possible. Ultimately, most poor people only have their parents to blame.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fb4600091bc47c55b4e482237fe59389",
"text": "The Child Care Expense Deduction (line 214) dollar limits will each increase by $1000, to new amounts of $8000 for children under 7 and $5000 for children age 7–16. Notes: As a tax deduction, your tax liability gets reduced at your marginal income tax rate, not the lowest tax rate (as would be the case for a tax credit). Yes, you still need receipts from your child care provider to support any claim. The non-refundable child tax credit a.k.a. amount for children under age 18 (line 367) introduced in 2007 is being eliminated starting in tax year 2015 coincident with the UCCB enhancement above. The credit could previously reduce tax liability by ~$340. The Family Tax Cut is being introduced and will be effective for tax year 2014. That is, when you file your 2014 income tax return in early 2015, you may be able to take advantage of this measure for income already earned in 2014. Provided a couple has at least one child under the age of 18, the Family Tax Cut will permit the transfer of up to $50,000 of taxable income from the higher income spouse's income tax return to the lower income spouse's return. While the potential transfer of $50,000 of taxable income to lower tax brackets sounds like a really big deal, the maximum tax relief is capped at $2000.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5dbce4387c18772fe1658c4462faa563",
"text": "I would disagree. Not all children are set to have good life outcomes. Those raised in poverty often experience a great deal of stress and suffering. Raising children to be productive adults in beneficial to society. Raising a child to continue the cycle of poverty and crime is not. Many times, people voluntarily organize into a family unit whereby the husband earns an income which can be considered in paying the wife to raise the child. Individuals are amazing at coming to voluntary agreements which help society.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "990d7cea7a0d872a8b50cca148e7d234",
"text": "\"This is a common and good game-plan to learn valuable life skills and build a supplemental income. Eventually, it could become a primary income, and your strategic risk is overall relatively low. If you are diligent and patient, you are likely to succeed, but at a rate that is so slow that the primary beneficiaries of your efforts may be your children and their children. Which is good! It is a bad gameplan for building an \"\"empire.\"\" Why? Because you are not the first person in your town with this idea. Probably not even the first person on the block. And among those people, some will be willing to take far more extravagant risks. Some will be better capitalized to begin with. Some will have institutional history with the market along with all the access and insider information that comes with it. As far as we know, you have none of that. Any market condition that yields a profit for you in this space, will yield a larger one for them. In a downturn, they will be able to absorb larger losses than you. So, if your approach is to build an empire, you need to take on a considerably riskier approach, engage with the market in a more direct and time-consuming way, and be prepared to deal with the consequences if those risks play out the wrong way.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1c020cee61c8b52238f5db2dd9a7d507",
"text": "Perhaps this is lasting result of the recession. I realize that the article specifically states that Lego notably grew and profited through the recession. However, other parts of society and other markets didn't. Now, years later, perhaps those other scenarios are affecting Lego's market. Specifically, I'm drawing a parallel to my personal experience. My kids were born just before the recession. Their grade is the largest grade in the school system. Every grade behind them (the kids born during the recession) is significantly smaller. Whatever the driver(s) was, people were having fewer kids during the recession. Further, although the general view is that the recession is over and the stock markets are back, household spending and income continues to stagnate. With fewer kids and a reluctance to spend, perhaps people in the US and Europe just aren't buying as many premium toys.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e373dddf3f29f86e314a823b7ab4fea6",
"text": "Using household income makes sense, as you would hardly expect differences in standard of living for members of the same household. True, more people in a family will mean more expenses, but not proportionally so. For a typical family of four, it wouldn't really matter if one or both parents contributed towards the household income.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9999e5a243333da3c268cf7929cc9ffc",
"text": "> As a parent, I call bullshit on this. I don't see why. You are confident your kids will be have more chances than you did because you are passing your wisdom onto them. Aren't they lucky to have you as parents? > ...a dynastic focus on generational wealth building simply cannot be called only luck. Nobody is suggesting that wealthy people don't work. I think the point of this article is that the poor work just as hard if not harder but kids from less successful households are naturally going to be taught life skills that are less effective.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6d14d3e1e91df97e32626f27aa2c3dd7",
"text": "While personal responsibility plays a vital role in economic mobility, forces outside individual control, such as access to better work, clearly applies as well. Different folks apply different weight to responsibility vs. access to opportunity, but in any case one should be at least mentioned with the other.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ab3e0d7bf5b04a94b23a3aa950039e98",
"text": "> To imply a grand conspiracy... No conspiracy required. All you have to agree with is that having money makes it easier to make money and society will sort itself into classes that become further apart and harder to move between. > How about it is hard work and good parenting? Those are important but exist in both rich and poor areas and it is a simple fact that you would get further with hard work and good parenting in a rich area than in a poor one. I think a good way to describe it is inequality of affluent opportunity and experience.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "18601b9bb18d04a3bb4c64b4b93ce478",
"text": "I have lived in communal houses. Most people don't want roommates. Especially if that means having several kids. I feel like your arguments are practical, I suppose, but not realistic. If I had 3 kids right now, if anything I would probably be earning less money because my flexibility would be much less. I couldn't pursue an education to earn more money because I would still have bills to pay for my kids. My parents are poor, and they live in an area that my job options would be about 3, and none would pay much more than minimum wage. I am 26, but I have known plenty of 19 year old single moms who just aren't able to get a job that pays well enough to support them, and again, they have few options to develop new skills. I guess you can say it is their fault, but we can hardly say that subway shouldn't have to pay them overtime or what is really less than a living wage. Economists and reality have shown us time and time again that more wages overall means a healthier economy. Every state that has raised wages in the past few years is better off because of it. Every state that has done so has seen their economy grow, and joblessness go down.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9a5ea0ebf12eea480e2f7ab2cd55bb9c",
"text": "\"I personally believe if one (average) income could support the needs of a family (nothing extravagant) and the parents had options (instead of only one of the parents having the ability to work for an income that supports a family) it would be better. At the micro view, there would be less grudges and more time for family. I feel bad now bc I'm stretched so thin I don't even have time to watch a tv show with our kids during the week. In our situation, my husband never finished school (his mom let him drop out in the 7th grade) so his work options are very limited. He has had to work out of town jobs since before we started dating. I graduated high school but due to having kids early, I put off college. Because of the expense of daycare, I stayed at home with the kids for about 5 years. The plan is I get my degree next fall, get a decent paying job to support the family and he can figure out what he wants to do as a career and be able to pursue it without having the pressure of HAVING to make an income to support a family. I have been nudging him to at least get an online high school diploma in the mean time but I think he is self conscious and scared he can't do it. We aren't the \"\"Keeping up with the Jones\"\" kind of people. I'm just trying to reach some goals and be financially stable and not worry about if we have enough money in the bank for bills or if the car breaks down if we are screwed. A teacher's job is very time consuming so it definitely will be a challenge if you don't work a job that allows you to help out. At my internship this summer the CFO was able to just leave and bring his daughter to work whenever he needed to. That luxury is not afforded to many. Also on a side note- when you have kids, please make an effort to take your paternity leave if your job offers it. You deserve it! Employees shouldn't feel bad for taking the benefits their company offers. Gender equality ftw!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "adaef46a8958f4ce4b2d54b72142aa69",
"text": "If your skills are at the level of a McDonald's cashier than you should be compensated for that. You should NOT be compensated for a lifestyle which you WANT. Having a kids and a wife is a choice, no one is putting a gun to your head. If your skills are at the minimum(which is 2% in the USA) than you should not be supporting a family, it's simple. The kid with a father/mother at that level will have a terrible life, lazy parents who are not willing to work to better themselves.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f3e50dd861f531211ef5db6eeca1998b",
"text": "Since this post was migrated from Parenting, my reply was in the context where it appeared to be misrepresenting facts to make a point. I've edited it to be more concise to my main point. In my opinion, the best way to save for your childs future is to get rid of as much of your own debt as possible. Starting today. For the average American, a car is 6-10%. Most people have at least a couple credit cards, ranging from 10-25% (no crap). College loans can be all over the map (5-15%) as can be signature (8-15%) or secured bank loans (4-8%). Try to stop living within your credit and live within your means. Yeah it will suck to not go to movies or shop for cute things at Kohl's, but only today. First, incur no more debt. Then, the easiest way I found to pay things off is to use your tax returns and reduce your cable service (both potentially $Ks per year) to pay off a big debt like a car or student loan. You just gave yourself an immediate raise of whatever your payment is. If you think long term (we're talking about long-term savings for a childs college) there are things you can do to pay off debt and save money without having to take up a 2nd job... but you have to think in terms of years, not months. Is this kind of thing pie in the sky? Yes and no, but it takes a plan and diligence. For example, we have no TV service (internet only service redirected an additional $100/mo to the wifes lone credit card) and we used '12 taxes to pay off the last 4k on the car. We did the same thing on our van last year. It takes willpower to not cheat, but that's only really necessary for the first year-ish... well before that point you'll be used to the Atkins Diet on your wallet and will have no desire to cheat. It doesn't really hurt your quality of life (do you really NEED 5 HBO channels?) and it sets everyone up for success down the line. The moral of the story is that by paying down your debt today, you're taking steps to reduce long haul expenditures. A stable household economy is a tremendous foundation for raising children and can set you up to be more able to deal with the costs of higher ed.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e6b6b282ec2c58732e168245a2809279",
"text": "Check out this recent Planet Money podcast on taxes & incentives via allowance for your children. It might not directly answer your question, but it brings up some interesting things to consider when setting up an allowance for your children.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
5c351c4d77761a0c99ec477c69e50156
|
Why can't 401(k) statements be delivered electronically?
|
[
{
"docid": "286f3c2c2f1e29bc738069cc7684932a",
"text": "\"There are a lot of unintended consequences of fairly arbitrary IRS guidelines when it comes to 401Ks, they both close and create tons of loopholes and many companies are left to implement their own policy around these laws. Ultimately what you are left with are a lot of random things, interpreted differently by every single company in the country, that aren't directly codified by the IRS or Congress. If you have a choice regarding what brokerage firm manages your 401(k), then just call around. Be sure to ask the pencil pusher on the phone to double check because they might say \"\"OF COURSE you can get paperless statements it is 2015\"\" but then when you sign up it becomes \"\"ooohhh sorry due to recent guidelines this kind of account isn't eligible for paperless statements\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e20ac0d3405216c3a1019c91e4fbfbf0",
"text": "\"Glad my question got bumped. I took it as a sign to get a solid answer out of Schwab. First the rep gave me the same line that it was impossible to provide paperless statements for a 401(k) plan because of \"\"regulations\"\". I pressed the issue and got this from the rep: I just spoke with our dedicated small business plan team. They told me that there are regulations that state that a Qualified Plan, such as this, require to have a statement sent. It is a Schwab policy that we have decided to only allow paper statements for this account type. So to clarify, it is a Schwab business decision to have the statements available only by mail. Hope someone from Schwab with some authority sees this post and is pushed toward helping change their policy. I can't imagine what a colossal waste of paper, postage, and hassle it is for everyone involved.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "da87ad09f8ea417326955b272c8086e8",
"text": "\"To answer, I'm going to make a few assumptions. First, the ideal scenario for a pre-tax 401(k) is the deposit goes in at a 25% tax rate (i.e. the employee is in that bracket) but withdrawn at 15%. This may be true for many, but not all. It's to illustrate a point. The SPY (S&P 500 index ETF) has a cost of .09% per year. If your 401(k) fees are anywhere near 1% per year total, over 10 years you've paid nearly 10% in fees, vs less than 1% for the ETF. Above, I suggest the ideal is that the 401(k) saves you 10% on your taxes, but if you pay 10% over the decade, the benefit is completely negated. I can add to the above that funds outside the retirement accounts give off dividends which are tax favored, and if you were to sell ETFs held over a year, they receive favorable cap-gains rates. The \"\"deposit to get the matching funds\"\" should always be good advice, it would take many years of high fees to destroy that. But even that seemingly reasonable 1% fee can make any other deposits a bad approach. Keep in mind, when retired you will have a zero bracket (in 2011, the combined standard deduction and exemption) adding to $9500, as well as a 10% bracket (the next $8500), so having some pretax money to take advantage of those brackets will help. Last, the average person changes jobs now and then. The ability to transfer the funds from the (bad) 401(k) to an IRA where you can control the investments is an option I'd not ignore in the analysis. I arbitrarily picked 1% to illustrate my thoughts. The same math will show a long time employee will get hurt by even .5%/yr if enough time passes. What are the fees in your 401(k)? Edit - Study of 401(k) fees - put out by the Dept of Labor. Unfortunately, it's over 10 years old, but it speaks to my point. Back then, even a 2000 participant plan with $60M in assets had 110 basis points (this is 1.1%) in fees on average. Whatever the distribution is, those above this average shouldn't even participate in their plans (except for matching) and those on the other side should look at their expenses. As Radix07 points out below, yes, for those just shy of retirement, the fee has less impact, and of course, they have a better idea if they will retire in a lower bracket. Those who have some catching up to do, may benefit despite the fees.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "47534fd1bf4464af31de30979d1441d3",
"text": "\"The \"\"must be postmarked\"\" language might be just from the old bank itself, not from the IRS. The language I see in Publication 969 only says \"\"You can make contributions to your HSA for 2014 until April 15, 2015.\"\" In this case, it is understandable that the credit union you have the new account with does not want to accept the contribution for tax year 2014. You didn't have an account with them in 2014. You didn't even send out the paperwork to them to open the account until last week, and they didn't open your account until this week, after the deadline. It is unfortunate, but I don't think you'll be able to force them to do anything differently here. It is just too late. I do know how that feels. I had a somewhat similar circumstance with my HSA, the first year I had the account. I contributed money to the HSA using my credit union's website, transferring money from my checking account into my HSA, as I was told to do. In January and February of the following year, I made more contributions this way, thinking that I was making them for the previous tax year. However, they never got coded correctly by the credit union, and I later found out that the credit union counted those as contributions for the current year. As a result, I was essentially denied the full contribution limit for that year, and had a bit of a paperwork nightmare. Now, if I have to make a prior year contribution, I only make it in person, and they have a form they have me fill out each time I do.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3310ca6438c55b037eeda66f77b51d14",
"text": "\"It becomes \"\"yours\"\" when it leaves the trust. Until that point the Trust owns the shares attributable to your account. There are some different arrangements out there, in the cases of some of the smaller 401(k) providers, where the assets are held in annuity products, or even individual annuities in the case of 403(b) plans. To further answer the question, the trust and trustee own and hold the account before you take a distribution. In a lot of cases the 401(k) recordkeeper has a trust company that they use to serve as the custodian (person or entity who retains the assets). In some plans you have an individual Trustee or a Corporate Trustee. Those setups are not good for that person or company because they are ultimately responsible for backing the assets in the plan, and as you can imagine, leaving that responsibility to one person is not safe for that individual. Hope that helps, glad to answer any other questions you have!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "034e29cd4e755643f5e95ac6daae8337",
"text": "I got notice from Charles Schwab that the forms weren't being mailed out until the middle of February because, for some reason, the forms were likely to change and rather than mail them out twice, they mailed them out once. Perhaps some state tax laws took effect (such as two Oregon bills regarding tax rates for higher incomes) and they waited on that. While I haven't gotten my forms mailed to me yet, I did go online and get the electronic copies that allowed me to finish my taxes already.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5dbb47ed381e77ebd0388498fc1456ac",
"text": "For this rollover, there are no restrictions of age/income/etc. You need to know - the transfer must be direct, i.e. if you get a physical check, it should be payable not to you, but to the new custodian (broker) for your benefit. Direct is preferable and faster. The assets may not be transferable 'in kind.' This phrase simply means that you may move the value, but if the assets are not shares that are held by the public, but special 401(k) class shares, they must be liquidated before moving, and moved as cash. This is a risk people with large accounts take should the market move dramatically during the time they are liquidated, and why, for them, I suggest doing it piecemeal.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "95dc6c3cf5a52f93fcd1b3e9d148ab64",
"text": "\"You mean \"\"I don't understand why someone would sign a contract expecting the employer to observe it\"\"? Pensions are contractual obligations. It's only the massive mismanagement, lack of fiscal responsibility, and evisceration of employee bargaining power that puts us in a position to think that employers wouldn't observe their contractual obligations. I mean, if this were the mortgage market, you would be arguing to banks \"\"What the hell made you think this homeowner would keep paying you 6% interest on this money when you're not providing any kind of value twenty years later?\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "490bb8b4274d1c87b42ffd73851a06fd",
"text": "\"This article fails to explain that paper gold doesn't \"\"necessarily\"\" guarantee the owner to physical gold. An index fund tracking the price of gold per ounce guarantees the owner the market value of gold at the termination of the contract. This keeps markets liquid, and allows investors to diversify into precious metals without the inconvenience of storage and delivery fees. As long as we are using currency that can be exchanged for gold this shouldn't pose a problem. If we move to a post currency world of barter and trade, you're better invested in weapons and ammunition.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "290c7fe6754d823f4f4597f866625b86",
"text": "It is typically very easy to roll a 401(k) into an IRA. Companies that provide IRA's are very experienced with it, and I would expect that they will take your calls from overseas. You will likely be able to do it over the internet without using a phone at all. Just open an IRA with any brokerage company (Scottrade, Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, Ameritrade, etc.) and follow instructions to roll your 401(k) into it. Most likely they will need your signature, but usually a scan of a form you have filled out will do. Be sure to have information on your 401(k) provider, including your account number there, on hand. These companies are all very reputable and this is not a difficult transaction. There's really no downside to rolling into an IRA. 401(k) plans usually have more limited options and/or worse fee structures and are frequently harder to work with, as you have observed.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7b4a6de4abd5979bec69ee4ab7328788",
"text": "The 401(k) contribution is Federal tax free, when you make the contribution, and most likely State too. I believe that is true for California, specifically. There was a court case some years ago about people making 401(k) or IRA contributions in New York, avoiding the New York state income tax. Then they moved to Florida (no income tax), and took the money out. New York sued, saying they had to pay the New York income tax that had been deferred, but the court said no. So you should be able to avoid California state income tax, and then later if you were to move to, for example, Texas (no income tax), have no state income tax liability. At the Federal level, you will have different problems. You won't have the money; it will be held by the 401(k) trustee. When you try to access the money (cash the account out), you will have to pay the deferred taxes. Effectively, when you remove the money it becomes income in the year it is removed. You can take the money out at any time, but if you are less than 59 1/2 at the time that you take it, there is a 10% penalty. The agreement is that the Feds let you defer paying the tax because it is going to finance your retirement, and they will tax it later. If you take it out before 59 1/2, they figure you are not retired yet, and are breaking your part of the agreement. Of course you can generally leave the money in the 401(k) plan with your old employer and let it grow until you are 59.5, or roll it over into another 401(k) with a new employer (if they let you), or into an IRA. But if you have returned to your own country, having an account in the U.S. would introduce both investment risk and currency risk. If you are in another country when you want the money, the question would be where your U.S. residence would be. If you live in California, then go to, say France, your U.S. residence would still be California, and you would still owe California income tax. If you move from California to Texas and then to France, your U.S. residence would be Texas. This is pretty vague, as you might have heard in the Rahm Emanual case -- was he a resident of Chicago or Washington, D.C.? Same problem with Howard Hughes who was born in Texas, but then spent most his life in California, then to Nevada, then to Nicaragua, and the Bahamas. When he died Texas, California and Nevada all claimed him as a resident, for estate taxes. The important thing is to be able to make a reasonable case that you are a resident of where ever you want to be -- driver's license, mailing address, living quarters, and so on.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3fdb07dc08015b2b1f9f1c3c89777d96",
"text": "\"The simplest answer to why you can't see it in your online statement is a design/business decision that was made, most probably originally to make online statements differ as little as possible from old fashioned monthly printed statements; the old printed statements never showed holds either. Some banks and card services actually do show these transactions online, but in my experience these are the rare exceptions - though with business/commercial accounts I saw this more, but it was still rare. This is also partly due to banks fearing lots of annoying phone calls from customers and problems with merchants, as people react to \"\"hey, renting that car didn't cost $500!\"\" and don't realize that the hold is often higher than the transaction amount and will be justified in a few days (or weeks...), etc - so please don't dispute the charges just yet. Behind the scenes, I've had bankers explain it to me thusly (the practice has bitten me before and it bothered me a lot, so I've talked to quite a few bankers about this): There are two kinds of holds: \"\"soft holds\"\" and \"\"hard holds\"\". In a soft hold, a merchant basically asks the bank, \"\"Hey, is there at least $75 in this account?\"\" The bank responds, and then has it's own individually set policy per account type as to how to treat that hold. Sometimes they reserve no money whatsoever - you are free to spend that money right out and rack up NSF fees to your heart's content. Yet some policies are to treat this identically to a hard hold and keep the money locked down until released. The hard hold is treated very much like an actual expenditure transaction, in that the money is locked and shown as no longer available to you. This varies by bank - some banks use an \"\"Account Balance\"\" and an \"\"Available Balance\"\", and some have done away with these dual terms and leave it up to you to determine what your balance is and what's \"\"available\"\" (or you have to call them). The key difference in the hard hold and a real expenditure is, technically, the money is still in your bank account; your bank has merely \"\"reserved\"\" it, earmarking it for a specific purchase (and gently promising the merchant they can have their money later), but the biggest difference is there is a time-limit. If a merchant does not process a completion to the transaction to claim the money, your bank will lift the hold after a period of time (I've seen 7-30 days as typical in the US, again varying by institution) returning your money to your balance that is available for purchasing and withdrawal. In every case, any vaguely decent banking institution allows you to call them, speak to some bank employee, and they can look up your account and inform you about the different sort of holds that are on your account that are not pending/completed purchase transactions. From a strictly cynical (perhaps rightly jaded) point of view, yes this is also used as a method to extort absurdly high fees especially from customers who keep a low balance in their account. I have had more than one bank charge NSF fees based on available balances that were due to holds made by gas pumps, for instance, even though my actual \"\"money in my account\"\" never went below $0 (the holds were for amounts larger than the actual transaction). And yes, the banks usually would waive those fees if you bothered to get someone on the phone or in person and made yourself a nuisance to the right person for long enough, but they made you work for it. But I digress.... The reality is that there are lots of back and forth and middle-men in transactions like this, and most banks try to hide as much of this from you the client as possible, partly because its a huge confusing hassle and its part of why you are paying a bank to handle this nonsense for you to start with. And, as with all institutions, rules and policies become easily adjusted to maximize revenues, and if you don't keep sizable liquid minimum balances (100% of the time, all year long) they target you for fees. To avoid this without having fat wads of extra cash in those accounts, is use an entirely disconnected credit card for reservations ONLY - especially when you are traveling and will be making rentals and booking hotels. Just tell them you wish to pay with a different card when you are done, and most merchants can do this without hassle. Since it's a credit card with monthly billing you can often end up with no balance, no waiting around for a month for payments to clear, and no bank fees! It isn't 100%, but now I never - if I can possibly avoid it - use my debit/bank card to \"\"reserve\"\" or \"\"rent\"\" anything, ever.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d4f82f6c6877348cee75b199a41339f1",
"text": "\"Is it really all that much for me to ask that exchanges not be complicit in my 401k being front-run? I really don't get how you can argue it's a good thing. I guess I should instead be mad at the my 401k management firm for not dragging their own private fiber networks and allowing my 401k to get shaved by \"\"smarter\"\" traders that do. You're ridiculous.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c13247d22b07329cfee1a80df0f5e770",
"text": "OK, so first of all, employers don't set up IRAs. IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. You can set up a personal IRA for yourself, but not for employees. If that is what you're after, then just set one up for yourself - no special rules there for self employment. As far as setting up a 401(k), I'd suggest checking with benefits management companies. If you're small, you probably don't have an HR department, so managing a 401(k) yourself would likely be overly burdensome. Outsourcing this to a company which handles HR for you (maybe running payroll, etc. also), would be the best option. Barring that, I'd try calling a large financial institution (Schwab, Fidelity, etc.) for clear guidance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fe3622b074be22e2f759e81ccf1b5611",
"text": "\"For 401(k) and regular IRA, you pay income tax on withdrawals from the account. At a certain age, there is a \"\"required minimum distribution\"\". This is an amount you must withdraw from the account or you face penalties. I've also read about, but am not familiar with, mechanisms by which you can retire early and start taking withdrawals before the regular official retirement age. (These may or may not be legit, I didn't do any research on it.) A Roth IRA, which is not \"\"tax deferred\"\" and thus not technically covered by your question, there is no tax on withdrawals (assuming you are at retirement age) and no required minimum distribution. Something to watch out for on your accounts are fees that they charge for withdrawals. I was in a 401(k) once that had a $50 fee per-withdrawal. A monthly check from this account would eat your money! I paid the fee once, when I rolled it into an account at a brokerage after leaving the company.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b8a45a3e2b81cc0f49f2d5dd2fa11139",
"text": "Not really practical... The real problem is getting the money into a form where you *can* invest it in something. It's not like E\\*Trade will let you FedEx them a briefcase of sequentially numbered hundreds and just credit your account, no questions asked. That **is** the hard part.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f55e29b5b419a1fa47ae9f6fc7d40bd7",
"text": "Nice idea. When I started my IRAs, I considered this as well, and the answer from the broker was that this was not permitted. And, aside from transfers from other IRAs or retirement accounts, you can't 'deposit' shares to the IRA, only cash.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
d0a82dcf9061af060c7d549d02fffd07
|
Employer-Paid relocation as taxable income?
|
[
{
"docid": "61ca24fc9ed4a1d70bc253d5905a22d6",
"text": "\"If all of the relocation expenses are paid by your employer to the moving companies, then you should not have any tax liability for those payments. Relocation expenses should be treated as normal business expenses by your employer. Note I emphasize \"\"should\"\" because it's possible that your employer \"\"could\"\" consider it income to you, but companies generally do not go out of their way to classify normal business expenses as income since it costs both them and you more money in taxes. As a side note, the reason your company is paying these expenses directly is probably to lessen the likelihood of these expenses being questioned in an audit (in comparison to if they cut you a reimbursement check which could get more scrutiny).\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "7156a9fde48c1a3aec096bab435c99e9",
"text": "Yes, you can do what you are contemplating doing, and it works quite well. Just don't get the university's payroll office too riled by going in each June, July, August and September to adjust your payroll withholding! Do it at the end of the summer when perhaps most of your contract income for the year has already been received and you have a fairly good estimate for what your tax bill will be for the coming year. Don't forget to include Social Security and Medicare taxes (both employee's share as well as employer's share) on your contract income in estimating the tax due. The nice thing about paying estimated taxes via payroll deduction is that all that tax money can be counted as having been paid in four equal and timely quarterly payments of estimated tax, regardless of when the money was actually withheld from your university paycheck. You could (if you wanted to, and had a fat salary from the university, heh heh) have all the tax due on your contract income withheld from just your last paycheck of the year! But whether you increase the withholding in August or in December, do remember to change it back after the last paycheck of the year has been received so that next year's withholding starts out at a more mellow pace.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4df5bb9fc859ff7e608102a75e71a935",
"text": "\"If you are a telecommuter and in good terms with your employer, then all you need is contact your employer and explain your situation. Ask them for a short letter that indicates: \"\"1. they require you to work from a privately rented office (or from a home office for those who prefer working from home), 2. this is one of the terms of your employment, and, 3. they will not reimburse you for this expense.\"\" With this letter in your hand, you satisify both the \"\"convenience of employer\"\" test AND the deduction of the rent for your private office as a unreimbursed employee expense. The IRS cannot expect your employer to open an office branch in your city just for your sake, nor can they expect you to commute to your employer's city for work, which is an impossiblity considering the distance. Additionally, the IRS cannot \"\"force\"\" telecommuters to work from home. The key is to get a letter from your employer. You'd be surprised how easily they are willing to write such letter for you.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cf29d354336d2585c9fbaef99b4ae97e",
"text": "\"The bill proposed to \"\"Under existing law, employers may take tax deductions for the costs associated with moving jobs out of the country. The proposed legislation would have eliminated that, and used the resulting new revenue to fund a 20 percent tax credit for the costs companies run up \"\"insourcing\"\" labor back into the U.S.\"\" From http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=16816660 as found by beermethestrength. I will explain this in an example below. Lets use allen edmonds. I manufacture shoes and sell them in the US. The facts we will assume is Revenue or sales is $100. Manufacturing cost is $50. Tax rate is 10%. Therefore, Profit before tax is $100 -$50 = $50. Tax is $5. Net profit is $45. However, suppose offshoring to Canada saves money. They say please and thank you at every opportunity and the positive work environment allows them to work faster. Correspondingly to make the same number of shoes our costs has decreased because we pay less for labour. The manufacturing cost decreases to $30. However, we incur costs to move such as severance payments to layoff contracted employees. (I promise to hire you and pay $1 a year for 2 years. I fire you at the end of the first year. To be fair, I pay you $1) However, it can be any legitimate expense under the sun. In this case we suppose this moving cost is $10. Revenue or sales is $100. Manufacturing cost is $30. Moving cost is $10. Tax rate is 10%. Profit before tax is $100 -$40 = $60. Tax is $6. Net profit is $54. Yay more jobs for Canadians. However, the legislation would have changed this. It would have denied that moving expense if you were moving out of the country. Therefore, we cannot consider $10 worth of expenses for tax purposes. Therefore Revenue or sales is $100. Manufacturing cost is $30. Tax rate is 10%. Profit before tax for tax purposes is $100 - $30 = $70. Tax is $7. Net profit for tax purposes is $63. However, my accounting/net/real profit is $53. I must deduct the $10 associated with moving. The difference between the two scenarios is $1. In general our net profit changes by our moving cost * our tax rate. There is no tax break associated with moving. In Canadian tax, any business expense in general can be deducted as long as it is legitimate and not specifically denied. I am uncertain but would assume US tax law is similar enough. Moving expenses in general are legitimate and not specifically denied and therefore can be deducted. Offshoring and onshoring are seen as legitimate business activities as in general companies do things to increase profit. (forget about patriotism for the moment). The bill was to make offshoring more expensive and therefore fewer companies would find offshoring profitable. However, republicans defeated this bill in congress. Most likely the house For completeness let us examine what would happen when we onshore (bring jobs from canada to us :( ). In our example, silly unions demand unrealistically high wages and increase our cost of manufacturing to $50 again. We decide to move back to the US because if it is the same everywhere for the sake of silly national pride we move our jobs back to the US. We incur the same moving cost of $10. Therefore we have Revenue or sales is $100. Manufacturing cost is $50. Moving cost of $10. Tax rate is 10%. Profit before tax for tax purposes is $100 - $60 = $40. Tax is $4. However, we are given a 20% tax credit for moving expense. $10 * .2 = 2. The government only assess us tax of 2. Net profit is $38. Tax credits are a one time deal so profit in the future will be $100 -$50 - $5 = $45. Same as the first example. insourcing = onshoring , outsourcing = offshoring for the purposes of this article. Not quite the same in real life.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "173677a1d78c4e8a90b0be22dec7361e",
"text": "\"I had experience working for a company that manufactures stuff and giving products to the employees. The condition was to stay employed for a year after the gift for the company to cover its cost (I think they imputed the tax), otherwise they'd add the cost to the last paycheck (which they did when I left). But they were straight-forward about it and I signed a paper acknowledging it. However, in your case you didn't get a product (that you could return when leaving if you didn't want to pay), but rather a service. The \"\"winning\"\" trip was definitely supposed to be reported as income to you last year. Is it okay for them to treat me differently than the others for tax purposes? Of course not. But it may be that some strings were attached to the winning of the incentive trip (for example, you're required to stay employed for X time for the company to cover the expense). See my example above. Maybe it was buried somewhere in small letters. Can they do this a year after the trip was won and redeemed? As I said - in this case this sounds shady. Since it is a service which you cannot return - you should have been taxed on it when receiving it. Would the IRS want to know about this fuzzy business trip practice? How would I report it? Here's how you can let them know. Besides now understanding the new level of slime from my former employer is there anything else I should be worried about? Could they do something like this every year just to be annoying? No, once they issued the last paycheck - you're done with them. They cannot issue you more paychecks after you're no longer an employee. In most US States, you are supposed to receive the last paycheck on your last day of work, or in very close proximity (matter of weeks at most).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7fd6d379a23acdd8369d63e87fb51d0e",
"text": "You're not physically present in the US, you're not a US citizen, you're not a green card holder, and you don't have a business that is registered in the US - US laws do not apply to you. You're not in any way under the US jurisdiction. Effectively connected income is income effectively connected to your business in the US. You're not in the US, so there's nothing to effectively connect your income to. Quote from the link: You usually are considered to be engaged in a U.S. trade or business when you perform personal services in the United States. You ask: If I form an LLC or C corp am I liable for this withholding tax? If you form a legal entity in a US jurisdiction - then that entity becomes subjected to that jurisdiction. If you're physically present in the US - then ECI may become an issue, and you also may become a resident based on the length of your stay.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "559b05e48a817e0e9841d2cc181a9a71",
"text": "\"You are confusing entirely unrelated things. First the \"\"profit distribution\"\" issue with Bob's S-Corp which is in fact tax evasion and will probably trigger a very nasty audit. Generally, if you're the sole employee of your own S-Corp, and the whole S-Corp income is from your own personal services, as defined by the IRS - there's no profit there. All the net income from such a S-Corp is subject to SE tax, either through payroll or through your K-1. Claiming anything else would be lying and IRS is notorious for going after people doing that. Second - the reclassification issue. The reason employers classify employees as contractors is to avoid payroll taxes (which the IRS gets through Bob's S-Corp, so it doesn't care) and providing benefits (that is Bob's problem, not the IRS). So in the scenario above, the IRS wouldn't care whose employee Bob is since Bob's S-Corp would have to pay all the same payroll taxes. The reclassification is an issue when employees are abused. See examples of Fedex drivers, where they're classified as contractors and are not getting any benefits, spend their own money on the truck and maintenance, etc. The employees are the ones who sued for reclassification, but in this case the IRS would be interested as well since a huge chunk of payroll taxes was not paid (driver's net is after car maintenance and payments, not before as it would be if he was salaried). So in your scenario reclassification is not as much a concern to Bob as his tax evasion scheme claiming earnings from performing personal services as \"\"profits from S-Corp\"\". A precedent to look at, as I mentioned elsewhere, would be the Watson v Commissioner case.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "78d14bc8caa8db04ea078cca3001630b",
"text": "You only need to report INCOME to the IRS. Money which you are paying to a landlord on behalf of someone else is not income.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a356d7386d41ea9870895ad5fcc771de",
"text": "You normally wouldn't pay income taxes on money that isn't income. Transferring money or withdrawing it from a bank isn't an income generating event. I think it is very doubtful that you would need to claim that on income tax forms.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "265d27dfb5d41ee5453592f8dcd0d2bc",
"text": "Its one of the main points. Transfer pricing includes discretionary decisions and is part of BEPS. Its also completely unnecessary: Pay taxes on revenue in country earned/sold. Get tax credits/refunds in country were spending is made. The reason why already profitable companies consider BEPS/tax arbitrage for HQ locations is because they get discretionary power over accounting profit allocation. Tax policy should serve the society though, and this proposal encourages the spending that benefits society. Its the usual case that the right answer is different than that being lobbied for.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "04b97a83bcb4ed2eba9355dafbdea597",
"text": "The tax is depended upon state where you are registered and the salary paid. More here If you employ contract you need not pay tax.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d9a780decda5c8e8bb9f5fa69add811c",
"text": "\"Even though you will meet the physical presence test, you cannot claim the FEIE because your tax home will remain the US. From the IRS: Your tax home is the general area of your main place of business, employment, or post of duty, regardless of where you maintain your family home. Your tax home is the place where you are permanently or indefinitely engaged to work as an employee or self-employed individual. Having a \"\"tax home\"\" in a given location does not necessarily mean that the given location is your residence or domicile for tax purposes. ... You are not considered to have a tax home in a foreign country for any period in which your abode is in the United States. However, your abode is not necessarily in the United States while you are temporarily in the United States. Your abode is also not necessarily in the United States merely because you maintain a dwelling in the United States, whether or not your spouse or dependents use the dwelling. ... The location of your tax home often depends on whether your assignment is temporary or indefinite. If you are temporarily absent from your tax home in the United States on business, you may be able to deduct your away from home expenses (for travel, meals, and lodging) but you would not qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion. If your new work assignment is for an indefinite period, your new place of employment becomes your tax home, and you would not be able to deduct any of the related expenses that you have in the general area of this new work assignment. If your new tax home is in a foreign country and you meet the other requirements, your earnings may qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion. If you expect your employment away from home in a single location to last, and it does last, for 1 year or less, it is temporary unless facts and circumstances indicate otherwise. If you expect it to last for more than 1 year, it is indefinite. If you expect your employment to last for 1 year or less, but at some later date you expect it to last longer than 1 year, it is temporary (in the absence of facts and circumstances indicating otherwise) until your expectation changes. For guidance on how to determine your tax home refer to Revenue Ruling 93-86. Your main place of business is in the US and this will not change, because your business isn't relocating. If you are intending to work remotely while you are abroad, you should get educated on the relevant laws on where you are going. Most countries don't take kindly to unauthorized work being performed by foreign visitors. And yes, even though you aren't generating income or involving anyone in their country, the authorities still well may disapprove of your working. My answer to a very similar question on Expatriates.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0ec32c2cac28c0c18576ea7a8a9e5dac",
"text": "To answer your question directly, this is a taxable benefit that they are providing for you in lieu of higher wages. It is taxable to the employee as income and through payroll taxes. It is taxable to the employer for their half of the payroll taxes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "866b5c9cc2f9d0044adca9577f629247",
"text": "\"You'll need to read carefully the German laws on tax residency, in many European (and other) tax laws the loss of residency due to absence is conditioned on acquiring residency elsewhere. But in general, it is possible to use treaties and statuses so that you end up not being resident anywhere, but it doesn't mean that the income is no longer taxed. Generally every country taxes income sourced to it unless an exclusion applies, so if you can no longer apply the treaty due to not being a resident - you'll need to look for general exclusions in the tax law. I don't know how Germany taxes scholarships under the general rules, you'll have to check it. It is possible that they're not taxed. Many people try to raise the argument of \"\"I'm not a resident\"\" to avoid income taxes altogether on earnings on their work - this would not work. But with a special kind of income like scholarship, which may be exempt under the law, it may. Keep in mind, that the treaty has \"\"who is or was immediately before visiting a Contracting State a resident of the other Contracting State\"\" language in some relevant cases, so you may still apply it in the US even if no longer resident in Germany.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "10d06e9d9bdbf2270cf09d670639571a",
"text": "A couple of thoughts. Tax benefits are the usual reasons to decide on one residency or another. International tax law is complex, and it's probably best to consult a professional. Certainly without knowing which the other country is I would not want to hazard a guess. If he is really not going to be taxed on the other country, residing there would seem sensible. But... In Canada residency for tax purposes is established for an entire year. If you are resident for more than six months your salary for the year is taxable. Conversely if you are present for less than six months you are not taxable. (This may have changed - it's been twenty years since I did this.) The other issue is healthcare. If you are not resident in Ontario you are not eligible for free healthcare, I believe. He might have to purchase supplemental insurance if he returns occasionally.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "735288ea721f87fe49b5c1098226c735",
"text": "The finance team from your company should be able to advise you. From what I understand you are Indian Citizen for Tax purposes. Any income you receive globally is taxable in India. In this specific case you are still having a Employee relationship with your employer and as such the place of work does not matter. You are still liable to pay tax in India on the salary. If you are out of India for more than 182 days, you can be considered as Non-Resident from tax point of view. However this clause would not be of any benefit to you as are having a Employee / Employer relationship and being paid in India. Edit: This is only about the India portion of taxes. There maybe a UK protion of it as well, plus legally can you work and your type of Visa in UK may have a bearing on the answer",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
9d0b11a59c90156f686d00b1d2bb5cfb
|
Why do car rental companies prefer/require credit over debit cards?
|
[
{
"docid": "fbb06dfe9438008cec5777b6f5f7541c",
"text": "A hotel can accept the debit card because each night they can withdraw the money. If you don't have sufficient funds they can instantly lock you out of your room. They an also limit your ability to access room service, and other extra expensive options. The rental car can't do that once you have the car. Plus they never know if you will bring the car back with damages, toll charges, and an empty tank of gas.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7b66fd4860d6465b06aeccfdb814d3cd",
"text": "Deposit on a Debit Card have a different effect, and many people don't understand it (and make a big stink), or cannot afford it (or both). Either of it results in lots of trouble for the business: In addition, having a credit card showes that some bank trusts the customer with an unsecured credit of this height, which is some reassurance for the business. A debit card proves only that he was able to get a checking account, which needs much less liquidity and stability.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "29e5364098ed267e8d58e3f0f938a9e2",
"text": "People with credit cards tend to have better credit than those who only have debit cards. People with better credit tend to not abuse such things as car rentals. It costs money for any company to run your credit. It doesn't cost a rental company any outflow of money to reject debit cards. So the possession of a credit card becomes a stand-in for running your credit before you rent a car.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f34d15ac316ea041a8bbb7aad7fce72c",
"text": "I am not sure if this is the actual reason or not, but all of the major credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover) provide damage insurance coverage on car rentals. Debit cards do not usually provide this coverage. So, if you use a credit card, the car company knows it will be able to recover the cost of any damage to the car. Of course, this doesn't explain some of the odd debit card policies out there. For example, Alamo will not let you use a debit card unless you provide proof of round trip travel (like a plane or cruise ticket). But you can use a credit card without having a travel ticket. I'm not sure how having a travel ticket makes debit card users less of a risk, but apparently it does somehow.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1c2e7a012cf98e72641115df9ad2d8bf",
"text": "A few reasons make sense: They have a defined process for rentals, risk assessment, and customer credit. Especially for a large corporation, making changes to that process is not trivial, adds risk/uncertainty, and will be costly. Such changes for a relatively small customer base might not makes sense. Many rental companies DO allow you to rent with a debit card. Why do some businesses take cash only? With a debit card, there is no third party guarantee. With a credit card, the cash is coming from a well-established third party who will pay (assuming no disputes) and has a well-established history of paying. Even if the merchant holds your account, it is still your cash under the control of you and your bank until the deposit clears the merchants bank. It is not surprising they view that as more risk and potentially not worth hassling with debit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0e1a2504957df50813c4e180e1d4ba47",
"text": "I have looked at the conditions of a car rental company, and I believe it provides the answers: Upon pick up of your vehicle, you must present a valid credit card (*) used to make the booking and which must be in the driver´s name. If you do not have a valid credit card we will accept your debit card when you pick up your vehicle. However, as we cannot reserve credit to cover the potential damage or refueling costs, you will need to take SuperCover and a fuel tank of fuel at the start of the rental. We will refund the value of the unused fuel at the end of the rental unless otherwise agreed with you. (*) VISA, MasterCard and American Express are accepted. Credit card or Third Party Insurance IMPORTANT: In case of damage, we will charge you the incurred amount up to the excess. You will then need to reclaim this amount from the provider of the credit card or third party insurer. We strongly recommend that you fully read and understand the terms and conditions of any cover provided by your chosen provider before you decline any of our optional services. Without our SuperCover, should you damage the vehicle during your rental period, we will charge you the corresponding amount up to the excess, regardless of whether you can subsequently reclaim this amount from the provider of the credit card or the third party insurer. In the event you would like to dispute any of the above mentioned charges you should send your request by mail or email to the Firefly location state on your rental agreement. https://global.fireflycarrental.com/qualifications-ES.html From that, we can conclude that : It's likely that disputes with customers in case of damage cost a lot to car rental companies, and for the 2 above reasons, demanding a credit card may alleviate it.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "3eceb7f45d453ce6dae1a02a88cab370",
"text": "\"I worked for a major car rental company (not Hertz, but comparable) for quite a while, taking reservations by phone. I completely agree that the reservation system is terrible, and is only vaguely based on the reality of their vehicles in stock at best. The problem is, from a strictly business perspective, taking more reservations than they have cars is currently considered the most profitable model for them. To play devil's advocate just a little, switching to a \"\"take only one reservation per vehicle, reserve it to 100% lock it in\"\" model is a bit more complicated than it sounds. In order to guarantee a specific car for a customer at a specific time, they either have to leave that car sitting on their lot until you rent it (not making money), or keep renting it out to other people in the interim. If they rent it out to someone else before your rental comes up, that removes the vehicle from their control. Bordering on constantly, renters don't return the vehicle within their promised schedule or return it in a damaged or otherwise unsuitable condition. To be clear I'm not trying to make excuses for the rental car company (there are many reasons I no longer work there), but it's objectively hard for them to get a specific vehicle if, say, all but one of them were in wrecks the previous night, and the person renting the last one drove it across the country without warning the rental office and refuses to come back. Those problems all get solved eventually, but that doesn't help you when you show up and can't get the car you reserved. So, they continue to take excessive reservations, and just give people whatever they happen to have when they show up, if they have any cars at all. There's definitely better ways to do it for the customer, but like many businesses, they'll continue to do it whatever way they determine is best for their profits. Edit: Words.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0bdd3abd6181a60196411e1ecab04972",
"text": "Credit cards are a golden goose for banks, as they get to issue high-interest loans and simultaneously generate alot of fee income. Debit cards aren't quite as good, but they still generate substantial fee income -- ~2% of every credit/non-PIN debit transaction goes to the bank and credit card network. Credit histories exist because they are the most effective tool available to predict whether you will pay back your loans or not. You don't need a credit history to buy most things, you need a credit history to get a large loan. Think of it from perspective of a lender: Credit scoring is the bank's way screening out people who are expensive to do business with. It's objective, doesn't discriminate on the basis of race, sex or other factors, and you have recourse if the rating agencies have incorrect information.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5b341f79c0872469203a249e72a7f18f",
"text": "\"These are two different ways of processing payments. They go through different systems many times, and are treated differently by the banks, credit card issuers and the stores. Merchants pay different fees on transactions paid by debit cards and by credit cards. Debit transactions require PIN, and are deducted from your bank account directly. In order to achieve that, the transaction has to reach the bank in real time, otherwise it will be declined. This means, that the merchant has to have a line of communications open to the relevant processor, that in turn has to be able to connect to the bank and get the authorization - all that while on-line. The bank verifies the PIN, authorizes the transaction, and deducts the amount from your account, while you're still at the counter. Many times these transactions cannot be reversed, and the fraud protections and warranties are different from credit transactions. Credit transactions don't have to go to your card issuer at all. The merchant can accept credit payment without calling anyone, and without getting prior authorizations. Even if the merchant sends the transaction for authorization with its processor, if the processor cannot reach the issuing bank - they can still approve the transaction under certain conditions. This is, however, never true with debit cards (even if used as \"\"credit\"\"). They're not deducted from your bank account, but accumulated on your credit card account. They're posted there when the actual transaction reaches the card issuer, which may be many days (and even many months) after the transaction took place. Credit transactions can be reversed (in some cases very easily), and enjoy from a higher level of fraud protection. In some countries (and most, if not all, of the EU) fraudulent credit transactions are never the consumer's problem, always the bank's. Not so with debit transactions. Banks may be encouraging you to use debit for several reasons: Merchants will probably prefer credit because: Consumers will probably be better off with credit because:\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c8f019a27ed05f78e83063182b5f864b",
"text": "In Addition to @JoeTaxpayer's answer, in the UK credit cards offer additional protection than if you were to pay by debit card. This includes (but is not limited to) getting your money back if the company you've bought something from goes bust before your order is complete.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9e88c6e1c6c8ea228540df3db741c995",
"text": "\"You ask about the difference between credit and debit, but that may be because you're missing something important. Regardless of credit/debit, there is value in carrying two different cards associated with two different accounts. The reason is simply that because of loss, fraud, or your own mismanagement, or even the bank's technical error, any card can become unusable for some period of time. Exactly how long depends what happened, but just sending you a new card can easily take more than one business day, which might well be longer than you'd like to go without access to any funds. In that situation you would be glad of a credit card, and you would equally be glad of a second debit card on a separate account. So if your question is \"\"I have one bank account with one debit card, and the only options I'm willing to contemplate are (a) do nothing or (b) take a credit card as well\"\", then the answer is yes, take a credit card as well, regardless of the pros or cons of credit vs debit. Even if you only use the credit card in the event that you drop your debit card down a drain. So what you can now consider is the pros and cons of a credit card vs managing an additional bank account -- unless you seriously hate one or more of the cons of credit cards, the credit card is likely to win. My bank has given me a debit card on a cash savings account, which is a little scary, but would cover most emergencies if I didn't have a credit card too. Of course the interest rate is rubbish and I sometimes empty my savings account into a better investment, so I don't use it as backup, but I could. Your final question \"\"can a merchant know if I give him number of debit or credit card\"\" is already asked: Can merchants tell the difference between a credit card and embossed debit card? Yes they can, and yes there are a few things you can't (or might prefer not to) do with debit. The same could even be said of Visa vs. Mastercard, leading to the conclusion that if you have a Visa debit you should look for a Mastercard credit. But that seems to be less of an issue as time goes on and almost everywhere in Europe apparently takes both or neither. If you travel a lot outside the EU then you might want to be loaded down with every card under the sun, and three different kinds of cash, but you'd already know that without asking ;-)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c35962088635faf13f84983276ec6936",
"text": "I haven't had a credit card in fifteen years. I use nothing but my debit card. (I find the whole idea of credit on a micro scale loathsome.) I have yet to encounter a single problem doing so, other than a lower than usual credit score for not keeping 23(!!!) revolving lines of credit open, or that's the number CreditKarma tells me I need in order to be an optimal consumer. In an nutshell, no, you don't NEED one. There are reasons to have them, but no.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c0b0f2a8a8ad5213aec82f7c592e9d45",
"text": "Debit cards with the Visa or Mastercard symbol on them work technically everywhere where credit cards work. There are some limitations where the respective business does not accept them, for example car rentals want a credit card for potential extra charges; but most of the time, for day-to-day shopping and dining, debit cards work fine. However, you should read up the potential risks. A credit card gives you some security by buffering incorrect/fraudulent charges from your account, and credit card companies also help you reverse incorrect charges, before you ever have to pay for it. If you use a debit card, it is your money on the line immediately - any incorrect charge, even accidential, takes your money from your account, and it is gone while you work on reversing the charge. Any theft, and your account can be cleaned out, and you will be without money while you go after the thief. Many people consider the debit card risk too high, and don't use them for this reason. However, many people do use them - it is up to you.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4571505cd5e76a598b1090e109add091",
"text": "\"A lot of credit card companies these days uses what they call \"\"daily interest\"\" where they charge the interest rate for the number of days till you pay off what you spent. This allows them to make more money than the \"\"period billing\"\". The idea of credit, theoretically, is that there isn't really a day when you can borrow without paying interest - in theory\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ccd9c4730192f7cd2f124af4769cec68",
"text": "Many small businesses are still cash and check. For example my landlord does not take credit card or online transfer. My choices are cash and check, and I prefer checks for the paper trail.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0d1b5fd24a8e63382d7e89adc5f8419e",
"text": "How you can pay your rent is really up to your landlord. They are, however, unlikely to take a credit card, for at least two reasons. Firstly they are unlikely to have the means to take electronic payment Second, and more importantly, merchants get charged a percentage of the transaction. These fees can be quite high to them for premium cards like travel and gold cards; three, four or even five percent of the value of the transaction. This is sometimes why you see cash discounted pricing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "23f69c6eab821c50c9174ecd592240a8",
"text": "I thought this was because credit card companies charge the retailer a fee to accept credit card payments. If you spend $100, the retailer pays $1 (or whatever percentage they have negotiated) to the credit card provider. Handing over $100 cash and paying $1 fee to Visa means a loss to the retailer. The same transaction on $100 worth of product means the loss is accepted out of the profit margin which the retailer accepts to attract custom.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a2877406bf0777a29e86442ade57fcb8",
"text": "Here's one reason that's being overlooked in answers so far. (@ChrisInEdmonton, this is for your comment on @Chad's answer.) How do credit card companies make money? Sure, there's interest charges, but those are offset significantly by the cost of borrowing money, and by people defaulting on their debt / entering bankruptcy. The other way they make money is by processing transactions. They get a cut of whatever you buy. If you're a high-income person, and you're going to process a lot of expenditures with this credit card, your business is worth more. They will be willing to bribe you with things like cash-back, frequent flier miles, and insurance on your auto rentals, so that they can be your #1 go-to card. (This works in concert with the way that some credit card vendors with richer clientele overall - American Express - get to charge higher merchant fees for access to these customers' wallets. But that was mentioned in other answers.) If you're not a high-income person, your business is worth less. If you go somewhere asking for credit, they're going to try and give you a card which will earn them the most money - which probably isn't the one where they give you back 50% of their transaction fee in rewards. It's a calculated risk, since they still have to compete against cash, debit cards, and all the other credit card companies, so they don't have you totally over a barrel, but you shouldn't expect as many freebies, either.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8d8d1ca1f1ac2f7f965dc501cd5c996e",
"text": "My bank charges me on my statement for debit transactions, but rewards me with bogo points when I run transactions as credit. AFAIK, retailers are prevented by contract with VISA et all from recouping the merchant fee from you (instead they can mark up all prices and offer a 'cash discount'), not that you'll be able to convince your vietnamese grocer of this. The difference between debit and credit fees is large enough that even these small tricks by the bank can mean a lot of money for them. Since most retailers accept either, they recruit me into their profit game with carrots and sticks. I've since moved to an actual cash back credit card and haven't regretted it yet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2092a8787b318cab157e958b640b32f3",
"text": "Credit in debit way - the card simply functions like a debit card for that transaction - pulling cash from your checking account. No difference. You've simply discovered the fact that some banks are using the same piece of plastic for two functions, debit which draws funds directly from your checking, and credit which offers you time to pay a bill the comes in some time later. It's a personal choice.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ef4425720fc7d104b359eb30f87b432a",
"text": "In Canada, there are many stores that take debit (Interac) but don't take Visa or MasterCard. For example, a corner store. In the US the reverse is often true: every tiny place seems to take Visa or MasterCard, but not debit. A Visa debit card looks like a Visa card to the merchant. It therefore has the benefit of being usable at places that only take Visa. (Substitute MasterCard as necessary.) This benefit is very small in Canada, less so elsewhere. Meanwhile the money is actually coming out of your bank account just like a debit card, which therefore has the benefit that you're not borrowing money, can't accidentally overspend, and run no risk of incurring interest charges. It is also a way to get what appears to be a credit card when you can't qualify for credit. If you do the majority of your spending in Canada, you don't need a Visa or MasterCard debit card. Your regular debit card (Interac) will work fine for you. If you have a credit card anyway (from another bank or whatever) then again, you don't need a debit card that can pretend to be a credit card.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
f117970f905f4390fa4a9635f454a929
|
Form 1040 - where to place my stipend?
|
[
{
"docid": "a403d7de68675f08817c02e9104ea567",
"text": "If you're correct that it's not taxable because it's non-taxable reimbursement (which is supported by your W-2), then it should not go on your 1040 at all. If it is taxable, then it really should have appeared on your W-2 and would probably end up on Line 7 of your Form 1040.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f7dda4d298962e5676469e1351ccb15d",
"text": "\"Some of the 45,000 might be taxable. The question is how was the stipend determined. Was it based on the days away? The mile driven? The cities you worked in? The IRS has guidelines regarding what is taxable in IRS Pub 15 Per diem or other fixed allowance. You may reimburse your employees by travel days, miles, or some other fixed allowance under the applicable revenue procedure. In these cases, your employee is considered to have accounted to you if your reimbursement doesn't exceed rates established by the Federal Government. The 2015 standard mileage rate for auto expenses was 57.5 cents per mile. The rate for 2016 is 54 cents per mile. The government per diem rates for meals and lodging in the continental United States can be found by visiting the U.S. General Services Administration website at www.GSA.gov and entering \"\"per diem rates\"\" in the search box. Other than the amount of these expenses, your employees' business expenses must be substantiated (for example, the business purpose of the travel or the number of business miles driven). For information on substantiation methods, see Pub. 463. If the per diem or allowance paid exceeds the amounts substantiated, you must report the excess amount as wages. This excess amount is subject to income tax with-holding and payment of social security, Medicare, and FUTA taxes. Show the amount equal to the substantiated amount (for example, the nontaxable portion) in box 12 of Form W-2 using code “L\"\"\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "c2796ecbc91f8c0146494e2f952bc726",
"text": "\"Well a definitive answer would require a lot of information. Instead of posting that kind of info online, you should take a look at the instructions for Form 2210 and in particular \"\"Schedule AI -- Annualized Income Installment Method,\"\" which corrects the penalty for highly variable income. Using this form you will likely be able to avoid the penalty, but it is hard to know for sure.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "65783e7cedfca85f8a5147c9863f6575",
"text": "\"I have an indirect answer for you. It is not a numeric answer but it is a procedure. The challenge with paying taxes for an employee besides their share of Social security and Medicare is that you have no idea what their state and Federal taxes are. Are they married, single, head of household? Is this their entire families income, or is it extra money to make ends meet? What about state taxes? It looks like you will need a W-4 from them. As you know the IRS Tax topic 756 has all the info you need. Federal Income Tax Withholding You are not required to withhold federal income tax from wages you pay to a household employee. However, if your employee asks you to withhold federal income tax and you agree, you will need a completed Form W-4 (PDF), Employee's Withholding Allowance Certificate from your employee. See Publication 15, (Circular E), Employer's Tax Guide, which has tax withholding tables that are updated each year. Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement If you must withhold and pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, or if you withhold federal income tax, you will need to complete Form W-2 (PDF), Wage and Tax Statement, for each employee. You will also need a Form W-3 (PDF), Transmittal of Wage and Tax Statement. See \"\"What Forms Must You File?\"\" in Publication 926 (PDF) for information on when and where to furnish and file these forms. To complete Form W-2 you will need an employer identification number (EIN) and your employees' Social Security numbers. If you do not already have an EIN, you can apply for one using the online EIN application available on IRS.gov. This service is available Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time. You can also apply for an EIN by mailing or faxing a completed Form SS-4 (PDF), Application for Employer Identification Number. International applicants may apply by calling 267-941-1099 (not a toll-free number) Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time to obtain their EIN. Refer to Topics 752 and 755 for further information. Don't forget Federal Unemployment Tax. Pub 15 will have tables so you can determine how much you should have been withholding if you had gone that route. It will be easiest to use a spreadsheet to do the calculations so that what you gave them in their checks is their net pay not their gross. The tables are constructed under the assumption you know their gross pay.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "36fcccad5602fec5364f2c1f4e6d3235",
"text": "Generally stock trades will require an additional Capital Gains and Losses form included with a 1040, known as Schedule D (summary) and Schedule D-1 (itemized). That year I believe the maximum declarable Capital loss was $3000--the rest could carry over to future years. The purchase date/year only matters insofar as to rank the lot as short term or long term(a position held 365 days or longer), short term typically but depends on actual asset taxed then at 25%, long term 15%. The year a position was closed(eg. sold) tells you which year's filing it belongs in. The tiny $16.08 interest earned probably goes into Schedule B, typically a short form. The IRS actually has a hotline 800-829-1040 (Individuals) for quick questions such as advising which previous-year filing forms they'd expect from you. Be sure to explain the custodial situation and that it all recently came to your awareness etc. Disclaimer: I am no specialist. You'd need to verify everything I wrote; it was just from personal experience with the IRS and taxes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a89ab2d6bd9760664b9f5741aabdd05f",
"text": "I know nothing about this, but found this link which suggests for H&R Block specifically: I kept searching and I found the section. It's at the end in the Credits section under 'other backup withholding'. Hopefully this helps someone else in the future.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "78619ef0b9c3bb98ba6bd974ee9cb02e",
"text": "The purpose of the W-4 form is to allow you to adjust the withholding to meet your tax obligations. If you have outside non-wage income (money from tutoring) you will have to fill out the W-4 to have extra taxes withheld. If you have deductions (kids, mortgages, student loan interest) then you need to adjust the form to have less tax taken out. Now if yo go so far that you owe too much in April, then you can get hit with penalties and a requirement to file your taxes quarterly the next year. Most years I adjust my W-4 to reflect changes to my situation. The idea is to use it to manage your withholding so that you minimize your refund without triggering the penalties. The HR department has advised you well. How to adjust: If you want to decrease withholding (making the refund smaller) add one to the number on the worksheet. In 2014 a change by 1 exemption is equal to a salary adjustment of $3,950. If this was spread over 26 paychecks that would be the same as lowering your salary by ~$152. If you are in the 15% tax bracket that increases your take home pay by ~10 a check.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1d4ba8a949e4138c61188e7132d74980",
"text": "You need to file IRS Form 1040-NR. The IRS's website provides instructions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b4faf049ea1214f376c1b3ba4effb521",
"text": "\"Look at how much tax you paid last year, including withholding and any additional amount that might have been due with the tax return. Look at the instructions for the W-4 form, which sets how much tax you want your employer to withhold. Adjust the numbers on that form until the total withheld during the year is close to what you expect this year's total to be -- remember, though, that there's no penalty for over-withholding but could be for under-withholding. Submit the W-4 form to your employer. Remember that we're a few weeks into the year, so even if you adjust withholding now there will have been several paychecks at the prior setting; you can try to build that into your guesstimate of how to reset the withholding, or just not worry about it. Do the same with your state's withholding adjustments form. Repeat on a yearly basis, to account for raises, changes in other income, changes in filing status, etc. until it's close enough that you're satisfied with it. Then reconsider if/when your financial situation changes. Personally I find that exercise more effort than it's worth, and have simply set my withholding at \"\"close enough\"\". I usually get some money back from the feds and owe some to the state, but either is handled happily by my normal bank account balance.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6fb392db66de88a0af8f251d21c68b04",
"text": "\"IRA distributions are reported on line 15b on the standard form 1040. That is in the same Income section as most of your other income (including that 1099 income and W2 income, etc.). Its income is included in the Line 22 \"\"Total Income\"\", from which the Personal Exemption (calculated on 6d, subtracted from the total in line 42) and the Standard Deduction (line 40 - also Itemized Deduction total would be here) are later reduced to arrive at Line 43, \"\"Taxable Income\"\". As such, yes, he might owe only the 10% penalty (which is reported on line 59, and you do not reduce this by the deductions, as you surmised).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6851122f48b8fd967b1633e2c0bdc341",
"text": "Do you get cash (or a deposit into your bank account) of your PhD stipend and then you immediately send the university a check to pay the tuition fee (which might be more than the cash you get from the University)? Or does the University simply keep the stipend money, transferring it from one pocket to another in essence, and say, OK, you have paid your tuition except for $X that you still owe us? Or does the university grant you a tuition waiver as part of your assistantship and reports this as income on Form 1099-MISC? In all of these cases, the money reported on Form 1099-MISC is not taxable income to you, and it is neither subject to Self-Employment tax (basically, Social Security and Medicare tax -- both the employee's share and the employer's share) nor to (Federal) income tax.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "177452e08f5bcd1a5ccb6fada4720bcd",
"text": "\"(Insert the usual disclaimer that I'm not any sort of tax professional; I'm just a random guy on the Internet who occasionally looks through IRS instructions for fun. Then again, what you're doing here is asking random people on the Internet for help, so here goes.) The gigantic book of \"\"How to File Your Income Taxes\"\" from the IRS is called Publication 17. That's generally where I start to figure out where to report what. The section on Royalties has this to say: Royalties from copyrights, patents, and oil, gas, and mineral properties are taxable as ordinary income. In most cases, you report royalties in Part I of Schedule E (Form 1040). However, if you hold an operating oil, gas, or mineral interest or are in business as a self-employed writer, inventor, artist, etc., report your income and expenses on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040). It sounds like you are receiving royalties from a copyright, and not as a self-employed writer. That means that you would report the income on Schedule E, Part I. I've not used Schedule E before, but looking at the instructions for it, you enter this as \"\"Royalty Property\"\". For royalty property, enter code “6” on line 1b and leave lines 1a and 2 blank for that property. So, in Line 1b, part A, enter code 6. (It looks like you'll only use section A here as you only have one royalty property.) Then in column A, Line 4, enter the royalties you have received. The instructions confirm that this should be the amount that you received listed on the 1099-MISC. Report on line 4 royalties from oil, gas, or mineral properties (not including operating interests); copyrights; and patents. Use a separate column (A, B, or C) for each royalty property. If you received $10 or more in royalties during 2016, the payer should send you a Form 1099-MISC or similar statement by January 31, 2017, showing the amount you received. Report this amount on line 4. I don't think that there's any relevant Expenses deductions you could take on the subsequent lines (though like I said, I've not used this form before), but if you had some specific expenses involved in producing this income it might be worth looking into further. On Line 21 you'd subtract the 0 expenses (or subtract any expenses you do manage to list) and put the total. It looks like there are more totals to accumulate on lines 23 and 24, which presumably would be equally easy as you only have the one property. Put the total again on line 26, which says to enter it on the main Form 1040 on line 17 and it thus gets included in your income.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "df1e56fb20ac2062c3ea4d7c85015ded",
"text": "\"If you're single, the only solution I'm aware of, assuming you are truly getting a 1099-misc and not a W-2 (and don't have a W-2 option available, like TAing), is to save in a nondeductible account for now. Then, when you later do have a job, use that nondeductible account (in part) to fund your retirement accounts. Particularly the first few years (if you're a \"\"young\"\" grad student in particular), you'll probably be low enough on the income side that you can fit this in - in particular if you've got a 401k or 403b plan at work; make your from-salary contributions there, and make deductible IRA or Roth IRA contributions from your in-school savings. If you're not single, or even if you are single but have a child, you have a few other options. Spouses who don't have earned income, but have a spouse who does, can set up a Spousal IRA. You can then, combined, save up to your spouse's total earned income (or the usual per-person maximums). So if you are married and your wife/husband works, you can essentially count his/her earned income towards your earned income. Second, if you have a child, consider setting up a 529 plan for them. You're probably going to want to do this anyway, right? You can even do this for a niece or nephew, if you're feeling generous.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "58fd1222e8565395bee7290f7a71a3e3",
"text": "\"In the U.S., Form 1040 is known as the tax return. This is the form that is filed annually to calculate your tax due for the year, and you either claim a refund if you have overpaid your taxes or send in a payment if you have underpaid. The form is generally due on April 15 each year, but this year the due date is April 18, 2016. When it comes to filing your taxes, there are two questions you need to ask yourself: \"\"Am I required to file?\"\" and \"\"Should I file?\"\" Am I required to file? The 1040 instructions has a section called \"\"Do I have to file?\"\" with several charts that determine if you are legally required to file. It depends on your status and your gross income. If you are single, under 65, and not a dependent on someone else's return, you are not required to file if your 2015 income was less than $10,300. If you will be claimed as a dependent on someone else's return, however, you must file if your earned income (from work) was over $6300, or your unearned income (from investments) was over $1050, or your gross (total) income was more than the larger of either $1050 or your earned income + $350. See the instructions for more details. Should I file? Even if you find that you are not required to file, it may be beneficial to you to file anyway. There are two main reasons you might do this: If you have had income where tax has been taken out, you may have overpaid the tax. Filing the tax return will allow you to get a refund of the amount that you overpaid. As a student, you may be eligible for student tax credits that can get you a refund even if you did not pay any tax during the year. How to file For low income tax payers, the IRS has a program called Free File that provides free filing software options.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c645485700df18057afcf52108eca4f2",
"text": "In this situation I would recommend figuring out about what you would need to pay in taxes for the year. You have two figures (your salary and dependents) , but not others. Will you contribute to a 401K, do you itemize deductions, etc... If things are uncertain, I would figure my taxes as if I took the standard deduction. For argument's sake let's assume that comes out to $7300. I would then add $500 on to my total to cover potential increases in taxes/fees. You can adjust this up or down based on your ability to absorb having to pay or the uncertainty in your first calcuation. So now $7800, divide by 26 (the amount of paychecks you receive in a year) = $300 Then I would utilize a payroll calculator to adjust my exemptions and additional witholding so my federal withholding is as close as possible to this number. Or you can sit with your payroll department and do the same.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f8c569996a42b57bb6a892abe0f18a17",
"text": "Your annual contributions are capped at the maximum of $5500 or your taxable income (wages, salary, tips, self employment income, alimony). You pay taxes by the regular calculations on Form 1040 on your earned income. In this scenario, you earn the income, pay taxes on the amount you earn, and put money in the Roth IRA. The alternative, a Traditional IRA, up to certain income levels, allows you to put the amount you contribute on line 32 of Form 1040, which subtracts the Traditional IRA contribution amount from your Adjusted Gross Income (line 37) before tax is calculated on line 44. In this scenario, you earn the income, put the money in the Traditional IRA, reduce your taxable income, and pay taxes on the reduced amount.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fca04554645e605e1908186d142ee401",
"text": "\"This does not apply to Roth IRAs. It defines the difference between the two depending on what your age is when this happens. If you are 59 or younger, you have a 10% penalty in addition to taxes. If you are between 59.5 and 70, there is no penalty, but you do have to pay taxes. If you are 70.5 or older, then you MUST withdraw money, and that withdrawal is called the \"\"required minimum distribution\"\" and you pay taxes on it as if it were income. In terms of investments, the two are the same in that the earnings you make on your investments grow tax free. Here is more information between the two. *Improvements are welcome for my answer.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
a1c56f1a8ba343ef6bb510b62d7c5f95
|
What funds were closed during or after the recent recessions?
|
[
{
"docid": "8d9810fb83e7253b932c4b16a16d9e55",
"text": "\"Yes, many hedge funds (for example) did not survive 2008-2009. But hedge funds were failing both before and after that period, and other hedge funds thrived. Those types of funds are particularly risky because they depend so much on leverage (i.e. on money that isn't actually theirs). More publically-visible funds (like those of the big-name index fund companies) tended not to close because they are not leveraged. You say that \"\"a great many companies\"\" failed during the recession, but that's not actually true. I can't think of more than a handful of publically-traded companies that went bankrupt. So, since the vast majority of publically-traded companies stayed in business, their stocks kept some/most of their value, and the funds that owned those stocks stayed afloat. I personally did not see a single index fund that went out of business due to the recession.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "5332ab4fcf9969669a3adebdc5e92194",
"text": "\"Bloomberg suggests that two Fidelity funds hold preferred shares of Snapchat Inc.. Preferred shares hold more in common with bonds than with ordinary stock as they pay a fixed dividend, have lower liquidity, and don't have voting rights. Because of this lower liquidity they are not usually offered for sale on the market. Whether these funds are allowed to hold such illiquid assets is more a question for their strategy document than the law; it is completely legal for a company to hold a non-marketable interest in another, even if the company is privately held as Snapchat is. The strategy documents governing what the fund is permitted to hold, however, may restrict ownership either banning non-market holdings or restricting the percentage of assets held in illiquid instruments. Since IPO is very costly, funds like these who look to invest in new companies who have not been through IPO yet are a very good way of taking a diversified position in start-ups. Since they look to invest directly rather than through the market they are an attractive, low cost way for start-ups to generate funds to grow. The fund deals directly with the owners of the company to buy its shares. The markdown of the stock value reflects the accounting principle of marking to market (MTM) financial assets that do not have a trade price so as to reflect their fair value. This markdown implies that Fidelity believe that the total NPV of the company's net assets is lower than they had previously calculated. This probably reflects a lack of revenue streams coming into the business in the case of Snapchat. edit: by the way, since there is no market for start-up \"\"stocks\"\" pre-IPO my heart sinks a little every time I read the title of this question. I'm going to be sad all day now :(.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a519077e8b48ef99b0d20e77a981deb0",
"text": "Thank you fgunthar. I was not aware of ILWs, but I agree - this is also the closest thing I've found. As for starting a fund, I'm unfortunately nowhere near that point. But, my curiosity seems to inevitably lead me to obscure areas like ILWs.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "046d9cdbbb9b9aa2eb877b718d47e705",
"text": "Try this site for the funds http://www.socialinvest.org/resources/mfpc/ I'm not aware of any etfs. I'm sure some exist though.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d551a112c05e7e4ad3cf68a202c506dc",
"text": "That is such a vague statement, I highly recommend disregarding it entirely, as it is impossible to know what they meant. Their goal is to convince you that index funds are the way to go, but depending on what they consider an 'active trader', they may be supporting their claim with irrelevant data Their definition of 'active trader' could mean any one or more of the following: 1) retail investor 2) day trader 3) mutual fund 4) professional investor 5) fund continuously changing its position 6) hedge fund. I will go through all of these. 1) Most retail traders lose money. There are many reasons for this. Some rely on technical strategies that are largely unproven. Some buy rumors on penny stocks in hopes of making a quick buck. Some follow scammers on twitter who sell newsletters full of bogus stock tips. Some cant get around the psychology of trading, and thus close out losing positions late and winning positions early (or never at all) [I myself use to do this!!]. I am certain 99% of retail traders cant beat the market, because most of them, to be frank, put less effort into deciding what to trade than in deciding what to have for lunch. Even though your pension funds presentation is correct with respect to retail traders, it is largely irrelevant as professionals managing your money should not fall into any of these traps. 2) I call day traders active traders, but its likely not what your pension fund was referring to. Day trading is an entirely different animal to long or medium term investing, and thus I also think the typical performance is irrelevant, as they are not going to manage your money like a day trader anyway. 3,4,5) So the important question becomes, do active funds lose 99% of the time compared to index funds. NO! No no no. According to the WSJ, actively managed funds outperformed passive funds in 2007, 2009, 2013, 2015. 2010 was basically a tie. So 5 out of 9 years. I dont have a calculator on me but I believe that is less than 99%! Whats interesting is that this false belief that index funds are always better has become so pervasive that you can see active funds have huge outflows and passive have huge inflows. It is becoming a crowded trade. I will spare you the proverb about large crowds and small doors. Also, index funds are so heavily weighted towards a handful of stocks, that you end up becoming a stockpicker anyway. The S&P is almost indistinguishable from AAPL. Earlier this year, only 6 stocks were responsible for over 100% of gains in the NASDAQ index. Dont think FB has a good long term business model, or that Gilead and AMZN are a cheap buy? Well too bad if you bought QQQ, because those 3 stocks are your workhorses now. See here 6) That graphic is for mutual funds but your pension fund may have also been including hedge funds in their 99% figure. While many dont beat their own benchmark, its less than 99%. And there are reasons for it. Many have investors that are impatient. Fortress just had to close one of its funds, whose bets may actually pay off years from now, but too many people wanted their money out. Some hedge funds also have rules, eg long only, which can really limit your performance. While important to be aware of this, that placing your money with a hedge fund may not beat a benchmark, that does not automatically mean you should go with an index fund. So when are index funds useful? When you dont want to do any thinking. When you dont want to follow market news, at all. Then they are appropriate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a59b5ee28bfa32e75c8c0dafabfc958f",
"text": "Well, there are many reasons that Lehman and Bear were allowed to go under. Lehman had much more exposure to real estate than Goldman and JP, and they were also the very first domino to fall, back when people didn't think the crisis was a full-blown crisis yet. As for Bear? I think the Fed harbored some hard feelings after the LTCM thing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1417779afe385704661db0ac0cd35bc2",
"text": "\"Since these indices only try to follow VIX and don't have the underlying constituents (as the constituents don't really exist in most meaningful senses) they will always deviate from the exact numbers but should follow the general pattern. You're right, however, in stating that the graphs that you have presented are substantially different and look like the indices other than VIX are always decreasing. The problem with this analysis is that the basis of your graphs is different; they all start at different dates... We can fix this by putting them all on the same graph: this shows that the funds did broadly follow VIX over the period (5 years) and this also encompasses a time when some of the funds started. The funds do decline faster than VIX from the beginning of 2012 onward and I had a theory for why so I grabbed a graph for that period. My theory was that, since volatility had fallen massively after the throes of the financial crisis there was less money to be made from betting on (investing in?) volatility and so the assets invested in the funds had fallen making them smaller in comparison to their 2011-2012 basis. Here we see that the funds are again closely following VIX until the beginning of 2016 where they again diverged lower as volatility fell, probably again as a result of withdrawals of capital as VIX returns fell. A tighter graph may show this again as the gap seems to be narrowing as people look to bet on volatility due to recent events. So... if the funds are basically following VIX, why has VIX been falling consistently over this time? Increased certainty in the markets and a return to growth (or at least lower negative growth) in most economies, particularly western economies where the majority of market investment occurs, and a reduction in the risk of European countries defaulting, particularly Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain; the \"\"PIGS\"\" countries has resulted in lower volatility and a return to normal(ish) market conditions. In summary the funds are basically following VIX but their values are based on their underlying capital. This underlying capital has been falling as returns on volatility have been falling resulting in their diverging from VIX whilst broadly following it on the new basis.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9d9444595e7e45564762ff58a6c29bc5",
"text": "\"While this figure is a giant flashing-red beacon of inflation, it should be noted that this has been happening during a period of unprecedented writedowns and deleveraging of \"\"hypothetical\"\" assets -- assets that exist on paper only. The result, given the way QE funds have been injected into the market (eg TAF), is that people who *should've* lost money get to tread water, and the inflation is not apparent in the rest of the economy (unless you are actually aware of the severe repercussions which should've happened but didn't). Also, and separately, I'm not so sure another round of QE is coming.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e3cc2326e8fa93452b5c41bfe54f0584",
"text": "Right now, the unrealized appreciation of Vanguard Tax-Managed Small-Cap Fund Admiral Shares is 28.4% of NAV. As long as the fund delivers decent returns over the long term, is there anything stopping this amount from ballooning to, say, 90% fifty years hence? I'd have a heck of a time imagining how this grows to that high a number realistically. The inflows and outflows of the fund are a bigger question along with what kinds of changes are there to capital gains that may make the fund try to hold onto the stocks longer and minimize the tax burden. If this happens, won't new investors be scared away by the prospect of owing taxes on these gains? For example, a financial crisis or a superior new investment technology could lead investors to dump their shares of tax-managed index funds, triggering enormous capital-gains distributions. And if new investors are scared away, won't the fund be forced to sell its assets to cover redemptions (even if there is no disruptive event), leading to larger capital-gains distributions than in the past? Possibly but you have more than a few assumptions in this to my mind that I wonder how well are you estimating the probability of this happening. Finally, do ETFs avoid this problem (assuming it is a problem)? Yes, ETFs have creation and redemption units that allow for in-kind transactions and thus there isn't a selling of the stock. However, if one wants to pull out various unlikely scenarios then there is the potential of the market being shut down for an extended period of time that would prevent one from selling shares of the ETF that may or may not be as applicable as open-end fund shares. I would however suggest researching if there are hybrid funds that mix open-end fund shares with ETF shares which could be an alternative here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e400ac547517161dca92438aa601eba3",
"text": "\"Thanks for the quick reply. I'd like to point out the post that triggered me to make this request in public is - Reddit post: http://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/naboa/fears_persist_that_the_us_labor_market_cannot_be/ Specific response: http://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/naboa/fears_persist_that_the_us_labor_market_cannot_be/c37kj2t The sidebar says that political debate is not permitted in this forum, and until recently I would say this request had been adhered to. But this particular FT article, like others, can be dissected politically, and therefore shouldn't be in r/finance. It belongs in r/economics. Unfortunately, any posts that relate to current macroeconomic circumstances, especially central banking and global unemployment, will invite the Ron-Paulites and they really don't add any sort of value to r/finance, and they do politicize the forum and debate. I don't think ZeroHedge _ever_ has a place in this forum. The source is not credible and always has too much of a political angle to be in a forum that has declared itself as \"\"not a place for politics.\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "65ee8fe1e4d415e65ad72de915f56166",
"text": "I would also like to have this discussed, alongside the issue that the US has gone into some type of [recession](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/US_Treasuries_to_Federal_Funds_Rate.png) roughly every ten year. So with the prospect of a possible recession with a close to 0% cash rate looming, what tools will the FED employ to keep Banks borrowing while maintaining inflation rates?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9c913aa51881967e18ada87b98694a77",
"text": "\"It sounds like this is an entirely unsettled question, unfortunately. In the examples you provide, I think it is safe to say that none of those are 'substantially identical'; a small overlap or no overlap certainly should not be considered such by a reasonable interpretation of the rule. This article on Kitces goes into some detail on the topic. A few specifics. First, Former publication 564 explains: Ordinarily, shares issued by one mutual fund are not considered to be substantially identical to shares issued by another mutual fund. Of course, what \"\"ordinarily\"\" means is unspecified (and this is no longer a current publication, so, who knows). The Kitces article goes on to explain that the IRS hasn't really gone after wash sales for mutual funds: Over the years, the IRS has not pursued wash sale abuses against mutual funds, perhaps because it just wasn’t very feasible to crack down on them, or perhaps because it just wasn’t perceived as that big of an abuse. After all, while the rules might allow you to loss-harvest a particular stock you couldn’t have otherwise, it also limits you from harvesting ANY losses if the overall fund is up in the aggregate, since losses on individual stocks can’t pass through to the mutual fund shareholders. But then goes to explain about ETFs being very different: sell SPY, buy IVV or VTI, and you're basically buying/selling the identical thing (99% or so correlation in stocks owned). The recommendation by the article is to look at the correlation in owned stocks, and stay away from things over 95%; that seems reasonable in my book as well. Ultimately, there will no doubt be a large number of “grey” and murky situations, but I suspect that until the IRS provides better guidance (or Congress rewrites/updates the wash sale rules altogether!), in the near term the easiest “red flag” warning is simply to look at the correlation between the original investment being loss-harvested, and the replacement security; at correlations above 0.95, and especially at 0.99+, it’s difficult to argue that the securities are not ”substantially identical” to each other in performance. Basically - use common sense, and don't do anything you think would be hard to defend in an audit, but otherwise you should be okay.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bd36cc84ea10cfdc1920099d015b5085",
"text": "Why don't you look at the actual funds and etfs in question rather than seeking a general conclusion about all pairs of funds and etfs? For example, Vanguard's total stock market index fund (VTSAX) and ETF (VTI). Comparing the two on yahoo finance I find no difference over the last 5 years visually. For a different pair of funds you may find something very slightly different. In many cases the index fund and ETF will not have the same benchmark and fees so comparisons get a little more cloudy. I recall a while ago there was an article that was pointing out that at the time emerging market ETF's had higher fees than corresponding index funds. For this reason I think you should examine your question on a case-by-case basis. Index fund and ETF returns are all publicly available so you don't have to guess.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2d664e07aaf29064a1f9ccdfd68672f5",
"text": "\"I used the term \"\"bond fund\"\" to mean a mutual fund which invests in bonds. Vanguard has a list. If you live in PA, OH, MA, FL, CA, NJ, or NY there are tax free funds you can invest in on that list.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b30b3318b9b323fa772c7dba51f37718",
"text": "Good analysis/point, except you're missing the fact that most pensions allocate only a tiny fraction of their overall portfolios to hedge funds. So say you have a $2 billion pension fund, maybe $50 million of that is hedge funds. So basically, yes the pools of money will get smaller, but there's a lot of the overall pie that the hedge funds aren't eating (yet).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0da2ace87efea30d3c2c957fdb254806",
"text": "If you're talking about TRUPS (Trust Preferred securities) these are all but banned for new issuance under Dodd-Frank and other regulations. Although some companies still have outstanding TRUPS most have either matured, defaulted or been refinanced into some other form of debt. Its not really an available form of capital raising anymore.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
3d58c929c12a52c736c048f6b1c6ab1e
|
Are there any countries where citizens are free to use any currency?
|
[
{
"docid": "cda9331c5800927240653668f7334abc",
"text": "\"Wikipedia has a list of countries which ban foreign exchange use by its citizens. It's actually quite short but does include India and China. Sometimes economic collapse limits enforcement. For example, after the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar (and its government running out of sufficient foreign exchange to buy the paper necessary to print more), the state turned a blind eye as the US dollar and South African rand became de facto exchange. Practicality will limit the availability of foreign exchange even in free-market economies. The average business can't afford to have a wide range of alternative currencies sitting around. Businesses which cater to large numbers of addled tourists sometimes offer one or two alternative currencies in the hopes of charging usurous rates of exchange. Even bureaux de change sometimes require you to order your \"\"rarer\"\" foreign exchange in advance. So, while it may be legal, it isn't always feasible.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b830b23272edea7523fbd60e05bdec03",
"text": "Sounds like you have a goldbug whispering in your ear. The Coinage Act doesn't restrict you from using foreign currency or lawful commodity or service to fulfill a debt. You are free to do that whenever you enter into an explicit or implicit contract with another party. If that wasn't the case, your kid trading his bag of chips for a bag of cookies at lunch would be a criminal act. It does mean that you ultimately must accept US currency to settle a debt. Following the previous example, if your kid gives his friend the bag of chips, but the cookies get destroyed somehow before being transferred, the friend can offer a couple of dollars to complete the transaction. The whole point of the Coinage Acts is to set a level playing field. If you don't pick one dominant store of value, you have a situation where it is impossible to evaluate the cost of goods and services. It has nothing to do with some competition with foreign currency. A robust, modern economy requires an adequate supply of capital and a common reference point for value within the economy. Think about it further with respect to Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution. Would you want a fiscally profligate state like California or New York to be able to print money and compel you as a contractor, employee or creditor to accept their scrip as payment? (Or worse, require payment in Gold or Vermont-issued dollars, but pay you in their money.) Of course not. That's why the Federal government controls the currency, and a dollar in Alaska is the same as a dollar in Georgia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f192e3451471bd51285576936d970749",
"text": "If I understand correctly, you're actually asking why there isn't a society whose members generally accept/use any currency for transactions, and just like, Google the exchange rate or something. The answer is because it's exceptionally inconvenient. Can you imagine having a wallet with 200 pouches for all the different currencies? Why would you want to deal with exchange rates all the time? What if the value of a currency changes? (A single currency at least has the illusion of being stable). Et cetera.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e76aee75fef6dbe440515cd180e1599e",
"text": "Shops in most touristic places tend to accept major currencies (at least dollar and euro). I remember a trip in Istanbul before the euro existed, the kids selling postcards near the blue mosque were able to guess your country and announce in your language the price in your currency.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "cbf4a5de9f84ac8dfd484389fa250ed0",
"text": "\"Currently, there is simply no reason to do so. It's not a problem. It is no more of a problem or effort to denote \"\"5,000\"\" than it is to denote \"\"50.00\"\". But if there were a reason to do so, it wouldn't be all that difficult. Of course there would be some minor complications because some people (mostly old people presumably) would take time getting used to it, but nothing that would stop a nation from doing so. In Iceland, this has happened on several occasions in the past and while Iceland is indeed a very small economy, it shouldn't be that difficult at all for a larger one. A country would need a grace period while the old currency is still valid, new editions of already circulating cash would need to be produced, and a coordinated time would need to be set, at which point financial institutions change their balances. Of course it would take some planning and coordination, but nothing close to for example unifying two or more currencies into one, like the did with the euro. The biggest side-effect there was an inflation shot when the currencies got changed in each country, but this can be done even with giant economies like Germany and France. Cutting off two zeros would be a cakewalk in comparison. But in case of currencies like the Japanese Yen, there is simply no reason to take off 2 zeros yet. Northern-Americans may find it strange that the numbers are so high, but that's merely a matter of what you're used to. There is no added complication in paying 5.000 vs. 50 at a restaurant, it merely takes more space on a computer screen and bill, and that's not a real problem. Besides, most of the time, even in N-America, the cents are listed as well, and that doesn't seem to be enough of a problem for people to concern themselves with. It's only when you get into hyper-inflation when the shear space required for denoting prices becomes a problem, that economies have a real reason to cut off zeros.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "07a3309a18a2c1be2bdf75d191c98722",
"text": "If this is your money, and if you can - if asked - prove that you legally made it, there is no limit. You pay taxes on your income, so sending it into the world is tax free. Your citizenship is not relevant for that.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "edb1f705ad85940e241269d785bb0f6b",
"text": "Originally dollars were exchangeable for specie at any time, provided you went to a govt exchange. under Bretton Woods this was a generally fixed rate, but regardless there existed a spread on gold. This ceased to be the case in 71 when the Nixon shock broke Bretton woods.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "791b9c92810949d5143fb8de3b0426a3",
"text": "I am a US citizen by birth only. I left the US aged 6 weeks old and have never lived there. I am also a UK citizen but TD Waterhouse have just followed their policy and asked me to close my account under FATCA. It is a complete nightmare for dual nationals who have little or no US connection. IG.com seem to allow me to transfer my holdings so long as I steer clear of US investments. Furious with the US and would love to renounce citizenship but will have to pay $2500 or thereabouts to follow the US process. So much for Land of the Free!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9ce931d868b678112c38d510efe1c7d3",
"text": "\"I think the important fact here is that all of our currencies are Fiat Currencies. So currency technically means nothing, because (as you mentioned) the country could print more any time it wants. Now what makes it useful is the combination of two big things: So I would say, we know they owe us 100 \"\"dollars\"\", and the dollar is just a word we use to represent value. It is not technically worth anything, beyond the fact that the government controls the amount of that currency in circulation and you trust that people still want more of that currency.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "302019998d8505c3d4064045d88f4dcc",
"text": "TD Bank (Northeast US) has free change counting machines at its branches. You don't have to have an account to use them.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6bd58cfcf59df1678bf6560942b4d86c",
"text": "No, there is nothing on the sidelines. Currency is an investment. There is no such thing as uninvested wealth. If you had a million in USD at the beginning of 2017, you would currently be out about sixty grand. There is no neutral way to store wealth.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b45f748a0c31dd76eb6f670978f51320",
"text": "Fist money does not have legal tender. And technically there are thousands of people willing to fight for bitcoin, who can be seen as an army so in that logic bitcoin has some intrinsic value. But both don't have intrinsic value. Most sources on the internet I can find agree with that. Wikipedia, investopedia and many others. Not that money needs intrinsic value. If the market value is 1000 times above the intrinsic value then the intrinsic value is not even relevant. But 1000 * 0 = 0 and the intrinsic value of the dollar itself (not coins) will always be 0. Same for the EUR and then YUAN.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "03a02fa136bd870c1b7e0c6f9b687c59",
"text": "Dollars are bits you don't control. The banking system has your bits and they can charge you more bits to move your bits around. At any point, they could freeze your accounts and suddenly you have no bits. It's all designed to make it so you can't function in society without them controlling your bits.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "47d7e6b46352b8e46c514f9e74f02502",
"text": "There are several local currency initiatives in the US list here. Most are attempts to normalize a value as a living wage, or encourage local consumption networks. If you are in the catchment region of one of these, see if you can get a grant or loan to get started (if you are willing to buy into the philosophy of the group such as a $10 minimum wage) m",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b7640319b1c12b9083eb1af33680b292",
"text": "US currency doesn't expire, it is always legal tender. I can see some trouble if you tried to spend a $10,000 bill (you'd be foolish to do so, since they are worth considerably more). Maybe some stores raise eyebrows at old-style $100's (many stores don't take $100 bills at all), but you could swap them for new style at a bank if having trouble with a particular store. Old-series currency can be an issue when trying to exchange US bills in other countries, just because it doesn't expire here, doesn't mean you can't run into issues elsewhere. Other countries have different policies, for example, over the last year the UK phased in a new five pound note, and as of last month (5/5/2017) the old fiver is no longer considered legal tender (can still swap out old fivers at the bank for now at least). Edit: I mistook which currency you took where, and focused on US currency instead of Canadian, but it looks like it's the same story there.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a1497dff2d1b493e990d08b1c6eb2a8f",
"text": "Any person at any time may produce their own currency, one can even do so on the back of a paper napkin, ripped beer coaster or whatever. This is NOT a banking privilege, it is within the lawful ability of anyone capable of engaging in commerce. It is called a 'negotiable instrument' ... it gives the holder rights to a sum of money. Notice that I say 'holder' ... this is what distinguishes it from a non-negotiable instrument, the fact that you don't need to redeem it from source, you can pass it to another who then becomes the 'holder in due course' and thus obtains the rights conferred. The conferable rights over a sum of money (or, indeed, other asset) are themselves 'value' Do banks do this ? Yes, all the time! ... one of the simplest examples are cheques drawn against the bank, which are considered 'as good as cash'. Usually they will be drawn out to the order of the person you wish to pay ... but can equally be drawn out to bearer. The only reasons they resist making out to bearer is : But you can write your own at 'any time' on 'any thing' ... See the apocryphal, yet deliciously entertaining, tale of the 'negotiable cow'",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bffafb1c110a47aebd15ce939c82941e",
"text": "This is more of an economics question than personal finance. That said, I already started writing an answer before I noticed, so here are a few points. I'll leave it open for others to expand the list. Advantages Disadvantages Advantages Disadvantages The flip-side to the argument that more users means more stability is that the impact of a strong economy (on the value of the currency) is diluted somewhat by all the other users. Indeed, if adopted by another country with similar or greater GDP, that economy could end up becoming the primary driver of the currency's value. It may be harder to control counterfeiting. Perhaps not in the issuing country itself, but in foreign countries that do not adopt new bills as quickly.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3048fcd106371966f419a784a95ddf8e",
"text": "The closest thing that you are looking for would be FOREX exchanges. Currency value is affected by the relative growth of economies among other things, and the arbritrage of currencies would enable you to speculate on the relative growth of an individual economy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fc17bf0c8d9eecdcd412998741cfc8f4",
"text": "Short answer: No. Some of those 'automatic' payments you've agreed to (presumably by signing a PAD form) are initiated in batch by the company whom you're buying from (phone company, cable company etc). So no, the bank has no indication from one day to the next what is coming through. And the request goes from say, your cable company to THEIR merchant bank to YOUR bank. Typically you have a monthly bill date which is fixed, and they should have terms established when it is due. If a payment comes back NSF they can retry once - but only for the same amount and I believe it is 14 days from the initial payment attempt. It makes it predictable, and you'd figure banks would clue in and start to predict for you when things may come out - but strictly speaking your bank doesn't know when or how much.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
10db78204904ddc7fd78fac0ccd2c134
|
Understanding taxes when buying goods at a store
|
[
{
"docid": "f46621f62cc31e011575311e7e421eba",
"text": "\"Grocery food is not subject to sales tax in Maryland, but some food is taxed depending on category or preparation. So you must have had a combination of grocery and taxable foods. One of the cheaper items you purchased was subject to a whopping penny of sales tax. http://taxes.marylandtaxes.com/Individual_Taxes/Taxpayer_Assistance/Individual_Tax_FAQs/Use_Tax_FAQs/q4.shtml In general, food sales are subject to Maryland's 6 percent sales and use tax unless a person operating a substantial grocery or market business sells the food for consumption off the premises and the food is not a taxable prepared food. A grocery or market business is considered to be \"\"substantial\"\" if the sales of grocery or market food items total at least 10 percent of all food sales.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e7d654a05a0ad811912554f7651690c5",
"text": "States have made sales tax more confusing by expanding some categories and shrinking or eliminating other categories. In days of old there were taxes on items, and specific taxes on other small categories such as fuel and cigarets . In many states there were taxes implemented state wide, and in other cases they only applied to a specific city or region. As time went on taxes could be raised to bring in more money for the state or local government, but these tax increase were seen as unfair to the poor. So now the states are modifying and tweaking the tax rates. Some items are tax free, some have a low tax, and some are at the full tax rate. This can get confusing because the type of store can also play a factor. A bag a chips from a grocery store can be treated differently than a bag of chips from a hotdog stand. Some states have also added special taxes on snack foods. In general, purchases they want to encourage (staples from the grocery store) are tax free or low tax, items they don't want to encourage (snacks) are fully taxed. You can also be sure that they will treat luxury items as fully taxed. A new frontier of taxation are ones designed to tax people who don't live there. They have added taxes on restaurants and hotels. Since they are paid by tourists, the people most likely to pay them don't have a voice in setting the rate. States are now wanting to tax services as a way to make up shortfalls in taxing. Don't expect consistency from state to state, or year to year. Oh by the way that penny tax was for something that cost 17 cents or less, unless that item had a lower tax rate. The receipt should clearly identify the taxable items, and their tax level.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "d6a98d3d7c90ccb8fe872ecdb9013ed4",
"text": "According to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, your service would appear to be exempt from taxes. However, if you are charging for tangible items, those would incur a sales tax.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "974ed9da6e3447681972ae43b6e9b83a",
"text": "You should total the items first, to get $3.00, then add the tax, then round up/down accordingly. Your two examples above don't offer this option, even though your second example arrives at the same result. In your first example, a number of items taxed one at a time might result in many .006 results which would round to .01. A long enough list of items would result in an error of many cents depending how many items there are. Totaling first then applying tax results in your saving .004 or losing .005 cents maximum due to rounding. See A Guide to Sales and Use Tax which is a document put out by the Massachusetts Dept of Revenue. In the chart for tax, it shows that $1.09 is taxed at five cents, but at 5%, it would be 5.45. So, at least for this state, I believe I correctly stated the rounding process.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "86ca0abf6aafa8af607fcb744d027344",
"text": "The regulations you're talking about (TR 1.263) are going into effect starting tax year 2016, so for purchases you made last year they're (kindof...) irrelevant. Kindof, because the IRS promises to not audit those that qualify under the regulations even if they use it before it goes into effect, but it doesn't legally have to. Since the regulations are new, I suggest you talk to a licensed professional who'd explain them to you and interpret them with regards to your specific situation. From my brief read, you can expense under these rules things that you would otherwise capitalize, with the $500 limit to the invoice. Meaning, if you bought a computer paying $500, which you use 50% for your business - you can expense $250. The benefit, comparing to the Sec. 179, is that you're not limited to new items, nor are you limited to business revenue. Otherwise, it looks like the applicability is similar. As I said - talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State), since these rules are new and untested, and you should probably have a professional provide guidance. I'm not such a professional.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ac8ee78517eb043bb57dc8c09a9056e8",
"text": "For case 1, there is no tax due as you sold the book for less than your cost basis. If you had sold for more than $100, then you would have had a profit. For case 2, that depends on the value of the gift card with respect to the value of your fare. Most likely that gift card is less than the cost of the fare. And in that case it would generally be treated as a reduction in the purchase price. The same way that rebates and cash back on credit card are treated. Note if for some reason a 1099 was generated that would change the situation and you would need to consult a tax professional. Since that would indicate that the other party to the transaction had a different view of the situation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4b7cd157197402aa1a8b2a3dc933137c",
"text": "\"This question and your other one indicate you're a bit unclear on how capital gains taxes work, so here's the deal: you buy an asset (like shares of stock or a mutual fund). You later sell it for more than you bought it for. You pay taxes on your profit: the difference between what you sold it for and what you bought it for. What matters is not the amount of money you \"\"withdraw\"\", but the prices at which assets are bought and sold. In fact, often you will be able to choose which individual shares you sell, which means you have some control over the tax you pay. For a simple example, suppose you buy 10 shares of stock for $100 each in January (an investment of $1000); we'll call these the \"\"early\"\" shares. The stock goes up to $200 in July, and you buy 10 more shares (investing an additional $2000); we'll call these the \"\"late\"\" shares. Then the stock drops to $150. Suppose you want $1500 in cash, so you are going to sell 10 shares. The 10 early shares you bought have increased in value, because you bought then for $100 but can now sell them for $150. The 10 late shares have decreased in value, because you bought them for $200 but can now only sell them for $150. If you choose to sell the early shares, you will have a capital gain of $500 ($1500 sale price minus $1000 purchase price), on which you may owe taxes. If you sell the late shares, you will have a capital loss of $500 ($1500 sale price minus $2000 purchase price is -$500), which you can potentially use to reduce your taxes. Or you could sell 5 of each and have no gain or loss (selling five early shares for $150 gives you a gain of $250, but selling five late shares for $150 gives you a loss of $250, and they cancel out). The point of all this is to say that the tax is not determined by the amount of cash you get, but by the difference between the sale price and the price you purchased for (known as the \"\"cost basis\"\"), and this in turn depends on which specific assets you sell. It is not enough to know the total amount you invested and the total gain. You need to know the specific cost basis (i.e., original purchase price) of the specific shares you're selling. (This is also the answer to your question about long-term versus short-term gains. It doesn't matter how much money you make on the sale. What matters is how long you hold the asset before selling it.) That said, many brokers will automatically sell your shares in a certain order unless you tell them otherwise (and some won't let you tell them otherwise). Often they will use the \"\"first in, first out\"\" rule, which means they will always sell the earliest-purchased shares first. To finally get to your specific question about Betterment, they have a page here that says they use a different method. Essentially, they try to sell your shares in a way that minimizes taxes. They do this by first selling shares that have a loss, and only then selling shares that have a gain. This basically means that if you want to cash out $X, and it is possible to do it in a way that incurs no tax liability, they will do that. What gets me very confused is if I continue to invest random amounts of money each month using Betterment, then I need to withdraw some cash, what are the tax implications. As my long answer above should indicate, there is no simple answer to this. The answer is \"\"it depends\"\". It depends on exactly when you bought the shares, exactly how much you paid for them, exactly when and how much the price rose or fell, and exactly how much you sell them for. Betterment is more or less saying \"\"Don't worry about any of this, trust us, we will handle everything so that your tax is minimized.\"\" A final note: if you really do want to track the details of your cost basis, Betterment may not be for you, because it is an automated platform that may do a lot of individual trades that a human wouldn't do, and that can make tracking the cost basis yourself very difficult. Almost the whole point of something like Betterment is that you are supposed to give them your money and forget about these details.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ebe7bab9b048af3bcc0e783606e7074e",
"text": "But why can't two companies exchange goods directly without paying VAT? This would make the famous carousel fraud scam impossible and businesses won't have to deal with complicated refunds. Sales tax in the United States works as you describe. Sales tax is charged only to end customers, not to businesses that themselves charge sales tax. But this means that a criminal business can charge tax and just pocket it unless someone else reports it. They can also evade income tax the same way. Not to mention other issues like cross jurisdiction taxes (e.g. internet sales often evade sales tax). The whole point of a Value Added Tax (VAT) is that they charge at each level. This creates a system where each buyer reports the tax paid to the seller so as to be able to deduct it. So the seller has to pay the VAT that they charged. Or the tax authorities know and can revoke their VAT license. If only the end user is charged tax, then fraud is easier than under a VAT. So easy, I doubt they have a special name for it. The fraudulent business just collects tax from end users and disappears. Or simply fails to record those transactions. You could call it missing transaction record fraud, but why bother? It's just straight up tax fraud. The complexity of the carousel fraud arises from the difficulty of evading a VAT.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "070d2ad7fe0e1c826446a42018bbc2ae",
"text": "Well, I'm from the Netherlands, which is also kind of a 'nanny' state, usually supermarket goods are fairly cheap (bottle of 1,5L Coca Cola is $1,42, a 24-crate of beer is around $11). But gasoline ($2/L), diesel ($1.60/L) and tobacco ($6-8.50) are quite expensive. Basically we have an extra tax on certain (unhealthy and environmentally harmful) goods so you get a basic consumer tax of 19% (soon to be 21%) + 15-250%. For example a pack of cigarettes of $6.50 is $1.71 without taxes right now. But for some reason alcohol isn't taxed as heavily, where tobacco gets upwards of 250% extra tax alcohol only gets 5-15.5% extra taxes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8efc4e650eabe8c7fe0c1abbac95773e",
"text": "\"In a nutshell - Value Added Tax. America, as usual, discovers what others have known and used for years. The idea of not taxing income that's tied to it is ridiculous. If you're only taxing spending but not income, people will just take spending elsewhere (Canada, Mexico, further away), and the economy will go down the drain. That's similar to the way people avoid paying sales tax now, except that it will be in orders of magnitude. Why should a corporation by office supplies in the US, if it has a branch in China? Edit Also, Fair Tax doesn't take into account moving money overseas. I've mentioned living elsewhere down below, and that also got me thinking of how I personally would certainly gain from that ridiculous thing called \"\"Fair Tax\"\". Basically, that's exactly how the \"\"rich folks\"\", those who push for it, will gain from it. Being able to move money out of the US basically makes it a perfect tax shelter. You don't pay taxes on the income (that you have in the US), and you don't pay taxes on the spendings (that you have elsewhere, because in that country income is taxable so you only pay VAT or sales taxes). This means that all the wealthy people, while investing and gaining money from the American economy (stocks, property, etc), will actually not be spending it in the US. Thus, no taxes paid to the US, dollars flowing out. Perfect. Actually, I should be all for this stupid idea. Very fair to me, no need to pay any taxes at all, because food will probably be exempt anyway.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3d4a6faeab3d0f592026d01218100e85",
"text": "They may stock items that frame the various price points. Of course they risk having the items go stale before they are sold. You also have situations where the store will advertise an item, but end up taking a loss on that sale because it will bring people in, and they will make other purchases. Determining what to stock, how to display it, and how to advertise it involves both math and psychology.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9f9936a491b490f6078a3268fba001cb",
"text": "\"I'm being taxed at a 40% rate, then I can give $500,000 to charity, write it off, and save $200,000 on my taxes. That's a net loss of $300,000. I may have paid less taxes, but it cost me 300 grand. Your logic is correct. However, here's another way to think about it. Suppose you are being taxed at a 40% rate. You wish to purchase $500,000 worth of diamonds. How much do you have to make in income to do so? You need to make $833,333 in income, pay 40% of that ($333,333) in taxes, and then spend the $500,000 on the diamonds. But to spend that $500,000 on a charitable donation, you only need to make an income of $500,000, taxed at a rate of 0%, because donations to charity count against your taxable income. Or, yet another way to think about it, is that if you make $833,333 in income, you can spend it on $500,000 worth of diamonds, or $833,333 worth of charitable contributions; effectively you get to purchase $333,333 worth of charitable contributions \"\"for free\"\" over the equivalent purchase that is not a charitable donation.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a377f67fb9ea0522d326e45b041eb6d5",
"text": "How do you know you are playing their cost plus tax? Retailers in the US currently only collect state sales tax on purchasers who are based in the same state they are in. For example, our business is in NY so we charge NY state sales tax. We do not charge sales tax for anyone living in any other state (or country). If your shipping address is in South America, the people you are buying from in the US should not be charging you any tax. You may have to pay customs duties and fees, but these are not sales tax.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2a5e7e8abd8792236b68ae0bf2f88c73",
"text": "Are you sure about this? I mean your premise. I thought tax was based on shipping address. I've made purchases, live, in NY, and had the choice to pay sales tax or to have the item shipped, in effect paying shipping, for real, instead of sales tax. It appears that by buying a loaded cash card you'd accomplish your goal. I've seen such cards go fo $1.50, no fees other than that. To save the sales tax, or pay the tax of the state you're in, it may be worth it. But a NH billing address don't solve this, again, I believe tax is based on ship-to.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "302477bcb2eda09a78915b86bcdbb8b0",
"text": "Could you not just say that you had bought it when it was pennies on the dollar and made the millions that way? There isn't much of a transaction record, is there? I also just realized that I don't understand how taxes work in that situation. If you have a different currency from the U.S. Dollar, and it increases in value greatly, do you have to pay tax on that increased value relative to the U.S. dollar? They don't when it's minimal increases.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b958ecddb6579a5edb96c07558272915",
"text": "\"In most jurisdictions, both the goods (raw materials) and the service (class) are being \"\"sold\"\" to the customer, who is the end user and thus the sale is subject to sales tax. So, when your friend charges for the class, that $100 is subject to all applicable sales taxes for the jurisdiction and all parent jurisdictions (usually city, county and state). The teacher should not have to pay sales tax when they buy the flowers from the wholesaler; most jurisdictions charge sales tax on end-user purchases only. However, they are required to have some proof of sales tax exemption for the purchase, which normally comes part and parcel with the DBA or other business entity registration paperwork in most cities/states. Wholesalers deal with non-end-user sales (exempt from sales tax) all the time, but your average Michael's or Hobby Lobby may not be able to deal with this and may have to charge your friend the sales tax at POS. Depending on the jurisdiction, if this happens, your friend may be able to reduce the amount the customer is paying that is subject to sales tax by the pre-tax value of the materials the customer has paid for, which your friend already paid the tax on.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "77f11f50bbd997629b688c1747b28103",
"text": "The reason is in your own question. The answer is simple. They use that code to tax the product otherwise it would just be out of pocket expenses.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
b5c4a2dca3d95b434629931c44b3325a
|
The Canadian dividend tax credit: Why is it that someone can earn a lot in dividends but pay no/little tax?
|
[
{
"docid": "249fd2f459eaf89b1886dd47a39b8995",
"text": "Basically, yes. That doesn't mean that it's easy to do. The government provides a dividend tax credit since an individual takes on more risk to invest in dividend-paying corporations rather than trading their human capital for an income. Thus, for the most part, $1 earned from dividends is taxed much less than $1 earned from income or interest. Finally, note that foreign dividends are not eligible for the dividend tax credit, and are not preferentially taxed.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ddb0cfad48be4fc91bf0dc8d084dca77",
"text": "\"The profits that the corporation had to earn to be able to pay you \"\"eligible\"\" dividends for the dividend tax credit were already taxed, and at a somewhat high corporate rate, in the case of large public companies with big profits. The dividend tax credit, which permits an individual to earn a lot from dividends and not pay any personal income tax, essentially recognizes that the profit making up the dividend was already highly taxed to begin with via corporate income tax. It aims to eliminate double-taxation. FWIW, if you own and run a small private business in Canada and pay yourself a dividend, such dividends are considered \"\"non-eligible\"\", i.e. you don't get as much a benefit from the dividend tax credit, since small business corporate income tax rates are much lower.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "521df5e113f22567afd3acdd292d5b3f",
"text": "It comes down to the practical value of paying dividends. The investor can continually receive a stream of income without selling shares of the stock. If the stock did not pay a dividend and wanted continual income, the investor would have to continually sell shares to gain this stream of income, incurring transaction costs and increased time and effort involved with making these transactions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4275283d6083a46b9904a9ea71360cbc",
"text": "Firstly a stock split is easy, for example each unit of stock is converted into 10 units. So if you owned 1% of the company before the stock split, you will still own 1% after the stock split, but have 10 times the number of shares. The company does not pay out any money when doing this and there is no effect on tax for the company or the share holder. Now onto stock dividend… When a company make a profit, the company gives some of the profit to the share holders as a dividend; this is normally paid in cash. An investor may then wish to buy more shares in the company using the money from the dividend. However buying shares used to have a large cost in broker charges etc. Therefore some companies allowed share holders to choose to have the dividend paid as shares. The company buys enough of their own shares to cover the payout, only having one set of broker charges and then sends the correct number of shares to each share holder that has opted for a stock dividend. (Along with any cash that was not enough to buy a complete share.) This made since when you had paper shares and admin costs where high for stock brokers. It does not make sense these days. A stock dividend is taxed as if you had been paid the dividend in cash and then brought the stock yourself.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "71e70c6c3d426e2f03e616d2b9f7092d",
"text": "\"Let me provide a general answer, that might be helpful to others, without addressing those specific stocks. Dividends are simply corporate payouts made to the shareholders of the company. A company often decides to pay dividends because they have excess cash on hand and choose to return it to shareholders by quarterly payouts instead of stock buy backs or using the money to invest in new projects. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by \"\"dividend yield traps.\"\" If a company has declared an dividend for the upcoming quarter they will almost always pay. There are exceptions, like what happened with BP, but these exceptions are rare. Just because a company promises to pay a dividend in the approaching quarter does not mean that it will continue to pay a dividend in the future. If the company continues to pay a dividend in the future, it may be at a (significantly) different amount. Some companies are structured where nearly all of there corporate profits flow through to shareholders via dividends. These companies may have \"\"unusually\"\" high dividends, but this is simply a result of the corporate structure. Let me provide a quick example: Certain ETFs that track bonds pay a dividend as a way to pass through interest payments from the underlying bonds back to the shareholder of the ETF. There is no company that will continue to pay their dividend at the present rate with 100% certainty. Even large companies like General Electric slashed its dividend during the most recent financial crisis. So, to evaluate whether a company will keep paying a dividend you should look at the following: Update: In regards to one the first stock you mentioned, this sentence from the companies of Yahoo! finance explains the \"\"unusually\"\" dividend: The company has elected to be treated as a REIT for federal income tax purposes and would not be subject to income tax, if it distributes at least 90% of its REIT taxable income to its share holders.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "258fe10941770d167bff3dadc9d48eef",
"text": "\"If you're referring to times when they pay nothing (or receive a refund) at the end of the year, it's because they're paying taxes throughout the year. At the end of the year, the accountants find that they paid exactly what they needed to (or more), so they don't have to pay anything (or get money back) on their yearly forms. I don't think there's a US corporation paying \"\"almost zero tax\"\" in the US.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d5da1b2653d529de022d9b333f8a33f2",
"text": "The dividend tax credit is not applicable to foreign dividend income, so you would be taxed fully on every dollar of that income. When you sell a stock, there will be a capital gain or capital loss depending on if it gained or lost value, after accounting for the Adjusted Cost Base. You only pay income tax on half of the amount earned through capital gains, and if you have losses, you can use them to offset other investments that had capital gains (or carry forward to offset gains in the future). The dividends from US stocks are subject to a 15% withholding tax that gets paid to the IRS automatically when the dividends are issued. If the stocks are held in an RRSP, they are exempt from the withholding tax. If held in a non-registered account, you can be reimbursed for the tax by claiming the foreign tax credit that you linked to. If held in a TFSA or RESP, the withholding tax cannot be recovered. Also, if you are not directly holding the stocks, and instead buy a mutual fund or ETF that directly holds the stocks, then the RRSP exemption no longer applies, but the foreign tax credit is still claimable for a non-registered account. If the mutual fund or ETF does not directly hold stocks, and instead holds one or more ETFs, there is no way to recover the withholding tax in any type of account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "14cecef7ceb7ed8c28d9710a31dd2d53",
"text": "The answer to your question doesn't depend on who you trade with but what country you live in. If you live outside of the US, you will have to pay tax on dividends... sometimes. This depends on the tax treaty that your country has with the US. Canada, Australia, UK and a few other countries have favorable tax treaties with the US that allow you to not be double taxed. You must look into the tax treaty that your home country has with the US to answer the question. Each country is different.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7f52cfa3fe6d5579e837625929aa1153",
"text": "That's not especially high income, and while I can't speak for Canadians, most of us south of the border just pay the tax. There are tax-advantged retirement savings plans, and charitable donations are often offset by a tax credit, and there are some tax incentives for mortgages, and so on.. but generally the right answer is to just accept that the income tax money was never yours to begin with.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "96dd6e5df1c97fbe6e67dfe48966cbbf",
"text": "It doesn't make much difference in the end. Imagine you have $100 of revenue in your company. You can either pay it to yourself as salary, meaning that you don't pay corporate tax on it, or you can keep it in the company, pay corporate tax on it, then pay yourself a dividend of what is left. While that dividend will be treated better than salary, remember that the company already paid tax on it. You paying less on what's left doesn't equate to paying less overall. Go ahead and run the numbers using your actual corporate tax rate and your personal income tax rate. Try doing your whole salary as dividends - not dollar for dollar, but as how much the company would have as profit to give you a dividend if it didn't spend (and deduct) salary money on you. You are unlikely to see any difference at all. The net final money in your pocket, and the amount that went to the government, will probably be the same. If paying dividends keeps your earned income low, you may find that you can't use RRSP or childcare deductions. You are also not getting CPP credit. That's an argument for salary, or at least a certain minimum amount of salary. You have to deduct taxes at source on salary and send it along to the government, which is an argument for dividends if you feel you could invest that money and use it well before the taxes get around to being due. Possibly you may discover an edge case where you move a few thousand from one marginal tax rate to another and clear a few hundred extra as a result. I don't discourage you from doing the math, I just point out that the various percentages (tax rates, grossups, deductions etc) have all been carefully chosen so that it pretty much works out the same, or gives a small preference to salary. We give excess money to ourselves as bonus rather than dividend having run the numbers a few times. There's no secret trick here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "348ecf0fe173c503a0275e31aa820056",
"text": "Revenue Canada allows for some amount of tax deferral via several methods. The point is that none of them allow you to avoid tax, but by deferring from years when you have high income to years when you have lower income allows you to realize less total tax paid due to the marginal rate for personal income tax. The corporate dividend approach (as explained in another answer) is one way. TFSAs are another way, but as you point out, they have limits. Since you brought TFSAs into your question: About the best and easiest tax deferral option available in Canada is the RRSP. If you don't have a company pension, you can contribute something like 18% of your income. If you have a pension plan, you may still be able to contribute to an RRSP as well, but the maximum contribution amount will be lower. The contribution lowers your taxable income which can save you tax. Interest earned on the equity in your RRSP isn't taxed. Tax is only paid on money drawn from the plan because it is deemed income in that year. They are intended for retirement, but you're allowed to withdraw at any time, so if you have little or no income in a year, you can draw money from your RRSP. Tax is withheld, which you may or may not get back depending on your taxable income for that year. You can think of it as a way to level your income and lower your legitimate tax burden",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b48723be4cfd22c056c3bd1f60c6f2b5",
"text": "Remember that long term appreciation has tax advantages over short-term dividends. If you buy shares of a company, never earn any dividends, and then sell the stock for a profit in 20 years, you've essentially deferred all of the capital gains taxes (and thus your money has compounded faster) for a 20 year period. For this reason, I tend to favor non-dividend stocks, because I want to maximize my long-term gain. Another example, in estate planning, is something called a step-up basis:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1e1c05f9836fca87e718e24af6bfbd37",
"text": "Let's say your marginal tax rate is 33%. For every dollar you put in an RRSP, you'll get 33 cents back on your taxes, while the whole amount grows tax free inside the investment. If you can afford it, money in an RRSP generates a lot of free money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8251000cc2c3e8b95abfb04205e6fcc7",
"text": "\"The answer is Discounted Cash Flows. Companies that don't pay dividends are, ostensibly reinvesting their cash at returns higher than shareholders could obtain elsewhere. They are reinvesting in productive capacity with the aim of using this greater productive capacity to generate even more cash in the future. This isn't just true for companies, but for almost any cash-generating project. With a project you can purchase some type of productive assets, you may perform some kind of transformation on the good (or not), with the intent of selling a product, service, or in fact the productive mechanism you have built, this productive mechanism is typically called a \"\"company\"\". What is the value of such a productive mechanism? Yes, it's capacity to continue producing cash into the future. Under literally any scenario, discounted cash flow is how cash flows at distinct intervals are valued. A company that does not pay dividends now is capable of paying them in the future. Berkshire Hathaway does not pay a dividend currently, but it's cash flows have been reinvested over the years such that it's current cash paying capacity has multiplied many thousands of times over the decades. This is why companies that have never paid dividends trade at higher prices. Microsoft did not pay dividends for many years because the cash was better used developing the company to pay cash flows to investors in later years. A companies value is the sum of it's risk adjusted cash flows in the future, even when it has never paid shareholders a dime. If you had a piece of paper that obligated an entity (such as the government) to absolutely pay you $1,000 20 years from now, this $1,000 cash flows present value could be estimated using Discounted Cash Flow. It might be around $400, for example. But let's say you want to trade this promise to pay before the 20 years is up. Would it be worth anything? Of course it would. It would in fact typically go up in value (barring heavy inflation) until it was worth very close to $1,000 moments before it's value is redeemed. Imagine that this \"\"promise to pay\"\" is much like a non-dividend paying stock. Throughout its life it has never paid anyone anything, but over the years it's value goes up. It is because the discounted cash flow of the $1,000 payout can be estimated at almost anytime prior to it's payout.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6df8cd70429f5684a7e83090776d634f",
"text": "This is the point of the article. Somehow a company which is so successful has, for tax purposes, such a razor thin margin. So their taxation clearly isn't in keeping with its actual ability to pay, passing along the burden to other businesses and individuals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "776390a58b31e5780cd3fe1a24d60e90",
"text": "Tax-advantaged accounts mean you pay less tax. You fundamentally pay less tax on IRAs and 401ks than other accounts. That's their benefit. You keep more money at the expense of the government. It makes sense for the government to limit it. If you don't understand why you pay less tax, you must consider the time value of money -- the principal now is the same value of money as the principal + earnings later. With IRAs and 401ks, you only pay income tax once: with Roth IRAs and 401ks, you pay tax on the entire amount of money once when you earn it; with pre-tax Traditional IRAs and 401ks, you pay tax on the entire amount of money once when withdraw it. However, with outside accounts, you have to pay tax more than once: you pay once when you earn it, and pay tax again on the earnings later, earnings that grew from money that was already taxed (which, when considering time value, means that the earnings have already been taxed), but is taxed again. For things like savings in a bank, it's even worse: interest (which grew from money already taxed) is taxed every year, which means some money you pay tax on n times, if you have it in there n years. If you don't understand the above, you can see with an example. We start with $1000 pre-tax wages and for simplicity will assume a flat 25% income tax rate, and a growth rate of 10% per year, and get the cash (assume it's a qualified withdrawal) in 10 years.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a7f7384d35c387d2c34d790377bb93df",
"text": "\"This scheme doesn't work, because the combination of corporation tax, even the lower CCPC tax, plus the personal income tax doesn't give you a tax advantage, not on any realistic income I've ever worked it out on anyway. Prior to the 2014 tax year on lower incomes you could scrape a bit of an advantage but the 2013 budget changed the calculation for the tax credit on non-eligible dividends so there shouldn't be an advantage anymore. Moreover if you were to do it this way, by paying corporation tax instead of CPP you aren't eligible for CPP. If you sit with a calculator for long enough you may figure out a way of saving $200 or something small but it's a lot of paperwork for little if any benefit and you wouldn't get CPP. I understand the money multiplier effect described above, but the tax system is designed in a way that it makes more sense to take it as salary and put it in a tax deferred saving account, i.e. an RRSP - so there's no limit on the multiplier effect. Like I said, sit with a calculator - if you're earning a really large amount and are still under the small business limit it may make more sense to use a CCPC, but that is the case regardless of using it as a tax shelter because if you're earning a lot you're probably running a business of some size. The main benefit I think is that if you use a CCPC you can carry forward your losses, but you have to be aware of the definition of an \"\"allowable business investment loss\"\".\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
ca0f426fee09a97efa945aeb3861353c
|
Overpaid Rent Owed By Real Estate
|
[
{
"docid": "99bac0c170cb9ce7d1c34f2e19203152",
"text": "Have you tried complaining to the Real Estate Institute in your state, and if that doesn't work try taking them to Fair Trading. I know from doing some work for real estates that getting money from them is like getting blood from a stone, but you just need to keep bugging them, talk to the manager or director, and tell them you have been waiting too long for your money, give them a deadline (not more than 3 business days) and tell them if you have not received the money by then you will make a complaint to the Real Estate Institute and take them to Fair Trading. Sometimes you have to go to the person who owns/ runs the business as the workers usually don't care, especially when it is extra work for them and they get no reward for doing it (plus the longer the Real Estate don't pay you the longer they earn interest on your money).",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "d531e6c8919ffe0ead8462feb2aba3db",
"text": "I wouldn't start a bidding war if I were you. Sometimes you may get potentially bad tenants who cannot find a property anywhere else offering more money just to get in a place. If you know nothing else about these people how can you guarantee they will keep paying the rent once they get in. The things you should be doing is checking the prospective tenant's employment and income status, making sure they are able to easily pay the rent. You should check their credit report to see if they have a history of bad debts. And you should be checking with their previous landlords or real estate agents to see if they caused any damages to their previous properties. You should create a form that prospective tenants can fill out providing you with all the essential information you are after. Get them so sign a statement that gives you authority to ask information about them with other people (their previous landlords/ real estate agents, and their employers). Have a system set out on how you will assess all applicants and for the information the applicants need to provide you with. Treat it as a business.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eda0f6e572c77ee7731c607bd7b2d042",
"text": "You are not a landlord. You have choices: The current situation is charity. And that's ok, so long as you acknowledge it. In the big picture, anything less than market rent is a gift that you are giving the person living in your house. A good tenant might keep the place in better shape, and deserve a lower rent, but that's a quid pro quo. In the end, landlording is a business. If you had 10-20 apartments, they would be proving an income to you and you would have a large chunk of your wealth tied up in it. You would keep the apartments in good shape both to be legal and not a slumlord, but you'd also collect market rent. $100/apt would be $1000-$2000/mo income to you and your family. You wife is right. As always. You have a decision to make to stop the bleeding.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d4ba0d02eef394fb45b1f529b16dd894",
"text": "There are probably specific laws that control landlord/tenant rent disputes. But your friend's argument assumes that there aren't. Let's assume that there aren't. So there are two possibilities. Either the contract directly addresses this issue or it doesn't. If the contract directly and specifically addresses this issue, then that controls. Your friend is not claiming that it is specifically addressed. So the general principle is this -- when something occurs within a contract that wasn't explicitly discussed by the parties, courts will try to figure out what the parties likely would have agreed to had they discussed the specific issue (without changing the agreed terms of the contract). This should produce the result that is fair to both parties. Your friend is arguing then that had he and the landlord discussed the issue, the landlord would have agreed that in the event he is no longer able to accept credit cards easily, your friend could live there rent free. That doesn't seem right to me. Does it seem right to you? Much more likely they would have agreed that he might have some leeway to work out a new payment scheme and maybe some late rent should be forgiven if he made an attempt to pay on time but couldn't make arrangements. But I don't see more than that being reasonable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fb63ae90cd193b56aa90bf4163a6c592",
"text": "There is no way that someone on this site can tell if they overpaid you. So for the purposes of my answer I am going to assume that the company is correct that you got overpaid somehow. I think the answer is pretty clear if they DIDN'T overpay you. If they overpaid you then Yes you owe the money. Why would you think otherwise. If they underpaid you, wouldn't you expect that they owed you money? Why should the opposite be any different? Finder's Keepers isn't a legal defense in this situation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "929e1ed662028615cc9ae4d59a2cae8e",
"text": "\"This is accepted law in Pennsylvania, however, I will defer to your expertise and state that the decades long precedents are incorrect and every judge that allows cases to continue is wrong and you are correct. The Internet is great for things like that. Hopefully the next person in court can simply state: No your Honor, the landlord did not follow established law! Court rulings be damned. I was on reddit and /u/OriginalSimba stated unequivocally said that what is happening is \"\"legally impossible\"\" and that the decades of precedent that exist is simply because \"\"the court screwed up\"\". Heck, they can take it further to state that \"\"every lease in Pennsylvania is illegal\"\". I offer sarcasm as a response but if this was a single ruling I might agree with you. It's well established here in the great Commonwealth of PA. I say it's been around 30 years because I've been a landlord here for over 20 years, and a renter for about 10 or so before that. The clause has always been there. The basis for today's laws here in PA are from the Landlord Tenant Act of 1951. I'm not a lawyer so I can't tell you when the first waiver of rights came about but it's very possible it could go back that far.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e7c4de12c012960ae2f30380ae29cab3",
"text": "\"I don't have a crystal ball but chances are your tenant is definitely lying. Rent was late and now the money intended to cover the rent; miraculously is lost in the mailbox. Anyhow, you were already nice to tolerate the late \"\"payment\"\". Keshlam's option 1.5 in the comments above is the ideal way to settle in which both parties have learned a lesson and are at a loss. Demand the rent payment but settle for half as a one time courtesy. If this continues or this tenant has shown shady predicaments such as this, you should look for legal means to evict this tenant. College students are very creative and who's to say this won't happen again? \"\"The neighbors dog took my wallet.\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b80cd12b199c52298cec99dc26f6ee26",
"text": "\"That ain't nothing. It's really easy to get \"\"whipped up\"\" into a sense of entitlement, and forget to be grateful for what you do have. If this house doesn't exist, what would his costs of housing be elsewhere? Realistically. Would landlords rent to him? Would other bankers lend him money to buy a house? Would those costs really be any better? What about the intangible benefits like not having any landlord hassles or having a good relationship with the neighbors? It's entirely possible he has a sweet deal here, and just doesn't make enough money. If your credit rating is poor, your housing options really suck. Banks won't lend you money for a house unless you have a huge ton of upfront cash. Most landlords won't rent to you at all, because they are going to automated scoring systems to avoid accusations of racism. In this day and age, there are lots of ways to make money with a property you own. In fact, I believe very firmly in Robert Allen's doctrine: Never sell. That way you avoid the tens of thousands of dollars of overhead costs you bear with every sale. That's pure profit gone up in smoke. Keep the property forever, keep it working for you. If he doesn't know how, learn. To \"\"get bootstrapped\"\" he can put it up on AirBnB or other services. Or do \"\"housemate shares\"\". When your house is not show-condition, just be very honest and relatable about the condition. Don't oversell it, tell them exactly what they're going to get. People like honesty in the social sharing economy. And here's the important part: Don't booze away the new income, invest it back into the property to make it a better money-maker - better at AirBnB, better at housemate shares, better as a month-to-month renter. So it's too big - Is there a way to subdivide the unit to make it a better renter or AirBnB? Can he carve out an \"\"in-law unit\"\" that would be a good size for him alone? If he can keep turning the money back into the property like that, he could do alright. This is what the new sharing economy is all about. Of course, sister might show up with her hand out, wanting half the revenue since it's half her house. Tell her hell no, this pays the mortgage and you don't! She deserves nothing, yet is getting half the equity from those mortgage payments, and that's enough, doggone it! And if she wants to go to court, get a judge to tell her that. Not that he's going to sell it, but it's a huge deal. He needs to know how much of his payments on the house are turning into real equity that belongs to him. \"\"Owning it on paper\"\" doesn't mean you own it. There's a mortgage on it, which means you don't own all of it. The amount you own is the value of the house minus the mortgage owed. This is called your equity. Of course a sale also MINUS the costs of bringing the house up to mandatory code requirements, MINUS the cost of cosmetically making the house presentable. But when you actually sell, there's also the 6% Realtors' commission and other closing costs. This is where the mortgage is more than the house is worth. This is a dangerous situation. If you keep the house and keep paying the mortgage all right, that is stable, and can be cheaper than the intense disruption and credit-rating shock of a foreclosure or short sale. If sister is half owner, she'll get a credit burn also. That may be why she doesn't want to sell. And that is leverage he has over her. I imagine a \"\"Winter's bone\"\" (great movie) situation where the family is hanging on by a thread and hasn't told the bank the parents died. That could get very complex especially if the brother/sister are not creditworthy, because that means the bank would simply call the loan and force a sale. The upside is this won't result in a credit-rating burn or bankruptcy for the children, because they are not owners of the house and children do not inherit parents' debt.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "acd8edcab069333c4f0510ce02c9a3e2",
"text": "Personally, it is the tenant's stupidity to leave cash and not get a receipt. If it were me, I would demand payment. But then $750 to me is a lot more than it may be to others. This is entirely a personal decision, legally I don't think the tenant has a leg to stand on because they have no proof they actually paid you, regardless of how or where they 'left it'.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fe638c47505fa844419fd4a4523d8fb8",
"text": "\"A person can finance housing expenses in one of two ways. You can pay rent to a landlord. Or you can buy a house with a mortgage. In essence, you become your own landlord. That is, insta the \"\"renter\"\" pays an amount equal to the mortgage to insta the \"\"landlord,\"\" who pays it to the bank to reduce the mortgage. Ideally, your monthly debt servicing payments (minus tax saving on interest) should approximate the rent on the house. If they are a \"\"lot\"\" more, you may have overpaid for the house and mortgage. The advantage is that your \"\"rent\"\" is applied to building up equity (by reducing the mortgage) in your house. (And mortgage payments are tax deductible to the extent of interest expense.) At the end of 30 years, or whatever the mortgage term, you have \"\"portable equity\"\" in the form a fully paid house, that you can sell to move another house in Florida, or wherever you want to retire. Sometimes, you will \"\"get lucky\"\" if the value of the house skyrockets in a short time. Then you can borrow against your appreciation. But be careful, because \"\"sky rockets\"\" (in housing and elsewhere) often fall to earth. But this does represent another way to build up equity by owning a house.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d33cfed182d3f8615b0308ee695e4067",
"text": "As a landlord for 14 years with 10 properties, I can give a few pointers: be able and skilled enough to perform the majority of maintenance because this is your biggest expense otherwise. it will shock you how much maintenance rental units require. don't invest in real estate where the locality/state favors the tenant (e.g., New York City) in disputes. A great state is Florida where you can have someone evicted very quickly. require a minimum credit score of 620 for all tenants over 21. This seems to be the magic number that keeps most of the nightmare tenants out makes sure they have a job nearby that pays at least three times their annual rent every renewal, adjust your tenant's rent to be approximately 5% less than going rates in your area. Use Zillow as a guide. Keeping just below market rates keeps tenants from moving to cheaper options. do not rent to anyone under 30 and single. Trust me trust me trust me. you can't legally do this officially, but do it while offering another acceptable reason for rejection; there's always something you could say that's legitimate (bad credit, or chose another tenant, etc.) charge a 5% late fee starting 10 days after the rent is due. 20 days late, file for eviction to let the tenant know you mean business. Don't sink yourself too much in debt, put enough money down so that you start profitable. I made the mistake of burying myself and I haven't barely been able to breathe for the entire 14 years. It's just now finally coming into profitability. Don't get adjustable rate or balloon loans under any circumstances. Fixed 30 only. You can pay it down in 20 years and get the same benefits as if you got a fixed 20, but you will want the option of paying less some months so get the 30 and treat it like a 20. don't even try to find your own tenants. Use a realtor and take the 10% cost hit. They actually save you money because they can show your place to a lot more prospective tenants and it will be rented much sooner. Empty place = empty wallet. Also, block out the part of the realtor's agreement-to-lease where it states they keep getting the 10% every year thereafter. Most realtors will go along with this just to get the first year, but if they don't, find another realtor. buy all in the same community if you can, then you can use the same vendor list, the same lease agreement, the same realtor, the same documentation, spreadsheets, etc. Much much easier to have everything a clone. They say don't put all your eggs in one basket, but the reality is, running a bunch of properties is a lot of work, and the more similar they are, the more you can duplicate your work for free. That's worth a lot more day-to-day than the remote chance your entire community goes up in flames",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c36be7dadeacd4e48979890060af57f0",
"text": "You are being ripped off on several counts. 1) 40k is 26% not 25%. 2) Why should you pay them $500 rent? they bought a share of the property, they should fund it if they intend to keep 75% 3) Why do you need to pay them for the 75%? why dont they need to pay you for the 25%? You are better off getting a loan for the 75% and going solo so you get to buy equity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c868a5a5da49707a69a0ddc035f9c7a4",
"text": "\"This is fairly simple, actually. You should insist on payment for the rent payment you never received and stop accepting cash payments. If you want to be nice, and believe the story, allow the tenant additional time or payment in installments for the missing $750, but this is a textbook example of why it's a bad idea to transact with cash. Insist on cash equivalents that are traceable and verifiable - check, money order or cashier's check, made out to you or your company name. Also, for what it's worth, you are not out $750, unless you choose to be. Your tenant is. \"\"I put cash in your mailbox\"\" is not proof of payment, and doesn't fly as payment anywhere. If it did, I'd never pay any of my bills.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e4ad0be85a116bee864a1595dcdf6501",
"text": "Since the tenant reportedly left money in your mailbox, and now the money is missing, a crime must have been committed. As such, have her file a report with law enforcement and provide you with a copy of that report. Remind her that, for her safety, it is best to file the report during daylight hours with other people present. You didn't make it clear to your tenant the methods in which she could provide payment. That was a mistake. At the same time, her decision to leave cash in a mailbox was foolish. If she is willing to file a report with law enforcement and provide you with a copy, tell her that you will split the loss and only require half her rent as a one-time courtesy. Make it clear that you are losing half the money too. If she is not willing to file a report, require the full rent.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ebcb79a96f86abe400f39b4e584aba25",
"text": "It's very possible that someone would lie to their landlord/landlady, but not be prepared to lie to the police. So here's what I would do. Advise your tenant that since her money has been stolen from your letterbox, she should report the theft to the police. If she refuses to report the theft to the police, then her story is probably a lie. In which case, treat the rent as deliquent and demand payment in full. Invoke whatever kind of recourse is available in your jurisdiction. If she goes ahead and reports the theft, then it's very likely that her story is true. It's probably in your interest to stay on good terms with such a tenant, so you could offer to split the loss with her. But let her know that this is a one-time offer, and you won't be so generous again.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8dd79db65f2185bdc8fe64923d0173c3",
"text": "\"Is the mortgage debt too high? The rental property is in a hot RE market, so could be easily sold with significant equity. However, they would prefer to keep it. Given the current income, there is no stress. However in absence of any other liquid [cash/near cash] assets, having everything locked into Mortgage is quite high. Even if real estate builds assets, these are highly illiquid investments. Have debt on such investments is risky; if there are no other investments. Essentially everything looks fine now, but if there is an crisis, unwinding mortgage debt is time consuming and if it forces distress sale, it would wipe out any gains. Can they afford another mortgage, and in what amount? (e.g. they are considering $50K for a small cabin, which could be rented out). I guess they can. But should they? Or diversify into other assets like stocks etc. Other than setting cash aside, what would be some good uses of funds to make sure the money would appreciate and outpace inflation and add a nice bonus to retirement? Mutual Funds / Stocks / bullions / 401K or other such retirement plans. They are currently in mid-30's. If there is ONE key strategy or decision they could make today that would help them retire \"\"early\"\" (say, mid-50's), what should it be? This opinion based ... it depends on \"\"what their lifestyle is\"\" and what would they want their \"\"lifestyle\"\" to be when they retire. They should look at saving enough corpus that would give an year on year yield equivalent to the retirement expenses.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
1f4fc02a1c990eb516299103018e5265
|
How to transfer money to yourself internationally?
|
[
{
"docid": "29e0d619dd0009cb1e01b506531c63ad",
"text": "Hmmm... As far as I know wire transfers are still the best option. If you make sure your US account accepts international wires for free (like TD Bank does) you'll have eliminated most of the costs (assuming your foreign bank doesn't charge too much for wiring the funds in the first place). Also, if your able to, you could consider wiring 6 or so months at the same time. I'm not familiar with XE.com but it seems it's not set up for transferring money so much as for trading currencies. While you could probably use it to transfer funds if you'd link both your accounts it seems a rather complicated way to go about things. Paypal could be an option if they'd allow you to set up an account in each country (or if you have a relative that could help out), but it gets more expensive than wire-transfers quickly. As for getting the best exchange rate... I've given up on that a long time ago and have accepted that as the cost of living internationally :).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a4ea222c46b78da5d98cec42d6f91562",
"text": "I use XE.com for almost the same purpose. They have free transfer options, such as ACH withdrawals and deposits. I normally do a online bill payment through my international bank to XE, and have them deposit it in the US via ACH. It takes 1-3 business days, and there's no fee beyond their small percentage (about 1.25%) on top of the exchange rate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1fe0edeb6c6da8ee333bf55a13c5f35a",
"text": "Transferwise is a new peer-to-peer service that's setup to lower fees for international money transfers: https://transferwise.com",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7957baed2fcd5a97163f83bb26a8c990",
"text": "It really depends on the amount of money - I currently have to pay my mortgage in the UK from the US until my house there is sold and my wife sends money from her (US) Paypal account to my UK Paypal account. As personal payments these don't attract the sort of fees you see for ebay payments et al. Compared to the fee-o-rama that a wire transfer turns into (I tried once from BofA to HSBC UK), it is noticeably cheaper for the amount of money we're sending. That said, a lot of the currency transfer services have support for monthly payments and you might get a decent exchange rate and fewer (or no) fees that way.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "932ff960880f07599349b1c4836a52b9",
"text": "Although I have not tried, you can check out the Western Union Money Transfers. http://www.westernunion.com/WUCOMWEB/staticMid.do?method=load&pagename=serviceToBank",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "97d71f0aa71ee30780c8ca0195c66503",
"text": "To transfer US$30,000 from the USA to Europe, ask your European banker for the SWIFT transfer instructions. Typically in the USA the sending bank needs a SWIFT code and an account number, the name and address of the recipient, and the amount to transfer. A change of currency can be made as part of the transfer. The typical fee to do this is under US$100 and the time, under 2 days. But you should ask (or have the sender ask) the bank in the USA about the fees. In addition to the fee the bank may try to make a profit on the change of currency. This might be 1-2%. If you were going to do this many times, one way to go about it is to open an account at Interactive Brokers, which does business in various countries. They have a foreign exchange facility whereby you can deposit various currencies into your account, and they stay in that currency. You can then trade the currencies at market rates when you wish. They are also a stock broker and you can also trade on the various exchanges in different countries. I would say, though, they they mostly want customers already experienced with trading. I do not know if they will allow someone other than you to pay money into your account. Trading companies based in the USA do not like to be in the position of collecting on cheques owed to you, that is more the business of banks. Large banks in the USA with physical locations charge monthly fees of $10/mo or more that might be waived if you leave money on deposit. Online banks have significantly lower fees. All US banks are required to follow US anti-terrorist and anti-crime regulations and will tend to expect a USA address and identity documents to open an account with normal customers. A good international bank in Europe can also do many of these same sorts of things for you. I've had an account with Fortis. They were ok, there were no monthly fees but there were fees for transactions. In some countries I understand the post even runs a bank. Paypal can be a possibility, but fees can be high ~3% for transfers, and even higher commissions for currency change. On the other hand, it is probably one of the easiest and fastest ways to move amounts of $1000 or less, provided both people have paypal accounts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4d09b3d9cf7ceb80f318ecff449b2bfb",
"text": "You can use a service like Transferwise to send money. The trick is that they allow sending money to yourself, from a GBP account to an EUR account, effectively making it an exchange shop. Their rates are usually very good, with the transfers happening on the same day most of the time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6d404e48a37707fb85892c3a278a7bd5",
"text": "I can only imagine the regulatory difficulty you're going through, and for that I empathize. First, bankers everywhere mostly do not know if a bank policy is due to regulation or internal rules. Other banks may be more flexible, but only the most reputable should be used. Re Paypal, they first deposit 1 USD and then withdraw it, but things may be different in Cyprus. Also, Paypal now has debit cards, so if Paypal is permitted to issue cards in Russia then it could presumably be used in Cyprus. Again, local regulation notwithstanding. Paypal now has phone support at the very back of their site, so I suggest a call to them. In countries that permit, Western Union can be used to wire money into an account from cash. The Bitcoin route should be used as a last resort. You could wake up tomorrow losting 25% easy. The regulations are a distant second compared to this problem. With all of the above methods, there will be varying delays from days to weeks.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9ee43db088ef43126ad6e5f9efd1aec9",
"text": "\"I think you can do it as long as those money don't come from illegal activities (money laundering, etc). The only taxes you should pay are on the interest generated by those money while sitting in the UK bank account. Since I suppose you already paid taxes on those money in Greece while you were earning those money. About being audited, in my own experience banks don't ask you much where your money are coming from when you bring money to them, they are very willing to help, and happy. (It's a differnte story when you ask to borrow money). When I opened a bank account in US I did not even have an SSN, but they didn't care much they just took my passport and used the passport number for registering the account. Obviously on the interest generated by the money in the US bank account I had to pay taxes, but it was easy because I simply let the IRS via the bank to withdarw the 27% on the interest generated (not on the capital deposited). I didn't put a huge amount of money there I had to live there for 1 year or some more. Maybe if i deposited a huge amount of money someone would have come to ask me how did I make all those money, but those money were legally generated by me working in Italy before so I didn't have anything to be afraid about. BTW: in Italy I was thinking to move money to a German bank in Germany. The risk of default is a nightmare, something of completly new now in UE compared to the past where each state had its own currency. According to Muro history says that in case of default it happened that some government prevented people from withdrawing money form bank accounts: \"\"Yes, historically governments have shut down banks to prevent people from withdrawing their money in times of crisis. See Argentina circa 2001 or US during Great Depression. The government prevented people from withdrawing their money and people could do nothing while their money rapidly lost value.\"\" but in case Greece prevents people from withdrwaing money, those money are still in EURO, so i'm wondering what would be the effect. I mean would it be fair that a Greek guy can not withdraw is EURO money whilest an Italian guy can withdraw the same currency money in Italy?!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4be1712bc31d7fa78eee37ac2c171b30",
"text": "\"Your question asks \"\"how\"\" but \"\"if\"\" may be your issue. Most companies will not permit an external transfer while still employed, or under a certain age, 55 or so. If yours is one of the rare companies that permits a transfer, you simply open an IRA with the broker of your choice. Schwab, Fidelity, eTrade, or a dozen others. That broker will give you the paperwork you need to fill out, and they initiate the transfer. I assume you want an IRA in which you can invest in stocks or funds of your choosing. A traditional IRA. The term \"\"self-directed\"\" has another meaning, often associated with the account that permits real estate purchases inside the account. The brokers I listed do not handle that, those custodians have a different business model and are typically smaller firms with fewer offices, not country-wide.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3074655230caab150bc15cef1403b6f8",
"text": "The supposed cheapest way to do this is via a website like: https://transferwise.com/en They claim to have the best exchange rates compared to banks but I have never used them. If you do use them could you let us know in the comments as to how good they are?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3f86d9531054d39e2a41f39f593c483d",
"text": "Depending on your income/savings level and who you work for (if you work for a big company check with an HSBC Premier advisor, they may waive the requirements), you may qualify for an HSBC Premier account, which can allow you to open accounts in different countries and transfer money between them without a fee. You can also get a Premier account without meeting the requirements if you are willing to pay a monthly fee, but I doubt that will be worth it in the long run for what you need (worth doing the math though if you travel frequently). NOTE: There may be similar offerings from other banks, but this is just the only one I'm aware of.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "303f9e3c17e772c2531668aa10c2dfe7",
"text": "There is a fourth option - pay those taxes. Depending on the amounts, it might be the easiest way - if you make 34.49 in interest, and pay 6 $ in taxes on it, and be done, that might not be worth any other effort. If the expected taxable amount is significant, moving (most of it) to index funds or other simply switching existing investments to ‘reinvest’ instead of ‘pay out in cash’ would be the best approach. Again, some smaller amounts in savings or checkings accounts are probably not worth any effort. Transferring the money to the US doesn’t save you taxes, as any interest would still be taxable. You have a risk to lose on the conversion back and forth (and a potential to gain - the exchange rate could go either way!), so if you are sure you go back, it’s not a good idea to move the money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "658753afb2ce69e32d23b16aa02a4b7e",
"text": "If I understand TransferWise’s Supported Countries page correctly, you could use their service. I believe it should be cheaper than having the bank convert. I've been very happy with the service and use it regularly.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "05526b29a5ac2fc0279c9c880b6a6360",
"text": "Try looking at Transferwise. They have low fees and often beat the banks. They (broadly speaking) work by finding people who need to convert money the other way round and then just push money around in the respective local currency.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bf9423b9d4b925b1d38d1d09b0f2d4a8",
"text": "\"My solution when I lived in Singapore was to open an account with HSBC, who at the time also had branches in the US. When I was home, I used the same debit card, and the bank only charged a nominal currency exchange fee (since it never had to leave their system, it was lower than had it left their system). Another option, though slightly more costly, is to use Paypal. A third option is to cash-out in CAD and convert to USD at a \"\"large\"\" institution - the larger your deposit/conversion balance, the better the rate you can get. To the best of my knowledge, this shouldn't be taxable - presuming you've paid the taxes on it to start with, and you've been filing your IRS returns every year you've been in Canada.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f36e485e0a7440fb5ee9b39247f2c2c5",
"text": "A lot depends on how much is in the account, and whether you expect to be returning (or having any sort of financial dealings) in Europe in the future. My own experience (about 10 years out of date, and with Switzerland) is that the easiest way to transfer reasonable amounts (a few thousand dollars) was simply to get it in $100 bills from the European bank. I also kept the account open for a number of years while living in the US (doing contracting that was paid into the European bank), and could withdraw money from American ATMs. I eventually had to close the account due to issues between the bank and the IRS. I think it was only that particular bank (UBS) that was the problem, though.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e53fd9523e727727b8cc719c89d51ff5",
"text": "One way is to wire transfer large amounts. If you transfer $5,000 at one go, that $50 fee works out to 1%, same as the $5 on a $500 ATM withdrawal (and ATM fees, hidden and explicit, tend to be higher than $5). The downside is exchange rate risk (taking more money at one go exposes you to that day's rate, good or bad, vs taking it in multiple chunks). If you're American, you also have to report large transfers and foreign balances on your taxes. Shopping around for a good home bank (with low wire & foreign ATM fees), is quite important.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b2a42a43199544b13ae1fa3a02bd3d56",
"text": "\"The easiest and least expensive way of doing this, similar to the answer from Randy Coulman, is to write a check and deposit it into the Canadian Institution. Since this transfer is between accounts you own the easiest thing to do is to do a deposit by mail. Contact your current institution on where you would need to mail your deposit to. You can then write yourself a check on the US bank and mail it to the Canadian bank; be sure to write \"\"For Deposit Only\"\" along with your account number (and Branch Number for Canada) on the back. This is the slowest, but cheapest method. An alternative option is to use Wire Transfers, but they can be very costly (you'll usually incur a fee when sending and when receiving). I only recommend them when you need the money in the account fast (they are usually settled within an hour).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d494f736c2fe7c90d149b3ec3bbbcc0f",
"text": "There are several ways to minimize the international wire transfer fees: Transfer less frequently and larger amounts. The fees are usually flat, so transferring larger amounts lowers the fee percentage. 3% is a lot. In big banks, receiving is usually ~$15. If you transfer $1000 at a time, its 1.5%, if you transfer $10000 - it's much less, accordingly. If you have the time - have them send you checks (in US dollars) instead of wire transferring. It will be on hold for some time (up to a couple of weeks maybe), but will be totally free for you. I know that many banks have either free send and/or receive. I know that ETrade provides this service for free. My credit union provides if for free based on the relationship level, I have a mortgage with them now, so I don't pay any fees at all, including for wire transfer. Consider other options, like Western Union. Those may cost more for the sender (not necessarily though), but will be free for the receiver. You can get the money in cash, or checks, which you can just deposit on your regular bank account. For smaller amounts, it should be much cheaper than wire transfer, for example - sending $500 to India costs $10, while wire transfer is $30.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
7375cb9dc5717879e046ec07be18a96b
|
Bringing money to UK for investment purposes
|
[
{
"docid": "9ad90a43dbbddabdd2b952044b0237b6",
"text": "Transfers of money to the UK for any purpose are not generally taxed, so you can just transfer it here and invest. Once the money is here, you'll be taxed on the business activity like anyone else - the company will have to pay corporation tax, and depending on your own residency you might have to pay income tax on any distributions from the company.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "b528f2b68ccc47dd8e86323231c148b1",
"text": "\"No. This is too much for most individuals, even some small to medium businesses. When you sell that investment, and take the cheque into the foreign bank and wire it back to the USA in US dollars, you will definitely obtain the final value of the investment, converted to US$. Thats what you wanted, right? You'll get that. If you also hedge, unless you have a situation where it is a perfect hedge, then you are gambling on what the currencies will do. A perfect hedge is unusual for what most individuals are involved in. It looks something like this: you know ForeignCorp is going to pay you 10 million quatloos on Dec 31. So you go to a bank (probably a foreign bank, I've found they have lower limits for this kind of transaction and more customizable than what you might create trading futures contracts), and tell them, \"\"I have this contract for a 10 million quatloo receivable on Dec 31, I'd like to arrange a FX forward contract and lock in a rate for this in US$/quatloo.\"\" They may have a credit check or a deposit for such an arrangement, because as the rates change either the bank will owe you money or you will owe the bank money. If they quote you 0.05 US$/quatloo, then you know that when you hand the cheque over to the bank your contract payment will be worth US$500,000. The forward rate may differ from the current rate, thats how the bank accounts for risk and includes a profit. Even with a perfect hedge, you should be able to see the potential for trouble. If the bank doesnt quite trust you, and hey, banks arent known for trust, then as the quatloo strengthens relative to the US$, they may suspect that you will walk away from the deal. This risk can be reduced by including terms in the contract requiring you to pay the bank some quatloos as that happens. If the quatloo falls you would get this money credited back to your account. This is also how futures contracts work; there it is called \"\"mark to market accounting\"\". Trouble lurks here. Some people, seeing how they are down money on the hedge, cancel it. It is a classic mistake because it undoes the protection that one was trying to achieve. Often the rate will move back, and the hedger is left with less money than they would have had doing nothing, even though they bought a perfect hedge.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "27956ee0d314fb8c8e1a361b3b04ae07",
"text": "I would say your decision making is reasonable. You are in the middle of Brexit and nobody knows what that means. Civil society in the United States is very strained at the moment. The one seeming source of stability in Europe, Germany, may end up with a very weakened government. The only country that is probably stable is China and it has weak protections for foreign investors. Law precedes economics, even though economics often ends up dictating the law in the long run. The only thing that may come to mind is doing two things differently. The first is mentally dropping the long-term versus short-term dichotomy and instead think in terms of the types of risks an investment is exposed to, such as currency risk, political risk, liquidity risk and so forth. Maturity risk is just one type of risk. The second is to consider taking some types of risks that are hedged either by put contracts to limit the downside loss, or consider buying longer-dated call contracts using a small percentage of your money. If the underlying price falls, then the call contracts will be a total loss, but if the price increases then you will receive most of the increase (minus the premium). If you are uncomfortable purchasing individual assets directly, then I would say you are probably doing everything that you reasonably can do.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "326e509907a0cd7a78e5cf4f2abef8db",
"text": "A) a tax treaty probably covers this for the avoidance of double taxation. Tax treaties can be very cryptic and have little precedence clarifying them http://www.irs.gov/businesses/international/article/0,,id=169552,00.html B) I'm going to say NO since the source of your income is going to be US based. But the UK tax laws might also have specific verbage for resident source income. sorry it is an inconclusive answer, but should be some factors to consider and point you in the right direction.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4bc6f91fe7edad1c5665a4051f60710d",
"text": "Can I transfer these money to India in my saving account? What will be tax implication to me? Yes you can. Whether you transfer to India or not does not change your tax obligation. If I understand correctly you are being paid an allowance in UK to cover your expense. If you are saving; then the saving portion is treated as income and you have to self declare this and pay tax according to you tax bracket. Can I transfer these money to my wife's account as a gift? What will be tax implication to me and my wife? There is no tax obligation to your wife. The tax obligation remain same to you as in first point. What if i transfer these money as loan refund to my friend? What will be tax implication for these to me and my friend? If there is proper paper trial to show your friend loaned you a sum at zero percentage and you have paid back; amounts are not to large; then there is no tax obligation to your friend. The tax obligation remains same to you as in point 1.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3bc01e681551f89397ada2de94172c65",
"text": "\"Is he affiliated with the company charging this fee? If so, 1% is great. For him. You are correct, this is way too high. Whatever tax benefit this account provides is negated over a sufficiently long period of time. you need a different plan, and perhaps, a different friend. I see the ISA is similar to the US Roth account. Post tax money deposited, but growth and withdrawals tax free. (Someone correct, if I mis-read this). Consider - You deposit £10,000. 7.2% growth over 10 years and you'd have £20,000. Not quite, since 1% is taken each year, you have £18,250. Here's what's crazy. When you realize you lost £1750 to fees, it's really 17.5% of the £10,000 your account would have grown absent those fees. In the US, our long term capital gain rate is 15%, so the fees after 10 years more than wipe out the benefit. We are not supposed to recommend investments here, but it's safe to say there are ETFs (baskets of stocks reflecting an index, but trading like an individual stock) that have fees less than .1%. The UK tag is appreciated, but your concern regarding fees is universal. Sorry for the long lecture, but \"\"1%, bad.\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b8bc5ac6fc7eafb3ec03c29d82e651ec",
"text": "\"The London Stock Exchange offers a wealth of exchange traded products whose variety matches those offered in the US. Here is a link to a list of exchange traded products listed on the LSE. The link will take you to the list of Vanguard offerings. To view those offered by other managers, click on the letter choices at the top of the page. For example, to view the iShares offerings, click on \"\"I\"\". In the case of Vanguard, the LSE listed S&P500 ETF is traded under the code VUSA. Similarly, the Vanguard All World ETF trades under the code VWRL. You will need to be patient viewing iShares offerings since there are over ten pages of them, and their description is given by the abbreviation \"\"ISH name\"\". Almost all of these funds are traded in GBP. Some offer both currency hedged and currency unhedged versions. Obviously, with the unhedged version you are taking on additional currency risk, so if you wish to avoid currency risk then choose a currency hedged version. Vanguard does not appear to offer currency hedged products in London while iShares does. Here is a list of iShares currency hedged products. As you can see, the S&P500 currency hedged trades under the code IGUS while the unhedged version trades under the code IUSA. The effects of BREXIT on UK markets and currency are a matter of opinion and difficult to quantify currently. The doom and gloom warnings of some do not appear to have materialised, however the potential for near-term volatility remains so longs as the exit agreement is not formalised. In the long-term, I personally believe that BREXIT will, on balance, be a positive for the UK, but that is just my opinion.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bbdd8fbfdd03c6f00f46a2dbba6e00fd",
"text": "\"Although there are occasional cases where simply moving money between countries results in a tax liability - for example a \"\"non-domiciled\"\" UK resident using the \"\"remittance basis\"\" - this is not the case in your situation. In general it would be extremely rare for non-residents of a country to be taxed on bringing money into that country, as it would be bad for tourism which most countries want to encourage. The requirement to declare large sums of money on entry is primarily so that the authorities can detect money laundering, rather than tax. Note that you will have to pay US tax on any interest you earn on that US bank account.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3a3ace553b8d5770299f9fc3f60b1b86",
"text": "I've done this for many years, and my method has always been to get a bank draft from my Canadian bank and mail it to my UK bank. The bank draft costs $7.50 flat fee and the mail a couple of dollars more. That's obviously quite a lot to pay on $100, so I do this only every six months or so and make the regular payments out of my UK account. It ends up being only a couple of percent in transaction costs, and the exchange rate is the bank rate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eafe19575c9337cfa63e45572f1e32ba",
"text": "Huh. It appears it's only currencies in sterling that are fully exempt. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/capital-gains-manual/cg12602 Government manuals are more detailed than .gov but still not perfect as it's HMRCs interpretation of legislation and has been overturned in the past. There is also another (old) article here about foreign currency transactions. https://www.taxation.co.uk/articles/2010/10/27/21191/currency-gains I have never come across forex capital gains in practice but I've learnt something today! Something to look out for in the UK as well I guess.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "96be13de93592923809ea5d881ff9459",
"text": "\"The simple answer would be - if you want to take Euros from Germany to Spain as cash and deposit them, you're not breaking any laws, there is nothing to declare to customs (you're still in the EU), it is not \"\"income\"\" so there is nothing to tax, and your bank should be able to receive it without issue (no currency conversion after all). It does however come with the risk of loss/theft en route. So it really depends on how comfortable you are walking around with that much on your person. If you don't want to carry that much around and your banks are imposing unreasonable fees, here's something you could investigate further (I have not tested it myself): Transferwise offers a service that lets people send money to foreign accounts (in different currencies) for a small fee, at mid-market rates. However, they also offer a \"\"request money\"\" feature which allows EUR-EUR transfers (and some other same currency transfers). So perhaps you could use this feature to simply request money from yourself. The requester puts in how much they want to receive. Then they send a generated link to the other party. When clicked, that link sets up a transaction for the requested amount, and sometimes a nominal fee (I created a link for a GBP-GBP transfer and it wanted 1 pound extra, but when I did the same for EUR-EUR it didn't want any extra). I assume you would need two Transferwise accounts, though maybe not? And I'm not sure whether doing this is technically allowed in their terms of service, so you should read those to be sure. The advantage, if this works, is that neither bank sees it as a \"\"transfer\"\". Rather, the originating bank makes a payment to Transferwise, and then Transferwise makes a deposit to the receiving account. So I can't imagine either bank would be able to impose their foreign-bank-transfer fees for the transaction. https://transferwise.com/request-money I have used Transferwise for currency conversions, but not the request money feature, maybe other users could chime in if they have used it.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c3ec6d61e453281b731ba7543c99feb8",
"text": "\"Money in your NRE/NRO account is your property and moving it to the U.K. is not a taxable event in the U.K. or in India. Extra paperwork is needed for transfer from an NRO account to prove that you have indeed paid taxes (or had taxes withheld) on the money in the NRO account to the Indian Government. Search this site for \"\"15CB\"\" and \"\"15CA\"\" for details.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f0b948d3ba6bb0db71fe1c892cbab69d",
"text": "There are restrictions on transferring money OUT OF Egypt (although less tight than previously: http://www.aawsat.net/2014/01/article55326839 ) but there aren't any such restrictions on sending money INTO Egypt. If you go to HSBC's retail UK banking pages and locate the page for International Money Transfers, http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/international-money-transfer you can see that you can transfer up to £50,000 per day into Egypt via online banking, £10,000 via telephone banking, or unlimited by visiting the branch. I'm not sure exactly what question you asked them or exactly what they said to you in response, but it sounds like there was some misunderstanding along the way.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c75297b62f73553ec352cda7a9fff1b6",
"text": "\"I've done exactly what you say at one of my brokers. With the restriction that I have to deposit the money in the \"\"right\"\" way, and I don't do it too often. The broker is meant to be a trading firm and not a currency exchange house after all. I usually do the exchange the opposite of you, so I do USD -> GBP, but that shouldn't make any difference. I put \"\"right\"\" in quotes not to indicate there is anything illegal going on, but to indicate the broker does put restrictions on transferring out for some forms of deposits. So the key is to not ACH the money in, nor send a check, nor bill pay it, but rather to wire it in. A wire deposit with them has no holds and no time limits on withdrawal locations. My US bank originates a wire, I trade at spot in the opposite direction of you (USD -> GBP), wait 2 days for the trade to settle, then wire the money out to my UK bank. Commissions and fees for this process are low. All told, I pay about $20 USD per xfer and get spot rates, though it does take approx 3 trading days for the whole process (assuming you don't try to wait for a target rate but rather take market rate.)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b333300fe111ad7b459f9ec0a85ee48d",
"text": "You would think so wouldn't you, after all, it's your money! In practise though, it's not as easy as you might think because anti money laundering and anti fraud laws mean you generally have to withdraw money to the same account you funded your trading from. Some forex trading account providers will allow you to fund from multiple sources, but then insist on putting money back to those sources in some proportion or some order or other. Some forex trading account providers at least claim that they may, AT THEIR DISCRETION, let you do it, IF the destination account is in the same name, but I wouldn't be surprised if they charged you for it, and actually the charges might be somewhat justified if they have to invoke identification procedures to make sure the other account is indeed actually you. You would have to talk to a specific service provider and see if they agree to do what you want, they all have FAQs about funding and withdrawal so you can scan around online for the slightly more flexible ones and then give them a call. You might find it difficult to get any guarantees out of them though.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "88c461ef9c397b80086de1ac45b49a68",
"text": "I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say, but in general its pretty simple: She goes to the UK bank and requests a wire transfer, providing your details as a recipient. You then go to your bank, fill the necessary forms for the money-laundaring regulations, you probably also need to pay the taxes on the money to the IRS, and then you have it. If you have 1 million dollars (or is it pounds?), I'm sure you can afford spending several hundreds for a tax attorney to make sure your liabilities are reduced to minimum.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
62fe2b2f587b04af0b9512a0ce165194
|
Does an employee have the right to pay the federal and state taxes themselves instead of having employer doing it?
|
[
{
"docid": "6e823a2231fe80ac405b0c2fe35a9cf4",
"text": "You can file a revised W-4 with your employer claiming more allowances than you do now. More allowances means less Federal tax and (if applicable and likely with a separate form) less state tax. This doesn't affect social security and Medicare with holding, though. That being said, US taxes are on a pay-as-you-go system. If the IRS determines that you're claiming more allowances than you're eligible for and not paying the proper taxes throughout the year, they will hit you with an underpayment penalty fee, which would likely negate the benefits of keeping that money in the first place. This is why independent contractors and self-employed people pay quarterly or estimated taxes. Depending on the employer, they may require proof of the allowances for adjustment before they accept the revised W-4.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8c603167c675f3637dff7e128e8c4512",
"text": "No. An employer is legally obliged to deduct taxes from your pay cheque and send them to the IRS. The only way round that is to either provide evidence of deductions that would reduce your tax bill to nothing, or to become self-employed.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b785bcf974c97d43b0f71c871e9a9f2a",
"text": "No, even businesses pay taxes quarterly. So if you formed Nathan, LLC, or otherwise became self employed, you'd still have to file quarterly estimates and make tax payments. This would cause taxes to be a much more high touch part of your life. However, you should ensure that you're claiming the proper exemptions etc to avoid excessive withholding.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "b17812fbcc51ba2eaa7f18c455796b30",
"text": "Should I have a W-2 re-issued? A W-2 can be corrected and a new copy will be filed with the IRS if your employer incorrectly reported your income and withholding on a W-2 that they issued. In this case, though the employer didn't withhold those taxes, they should not reissue the W-2 unless they plan to pay your portion of the payroll taxes that were not withheld. (If they paid your share of the taxes, that would increase your gross income.) Who pays for the FICA I should have paid last year? Both you and your employer owe 7.65% each for FICA taxes. By law your employer is required to pay their half and you are required to pay your half. Both you and your employer owe additional taxes because of this mistake. Your other questions assume that your employer will pay your portion of the taxes withheld. You employer could decide to do that, but this also assumes that it was your employer's fault that the mistakes were made. If you transitioned to resident alien but did not inform your employer, how is that your employer's fault?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c8429265033f2b74acb269e7e2c43e9f",
"text": "In the USA, you probably owe Self Employment Tax. The cutoff for tax on this is 400$. You will need to file a tax return and cover the medicaid expenses as if you were both the employer and employee. In addition, if he earns income from self-employment, he may owe Self-Employment Tax, which means paying both the employee’s and employer's share of Social Security and Medicaid taxes. The trigger for Self Employment Tax has been $400 since 1990, but the IRS may change that in the future. Also see the IRS website. So yes, you need to file your taxes. How much you will pay is determined by exactly how much your income is. If you don't file, you probably won't be audited, however you are breaking the law and should be aware of the consequences.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dea7c7689275e326ed6b5c49f6b24906",
"text": "Businesses do not pay income tax on money that they pay out as salary to their employees. Businesses generally only pay income tax on profit. Profit is the money that comes in (revenue) minus the business expenses. Payroll to the employees is a deductible business expense.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "390d6a4321ba550ab4081a7c24fe69a9",
"text": "As a resident of New York State you will, in addition to the Federal income tax handled by the IRS, be responsible for state and local income taxes. For New York the state tax forms are also used to determine your New York city tax. If HR was either not aware of the local tax requirement for New York or you filled out the New York State version of the W-4 incorrectly you may have had too little tax withheld for New York state. The refund from the IRS is not dependent on the refund/owe status for state and local taxes. It is possible that your state taxes are fine but that you owe taxes to the city. That tax you owe to the city will reduce the refund from the state and may require you to pay money to New York. Of course if you do itemize, what you pay to the state and city may result in deductions on your federal form. If you owe back taxes to the state or local government this could result in the IRS seizing a federal refund, but that doesn't happen right away.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c6019c84871971a919272101d493033a",
"text": "I would talk to your HMRC tax office they do have guidance on this issue here http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/working/intro/employed-selfemployed.htm",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e9724203d4f5b5c13be3e4ffa92717c5",
"text": "I would think that the real teeth here would be the IRS, should they look into it (and they should). Splitting paychecks to avoid overtime also reduces taxes paid, which is large scale tax fraud, which generally leads to a sentence in gently-caress-my-bum-Federal-Penitentiary.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "691b6d6029c2f362848881780986f078",
"text": "I think you can. I went to Mexico for business and the company paid for it, so if you are self employed you should be able to expense it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bd0cd1ffc0e6c65e00d41375c1a05379",
"text": "The companies give jack shit about what the taxpayers have to pay. They only lower their own expenses. Without collective bargaining power, and forcing competing companies to have the same expenses, the employees will quite simply be screwed. Systems setup by the government on the other hand supply both. Also, what about those without earned income... What do people deserve if they do not (currently or ever) contribute to the economy? In part it depends on what kind of society one wants to live in, I guess, and whether the people are willing to keep the government functioning for the common good.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "70a52b4c0f3fde7f782b50da8799b4a9",
"text": "\"If a country had a genuine completely flat income tax system, then it wouldn't matter who paid the tax since it doesn't depend on the employee's other income. Since not many countries run this, it doesn't really make sense for the employee to \"\"take the burden\"\" of the tax, as opposed to merely doing the administration and paying the (probable) amount of tax at payroll, leaving the employee to use their personal tax calculation to correct the payment if necessary. Your prospective employer is probably saying that your tax calculation in Singapore is so simple they can do it for you. They may or may not need to know a lot of information about you in order to do this calculation, depending what the Singapore tax authorities say. If you're not a Singapore national, they may or may not be relying on bilateral tax agreements with your country to assert that you won't have to pay any further tax on the income in your own country. It's possible they're merely asserting that you won't owe anything else in Singapore, and in fact you will have taxes to report (even if it's just reporting to your home tax authority that you've already paid the tax). Still, for a foreign worker a guarantee you won't have to deal with the local tax authority is a good thing to have even if that's all it is. Since there doesn't appear to be any specific allowance for \"\"tax free money\"\" in the Singapore tax system, it looks like what you have here is \"\"just\"\" the employer agreeing to do something that will normally result in the correct tax being paid in your behalf. This isn't uncommon, but it's also not exactly what you asked for. And in particular if you have two jobs in Singapore then they can't both be doing this, since tax is not flat. The example calculation includes varying tax rates for the first X amount of income that (I assume without checking) are per person, not per employment. Joe's answer has the link. In practice in the UK (for example), there are plenty of UK nationals working in the UK who don't need to do a full tax return and whose tax is collected entirely at source (between PAYE and deductions on bank interest and suchlike). In this sense the employer is required by law to take the responsibility for doing the admin and making the tax payments to HMRC. Note that a UK employer doesn't need to know your circumstances in detail to make the correct payroll deductions: all they need is a so-called \"\"tax code\"\", which is calculated by HMRC and communicated to the employer, and which basically encodes how much they can pay you at zero rate before the various tax rate tiers kick in. That's all the employer needs to know here for the typical employee: they don't need to know precisely what credits and liabilities resulted in the figure. However, these employers still don't offer empoyees a net salary (that is, they don't take on the tax burden), because different employees will have different tax codes, which the employer would in effect be cancelling out by offering to pay two people the same net salary regardless of their individual circumstances. The indications seem to be that the same applies in Singapore: this offer is really a net salary subject to certain assumptions (the main one being that you have no other tax liabilities in Singapore). If you're a Singapore millionaire taking that job for fun, you might find that the employer doesn't/can't take on your non-standard tax liability on this marginal income.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "acaf0037dbf1ceb8761d571c06a645fe",
"text": "There are certain situations where you could legally pay yourself rent, but it'd be in the context of multiple business entities interacting, never in the context of an individual renting their own property. Even if you could, any rent paid to yourself would count as rental income, so there'd be no benefit. Edit: I was hunting for examples where it might be acceptable, and didn't, but I found a good explanation as to why it is not acceptable from Brandon Hall on a BiggerPockets post: To get technical, you will be going up against the Economic Substance Doctrine which states that a transaction has economic substance if: (1) the transaction changes in a meaningful way (apart from Federal income tax effects) the taxpayer’s economic position; and (2) the taxpayer has a substantial purpose (apart from Federal income tax effects) for entering into such transaction. By transferring your primary residence into a LLC, you would not be changing your economic position. Further, you do not have a substantial purpose for entering into such transaction other than to simply avoid paying federal income taxes. So it might make sense if multiple people owned the LLC that owned the property you wanted to rent, and there are instances where company X owns holding company Y that owns an office building that company X rents space in. But if you're the sole player in the LLC's then it sounds like a no-go.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b53a96763ca7c8a044099cc57e193c1e",
"text": "\"I did a little research and found this article from 2006 by a Villanova law professor, titled \"\"No Thanks, Uncle Sam, You Can Keep Your Tax Break\"\". The final paragraph of the article says: Under these circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that a taxpayer is not required to claim a allowable deduction unless a statutory provision so requires, or a binding judicial precedent so specifies. It would be unwise, of course, to forego a deduction that the IRS considers mandatory such as those claimed by self-employed individuals with respect to their self-employment, whether for purposes of the self-employment tax or the earned income tax credit. Until the statute is changed or some other binding authority is issued, there is no reason taxpayers who wish to forego deductions, such as the dependency exemption deduction, should hesitate in doing so. (The self-employment tax issues in the quote cited by CQM are explicitly discussed in the article as one of a few special kinds of deduction which are mandatory.) This is not a binding statement: it's not law or even official IRS policy. You could never use it as a defense in the event that this professor turned out to be wrong and the IRS decided to go after you anyway. However, it is a clear statement from a credible, qualified source.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6079b215abcfc0a68bac04946edc29a9",
"text": "@littleadv is right, this depends on your country. Furthermore, this is likely to depend on the type of business you own (in the US: LLC, S-corp, C-corp). In some countries you have to provide yourself a minimum wage if you are classified as a major shareholder and work for the company. When there is a minimum level of wage you have to pay yourself the tax rate on wages is typically higher than on dividends. The wage you then receive is taxed in line with normal wage taxation rules. Above the minimum wage you can pay yourself in dividends.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4e5c747746142c0d25d8674c0f3044c0",
"text": "\"They are basically asking for the name of the legal entity that they should write on the check. You, as a person, are a legal entity, and so you can have them pay you directly, by name. This is in effect a \"\"sole proprietorship\"\" arrangement and it is the situation of most independent contractors; you're working for yourself, and you get all the money, but you also have all the responsibility. You can also set up a legal alias, or a \"\"Doing Business As\"\" (DBA) name. The only thing that changes versus using your own name is... well... that you aren't using your own name, to be honest. You pay some trivial fee for the paperwork to the county clerk or other office of record, and you're now not only John Doe, you're \"\"Zolani Enterprises\"\", and your business checks can be written out to that name and the bank (who will want a copy of the DBA paperwork to file when you set the name up as a payable entity on the account) will cash them for you. An LLC, since it was mentioned, is a \"\"Limited Liability Company\"\". It is a legal entity, incorporeal, that is your \"\"avatar\"\" in the business world. It, not you, is the entity that primarily faces anyone else in that world. You become, for legal purposes, an agent of that company, authorized to make decisions on its behalf. You can do all the same things, make all the same money, but if things go pear-shaped, the company is the one liable, not you. Sounds great, right? Well, there's a downside, and that's taxes and the increased complexity thereof. Depending on the exact structure of the company, the IRS will treat the LLC either as a corporation, a partnership, or as a \"\"disregarded entity\"\". Most one-man LLCs are typically \"\"disregarded\"\", meaning that for tax purposes, all the money the company makes is treated as if it were made by you as a sole proprietor, as in the above cases (and with the associated increased FICA and lack of tax deductions that an \"\"employee\"\" would get). Nothing can be \"\"retained\"\" by the company, because as far as the IRS is concerned it doesn't exist, so whether the money from the profits of the company actually made it into your personal checking account or not, it has to be reported by you on the Schedule C. You can elect, if you wish, to have the LLC treated as a corporation; this allows the corporation to retain earnings (and thus to \"\"own\"\" liquid assets like cash, as opposed to only fixed assets like land, cars etc). It also allows you to be an \"\"employee\"\" of your own company, and pay yourself a true \"\"salary\"\", with all the applicable tax rules including pre-tax healthcare, employer-paid FICA, etc. However, the downside here is that some money is subject to double taxation; any monies \"\"retained\"\" by the company, or paid out to members as \"\"dividends\"\", is \"\"profit\"\" of the company for which the company is taxed at the corporate rate. Then, the money from that dividend you receive from the company is taxed again at the capital gains rate on your own 1040 return. This also means that you have to file taxes twice; once for the corporation, once for you as the individual. You can't, of course, have it both ways with an LLC; you can't pay yourself a true \"\"salary\"\" and get the associated tax breaks, then receive leftover profits as a \"\"distribution\"\" and avoid double taxation. It takes multiple \"\"members\"\" (owners) to have the LLC treated like a partnership, and there are specific types of LLCs set up to handle investments, where some of what I've said above doesn't apply. I won't get into that because the question inferred a single-owner situation, but the tax rules in these additional situations are again different.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a8ea55b8b623ba0c931af98338036e0b",
"text": "\"In the United States, with an S-Corp, you pay yourself a salary from company earnings. That portion is taxed at an individual rate. The rest of the company earnings are taxed as a corporation, which often have great tax benefits. If you are making over $80K/year, the difference can be substantial. A con is that there is more paperwork and you have to create a \"\"board\"\" of advisors.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d31afd12a64e4b2b71c28cdd1bfc7dee",
"text": "As others have mentioned yes it is taxable. Whether it goes through payroll and has FICA taken out is your issue in terms that you need to report it and you will an extra 7.5% self employment taxes that would normally be covered by your employer. Your employer may have problems but that isn't your issue. Contrary to what other users are saying chances are there won't be any penalties for you. Best case you have already paid 100% of last years tax liability and you can file your normal tax return with no issues. Worst case you need to pay quarterly taxes on that amount in the current quarter. IRS quarters are a little weird but I think you need to pay by Jan 15th for a December payment. You don't have to calculate your entire liability you can just fill out the very short form and attach a check for about what you will owe. There is a form you can fill out to show what quarter you received the money and you paid in it is a bit more complex but will avoid the penalty. For penalties quarterly taxes count in the quarter received where as payroll deductions count as if they were paid in the first quarter of the year. From the IRS The United States income tax is a pay-as-you-go tax, which means that tax must be paid as you earn or receive your income during the year. You can either do this through withholding or by making estimated tax payments. If you do not pay your tax through withholding, or do not pay enough tax that way, you might also have to pay estimated taxes. If you did not pay enough tax throughout the year, either through withholding or by making estimated tax payments, you may have to pay a penalty for underpayment of estimated tax. Generally, most taxpayers will avoid this penalty if they owe less than $1,000 in tax after subtracting their withholdings and credits, or if they paid at least 90% of the tax for the current year, or 100% of the tax shown on the return for the prior year, whichever is smaller.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
fc22eb72fb7a54e1f3bad44f41372044
|
Do my parents need to pay me minimum wage?
|
[
{
"docid": "6218612dc59b0980c2ead70ffc9ac90c",
"text": "Yes they do. Here is the main page on minimum wage for the province of British Columbia. This page lists exemptions from BC minimum wage laws, but there are none for working in a family business, or for being underage. Students are exempted only if they are on approved work study. Generally all provinces apply minimum wage laws to every employee.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3ebc53826c024c667f0b10d903d8ae4f",
"text": "\"There is actually a restriction on how high a wage they can pay you. There didn't use to be, but now it has to be reasonable for the work you are doing, so they can't pay you $100/hr while other people doing the same work get minimum wage. You might ask why on earth a parent would want to pay a child way more than they're worth? The salary is tax deductible to the company. Then the child pays their \"\"expenses\"\" - hockey fees and equipment, field trips, birthday presents for their friends and so on - out of the money the company paid them. They also save for their post-secondary education. The rest of the family budget now has a little more room, and the parents can lower their own salaries if they have expensive children. This means more net money in the company and less total income tax paid by the family for the same total income. My concern is that if your parents don't know whether or not you must be paid minimum wage (you must, there's no family exemption) then they also don't know whether you should have EI deducted (probably not) and various other special cases like eligibility for summer student subsidies. The firm's accountant should be able to help with these things and the company should know all this. It's not the role of a 14 year old to ask the Internet how to run a business, the business owners should know it.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "d309c1285c4ff1de58ed745230afc016",
"text": "The problem is not just the minimum wage. It's that the minimum wage is not enough to live on, and yet it's simultaneously extremely difficult to earn more than minimum wage if you're trapped in the cycle of earning minimum wage and spending all your money and free time keeping your head above water.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c26adec9cef75f007e818799e32d911c",
"text": "Grants come in several flavors: federal aid, college aid, and independent aid. We'll immediately ignore the last option, independent aid (usually in the forms of scholarships), as these can come from all sorts of organizations for various reasons and are generally merit-based. For federal and college aid, you will need to file a FAFSA. Since your parents are divorced, you will need to use the financial information of whichever one of them you lived with more during the last 12 months. Once you submit the FAFSA, you will receive your EFC, which is the amount of money your family is estimated to be able to contribute to your education for the year. The EFC isn't an obligation, but the simplified formula to determine how much you are in need is: (tuition cost + room and board + overhead (books, transport, etc)) - EFC = estimated need. This need will then allow your school to give you an aid package which is comprised of federal loans, grants, work-study programs, and college grants/scholarships (a scholarship is based on some kind of merit, be it academic or something else, while a grant is either general or need-based). There is no good way to determine how much you will be given, so apply and find out. You may be able to talk with a financial aid officer at your school for an estimate, but it would just be an educated guess. If you have an EFC lower than your estimated yearly cost, you will generally be offered a Pell grant by the government (free money, basically) which currently has a yearly cap of $5775, though you may receive less than this. There are also a few other federal grant programs if you have exceptional financial need, but all of the grants are determined for you, you can't apply for them. Your college may also assign grants based on its own internal programs, and like federal funding you can't ask for them, they are simply given as part of an aid package. Lastly, you will probably be offered a combination of subsidized, unsubsidized, and parent loans to cover any difference in cost vs funding. There are also work-study programs you can opt in for, which is just an on-campus job in some capacity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d2b3ac3e04f16008caaa1ceb136d3ef0",
"text": "If you think that your parents' home is in danger, you might want to check what it would take to make sure their house is safe, and what the financial situation actually is. You are paying rent, there are brothers who may or may not be paying rent. We don't have the information, you have. Saving that house might be a worthwhile investment. I assume that if you moved out, either rented or by buying a house, they wouldn't get any rent from you anymore and whatever the situation is, it would be much worse.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "283aec045c7f9a9ebbd33dc6f9a26f8c",
"text": "Is your argument that a company should be responsible for paying an employee enough to support whatever lifestyle that employee chooses? Because that's definitely what it sounds like you're arguing for. The minimum wage should be exactly $0. If you don't have the skills to earn enough to support yourself, then you need better skills not laws forcing someone to pay you more money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "56366def285b890e0e187764b2691abf",
"text": "\"After doing a little research, I was actually surprised to find many internet resources on this topic (including sites from Intuit) gave entirely incorrect information. The information that follows is quoted directly from IRS Publication 929, rules for dependents First, I will assume that you are not living on your own, and are claimed as a \"\"dependent\"\" on someone else's tax return (such as a parent or guardian). If you were an \"\"emancipated minor\"\", that would be a completely different question and I will ignore this less-common case. So, how much money can you make, as a minor who is someone else's dependent? Well, the most commonly quoted number is $6,300 - but despite this numbers popularity, this is not true. This is how much you can earn in wages from regular employment without filing your own tax return, but this does not apply to your scenario. Selling your products online as an independent game developer would generally be considered self-employment income, and according to the IRS: A dependent must also file a tax return if he or she: Had wages of $108.28 or more from a church or qualified church-controlled organization that is exempt from employer social security and Medicare taxes, or Had net earnings from self-employment of at least $400. So, your first $400 in earnings triggers absolutely no requirement to file a tax return - blast away, and good luck! After that, you do not necessarily owe much in taxes, however you will need to file a tax return even if you owe $0, as this was self-employment income. If you had, for instance, a job at a grocery store, you could earn up to $6,300 without filing a return, because the store would be informing the IRS about your employment anyway - as well as deducting Medicare and Social Security payments, etc. How much tax will you pay as your income grows beyond $400? Based upon the IRS pages for Self-Employment Tax and Family Businesses, while you will not likely have to pay income tax until you make $6,300 in a year, you will still have to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes after the first $400. Roughly this should be right about 16% of your income, so if you make $6000 you'll owe just under $1000 (and be keeping the other $5000). If your income grows even more, you may want to learn about business expense deductions. This would allow you to pay for things like advertisement, software, a new computer for development purposes, etc, and deduct the expenses out of your income so you pay less in taxes. But don't worry - having such things to wonder about would mean you were raking in thousands of dollars, and that's an awfully good problem to have as a young entrepreneur! So, should you keep your games free or try to make some money? Well, first of all realize that $400 can be a lot harder to make when you are first starting in business than it probably sounds. Second, don't be afraid of making too much money! Tax filing software - even totally free versions - make filing taxes much, much easier, and at your income level you would still be keeping the vast majority of the money you earn even without taking advantage of special business deductions. I'd recommend you not be a afraid of trying to make some money! I'd bet money it will help you learn a lot about game development, business, and finances, and will be a really valuable experience for you - whether you make money or not. Having made so much money you have to pay taxes is not something to be afraid of - it's just something adults like to complain about :) Good luck on your adventures, and you can always come back and ask questions about how to file taxes, what to do with any new found wealth, etc!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f548159b229a16c96b2da6206c8b433b",
"text": "Yes but the employee losing that job can be devastating because as someone who works for minimum wage (in college and living at home right now so my cost of living is low) but without that I would have no savings.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "24f57d4a14e3f6a6a4a25536b8f3d554",
"text": "The fact that you're a minor really only factors into who pays the taxes, you or your parents. If you are below the age where you can legally earn money (and therefore pay taxes), then the income will be considered your parent's or guardian's income, and they will be responsible for the taxes. If you are of the age where you are legally allowed to earn your own money, then yes, you will have to pay taxes. Either way, taxes must be paid. If age were a way of escaping the taxes, every big youtuber would simply open their account in the name of one of their children or a child they know...",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "949f3a4e415633760c540268921a224e",
"text": "\"This might sound harsh, but the first thing I would suggest is to stop making excuses. I wasn't able to continue due to pressure from college and family The college I went to was horrible. Employers can very easily hire foreign work-force for very cheap; for example as a citizen if I work $10 an hour, they can get someone from outside to work for $5 per hour There's no guarantee that the project will succeed. I cannot really work and at the same time develop software on my free time. Despite my failures in the past, I was not the main person that's responsible for those failures. Even if all of this is true, it's not helping you move forward and it seems to be getting in the way of creating a good action plan and motivating yourself to succeed. If you believe (based on past experiences) that you are doomed to fail, then you are indeed doomed to fail. You need to take a step back and re-evaluate your current circumstances and what you can do to reach your goals. You have a couple of things working in your favor here. It's great that you are debt free. That already puts you ahead of a lot of your peers. You have the option of living with your parents. Presumably for no rent, or at least much lower rent than you would have to pay if you move out. This is worth literally thousands of $/£/€ for every year you stay. Now, onto your questions: 1) Should I quit regular programming for a normal job because I never monetized programming so I can move out of my parents' home? Are you being paid for this \"\"regular programming\"\"? If so, are you being paid more than minimum wage? If not, it's perfectly acceptable to consider alternative ways to spend your time and generate income. However, this doesn't have to be at the expense of living with your parents. Have you thought about getting a new or second job while still living with them? If you absolutely must move out of your parent's home, consider renting a room in a house with other people to keep the rent costs to a minimum. That way, even if your main job is low paying, you should be able to put aside some money each month for future endeavors. 2) Should I monetize programming and gamble with the future? What does this mean? Are you thinking you'll write a mobile app and sell thousands of copies for 99¢ each? That would indeed be a big gamble, but maybe that's not what you meant, so you'll need to clarify. 3) Would it be wise to essentially quit programming for the sake of a minimum wage job? I'm not sure how this is different from question 1. So I'll reiterate what I said there - moving out is going to be expensive. You can still do it, but you're asking on a Personal Finance site where the focus is usually how to minimize living costs and maximize income. Without knowing more about where you live (employment opportunities, cost of living) the default recommendation is usually to save money by staying in your parents house. TLDR: Don't focus on anyone else. They are not preventing you from getting the job you want. Look at your own skills and qualifications (not just programming, consider all of your abilities). What are you good at? Who might need those skills? What is the cost of reaching those people (commute time, moving nearer)? What is the reward? If the reward exceeds the cost, start approaching those people. Show them what you can do.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2fe00a78dd66de649ffcfa0dfa140ba1",
"text": "\"Part of your first link has this statement that I suspect you are missing: However, Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. Note that executive is in that list. As for the additional note: To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $455 per week. Generally which means, \"\"in most cases; usually.\"\" is not a universal qualifier and thus exceptions can exist. I'd imagine that restricted stock could be a way around some of the rules as there would be a monetary value there in the case of the stock for companies of a particular size.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b257a8eb2e106d7e598a1f6efa62a3ca",
"text": "AFAIU, you don't need pay any taxes for you amount in NRE account since this amount is already taxed. I also think, you do not need to pay taxes on the interest earned on NRE account. However, you need to disclose the amount in your Indian Bank(s), if at any point of time, exceed $10K (When converted from INR to $). This is FBAR. Sending money to non-NRE account would come under Indian Tax scanner. For instance, if your parents use that money to pay EMIs or any huge purchase, then that might cause an issue. Most of the times, these type of purchases go unnoticed. However, the party who is taking money, may ask for source, especially if its a financial institution or Govt bodies. Also, for non-NRE accounts, you need to pay taxes and on interest earned. Hope this helps!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8a9c0077daed80612c8241b232366478",
"text": "Here is what I was able to find: Yes, but there are special instructions for minors: Working hours: New York State labor laws are slightly more strict than the federal: https://www.labor.state.ny.us/workerprotection/laborstandards/workprot/nyvsfed.shtm Minimum wage: The Dept of Labor's Youth & Labor page states: Occupations such as babysitting are not subject to the minimum wage law. No supporting documentation is given. Another page describes the Youth Minimum Wage Program: A minimum wage of not less than $4.25 may be paid to employees under the age of 20 for their first 90 consecutive calendar days However, I can't find any such exception in New York State minimum wage law. According to Publication 926, Household Employer's Tax Guide: Federal income tax withholding No, I am not required to withhold federal income taxes from a household employee. If we both want them to be withheld, a W-4 should be submitted to me. State income tax withholding No, according to NYS Pub 27: Withholding income tax (federal or New York State) from wages paid to household employees is voluntary on your part and your employee Social security and medicare No, I am not required to withhold FICA taxes because when calculated wages, I should not include: An employee who is under the age of 18 at any time during the year. Exception: Count these wages if providing household services is the employee's principal occupation. If the employee is a student, providing household services is not considered to be his or her principal occupation. Unemployment insurance No, I don't think I have to pay federal unemployment tax. I think the exception for FICA applies to FUTA. For New York (according to Household Employers Guide for Unemployment Insurance), there is an exception for paying state unemployment insurance: Daytime students who attend elementary or high school (However, you must pay UI taxes on wages you pay these students if you are liable under FUTA.) I can't find any specific requirements, but aside from numbers of hours times rate of pay, you might want to consider the information required by the Wage Theft Prevention Act: Also, consider this requirements from the NY Minimum Wage Act Every employer shall keep true and accurate records of hours worked by each employee covered by an hourly minimum wage rate, the wages paid to all employees, and such other information as the commissioner deems material and necessary, and shall, on demand, furnish to the commissioner or his duly authorized representative a sworn statement of the same.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2140584e169d629a1d505262f59597bf",
"text": "Smart parents not wanting to get stuck with a student loan or co-signing on a loan. because rent is so high Are you able to live with your parents? Is there anyway to reduce the cost of rent like renting a room? Can you move somewhere where the rent is cheaper? working 25 hours per week Working 25 hours per week and taking 6 hours is a pretty light schedule. It is not even 40 hours per week. What is stopping you from working 40 hours and paying for school from your salary? In my own life I created a pretty crappy situation for myself when I was a young man. I really wanted to go to a prestigious university, but ended up going to a community college, and then to a university that was lesser known in a less expensive area. I had to work like crazy, upwards of 50 hours per week. I also took a full load in a difficult degree program. You probably don't have to go to the extremes that I went through, but you can work more. Most adults work at their jobs well more than 40 hours per week, then come home and continue to work (on the house, raising kids, trying to start a side business, etc...). So you might as well become an adult now. There are ways to become independent from your parents for FAFSA like have a baby, get married, or join the military. I'd only recommend the last one as you will also receive the GI Bill. Another option is to try and obtain a job that offers financial aid.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "aaa391cfed23a79f97d9a55fbf024542",
"text": "yes and no its definitely not charitable as they are making money of off you but depending on the outside conditions if you had to pay a mortgage on that condo with only 35k in payments to start off it would more than likely exceed 500 dollars a month however there would always be a point were the mortgage would end and it dosent sound like thats going to be the case with you paying your parents so it depends on how long your going to have that condo and how much mortgage would have been.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4042edc1b15b5ef9e49fc907d8b2ba76",
"text": "\"idea that somehow people will take a lower income job and automatically grow into a higher paying one. It doesn't happen automatically. But it does happen all the time. It's climbing the corporate ladder if you will. \"\"leads to trying to have a workforce that's minimum wage with little room for growth\"\" Simply untrue at most successful companies. If you provide value, they pay you what your worth or you jump (if you are smart enough). I see it all the time. Minimum wage may or may not have kept up with inflation, by that's like saying working at McDonald's only affords me such and such lifestyle. Defined circumstances are required to solve the problem. Inflation isn't directly solved by upping the minimum wage so move on to a better solution. \"\"Jobs a worthy cry but can't be only metric to ensure people have opportunity to live decently\"\". Jobs are the opportunity. Where there is specific abuse in the workplace denying people equal job opportunity, we fight it. If you don't pay me enough, and I am forced to work for you... that's called indentured servitude which is an abuse and illegal as humans are property in such a case. But if you force me to pay you more than I want to, somehow that's okay? Goes both ways. Leave to a company that pays you what your worth if I don't pay you enough. This is how the most people grow over time to better salaries and more prestigious titles. \"\"Lots of college grads with low paying jobs\"\" Define \"\"low paying\"\". I'm a college grad. Wife is too. Lots of people I know are. What $ we make varies greatly from person to person based largely upon the opportunities we created/took not because of a mandated min wage.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3050769ddb0d2dc1ca67b52a9e6185d3",
"text": "First you need to ensure that you are not violating any Federal child labor laws. I would look at this: U.S. Dept of Labor, Wage & Hour Div., Standards for 14- and 15-Year Olds in Nonagricultural Employment. These were the items that pertained to Federal Law, for 14 year olds: 14 is the minimum age for employment in specified occupations outside of school hours for limited periods of time each day and each week. Fourteen- and 15-Year-Olds May Not Be Employed: There is a section on minimum allowed wage payment to young workers, and also a list of allowed types of work for 14 and 15 year old's. The type of household helper tasks described definitely fell within what was allowed for child labor. The same page details what sort of forms need to be filled out. I think this is something that is done quite commonly. Here are specifics in New York State for minimum wage for minors and for employing 14 year olds.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
48d7183ca933cc7c7ab05798a2112876
|
Tracking my spending, and incoming and outgoing (i.e cashflow)
|
[
{
"docid": "faef59d5875f40e992a989808dd55827",
"text": "Systems to research that may help you out: Less Accounting and Wave are great because they can import data from banks / credit cards. I know you said your bank doesn't export it but it seems like something as a small business you would want.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "07d2dc099d9877410a2f73be08142986",
"text": "Honing in on your last question: Is there a better way? I think there is, but it would require you to change the way you handle your spending, and that may not be of interest to you. Right now you have a lot of manual work, keeping track of expenditures and then entering the, every day. The great thing about switching to a habit where you pay for everything using a debit or credit card is that you can skip the manual entry by importing your transactions from your bank. You mention that your bank doesn't allow for exporting. There's still a chance that your bank can connect with a solution like Wave Accounting (http://www.waveaccouting.com), which is free and made for small business accounting. (Full disclosure: I represent Wave.) If your current bank doesn't permit export or connections with Wave, it may be worth switching to a different bank. It's a bit of a pain to make the switch, I know, but you really will save a massive amount of time and effort over the course of the year, as well as minimize the risk of human error, compared to entering your receipts on a daily basis. In Wave, you can still enter all of your cash receipts manually if you want to continue with your current practice of cash payments. One important thing to mention, too: If you're looking for a better way of doing things, make sure it includes proper backup. There would be nothing worse than entering all that data onto a spreadsheet and then something happening to your computer and you lose it all. Wave Accounting is backed up hourly and uses bank-level security to keep your information safe. One last thing: as I mention above, Wave Accounting is free. So if it is a good match for your small business accounting needs, it will also be a nice fit for your wallet.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "0507b77c98c3fcf6da71fa48b8d2b9c8",
"text": "My bank will let me download credit card transactions directly into a personal finance program, and by assigning categories to stores I can get at least a rough overview of that sidd of things, and then adjust categories/splits when needed. Ditto checks. Most of my spending is covered by those. Doesn't help with cash transactions, though; if I want to capture those accurately I need to save receipts. There are ocr products which claim to help capture those; haven't tried them. Currently, since my spending is fairly stable, I'm mostly leaving those as unknown; that wouldn't work for you.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "002e6b42dcf753ed26b4cc285fc9a1f4",
"text": "\"I'm not convinced this is completely possible without additional data. I'm categorizing my purchases now, and I keep running into things like \"\"was this hardware store purchase for home repair, hobby tools and supplies, cookware, ...\"\" Ditto for department stores, ditto for cash purchases which appear only as an ATM withdrawal. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I guess, sometimes I just give up. In the end, this budget tracking isn't critical for me so that's good enough. If you really want accuracy, though, I think you are stuck with keeping all your receipts, of taking notes, so you can resolve these gaps.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8018eefd837fd80fcc3c6bd9a4cb2eb5",
"text": "\"JoeTaxpayer's answer mentions using a third \"\"house\"\" account. In my comment on his answer, I mentioned that you could simply use a bookkeeping account to track this instead of the overhead of an extra real bank account. Here's the detail of what I think will work for you. If you use a tool like gnucash (probably also possible in quicken, or if you use paper tracking, etc), create an account called \"\"Shared Expenses\"\". Create two sub accounts under that called \"\"his\"\" and \"\"hers\"\". (I'm assuming you'll have your other accounts tracked in the software as well.) I haven't fully tested this approach, so you may have to tweak it a little bit to get exactly what you want. When she pays the rent, record two transactions: When you pay the electric bill, record two transactions: Then you can see at a glance whether the balances on \"\"his\"\" and \"\"hers\"\" match.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e4fd4caeba66a11f04131154e9c7d968",
"text": "Track your spending and expected income -- on paper, or with a personal-finance program. If you know how much is committed, you know how much is available. Trivial with checks, requires a bit more discipline with credit cards.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2a8aa234932951e462e9c75416d5fab0",
"text": "If you want to keep any consistent standard, you need to knuckle down and make those transaction entries. Honestly, this is a lot faster doing in bulk than doing day-by-day. But change how you account so it isn't annoying. I minimize my bookable transactions. For instance I deposit all income whole (for tracking) but stop tracking when the money is converted to cash or gift card money - I log adding $50 to a McDonalds gift card, but not the individual meals. I only use cash for the myriad small things I do not want to track - fast food, parking meters, etc. Anything big or that I want to track goes on a credit card. Then it's easy to reconcile credit cards to accounting system. (Cathy) Ryan's Law: if it wasn't written down, it didn't happen.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1ee3149b12c0eb37a8beb933962a0205",
"text": "I recently made the switch to keeping track of my finance (Because I found an app that does almost everything for me). Before, my situation was fairly simple: I was unable to come up with a clear picture of how much I was spending vs saving (altho I had a rough idea). Now I here is what it changes: What I can do now: Is it useful ? Since I don't actually need to save more than I do (I am already saving 60-75% of my income), 1) isn't important. Since I don't have any visibility on my personal situation within a few years, 2) and 3) are not important. Conclusion: Since I don't actually spend any time building theses informations I am happy to use this app. It's kind of fun. If I did'nt had that tool... It would be a waste of time for me. Depends on your situation ? Nb: the app is Moneytree. Works only in Japan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8ecad338e1109d173bd965ba1f489795",
"text": "\"What I've found works best when working on my personal budget is to track my income and spending two different ways: bank accounts and budget categories. Here is what I mean: When I deposit my paycheck, I do two things with it: It goes into my checking account, so the balance of my checking account goes up by the amount of my paycheck. I also \"\"deposit\"\" the money from my checking account into my various budget category balances. This is separate from my bank account balances. Some of my paycheck money goes into my groceries category, some goes into clothing, some into car fuel, entertainment, mortgage, phone, etc. Some goes into longer range bills that only happen once or twice a year, such as car insurance, life insurance, property tax, etc. Some goes into savings goals of ours, such as car replacement, vacation, furniture, etc. Every dollar that we have in a bank account or in cash in our wallets is also accounted for in a budget category. If you add up the balances of our bank accounts and cash, and you add up the balances of our budget categories, they add up to the same number. When we make a purchase, this also gets accounted for twice: The appropriate bank account (or cash wallet) balance gets reduced by the purchase amount. The appropriate budget category gets reduced by the purchase amount. In this way, we don't really need to worry about having separate bank accounts for different purposes. We don't need to put our savings goal money in a separate bank account from our grocery money, if we don't want to. The budget category accounting keeps track of how much money is allocated to each purpose. Now, the budget category amounts are not spent yet; the money in them is still in our bank account, and we can move money around in the categories, if we change our mind on how to allocate them. For example, if we don't spend all of our gas money for the month, we can either keep that money in the gas category, or we can move it to a different category, such as the car replacement category or the vacation category. If the phone bill is more than we expect, we can move money around from a different category to cover it. Now, back to your question: We allocate some money from each paycheck into our furniture category. But the money is not really spent until we actually buy some furniture. When we do, the furniture category balance and bank account balance both go down by the amount of the purchase. All of this can be kept track of on the computer in a spreadsheet. However, it's not easy to keep track of so many categories and bank balances. An easier solution is custom budgeting software designed for this purpose. I use and recommend YNAB.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "82556cf6dd6ff545b2163acfa5412108",
"text": "\"An accounting general ledger is based on tracking your actual assets, liabilities, expenses, and income, and Gnucash is first and foremost a general ledger program. While it has some simple \"\"budgeting\"\" capabilities, they're primarily based around reporting how close your actual expenses were to a planned budget, not around forecasting eventual cash flow or \"\"saving\"\" a portion of assets for particular purposes. I think the closest concept to what you're trying to do is that you want to take your \"\"real\"\" Checking account, and segment it into portions. You could use something like this as an Account Hierarchy: The total in the \"\"Checking Account\"\" parent represents your actual amount of money that you might reconcile with your bank, but you have it allocated in your accounting in various ways. You may have deposits usually go into the \"\"Available funds\"\" subaccount, but when you want to save some money you transfer from that into a Savings subaccount. You could include that transfer as an additional split when you buy something, such as transferring $50 from Assets:Checking Account:Available Funds sending $45 to Expenses:Groceries and $5 to Assets:Checking Account:Long-term Savings. This can make it a little more annoying to reconcile your accounts (you need to use the \"\"Include Subaccounts\"\" checkbox), and I'm not sure how well it'd work if you ever imported transaction files from your bank. Another option may be to track your budgeting (which answers \"\"How much am I allowed to spend on X right now?\"\") separately from your accounting (which only answers \"\"How much have I spent on X in the past?\"\" and \"\"How much do I own right now?\"\"), using a different application or spreadsheet. Using Gnucash to track \"\"budget envelopes\"\" is kind of twisting it in a way it's not really designed for, though it may work well enough for what you're looking for.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0c509b1b72a4cbf876193786938eb9a1",
"text": "Use one journal entry, and split the expenses into the appropriate accounts. This can happen even if you never mix business and personal on the same receipt: say you order office supplies (which where I live are immediately deductible as an expense) and software or hardware (which must be depreciated because they are assets) on the same order. We have an account called Proprietors Loan which represents money the company is lending to the humans who own it, or that the humans are lending to the company. Were I to pay for my personal lunch on a business credit card, it would go through that account, increasing the amount the company has lent me or decreasing the amount I have lent it. Similarly if I made a business purchase with a personal card it would go through that account in the other direction. Where I live, I can lend my company all the money I want any time, but if the company lends me money there can't be an outstanding balance over the corporate year end. If you make two credit card entries of 5 and 10 when you go to reconcile your accounts it will be harder because you'll have to realize they together match the single 15 line on your statement. Making a single entry (your A option) will make reconciling your statement much easier. And that way, you'll probably reconcile your statements, which is vital to knowing you actually recorded everything.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1b4e473675196ea73e28c4a46e3d696f",
"text": "You're lending the money to your business by paying for it directly. The company accounts must reflect a credit (the amount you lend to it) and a debit (what it then puts that loan towards). It's fairly normal for a small(ish) owner-driven company to reflect a large loan-account for the owners. For example, if you have a room at home dedicated for the business it is impractical to pay rent directly via the company. The rental agreement is probably in your name, you pay the rent, and you reconcile it with the company later. You could even charge your company (taxable) interest on this loan. When you draw down the loan from the company you reverse this, debit your loan account and credit the company (paying off the debt). As far as tracking that expenditure, simply handle those third-party invoices in the normal way and file them for reference.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b5ac2c4ff3c5d1c545838bec51ac3bb8",
"text": "\"Other responses have focused on getting you software to use, but I'd like to attempt your literal question: how are such transactions managed in systems that handle them? I will answer for \"\"double entry\"\" bookkeeping software such as Quicken or GnuCash (my choice). (Disclaimer: I Am Not An Accountant and accountants will probably find error in my terminology.) Your credit card is a liability to you, and is tracked using a liability account (as opposed to an asset account, such as your bank accounts or cash in your pocket). A liability account is just like an asset except that it is subtracted from rather than added to your total assets (or, from another perspective, its balance is normally negative; the mathematics works out identically). When you make a purchase using your credit card, the transaction you record transfers money from the liability account (increasing the liability) to the expense account for your classification of the expense. When you make a payment on your credit card, the transaction you record transfers money from your checking account (for example) to the credit card account, reducing the liability. Whatever software you choose for tracking your money, I strongly recommend choosing something that is sufficiently powerful to handle representing this as I have described (transfers between accounts as the normal mode of operation, not simply lone increases/decreases of asset accounts).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d5d1e8cea7fd9c7f67b3b8a3b5051f7f",
"text": "Personally, I have a little checkbook program that I use to keep track of my spending and balance. Like you -- and I presume like most people -- I have certain recurring bills: the mortgage, insurance payments, car payment, etc. I simply enter these into the checkbook program about a month before the bill is due. Then I can run a transaction list that shows the date, amount, and remaining balance after each transaction. So if I want to know how much money I really have available to spend, I just look for the last transaction before my next payday, and see what the balance will be on that day. Personally, I always keep a certain amount of pad in my account so if I made a mistake and entered an incorrect amount for a check, or forgot to enter one completely, I don't overdraw the account. (I like to keep $1000 in such padding but that's way more than really necessary, it's very rare that I make a mistake of more than $100.) In my case, I don't enter electric bills or heating bills because I don't know the amount until I get the bill, and the amounts fall well within my padding, and for just two bills I can factor them in in my head. BTW I wrote this program myself but I'm sure there are similar products on the market. I used to use a spreadsheet and that worked pretty well. (Mainly I wrote the program because I have a tiny side business that I have to keep tax records for even though it makes almost no money.) You could in principle do it on paper, but the catch to that is that when you write payments on your paper ledger in advance of actually writing the check, you will often be writing down payments out of order, and so it becomes difficult to see what your balance is or was or will be on any given date. But a computer system can easily accept transactions out of order and then sort them and re-do the balance calculations in a fraction of a second.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0e18d1212fa62a4a052dbb4b096fb6db",
"text": "\"Congratulations on keeping better track of your finances! Typically there will be a class of accounts labelled \"\"Income\"\", under which you will have a separate account for each type of income (stock dividends, paychecks, home appreciation, etc). In that case, showing your income would be a transfer from the Paycheck account to your Checking account. Note that, as there are no offsetting transactions, this means your income account will steadily accrue a balance over time - just ignore this number, it's only the sum of all your paychecks. There are methods of dealing with that number (and making the income account have a zero balance), but you don't need to worry about it at this stage. Just learning to properly track expenses is the major accomplishment.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0f10a2dce412274f1481a39aa4a09c44",
"text": "There are several reports under the Reports>Income & Expenses menu which could be useful. Cash Flow - shows, for a particular set of accounts, where incoming and outgoing money from those accounts came from and went to. Expense BarChart/PieChart - shows top N expenses. Income Statement (also called Profit & Loss) - shows all incomes and expenses for the time period. Each of these reports have an options dialog which will let you change the period that they are reporting on and the accounts to be included in the reports. The Cash Flow report sounds particularly useful for your second scenario.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "498db99de29e752203935a5442bc5447",
"text": "You have to track your spending for a month, down to the cent. Without those records, the person trying to help you has no real data. Even a week would be a start. Heck, try just doing this today. See if it works for you. Throughout each day: Each evening: At the end of a month (or week, or whatever period you want): Each day you do it successfully it will get easier. Let us know how it works out! Best wishes!",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
a687a094427d9471f2af9372109453a2
|
1040 or 1040NR this time?
|
[
{
"docid": "1e9be9267b7d796c28f93fb7647721d8",
"text": "\"1040 or 1040NR depends on whether you are a resident alien or nonresident alien -- 1040/1040A/1040EZ for resident aliens, and 1040NR/1040NR-EZ for nonresident aliens. Determining whether you are a resident is somewhat complex, and there is not enough information in your question to determine it. Publication 519 is the guide for taxes for aliens. (It hasn't been updated for 2014 yet, so mentally shift all the years in the publication up by one year when you read it.) Since you don't have a green card, whether you are a resident is determined by the Substantial Presence Test. The test says that if (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2014) + 1/3 of (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2013) + 1/6 of (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2012) >= 183 days (half a year), then you are a resident alien for 2014. However, there are exceptions to the test. Days that you are an \"\"exempt individual\"\" are not counted toward the Substantial Presence Test. And \"\"exempt individuals\"\" include international students, trainees, teachers, etc. However, there are exceptions to the exceptions. Students are not \"\"exempt individuals\"\" for a year if they have been exempt individuals for any part of 5 previous calendar years. (Different exceptions apply for teachers and trainees.) So whether you are an \"\"exempt individual\"\" for one year inductively depends on whether you have been an \"\"exempt individual\"\" in previous years. Long story short, if before you came to the U.S. as an F-1 student, you haven't been in the U.S. on F-1 or J-1 status, then you will be a nonresident alien for the first 5 calendar years (calendar year = year with a number, not 365 days) that you've been on F-1. We will assume this is the case below. So if you started your F-1 in 2009 (any time during that year) or before, then you would have already been an exempt individual for 5 calendar years (e.g. if you came in 2009, then 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 are your 5 years), so you would not be an exempt individual for any part of 2014. Since you were present in the U.S. for most of 2014, you meet the Substantial Presence Test for 2014, and you are a resident alien for all of 2014. If, on the other hand, you started your F-1 in 2010 (any time during that year) or after, then you would still be an exempt individual for the part of 2014 that you were on F-1 status (i.e. prior to October 2014. OPT is F-1.). Days in 2014 in H1b status (3 months) are not enough for you to satisfy the Substantial Presence Test for 2014, so you would be a nonresident alien for all of 2014. If you fall into the latter case (nonresident alien), there are some alternative choices you have. If you were in the U.S. for most of those last 3 months, then you are eligible to choose to use the \"\"First-Year Choice\"\". I will not go into the steps to use this choice, but the result is that it makes you dual-status for 2014 -- nonresident until October, and resident since October. If you are single, then making this choice pretty much gives you no benefit. However, if you are married, then making this choice allows you to subsequently make another choice to become a resident for all of 2014. Being resident gives you some benefits, like being able to file as Married Filing Jointly (nonresidents can only file separately), being able to use the Standard Deduction, being able to use many other deductions and credits, etc. Though, depending on what country you're from, it may affect your treaty benefits, so check that before you consider it.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d34cb5f443878184b7f7c24914d6b8db",
"text": "Since you were a nonresident alien student on F-1 visa then you will be considered engaged in a trade or business in the USA. You must file Form 1040NR. Here is the detailed instruction by IRS - http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Taxation-of-Nonresident-Aliens",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "c976275b07f08beafa961ce161e4872b",
"text": "NRE is better. It's a tax free account, exempt from income tax. NRE account is freely repatriable (Principal and interest earned) while the NRO account has restricted repatriability",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "856888a2499d8ea27cb454ac4c6e0f26",
"text": "Here's a description. The relevant discussion for tax year 2010 starts on page 22 of the 1040 instructions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8c00a274f62e3cfc4e3f99a61e61425e",
"text": "There may be differences in different contexts, but here's my general understanding: Rate of Return (or Return on Investment) is the total gain or loss of an investment divided by the initial investment amount. e.g. if you buy stock for $100 and later sell it for $120 you have a 20% Rate of Return. You would have a 20% ROR regardless of if you sell it tomorrow or in a year. Internal Rate of Return is effectively annualized. It is the annual rate at which each of a series of cashflows is discounted that would give you a net present value of 0. Meaning if you spent $100 today and in exactly one year you received $120 back, you would have an IRR of 20%. If you received the $120 back in 6 months, your IRR would be roughly 40%. An IRR calculation can include multiple cashflows at various times, while ROR is (in my mind) the total net gain or loss relative to the investment (irrespective of the time of the cash flows). IRR is more effective when comparing investments that have different time horizons. Spending $100 to get $120 tomorrow is much better (from an IRR perspective) than getting $120 two years from now, since you could take that $20 gain and invest it for the rest of the two years.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5ee9f8d91bf9c6edf84fc8a1577ed745",
"text": "Instead of SSN, foreign person should get a ITIN from the IRS. Instead of W9 a foreigner should fill W8-BEN. Foreigner might also be required to file 1040NR/NR-EZ tax report, and depending on tax treaties also be liable for US taxes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ef3c158a705519262993c7d13c839988",
"text": "\"Besides money and time lost, it is pretty clear that most tax advisors are not well versed in non-resident taxes. It seems that their main clients are either US residents or H1B workers (who are required to file as residents). I share your pain on this one. In fact, even for H1B/green card holders or Americans with income/property abroad vast majority of advisers will make mistakes (which may become quite costly). IRS licensing exams for EA/RTRP do not include a single question on non-resident taxation or potential issues, let alone handling treaties. Same goes for the AICPA unified CPA exam (the REG portion of which, in part, deals with taxes). I'm familiar with the recent versions of both exams and I am very disappointed and frustrated by that lack of knowledge requirement in such a crucial area (I am not a licensed tax preparer now though). That said, the issue is very complicated. I went through several advisers until I found the one I can trust to know her stuff, and while at it happened to learn quite a lot about the US tax code (which doesn't make me sleep any better by the least). It is my understanding that preparing a US tax return for a foreign person without a mistake is impossible, but the question is how big is the mistake you're going to make. I had returns prepared by solo working advisers where I found mistakes as ridiculous as arithmetic calculation errors (fired after two seasons), and by big-4 firms where I found mistakes that cost me quite a lot (although by the time I figured that they cost me significant amounts, it was too late to sue or change; fired after 2 seasons as well). As you can see, it is relevant to me as well, and I do not do my own tax returns. I usually ask for the conservative interpretations from my adviser, IRS is very aggressive on enforcement and the penalties, especially on foreigners are draconian (I do not know if it ever went through a judicial review, as I believe some of these penalties are unconstitutional under the 8th amendment, but that's my personal opinion). Bottom line - its hard to find a decent tax adviser, and that's why the good ones are expensive. You get what you pay for. How do I go about locating a CPA/EA who is well versed in non-resident taxes located in the Los Angeles area (Orange County area is not too far away either) These professionals are usually active in large metropolitan areas with a lot of foreigners. You should be able to find decent professionals in LA/OC, SF Bay, Seattle, New York, Boston, and other cities and metropolises attracting foreigners. Also, look for those working in the area of a major university. Specific points: If I find none, can I work with a quaified person who lives in a different state and have him file my taxes on my behalf (electronically or via scans going back and forth) Yes. But that person my have a problem representing you in California (in case you're audited), unless he's an EA (licensed by the Federal government, can practice everywhere) or is licensed as a CPA or Attorney by the State of California. Is there a central registry of such quaified people I can view (preferably with reviews) - akin to \"\"yellow pages\"\" IRS is planning on opening one some time this year, but until then - not really. There are some commercial sites claiming to have that, but they're using the FOIA access to the IRS and states' listings, and may not have updated information. They definitely don't have updated license statuses (or any license statuses) or language/experience information. Wouldn't trust them.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d2e19aa7de5566d8a29671be19184800",
"text": "\"I am looking at a 1040A. Line 11a asks for total IRA distributions. 11b asks for the taxable amount. Enter \"\"QCD\"\" as explanation and remove the Qualified Charitable Deduction amount from 11a to get 11b which is added to your income if there's any positive balance.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a89ab2d6bd9760664b9f5741aabdd05f",
"text": "I know nothing about this, but found this link which suggests for H&R Block specifically: I kept searching and I found the section. It's at the end in the Credits section under 'other backup withholding'. Hopefully this helps someone else in the future.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3f05bf56b4b293ae36f55deb39d23e24",
"text": "I have now filed my taxes and am able to report back with precisely what took place. To summarize, my situation was the following (before filing taxes): As it turns out, if I have $4x of NRTC's, it is not $4x that I can redeem. It is 15% of $4x that I can redeem to be able to get a tax refund. For the sake of simplicity, let's say I have $10x NRTC's instead of $4x NRTC's. That gives me $1.5x as the actual redeemable amount. I will get $x back on my refund since I have $1.5x available. Have I understood the system correctly? Since $x is a substantial amount, I want to know if I can factor this in as money that will be coming in. In summary, the only thing I didn't know before filing my taxes was the 15% rule!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "abd138c01e6d5a971c99c8f92350dfec",
"text": "\"That's a tricky question and you should consult a tax professional that specializes on taxation of non-resident aliens and foreign expats. You should also consider the provisions of the tax treaty, if your country has one with the US. I would suggest you not to seek a \"\"free advice\"\" on internet forums, as the costs of making a mistake may be hefty. Generally, sales of stocks is not considered trade or business effectively connected to the US if that's your only activity. However, being this ESPP stock may make it connected to providing personal services, which makes it effectively connected. I'm assuming that since you're filing 1040NR, taxes were withheld by the broker, which means the broker considered this effectively connected income.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4a6861c5a6ac2146025b8a13d9207d3c",
"text": "That's pretty typical for introductory problems. It's leading you into an NPV question. They're keeping the cash flows the same to illustrate the time value of money to show you that even though the free cash flow is the same in year 1 and year 4 or whatever when you discount it to present value today's stream is worth more than tomorrow's",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "44f7f02ebc9b4bba410c9a805b9ed00d",
"text": "\"If you have income - it should appear on your tax return. If you are a non-resident, that would be 1040NR, with the eBay income appearing on line 21. Since this is unrelated to your studies, this income will not be covered by the tax treaties for most countries, and you'll pay full taxes on it. Keep in mind that the IRS may decide that you're actually having a business, in which case you'll be required to attach Schedule C to your tax return and maybe pay additional taxes (mainly self-employment). Also, the USCIS may decide that you're actually having a business, regardless of how the IRS sees it, in which case you may have issues with your green card. For low income from occasional sales, you shouldn't have any issues. But if it is something systematic that you spend significant time on and earn significant amounts of money - you may get into trouble. What's \"\"systematic\"\" and how much is \"\"significant\"\" is up to a lawyer to tell you.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "19c1bed44c0810777064c3f77e592123",
"text": "I edited my W4 over several years, trying to get rid of my refund. It's a balancing act, just be careful to not owe more than about $1000 each year. They can hit you with a small penalty. It's never been enough to concern me, but it's there. It's also a balancing act if you get a raise, a bonus, any kind of differences in pay...",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "80dade3f36a370d1af885e3af8e01083",
"text": "\"H.R. basically consults Publication 15 (this is the link to 2015) to determine how much to hold, based on filing status, exemptions, and pay amount. What's described here is a form of estimation, or, in other words, H.R. withholds what would be your actual taxes, dividing across the number of paychecks you receive. Assuming your gross pay and exemptions do not change, this usually results in a zero-sum for taxes owed (you will receive nothing, and owe nothing). As you can see from the charts, the year is basically broken down into equal tax units that reflect how much you would owe if you worked at that bracket all year. This estimation works best when you have steady hours from check to check. In other words, your taxes are based on the estimate of what you'd make if you earned that much all year, scaled down to the time frame (e.g. 1/52 if you are paid weekly, or 1/26 if you paid biweekly). They do not go \"\"up\"\" near the end of the year, because they're estimated in advance. You don't move up a tax bracket, but are instead taxed at a particular bracket every paycheck. There's also other forms of estimation mentioned there, but basically follow the same scheme. Note that all estimation forms are just that-- estimates. It's best to use a calculator and compare your current taxes whenever a significant change occurs-- a raise, a new child, getting married or divorced, etc. You'll want to be able to alter your exemptions so that enough taxes are coming out. That's also the reason for the \"\"withhold extra\"\" box, so that you can avoid owing. For example, if you're making $44 a week for the first 26 weeks, and then you make $764 a week for the second 26 weeks of the year, you'll end up with an actual tax liability of $2,576.6, but end up paying only $2,345.20. You would owe $231.40. Of course, the actual math is a lot more complicated if you're an employee paid by the minute, for example, or you have a child, go to college, etc. Paychecks that vary wildly, like $10,000 one week and $2,000 the next tend to have the hardest-to-predict estimates (e.g. jobs with big commission payouts). You should avoid living check-to-check with jobs that pay this way, because you'll probably end up owing taxes. Conversely, if you've done your estimates right and you're paid salary or exactly the same number of hours every week, you'll find that the taxes are much easier to predict and you can usually easily create a refund situation simply by having the correct exemptions on your check. So, in summation, if your check falls in the 25% category (which is, of course, 25% above the tax bracket break point), you're already paying the correct amount, and no further drop in your check would be expected.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "126fd13c67264c54eded0b947f3c655d",
"text": "It's the same result either way. Say the bills are $600, and you are reimbursed $400. You'd be able to write off $400 as part of the utilities that are common expenses, but then claim the $400 as income. I'd stick with that, and have contemporaneous records supporting all cash flow. You also can take 2/3 of any other maintenance costs that most homeowners can't. Like snow removal, lawn care, etc.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1d4ba8a949e4138c61188e7132d74980",
"text": "You need to file IRS Form 1040-NR. The IRS's website provides instructions.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
098344be07def21b293377287443a36e
|
Are there any benefits of FMLA beyond preserving your job?
|
[
{
"docid": "66f90d0fc6804953b4c245195b40a168",
"text": "How will your employer treat your pay and benefits status while you're on leave? Disability income coverage and leave policies work in tandem to solve very different problems. Disability income coverage covers your income, leave policies guarantee your status as an employee. Typically, STD coverage requires an actual loss of income and will offset it's stated benefit for any income you're receiving. In general you can't begin a STD claim after the 7 day waiting period and also draw income from vacation or sick time. Also, typically STD will cover some percentage of your covered pay (sometimes including commission/bonus income) up to some weekly maximum. FLMA requires employers to allow certain amounts of time for certain types of leave. FMLA is not necessarily an income replacement tool like STD coverage. Contrary to your post it's my understanding that if sick and vacation time accrue in to a single PTO bucket your employer is prohibited from requiring employees to exhaust accrued time prior to beginning FMLA leave. In general, you're not missing anything because the point of FMLA is to guarantee your job and status as an employee from a benefits perspective. Benefits language from the Department of Labor Website A covered employer is required to maintain group health insurance coverage, including family coverage, for an employee on FMLA leave on the same terms as if the employee continued to work.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "435f095c00fd0b097b98c27a0a57a9df",
"text": "In your situation, it sounds like the only added benefit would be insurance continuance. For employees who can't access short-term disability it is a critical protection against losing their job. I just want to emphasize that given that you are in a pretty decent employment situation.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "8528836692ef2f383dfe4333371524a4",
"text": "No, but they do have a moral obligation to give the employees that stay commensurately for the share if productivity. If a company had 100 clerks, and fired 90 with the introduction of computers, shouldn't there be a somewhat balanced share of those savings going to the computer clerks?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1e5a296417919a3349a32bef497bbb96",
"text": "\"The company itself doesn't benefit. In most cases, it's an expense as the match that many offer is going to cost the company some percent of salary. As Mike said, it's part of the benefit package. Vacation, medical, dental, cafeteria plans (i.e. both flexible spending and dependent care accounts, not food), stock options, employee stock purchase plans, defined contribution or defined benefit pension, and the 401(k) or 403(b) for teachers. Each and all of these are what one should look at when looking at \"\"total compensation\"\". You allude to the lack of choices in the 401(k) compared to other accounts. Noted. And that lack of choice should be part of your decision process as to how you choose to invest for retirement. If the fess/selection is bad enough, you need to be vocal about it and request a change. Bad choices + no match, and maybe the account should be avoided, else just deposit to the match. Note - Keith thanks for catching and fixing one typo, I just caught another.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8387478efeb42f07130050ef4de9134e",
"text": "almost all unions want the business they are in to survive. Most of the stories you hear are such an extreme outlier or just plain made up. Believe it or not, everyone in the union, wants the corp to survive to pay them retirement benefits. They dont want to rape the corp like corps rape resources. They want fair pay. They want pay to go up when the company does better, just like companies tend to demand pay cuts or fire people when the company does worse. quit treating people like a commodity and instead treat them like actual people helping your actual corp to actually grow.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d8727042c22aefe9e3adf5f21e60d2b2",
"text": "I recently rejected an offer at a different firm that would have provided a 14k yearly increase. The reason for the rejection was because I would have had to give up two work from home days, my commute would have been about an hour and half each way, I would have lost about 14 extra days of PTO and holiday pay, and the new company didn't match anything for 401k.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b7b691b09ae341c38fe213061e04c5eb",
"text": "Financial benefit? No. No matter whether you are paid based on a salary or by the hour, the frequency of your pay check has no effect since at the end of the year you will have received the exact same amount of money. Psychological benefit? Well, from the many answers and comments on this page that seem to think there is a difference, then apparently there is a large psychological difference. Whether that is a benefit or not, I guess, depends on your personality.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a1fbd5d6787b133fa068de9ba6ec91ab",
"text": "Other than the guaranteed 5% bonus (assuming you sell it right away), no benefits. Keep in mind that the price from which the discount is calculated is not necessarily the market price at the date of the ESPP purchase, so the actual discount may be more than 5% (depending on the volatility of the stock - much more).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9cdaa61a2421adce6c2d2297ddbb8541",
"text": "\"I write software myself and was involved in a couple of start ups. One failed, another was wildly successful, but I did not receive much in compensation. The former I received stock, but since it failed, it was worthless anyway. There should be compensation for your time in addition to equity in a company. Any agreement needs be in writing. In the later situation I was told to expect about a 17%/year bonus, but nothing could be guaranteed. Translation: \"\"It will never happen.\"\" It didn't, but I meet my lovely wife there so I have that for a bonus. Agreements need to address the bad things can happen. What happens if one of you is no longer interested in continuing? What happens if one of you die, or addicted to something? What happens if one of you gets thrown in jail or disabled? Right now you are full of optimism and hope, but bad things happen. Cover those things while you still like each other. It might be enough to have a good salary, and some stock options. You man not be interested in running the day to day business. Most of all good luck, I wish you all the best!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1540d70c6537c53cb376783708dfe6e0",
"text": "I've always been a proponent that being laid off or fired is the best thing that can happen to an individual. It's very painful and scary in the short term, but the long term results in a much better life and level of happiness. I've seen it in friends, read it in articles, and experienced it personally. This hurts today - but they're going to attain a new level of happiness and reward.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0171b4ba66d57b41b836a5166351bbce",
"text": "\"I was on a form of a retainer for a little over a year. My situation kind of sucked but there's ways in which it would be favourable. I was pretty green at the time and just agreed to what they wanted. I worked for them as an employee for over a year, but they didn't pay overtime so I asked to work part time for them instead. They bait and switched me to work contractor. I renegotiated pay to be higher to fit that. I was paid minimum 22.5 hours a week, on a monthly schedule, plus any extra hours I worked. In reality a retainer would pay in advance and you wouldn't have to actually be present for the minimum hours like I was. Still was better than being an employee. I worked as an \"\"application developer\"\". But this isn't an unheard of thing in the tech sector; former employees that built your systems to be contracted at a later date to provide their expertise at a higher rate because they are the most familiar with the system and/or have a track record of being very good at satisfying the business' specifications or needs.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "22590ba1c5c21a811a2440d8212d2517",
"text": "I don't want to argue any, either, I'll just reiterate what I was originally trying to get at: Your boss/owner/manager is dependant on you creating enough value to pay their paycheck as well. Managers do not directly create value for the company. They might bring in deals, they might 'know' someone, etc. but in the end, workers make the product. If a worker leaves, they'll just have to get another one, or that value ceases. Taken to the extreme, they'd be a company of bosses & managers, and no work at all being done. (but plenty of TPS reports done with the correct cover sheets.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "47a525b91c3d229c722e3fd90eb65dca",
"text": "\"I just don't know how else an employee gains any bargaining power without one? It seems to me in companies in my industry that those without unions bargain their own wage in secret. Then the company wins because its me vs you all the time. A union makes wages and benefits more transparent. You can pick up a copy of my collective bargaining agreement and see what everyone makes. Also you gain the backing legally with resources not available to most persons on their own. I just don't know another way employees can have any \"\"advantage\"\" in a common workplace.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f548159b229a16c96b2da6206c8b433b",
"text": "Yes but the employee losing that job can be devastating because as someone who works for minimum wage (in college and living at home right now so my cost of living is low) but without that I would have no savings.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ff99d5fb81a5d32d09feec4cac7be5c8",
"text": "\"Bad employees are a risk when they are not easily replaceable or have great responsibility, neither of which apply to Subway. I am aware of the multiplier effect, but there must be a corresponding value added to the economy, otherwise you artificially inflate prices and no one is better off. Caring for good employees and their well being is not the same as giving everyone a blanket \"\"living wage\"\" which could be honestly anything, depending on the standard of living used as an index.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cec5dc93f01333c2f3239e1432657220",
"text": "Conversly, then you should not enjoy the benefits privided by being in a union then right? That seems simple enough, but that's not how it works. Unions by law have the duty of fair representaion, so even if you are not a member, you still are awarded all the benefits and protections of the contract. So, it's not that simple, because how do you balance that if not for fair share? The union still has to pay to protect you, but you don't have to pay for any of the work they do. So then, if you can get all the benefits of being in the union and not pay a dime for it, why would you? Seems logical right, it's a good deal, we all want to save money. Well as everyone stops paying and the union can't afford to operate as it did, like any organization, it restructures and lays off staff. Now the union no longer has the resources to offer you good representation, which causes the dues paying members to be frustrated and to drop out and or ditch the union entirely. Now no one in your workplace has a voice, a contract, or any protections. That may turn out to be great, but you know, the company wants to save money too.. The company is also no longer obligated to offer you the same wages or benefits that your coworkers negotiated. So now the company is free to cut wages, benefits and workforce to improve thier bottom line or executive bonuses.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ee4f235b4d714e73d6ee48e3cc39143b",
"text": "There is no benefit in life insurance as such (ie, death insurance.) There is a great deal of value in other types though: total and permanent disability insurance, trauma insurance (a lump sum for a major medical event), and income protection insurance (cover against a temporary but disabling medical condition). If you don't have that, you should get it right now. This is about the most important insurance you can carry. Being unable to work for the rest of your life has a far larger impact than having, say, your car stolen. ... If, later on, you acquire dependents, and you feel you ought to have life insurance, then you will have a relationship with a life insurance company, and maybe they will let you upgrade from income/TPD to income/TPD/life without too much fuss or requalification. Some do; whether yours would I don't know. But at least you have a toe in the door with them, in a way that is infinitely more immediately useful than getting life insurance that you don't actually need.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
13f13bf569fcd55b72f8f719e7c86276
|
“Debt Settlement Order” Text Spams – How do they work?
|
[
{
"docid": "6dab9d3aa01fd09de0f45339785fb7f0",
"text": "\"There are likely to be two approaches: An autodialer of any description would be more than capable of sending an SMS or initiating a direct telephone call with any set of telephone numbers. Such autodialiers can run off a personal computer via VoIP or some such third-party. As to getting the numbers, it can be either from a purchased list (if they're serious about this and are obeying any call opt-out lists) or simply a number range dialed sequentially, whether they work or not. In a more serious operation, any returns are fed directly to a call centre where real human beings then initiate direct contact. Otherwise it is simply a fishing expedition and any valid numbers can then be sold to other agencies as a screened list (and, therefore, more valuable). From an SMS perspective, anyone can purchase a vendor-level SMS Gateway subscription (of which there are loads of vendors - and note the number that allow \"\"web-to-SMS\"\") which permits you to receive and respond to any SMS received. This is always about the \"\"law of large numbers\"\". If they can get in the hundreds of thousands of valid numbers and a small number respond then they can make money. Like any spam, because a few are gullible, the rest of us are targets too. Update: A few searches for \"\"software auto sms\"\" and similar results in a fair number of prospects. As I don't wish this to become too much of a \"\"how-to\"\" I'm not going to link.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "7f38ebc3c2705a7f4104fe2406963d63",
"text": "This sounds like a shady trick. I would consult with a consumer debt lawyer in your area. Most county bar associations in the US have a referral service, where they recommend a local lawyer and there is a reduced fee for the initial visit. I think the statute of limitations is 10 years in most cases, but it depends on where you live. From these bare details,I think they don;t have much of a case. Go see a lawyer and don't let them harrass you.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4343d69b98c82e18a62d67a5bf7d42d0",
"text": "This shows the impact of the inquiries. It's from Credit Karma, and reflects my inquiries over the past two years. In my case, I refinanced 2 properties and the hit is after this fact, so my score at 766 is lower than when approved. You can go to Credit Karma and see how your score was impacted. If in fact the first inquiry did this, you have cause for action. In court, you get more attention by having sufficient specific data to support your claim, including your exact damages.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "aa9d259510819cd62f0e479e8728860b",
"text": "\"You say your primary goal is to clean up your credit report, and you're willing to spend some cash to do it. OK. But beware: the law in this area is a funhouse mirror, everything works upside down and backwards. To start, let's be clear: Credit reports are not extortion to force you into paying. They are a historical record of your creditworthiness, and almost impossible to fix without altering history. Paying on this debt will affirm the old data was correct, and glue it to your report. Here's how credit reporting works for R-9 (sent to collections) amounts. The data is on your credit report for 7 years. The danger is in this clock being restarted. What will not restart the clock? Ignoring the debt, talking casusally to collectors, and the debt being sold from one collector to another. What will restart the clock? Acknowledging the debt formally, court judgment, paying the debt, or paying on the debt (obviously, paying acknowledges the debt.) Crazy! You could have a debt that's over 7 years old, pay it because you're a decent person, and BOOM! Clock restarts and 7 more years of bad luck. Even worse-- if they write-off or forgive any part of the debt, that's income and you'll need to pay income tax on it. Ugh! Like I say, the only way to remove a bad mark is to alter history. Simple fact: The collector doesn't care about your bad credit mark; he wants money. And it costs a lot of money, time and/or stress for both of you to demand they research it, negotiate, play phone-tag, and ultimately go to court. So this works very well (this is just the guts, you have to add all the who, what, where, signature block, formalities etc.): 1 Company and Customer absolutely disagree as to whether Customer owes Company this debt: (explicitly named debt with numbers and amount) 2 But Company and Customer both eagerly agree that the expense, time, and stress of research, negotiation, and litigation is burdensome for both of us. We both strongly desire a quick, final and no-fault solution. Therefore: 3 Parties agree Customer shall pay Company (acceptable fraction here). Payment within 30 days. To be acknowledged in writing by Company. 4 This shall be absolute and final resolution. 5 NO-FAULT. Parties agree this settlement resolves the matter in good faith. Parties agree this settlement is done for practical reasons, this bill has not been established as a valid debt, and any difference between billed and settled amount is not a canceled nor forgiven debt. 6 Neither party nor its assigns will make any adverse statements to third parties relating to this bill or agreement. Parties agree they have a continuous duty to remove adverse statements, and agree to do so within seven days of request. 7 Parties specifically agree no adverse mark nor any mark of any kind shall be placed on Customer's credit report; and in the event such a mark appears, Parties will disavow it continuously. Parties agree that a good credit report has a monetary value and specific impacts on a customer's life. 8 Jurisdiction of law shall be where the effects are felt, and that shall be (place of service) regarding the amounts of the bill proper. Severable, inseparable, counterparts, witness, signature lines blah blah. A collector is gonna sign this because it's free money and it's not tricky. What does this do? 1, 2 and 5 alter history to make the debt never have existed in the first place. To do this, it must formally answer the question of why the heck would you pay a debt that isn't real and you don't owe: out of sheer practicality; it's cheaper than Rogaine. This is your \"\"get out of jail free\"\" card both with the credit bureaus and the IRS. Of course, 3 gives the creditor motivation to go along with it. 6 says they can't burn your credit. 7 says it again and they're agreeing you can sue for cash money. 8 lets you pick the court. The collector won't get hung up on any of these since he can easily remove the bad mark. (don't be mad that they won't do it \"\"for free\"\", that's what 3 is for.) The key to getting them to take a settlement is to be reasonable and fair. Make sure the agreement works for them too. 6 says you can't badmouth them on social media. 4 and 5 says it can't be used against them. 8 throws them a bone by letting them sue in their home court for the bill they just settled (a right they already had). If it's medical, add \"\"HIPAA does not apply to this document\"\" to save them a ton of paperwork. Make it easy for them. You want the collector to take it to his boss and say \"\"this is pretty good. Do it.\"\" Don't send the money until their signed copy is in your hands. Then send promptly with an SASE for the receipt. Make it easy for them. This is on you. As far as \"\"getting them to send you an offer\"\", creditors are reluctant to mail things especially to people they don't think will pay, because it costs them money to write and send. So you may need to be proactive about running them down with your offer. Like I say, it's a funhouse mirror.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3d5daf9cc17e40cfa669930d0cc5de79",
"text": "Request verification in writing of the debt. They are required to provide this by law. Keep this for your records. Send them a notice by certified mail stating that this is not your debt and not to contact you again. Indicate that you will take legal action if they continue to try and collect. Keep a log of if/when they continue to call or harass you. Contact counsel about your rights under the fair debt collection laws, but if they keep harassing you after being provided proof of your identity, they are liable. You could win a judgement in court if you have proof of bad behavior. If your identity is stolen, you are not legally responsible for the charges. However it is a mess to clean up, so pull your credit reports and review your accounts to be sure.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "80ff743892623ae50d1e5ca836fc4400",
"text": "\"She claimed that she makes money. When you wanted to make some too, she asked for your account credentials - which are only needed to take money away, never to give. The simplest explanation would be loan scam: Even if you have only $10 on your account, you can lose much more - the trick is that someone using your credentials can take an online loan in your name, and steal that money. If the scheme is long-running, she'll be taking new loans and using the money to pay back the earlier ones, building up credit history for her victims - only to allow taking even bigger loans. Her victims see the incoming transfers and are happy about the scheme \"\"working\"\". Until she decides that the pot is big enough to cash it in and disappear, leaving everyone deep in debt. Those who fell for this could be already defaulting loans they have no idea about and the loan companies have no way of notifying them, because she redirected the contact details. Never reveal your password. Nobody needs your password for any legitimate purpose.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c08b8d8c7c8e00e387c0743a7a55121f",
"text": "You can complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service in Australia. I've never used them in particular but generally organizations will respond much faster once you get the ombudsman involved. However, since you say they've now kept their promises, the ombudsman is unlikely to do much more than listen sympathetically.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1ea12d08b27c305c365845315d008efb",
"text": "This is called a fraudulent conveyance because its purpose is to prevent a creditor from getting repaid. It is subject to claw back under US law, which is a fancy way of saying that your friend will have to pay the bank back. Most jurisdictions have similar laws. It is probably a crime as well, but that varies by jurisdiction.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3aa73616af3f7a1e40c6ed37c63ab375",
"text": "\"As a former debt collector myself, I can tell you that we did occasionally get someone claiming that they weren't who they really were. However, it was pretty obvious who was telling the truth after a while. Above all else, just be calm and polite. Technically, you can also say \"\"do not call this number again\"\" and they have to stop calling, but I wouldn't do this right off the bat. Its best if they are convinced that you aren't the guy they're looking for. Calmness and politeness are traits that debtors usually lack, sometimes because they are just normal people overwhelmed with their situation, and sometimes because they are irrational loser (sorry, but its true). Either way, if you are consistently calm and unconcerned about their threats, they will either give up or realize you aren't the guy. Eventually they will stop calling you (or at least I know I would have stopped calling you).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c15816a0b00f6eee6143953eeca0884a",
"text": "\"Sue the debt collectors in small claims court. There are several example stories around the internet, but this is a well written one from the consumerist. If your phone is a cell phone: \"\"it is against the law for a company to leave a pre-recorded message on your cell phone.\"\" In fact, the call frequency increased once they realized they had reached a live person. I called each of these companies multiple times, and though I was given assurances each time that my number would be taken off of their lists, the calls continued, morning, noon and night. At my wits end, I decided the only way to have the harassing calls stop was to file suits against the collection companies. It's very important to understand that it is against the law for a company to leave a pre-recorded message on your cell phone. Armed with this knowledge, I filed suit against several of the collection companies. I filed in small claims court so I did not need to hire an attorney, and the process was as simple as completing a paragraph on a complaint form. For evidence, I had over a hundred Google Voicemail transcripts showing the times the companies called and the text of the pre-recorded messages. Mysteriously, the calls all stopped immediately on the same date the collection companies received the certified letters stating they were being sued. Then a new flurry of calls began pouring in. This time it was their attorneys. The attorneys representing these out of state collection companies were all desperate to settle out of court. hey did not want to incur the expense of traveling for court or hiring a local law firm who wasn't on retainer. They also understood they had no justifiable defense for the calls. To make a long story short, so far I have successfully sued 3 of these collection companies and settled for more than $5,000 out of court. All it cost me was $35 and 20 minutes per suit. Making these companies pay is the only incentive for them to stop their illegal and harassing practices. If more consumers knew their rights and actually took a few minutes to stand up for them, it would become less profitable for these companies to conduct business the way they do now. -Source And whether you have a cell phone or land line, It is illegal for the debt collectors to tell you they are calling to collect a debt for someone else under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (wikipedia, ftc docs). What Remedies Are Available If The Debt Collector Violates The Law Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, you have the right to sue a debt collector in state or federal court within one year from the date of the violation. If you win, you may recover damages in the amount of any losses you suffered as a result of the violation, plus an additional amount of up to $1,000.00. You may also be able to recover court costs and attorney fees. If the same debt collector has engaged in unlawful conduct with a number of consumers, it may be possible to find a lawyer who will file a class action lawsuit. -Source With regard to whether you can sue under FDCPA if you are not the debtor, one FDCPA lawyer (take with grain of salt) says yes: Did you know that it doesn't matter if you owe the account the debt collector is calling you about or not? If a debt collector violates the FDCPA (the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 USC 1692 et. seq.) that debt collector could be liable to pay you statutory damages, actual damages, attorney's fees, and court costs. -Source\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "022e5bdbc1a6959fb1bafc31923db57d",
"text": "If they're making 100k a month in sales, why do they need your 92k so badly that they're willing to pay 200% annual interest? Going to a loanshark or the mob would be cheaper, to say nothing of all the legal options available to them. Or they could just wait three weeks for revenue to cover it. Nothing about this adds up to anything other than a scam. Your friend might be well-meaning, but someone along the line is looking for a sucker.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e7c4de12c012960ae2f30380ae29cab3",
"text": "\"I don't have a crystal ball but chances are your tenant is definitely lying. Rent was late and now the money intended to cover the rent; miraculously is lost in the mailbox. Anyhow, you were already nice to tolerate the late \"\"payment\"\". Keshlam's option 1.5 in the comments above is the ideal way to settle in which both parties have learned a lesson and are at a loss. Demand the rent payment but settle for half as a one time courtesy. If this continues or this tenant has shown shady predicaments such as this, you should look for legal means to evict this tenant. College students are very creative and who's to say this won't happen again? \"\"The neighbors dog took my wallet.\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4e41ab5f9d9f6e13cf1e4fe2b019eb8d",
"text": "Someone else might be able to provide more details - but generally yes, of course. International corporations can pursue debt collection across borders - whether or not they do is a matter of convenience rather than law. My understanding is that a company's ability to report on your credit report is dependent on their membership in Equifax, USA etc. - so while most of your credit is country by country, international companies or companies with any relationship in other countries can follow you cross-border if they find out your new address and report the debt w/ that address. Since virtually every major company has some American affiliate, I wouldn't hold my breath that you can escape it indefinitely ESPECIALLY since you don't already have the debt, and have the power to actually pay for the service that you're using. Also - this is an incredibly scummy thing to do, and no matter how you dress it up as a financial decision it's just theft. Would you leave the country without paying your landlord? Without paying for groceries or other physical goods? Why is stealing from a telecom company any different?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "213bfb9c6674440fc32a5733bc2f5010",
"text": "\"It's not usually apparent to the average consumer, but there's actually two stages to collecting a payment, and two ways to undo it. The particular combination that occurs may lead to long refund times, on top of any human delays (like Ben Miller's answer addresses). When you pay with a credit card, it is typically only authorized - the issuing bank says \"\"I'm setting this money aside for this transaction\"\", but no money actually changes hands. You'll typically see this on your statement as a \"\"pending\"\" charge. Only later, in a process called \"\"settlement\"\", does your bank actually send money to the merchant's bank. Typically, this process starts the same day that the authorization happens (at close of business), but it may take a few days to complete. In the case of an ecommerce transaction, the merchant may not be allowed to start it until they ship whatever you ordered. On the flip side, a given transaction can be voided off or money can be sent back to your card. In the first case, the transaction will just disappear altogether; in the second, it may disappear or you may see both the payment and the refund on your statement. Voids can be as fast as an authorization, but once a transaction has started settlement, it can't be voided any more. Sending money back (a \"\"refund\"\") goes through the same settlement process as above, and can take just as long. So, to specifically apply that to your question: You get the SMS when the transaction is authorized, even though no money has yet moved. The refund money won't show up until several days after someone indicates that it should happen, and there's no \"\"reverse authorize\"\" operation to let you or your bank know that it's coming.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "83b726abb06b3facfd6be7b430d842bc",
"text": "Good! The article says it was some kind of collateral protection insurance that customers were signed up for despite it being unrequired for the loan. The accusations is that WF racketeered about 800,000 loans by bundling in this bunk insurance cost as part of the loan structure. I'm glad you're not caught up in it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7472e8cf6efbfb7589c2c05575b11d70",
"text": "Eric is right regarding the tax, i.e. ordinary income on discount, cap gain treatment on profit whether long term or short. I would not let the tax tail wag the investing dog. If you would be a holder of the stock, hold on, if not, sell. You are considering a 10-15% delta on the profit to make the decision. Now. I hear you say your wife hasn't worked which potentially puts you in a lower bracket this year. I wrote Topping off your bracket with a Roth Conversion which would help your tax situation long term. Simply put, you convert enough Traditional IRA (or 401(k) money) to use up some of the current bracket you are in, but not hit the next. This may not apply to you, depending on whether you have retirement funds to do this. Note - The cited article offers numbers for a single person, but illustrates the concept. See the tax table for the marginal rates that would apply to you.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
965b6a556595afe9d7101e757955a877
|
2 houses 450k each or one 800k?
|
[
{
"docid": "9dcde1f44c58e9694cf6dd845c37d03b",
"text": "Having someone else paying you rent is always going to be the better deal financially. The question is, what does $450k buy in the neighborhood in which you want to live, vs $800k? I'm going to assume you can afford either option (buying a $450k home and not selling, or an $800k home and selling your current one) whether someone's paying you rent or not. Let's make up some numbers here; a $450k home, financed 80/20 (360k principal) at 4% for 30 years will cost you about $1720 in P&I payments per year (plus escrows such as RE taxes, PMI, and homeowners insurance where applicable). An $800k home financed 80/20 (640k principal) at 4% for 30yr will give you payments of about $3,055/mo before taxes and insurance. So, the worst case overall is that you buy a 450k home in the new neighborhood and are not, at any given time, collecting rent on the old property. That would (assuming the mortgage terms on both home loans were comparable) cost you $3440/mo and you'd be living in a $450k home in a neighborhood where 450k may not buy a home as nice as the one you moved out of. The question as I stated above is this; assuming you had a reliable tenant in your home for the entire remaining life of the loan on your current home, which is more acceptable to you: buying $450k of home (which might be a downgrade in sqft or amenities) and paying $2020 in P&I, or paying about a grand more ($3055/mo) for a much nicer home in the new location? Strictly from a money perspective, the renter is going to be the best option, IF you get reliable tenancy for the entire life of the mortgage on that house; you'll be paying $2020/mo for 30 years, which is $727,200, to end up with $950k of total home value (plus adjustments for actual home value appreciation/depreciation). That's the only way you'll come out ahead on any mortgage; have someone else pay most of it for you. If you don't rent, the $800k home will cost you $1,099,800, while two $450k homes will cost you $1,454,400. The percentage of home value over total payments for the 800k home would be 72% (you will have paid 137% of the value of the home), while you will have paid 153% of the value of two 450k homes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e4bf0dcb96ce68979ca1b604142bb2d7",
"text": "\"Forget the math's specifics for a moment: here's some principles. Additional housing for a renter gives you returns in the form of money. Additional housing for yourself pays its returns in the form of \"\"here is a nice house, live in it\"\". Which do you need more of? If you don't need the money, get a nicer house for yourself. If you need (or want) the money, get a modest house for yourself and either use the other house as a rental property, or invest the proceeds of its sale in the stock market. But under normal circumstances (++) don't expect that buying more house for yourself is a good way to increase how much money you have. It's not. (++ the exception being during situations where land/housing value rises quickly, and when that rise is not part of a housing bubble which later collapses. Generally long-term housing values tend to be relatively stable; the real returns are from the rent, or what economists call imputed rent when you're occupying it yourself.)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5c85b73eb81446ba89b3ae191aac44b1",
"text": "Because it appears you have in the neighborhood of 30 years remianing on your mortgage for the first house, If you can sell it you will likely be better off in the end. While renting has the potential for greater income it is a business. And like any business there are risks, expenses, and work required to make it successful. There will be times where you can not find a renter immediately and will be responsible for making both payments, maintaining both houses, the insurance(which for an owner is higher for a rental property than a domicile), and paying the applicable taxes. You need to look at your best and worst case numbers. If your best case numbers leave you in the hole 300/month then that is not the sort of business you want to run. Your investment should build your savings and retirement funds not deplete them. Further you are more likely to fall between your best and worst case scenerios. So you need to be able to thrive at that level. If something in the middle is going to take you into bankruptcy then sell the property. If you are not willing to put the time into your business that it will need (My rental home took about 10-30 hours a month despite renters being responsible for basic upkeep and maintenance. Finally your plan B: A home with 800k value will have higher costs and higer expenses and maintenance. If the 800k home is the home you and your family needs then by all means go for it. But if it can do just as well in the 450k Home then go there. Pay the home off early by making the payments you would be making for the 800k home. In this way you pay less in total cost of the home and set your self up for the greatest chance of success. Once that home is paid off the break even point for renting goes way down as well. So the rental option could be in the future. I would just aviod it now if possible.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "35d19da976c557e53da33983f6993199",
"text": "I live in suburban Washington DC. The houses in my old neighborhood that used to sell for $500K to $600K were renting for about $2,500 because that's all the market could bear. My mortgage was about $3,100 but I could never have rented it out for that. Owners were taking a loss every month just to keep the house. Like I said earlier though, that same house is now only worth $328K. They're still renting for the same $2,500 per month that they did before the value plummeted. I did downsize a bit when I moved to my new house. Went from 4 very large bedrooms to 4 moderate bedrooms (1 is kinda small) and went from 3 bathrooms to 2. But the plot is much larger now than my previous house. Before felt like a McMansion and now it feels like a cozy cottage but I'm sure a lot of that is my perception of the whole situation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e84a8b4c47e19de7bbbad138cef6c93c",
"text": "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/real-estate-prices-housing-inequality-by-robert-j--shiller-2017-07) reduced by 92%. (I'm a bot) ***** > In some cities, higher-priced homes may tend to turn over more rapidly than in others. > Some cities may be inhabited by larger families, implying bigger houses than in other cities. > Using satellite data for major US cities, the economist Albert Saiz of MIT confirmed that tighter physical constraints - such as surrounding bodies of water or land gradients that make properties unsuitable for extensive building - tend to correlate with higher home prices. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6os52x/shiller_on_housing_prices/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~172691 tl;drs so far.\"\") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr \"\"PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.\"\") | *Top* *keywords*: **city**^#1 **home**^#2 **price**^#3 **housing**^#4 **income**^#5\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "df70fab408e657760c2377580cfb5e79",
"text": "You can hire a builder to build for you on a lot that you would be happy to live on with utilities already connected. Subdividing a large piece of land gets a little more complicated. What easements exist, and what new easements would need to be created when connecting utilities? Would all of the lots already have street access, or do you need to dedicate some of the land to building a new road in the subdivision? Also, I edited your post because 83,000sqft is 1.9 acres. Building homes on .19 acre parcels (assuming no need for a road to take another 15% of the lot) reduces the value of the homes that you are building. You should run the numbers with 6 houses and see how attractive the math looks. Also, you should look for updated numbers on cost to build. Custom homes are likely closer to $275-$350 (where an architect is involved with drawing the plans).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d752be341408de731a2bc853084a3a67",
"text": "You should very much nail down your planned expenses and profit. However beyond that you may have some better options to avoid taxation assuming all your plans go well. You should take into account the ability to avoid taxes on the sale of a primary residence. You could build the spec house, then move into the spec house. You could then sell the primary (avoiding any profit less than $500k filing jointly, assuming you meet the Home Sale Tax Exclusion requirements). You can then in another two years or so sell the spec house if you want and again avoid up to $500k in profit. http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-250000500000-home-sale-tax-exclusion.html",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4f6ed8bf407fec3f473e98f309f972ee",
"text": "The breakeven amount isn't at 8 years. You calculated how many years of paying $500 it would take to break even with one year of paying $4000. 8 x 10 years = 80 years. So by paying $500/year it will take you 80 years to have spent the same amount ($40000 total) as you did in 10 years. At this point it may seem obvious what the better choice is. Consider where you'll be after 10 years: In scenario #1 you've spent $5000 ($500*10) and have to continue spending $500/year indefinitely. In scenario #2 you've spent $40000 ($4000*10) and don't have to pay any more, but you currently have $35000 ($40000 - $5000) less than you did in scenario #1. If you had stayed with scenario #1 you could invest that $35000 at a measly 1.43% annual return and cover the $500 payments indefinitely without ever dipping into your remaining $35000. Most likely over the long term you'll do better than 1.43% per year and come out far ahead.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8b839d729f83a276ef9f64f6ca8539a4",
"text": "A $250K earner might have $4M in retirement savings and $500K in available funds, but doesn't wish to spend all his liquidity on the house. In general, a house might cost 2-3 times one's annual income. It would take many years to get that saved up. They might want to have the house sooner. It all goes back to choice, priorities, personal preference.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "76b0bc30e0178a8627847743ff0ae369",
"text": "\"Say you're buying a 400K house. Your relative finances 120K (30%). Say I'm optimistic, but the real-estate market recovers, and your house is worth 600K in 5-6 years (can happen, with the inflation and all). The gain is 200K. Your relative gets 100K. You repay him 220K on 120K loan for 5 years. Roughly, 16% APR. Quite an expensive loan. I'm of course optimistic, it seems to me that so is your relative. The question is: if the house loses value in that term, does your relative take 50% of the losses? Make calculations based on several expected returns (optimistic, \"\"realistic\"\", loss case, etc), and for each calculate how much in fact will that loan cost. It will help you to decide if you want it. Otherwise your relationships with your relative might go very bad in a few years. BTW: Suggestion: it's a bad idea to mix business and friend/family you don't want to lose.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3007ba4951c53c091d51a0fa105e1cdb",
"text": "I was down in San Diego recently and talking with a friend while at dinner. I was complaining that the housing in my area had gone up and a starter 3/2 was getting into the ~415k range. I guess houses in not even good parts of SD are in the 600k range minimum.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9af55094839c6d10fccdf320dad52f9c",
"text": "Another vote for a bigger downpayment, for the reasons Benjamin mentions. Also, from experience, I would save up at least a small pile as a separate house emergency fund because you will find things that are wrong and/or that got bodged by the previous owner and it's probably not going to last past the first few months of home ownership. In my case, the home inspector missed - amongst other things - that the shower on the 2nd floor was leaking both into the adjoining bedroom and the living room below. That added a little unexpected expenditure as you might guess.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b3c6a45aea4d9f4080a1225c5a2cd167",
"text": "First the good news: based on the time involved, and the amount of potential profits; you will not owe any tax on the sale of the house no matter which option you pick. Now the details. When determining if there are any capital gains the IRS cares about the difference between the sale price and the purchase price. The amount of the loan, the final balance of the loan, or the lack of loan don't factor into the calculation. To complicate matters the government does factor into the equation any improvements you have made to the house (like a new deck) and the cost of buying and selling the house (real estate agents). If a single person has less than 250K in capital gains and has used the house as their main residence for 2 of the the previous 5 years their tax is zero. For a couple the tax free gain is $500K. For your situation since the sale price is less than $250K, the capital gains will also be less than $250K. You do have one potential area of concern. If the house is worth significantly more than $150K, the government could claim that the difference between what you charged your parents and what you could have charged was a gift. Assuming that there are no other factors that you didn't include in the original question it would appear that you will not face any taxes. Regarding your two options, neither will impact the taxes. Though draining your savings or investments could make it difficult to meet an emergency during the time between the sending of the $95K to the mortgage company and the closing on the deal with your parents. If the money came from retirement account it could have an even greater impact on your taxes and retirement situation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c36be7dadeacd4e48979890060af57f0",
"text": "You are being ripped off on several counts. 1) 40k is 26% not 25%. 2) Why should you pay them $500 rent? they bought a share of the property, they should fund it if they intend to keep 75% 3) Why do you need to pay them for the 75%? why dont they need to pay you for the 25%? You are better off getting a loan for the 75% and going solo so you get to buy equity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e3825f236f55ce6c0cc79c0570948647",
"text": "If you buy a townhouse, you often are in a condominium arrangement in the US (when you're really in a rowhouse in particular). So that's a downside right away: you have to have a HOA, or at least some sort of common agreement, though it might not have formal meetings. Everyone who owns an interest in the entire group of townhouses gets some say in landscaping and such. Beyond that though, townhouses (and similarly, condominiums) are often easier to own (as they don't have as much maintenance that you have to do), but more expensive because you pay someone to do it (the landscaping, the external repairs, etc.). You likely don't have as much control over what the external looks like (because you have to be in agreement with the other owners), but you also don't have to do the work, unless your agreement is to collectively do the mowing/landscaping, which you should know in advance. I wouldn't underestimate the value of easier, by the way; it's very valuable to not have to deal with as many repairs and to be able to go a week without thinking about mowing or watering. In that sense it can be a nice transition into ownership, getting some-but-not-all of the obligations. But if that's something you really value, doing the landscaping and mowing and whatnot, that's relevant too. You can always tell your realtor to look for townhouses where the owners do some/all of the landscaping, though that opens up a different can of worms (where you rely on others to do work that they may not do, or do well). They're also somewhat noisier; you may be sharing a wall (but not necessarily, air-gap townhouses do exist) and either way will be closer to your neighbors. Does noise bother you? Conversely, are you noisy? In a college town this is probably something to pay attention to. Price wise, of course stay well within your means; if being close to the city center is important, that may lead you to buy a townhouse in that area. If being further out isn't a problem, you'll probably have similar choices in terms of price as long as you look in cheaper areas for single family homes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2da3d0954e3914fc9220ceba6955c704",
"text": "I live in MA. Median price value here is $410K. Depending on location a $410K house here can be a ranch from 1950 needing a complete overhaul, a 1970's split level, a 4 bedroom Colonial in Central MA or a condo somewhere close to Boston. These homes are decidedly nothing special, and certainly not where the 1% live. There are plenty of houses that list in the $750s in my town that go on and off the market really quickly, generally purchased by a two-earner family making decent (but not 1%er) money. Think engineers, doctors, sales and marketing execs, managers. Source : https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/07/25/median-home-price-massachusetts-tops-for-first-time/rVsP7BwWZCtKwP9BqZQOKJ/story.html",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1ab5fbddc232cbe6f468ada3377e5260",
"text": "A lot depends on whether your mortgage payments are interest only or 'repayment' and what the remaining term is on each of the mortgages. Either way I suspect that the best value for the money you put in will be had by making payments to the larger, newer mortgage. This is because the quicker you reduce the capital owed the less interest you will pay over the whole term of the mortgage and you've already had the older mortgage for sometime (unless you remortgaged) so the benefit you can get from an arbitrary reduction in the capital is inevitably less than you will get from the same reduction in the capital of the newer mortgage. Even if the two mortgages are the same age then the benefit of putting money into the one on the new house is greater due to the greater interest charged on it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "990df5d54f35fc76dac95ac6c32c752c",
"text": "\"Another problem with this plan (assuming you get past Rocky's answer somehow) is that you assume that $50K in construction costs will translate to $50K in increased value. That's not always true; the ROI on home improvements is usually a lot less than 100%. You'd also owe more property taxes on your improvements, which would cut into your plan somewhat. But you also can't keep doing this forever. Soon enough, you'd run out of physical and/or legal space to keep adding additions to the house (zoning tends to limit how much you can build, unless you're in the middle of nowhere, and eventually you'd fill the lot), even if you did manage to keep obtaining more and more loans. And you'd quickly reach the point of diminishing returns on your expansions. Many homebuyers might be prepared to pay more for a third or fourth bedroom, but vanishingly few in most markets will pay substantially more for a second billiards room or a third home theater. At some point, your house isn't a mansion, it's \"\"that ridiculous castle\"\" only an eccentric would want, and the pool of potential buyers (and the price they'll pay for it) diminishes. And the lender, not being stupid, isn't going to go on financing your creation of a monstrosity, because they are the ones who will be stuck with the place if you default.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
94252672c382371c469ac5222b62e486
|
What are the costs to establish an LLC and to maintain it?
|
[
{
"docid": "8bee88c03ff8c758403ac1e82e9afc43",
"text": "The cost will be around $300-$500 if you do it correctly it in Florida and can be over a $1,000 if you do it in New York (New York is more expensive due to a publication requirement that New York has for LLC’s). The price ranges I’ve given include filing, state fees, getting a tax ID number (EIN), operating agreement, membership certificates, registered agent fees and publication fees if done in New York. Each state also have licensing boards and city fees that are applicable, so you would want to also make sure that you are keeping compliant there. Yearly paperwork to keep the LLC running won’t be so expensive, expect the state to charge a yearly fee and require some basic information to be submitted. I had a quick look at Florida, and with someone filing it for you, expect around $200 to $250 a year, plus registered agent fees. If you are late in Florida the penalty is $400 so you definitely would want a service that provides compliance calendar notifications to make sure you are on time with fees. In regards to bookkeeping and taxes, yearly tax filing will start at $250 to $500 for an LLC and move up from there depending on the services being offered and the amount of time of work. I recently referred someone to an accountant that will charge $250 to file an almost zero tax return on an LLC. I think $40 an hour is a little low for a bookkeeper but it all depends on where you are. I know in some major cities bookkeepers expect $75 an hour or higher. So the expectation in Miami and Manhattan will probably be more expensive than Jacksonville and Albany. If you doing a little business don’t expect the cost to be too much on the bookkeeping. So, breakdown: $300-$500 (FL) - $1,000 (NY) Registration of LLC + any business license, city or other registrations $250 Yearly Fee + Yearly Registered Agent + any business licenses, city or other fee $500 Tax Return + Bookkeeping Fee Banks will charge more than a personal account so expect $120 a year plus. In regards to service I would look at companies that specialize in foreigners setting up businesses in the US, because they will have services designed to help you more than services that primarily specialize with US clients. You are going to have some different needs, based on not having a Social Security Number or establishing from overseas.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "72684d4f21bf2b2b5d71ece186c61e17",
"text": "\"I'll answer in general terms, since I'm not familiar with the price ranges in Florida. The LLC formation costs $125 (state fee). In addition you'll need a registered agent. Registered agent could be your CPA/EA/bookkeeper/property manager/local friend, or you can pay firms specializing in providing registration and agents services such as NorthWestern or LegalZoom (there are many others). You'll need to pay an annual fee of ~$140 in Florida. If you are using someone to do the formation, they'll charge more (usually the on-line services are cheaper than a local CPA or attorney, by $100-$300). Bookkeeping will probably be charged by the hour, but some bookkeepers charge flat fees for small accounts. Per hour would be probably in the range of $40-$80. You'll have to pay taxes - both in Florida (where the property is) and on the Federal level to the IRS. You'll be paying them as a non-Resident individual. Your CPA/EA will charge you anywhere between $150 to $500 for that (if they charge more - run away, unless there's some specific complication that requires extra costs). You will need a ITIN for that, your CPA/EA can help you get one or you can apply yourself. Be careful with all those people selling cr@p about organizing in Delaware/Wyoming/Nevada (like CQM in his answer). Organizing in a state other than where the properties are located (or off-shore) won't save you a dime, and not only that - it will add to the costs. Because you'll have to pay to the state where you organized (CQM mentioned Wyoming - $50/year), keep registered agent in the state of organization (+$99) and also do all the things I've described above about Florida - as a \"\"Foreign\"\" (out of state) entity, which may mean higher fees. It won't save you any taxes as well, because you pay taxes to the state from which you derive income, which is Florida, either way. Remember that what you call LLC in Italy may be in fact a \"\"Corporation\"\" as defined in the US, and there's a huge difference. You should probably not put a real-estate property in a Corporation in the US. You must get a legal advice from a (Florida) lawyer ($0-$500/hr consultation), and a tax advice from a (Florida) CPA/EA ($0-$200/hr consultation). Do not consider anything I write here as a legal or tax advice, because it is not. You need a professional to help you because as an Italian, you don't know how things work exactly and relying on rumours and half-truths that you may find and get over the Internet may end up costing you significantly in damages. Also, talk to a reliable real estate agent and property manager before making any purchases.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "2412c5cd1130f007f6f068e6b280e2b3",
"text": "\"You're confusing so many things at once here...... First thing first: we cannot suggest you what to do business-wise since we have no idea about your business. How on Earth can anyone know if you should sell the software to someone or try to distribute to customers yourself? How would we know if you should hire employees or not? If you say you don't need employees - why would you consider hiring them? If you say you want to sell several copies and have your own customers - why would you ask if you should sell your code to someone else? Doesn't make sense. Now to some more specific issues: I heard sole proprietary companies doesn't earn more than 250k and it's better to switch to corporation or LLC etc. because of benefits. I heard it was snowing today in Honolulu. So you heard things. It doesn't make them true, or relevant to you. There's no earning limit above which you should incorporate. You can be sole proprietor and make millions, and you can incorporate for a $10K/year revenue business. Sole proprietorship, incorporation (can be C-Corp or S-Corp), or LLC - these are four different types of legal entity to conduct business. Each has its own set of benefits and drawbacks, and you must understand which one suits you in your particular situation. For that you should talk to a lawyer who could help you understand what liability protection you might need, and to a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your state) who can help you understand the tax-related costs and benefits of each choice. On the other hand I heard that if I create LLC company, in case of failure, they can get EVERYTHING from me, what's this all about? No. This is not true. Who are \"\"they\"\", how do you define \"\"failure\"\", and why would they get anything from you at all? Even without knowing all that, your understanding is wrong, because the \"\"LL\"\" in LLC stands for LIMITED liability. The whole point of forming LLC or Corporation is to limit your own personal liability. But mere incorporation or forming LLC doesn't necessarily mean your liability is limited. Your State law defines what you must do for that limited liability protection, and that includes proper ways to run your business. Again - talk to your lawyer and your tax adviser about what it means to you. I'm totally unfamiliar with everything related to taxes/companies/LLC/corporation etc Familiarize yourself. No-one is going to do it for you. Start reading, ask specific questions on specific issues, and get a proper legal and tax advice from licensed professionals.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "18cd8234a214ff8a7f311bcf36715bc1",
"text": "If you need to shop coins, you could do your personal improvement, however, this may be tricky because of even easy documentation errors fee extra. For many little employer proprietors, the high-quality picks the use of a business enterprise company, which is a fee-powerful preference to make sure your documentation is accurate and filed right away with conditions. If you're concerned in Delaware LLC with as little quotes as viable, begin with the aid of considering conditions wherein you'll include. You do no longer require work within the state you select, however it may be more reasonable for pick out your home circumstance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1f9dfe3f3a6fb4891b0208bcc8d08440",
"text": "\"Technically filing fee is probably a \"\"startup cost\"\", but yes - its a kind of an expense. The yearly recurring fee is an expense.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c63354cffacbd0dd596f593b412164d3",
"text": "\"There are very few circumstances where forming an out of state entity is beneficial, but a website is within these circumstances in certain instances. Businesses with no physical operations do not need to care what jurisdiction they are registered in: your home state, a better united state or non-united state. The \"\"limited liability\"\" does it's job. If you are storing inventory or purchasing offices to compliment your online business, you need to register in the state those are located in. An online business is an example of a business with no physical presence. All states want you to register your LLC in the state that you live in, but this is where you need to read that state's laws. What are the consequences of not registering? There might be none, there might be many. In New York, for example, there are no consequences for not registering (and registering in new york - especially the city - is likely the most expensive in the USA). If your LLC needs to represent itself in court, New York provides retroactive foreign registrations and business licenses. So basically, despite saying that you need to pay over $1000 to form your LLC \"\"or else\"\", the reality is that you get the local limited liability protection in courts whenever you actually need it. Check your local state laws, but more times than not it is analogous to asking a barber if you need a haircut, the representative is always going to say \"\"yes, you do\"\" while the law, and associated case law, reveals that you don't. The federal government doesn't care what state your form an LLC or partnership in. Banks don't care what state you form an LLC or partnership in. The United States post office doesn't care. Making an app? The Apple iTunes store doesn't care. So that covers all the applicable authorities you need to consider. Now just go with the cheapest. In the US alone there are 50 states and several territories, all with their own fee structures, so you just have to do your research. Despite conflicting with another answer, Wyoming is still relevant, because it is cheap and has a mature system and laws around business entity formation. http://www.incorp.com has agents in every state, but there are registered agents everywhere, you can even call the Secretary of State in each state for a list of registered agents. Get an employer ID number yourself after the business entity is formed, it takes less than 5 minutes. All of this is also contingent on how your LLC or partnership distributes funds. If your LLC is not acting like a pass through entity to you and your partner,but instead holding its own profits like a corporation, then again none of this matters. You need to form it within the state you live and do foreign registrations in states where it has any physical presence, as it has becomes its own tax person in those states. This is relevant because you said you were trying to do something with a friend.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9dadcaf1b7aff5c3555a19c51de29974",
"text": "The CPA's mention of $2,500 is probably referring to the recently increased de minimis safe harbor under the final tangible property regulations (used to be $500) without an applicable financial statement. The IRS will not challenge your choice of expense or capitalization on amounts on or below $2500 if you elect the de minimis safe harbor election on your return. However, you must follow whatever you're doing for your books. (So if you are capitalizing your laptops for book purposes, you would also need to capitalize for tax purposes). Section 179 allows you to expense property that you would have otherwise have had to capitalize and depreciate. Section 179 can be annoying, especially if your LLC is treated as a passthrough, because there are recapture provisions when you dispose of the asset too early. For the tax return preparer, it makes the return preparation much more simple if there are no fixed assets to account for in the first place, which is quite possible if you are expensive all items/invoices less than $2,500.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f32db279288b5726c22159492891b6d4",
"text": "\"Since as you say, an LLC is a pass-through entity, you will be making income in the U.S. when you sell to U.S. customers. And so you will need to file the appropriate personal tax forms in the US. As well as potentially in one or more States. The US government does not register LLCs. The various States do. So you'll be dealing with Oregon, Wisconsin, Wyoming, one of those for the LLC registration. You will also need to have a registered agent in the State. That is a big deal since the entire point of forming an LLC is to add a liability shield. You would lose the liability shield by not maintaining the business formalities. Generally nations aim to tax income made in their nation, and many decline to tax income that you've already paid taxes on in another nation. A key exception: If money is taxed by the U.S. it may also be taxed by one of the States. Two States won't tax the same dollar. Registering an LLC in one State does not mean you'll pay state taxes there. Generally States tax income made in their State. It's common to have a Wyoming LLC that never pays a penny of tax in Wyoming. Officially, an LLC doing business in a State it did not form in, must register in that State as a \"\"foreign LLC\"\" even though it's still in the USA. The fee is usually the same as for a domestic LLC. \"\"Doing business\"\" means something more than incidental sales, it means having a presence specifically in the State somehow. It gets complicated quick. If you are thinking of working in someone's app ecosystem like the Apple Store, Google Play, Steam etc. Obviously they want their developers coding, not wrestling with legalities, so some of them make a priority out of clearing and simplifying legal nuisances for you. Find out what they do for you.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "983b96518395d2dd077ddb166149f582",
"text": "or just input it in my accounting software along with receipts, and then when I'm doing taxes this would go under the investment or loses (is it somewhere along that line)? Yes, this. Generally, for the long term you should have a separate bank account and charge card for your business. I started my business (LLC) by filing online, and paying a fee for a registration, and that makes it a business cost right? Startup cost. There are special rules about this. Talk to your tax adviser. For the amounts in question you could probably expense it, but verify.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6f4290ed479d97b76cb8e3e8ecc89e8f",
"text": "Starting and running a business in the US is actually a lot less complicated than most people think. You mention incorporation, but a corporation (or even an S-Corp) isn't generally the best entity to start a business with . Most likely you are going to want to form an LLC instead this will provide you with liability protection while minimizing your paperwork and taxes. The cost for maintaining an LLC is relatively cheap $50-$1000 a year depending on your state and you can file the paperwork to form it yourself or pay an attorney to do it for you. Generally I would avoid the snake oil salesman that pitch specific out of state LLCs (Nevada, Delaware etc..) unless you have a specific reason or intend on doing business in the state. With the LLC or a Corporation you need to make sure you maintain separate finances. If you use the LLC funds to pay personal expenses you run the risk of loosing the liability protection afforded by the LLC (piercing the corporate veil). With a single member LLC you can file as a pass through entity and your LLC income would pass through to your federal return and taxes aren't any more complicated than putting your business income on your personal return like you do now. If you have employees things get more complex and it is really easiest to use a payroll service to process state and federal tax with holding. Once your business picks up you will want to file quarterly tax payments in order to avoid an under payment penalty. Generally, most taxpayers will avoid the under payment penalty if they owe less than $1,000 in tax after subtracting their withholdings and credits, or if they paid at least 90% of the tax for the current year, or 100% of the tax shown on the return for the prior year, whichever is smaller. Even if you get hit by the penalty it is only 10% of the amount of tax you didn't pay in time. If you are selling a service such writing one off projects you should be able to avoid having to collect and remit sales tax, but this is going to be very state specific. If you are selling software you will have to deal with sales tax assuming your state has a sales tax. One more thing to look at is some cities require a business license in order to operate a business within city limits so it would also be a good idea to check with your city to find out if you need a business license.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "300c2b236171618b127627cb296130ad",
"text": "Through your question and then clarification through the comments, it looks like you have a U.S. LLC with at least two members. If you did not elect some other tax treatment, your LLC will be treated as a partnership by the IRS. The partnership should file a tax return on Form 1065. Then each partner will get a Schedule K-1 from the partnership, which the partner should use to include their respective shares of the partnership income and expenses on their personal Forms 1040. You can also elect to be taxed as an S-Corp or a C-Corp instead of a partnership, but that requires you to file a form explicitly making such election. If you go S-Corp, then you will file a different form for the company, but the procedure is roughly the same - Income gets passed through to the owners via a Schedule K-1. If you go C-Corp, then the owners will pay no tax on their own Form 1040, but the C-Corp itself will pay income tax. As far as whether you should try to spend the money as business expense to avoid paying extra tax - That's highly dependent on your specific situation. I'd think you'd want to get tailored advice for that.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d07379d9352e2084e5156e5ebf7d3235",
"text": "In GA, LLC fees are $50 a year. Incorporating is a one time $100 fee. This information is current as of September 2013.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2cf41b3998449312536891cb10ff7e6a",
"text": "Looks like it's $500 to start (certificate of organization) and $500 per year after that (for an annual report). Start here: http://1.usa.gov/haxLUB And that's just for the state to recognize you as an LLC.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0a998ba4e2f818772ac51100aeaa986e",
"text": "I am from India. I visited US 6-8 times on business VISA and then started 2 Member LLC. Myself and My wife as LLC Members. We provide Online Training to american students from India. Also Got EIN number. Never employed any one. Do i need to pay taxes? Students from USA pays online by Paypal and i am paying taxes in India. Do i need to pay Taxes in US? DO i need to file the Tax returns? Please guide me. I formed LLC in 2010. I opened an Office-taken Virtual office for 75 USD per month to open LLC in 2010. As there is physical virtual address, am i liable for US taxes? All my earning is Online, free lancing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ceeecc34e00810972aa028a778fd4c31",
"text": "The LLC will file its own business taxes which may or may not have business level income and expenses. At the end, the LLC will issue Schedule K-1 tax forms to the members, that based on their percentage ownership, will reflect the percentage share of the income/losses. From an individual standpoint, the members need only worry about the K-1 form they receive. This has quite a few pass-through categories from the LLC, but the Income/Loss may be the only used one. The individual will likely include the K-1 by filing a Schedule-E along with their 1040 form. The 1040 Schedule-E has some ability to deduct expenses as an individual. Generally it's best not to commingle expenses. Additional schedule-E expense reporting is generally for non-reimbursed, but related business expenses. If a member paid certain fees for the LLC, it is better for the LLC to reimburse him and then deduct the expense properly. Schedule-E is on a non-LLC, personal level.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "521ca52299c5af07b7cf3157b6a45764",
"text": "\"TL;DR: Get a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) for tax issues, and a lawyer for the Operating Agreement, labor law and contract related issues. Some things are not suitable for DIY unless you know exactly what you're doing. We both do freelance work currently just through our personal names. What kind of taxes are we looking into paying into the business (besides setup of everything) compared to being a self proprietor? (I'm seeing that the general answer is no, as long as income is <200k, but not certain). Unless you decide to have your LLC taxed as a corporation, there's no change in taxes. LLC, by default, is a pass-through entity and all income will flow to your respective tax returns. From tax perspective, the LLC will be treated as a partnership. It will file form 1065 to report its income, and allocate the income to the members/partners on schedules K-1 which will be given to you. You'll use the numbers on the K-1 to transfer income allocated to you to your tax returns and pay taxes on that. Being out of state, will she incur more taxes from the money being now filtered through the business? Your employee couldn't care less about your tax problems. She will continue receiving the same salary whether you are a sole proprietor or a LLC, or Corporatoin. What kind of forms are we looking into needing/providing when switching to a LLC from freelance work? Normally we just get 1099's, what would that be now? Your contract counterparts couldn't care less about your tax problems. Unless you are a corporation, people who pay you more than $600 a year must file a 1099. Since you'll be a partnership, you'll need to provide the partnership EIN instead of your own SSN, but that's the only difference. Are LLC's required to pay taxes 4 times per year? We would definitely get an accountant for things, but being as this is side work, there will be times where we choose to not take on clients, which could cause multiple months of no income. Obviously we would save for when we need to pay taxes, but is there a magic number that says \"\"you must now pay four times per year\"\". Unless you choose to tax your LLC as a corporation, LLC will pay no taxes. You will need to make sure you have enough withholding to cover for the additional income, or pay the quarterly estimates. The magic number is $1000. If your withholding+estimates is $1000 less than what your tax liability is, you'll be penalized, unless the total withholding+estimates is more than 100% of your prior year tax liability (or 110%, depending on the amounts). The LLC would be 50% 50%, but that work would not always be that. We will be taking on smaller project through the company, so there will be times where one of us could potentially be making more money. Are we setting ourselves up for disaster if one is payed more than the other while still having equal ownership? Partnerships can be very flexible, and equity split doesn't have to be the same as income, loss or assets split. But, you'll need to have a lawyer draft your operational agreement which will define all these splits and who gets how much in what case. Make sure to cover as much as possible in that agreement in order to avoid problems later.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d51b2368c61b4de2a5d784f5ba5fdea4",
"text": "\"Like you said, it's important to keep your personal assets and company assets completely separate to maintain the liability protection of the LLC. I'd recommend getting the business bank account right from the beginning. My wife formed an LLC last year (also as a pass-through sole proprietorship for tax purposes), and we were able to get a small business checking account from Savings Institute and Trust that has no fees (at least for the relatively low quantity of transactions we'll be doing). We wrote it a personal check for startup capital, and since then, the LLC has paid all of its own bills out of its checking account (with associated debit card). Getting the account opened took less than an hour of sitting at the bank. Without knowing exactly where you are in Kentucky, I note that Googling \"\"kentucky small business checking\"\" and visiting a few banks' web sites provided several promising options for no-fee business checking.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
bc0125dd2bdb71846e58ebc7aa687d45
|
Is it sensible to redirect retirement contributions from 401(k) towards becoming a landlord?
|
[
{
"docid": "9b9b6bd0da39b12ed4ac17e04daefd67",
"text": "\"Here are the issues, as I see them - It's not that I don't trust banks, but I just feel like throwing all of our money into intangible investments is unwise. Banks have virtually nothing to do with this. And intangible assets has a different meaning than you assume. You don't have to like the market, but try to understand it, and dislike it for a good reason. (Which I won't offer here). Do your 401(k) accounts offer company match? When people start with \"\"we'd like to reduce our deposits\"\" that's the first thing we need to know. Last - you plan to gain \"\"a few hundred dollars a month.\"\" I bet it's closer to zero or a loss. I'll return to edit, we have recent posts here that reviewed the expenses to consider, and I'd bet that if you review the numbers, you've ignored some of them. \"\"A few hundred\"\" - say it's $300. Or $4000/yr. It would take far less work and risk to simply save $100K in your retirement accounts to produce this sum each year. The investment may very well be excellent. I'm just offering the flip side, things you might have missed. Edit - please read the discussion at How much more than my mortgage should I charge for rent? The answers offer a good look at the list of expenses you need to consider. In my opinion, this is one of the most important things. I've seen too many new RE investors \"\"forget\"\" about so many expenses, a projected monthly income reverts to annual losses.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "07879fbd5435f8dae93d0837a5e1bb5e",
"text": "As a general rule, diversification means carrying sufficient amounts in cash equivalents, stocks, bonds, and real estate. An emergency fund should have six months income (conservative) or expenses (less conservative) in some kind of cash equivalent (like a savings account). As you approach retirement, that number should increase. At retirement, it should be something like five years of expenses. At that time, it is no longer an emergency fund, it's your everyday expenses. You can use a pension or social security to offset your effective monthly expenses for the purpose of that fund. You should five years net expenses after income in cash equivalents after retirement. The normal diversification ratio for stocks, bonds, and real estate is something like 60% stocks, 20% bonds, and 20% real estate. You can count the equity in your house as part of the real estate share. For most people, the house will be sufficient diversification into real estate. That said, you should not buy a second home as an investment. Buy the second home if you can afford it and if it makes you happy. Then consider if you want to keep your first home as an investment or just sell it now. Look at your overall ownership to determine if you are overweighted into real estate. Your primary house is not an investment, but it is an ownership. If 90% of your net worth is real estate, then you are probably underinvested in securities like stocks and bonds. 50% should probably be an upper bound, and 20% real estate would be more diversified. If your 401k has an employer match, you should almost certainly put enough in it to get the full match. I prefer a ratio of 70-75% stocks to 25-30% bonds at all ages. This matches the overall market diversification. Rebalance to stay in that range regularly, possibly by investing in the underweight security. Adding real estate to that, my preference would be for real estate to be roughly a quarter of the value of securities. So around 60% stocks, 20% bonds, and 20% real estate. A 50% share for real estate is more aggressive but can work. Along with a house or rental properties, another option for increasing the real estate share is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). These are essentially a mutual fund for real estate. This takes you out of the business of actively managing properties. If you really want to manage rentals, make sure that you list all the expenses. These include: Also be careful that you are able to handle it if things change. Perhaps today there is a tremendous shortage of rental properties and the vacancy rate is close to zero. What happens in a few years when new construction provides more slack? Some kinds of maintenance can't be done with tenants. Also, some kinds of maintenance will scare away new tenants. So just as you are paying out a large amount of money, you also aren't getting rent. You need to be able to handle the loss of income and the large expense at the same time. Don't forget the sales value of your current house. Perhaps you bought when houses were cheaper. Maybe you'd be better off taking the current equity that you have in that house and putting it into your new house's mortgage. Yes, the old mortgage payment may be lower than the rent you could get, but the rent over the next thirty years might be less than what you could get for the house if you sold it. Are you better off with minimal equity in two houses or good equity with one house? I would feel better about this purchase if you were saying that you were doing this in addition to your 401k. Doing this instead of your 401k seems sketchy to me. What will you do if there is another housing crash? With a little bad luck, you could end up underwater on two mortgages and unable to make payments. Or perhaps not underwater on the current house, but not getting much back on a sale either. All that said, maybe it's a good deal. You have more information about it than we do. Just...be careful.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "18a41c6e82cb828cc6beeb5ccba6f277",
"text": "\"With a healthy income its quite possible to contribute too much into 401Ks/IRAs. For example, if your retired today and had 3 million or so, how much more would you need? Would an extra million materially change your life? Would it make you happier if you invested that extra in some rental properties or perhaps a business like a sandwich or ice cream shop where you have more direct control? This kind of discussion is possible as you indicate that you have taken care of your life financially. It seems at odds with the negative press describing the woefully condition of the standard person's finances. These articles ignore a very simple fact: its because of bad behavior. You, on the contrary, have behaved well and are in the process of reaping rewards. This is where I feel your \"\"mental gymnastics\"\" originates. Looking to engage in the rental market is no different then buying a franchise. You are opening a business of your own. You'll have to educate yourself and are likely to make a few mistakes that will cause you to write checks to solve. Your goal is to minimize those mistakes. After all, what do you know about the rental home business? I am guessing not much. Educate yourself. Read and spend some money on taking knowledgeable people out for coffee. In the end you should understand that although a poor decision may cost you money you cannot really make a bad decision. Lets say you do buy a rental property, things go south, you sell for a loss, etc.... In the end the \"\"butchers bill\"\" is 50K or so. Will that materially change your life? Probably not. The worst case is perhaps you have to work a year or two beyond the anticipated retirement age to make up that money. No big deal.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c1a29ce550ddfbbadce743b145cad0a2",
"text": "This is going to seem pretty far off the beaten path, but I hope when you finish reading it you'll see the point... Suppose someone offered you a part time job: Walk their dog once per day for at least 20 minutes, and once per week pick up the dog poo from their lawn. Your compensation is $300/month. Now suppose instead you are given two choices for a job: Your preference probably has more to do with your personality and interests than the finances involved.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "9c6049b7f0f02c8b3d88fd94a38a84ea",
"text": "I kind of hate piling on with another opinion, but this is too long for a comment. I did what you are thinking of doing, I would at least try renting it for a couple years so long as: The primary risks of renting are mostly related to unexpected costs and bad tenants, you've got a very healthy income, so as long as you maintain a nice emergency fund it doesn't sound like keeping this property as a rental will be too much risk. If the rental market is strong where your house is, then you have a better chance of avoiding bad tenants. I like to keep my rent a little lower than the max I think it could go for, to attract more applications and hopefully find someone who will be a good longer term tenant. Tax-free gains So long as you lived in your house 2 of the last 5 years, you can sell without paying capital gains tax on your profit, so you could try renting it for 2 years and then sell. That was a key for me when I converted my first house to a rental. I liked that flexibility, there's still the typical renting risks associated, but it's not a lifelong commitment. You can get 2 years of increased equity/appreciation tax-free, or you could find you enjoy it and keep it for the long haul.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e9608373ac4641fd3bf118810516a650",
"text": "\"In asnwer to your questions: As @joetaxpayer said, you really should look into a Solo 401(k). In 2017, this allows you to contribute up to $18k/year and your employer (the LLC) to contribute more, up to $54k/year total (subject to IRS rules). 401(k) usually have ROTH and traditional sides, just like IRA. I believe the employer-contributed funds also see less tax burden for both you and your LLC that if that same money had become salary (payroll taxes, etc.). You might start at irs.gov/retirement-plans/one-participant-401k-plans and go from there. ROTH vs. pre-tax: You can mix and match within years and between years. Figure out what income you want to have when you retire. Any year you expect to pay lower taxes (low income, kids, deductions, etc.), make ROTH contributions. Any year you expect high taxes (bonus, high wage, taxable capital gains, etc.), make pre-tax payments. I have had a uniformly bad experience with target date funds across multiple 401(k) plans from multiple plan adminstrators. They just don't perform well (a common problem with almost any actively managed fund). You probably don't want to deal with individual stocks in your retirement accounts, so rather pick passively managed index funds that track various markets segments you care about and just sit on them. For example, your high-risk money might be in fast-growing but volatile industries (e.g. tech, aerospace, medical), your medium-risk money might go in \"\"total market\"\" or S&P 500 index funds, and your low-risk money might go in treasury notes and bonds. The breakdown is up to you, but as an 18 year old you have a ~50 year horizon and so can afford to wait out anything short of another Great Depression (and maybe even that). So you'd want generally you want more or your money in the high-risk high-return category, rebalancing to lower risk investments as you age. Diversifying into real estate, foreign investments, etc. might also make sense but I'm no expert on those.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1baa35d090f2f92a23c1fdeacd016e8c",
"text": "\"Does your current 401(k) have low fees and good investment choices? If so you might be able to \"\"roll-in\"\" your rollover IRA to your 401(k), then do a backdoor Roth IRA contribution. A Roth IRA would be far more useful than a non-deductible traditional IRA.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "908961df089838354f7ea512ee03d06e",
"text": "\"I would like to buy hubby a beer and talk some sense into him. Do you have 2 years gross income saved as your retirement balance? That's about where he should be at age 30. I wrote about this in an article Retirement Savings Ratio. Blowing the 401(k) for anything less than an extreme emergency is downright foolish. The decision whether to roll it to an IRA or the new account isn't so simple. If you roll it to new plan, yes you can borrow, up to 60 months at a low rate, 4% or so. Taking the cash and then making an IRA deposit just means paying the penalty for nothing, unless you manage it just right, depositing the amount within 60 day, etc. You don't mention what he wants to do with it. You need to sit down and have a long \"\"money talk.\"\" Keep in mind, if you oversave, it's easy to retire early, or at 50 just stop saving, spend every new dime. But it's something else to turn 50 and realize you will have to work till you die. I've seen both situations. (I am 48, the Mrs, 54 our multiple is now 13. The target is 20 to retire. The house is not counted as it can't be spent. The mortgage IS counted as it must be paid) Edit - as I read this again, I see the OP asked about opening an IRA in the same year they withdraw the 401(k) and pay tax and penalty. Wow. I also see her user reverted to generic, which means, I think, she's never returned. I hope they made the right decision, to keep the money in retirement accounts. Hubby never even said what he wanted the money for.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "54c8b95482efb17d27bb5df4bdffc267",
"text": "My answer would be yes. In addition, I'm not sure that anything requires you to roll your current 401(k) into a new one if you don't like the investment options. Keeping existing funds in your current 401(k) if you like their investment options might make sense for you (though they obviously wouldn't be adding funds once you're no longer an employee). As for the terms of the potential new 401(k), the matching percentage and vesting schedule match what I've seen at past employers. My current employer offers the same terms, but there's no vesting schedule.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "97cf05dfe3028c0d5c154cf84ef6da1e",
"text": "Adding to the excellent answers already given, we typically advise members to contribute as much as needed to get a full employer match in their 401K, but not more. We then redirect any additional savings to a traditional IRA or ROTH IRA (depending on their age, income, and future plans). Only once they've exhausted the $5000 maximum in their IRA will we look at putting more money into the 401K. The ROTH IRA is a beautiful and powerful vehicle for savings. The only reason to consider taking money out of the ROTH is in a case of serious catastrophe.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b4a947c1b4a02e26f333a174d8090296",
"text": "If your employer does not offer contribution matching, and you don't like the range of investment options provided by the company 401k, then you probably are better off investing in your own IRA instead. In an IRA held at a bank or brokerage, you can invest in multiple stocks or funds and move money around within the IRA pretty freely in most cases. If your company is doing well and is actually sharing profit into the 401k, you might consider leaving your 5% contribution to the 401k where it is and put the other 5% you are planning to contribute into a new IRA of your own. This straddles the risk of you losing money if your company 401k tanks (or profit sharing dries up) and your missing out on profit sharing if it continues to pay well.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6717866315a55e750928ea6245ad3f8b",
"text": "I don't quite understand your thought process here. First, in a tax-advantaged retirement account you are NOT allowed to engage in a transaction with yourself. If you just want to run a business and be able to write off expenses, how is using the self-directed IRA relevant? You can either buy the condo using your tax-advantaged account and rent it out to regular tenants. Or you buy the condo yourself using your own money and then operate your business so you can deduct business expenses from doing so. 401k's allow you to take a loan out of it, so you can look into that as well.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "20663595c8334d2587d0d9cec3ca94f7",
"text": "The plan is perfectly valid and legal as tax rules currently stand. There is no limit to the amount you can rollover or convert to Roth. Assuming your 401(k) is traditional pre-tax, you'll have to pay income taxes on the amount you convert above personal exemption + standard deduction, which is currently about $10k/year for single filers. The other caveat is you'll need funds to live off of while your conversion money is seasoning for 5 years in your Roth IRA. If you start the conversion while you are still working, you'll be paying taxes on it in your marginal bracket, which will negate much of the benefit of the pre-tax 401(k). If your living expenses are low, you can convert about $10k/year without federal income taxes, while living off capital gains from a taxable account which have a 0% rate in the 15% income tax bracket (goes up to about $37k/year).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "048dbe98016d45e8ce3e54b597459f48",
"text": "\"As long as you're willing to pay the taxes and the penalties, once you're no longer employed you're allowed to do whatever you want. You can always do an \"\"direct roll-over\"\" (See IRC Sec. 401(a)(31)(A) which mandates this) and then withdraw from another qualified account, thus creating a withdrawal, if they refuse to just mail you a check (Why would they care? Don't know). The match may have some vesting restrictions, though. Your own contributions - are yours to do with whatever you feel like. That said, just pointing out the obvious - it's a very bad idea. Unless you expect to die before you're 60 and don't want to leave a dime to your heirs, you would probably be better off leaving it in a tax-sheltered account. If the custodian is bad - just roll over elsewhere, there's tons of excellent IRA providers.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "158a63615addb9a4abf5b13f930e9c11",
"text": "It is great that you came up with a plan to own a rental home, free and clear, and also move up in home. It is also really good of you to recognize that curtailing spending has a profound effect on your net worth, many people fail to acknowledge that factoid and prefer to instead blame things outside their control. Good work there. Here are some items of your plan that I have comments on. 11mo by aggressively curtailing elective spending How does your spouse feel about this? They have to be on board, but it is such a short time frame this is very doable. cashing out all corporate stock, This will probably trigger capital gains. You have to be prepared to pay the tax man, but this is a good source of cash for your plan. You also have to have an additional amount that will likely be due next April 15th. redirecting all contributions to my current non-matched R401(k) This is fine as well because of the short time frame. withdrawing the principal from a Roth IRA This I kind of hate. We are so limited in money that we can put into tax favored plans, that taking money out bothers me. Also it is that much more difficult to save in a ROTH because of the sting of taxes. I would not do this, but would favor instead to take a few extra months to make your plan happen. buy home #2 How are you going to have a down payment for home #2? Is your intention to pay off home and save a while, then purchase home #2? I would do anything to avoid PMI. Besides I would take some time to live in a paid for house. Overall I would grade your plan a B. If take a bit longer, and remove the withdrawing from the ROTH, it then becomes an A-. With a good explanation of how you come up with the down payment for house 2, you could easily move to an A+.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f98e2c40271286a1f613521f95a2ab21",
"text": "Unless you plan to sell your home and live in a box during your retirement I wouldn't consider it an investment that is a viable replacement for a retirement account. Consider this: Even if housing prices DO go way up, you still need a place to live. When you sell that house and try to buy another one to live in, you will find that the other houses went up in price too, negating your gain. The only way this might work is if you buy a much bigger house than you will need later and trade down to pull out some equity, or consider a reverse-mortgage for retirement income.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "00b9e39c2ab056cafe629fed477dab86",
"text": "Do not borrow to invest in real estate. The interest payments will eat up most of your profit (the property management fees might eat up the rest), and you will have significant risk with tenant issues, property value, etc. Many people have made it work - many also lose everything. Real estate can be a great investment, but you can't even afford a house of your own yet, let alone investment property. Keep saving up until you have 20% down to buy a house of your own (ideally that you can put on a 15% fixed mortgage), and pay it off as quickly as you can. Then you can start saving for your first rental property. If that process isn't fast enough for you, you have two options. Increase your income or reduce your expenses. There's no shortcut to wealth-building without taking significant risks. At most I would scale back the 401(k) to the 5% match you get, but you should scale that back up once you have enough for a down payment.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "909eae1d15d84e2380144c2af50e1f14",
"text": "My observations is that this seems like hardly enough to kill inflation. Is he right? Or are there better ways to invest? The tax deferral part of the equation isn't what dominates regarding whether your 401k beats 30 years of inflation; it is the return on investment. If your 401k account tanks due to a prolonged market crash just as you retire, then you might have been better off stashing the money in the bank. Remember, 401k money at now + 30 years is not a guaranteed return (though many speak as though it were). There is also the question as to whether fees will eat up some of your return and whether the funds your 401k invests in are good ones. I'm uneasy with the autopilot nature of the typical 401k non-strategy; it's too much the standard thing to do in the U.S., it's too unconscious, and strikes me as Ponzi-like. It has been a winning strategy for some already, sure, and maybe it will work for the next 30-100 years or more. I just don't know. There are also changes in policy or other unknowns that 30 years will bring, so it takes faith I don't have to lock away a large chunk of my savings in something I can't touch without hassle and penalty until then. For that reason, I have contributed very little to my 403b previously, contribute nothing now (though employer does, automatically. I have no match.) and have built up a sizable cash savings, some of which may be used to start a business or buy a house with a small or no mortgage (thereby guaranteeing at least not paying mortgage interest). I am open to changing my mind about all this, but am glad I've been able to at least save a chunk to give me some options that I can exercise in the next 5-10 years if I want, instead of having to wait 25 or more.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "321f8df72cabe30c161471135e16fa5e",
"text": "There is a process called a backdoor IRA. You now have effectively made a Roth IRA contribution in a year where technically you aren't eligible. You do not have to pay taxes on earnings with a Roth IRA. You are limited to the normal annual contribution to the IRA (Roth or traditional). If you don't convert your traditional IRA contribution to a Roth IRA, then you are right. That gains nothing except enhanced protection in bankruptcy. Only do this if you are taking advantage of the Roth rollover. I'm ignoring rolling over a 401k into an IRA, as that doesn't increase the amount you can contribute. This does. You can contribute the full $18,000 to the 401k and still make a full contribution to the backdoor IRA. This is the tax advantaged form of an IRA. This avoids double taxation. Let's assume that your investment can go into something with a 5% annual return and you pay a 25% tax rate (doesn't matter as it drops out). You are going to invest for thirty years and then withdraw. You initially have $1000 before taxes. With a regular investment: You now have $2867.74. With a pre-tax IRA. You now have $3241.45 (it is not an accident that this is almost the same as the amount before the capital gains tax in the example without an IRA). You avoided the $373.72 capital gains tax. Even though you paid a lot more tax, you paid it out of the gains from investing the original $250 that you would have paid in tax. This helps you even more if the capital gains tax goes up in the future. Or if your tax bracket changes. If you currently are in the 25% bracket but retire in the 15% bracket, these numbers will get even better in your favor. If you currently are in the 15% bracket and worry that you might retire in the 25% bracket, consider a Roth instead. It also avoids double taxation but its single taxation is at your current rate rather than your future rate.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
4fb84aac7b6078eaa11ec13c19956bfe
|
How to report Canadian income from a small contract job?
|
[
{
"docid": "e78b35365288cf3823c4ae0b5e8b957f",
"text": "\"It's pretty easy. In the Interview Setup for Ufile, check the box for \"\"Self-employment business income\"\". Then during the process of filling everything out, you'll get a Self-Employment screen. It'll ask for the name of your business, but just put your own name since you don't have one. For the 6-digit classification code, click the ? button and look through the list for the industry that best matches the one for whom you wrote the technical report. Or you can go with 711500: Independent artists, writers and performers. It doesn't really matter that much so don't worry if it's a poor match. It will also ask you for your income and expenses. I don't know exactly what costs you might have incurred to write your report, but you can likely claim a very tiny amount of \"\"home office\"\" expenses. Costs like rent (or mortgage interest + property tax), utilities, and home insurance can be claimed, but they have to be pro-rated for the time you were actually doing the work, and are based on the amount of space you used for the work. For example, if you paid $1000 rent and $200 utilities for the month in which the work was done, and it took you 20 of the 31 days in that month to actually do the work, and you used a room that makes up about 10% of the square footage of your home, then you can claim: $1200 * 20/31 * 0.1 = $77.42 for your home office expenses. If you also used that room for non-business purposes during that time, then you reduce it even further. Say, if the room was also used for playing video games 50% of the time, then you'd only claim $38.71\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "4f23189bc5ab93bc85fe590c711b5301",
"text": "If you want to subcontract some of your excess work to somebody else, you better be in business! While some kinds of employees (e.g. commissioned salespeople) are permitted to deduct some expenses on their income tax, generally only a real business can deduct wages for additional employees, or the cost of services provided by subcontractors. Do you invoice your clients and charge HST (GST)? Or do you tell your clients each pay period how many hours you worked and they compensate you through their payroll system like everybody else that walks through the door? If you're not invoicing and charging HST (GST) (assuming you exceed the threshold, and if you have too much work, you probably do!), then perhaps your clients are treating you as an employee – by default – and withholding taxes, CPP, and EI so they don't get in trouble? After all, Canada Revenue Agency is likely to consider any person providing a service to a company to be an employee unless there is sufficient evidence to the contrary, and when there isn't enough evidence, it's the company paying for the services that would be on the hook for unpaid taxes, CPP, and EI. Carefully consider what form of business you are operating, or were intending to operate. It's essential for your business to be structured appropriately if you want to hire or subcontract. You ought to be either self-employed as a sole proprietor, or perhaps incorporated if it makes more sense to your situation. Next, act accordingly. For instance, it's likely that your business should be taking care of the source deductions, CPP, and EI. In fact, self-employed individuals shouldn't even be paying into EI – an independent contractor wouldn't qualify to make an EI claim if they lost a contract. As an independent, one doesn't have a job, one has a business, and EI doesn't cover the business itself, only the employees that the business deals with at arm's length. As a business owner, you would be considered non-arms-length, and exempt from EI. Growing your business in the way that you are suggesting is an important enough a step that you should seek professional advice in advance. Find a good accountant that deals with self-employed individuals & small businesses and run all this by him. He should be able to guide you accordingly. Find a lawyer, too. A lawyer can guide you on how to properly subcontract others while protecting you and your business. Finally, be mindful of what it is you agreed to in your contract with your client: Do they expect all services to be performed by you, personally? Even if it wasn't written down who exactly would be performing the services, there may be an assumption it's you. Some negotiation may be in order if you want to use subcontractors.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b2c2a2438b925a7ca203cf52bfabeaf3",
"text": "You really shouldn't be using class tracking to keep business and personal operations separate. I'm pretty sure the IRS and courts frown upon this, and you're probably risking losing any limited liability you may have. And for keeping separate parts of the business separate, like say stores in a franchise, one approach would be subaccounts. Messy, I'm sure.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ccde069c7755ed62ee56a93b5a2fb5fd",
"text": "I would suggest that you try ClearCheckbook. It is kind of like Mint, but you can add and remove things (graphs, features, modules) to make it as simple or diverse as you need it to be. It should be a workable solution for simply tracking both income and expenses, yet it will also provide extra features as needed. There is a free option as well as a paid option with added features. I have not used ClearCheckbook before, but according to their features page it looks like you may have to upgrade to the paid option if you want to have complete tagging/custom field flexibility.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fd27658674e7d86ccf10bc37cd400f6c",
"text": "\"I can say that I got X dollars from an account like \"\"Income:Benefits\"\"... but where do I credit that money to? \"\"Expenses:Groceries\"\" Yes doesn't feel right, since I never actually spent that money on food, You did, didn't you? You got food. I'm guessing there's an established convention for this already? Doubt it. Established conventions in accounting are for businesses, and more specifically - public companies. So you can find a GAAP, or IFRS guidelines on how to book benefits (hint: salary expense), but it is not something you may find useful in your own household accounting. Do what is most convenient for you. Since it is a double-booking system - you need to have an account on the other side. Expenses:Groceries doesn't feel right? Add Expenses:Groceries:Benefits or Expenses:Benefits or whatever. When you do your expense and cash-flow reports - you can exclude both the income and the expense benefits accounts if you track them separately, so that they don't affect your tracking of the \"\"real\"\" expenses.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "894f9971edb02a62cb857bcb56f6a802",
"text": "As an individual freelancer, you would need to maintain a book of accounts. This should show all the income you are getting, and should also list all the payments incurred. This can not only include the payments to other professionals, but also any hardware purchased, phone bills, any travel and entertainment bills directly related to the service you are offering. Once you arrive at a net profit figure, you would need to file this as your income. Consult a tax professional and he can help with how to keep the records of income and expenses. i.e. You would need to create invoices for payments, use checks or online transfers for most payments, segregate the accounts, one account used for this professional stuff, and another for your personal stuff, etc. In a normal course the Income Tax Department does not ask for these records, however whenever your tax returns get scrutinized on a random basis, they would ask for all the relevant documentations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b018fe2ddb7dcc9bf08e6fffdb96fb4f",
"text": "\"Get an accountant. Now. There are many subtle things that you do not know especially if you are just starting with your own corporation. There is also an issue of corporate tax return that you will have to face pretty soon. You should be looking for accountant that does accounting for corporations, there are companies specializing in small business. I do not think you can \"\"just\"\" transfer money to your personal account. They have to be treated as dividends and treated as such for income tax purposes. Or, as you described, you may pay yourself a salary, but then you have to pay CPP and EI on top of that. When you pay yourself dividends your corporation will need to issue T5 slip for you (accountant will do that) that you will need to use when preparing personal tax return. If you pay yourself salary, corporation will need to give you T4 In terms of tax treatment, if we do not take RRSP contributions dividend tax treatment will leave little bit more money in your hands. I'd say if you have RRSP room and/or TFSA room, pay yourself dividends and then do contributions as you see fit, if you need RRSP room, pay yourself salary. TFSA room does not depend on the type of income, so if you have room there, consider filling it first.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "be8d414a0fd1c029f1c9ad663a449c4d",
"text": "I do NOT know the full answer but I know here are some important factors that you need to consider : Do you have a physical location in the United States? Are you working directly from Canada? With a office/business location in the United States your tax obligation to the US is much higher. Most likely you will owe some to the state in which your business is located in Payroll Tax : your employer will likely want to look into Payroll tax, because in most states the payroll tax threshold is very low, they will need to file payroll tax on their full-time, part-time employees, as well as contractor soon as the total amount in a fiscal year exceeds the threshold Related to No.1 do you have a social security number and are you legally entitled to working in the States as an individual. You will be receiving the appropriate forms and tax withholding info Related to No.3 if you don't have that already, you may want to look into how to obtain permissions to conduct business within the United States. Technically, you are a one person consulting service provider. You may need to register with a particular state to obtain the permit. The agency will also be able to provide you with ample tax documentations. Chances are you will really need to piece together multiple information from various sources to resolve this one as the situation is specific. To start, look into consulting service / contractor work permit and tax info for the state your client is located in. Work from state level up to kick start your research then research federal level, which can be more complex as it is technically international business service for Canada-US",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c1f72824ef2b3072f154a0d2fa565ef4",
"text": "Depending on what software you use. It has to be reported as a foreign income and you can claim foreign tax paid as a foreign tax credit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b3647fabeeeeda60c6fe140cefcf0735",
"text": "\"As you clarified in the comments, it is not a contract work but rather an additional temporary assignment with the same employer. You were paid for it in form of a \"\"bonus\"\" - one time irregular payment, instead of regular periodic payments. Irregular wage payments fall under the flat rate withholding rule (the 25% for Federal, some States have similar rules for State withholding). This is not taxes, this is withholding. Withholding is money the employer takes from your salary and forwards to the IRS on the account of your tax liability, but it is not in itself your tax liability. When you do your annual tax return, you'll calculate the actual tax you were supposed to pay, and the difference between what was withheld and your actual tax will be refunded to you (or owed by you, if not enough was withheld). You can control the regular pay withholding using W4 form.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5f1ba13982a5807efb36ceba54ef5776",
"text": "Hmm, let's see, I always get Credit and Debit mixed up, but I'll try: Signing of the contract: Receiving 500 deposit: When you are done Accounts Receivable will have $500 (because you are owed $500), Revenue will have $1000 (because you made $1000 on an accrual basis), and Cash will have $500 (because you have $500 in your pocket).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "96dd6e5df1c97fbe6e67dfe48966cbbf",
"text": "It doesn't make much difference in the end. Imagine you have $100 of revenue in your company. You can either pay it to yourself as salary, meaning that you don't pay corporate tax on it, or you can keep it in the company, pay corporate tax on it, then pay yourself a dividend of what is left. While that dividend will be treated better than salary, remember that the company already paid tax on it. You paying less on what's left doesn't equate to paying less overall. Go ahead and run the numbers using your actual corporate tax rate and your personal income tax rate. Try doing your whole salary as dividends - not dollar for dollar, but as how much the company would have as profit to give you a dividend if it didn't spend (and deduct) salary money on you. You are unlikely to see any difference at all. The net final money in your pocket, and the amount that went to the government, will probably be the same. If paying dividends keeps your earned income low, you may find that you can't use RRSP or childcare deductions. You are also not getting CPP credit. That's an argument for salary, or at least a certain minimum amount of salary. You have to deduct taxes at source on salary and send it along to the government, which is an argument for dividends if you feel you could invest that money and use it well before the taxes get around to being due. Possibly you may discover an edge case where you move a few thousand from one marginal tax rate to another and clear a few hundred extra as a result. I don't discourage you from doing the math, I just point out that the various percentages (tax rates, grossups, deductions etc) have all been carefully chosen so that it pretty much works out the same, or gives a small preference to salary. We give excess money to ourselves as bonus rather than dividend having run the numbers a few times. There's no secret trick here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a7e2a606c97bfc5cfbd40ad6d732d447",
"text": "Generally, report your $150,000. If/when the the tax collectors notice the anomaly, they'll attempt to contact you to remedy it. I can't speak for Canada, but in the US, it's pretty orderly. The IRS requests additional information or proof and only open it up into a full blown audit if the suspect wrongdoing. In your case, you could show a business agreement detailing the revenue split proving you correctly reported. This is only for your consideration. I strongly recommending finding and keeping a professional tax advisor.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5f4c85a0ec524834a22e73607839809b",
"text": "I wrote a small Excel-based bookkeeping system that handles three things: income, expenses, and tax (including VAT, which you Americans can rename GST). Download it here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "efde1ab1a9035da2874810c95db67d9e",
"text": "\"I think you're on the right track. Your #2 journal entry is incorrect. It should be (I usually put the debit entry on top, but I followed your formatting) I'm assuming your employer uses an accountable reimbursement plan (reimbursing you when you turn in your payment bill/receipts). This is not salary. Reimbursements under the accountable plan in the US are not taxed as income. If you think about it though, \"\"phone expense\"\" isn't really your phone expense. So, instead of #1 entry, you could make an account receivable, or other current asset account, maybe call it Reimbursables - cellphone, and debit this account, and credit your cash account. When you receive the $30 back, you will reverse the entries on the day of payment. If you do it this way, you should be able to see a list of receivables outstanding (I'm not too familiar with GNUCash but I'm sure it has this type of report).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1ead9519c377d41cada5b7e5d4c8af17",
"text": "You should be recording the reimbursement as a negative expense on the original account the expense was recorded. Let's assume you have a $100 expense and $100 salary. Total $200 paycheck. You will have something like this In the reports, it will show that the expense account will have $0 ($100 + ($100)), while income account will have $100 (salary).",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
ac532e838088bc52390e4ca57f0b0bfe
|
What is value investing? What are the key principles of value investing?
|
[
{
"docid": "69e391d3a97df557994cd37dac75471a",
"text": "Value investing is an investment approach that relies on buying securities below their intrinsic values. There are two main concepts; one is the Intrinsic Value and the other is Margin of Safety. Intrinsic value is the value of the underlying business - if we are talking about stocks - that can be calculated through carefully analyzing the business looking at all aspects of it. If there is an intrinsic value exists for a company then there is a price tag we can put on its shares as well. Value investing is looking to buy shares well below its intrinsic value. It is important to know that there is no correct intrinsic value exists for a company and two people can come up with different figures, if they were presented the same data. Calculating the intrinsic value for a business is the hardest part of value investing. Margin of Safety is the difference between the buying price of a stock and its intrinsic value. Value investors are insisting on buying stocks well below their intrinsic value, where the margin of safety is 20%-30% or even more. This concepts is protecting them from poor decisions and market downturns. It is also providing a room for error, when calculating the intrinsic value. The approach was introduced by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd in a book called Security Analysis in 1934. Other famous investor using this approach is Warren Buffet Books to read: I would start to read the first two book first.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6185b178bed99afd98ae1c4d60cc2cee",
"text": "\"Fama-French would be a couple of names if you want to look at this from a value/growth dichotomy. A simplified form of this was to take the stocks with a lower Price/Book Value that would be the value stocks while the others would be the growth. The principle is that some of the beaten-down stocks will appreciate more than the growth stocks will. 6 Ways To Improve Your Portfolio Returns Today also makes note of the \"\"growth vs value\"\" split if you want another reference that way. Historically, growth has been more volatile and produced lower returns, though past performance isn't necessarily always going to hold as some people like to invest in what is known as a \"\"slice & dice\"\" portfolio where a portion in invested in each of 4 corners: Large-growth, large-value, small-growth, and small-value. Some may add in bonds, REITs, and foreign stocks but the idea is that in different years, different parts of the market will do better and this is a way to capture that in a sense.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "100c16089b98c6da4bdec9e3d52ba91b",
"text": "\"The raw question is as follows: \"\"You will be recommending a purposed portfolio to an investment committee (my class). The committee runs a foundation that has an asset base of $4,000,000. The foundations' dual mandates are to (a) preserve capital and (b) to fund $200,000 worth of scholarships. The foundation has a third objective, which is to grow its asset base over time.\"\" The rest of the assignment lays out the format and headings for the sections of the presentation. Thanks, by the way - it's an 8 week accelerated course and I've been out sick for two weeks. I've been trying to teach myself this stuff, including the excel calculations for the past few weeks.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a8f4d0b823ec45f1f14ee70df1183374",
"text": "It sounds to me like you may not be defining fundamental investing very well, which is why it may seem like it doesn't matter. Fundamental investing means valuing a stock based on your estimate of its future profitability (and thus cash flows and dividends). One way to do this is to look at the multiples you have described. But multiples are inherently backward-looking so for firms with good growth prospects, they can be very poor estimates of future profitability. When you see a firm with ratios way out of whack with other firms, you can conclude that the market thinks that firm has a lot of future growth possibilities. That's all. It could be that the market is overestimating that growth, but you would need more information in order to conclude that. We call Warren Buffet a fundamental investor because he tends to think the market has made a mistake and overvalued many firms with crazy ratios. That may be in many cases, but it doesn't necessarily mean those investors are not using fundamental analysis to come up with their valuations. Fundamental investing is still very much relevant and is probably the primary determinant of stock prices. It's just that fundamental investing encompasses estimating things like future growth and innovation, which is a lot more than just looking at the ratios you have described.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6bfdc5b647b5f94ef5ffe18b4b174c9a",
"text": "\"Despite Buffett's nearly perfect consistent advice over the past few decades, they don't reflect his earliest days. His modern philosophy seemed to solidify in the 1970s. You can see that Buffett's earliest days grew faster, at 29.5 % for those partners willing to take on leverage with Buffett, than the last half century, at 19.7%. Not only is Buffett limited by size, as its quite difficult to squeeze one half trillion USD into sub-billion USD investments, but the economy thus market is far different than it was before the 1980s. He would have to acquire at least 500 billion USD companies outright, and there simply aren't that many available that satisfy all of his modern conditions. The market is much different now than it was when he first started at Graham-Newman because before the 1960s, the economy thus market would collapse and rebound about every few years. This sort of variance can actually help a value investor because a true value investor will abandon investments when valuations are high and go all in when valuations are low. The most extreme example was when he tried to as quietly as possible buy up an insurance company selling for something like a P/E of 1 during one of the collapses. These kinds of opportunities are seldom available anymore, not even during the 2009 collapse. As he became larger, those investments became off limits because it simply wasn't worth his time to find such a high returner if it's only a bare fraction of his wealth. Also, he started to deviate from Benjamin Graham's methods and started to incorporate Philip Fisher's. By the 1970s, his investment philosophy was more or less cemented. He tried to balance Graham's avarice for price with Fisher's for value. All of the commentary that special tax dodges or cheap financing are central to his returns are false. They contributed, but they are ancillary. As one can see by comparing the limited vs general partners, leverage helps enormously, but this is still a tangent. Buffett has undoubtedly built his wealth from the nature of his investments. The exact blueprint can be constructed by reading every word he has published and any quotes he has not disavowed. Simply, he buys the highest quality companies in terms of risk-adjusted growth at the best available prices. Quantitatively, it is a simple strategy to replicate. NFLX was selling very cheaply during the mid-2000s, WDC sells frequently at low valuations, up and coming retailers frequently sell at low valuations, etc. The key to Buffett's method is emotional control and removing the mental block that price equals value; price is cost, value is revenue, and that concept is the hardest for most to imbibe. Quoting from the first link: One sidelight here: it is extraordinary to me that the idea of buying dollar bills for 40 cents takes immediately to people or it doesn't take at all. It's like an inoculation. If it doesn't grab a person right away, I find that you can talk to him for years and show him records, and it doesn't make any difference. They just don't seem able to grasp the concept, simple as it is. A fellow like Rick Guerin, who had no formal education in business, understands immediately the value approach to investing and he's applying it five minutes later. I've never seen anyone who became a gradual convert over a ten-year period to this approach. It doesn't seem to be a matter of IQ or academic training. It's instant recognition, or it is nothing. and I'm convinced that there is much inefficiency in the market. These Graham-and-Doddsville investors have successfully exploited gaps between price and value. When the price of a stock can be influenced by a \"\"herd\"\" on Wall Street with prices set at the margin by the most emotional person, or the greediest person, or the most depressed person, it is hard to argue that the market always prices rationally. In fact, market prices are frequently nonsensical. and finally Success in investing doesn’t correlate with I.Q. once you’re above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing. There is almost no information on any who has helped Buffett internally or even managed Berkshire's investments aside from Louis Simpson. It is unlikely that Buffett has allowed anyone to manage much of Berkshire's investments considering the consistent stream of commentary from him claiming that he nearly does nothing except read annual reports all day to the extent that he may have neglected his family to some degree and that listening to others will more likely hurt performance than help with the most striking example being his father's recommendation that he not open a hedge fund after retiring from Graham-Newman because he believed the market was topping, and he absolutely idolized his father.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e3203580708f5da3c2fd8f0e3fa45ffb",
"text": "\"Every investment comes with a risk. There is also a bit of speculation involved. In there is an anticipation that one expects the value to go up in normal course of events. By your definition \"\"If I buy this equipment, I could produce more widgets, or sell more widgets,\"\" as an investment. Here again there is an anticipation that the widgets you sell will give you more return. If you are investing in stock/share, you are essentially holding a small portion of value in company and to that extent you are owining some equipment that is producing some widget .... Hence when you are purchasing Stocks, it would be looked as investment if you have done your home work and have a good plan of how you want to invest along with weiging the risk involved. However if you are investing only for the purpose of making quick bucks following so called hot tips, then you are not investing but speculating.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a43792daa2607f4f44803d30544cc574",
"text": "\"Thanks. This is super simplified as I said. It gets much deeper when you start looking at costs of capital, country risk premiums (for projects in emerging markets), \"\"risk free rate of return\"\" (putting cash in guaranteed returns such as a us treasury note), mutually exclusive projects, etc. But the basic concept is... what is the minimum required return on a project to justify choosing to pursue it. If you borrow money via loan at 10%, your required rate of return on whatever project you invest it in has to be at least that 10%. Otherwise you're better off just not doing anything.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "399db64a304c7fc66c5a72efd53d8696",
"text": "How you use the metric is super important. Because it subtracts cash, it does not represent 'value'. It represents the ongoing financing that will be necessary if both the equity plus debt is bought by one person, who then pays himself a dividend with that free cash. So if you are Private Equity, this measures your net investment at t=0.5, not the price you pay at t=0. If you are a retail investor, who a) won't be buying the debt, b) won't have any control over things like tax jurisdictions, c) won't be receiving any cash dividend, etc etc .... the metric is pointless.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4ca0852fdce161b965d5715975eb9a33",
"text": "\"As foundational material, read \"\"The Intelligent Investor\"\" by Benjamin Graham. It will help prepare you to digest and critically evaluate other investing advice as you form your strategy.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "733bdfd0269c974184d15a1ad82c5f9a",
"text": "For a non-technical investor (meaning someone who doesn't try to do all the various technical analysis things that theoretically point to specific investments or trends), having a diverse portfolio and rebalancing it periodically will typically be the best solution. For example, I might have a long-term-growth portfolio that is 40% broad stock market fund, 40% (large) industry specific market funds, and 20% bond funds. If the market as a whole tanks, then I might end up in a situation where my funds are invested 30% market 35% industry 35% bonds. Okay, sell those bonds (which are presumably high) and put that into the market (which is presumably low). Now back to 40/40/20. Then when the market goes up we may end up at 50/40/10, say, in which case we sell some of the broad market fund and buy some bond funds, back to 40/40/20. Ultimately ending up always selling high (whatever is currently overperforming the other two) and buying low (whatever is underperforming). Having the industry specific fund(s) means I can balance a bit between different sectors - maybe the healthcare industry takes a beating for a while, so that goes low, and I can sell some of my tech industry fund and buy that. None of this depends on timing anything; you can rebalance maybe twice a year, not worrying about where the market is at that exact time, and definitely not targeting a correction specifically. You just analyze your situation and adjust to make everything back in line with what you want. This isn't guaranteed to succeed (any more than any other strategy is), of course, and has some risk, particularly if you rebalance in the middle of a major correction (so you end up buying something that goes down more). But for long-term investments, it should be fairly sound.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8ad8c31cf38ded9ae11e02d78b881164",
"text": "\"Thank you for the in-depth, detailed explanation; it's refreshing to see a concise, non verbose explanation on reddit. I have a couple of questions, if that's alright. Firstly, concerning mezzanine investors. Based on my understanding from Google, these people invest after a venture has been partially financed (can I use venture like that in a financial context, or does it refer specifically to venture capital?) so they would receive a smaller return, yes? Is mezzanine investing particularly profitable? It sounds like you'd need a wide portfolio. Secondly, why is dilution so important further down the road? Is it to do with valuation? Finally, at what point would a company aim to meet an IPO? Is it case specific, or is there a general understanding of the \"\"best time\"\"? Thank you so much for answering my questions.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3adfcbe31a6b9bb6731237d8769eecb4",
"text": "For the mechanices/terms of stock investing, I recommend Learn to Earn by Peter Lynch. I also like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle. It explains why indexing is the best choice for most people. For stock picking, a good intro is The Little Book of Value Investing by Chris Brown. And then there is The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. IMO, this is the bible of investing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f50607ffadab1c7bacb18fce2adec8de",
"text": "\"The way I've implemented essentially \"\"value averaging\"\", is to keep a constant ratio between different investment types in my portfolio. Lets say (in a simple example), 25% cash, 25% REIT (real estate), 25% US Stock, 25% Foreign stock. Lets say I deposit a set $1000 per month into this account. If the stock portion goes up, it will look like I need more cash & REIT, so all of that $1000 goes into cash & the REIT portion to get them towards their 25%. I may spend months investing only in cash & the REIT while the stock goes up. Of course if the stock goes down, that $1000 per month goes into the stock accounts. Now you can also balance your account if you'd like, regularly selling stock (or the REIT), and making the account balanced. So if the stock goes down, you'd use the cash & REIT to purchase more stock. If the stock went up, you'd sell the stock, and buy REIT & leave more in cash.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bbefe50d05a17ab5e03bbdd33a74cb84",
"text": "\"**Modern portfolio theory** Modern portfolio theory (MPT), or mean-variance analysis, is a mathematical framework for assembling a portfolio of assets such that the expected return is maximized for a given level of risk, defined as variance. Its key insight is that an asset's risk and return should not be assessed by itself, but by how it contributes to a portfolio's overall risk and return. Economist Harry Markowitz introduced MPT in a 1952 essay, for which he was later awarded a Nobel Prize in economics. *** **Option (finance)** In finance, an option is a contract which gives the buyer (the owner or holder of the option) the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset or instrument at a specific strike price on a specified date, depending on the form of the option. The strike price may be set by reference to the spot price (market price) of the underlying security or commodity on the day an option is taken out, or it may be fixed at a discount in a premium. The seller has the corresponding obligation to fulfill the transaction—to sell or buy—if the buyer (owner) \"\"exercises\"\" the option. An option that conveys to the owner the right to buy at a specific price is referred to as a call; an option that conveys the right of the owner to sell at a specific price is referred to as a put. *** ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/finance/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.27\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "695d9044391183d088ac37025b39cdb2",
"text": "If it's money you can lose, and you're young, why not? Another would be motifinvesting where you can invest in ideas as opposed to picking companies. However, blindly following other investors is not a good idea. Big investors strategies might not be similar to yours, they might be looking for something different than you. If you're going to do that, find someone with similar goals. Having investments, and a strategy, that you believe in and understand is paramount to investing. It's that belief, strategy, and understanding that will give you direction. Otherwise you're just going to follow the herd and as they say, sheep get slaughtered.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "76c6225dc5f0d9e48a5430310a5a8e41",
"text": "This is only a rule of thumb. Peter Lynch popularized it; the ratio PE/growth is often called the Lynch Ratio. At best it's a very rough guideline. I could fill up this page with other caveats. I'm not saying that it's wrong, only that it's grossly incomplete. For a 10 second eyeball valuation of growth stocks, it's fine. But that's the extent of its usefulness.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bdcc2b65eb978ffd08c5dbe18108ebc4",
"text": "Disclosure: I am not an agent. Yes you can negotiate a lower price if the seller doesn't have to pay a buyers' agent's commission, but you probably won't save the full commission, since the buyer will want to take some of those savings in exchange for the extra risks involved. Thinks about some of the things that buyers' agents do on your behalf: I expect even a good buyer's agent has some incentive for the sale price to be higher rather than lower, as their commission is greater with higher sales price. True, but their main incentive is to make a sale or they get nothing. Since their commission is relatively low, even a 10% increase in the offer only gives them a 0.3% increase in their commission. It usually isn't enough for them to encourage you to make a bad deal, which could hurt their reputation. Does the answer change depending on whether the seller is using an agent or not? Some FSBO sellers are more willing to work with non-agent buyers, but the same risks above apply. The bottom line is: you can buy a house without an agent, but you need to make sure that you can replace their expertise and time spent working for you, and that the savings are worth the additional work and risks.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
187b926919a8119019344e3e62da920e
|
Why does my bank suddenly need to know where my money comes from?
|
[
{
"docid": "7d643ed047c1d902947122689b38d25b",
"text": "\"Banks have a financial, and regulational duty called \"\"Know your customer\"\", established to avoid a number of historical problems occurring again, such as money laundering, terrorism financing, fraud, etc. Thanks to the scale, and scope of the problem (millions of customers, billions of transactions a day), the way they're handling this usually involves fuzzy logics matching, looking for irregular patterns, problem escalation, and other warning signs. When exceeding some pre-set limit, these signal clues are then filtered, and passed on for human inspection. Needless to say, these algorithms are not perfect, although, thanks to financial pressure, they are improving. In order to understand why your trading account has been suspended, it's useful to look at the incentives: false positives -suspending your trade, and assuming you guilty until proven otherwise- could cost them merely your LTV (lifetime value of customer -how much your business brings in as profit); while false negatives -not catching you while engaging in activities listed above- might cost them multi-month investigations, penalties, and court. Ultimately, this isn't against you. I've been with the bank for 15 years and the money in the accounts has been very slowly accumulated via direct-deposit paychecks over that time. From this I gather the most likely explanation, is that you've hit somekind of account threshold, that the average credit-happy customers usually do not exceed, which triggered a routine checkup. How do you deal with it? Practice puppetry! There is only one way to survive angry customers emotionally: you have to realize that they’re not angry at you; they’re angry at your business, and you just happen to be a convenient representative of that business. And since they’re treating you like a puppet, an iconic stand-in for the real business, you need to treat yourself as a puppet, too. Pretend you’re a puppeteer. The customer is yelling at the puppet. They’re not yelling at you. They’re angry with the puppet. Your job is to figure out, “gosh, what can I make the puppet say that will make this person a happy customer?” In an investigation case, go with boredom: The puppet doesn't care, have no feelings, and is eternally patient. Figure out what are the most likely words that will have the matter \"\"mentally resolved\"\" from the investigator's point of view, tell them what they have to hear, and you'll have case closed in no time. Hope this helps.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c5443ee2e6f6034ecd03ddefed7a53ab",
"text": "Most likely this is connected with new banking regulations related to the Patriot Act, which require banks to be much more inquisitive about their customers and their money. The requirements are mostly about new accounts, but there may be some provisions to backfill this information for existing accounts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "79f31adf9ba96bc685681684d0bfdc6a",
"text": "Banks and credit unions are constantly required to improve their detection methods for suspicious transactions. It's not just big transactions anymore, it's scattered little ones, etc. Our credit union had to buy software that runs through transactions sniffing for suspicious patterns. More regulations and more costs that ultimately get passed on to customers in one way or another. Some of your transactions probably tripped a wire where there was none before.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e87339fb33848438b29492d4293e6df9",
"text": "Bank runs very complex software to detect suspicious activity - terrorism financing, money laundering, etc. How would a program know that some person's activity is suspicious? It uses a set of rules. That set might be imperfect (that likely was not intended) - there might be some rule that triggers a warning on your account dominating the fact you've been with them for 15 years. So it's highly likely that an imperfect program triggered a warning on your account and the bank employer didn't dismiss it.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "0e961894f3c0026db5bef446d8368b31",
"text": "\"Definitely this. The fact that it's termed \"\"identity theft\"\" is a great PR spin for banks. Someone else is attempting transactions while fraudulently claiming to be you. You did not lose your identity or even a piece of it. You are still fully you. You are not even involved in the fraudulent transaction! It's a transaction between the bank and the fraudster, and the bank has agreed to some action you did not authorize. They should be responsible for cleanup.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f8aa47beede59c8ab5527ab55e505aa7",
"text": "One bank is more willing to risk losses and customer hassle in exchange for lower processing costs than the other bank is. It's strictly a business decision. Regarding how they detect suspicious transactions: Patten detection based on your past usage history. I've gotten calls asking me to confirm that I just placed a large order with a company I'd never bought from before, or in a country that I haven't previously visited, or...",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b7f7a88163519e4bfaff7e4bae52dc81",
"text": "I feel like no one really has he right to step in and ask me what I'm spending my own money on and why Well, yes - the bank do, and they are legally required to. It's for legal purposes and for your own protection. The bank are looking for money laundering, generally. You can't withdraw more than $10,000 cash without the bank having to report it; however, if you ask for $10,000, the bank tell you that they have to report it, and so you reduce your request to (say) $9,500, the bank will still report it - with a note on the report saying that you initially requested a higher limit. They also check spending patterns. If for the last six months you've withdrawn $1,000 in cash each month, but for the last four days you've asked for $5,000 each time, then they'll ask what the money is being used for, in case you're being defrauded. Your question implies that the 'financial people' are asking for the money in cash. If so, then that's a big (BIG!) red flag. No reputable company would ask for deposits that cannot be traced. In this case, I'd be looking for other 'financial advisors'. Interview several, not just the ones used by your friends and/or relatives. And if you don't understand an investment completely, then you shouldn't be making that investment. Your advisor would not be risking their OWN money on it, would they...",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "18665dc5fa080e4469ed3808a1f01234",
"text": "Most transactions that the bank performs for you are electronic ACH transactions, so the costs to them are minimal in the long run. Most banks do it now to keep up with the competition. Almost every bank does it now, so they have to do it to attract new business and keep existing customers. Also, the more you rely on the bank and use them to pay bills, the more they learn about you over time and can use that data in overall marketing plans. It's easier for them to record it into their system if it is all electronic to begin with.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ad95541644e49cb3761095f39c7f52da",
"text": "\"I don't see how this concept takes off. First and foremost, BankSimple is NOT a bank but a tech company masquerading as one. BankSimple leaves industry regulation and treasury management -- the CORE of banking, to outside parties. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to have as few stops between me and my money as possible. If not for a fear of losing it in a robbery and inability to earn interest, I'd shove it under a mattress. So why would I want to bank with an intermediary, who admittently doesn't understand how the process works? How is that \"\"looking out for my interests\"\"? And how is your security better than other institutions that offer 128-bit encryption and multiple security questions to test a customer's identity? I'd like to add that not charging overdraft fees and providing lines of credit to help customers out in the event they spend more than they have is nice in concept, but what happens when those same customers do not make deposits to cover their shortfalls? When it comes to money, people will take advantage of any opportunities they have to circumvent the system. Especially if funds are tight.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "543f4652e82ee1c5329dcd9006612b55",
"text": "As a merchant I can tell you that the only thing the bank gets from me. Is the total amount and a category for my business. No detail, not ever.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "53cb7cc61f2dfbdbd6f1da0668f6fc1d",
"text": "\"Well, it took some effort to get an explanation from my bank. Turns out that some supermarkets use direct debit as a method of transferring money for purchases payed by so-called \"\"EC\"\" cards here. I was told that for some reason, a supermarket decided to reverse one of such transactions.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5f53938fe4acef1c5ca2cc4e5bb639f7",
"text": "\"TLDR: Why can't banks give me my money? We don't have your money. Who has my money? About half a dozen different people all over the world. And we need to coordinate with them and their banks to get you your money. I love how everyone seems to think that the securities industry has super powers. Believe me, even with T+3, you won't believe how many trades fail to settle properly. Yes, your trade is pretty simple. But Cash Equity trades in general can be very complicated (for the layman). Your sell order will have been pushed onto an algorithmic platform, aggregated with other sell order, and crossed with internal buy orders. The surplus would then be split out by the algo to try and get the best price based on \"\"orders\"\" on the market. Finally the \"\"fills\"\" are used in settlement, which could potentially have been filled in multiple trades against multiple counterparties. In order to guarantee that the money can be in your account, we need 3 days. Also remember, we aren't JUST looking at your transaction. Each bank is looking to square off all the different trades between all their counter parties over a single day. Thousands of transactions/fills may have to be processed just for a single name. Finally because, there a many many transactions that do not settle automatically, our settlements team needs to co-ordinate with the other bank to make sure that you get your money. Bear in mind, banks being banks, we are working with systems that are older than I am. *And all of the above is the \"\"simplest\"\" case, I haven't even factored in Dark Pools/Block trades, auctions, pre/post-market trading sessions, Foreign Exchange, Derivatives, KYC/AML.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8f414572f1273861b9e4d36c3ad3e02a",
"text": "As I replied to someone else who said that: I'm often having to send stuff with the check. Paperwork, a bill etc. While that would work to a person who knows me, it's usually not going to work with a business or government who needs to know why I'm sending this check.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a94776ff15107b4078eabd2f71906a41",
"text": "\"Welcome to the 21st century, the New Order. Forget all that legal mumbo jumbo you may have read back in law school in the 1960s about commercial code. Its all gone now. Now we have Check 21 and the Patriot Act !!! Basically what this means is that because some Arab fanatics burned down the World Trade Center, the US government and its allied civilian banking company henchmen now have total control and dictatorship over \"\"your\"\" money, which is no longer really money, but more like a \"\"credit\"\" to your account with THEM which they can do with what they want. Here are some of the many consequences of the two aforementioned acts: (1) You can no longer sue a bank for mishandling your money (2) All your banking transaction information is the joint property of the bank, its \"\"affiliates\"\" and the US Treasury (3) You can no longer conduct private monetary transactions with other people using a bank as your agent; you can only request that a bank execute an unsecured transaction on your behalf and the bank has total control over that transaction and the terms on which occurs; you have no say over these terms and you cannot sue a bank over any financial tort on you for any reason. (4) All banks are required to spy on you, report any \"\"suspicious\"\" actions on your part, develop and run special software to detect these \"\"suspicious actions\"\", and send their employees to government-run educational courses where they are taught to spy on customers, how to report suspicious customers and how to seize money and safe deposit boxes from customers when the government orders them to do so. (5) All banks are required to positively identify everyone who has a bank account or safe deposit box and report all their accounts to the government. (6) No transactions can be done anonymously. All parties to every banking transaction must be identified and recorded. So, from the above it should be clear to (if you are a lawyer) why no endorsement is present. That is because your check is not a negotiable instrument anymore, it is merely a request to the bank to transfer funds to the Treasury. The Treasury does not need to \"\"endorse\"\" anything. In fact, legally speaking, the Treasury could simply order your bank to empty your account into theirs, and they actually do this all the time to people they are \"\"investigating\"\" for supposed crimes. You don't need to endorse checks you receive either because, as I said above, the check is no longer a negotiable instrument. Banks still have people do it, but it is just a pro forma habit from the old days. Since you can't sue the bank, the endorsement is pretty meaningless because it cannot be challenged in court anyway. You could probably just write \"\"X\"\" there and they would deposit it.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a7f53388750c3c3aa69d751131546f00",
"text": "From my reading of the wikipedia page (CRT), this only happens if you deposit or withdraw currency, not checks. The idea behind this is that checks, ACH, etc. leave paper trails that can be tracked. Cash doesn't, so it gets this extra level of scrutiny. If yu get a cashiers check or a money order to pay a bill, I don't think a CRT is created. If you withdraw $15,000 to buy a car in cash (1 stack of $100 bills), then a CRT would be generated. It still isn't a problem, as long as you can show a bill of sale showing where the money went (or came from, if you are the seller). The IRS has a FAQ about this. It says (taken from several spots at that page): Cash is money. It is currency and coins of the United States and any other country. A cashier’s check, bank draft, traveler’s check, or money order with a face amount of more than $10,000 is not treated as cash and a business does not have to file Form 8300 when it receives them. These items are not defined as cash because, if they were bought with currency, the bank or other financial institution that issued them must file a Currency Transaction Report. The exception to this is if you are buying something with a resale value of more than $10k with a check, money order, etc of less than $10k.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a8c51d2323b6e68f7e7384924a79395c",
"text": "\"It means that you are expected to have received a separate piece of communication (\"\"advice\"\") which confirms who the payment came from. This is common with CHAPS payments and overseas transactions.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "62568d7cf61f5ac147fe877da66f9da3",
"text": "They are networked machines and they talk to all the banks in order to look up the details of your account to provide you with that money. The protocol they use has known vulnerabilities. A blackhat conference about 5 years ago they made one of the machines output money onto the street.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0700971fbc357b77224692f5644dac4a",
"text": "The person you're talking to is probably someone in the company. They need to convey the message to their bank. So you need to explain it to them as if they were 3 year old kids. You may be used to SWIFT transactions because that's how you always get paid, but unless the UK firm regularly employes Russian freelancers, this is probably the first time ever they have heard of it. Similarly, someone in the local branch of their community bank has probably never heard of it before either. In Europe they use IBANs and SWIFTs are rather uncommon. Be patient, explain the issue and the solution in as many words as you can, and suggest them putting you on speaker at the bank so that you could talk directly to the person executing the transaction. If you do the same on your side and let the bankers talk directly to each other - that would probably be ideal.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "237b046a1a504aac7ff28b5d4f68910b",
"text": "lol- yeah, I know how banks work. My point is EVERY transaction should be recorded somewhere. Banks have both internal and external auditors who's only job it is to monitor the transactions to make sure everything adds up. It just doesn't make sense that the CEO of the company would have so little idea of what is going on. Shades of Enron to me.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
812eaf33d2177a0a3625240e04bc49b4
|
How can rebuilding a city/large area be considered an economic boost?
|
[
{
"docid": "5251b993f2df61493ab1d3a961a1ff8a",
"text": "\"You are not wrong. This is called the \"\"Broken Window\"\" fallacy in economics. Imagine if 20% of a population was employed to go around breaking windows. This would stimulate the economy as many people would have to be employed to make new windows, repair the broken windows, etc.. The problem is that everyone would have been better off if they didn't have to spend their valuable resources on repairing a perfectly functioning window. Although many people will be employed to rebuild Japan, this doesn't improve the standard of living for the folks in Japan.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "10a656c7c1d2ca87a162b1eaeab7a979",
"text": "\"You're entirely correct. It's one of those \"\"broken window\"\" fallacies. Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James B., when his careless son happened to break a square of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation - \"\"It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?\"\" Frederic Bastiat's 1850 essay, \"\"That which is seen and that which is not seen\"\" is still the best and most beautifully-written of such explanations. As you point out, a gain for the construction companies is more than offset by the loss of life and financial expenditure of the insurance companies. Plus, it is never possible to quantify the entirety of the loss in terms of opportunities foregone (\"\"that which is not seen\"\"). People who were about to do incredible things but now gone. Property, of any nature, no longer of use to build on or perform service. Any replacement comes at the expense of other opportunities.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3ad3d880e9d7646869f8714ddd5dd6f0",
"text": "The problem here is that the metrics that are used to track the economy are looking for things like growth and change. In a perfect world, everyone would have exactly what they need and there would no need for economists because the economy would be static.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "941cf2ba28a5fb1b15c47aea99340118",
"text": "It will have some positives, and some negatives. The hardest hit will be the insurance agencies, as well as banks. Manufacturing will also take a short term hit. When insurance payments come out, then there will be a boom in construction, consumer goods, industrial goods, etc. Companies will upgrade their equipment whereas before they might have let it run for another 10-20 years or longer. After all, if you are going to buy something, you aren't going to get it used, you'll get something more modern. Of course, Japan already was one of the most modern countries in the world, so they likely won't see as many gains as other countries, but this would hold more true in a less technologically advanced society. Long term, 10-20 years down the line, when everything is rebuilt, it might have a slight positive increase in productivity, but this will be somewhat offset because Japan already is such a technological powerhouse, and on the cutting edge in many technologies. But I agree, it's quite foolish to say that it'll improve the economy of Japan, some clarification should be done to clear that one up...",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0633c29b92b10aa9f2da6b268fb35e2f",
"text": "\"The people who benefit are large engineering and construction companies, manufacturers of construction equipment, bankers and lawyers. So in the world of realpolitik that we live in, the misery of millions of \"\"other people\"\" is spun as a net benefit, because \"\"we\"\" benefit from that misery.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c964a2755a0c7300abb81a9c680931f6",
"text": "It certainly creates an opportunity for the re-distribution of wealth. Money will be transferred from insurance companies to construction companies. Businesses that go under will be replaced by ones that survived. Some companies will make a profit out of this, but as you have already figured out, no new wealth is created by the disaster. (Although lots has been destroyed, so we are looking at a net loss.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "515fe077377723f8c17b8faab6fa23c4",
"text": "Wikipedia's article on the Parable of the broken window mentions that Keynesians would argue that broken windows can be useful in depressed economies. I think Japan's economy was somewhat depressed, so if it applies anywhere, it'd apply in this scenario.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "7553c50f195a743abb304f1d7a6f6530",
"text": "Until there is a significant price pressure, it’s always going to be cost prohibitive to build high in earthquake prone zones. Those mitigation measures don’t come cheap at all. As for the skyline, eh, that’s subjective. If the local culture values a “small town” or even bucolic feel, keeping buildings below tree lines isn’t regressive at all.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9c325f06ff7af83af85a9381786b15a0",
"text": "No. Our taxes allocated the resources necessary for us to have roads, power, and all the nice facilities we use. The rich benefited from the government offering them the jobs to build these things. Or did you forget about that part? You sound like you think the rich are altruistic. If they were, would we really be in the situation we are today, with the increasing wage gap and people distrusting big business? No. We would laud big business as our saviors and protectors, would have confidence that big business is there if we fall down, to pick us up. But big business has shown it is more about back stabbing than helping.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "99cea4ea29b3d66ca884f401306360e1",
"text": "Chicago has several neighborhoods going through that same gentrification cycle. There are several more city neighborhoods that will probably see that kind of rebuilding before Gary, many of which you pass through traveling between downtown and Gary. Transit between Chicago and Gary exists, but it's not as good as transit to other suburbs because of the lack of cooperation between Illinois and Indiana.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dbf0a8bf5ebf1b3e1ed132596db4939a",
"text": "Building tanks and helicopters is the use of the countries economic resources for goods that provide no net benefit to the economy beyond their construction price. If, for example, the government wanted to stimulate the economy by spending $1 trillion on something, sure, the country's GDP would by definition increase by $1 trillion, and there'd probably be some multiplier effect by those workers now having additional money to spend on other goods. There's also going to be some negative effects on other sectors of the economy because the prices for labor and raw materials will go up because of the increased demand from the government. If the government is buying $100 billion in steel and aluminum, you can bet that the spot prices of steel and aluminum is going to jump up, squeezing any private industries that need to buy those resources. Now the question is what do you spend that $1 trillion on to get the biggest bang for your buck. Military hardware accomplishes the goal of having something disposable to buy with $1 trillion, but little additional benefit to the private economy. If you instead spent $1 trillion on building infrastructure (bridges/roads/dams/pipelines/flood control), scientific research, or education, you've now generated goods that have their own intrinsic value to society beyond their cost - whether it be less traffic, new scientific discoveries, or a more educated workforce.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c869a09ee00b8672fb4f041bf9835f20",
"text": "Which will almost certainly cause more of a real estate bubble in the urban core. If you can't afford to live there you don't get a good job and the local councils will strike down attempts to build more housing. This will not end well.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8556398e6e591a6e2ab338b1ae6087d6",
"text": "In a way this is good because it encourages people to move out of these high cost areas to lower cost. Over time that will tend to even out the problem and move resources around the country. Anyone waiting for NYC to become cheap again is just plain stupid. It didn't even get cheap in the 2008 crash.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a3d4e2f50066dd7f36ddafc743b62f23",
"text": "Don't try because it's a moving target. A thriving economy on paper can be entirely valuation based. It tells you nothing about distribution of wealth in the economy. The majority would be destitute and we could still be talking of booming times if speculative markets can find creative ways of growing valuations of existing assets with credi growth. All that is needed is for two people to bid a painting to 100 million for the painting to have contributed positively to a growth in the value of goods and services in the economy. The same is done with intellectual property and corporate valuations. Good times are times when capital gains can be seized on account of expansionin of credit or government spending. Recessions are closer when governments try and pull in more than they spend and when lending can't expand. Government spending is increaasing these days despite talk of the contrary.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d06525efe0150a80ee674745dfe0cf60",
"text": "It’s really hard to interpret the scale of this effect. How many listings does an area need to have for this to hold true? If a town goes from 5 listings to 25 (400% increase!) would that translate to a 15% increase in average rent? Probably not. Percent of total housing stock being listed on Airbnb would probably be a better measurement. At least in NYC, the city of perpetually too high rent, the rate of rent increases has been relatively low, despite the rise of Airbnb over the last few years. Without reading the (not yet published ) study that this article is reporting on, it’s not possible to say whether the .39% increase in rent is a meaningful contribution, or a barely measurable statistic.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c736826887aa913f0544388ca51db098",
"text": "If the building has no income, it also probably has minimal expenses. The heat, water and electricity costs are nearly zero. They are letting the value depreciate, and taking it off the taxes. I also suspect the condition of the building is poor, so any effort to make the building productive would be very costly. Many cities combat this by setting the tax on empty buildings or empty lots at a much higher rate. Or they set the value of the property at a high valuation based on what it could generate. Sometimes this is only targeted at some sections of the city to encourage development. They also offer tax breaks when the owner of a house has the house as their principal residence.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "46e735a6ff3da6e51a55fea9c5345e5a",
"text": "Have a beef with your proof... measuring at the county level is misleading. Baltimore county has some wealthy areas. It goes all the way up to the state line. There's plenty of more affluent pockets included in that. Same is true for Detroit, Wayne county includes many affluent areas. Rural counties however tend to be isolated and more uniform. If you're looking in Owsley Kentucky (poorest county per that article)... it's not really near anything resembling a major commerce area and there's no pockets of higher-value homes hidden anywhere like you find around major metro areas...",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "33cb7c8786213c9e33b8c0d18204fcf1",
"text": "I never said it didn't have a visible effect on local economies, but the total from your posts barely clicks over 100k jobs. Advances in engineering have devastated the manual labor industry much more than any outsourcing could accomplish.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6af5f8c2b9eb1c37d0314aa5c5686681",
"text": "There's nothing really there to comprehend. Cost and demand are inversely proportional. Boosting demand has the same effect as reducing costs. Actually, there is something to comprehend. People will use the appeal of central economic planning to funnel money to their pet projects. Regardless of what that project is, the allocation of resources to it by artificial means throws off equilibrium in the entire economy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c6ab7b07e253e53eeb7ab7817fde6bd6",
"text": "No because that $100k didnt just come from nowhere, it came from tax payers. Tax payer who wouldve used the money to buy other things or use differently. the govt redirecting it to the two hole diggers does not ADD to the economy, it takes away because the capital is forced down an unproductive avenue.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f01e1a7edf63a0988a205ed059a30d2d",
"text": "You’ll find home owners calling the experts for this project as they want to sell the property. In this situation, hiring project management Sydney experts and getting renovation done gives a handsome boost to the property’s resale value and find most of the project management Sydney companies offering the service called restoration.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "79d1b408f0f7af38929242b30586d28c",
"text": "\"I didn't idly pick the SF Bay as my model. That place was literally \"\"Rust-Belt West\"\" after industrial contraction starting at the end of WWII and continuing through the '70s. But the Silicon Valley boom didn't revitalize the former industrial areas, but merely a few 'gentrified' spots, *like where those buses originate*. Those 400K new 'service/support' jobs *won't pay enough* to allow the workers to live *in the city*. They'll be commuting from *beyond* the upper-crust suburbs you mention, [just like these Californians](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/business/economy/san-francisco-commute.html).\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
a910c7f2665445b0697b8e173d9b23f4
|
Does inflation equal more loans?
|
[
{
"docid": "661f33e62466e5895f8ac34f2a5ff5c6",
"text": "What is the relationship between inflation and interest rates? notes a relationship between inflation and interest rates that would suggest high inflation would imply higher interest rates that would mean less loans as money becomes more expensive in a sense. In contrast, in times of low inflation then rates may be low and thus there is a greater chance of people and businesses wanting loans.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "932a6bb74f8c695d3afa4ff3e828ce46",
"text": "In terms of operations, banks are indifferent to inflation. Short rates except right before a recession or near-recession are always lower than long rates, regardless of inflation level, assuming no quotas or price controls. Banks produce credit by borrowing short to lend long, so as long as short rates are lower than long rates, they can be expected to produce loans, again assuming no quotas or price controls. In short, from the banks' perspective, inflation does not affect their desire to produce credit.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "a329b56b19b8b4fe4427e5efe77c3d45",
"text": "It seems from the Bernanke and pundits in general that there's an ideal inflation rate and it's not zero. When you reference that recessions bring prices down, I think I understand you, but recession does not mean deflation. In fact deflation is a rarity, not a common occurrence. When you look at what compounding does, you see that a 3% inflation rate will double the cost of an item in 24 years. From 1975 to 2010, inflation was 4X as it ran well above 3% for a time. I chose that date as I was 13 at the time, and wasn't too aware of specific prices before that. So I've seen a pizza go from $3 to $12 during my life. I hope to live long enough to see it double again. I think that it's hyperinflation that's an ongoing concern, but the controlled inflation as I just described is not detrimental, in fact it's preferable in some sense. For example, when I look at my 5% mortgage, it's 3.6% after tax, but with a 3% inflation rate, my cost is really .6%, as the remaining debt devalues over time and the house (in theory) goes up with inflation. On the other extreme, higher inflation, say 8%, starts to be detrimental, distorting spending behavior and bad for the system.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1d75d9d5c4aa7f516fd700eac2a55788",
"text": "I'd agree, inflation affects the value of the dollar you measure anything in. So, it makes your debt fade away at the same rate it eats away at dollar denominated assets. I'd suggest that one should also look at the tax effect of the debt or assets as well. For example, my 3.5% mortgage costs me 2.625% after tax. But a 4% long term cap gain in stocks, costs me .6% in tax for a net 3.4%.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5335ecf49cf360aa289d99ecc552d636",
"text": "Inflation is basically this: Over time, prices go up! I will now address the 3 points you have listed. Suppose over a period of 10 years, prices have doubled. Now suppose 10 years ago I earned $100 and bought a nice pair of shoes. Now today because prices have doubled I would have to earn $200 in order to afford the same pair of shoes. Thus if I want to compare my earnings this year to 10 years ago, I will need to adjust for the price of goods going up. That is, I could say that my $100 earnings 10 years ago is the same as having earned $200 today, or alternatively I could say that my earnings of $200 today is equivalent to having earned $100 10 years ago. This is a difficult question because a car is a depreciating asset, which means the real value of the car will go down in value over time. Let us suppose that inflation doesn't exist and the car you bought for $100 today will depreciate to $90 after 1 year (a 10% depreciation). But because inflation does exist, and all prices will be 0.5% higher in 1 years time, we can calculate the true selling price of the car 1 in year as follows: 0.5% of $90 = 0.005*90 = $0.45 Therefore the car will be $90 + $0.45 = $90.45 in 1 years time. If inflation is low, then the repayments do not get much easier to pay back over time because wages have not risen by as much. Similarly the value of your underlying asset will not increase in value by as much. However as compensation, the interest rates on loans are usually lower when inflation is lower. Therefore generally it is better to get a loan in times of high inflation rather than low inflation, however it really depends on how the much the interest rates are relative to the inflation rate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a70568de6258ac4ff20caf60647f630e",
"text": "\"First, a clarification. No assets are immune to inflation, apart from inflation-indexed securities like TIPS or inflation-indexed gilts (well, if held to maturity, these are at least close). Inflation causes a decline in the future purchasing power of a given dollar1 amount, and it certainly doesn't just affect government bonds, either. Regardless of whether you hold equity, bonds, derivatives, etc., the real value of those assets is declining because of inflation, all else being equal. For example, if I invest $100 in an asset that pays a 10% rate of return over the next year, and I sell my entire position at the end of the year, I have $110 in nominal terms. Inflation affects the real value of this asset regardless of its asset class because those $110 aren't worth as much in a year as they are today, assuming inflation is positive. An easy way to incorporate inflation into your calculations of rate of return is to simply subtract the rate of inflation from your rate of return. Using the previous example with inflation of 3%, you could estimate that although the nominal value of your investment at the end of one year is $110, the real value is $100*(1 + 10% - 3%) = $107. In other words, you only gained $7 of purchasing power, even though you gained $10 in nominal terms. This back-of-the-envelope calculation works for securities that don't pay fixed returns as well. Consider an example retirement portfolio. Say I make a one-time investment of $50,000 today in a portfolio that pays, on average, 8% annually. I plan to retire in 30 years, without making any further contributions (yes, this is an over-simplified example). I calculate that my portfolio will have a value of 50000 * (1 + 0.08)^30, or $503,132. That looks like a nice amount, but how much is it really worth? I don't care how many dollars I have; I care about what I can buy with those dollars. If I use the same rough estimate of the effect of inflation and use a 8% - 3% = 5% rate of return instead, I get an estimate of what I'll have at retirement, in today's dollars. That allows me to make an easy comparison to my current standard of living, and see if my portfolio is up to scratch. Repeating the calculation with 5% instead of 8% yields 50000 * (1 + 0.05)^30, or $21,6097. As you can see, the amount is significantly different. If I'm accustomed to living off $50,000 a year now, my calculation that doesn't take inflation into account tells me that I'll have over 10 years of living expenses at retirement. The new calculation tells me I'll only have a little over 4 years. Now that I've clarified the basics of inflation, I'll respond to the rest of the answer. I want to know if I need to be making sure my investments span multiple currencies to protect against a single country's currency failing. As others have pointed out, currency doesn't inflate; prices denominated in that currency inflate. Also, a currency failing is significantly different from a prices denominated in a currency inflating. If you're worried about prices inflating and decreasing the purchasing power of your dollars (which usually occurs in modern economies) then it's a good idea to look for investments and asset allocations that, over time, have outpaced the rate of inflation and that even with the effects of inflation, still give you a high enough rate of return to meet your investment goals in real, inflation-adjusted terms. If you have legitimate reason to worry about your currency failing, perhaps because your country doesn't maintain stable monetary or fiscal policies, there are a few things you can do. First, define what you mean by \"\"failing.\"\" Do you mean ceasing to exist, or simply falling in unit purchasing power because of inflation? If it's the latter, see the previous paragraph. If the former, investing in other currencies abroad may be a good idea. Questions about currencies actually failing are quite general, however, and (in my opinion) require significant economic analysis before deciding on a course of action/hedging. I would ask the same question about my home's value against an inflated currency as well. Would it keep the same real value. Your home may or may not keep the same real value over time. In some time periods, average home prices have risen at rates significantly higher than the rate of inflation, in which case on paper, their real value has increased. However, if you need to make substantial investments in your home to keep its price rising at the same rate as inflation, you may actually be losing money because your total investment is higher than what you paid for the house initially. Of course, if you own your home and don't have plans to move, you may not be concerned if its value isn't keeping up with inflation at all times. You're deriving additional satisfaction/utility from it, mainly because it's a place for you to live, and you spend money maintaining it in order to maintain your physical standard of living, not just its price at some future sale date. 1) I use dollars as an example. This applies to all currencies.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ba326d329c8e239ec41ea6590f2d3269",
"text": "\"The classic definition of inflation is \"\"too much money chasing too few goods.\"\" Within a tight range, say 1-3%, inflation is somewhat benign. There's a nice inflation widget at The Inflation Calculator which helps me see that an item costing $1000 in 1975 would now (2010) be about $4000, and $1000 from 1984 till now, just over $2000. I chose those two years to make a point. First, I am 48, I graduated college in 1984, so in my working life I've seen the value of the dollar drop by half. On the other hand it only took 9 years from 75-84 to see a similar amount of inflation occur. I'd suggest that the 26 year period is far more acceptable than the 9. Savers should be aware of their real return vs what was a result of inflation. I'm not incensed either way but logically have to acknowledge the invisible tax of inflation. I get a (say) 6% return, pay 2% in tax, but I'm not ahead by 4%, 3% may be lost to inflation. On the flip side, my mortgage is 3.5%, after taxes that's 2.625%, but less than 0% after (long term) inflation. So as a debtor, I am benefiting by the effect of inflation on what I owe. Interesting also to hear about deflation as we've grown used to it in the case of electronics but little else. Perhaps the iPad won't drop in price, but every year it will gain features and competitors will keep the tablet market moving. Yet people still buy these items. Right now, there's not enough spending. I'd suggest that, good financial advice aside, people as a whole need to start spending to get the economy moving. The return of some inflation would be a barometer of that spending starting to occur.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "71a50ca4d80ab616d4321d9aa4ce5354",
"text": "The worst part of government induced tuition inflation wasn't even the GI Bill. Although I'm sure that started it a bit. It really took off in the late 1970s / 1980 with the establishment of the Department of Education and the Sallie Mae loan clearing house. There's a massive inflection point in historical inflation adjusted tuition prices right around 1980, when those were established. No coincidence. Also, you know whats worse than the **government** getting in the housing-price-inflation business? The freaking **central bank** getting in on the housing-price-inflation business. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/quarterly-balance-sheet-developments-report.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/quarterly_balance_sheet_developments_report_201708.pdf The federal reserve holds $4.4 T in total assets. That is the sole source of the entire money supply of the United States Dollar. It does not come from anywhere else. Of course, you get money velocity and money multipliers after that, but this is the origin. Of that $4.4 T, they hold $2.4 T in US Treasury securities. Ok, that's fine. That's the whole point of the federal reserve. They control the money supply through buying / selling (letting mature / redeem) US government securities. But wait, hold up, what the heck happened to the other $2.0 T in assets ... um, where did those go? There are some other assets, but the next largest ... the federal reserve owns $1.7 T in mortgage backed securities. Holy ... effing ... sheeeeeeeet. What in the actual f*** is the central bank doing buying mortgage backed securities? That absolutely, positively, is **NOT** monetary policy. That shit is fiscal policy, which the federal reserved is **NOT** supposed to be engaging in. And now you know why housing prices are even more effed up than tuition prices.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f5006e159057eb54f759199c5b603f5f",
"text": "There's a difference between physical currency and money (For example a bank may only hold only a small percentage of total deposits as cash that it's customers can withdraw). I'm not sure which you're referring to, but either way you should read about inflation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "931efdb6af74a7feffd7a87fd30575f2",
"text": "Inflation is not applicable in the said example. You are better off paying 300 every month as the balance when invested will return you income.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2958f86f8f366a00d2d7f0d9d1521dea",
"text": "I believe it goes a little something like this: During period of inflation, all boats rise. Everyone get's richer, and gain control of more physical assets. During periods of depression, debts are being called due by those who gave out the loans (these few powerful men) that can't be paid, and so foreclosures and the like occur, giving the creditors control of the actual physical assets. Basically you have to track physical assets instead of financial ones to see how the boom and busts are beneficial to the wealthy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fc6ff22d4a46d1b5085eed248eb0c7e0",
"text": "That sounds like bunk too me. Even if it does, the total number of loans isn't going to be a major factor in your credit score. I wouldn't worry about it unless you have other reasons to consolidate the loans. For example, Government student loans can introduce risk into your finances in that they are difficult to dismiss as part of a bankruptcy if that ever becomes necessary.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "390afd4dabff9fdbde3d42a41d0007ca",
"text": "What the comments above say is true, but one more thing is there. FD rates are directly proportional to loan rates. However, banks make money because loan rates will always be higher than FD rates.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "04d4827d726ea7bf03eb32ae11d2012b",
"text": "Typically in a developed / developing economy if there is high overall inflation, then it means everything will rise including property/real estate. The cost of funds is low [too much money chasing too few goods causes inflation] which means more companies borrow money cheaply and more business florish and hence the stock market should also go up. So if you are looking at a situation where industry is doing badly and the inflation is high, then it means there are larger issues. The best bet would be Gold and parking the funds into other currency.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "edfaea8b74131376f39df1847e966ad5",
"text": "It's misleading news. Comparing debt levels in nominal terms is completely pointless over a period of more than a few months. The article you responded to quite literally quoted extracts from the article you subsequently posted and explained why they were misleading or incorrect.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b4e87a814da9242f7855873f3fdeff89",
"text": "I believe there are two ways new money is created: My favorite description of this (money creation) comes from Chris Martenson: the video is here on Youtube. And yes, I believe both can create inflation. In fact this is what happened in the US between 2004 and 2007: increasing loans to households to buy houses created an inflation of home prices.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "224b2adcaf210e11107ae36c6a1e6b3e",
"text": "\"Vitalik has mentioned this in a comment but I think it ought to be expanded upon: Companies that aren't already penny stocks really don't stand to gain anything from trying to prevent short interest. Short selling does not inherently lower the stock price - not any more so than any other kind of selling. When somebody shorts a stock, it's simply borrowed from another investor's margin; as long as it's not a naked short resulting in an FTD (Failure To Deliver) then it does not add any \"\"artificial\"\" selling pressure. In fact, shorting can actually drive the price up in the long term due to stops and margin calls. Not a guarantee, of course, but if a rally occurs then a high short interest can cause a cascade effect from the short \"\"squeeze\"\", resulting in an even bigger rally than what would have occurred with zero short interest. Many investors actually treat a high short interest as a bullish signal. Compare with margin buying - essentially the opposite of short selling - which has the opposite effect. If investors buy stocks on margin, then if the value of that stock decreases too rapidly they will be forced to sell, which can cause the exact same cascade effect as a short interest but in the opposite direction. Shorting is (in a sense) evening out the odds by inflating the buying pressure at lower stock prices when the borrowers decide to cover and take profits. Bottom line is that, aside from (illegal) insider trading, it doesn't do businesses any good to try to manipulate their stock price or any trading activity. Yes, a company can raise capital by selling additional common shares, but a split really has no effect on the amount of capital they'd be able to raise because it doesn't change the actual market cap, and a dilution is a dilution regardless of the current stock price. If a company's market cap is $1 billion then it doesn't matter if they issue 1 million shares at $50.00 each or 10 million shares at $5.00 each; either way it nets them $50 million from the sale and causes a 5% dilution, to which the market will react accordingly. They don't do it because there'd be no point.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
a70e44b83d880dd5a492895b0a30a657
|
PayPal wants me to “add a bank account”, another funding source. Credit card isn't working. Why?
|
[
{
"docid": "96ffb13a982db73087976ced7d534403",
"text": "I'm guessing that you've reached the value limit of a payment that can be made without linking your account to a bank account. While you want privacy, PayPal wants to not be a money launderer. You may need to seek an alternative way to pay for this if you're trying to be private about it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4b12ced4b2c65310a56ef71aa69c0bb5",
"text": "Visit paypalblows.org to find out more reasons. PayPal wants your bank account info on file before they allow you to take payment. So setup a bank account strictly for this service, and if they give you trouble or suspend your account, simply never use them again and tell others of your experience. I think the only reason why PayPal wants a bank account is so they can dip into it and take chargeback money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "67b16b5e59401865bd13b1b65a0a47fd",
"text": "Have you checked to make sure that your card isn't at the limit, or at risk of expiring soon? Maybe PayPal has a policy to reject credit cards with expiry dates that fall within their buyer/seller protection periods? But to answer your question, no, I've never had this happen to me before.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "740ca590b0233f0eb8e4fdbb08c353c3",
"text": "I would guess that this is due to the card issuer, not Paypal. Credit card transactions are tagged with a code describing the type of purchase, and some issuers disallow certain types (such as gambling).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0c5e87f8ad4f78766ee62122ac566585",
"text": "It's possible the recipient of the payment is not setup to receive funds form PayPal from a credit card, too.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e817c6ac14aee27f38a313a4b564c0ad",
"text": "I'm pretty sure it's merchant-dependent. If a credit card transaction doesn't go through, PayPal will automatically charge your bank account. Some merchants may want that extra insurance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6d22fa9d8d1f7a79d793e3c41110f867",
"text": "I've used PayPal for my business for a long time. Sometimes PayPal doesn't trust credit cards. Debit or direct bank transfer are reliable. There is also a charge for using a credit card but I don't think that is the reason. You may be trying to purchase a high value item. That would be a possible reason why PayPal allowed you to use credit cards in the past, but will not allow you to do so now, for these particular transactions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "51788755f7176dffdb025f6ef5264772",
"text": "It's always a good idea to check your credit history on a regular basis - try checking your credit score from one of the independent providers recently (like Equifax) ? Maybe that will offer a clue what PayPal is doing.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "0f1df7e4f7aa6193075c0a9d820d7d96",
"text": "I was having issues with transferring money from my UK bank (HSBC) to my paypal... HSBC was asking for an IBAN code to complete the transaction. I couldn't find an IBAN code listed anywhere on my Paypal acct. What finally solved it for me was when I entered the last 4 digits of the Paypal account number, HSBC then threw up a message saying that payee was listed in my payees and to do a search for payees. (I had never manually entered my Paypal as a payee, but it was there in a huge list of companies already known and listed by HSBC.) Then all I had to do was put in the reference number Paypal had given and the amount. It was in my paypal account within minutes. Hope this helps :)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "087c2c58da445cb09a11861be55ecdea",
"text": "There's never been a good micropayment system on the internet. Credit card and paypal transaction costs are too high, and the whole thing takes too long. The hassle of a credit card transaction only makes sense if you are making a major (5$ and up) purchase. For micropayments there should be no lower limit on amounts, and contributing should take under a second. Like a button that contributes 5 cents.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1e48346505bbfa9c6c2211e74bf594c8",
"text": "The answer is no. Paypal will always ask for permission before adding or withdrawing money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "39c5a95ee4710cbcd2a36edb902728c8",
"text": "Just create him a regular PayPal account, then so to the Pay Pal prepaid card page, https://www.paypal-prepaid.com, order a card an attach it to his personal paypal account. Unlike student account, you have to do 2 transfers, one into his paypal account, and then to the prepaid card. That is an answer! Unlike those of use with teenagers under 18 who now have their student accounts jacked from them and there really isn't a good option. Not happy with PayPal right now.I am sure there is a government bureaucrat somewhere behind this decision.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fad9d64626f90023c966ca639615a523",
"text": "Every reward program has to have a funding source. If the card gives you x percent back on all purchases. That means that their business is structured to entice you to pump more transactions through the system. Either their other costs are lower, or the increased business allows them to make more money off of late fees, and interest. If the card has you earn extra points for buying a type of item or from a type of store (home stores improvement in the Spring), they are trying to make sure you use their card for what can be a significant amount of business during a small window of time. Sometimes they cap it by saying 5% cash back at home improvement stores during the spring but only on the first $1500 of purchases. That limits it to $75 maximum. Adding more business for them, makes more money for them. Groceries and gas are a good year round purchase categories. Yes there is some variation depending on the season, and the weather, but overall there is not an annual cliff once the season ends. Gas and groceries account for thousands of dollars a year these are not insignificant categories, for many families are recession proof. If they perceive a value from this type of offer they will change their buying behavior. My local grocery store has a deal with a specific gas station. This means that they made a monetary deal. Because you earn points at the grocery store and spend points at the gas station, the grocery store is paying some compensation to the gas station every time you use points. The gas station must be seeing an increase in business so theoretically they don't get 100% compensation from the grocery store. In cases where credit cards give airline miles, the credit card company buys the miles from the airline at a discount because they know that a significant number of miles will never be used.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9e75314738a131060b3b11bb758d4ac7",
"text": "Like Bluetie Grasper have said. Can I create a PayPal account and receive €200 (or a similar amount) without adding a bank account, credit card, or anything but my email address? The answer is No. You can transfer the money to your PayPal account but until you verify it with your personal information with at least a credit card or mostly likely a bank account, PayPal will hold those funds until otherwise. Can I then use that money to buy on Amazon, still without adding anything but my email address? If not, can I buy gift cards and use those on Amazon? Amazon does not accept PayPal.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1814c245d4338917dc48e0ed8e42ba48",
"text": "\"Paypal has an account called \"\"micropayments\"\" for those who have a lot of transaction under $10 with \"\"better\"\" commission structure, 5%+5c per transaction (rather than 2.9% + 30c with regular merchant accounts)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cd3098f5ce3f088f602a2d1842ad0caa",
"text": "Opening Bank Account in US without physically being present is difficult. I'm having number of clients in USA to pay for my work, but I’m really confused to get money from my clients to my saving bank account. You can get money via PayPal or if they are repeat customers, ask them to send via remittance services like Money2India or Remit2India etc.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6f04c572febf901d91fa7fbf164c5f1f",
"text": "Your chief problem seems to be that you're mixing Visa (credit cards) and Step2 (a European Automated Clearing House). Credit cards are primarily an American concept, but do work worldwide especially in travel&tourism industry. The Credit Card companies are financial institutions themselves and operate similar to international banks They're typically acting as intermediaries between the customer's bank and the retailer's bank, so this works even if those two banks have no existing agreements. This is expensive, though. Step2 is a cheaper European system which eliminates the middle man. It allows the consumer's bank to directly pay the retailer's bank. VISA is not a member of Step2.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fd2f1fc30829819c8c5653ecd6f4f808",
"text": "As an Indian resident you can open an Resident Foreign Currency Account, i.e. an USD account. This facility is provided by all major banks. I am not sure if PayPal would transfer money to these accounts or would convert. The alternative is to give this account number along with other Bank details to the company in US and ask them to send money via remittance services.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9bf1be9ecafff749ac8c6c74984f9a25",
"text": "If you have a deposit account (like a checking account) and a credit card at the same bank, it is common for the bank to have a clause that lets them make automatic payments to the credit card. I've also seen this happen in the case of death where the deceased person had $2,000 in a checking account and owed some on a credit card. Upon death, the bank took the $2,000 and applied it to the credit card without asking.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "98ba8154a4fdeb826cdd6ef732faaf67",
"text": "In most cases, a debit card can be charged like a credit card so there is typically no strict need for a credit card. However, a debit card provides weaker guarantees to the merchant that an arbitrary amount of money will be available. This is for several reasons: As such, there are a few situations where a credit card is required. For example, Amazon requires a credit card for Prime membership, and car rental companies usually require a credit card. The following does not apply to the OP and is provided for reference. Debit cards don't build credit, so if you've never had a credit card or loan before, you'll likely have no credit history at all if you've never had a credit card. This will make it very difficult to get any nontrivially-sized loan. Also, some employers (typically if the job you're applying for involves financial or other highly sensitive information) check credit when hiring, and not having credit puts you at a disadvantage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5732591aae33f59231af5cb46932ab57",
"text": "A credit card is not a bank account. It is, essentially, a contract to extend a line of credit on an as needed basis through a process accepted by the provider(purchase through approved vender, cash advance, etc). There is no mechanism for the bank to accept or hold a deposit. While most card issuers will simple retain the money for a period of up 30-60 days to apply toward transactions, I have had a card that actually charged a fee for having a negative balance in excess of $10 for more than 30 days(the fee was $10/month). So no you can not DEPOSIT money on any credit card. You need an account that accepts deposits to make a deposit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "470eedf873888a1c251d256f1b7c710f",
"text": "\"We also have a \"\"minimum daily balance\"\" account that requires a decent balance, but I'd much prefer to have my money elsewhere, growing little to any interest, versus sitting around collecting dust. Ours is a daily average, so you could have a lots in there for a few days to help make up the days when you're under.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3ca33c5438a226b77697ac71c63cfd6f",
"text": "\"In this answer, I won't elaborate on the possibilities of fraud (or pure human error), because something can always go wrong. I will, however, explain why I think you should always keep receipts. When the (monthly or so) time comes to pay your credit card bill, your credit card company sends you a list of transactions. That list has two primary purposes, both of which I would consider equally important: While for the former item, a receipt is not necessary (though it certainly does not hurt showing the receipt along with the bill to provide further proof that the payment was indeed connected to that bill), the latter point does require you to store the receipts so you can check, item-by-item, whether each of the sums is correct (and matched with a receipt at all). So, unless you can actually memorize all the credit card transactions you did throughout the past one or two months, the receipts are the most convenient way of keeping that information until the bill arrives. Yes, your credit card company probably has some safeguards in place to reveal fraud, which might kick in in time (the criteria are mostly heuristical, it seems, with credit cards or legitimate transactions here getting blocked every now and then simply because some travelling of the actual owner was misinterpreted as theft). However, it is your money, it is your responsibility to discover any issues with the bill, just as you would check the monthly transaction list from your bank account line by line. Ultimately, that is why you sign the vendor copy of the receipt when buying something offline; if you discover an issue in your list of transactions, you have to notify your credit card company that you dispute one of the charges, and then the charging vendor has to show that they have your signature for the respective transaction. So, to summarize: Do keep your receipts, use them to check the list of transactions before paying your credit card bill. EDIT: The receipt often cannot be replaced with the bill from the vendor. The bill is useful for seeing how the sum charged by the respective vendor was created, but in turn, such bills often do not contain any payment information, or (when payment was concluded before the bill was printed, as sometimes happens in pre-paid scenarios such as hotel booking) nondescript remarks such as \"\"- PAYMENT RECEIVED -\"\", without any further indication of which one of your credit cards, debit cards, bank accounts, stored value cards, or cash was used.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
1d1c7a1eba02966dfc53ca93a621fba1
|
Do I have to pay a capital gains tax if I rebuy different stocks?
|
[
{
"docid": "a75d081940ade1bc317d8a56611a74e2",
"text": "\"Yes- you do not realize gains or losses until you actually sell the stock. After you sell the initial stocks/bonds you have realized the gain. When you buy the new, different stocks you haven't realized anything until you then sell those. There is one exception to this, called the \"\"Wash-Sale Rule\"\". From Investopedia.com: With the wash-sale rule, the IRS disallows a loss deduction from the sale of a security if a ‘substantially identical security' was purchased within 30 days before or after the sale. The wash-sale period is actually 61 days, consisting of the 30 days before and the 30 days after the date of the sale. For example, if you bought 100 shares of IBM on December 1 and then sold 100 shares of IBM on December 15 at a loss, the loss deduction would not be allowed. Similarly, selling IBM on December 15 and then buying it back on January 10 of the following year does not permit a deduction. The wash-sale rule is designed to prevent investors from making trades for the sole purpose of avoiding taxes.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b56a85f57234547f3c59a0a0c730b0b9",
"text": "Yes. As long as the stock is in a taxable account (i.e. not a tax deferred retirement account) you'll pay gain on the profit regardless of subsequent purchases. If the sale is a loss, however, you'll risk delaying the claim for the loss if you repurchase identical shares within 30 days of that sale. This is called a wash sale.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ce3fbd446013c0224cc90bf725238b8d",
"text": "Probably. It sounds like you're looking for a 1031-exchange for stocks and bonds. From the wikipedia page for 1031-exchanges: To qualify for Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, the properties exchanged must be held for productive use in a trade or business or for investment. Stocks, bonds, and other properties are listed as expressly excluded by Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, though securitized properties are not excluded. 1031-exchanges usually are applicable in real estate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b3371f553b12a1b7800b33aa60fbd97b",
"text": "Yes (most likely). If you are exchanging investments for cash, you will have to pay tax on that - disregarding capital losses, capital loss carryovers, AGI thresholds, and other special rules (which there is no indication of in your question). You will have to calculate the gain on Schedule D, and report that as income on your 1040. This is the case whether you buy different or same stocks.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "b71d90f468244b9112ee5d323ffe41af",
"text": "You don't generally pay capital gains taxes until you sell the stock. If you bought it in 2013 and the price goes up in 2014 but you just hold on to the stock, you won't have to pay any taxes on it. If you then sold it in 2015 for a profit, you'd have to pay capital gains taxes on the profit. Note that this excludes dividends. Dividends may complicate the matter somewhat. I'm also assuming you are in the U.S. or Canada, or a country like one of those two. It's possible some other country does taxes differently, though it'd surprise me.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1af8f81a857213cb573cf7e58603bb56",
"text": "You don't. When you sell them - your cost basis would be the price of the stock at which you sold the stocks to cover the taxes, and the difference is your regular capital gain.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e010e30f00d9eee999d65576330a6ad6",
"text": "Assuming that taxes were withheld when you received the options, you would now only owe tax on the profit from the sale of the stock. The cost basis would be whatever you bought the stock for (the strike price of the options in this case), and the profit will be the total amount received from the sale minus the total cost of those shares. Since you bought the stock more than one year ago, you will get taxed at the long-term capital gains rate of 15% (unless you are in the 39.6% tax bracket, in which case the rate is 20%). As with all tax advice on this site, you need to check with a tax specialist when you actually file, but that should give you a rough indication of what your tax liability is.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "07bf474c12d103b26dbb1cfc023e0938",
"text": "Yes, to change which stocks you owe you need to sell one and buy the other, which for tax purposes means taking the profit or loss accrued up to then. On the other hand this establishes a new baseline, so you will not be double-faced on those gains. It just makes a mess of this year's tax return, and forced you to set aside some if the money to cover that.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "48b2fd3b012dabac3583f3775f1f943d",
"text": "If you are a US resident (not necessarily citizen) then yes, you do have to pay capital gains taxes on any capital gains, including interest from assets oversees (like interest from a savings account). Additionally you have to report all your foreign bank accounts according to FATCA (https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-tax-compliance-act-fatca).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bf0540111a2051185227f72005547c32",
"text": "\"Generally if you are using FIFO (first in, first out) accounting, you will need to match the transactions based on the number of shares. In your example, at the beginning of day 6, you had two lots of shares, 100 @ 50 and 10 @ 52. On that day you sold 50 shares, and using FIFO, you sold 50 shares of the first lot. This leaves you with 50 @ 50 and 10 @ 52, and a taxable capital gain on the 50 shares you sold. Note that commissions incurred buying the shares increase your basis, and commissions incurred selling the shares decrease your proceeds. So if you spent $10 per trade, your basis on the 100 @ 50 lot was $5010, and the proceeds on your 50 @ 60 sale were $2990. In this example you sold half of the lot, so your basis for the sale was half of $5010 or $2505, so your capital gain is $2990 - 2505 = $485. The sales you describe are also \"\"wash sales\"\", in that you sold stock and bought back an equivalent stock within 30 days. Generally this is only relevant if one of the sales was at a loss but you will need to account for this in your code. You can look up the definition of wash sale, it starts to get complex. If you are writing code to handle this in any generic situation you will also have to handle stock splits, spin-offs, mergers, etc. which change the number of shares you own and their cost basis. I have implemented this myself and I have written about 25-30 custom routines, one for each kind of transaction that I've encountered. The structure of these deals is limited only by the imagination of investment bankers so I think it is impossible to write a single generic algorithm that handles them all, instead I have a framework that I update each quarter as new transactions occur.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3c656dde86da64f3ddec1ee9aad23b39",
"text": "\"They are similar in the sense that they are transferring money from the company to shareholders, but that's about it. There is different tax treatment, yes, but that's because they are fundamentally different. Dividends transfer money equally to all shareholders, but that also reduces the value of each share by the same amount, since it's cash out the door, which drops the value of the company. Shareholders are taxed on dividends at the capital gains tax rate. A buyback returns the cash to shareholders who decide to sell. Other shareholders get a secondary benefit of now owning a slightly larger portion of the company since there are fewer shares outstanding. Shareholders only pay tax if they sell shares for a gain. It that means when company buyback their stock, the stock price will definitely go up? Not necessarily. It depends on the price that the company buys back the shares for and what the \"\"opportunity cost\"\" of that cash is - meaning what else could the company have done with the cash that would have been better? Buybacks often happen in mature companies with undervalued stock prices and fewer opportunities for further investment. If a company has an intrinsic value of $10 a share but its stock is trading at $8 a share, then it can instantly get a 25% \"\"return\"\" by buying back stock. I use the term \"\"return\"\" loosely since the company does not actually profit from the buyback, but from the shareholder's perspective the company is worth more per share.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9261b5cc8faec072e234aace913f48c3",
"text": "@BlackJack does a good answer of addressing the gains and when you are taxed on them and at what kind of rate. Money held in a brokerage account will usually be in a money-market fund, so you would own taxes on the interest it earned. There is one important consideration that must be understood for capitol Losses. This is called the Wash Sale Rule. This rule comes into affect if you sell a stock at a LOSS, and buy shares of the same stock within 30 days (before or after) the sale. A common tactic used to minimize taxes paid is to 'capture losses' when they occur, since these can be used to offset gains and lower your taxes. This is normally done by selling a stock in which you have a LOSS, and then either buying another similar stock, or waiting and buying back the stock you sold. However, if you are intending to buy back the same stock, you must not 'trigger' the Wash Sale Rule or you are forbidden to take the loss. Examples. Lets presume you own 1000 shares of a stock and it's trading 25% below where you bought it, and you want to capture the loss to use on your taxes. This can be a very important consideration if trading index ETF's if you have a loss in something like a S&P500 ETF, you would likely incur a wash sale if you sold it and bought a different S&P500 ETF from another company since they are effectively the same thing. OTOH, if you sold an S&P500 ETF and bought something like a 'viper''total stock market' ETF it should be different enough to not trigger the wash sale rule. If you are trying to minimize the taxes you pay on stocks, there are basically two rules to follow. 1) When a gain is involved, hold things at least a year before selling, if at all possible. 2) Capture losses when they occur and use to offset gains, but be sure not to trigger the wash sale rule when doing so.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "16fafc1f035e5b4f5afeac6a5bb0e2f0",
"text": "Normally, you don't pay capital gains tax until you actually realize a capital gain. However, there are some exceptions. The exception that affected Eduardo Saverin is the expatriation tax, or exit tax. If you leave a country and are no longer a tax resident, your former country taxes you on your unrealized capital gains from the period that you were a tax resident of that country. There are several countries that have an expatriation tax, including the United States. Saverin left the U.S. before the Facebook IPO. Saverin was perhaps already planning on leaving the U.S. (he is originally from Brazil and has investments in Asia), so leaving before the IPO limited the amount of capital gains tax he had to pay upon his exit. (Source: Wall Street Journal: So How Much Did He Really Save?) Another situation that might be considered an exception and affects a lot of us is capital gain distributions inside a mutual fund. When mutual fund managers sell investments inside the fund and realize gains, they have to distribute those gains among all the mutual fund investors. This often takes the form of additional shares of the mutual fund that you are given, and you have to pay capital gains tax on these distributions. As a result, you can invest in a mutual fund, leave your money there and not sell, but have to pay capital gains tax anyway. In fact, you could owe capital gains tax on the distributions even if the value of your mutual fund investment has gone down.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "29af954b3b5d2f33d38175d849fcf8ac",
"text": "You should get a 1099-MISC for the $5000 you got. And your broker should send you a 1099-B for the $5500 sale of Google stock. These are two totally separate things as far as the US IRS is concerned. 1) You made $5000 in wages. You will pay income tax on this as well as FICA and other state and local taxes. 2) You will report that you paid $5000 for stock, and sold it for $5500 without holding it for one year. Since this was short term, you will pay tax on the $500 in income you made. These numbers will go on different parts of your tax form. Essentially in your case, you'll have to pay regular income tax rates on the whole $5500, but that's only because short term capital gains are treated as income. There's always the possibility that could change (unlikely). It also helps to think of them separately because if you held the stock for a year, you would pay different tax on that $500. Regardless, you report them in different ways on your taxes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1c7beebb3549c75c9dd76f80232f5e9c",
"text": "What you are looking for is a 1031 exchange. https://www.irs.gov/uac/like-kind-exchanges-under-irc-code-section-1031 Whenever you sell business or investment property and you have a gain, you generally have to pay tax on the gain at the time of sale. IRC Section 1031 provides an exception and allows you to postpone paying tax on the gain if you reinvest the proceeds in similar property as part of a qualifying like-kind exchange. Gain deferred in a like-kind exchange under IRC Section 1031 is tax-deferred, but it is not tax-free. You may also sell your house for bitcoin and record the sales price on the deed with an equal or lesser amount that you bought it for.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "306bbfcbeb9d36a4dfe629c06c6049d9",
"text": "\"A nondividend distribution is typically a return of capital; in other words, you're getting money back that you've contributed previously (and thus would have been taxed upon in previous years when those funds were first remunerated to you). Nondividend distributions are nontaxable, so they do not represent income from capital gains, but do effect your cost basis when determining the capital gain/loss once that capital gain/loss is realized. As an example, publicly-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs) generally distribute a return of capital back to shareholders throughout the year as a nondividend distribution. This is a return of a portion of the shareholder's original capital investment, not a share of the REITs profits, so it is simply getting a portion of your original investment back, and thus, is not income being received (I like to refer to it as \"\"new income\"\" to differentiate). However, the return of capital does change the cost basis of the original investment, so if one were to then sell the shares of the REIT (in this example), the basis of the original investment has to be adjusted by the nondividend distributions received over the course of ownership (in other words, the cost basis will be reduced when the shares are sold). I'm wondering if the OP could give us some additional information about his/her S-Corp. What type of business is it? In the course of its business and trade activity, does it buy and sell securities (stocks, etc.)? Does it sell assets or business property? Does it own interests in other corporations or partnerships (sales of those interests are one form of capital gain). Long-term capital gains are taxed at rates lower than ordinary income, but the IRS has very specific rules as to what constitutes a capital gain (loss). I hate to answer a question with a question, but we need a little more information before we can weigh-in on whether you have actual capital gains or losses in the course of your S-Corporation trade.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7656f373c9e4cfffccc92e080131a065",
"text": "If the charity accepts stock, you can avoid the tax on the long term cap gain when you donate it. e.g. I donate $10,000 in value of Apple. I write off $10,000 on my taxes, and benefit with a $2500 refund. If I sold it, I'd have nearly a $1500 tax bill (bought long enough ago, the basis is sub $100). Any trading along the way, and it's on you. Gains long or short are taxed on you. It's only the final donation that matters here. Edit - to address Anthony's comment on other answer - I sell my Apple, with a near $10,000 gain (it's really just $9900) and I am taxed $1500. Now I have $8500 cash I donate and get $2125 back in a tax refund. By donating the stock I am ahead nearly $375, and the charity, $1500.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "87b1311ea060117cc2ce42d5a0981452",
"text": "Purchasing stock doesn't affect your immediate taxes any more than purchasing anything else, unless you purchase it through a traditional 401k or some other pre-tax vehicle. Selling stock has tax effects; that's when you have a gain or loss to report.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "29d049a637679b747e534f375740ba5f",
"text": "Brokerage->Brokerage 13-16 The loss from the previous purchase will be added to the cost basis of the security for the second purchase. Since you sold it at a loss again it would increase your losses. Your loss from the first sale will be disallowed. Your loss will be added to the cost basis of the next purchase. Your gains will be taxed on the total of the cost basis which will reduce your gains. Which you will taxed 'less'. Your gains will be taxed. Your loss is allowed. You will be taxed on both. Wash Sales really only applies to losses. If you sell for gain, the tax man will be happy to take his share. From my understanding, it does not matter if it is IRA or Brokerage, the wash sale rule affects them all. Check this link: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/understanding-the-wash-sale-rules-2015-03-02",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
1d640384067fa7ce3864486d6d2b9b64
|
How to gift money anonymously to an individual after collection thru a donation site?
|
[
{
"docid": "0604ebabe31f6cf99563c6536cfc95aa",
"text": "Regarding the tax implications half of your question ... There seem to be a lot of articles that say there's not yet any established law concerning the tax treatment of crowdsourced funds. Since your objective is gift-giving rather than business purposes, it would seem that the gift tax rules would apply, and gift taxes are charged to the donor not the donee. (But I am not a tax attorney.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "09eb4f9f059e4efdb43ffc2f2f3b3b82",
"text": "\"You mention that \"\"A great friend and couple's family\"\" which makes me think this is a couple. For gift tax concerns, you can give a couple 2 x the gift tax exemption ($28,000 in 2015). Your example of $22k would fit in this amount. To give this money anonymously, I know that people have reached out to a pastor in the area who will deliver an envelope with the gift and not disclose the source. Talking to a pastor who has done this, he said the call came out of the blue and he was happy to be able to help.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2102f925b4367dbf70ccd460f89ec49d",
"text": "In the US the best way to solve the problem, IMHO, would be via a trust. Talk to a properly licensed trust/estate attorney and a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State). Using intermediary who's not a 501(c) organization may pose income tax issues to that intermediary as providing support to the needy is not a valid business expense. It may also pose gift tax issues, since the aggregate amounts may exceed the statutory exemption limits. Using a (non-revokable) trust you can avoid these issues, but others may come up (such as what to do with the trust income or undistributed moneys). Talk to the advisers about how to avoid them.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "29804bab79f47aa6d3252357b0decc82",
"text": "\"I would write them a check or give them cash money. There are payment receipt forms available online, you can print one of have them fill it out and sign it. Just google \"\"private party receipt\"\". Money transfer (via bank account or Paypal) is also an option, but in my opinion it's more convenient to meet up and handle it in person. If you want, you can have them meet you at a notary public's office (your local bank branch should have one) and have the receipt notarized. I don't think it's a scam, but make sure you are paying the right person.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ecad50d0648a674b4523a69676b615e9",
"text": "credit cards are almost never closed for inactivity. i have had dozens of cards innactive for years on end, and only one was ever closed on me for inactivity. i would bet a single 1$ transaction per calendar year would keep all your cards open. as such, you could forget automating the process and just spend 20 minutes a year making manual 1$ payments (e.g. to your isp, utility company, google play, etc.). alternatively, many charities will let you set up an automatic monthly donation for any amount (e.g. 1$ to wikipedia). or perhaps you could treat yourself to an mp3 once a month (arguably a charitable donation in the age of file sharing). side note: i use both of these strategies to get the 12 debit card transactions per month required by my kasasa checking account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fd647bbb6075195664a28da2dd0b438d",
"text": "If I were donating money to a charity, i.e. an organization set up to help others, I would simply send them the money and ask that my name not be used in publicity. That would mean that the person(s) actually benefiting from my donation didn't know who I was. The charity would know, but they don't themselves benefit.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b4a9f359372c7bca8b88b5456e089885",
"text": "Let's define better the situation and then analyze it: Start with: End with: Process: So B has the same amount of money, just in a different bank account, but A and C changed states. A now doesn't have money, and C does, as the result of the transaction between A, B and C. The gift tax issue I see is the transfer of money from A (you) to C (your brother). If you're a US tax resident then you have $14K exemption from gift tax per person per year. £20K is more than that, so it will be subject to the tax. The fact that a third person was involved as an intermediary is irrelevant - for the purpose of gift tax there's no distinction between using a bank for transfers or a private party. Keep in mind that paying tuition directly to the institution on behalf of your brother may help you mitigate your gift tax liability - tuition payment made on behalf of your brother is exempt from gift tax. But it has to be made directly to the institution, it cannot pass through your brother.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5def525b2a57b46bcad7d51eab491630",
"text": "\"Can I teach children an invaluable skill for free and provide a website or PayPal link for anyone who appreciates the result of my gift to their child and wishes to gift me money (or maybe they don’t have a child but believe in my revolutionary contribution to the future) as they see fit, up to $10K? Two immediately obvious problems with this strategy: What about when you receive gifts from people who aren't in the US? You have to declare, and pay taxes on, foreign gifts. It seems to me that these may not be gifts because they are given in connection with the service you provided rather than from \"\"detached and disinterested generosity\"\" as required to make the gift tax exempt. (See Commisioner v. Duberstein -- gift given to thank associate for a sales lead did not arise from detached generosity. See Stanton v. United States -- gift given in appreciation of services rendered may or may not be a gift for tax purposes. See also Bogardus v. Commissioner -- gifts inspired by past service can be tax exempt.)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3f27d97c7be11d0fbb46d6ba00904ca8",
"text": "From PayPal's website: PayPal offers discounted transaction rates for 501(c)(3) charities for most products, and consistently low rates for all other nonprofits. No extra fees for setup, statements, withdrawals or cancellation. 2.2% + $0.30 per transaction and no monthly fee for charities. There is a reduced rate if the donations total more than $100,000 (which they would for Wikipedia), but PayPal doesn't publish those rates. You have to call and ask about them. One forum I read indicates the rate drops to 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "577e71f18a181d82dd8514aef826d53e",
"text": "\"When you say \"\"donate\"\", it usually assumes charitable donation with, in this context, tax benefit. That is not what happens in your scenario. Giving someone money with the requirement of that someone to spend that money at your shop is not donation. It is a grant. You can do that, but you won't be able to deduct this as charitable donation, but the money paid to you back would be taxable income to you. I respectfully disagree with Joe that its a wash. It is not. You give them money that you cannot deduct as an expense (as it is not business expense) or donation (as strings are attached). But you do give them the money, it is no longer yours. When they use the money to pay you back - that same money becomes your taxable income. End result: you provide service, and you're the one paying (taxes) for it. Why would you do that?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ad93777ab6cb86f0887b67a59c64d148",
"text": "No matter how the money was received/inherited by the parent, the receiver of the gift (in this case the child) will not owe any taxes. If it is below the annual gift exclusion the parent will not owe any taxes or need to fill out any forms. If it is above the annual exclusion then it will depend on how the money was transfer to the child/grand children. One check to the family would not be a good way for the parent to distribute the funds. A check to each person in the family unit (child, spouse, grand child) will allow a large amount to be transferred each year. Because the OP doesn't have a clear understanding of the source of the funds, and any taxes that might or might not have been paid at that time, and the parent isn't willing to discuss this information with the OP; the source of the funds is irrelevant to the answer. do I have to pay additional tax on the amount I receive from her? No.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "74e6723b2a4656386b468664716c80ac",
"text": "\"There is such a thing as Deposit Only. This will allow the individual's account to function only for collection of monetary deposits. NO ONE will be able to withdraw...only deposit. The account holder may still physically withdraw at their banking institution. Think of it as taking your account from a \"\"public\"\" profile to a \"\"private\"\" profile. Doing this is beneficial for ppl who may have been scammed into a program or product where there account is bieng fraudulently overdrafted, or simply to protect your funds from bieng drafted without your approval or despite your requests for ceasing the drafts. When making your account a deposit only account it's a good idea to open a NEW account at a Different banking institution, because some banks will still allow an account that is \"\"attached\"\" to the deposit only account to be drafted from it. WIth the new account you can utilize that one for paying day to day bills and just transfer funds from the deposit only account to the new account. A deposit only account is also a good way to build up a nice nest egg for yourself or even a young adult! source- Financial Adivsor 4years-\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "011d6c67626098c40d257416c279a93a",
"text": "Yes, Paypal has such a button you can use, but to be clear, the money you receive is taxable income. Your website is providing 'value' to the readers, and while they may feel they are making a gift to you, it's earned income as far as the IRS is concerned. (This assumes you are in the US, you may wish to add a tag to indicate your country)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0dfb4e03ffc8767514659978e2eed191",
"text": "The best way is to ask the charity and the custodian of the retirement account. Both will want to make sure it is done correctly. The charity will want to be able to not have the account go through the probate process. Probate can delay to transfer of money for months or longer. Items in the will could be contested.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "159ebc98bb6fd24aa4857ed919b18228",
"text": "Do I report it as income? Is it subject to just the same amount of taxes (~30%) as regular income? Are there any restrictions on how it can be used? It is income. You can deduct the costs of maintaining the web page and producing the software from it (have an accountant do that for you, there are strict rules on how to do that, and you can only deduct up to the income if its a hobby and not a for-profit business), but otherwise it's earned income like any other self employment income. It is reported on your schedule C or on line 21 of your 1040 (miscellaneous income), and you're also liable for self-employment taxes on this income. There are no restrictions, it's your money. Technically, who is the donation even being made to? Me, just because I own the webpage? Yes. This is for the United States, but is there any difference if the donations come from overseas? No, unless you paid foreign taxes on the money (in which case you should fill form 1116 and ask for credit). If you create an official 501(c) organization to which the donations are given, instead of you getting it directly, the tax treatment will be different. But of course, you have to have a real charitable organization for that. To avoid confusion - I'm not a licensed tax professional and this is not a tax advice. If in doubt - talk to a EA/CPA licensed in your State.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0383a3d4efc2433af856ac82cdaa3e04",
"text": "\"Do you guys know any options that are accessible to any global citizen? Prepaid and stored value cards are anonymous. For an arbitrary reason, the really anonymous ones only allow you to load $500 but there is no regulation that dictates this amount. In the USA, these cards are exempt from being declared at border crossings. Not because they look like credit cards, but because they are exempt by the US Treasury and Customs. The cons is that there are generally fees to use them. US DOJ has done research showing that some groups take advantage of the exemption moving upwards of $50,000 a day between borders, but Congress is fine with this exemption and the burden is always on the government to determine \"\"illicit origin\"\". Stigmatizing how money is moved is only a 30 year old phenomenon, but many free nations do not really have capital controls, they only care that you pay taxes and that the integrity of their stock markets are upheld. Aside from that there are no qualms about anonymity, except from your neighbors but they dont matter for a global citizen. In theory, the UK should have more flexibility in anonymity options, such as stored value cards with higher limits.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ea300057d65e1606fdea10a2662839c8",
"text": "\"I have 2 PayPal accounts for this purpose (with different email addresses). The first account is tied to my real email address, and has my real name, phone and home address associated with it. This account is also connected to my bank account and credit cards. For riskier transactions where I don't need physical delivery (or will accept delivery to my local post-office in cases where I don't trust the seller with my personal details) I use my secondary account, which has a secondary email address of mine, and a fake name and with a fake address, it is not connected to any external accounts. To send or receive money \"\"anonymously\"\" I first send money from my real account to my fake account (inter-account transfers are free with PayPal), and then send the money to the seller from the fake account. This is in violation of PayPal's terms of service, but I've been using this system for the past 5+ years without any issues.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5ea5eaff70dfacae1fcb7152ff7cd61d",
"text": "You are correct that it is relatively easy for someone to create fake checks and steal money. They even made a movie about it, and not much has changed since that movie takes place. However, most checking accounts do indeed have $0 liability for this type of check fraud, referred to as check forgery. If someone does cash a check against your account that you did not write, you will eventually get your money back. Essentially, the thief stole from the bank (or the merchant that accepted the check), not from you. In the U.S., check forgery is generally covered by state law. According to a Q&A on the CFPB website, if you report to the bank that a check that cleared your account was forged in some way, and you do this within a reporting window defined by state law, the bank is supposed to return your money.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
e56dce7a8fae243552c5b332f095ecf3
|
Alternative to Jumbo Mortgage
|
[
{
"docid": "85a12d5a105747afa120837f2fee77ef",
"text": "Yes, banks still offer combo loans, but it is going to depend on the appraised value of your home. Typically lenders will allow you to finance up to 80% loan to value on the first mortgage (conforming loan amount) and 95% combined loan to value on a HELOC. I would start by checking with your local credit union or bank branch. They have more competitive rates and can be more flexible with loan amount and appraised value guidelines.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b9300c42e6ddab9c79fd61d14d4cb061",
"text": "You should also be aware that there are banks that do business in the US that do not deal with Fannie Mae, and thus are not subject to the rules about conforming loans. Here is an example of a well-known bank that lists two sets of rates, with the second being for loans of $750,000 or more (meaning the first covers everything up to that) https://home.ingdirect.com/orange-mortgage/rates",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "bfa0272d5b3a2671dfda9ee449eee319",
"text": "\"littleadv's first comment - check the note - is really the answer. But your issue is twofold - Every mortgage I've had (over 10 in my lifetime) allows early principal payments. The extra principal can only be applied at the same time as the regular payment. Think of it this way - only at that moment is there no interest owed. If a week later you try to pay toward only principal, the system will not handle it. Pretty simple - extra principal with the payment due. In fact, any mortgage I've had that offered a monthly bill or coupon book will have that very line \"\"extra principal.\"\" By coincidence, I just did this for a mortgage on my rental. I make these payments through my bank's billpay service. I noted the extra principal in the 'notes' section of the virtual check. But again, the note will explicitly state if there's an issue with prepayments of principal. The larger issue is that your friend wishes to treat the mortgage like a bi-weekly. The bank expects the full amount as a payment and likely, has no obligation to accept anything less than the full amount. Given my first comment above here is the plan for your friend to do 99% of what she wishes: Tell her, there's nothing magic about bi-weekly, it's a budget-clever way to send the money, but over a year, it's simply paying 108% of the normal payment. If she wants to burn the mortgage faster, tell her to add what she wishes every month, even $10, it all adds up. Final note - There are two schools of thought to either extreme, (a) pay the mortgage off as fast as you can, no debt is the goal and (b) the mortgage is the lowest rate you'll ever have on borrowed money, pay it as slow as you can, and invest any extra money. I accept and respect both views. For your friend, and first group, I'm compelled to add - Be sure to deposit to your retirement account's matched funds to gain the entire match. $1 can pay toward your 6% mortgage or be doubled on deposit to $2 in your 401(k), if available. And pay off all high interest debt first. This should stand to reason, but I've seen people keep their 18% card debt while prepaying their mortgage.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "55bd433a38d2333dc733ebaacf1980d3",
"text": "Your best bet is to talk with a banker about your specific plans. One of the causes of the housing crash was an 80/20 loan. There you would get a first for 80% of the value of a home and 20% on a HELOC for the rest. This would help the buyer avoid PMI. Editorially, the reason this was popular was because the buyer could not afford the home with the PMI and did not have a down payment. They were simply cutting things too close. Could you find a banker willing to do something like this, I bet you could. In your case it seems like you are attempting to increase the value of your home by using money to do an improvement so the situation is better. However, sizable improvements rarely return 100% or more on investments. Typically, I would think, the bank would want you to have some money invested too. So if you wanted to put in a pool, a smart banker would have you put in about 60% of the costs as pools typically have a 40% ROI. However, I bet you can find a banker that would loan you 100%. You don't seem to be looking for advice on making a smart money decision, and it is difficult to render a verdict as very little detail is supplied about your specific situation. However, while certain decisions might look very profitable on paper, they rarely take into consideration risk.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "91efd15284b5feb071813dda505628cb",
"text": "I've investigated this, and banks are willing to offer a deal similar to what you ask. You would take out a securities-backed loan, which provides you with the down payment on the property. For the remainder, you take out a regular mortgage. JAGAnalyst wonders why banks would accept this. Simple: because there's money to be made, both on the securities-backed loan and the mortgage. Both parts of the deal are financially sound from the banks perspective. Now, the 20% number is perhaps a bit low. Having 20% of the value in shares means you'd be able to get a loan for 50% of that, so only a 10% downpayment.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e651a251829a7dbecf27ec87e52537b0",
"text": "Without commenting on whether or not it's needed I don't think we are going to see a QE3 and all the political pressure is for some reason to start raising rates. Regardless of how it plays out it's safe to say that the Fed Rate isn't going any lower. You should also watch closely what happens to Fannie and Freddie. If they are dismantled and government backed mortgages become a thing of the past then I think it'll become impossible for a consumer to find a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. Even if they are kept alive, they will be put on a short leash and that will serve to further depress the mortgage market. Long story short, I'd lock your rate in.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7b2b5680166af921079718e37b719cb9",
"text": "Just to offer another alternative, consider Certificates of Deposit (CDs) at an FDIC insured bank or credit union for small or short-term investments. If you don't need access to the money, as stated, and are not willing to take much risk, you could put money into a number of CDs instead of investing it in stocks, or just letting it sit in a regular savings/checking account. You are essentially lending money to the bank for a guaranteed length of time (anywhere from 3 to 60 months), and therefore they can give you a better rate of return than a savings account (which is basically lending it to them with the condition that you could ask for it all back at any time). Your rate of return in CDs is lower a typical stock investment, but carries no risk at all. CD rates typically increase with the length of the CD. For example, my credit union currently offers a 2.3% APY on a 5-year CD, but only 0.75% for 12 month CDs, and a mere 0.1% APY on regular savings/checking accounts. Putting your full $10K deposit into one or more CDs would yield $230 a year instead of a mere $10 in their savings account. If you go this route with some or all of your principal, note that withdrawing the money from a CD before the end of the deposit term will mean forfeiting the interest earned. Some banks may let you withdraw just a portion of a CD, but typically not. Work around this by splitting your funds into multiple CDs, and possibly different term lengths as well, to give you more flexibility in accessing the funds. Personally, I have a rolling emergency fund (~6 months living expenses, separate from all investments and day-to-day income/expenses) split evenly among 5 CDs, each with a 5-year deposit term (for the highest rate) with evenly staggered maturity dates. In any given year, I could close one of these CDs to cover an emergency and lose only a few months of interest on just 20% of my emergency fund, instead of several years interest on all of it. If I needed more funds, I could withdraw more of the CDs as needed, in order of youngest deposit age to minimize the interest loss - although that loss would probably be the least of my worries by then, if I'm dipping deeply into these funds I'll be needing them pretty badly. Initially I created the CDs with a very small amount and differing term lengths (1 year increments from 1-5 years) and then as each matured, I rolled it back into a 5 year CD. Now every year when one matures, I add a little more principal (to account for increased living expenses), and roll everything back in for another 5 years. Minimal thought and effort, no risk, much higher return than savings, fairly liquid (accessible) in an emergency, and great peace of mind. Plus it ensures I don't blow the money on something else, and that I have something to fall back on if all my other investments completely tanked, or I had massive medical bills, or lost my job, etc.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "97c33aa8e668fb4aae4bbdd1108233f1",
"text": "\"In your particular condition could buy the condo with cash, then get your mortgage on your next house with \"\"less than 20%\"\" down (i.e. with mortgage insurance) but it would still be an owner occupied loan. If you hate the mortgage insurance, you could save up and refi it when you have 20% available, including the initial down payment you made (i.e. 80% LTV ratio total). Or perhaps during the time you live in the condo, you can save up to reach the 20% down for the new house (?). Or perhaps you can just rent somewhere, then get into the house for 20% down, and while there save up and eventually buy a condo \"\"in cash\"\" later. Or perhaps buy the condo for 50% down non owner occupied mortgage... IANAL, but some things that may come in handy: you don't have to occupy your second residence (owner occupied mortgage) for 60 days after closing on it. So could purchase it at month 10 I suppose. In terms of locking down mortgage rates, you could do that up to 3 months before that even, so I've heard. It's not immediately clear if \"\"rent backs\"\" could extend the 60 day intent to occupy, or if so by how long (1 month might be ok, but 2? dunno) Also you could just buy one (or the other, or both) of your mortgages as a 20% down conventional \"\"non owner occupied\"\" mortgage and generate leeway there (ex: buy the home as non owner occupied, and rent it out until your year is up, though non owner occupied mortgage have worse interest rates so that's not as appealing). Or buy one as a \"\"secondary residency\"\" mortgage? Consult your loan officer there, they like to see like \"\"geographic distance\"\" between primary and secondary residences I've heard. If it's HUD (FHA) mortgage, the owner occupancy agreement you will sign is that you \"\"will continue to occupy the property as my primary residence for at least one year after the date of occupancy, unless extenuating circumstances arise which are beyond my control\"\" (ref), i.e. you plan on living in it for a year, so you're kind of stuck in your case. Maybe you'd want to occupy it as quickly as possible initially to make the year up more quickly :) Apparently you can also request the lender to agree to arbitrarily rescind the owner occupancy aspect of the mortgage, half way through, though I'd imagine you need some sort of excuse to convince them. Might not hurt to ask.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7927517d12481b9d1660cac99e8367d5",
"text": "Never ever use a giant monster mega bank for home loans. I am sure you probably didn't and they bought your loan from someone else. You have no legal options. What you should do Is look at getting a new loan maybe a 15 year loan. Your payment might be the same with no PMI. I would check with a relator to see what they think your home is worth. Also if you have any money you can always pay extra to the principle and get yourself to 20% based on the next appraisal. You might have a legal option regarding what they say you need in value 350k is what it should appraise to for you to get rid of pmi when you owe 280k Remember Citibank is a publicly traded company and their goal is to make more money. The CEO has a fiduciary relationship with stock holders not customers. They seriously have board meetings to figure out what charges they can invent to screw their customers and make shitloads of money. There is no incentive for them to let you get out of your PMI.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "af5fa73a378d3cb8c758b0030f400d24",
"text": "A better idea if applicable is to borrow 50K (max allowed) to buy a house and pay interest to yourself instead of a bank. And none of that origination and closing fees lost to the lender",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8226861e999d5309617e09affbc81fb2",
"text": "\"It's a little unusual, but I don't think the financial terms are completely unreasonable on their face. What you describe is similar to an interest-only loan, where you make payments that only cover the interest due each month, and the entire principal is due as a single \"\"balloon payment\"\" on a specified date (in this case, the date on which the condo is sold). Your monthly payment of $500 on a principal of $115K is equivalent to an annual interest rate of 5.22%, which at least is not completely usurious. With a traditional mortgage you might pay a rate as low as 3%, if you had sufficient income and excellent credit - but I don't know, from what you've said, whether that's the case. Did you make the current arrangement because you were unable to get a loan from a bank? The main difference here is that instead of the balloon payment being a fixed $115K, it's \"\"75% of the gross proceeds of the sale\"\". If the condo eventually sells for $155K, that would be $116,250, so that's slightly advantageous to them (assuming that \"\"gross proceeds\"\" means \"\"before deducting commissions for either the buyers' or sellers' realtors or any other costs of the sale\"\"), and thus slightly disadvantageous to you. If the condo appreciates in value, that's more of a win for them and more of a relative loss for you. But it's also possible that the value of the condo goes down, in which case this arrangement is better for you than a fixed balloon payment. So this deal does prevent you from getting a larger share of any gains in the value of the property, but it also helps insulate you from any losses. That's important to keep in mind. There's also the issue of needing their consent to sell. That's potentially problematic - usually in a joint ownership scheme, either owner has the right to demand to be bought out or to force a sale. I guess it depends on whether you think your parents would be likely to consent under reasonable circumstances, or to insist on holding the property against your best interests. It's true that you aren't building equity with this arrangement, and if you thought you were, you are mistaken or misled. But let's compare it with other options. If you would qualify for a traditional 30-year fixed mortgage at 3%, your monthly payment would be slightly lower ($484), and you would be building some equity because your payments would reduce the principal as well as paying the interest. But a 30-year loan builds equity very slowly at first - after 7 years you'd have only about $20,000 in principal paid down. If we assume that 5.2% represents the interest rate you'd otherwise pay based on your creditworthiness, then your monthly payment would be $631. So compared to that, you have an extra $130 per month that you can save or invest in whatever you want - you're not forced to invest it in your house. Note that in either case you'd still be paying the condo fees, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance yourself. So we might as well eliminate those from consideration. It might be a good idea to find out what other options you would have - perhaps try to get an interest rate quote on a traditional mortgage from a bank, based on your income and credit history. Then you can decide what to do, taking into account: your financial situation; how much of a monthly payment could you afford? your relationship with your parents; are they likely to be reasonable about renegotiating? Do they in general tend to respect your wishes? Would it harm your relationship if you tried to get out of the deal, and how important is that to you? To what extent do you actually want to pay for equity in this property? Do you really believe it's a good investment, and have evidence to support that? Your options include: Try to renegotiate the terms of the loan from your parents Try to \"\"refinance\"\" the loan, by getting a loan from a bank and paying off some agreed-upon amount of principal to your parents Try to force the sale of the condo and move to another house, financing it some other way Consult a lawyer as to whether your agreement with your parents is legally enforceable. For instance, do they have a lien on the property?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "033272001584b44ca78b60db0b437eab",
"text": "\"I think your analysis is very clear, it's a sensible approach, and the numbers sound about right to me. A few other things you might want to think about: Tax In some jurisdictions you can deduct mortgage interest against your income tax. I see from your profile that you're in Texas, but I don't know the exact situation there and I think it's better to keep this answer general anyway. If that's the case for you, then you should re-run your numbers taking that into account. You may also be able to make your investments tax-advantaged, for example if you save them in a retirement account. You'll need to apply the appropriate limits for your specific situation and take an educated guess as to how that might change over the next 30 years. Liquidity The money you're not spending on your mortgage is money that's available to you for other spending or emergencies - i.e. even though your default assumption is to invest it and that's a sensible way to compare with the mortgage, you might still place some extra value on having more free access to it. Overpayments Would you have the option to pay extra on the mortgage? That's another way of \"\"investing\"\" your money that gets you a guaranteed return of the mortgage rate. You might want to consider if you'd want to send some of your excess money that way.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "886e10a51f92d7a079ec4b39db998528",
"text": "\"I love the idea of #1, keep that going. I don't think #2 is very realistic. Given the short time frame putting money at risk for a higher yield may not work in your favor. If it was me, I'd stick to a \"\"high interest\"\" savings account (around 1%). I don't mind #3 either, however, I'd be socking whatever you could to mortgage principle so you can get out of PMI sooner rather than later. That would be my top priority. Given the status of interest rates, you may end up saving money in the long run. I doubt it, but you may. If you choose to go with #3, don't settle for a house that you really don't like. Get something that you want. Who knows it may take you a year or so to find something!\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "883cafa8f5663e43e4c96d54317ed88f",
"text": "Banks in certain countries are offering such facility. However I am not aware of any Bank in Hungary offering this. So apart from maintaining a higher amount in HUF, there by reducing the costs [and taking the volatility risks]; there aren't many options.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1707e391b50fb6601344bdb077f3ff93",
"text": "I think it's smart. It's the same game, just stiffer regulations, so your lender will ask more from you. Buy if you... If someone has been saving for years and years and still can't put 20% down, I think they're taking a significant risk. Buy something where your mortgage payment is around one week's salary at most. Try to buy only what you can afford to live in if you lost your job and couldn't find work for 3-6 months. You might want to do a 30-yr fixed instead of a 15-yr if you're worried about cash-flow.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e9703e6b79e864d9119a16aa219fdc1d",
"text": "In the United States a Jumbo Loan is one in which the loan amounts exceeds a set value. For much of the US it is currently $417,000 but it is higher in some areas. It is set by the US government and is adjusted each year. If you are trying to avoid the Jumbo designation then putting more down makes that possible. Generally the Jumbo loans have a higher rate. My credit union does allow jumbo loans with less than 20% down, but I am not sure if they are in the majority or the minority regarding down payment requirements. Keep in Mind that once the house price goes above Jumbo/0.8 or $521,250 you will be putting down more than 20% to avoid the Jumbo designation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b906cdacb29255d729eb9ce051426cc4",
"text": "\"Consider property taxes (school, municipal, county, etc.) summing to 10% of the property value. So each year, another .02N is removed. Assume the property value rises with inflation. Allow for a 5% after inflation return on a 70/30 stock bond mix for N. After inflation return. Let's assume a 20% rate. And let's bump the .05N after inflation to .07N before inflation. Inflation is still taxable. Result Drop in value of investment funds due to purchase. Return after inflation. After-inflation return minus property taxes. Taxes are on the return including inflation, so we'll assume .06N and a 20% rate (may be lower than that, but better safe than sorry). Amount left. If no property, you would have .036N to live on after taxes. But with the property, that drops to .008N. Given the constraints of the problem, .008N could be anywhere from $8k to $80k. So if we ignore housing, can you live on $8k a year? If so, then no problem. If not, then you need to constrain N more or make do with less house. On the bright side, you don't have to pay rent out of the .008N. You still need housing out of the .036N without the house. These formulas should be considered examples. I don't know how much your property taxes might be. Nor do I know how much you'll pay in taxes. Heck, I don't know that you'll average a 5% return after inflation. You may have to put some of the money into cash equivalents with negligible return. But this should allow you to research more what your situation really is. If we set returns to 3.5% after inflation and 2.4% after inflation and taxes, that changes the numbers slightly but importantly. The \"\"no house\"\" number becomes .024N. The \"\"with house\"\" number becomes So that's $24,000 (which needs to include rent) versus -$800 (no rent needed). There is not enough money in that plan to have any remainder to live on in the \"\"with house\"\" option. Given the constraints for N and these assumptions about returns, you would be $800 to $8000 short every year. This continues to assume that property taxes are 10% of the property value annually. Lower property taxes would of course make this better. Higher property taxes would be even less feasible. When comparing to people with homes, remember the option of selling the home. If you sell your .2N home for .2N and buy a .08N condo instead, that's not just .12N more that is invested. You'll also have less tied up with property taxes. It's a lot easier to live on $20k than $8k. Or do a reverse mortgage where the lender pays the property taxes. You'll get some more savings up front, have a place to live while you're alive, and save money annually. There are options with a house that you don't have without one.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
ceffddc3b25b377b685620a387e0a477
|
Any specific examples of company valuations according to Value Investing philosophy?
|
[
{
"docid": "59246ae9b4f3f7ec846b8c47640bb308",
"text": "\"I highly recommend http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ Professor Damodaran. He's written some of the best valuation books in existence (my favorite, simply \"\"Investment Valuation\"\"). On his website you'll find a big pile of spreadsheets, that are models for working the various approaches to valuing a company. Also, he teaches an MBA-level valuation course at Stern School of Business in NYC. And he videotapes it and you can watch it for free. Very smart, kind, generous man.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d513872a89d3375d7b33660846180649",
"text": "Buffet is in a different league from other value investors. He looks for stable companies with no debt and good management. Then he looks to deeply understand the industries of candidate companies, and looks for companies that are not in commodity businesses or sell commodities that can be bought for 25% of the valuation that he believes reflects the true value of the company. Deeply understanding the market is really the key. Consider the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, which Buffet purchased last year. Railroads benefit from higher oil prices, as they can transport cargo much cheaper than trucks. They also tend to have natural monopolies in the regions they operate in. Buffet bought the railroad just as production of oil and natural gas in North Dakota started picking up. Since pipeline capacity between North Dakota and refineries in Texas/Oklahoma is very limited, the railroad is making alot of money transporting crude.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "8399543fe9b611cc89a88cecf78f9c74",
"text": "It's been awhile since my last finance course, so school me here: What is the market cap of a company actually supposed to represent? I get that it's the stock price X the # of shares, but what is that actually representing? Revenues? PV of all future revenues? PV of future cash flows? In any case, good write up. Valuation of tech stocks is quite the gambit, and you've done a good job of dissecting it for a layman.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7260e33a94f0592cc40cc223803db899",
"text": "There are books on the subject of valuing stocks. P/E ratio has nothing directly to do with the value of a company. It may be an indication that the stock is undervalued or overvalued, but does not indicate the value itself. The direct value of company is what it would fetch if it was liquidated. For example, if you bought a dry cleaner and sold all of the equipment and receivables, how much would you get? To value a living company, you can treat it like a bond. For example, assume the company generates $1 million in profit every year and has a liquidation value of $2 million. Given the risk profile of the business, let's say we would like to make 8% on average per year, then the value of the business is approximately $1/0.08 + $2 = $14.5 million to us. To someone who expects to make more or less the value might be different. If the company has growth potential, you can adjust this figure by estimating the estimated income at different percentage chances of growth and decline, a growth curve so to speak. The value is then the net area under this curve. Of course, if you do this for NYSE and most NASDAQ stocks you will find that they have a capitalization way over these amounts. That is because they are being used as a store of wealth. People are buying the stocks just as a way to store money, not necessarily make a profit. It's kind of like buying land. Even though the land may never give you a penny of profit, you know you can always sell it and get your money back. Because of this, it is difficult to value high-profile equities. You are dealing with human psychology, not pennies and dollars.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "63bc244c29598b0de41cdc7a48443d51",
"text": "\"I hate to be the guy that says this but if you are indeed competing in the CFAI Research Challenge it is probably important. Remember you cannot use CFA as a noun (CFA's) you can only use it as an adjective ie a CFA charterholder. As far as you question, what was provided below is pretty much all you need. Security Analysis, anything from the NYU professor and Greenwald stuff (although Greenwald, like someone already mentioned, is balance sheet focused) will get you where you need to go. I am not sure what you mean by \"\"exotic valuation\"\" methods. As far as I know, the three most accepted and used valuation models by practitioners are the DCF model, the multiple model and the residual income model. DCF uses short term cash flows and a terminal value discounted to today at some discount rate. The multiple model puts some multiple on earnings, book value, cash flow to arrive at a fair value. The residual model is the opposite of the DCF. One starts with the assets book value, then accrues all income generated in excess of WACC from all future periods. Find some CFAI Level 2 books on equity and bond valuation. They pretty much cover it all. And for a closing note, to perform well in investing and valuing companies it is not about what valuation model you use. Focus on WHY an asset should be worth what you think it is worth, not HOW you get to some valuation of that asset. Just my two cents.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a39b37febb386d8d25976b32ed6e7097",
"text": "all of these examples are great if you actually believe in fundamentals, but who believes in fundamentals alone any more? Stock prices are driven by earnings, news, and public perception. For instance, a pharma company named Eyetech has their new macular degeneration drug approved by the FDA, and yet their stock price plummeted. Typically when a small pharma company gets a drug approved, it's off to the races. But, Genetech came out said their macular degeneration drug was going to be far more effective, and that they were well on track for approval.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2f56ae1095f00461fba1809cd285a175",
"text": "\"You should distinguish between the price and the value of a company: \"\"Price is what you pay, value is what you get\"\". Price is the share price you pay for one share of the company. Value is what a company is worth (based on fundamental analysis, one of the principles of value investing). I would recommend selling the stock only if the company's value has deteriorated due to fundamental changes (e.g. better products from competitors, declining market) and its value is lower than the current share price.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e91d8c0dcb863fc4b14459f62a081534",
"text": "\"Complex matter that doesn't boil down to a formula. The quant aspect could be assessed by calculating WACCs under various funding scenarii and trying to minimize, but it is just one dimension of it. The quali aspects can vary widely depending on the company, ownership structure, tax environment and business needs and it really can't be covered even superficially in a reddit comment... Few examples from the top of my mind to give you a sense of it: - shareholders might be able to issue equity but want to avoid dilution, so debt is preferred in the end despite cost. Or convertible debt under the right scenario. - company has recurring funding needs and thinks that establishing a status on debt market is worth paying a premium to ensure they can \"\"tap\"\" it whenever hey need to. - adding debt is a way to leverage and enhance ROI/IRR for certain types of stakeholders (think LBOs) - etc etc etc Takes time and a lot of experience/work to be able to figure out what's best and there isn't always a clear answer. Source: pro buy side credit investor with experience and sizeable AuMs.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "88bad5cf03d3a2c8d04785fcf5589fec",
"text": "\"One way to value companies is to use a Dividend discount model. In substance, it consists in estimating future dividends and calculating their present value. So it is a methodology which considers that an equity is similar to a bond and estimates its current value based on future cash flows. A company may not be paying dividends now, but because its future earnings prospects are good may pay some in the future. In that case the DDM model will give a non-zero value to that stock. If on the other hand you think a company won't ever make any profits and therefore never pay any dividends, then it's probably worth 0! Take Microsoft as an example - it currently pays ~3% dividend per annum. The stock has been listed since 1986 and yet it did not pay any dividends until 2003. But the stock has been rising regularly since the beginning because people had \"\"priced in\"\" the fact that there was a high chance that the company would become very profitable - which proved true in the long term (+60,000% including dividends since the IPO!).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0a7f714f0a3b50be1430a11363a34698",
"text": "Aswath Damodaran's [Investment Valuation 3rd edition](http://www.amazon.com/Investment-Valuation-Techniques-Determining-University/dp/1118130731/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1339995852&sr=8-12&keywords=aswath+damodaran) (or save money and go with a used copy of the [2nd edition](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0471414905/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used)) He's a professor at Stern School of Business. His [website](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/) and [blog](http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/) are good resources as well. [Here is his support page](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/Inv3ed.htm) for his Investment Valuation text. It includes chapter summaries, slides, ect. If you're interested in buying the text you can get an idea of what's in it by checking that site out.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b648eff366f6e5637857115c7754cff1",
"text": "Other metrics like Price/Book Value or Price/Sales can be used to determine if a company has above average valuations and would be classified as growth or below average valuations and be classified as value. Fama and French's 3 Factor model would be one example that was studied a great deal using an inverse of Price/Book I believe.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "278f315a77e4a4a26c0a02e978f6be6f",
"text": "This fortune article is referenced in his either 2003 or 2004 annual report in which he does say that the market will not likely return much in the future and generally talks numbers. I am also a value investor, such that I can be in this environment and believe there is a bit of value in knowing where you think the market is headed but the real value is in underwriting each deal. In long, I agree with you",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b731769f380d1dbc187594d1070e9701",
"text": "I was thinking that the value of the stock is the value of the stock...the actual number of shares really doesn't matter, but I'm not sure. You're correct. Share price is meaningless. Google is $700 per share, Apple is $100 per share, that doesn't say anything about either company and/or whether or not one is a better investment over the other. You should not evaluate an investment decision on price of a share. Look at the books decide if the company is worth owning, then decide if it's worth owning at it's current price.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "164f357b28487a92dd220457fa1bda24",
"text": "\"I tell you how I started as an investor: read the writings of probably the best investor of the history and become familiarized with it: Warren Buffett. I highly recommend \"\"The Essays of Warren Buffett\"\", where he provides a wise insight on how a company generates value, and his investment philosophy. You won't regret it! And also, specially in finance, don't follow the advice from people that you don't know, like me.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8b82fb1b960b241080e16afd01ce6551",
"text": "\"Each company has X shares valued at $Y/share. When deals like \"\"Dragon's Den\"\" in Canada and Britain or \"\"Shark Tank\"\" in the US are done, this is where the company is issuing shares valued at $z total to the investor so that the company has the funds to do whatever it was that they came to the show to get funding to do, though some deals may be loans or royalties instead of equity in the company. The total value of the shares may include intangible assets of course but part of the point is that the company is doing an \"\"equity financing\"\" where the company continues to operate. The shareholders of the company have their stake which may be rewarded when the company is acquired or starts paying dividends but that is a call for the management of the company to make. While there is a cash infusion into the company, usually there is more being done as the Dragon or Shark can also bring contacts and expertise to the company to help it grow. If the investor provides the entrepreneur with introductions or offers suggestions on corporate strategy this is more than just buying shares in the company. If you look at the updates that exist on \"\"Dragon's Den\"\" or \"\"Shark Tank\"\" at least in North America I've seen, you will see how there are more than a few non-monetary contributions that the Dragon or Shark can provide.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "18f714e37c58c5709f088dfa8fe323b8",
"text": "I could argue Amazon. And Facebook the other way. Before the down-vote brigade appears, I'll just say I said I could *argue* those points. Also, I haven't done valuation in years, and definitely not for tech because while I am a big techie, the industry itself seems likes a clown lottery with respect to valuation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2b6a35f1951cf41e56a1603955d3ac58",
"text": "As I have worked for H&R Block I know for a fact that they record all your activity with them for future reference. If it is their opinion that you are obligated to use their service if you use some other service then this, most likely, will affect your future dealings with them. So, ask yourself this question: is reducing their income from you this year worth never being able to deal with them again in future years? The answer to that will give you the answer to your question.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
9a4c3d10eb66471be4871bc23cae524b
|
Does Reuters provide the 4pm London Spot rate for currencies?
|
[
{
"docid": "f07f11ef961fba7897da39b6b1e87f3e",
"text": "The interpretation is correct. The Reuters may give you the London 4PM rates if you query after the close for the day. The close rate is treated as the rate. http://uk.reuters.com/business/currencies/quote?srcAmt=1&srcCurr=GBP&destAmt=&destCurr=USD The London 4PM rate may be obtained from Bank of England at the link below; http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/mfsd/iadb/index.asp?Travel=NIxSTxTIx&levels=1&XNotes=Y&XNotes2=Y&Nodes=X3790X3791X3873X33940&SectionRequired=I&HideNums=-1&ExtraInfo=false&A3836XBMX3790X3791.x=4&A3836XBMX3790X3791.y=3 Or any other Bank that provides such data",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "d56cf7b2f6193eac92d57bd4a84e4d3b",
"text": "\"The answer to each of your questions is no. It is important to appreciate that the \"\"quoted\"\" ticker price may be delayed by say 15 minutes, and thus is not \"\"real-time.\"\"\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f6525fabe5b4facfd715c4d176e28d7c",
"text": "They could have different quotes as there are more than a few pieces here. Are you talking a Real Time Level II quote or just a delayed quote? Delayed quotes could vary as different companies would be using different time points in their data. You aren't specifying exactly what kind of quote from which system are you using here. The key to this question is how much of a pinpoint answer do you want and how prepared are you to pay for that kind of access to the automated trades happening? Remember that there could well be more than a few trades happening each millisecond and thus latency is something to be very careful here, regardless of the exchange as long as we are talking about first-world stock exchanges where there are various automated systems being used for trading. Different market makers is just a possible piece of the equation here. One could have the same market maker but if the timings are different,e.g. if one quote is at 2:30:30 and the other is at 2:30:29 there could be a difference given all the trades processed within that second, thus the question is how well can you get that split second total view of bids and asks for a stock. You want to get all the outstanding orders which could be a non-trivial task.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "03e9557aeedc4a1650f7eba55a9cf3b6",
"text": "I work for a fund management company and we get our news through two different service providers Bloomberg and Thomson One. They don't actually source the news though they just feed news from other providers Professional solutions (costs ranging from $300-1500+ USD/month/user) Bloomberg is available as a windows install or via Bloomberg Anywhere which offers bimometric access via browser. Bloomberg is superb and their customer support is excellent but they aren't cheap. If you're looking for a free amateur solution for stock news I'd take a look at There are dozens of other tools people can use for day trading that usually provide news and real time prices at a cost but I don't have any direct experience with them",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e452b219724c5f5bd7923cc1230effeb",
"text": "Have you looked at ThinkorSwim, which is now part of TD Ameritrade? Because of their new owner, you'll certainly be accepted as a US customer and the support will likely be responsive. They are certainly pushing webinars and learning resources around the ThinkorSwim platform. At the least you can start a Live Help session and get your answers. That link will take you to the supported order types list. Another tab there will show you the currency pairs. USD is available with both CAD and JPY. Looks like the minimum balance requirement is $25k across all ThinkorSwim accounts. Barron's likes the platform and their annual review may help you find reasons to like it. Here is more specific news from a press release: OMAHA, Neb., Aug 24, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- TD AMERITRADE Holding Corporation (NASDAQ: AMTD) today announced that futures and spot forex (foreign exchange) trading capabilities are now available via the firm's thinkorswim from TD AMERITRADE trading platform, joining the recently introduced complex options functionality.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "59cfda44e5b7c17b0ab1e06760dc02fd",
"text": "Today's rate is 23.21 bps. I'm going to list years forward, spot rate, forward rate. 1, 30.27, 61.77 2, 63.64, 155.73 3, 107.15, 228.04 4, 143.16, 266.31 5, 172.55, 290.12 These are bids, but mids are all within a basis point",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6ab77689a3736559dc6bcc1147836b43",
"text": "Please use the sharing tools found via the email icon at the top of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/23ab8a02-5787-11e7-80b6-9bfa4c1f83d2?mhq5j=e1 By continuing to use this site you consent to the use of cookies on your device as described in our cookie policy unless you have disabled them. You can change your cookie settings at any time but parts of our site will not function correctly without them. Dismiss cookie message Accessibility helpSkip to navigationSkip to contentSkip to footer Financial Times MYFT HOME WORLD UK COMPANIES MARKETS OPINION WORK & CAREERS LIFE & ARTS Portfolio My Account HOME WORLD UK COMPANIES MARKETS OPINION WORK & CAREERS LIFE & ARTS MYFT Bank stress tests Add to myFT US banks pass first round of annual stress tests Clean bill of health from Federal Reserve opens door to increased shareholder payouts Read next Week in Review Week in Review, July 1 © AFP Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Email4 Save JUNE 22, 2017 by: Alistair Gray and Ben McLannahan in New York and Barney Jopson in Washington US banks have big enough capital buffers to keep trading through an economic meltdown, regulators said on Thursday, in a finding that improves their chances of boosting payouts to shareholders. In the first round of this year’s stress tests, the Federal Reserve probed how 34 banks would fare in a financial and economic slump in which the unemployment rate doubles and the stock market loses half its value. The central bank calculated that the banking sector would endure $493bn in losses in the simulated downturn. Yet officials concluded that the banks would emerge from the crash “well capitalised”, with cushions of shareholder funding still above the Fed’s minimum required levels. The largely upbeat results augur well for US banks as the Fed prepares to unveil the results of the tests’ second round next week, when investors will learn how much capital they can return through dividends and share buybacks. However, the figures released on Thursday do not foretell what the Fed will say about payouts, not least because regulators can approve or block US banks’ capital plans on qualitative as well as quantitative grounds. Lex Bank stress tests: chilled The once-vital check on the industry’s health is outliving its usefulness UBS analysts estimate that the four biggest by assets — JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — will be able to return a net $59.8bn this year, rising to $72.3bn in 2018. Citi and Morgan Stanley could be among about a dozen banks that will make requests to return more than 100 per cent of their annual earnings to shareholders, according to Goldman Sachs analysts. Despite the positive stress test results, not all investors would be comfortable with such a bonanza. Bill Hines, a fixed-income investment manager at Aberdeen Asset Management in Philadelphia, said the prospect of payouts in excess of profits “does scare us a little bit”. “If the safety blanket is pulled away . . . that may come to the detriment of capital and safety.” Across-the-board passes for the stress-test are “a good thing,” he said, as it shows that banks have rebuilt capital levels substantially since the crisis. “But from a creditor’s standpoint you don’t want to see all the profits go out the door.” While banks have already told the Fed what they propose to do on dividends and buybacks, they are now able to make more conservative payout plans if, based on the first-round results, they think it will reject them in the second round. Related article Regulators back Trump on looser financial rules Officials endorse Volcker rule revamp and bank relief from burden of ‘stress tests’ The regulator’s simulated downturn lasts for nine quarters. Banks’ overall loan losses and declines in capital under the worst crisis scenario were smaller than in last year’s stress tests, Fed officials said. Still, the test found that some banks would come close to breaching regulatory minimums during the meltdown on some metrics. For instance, Morgan Stanley’s “supplementary leverage ratio” — a new measure of financial strength that takes effect in 2018 — would drop as low as 3.8 per cent compared with a required level of 3 per cent. The results also drew attention to banks’ exposure to credit card lending. The Fed found banks would suffer the biggest losses in their card portfolios in the hypothetical crisis. Fed officials said that partly reflected a rapid expansion in the size of banks’ credit card assets and rising delinquency rates in the real world. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Email4 Save Latest on Bank stress tests Week in Review Week in Review, July 1 Fed stress tests give $1.6bn boost to Buffett Fed gives nod to ‘payout party time’ for banks Lex US banks: feeling special Premium Stress tests clear big US banks for $100bn payout Read latest Week in Review Week in Review, July 1 Latest on Bank stress tests Add to myFT Week in Review Week in Review, July 1 US banks pass test; Google, Takata, Fox and M&A also in the news Banks Fed stress tests give $1.6bn boost to Buffett Investor is one of the largest holders of US bank stocks and will reap big dividends Analysis Bank stress tests Fed gives nod to ‘payout party time’ for banks Buybacks and dividends set to soar after industry passes latest stress test Latest in Banks Add to myFT Central Banks BoE successfully tests new payment method ‘Interledger’ programme synchronises transactions between two central banks 3 HOURS AGO US banks US consumers set to be given power to sue banks Financial institutions express fury at CFPB proposal that could spur class actions UK banks BoE warns UK banks on accounting practices PRA chief Sam Woods says lenders should ‘expect questions’ on balance sheet trickery Follow the topics mentioned in this article JPMorgan Chase & Co. Add to myFT Companies Add to myFT Banks Add to myFT Wells Fargo Add to myFT Citigroup, Inc. Add to myFT Follow the authors of this article Barney Jopson Add to myFT Alistair Gray Add to myFT Take a tour of myFT Support View Site Tips Feedback Help Centre About Us Accessibility Legal & Privacy Terms & Conditions Privacy Cookies Copyright Slavery Statement Services FT Live Share News Tips Securely Individual Subscriptions Group Subscriptions Republishing Contracts & Tenders Analysts Research Executive Job Search Advertise with the FT Follow the FT on Twitter Ebooks UK Secondary Schools Tools Portfolio Today's Newspaper (ePaper) Alerts Hub Lexicon MBA Rankings Economic Calendar News feed Newsletters Currency Converter More from the FT Group Markets data delayed by at least 15 minutes. © THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2017. FT and ‘Financial Times’ are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd. 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"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "949551126783dc387e3ca4d8f8389f3b",
"text": "What you want is the distribution yield, which is 2.65. You can see the yield on FT as well, which is listed as 2.64. The difference between the 2 values is likely to be due to different dates of updates. http://funds.ft.com/uk/Tearsheet/Summary?s=CORP:LSE:USD",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ed60840adabb35f50fbe3ecac6904235",
"text": "\"What you're looking for are either FX Forwards or FX Futures. These products are traded differently but they are basically the same thing -- agreements to deliver currency at a defined exchange rate at a future time. Almost every large venue or bank will transact forwards, when the counterparty (you or your broker) has sufficient trust and credit for the settlement risk, but the typical duration is less than a year though some will do a single-digit multi-year forward on a custom basis. Then again, all forwards are considered custom contracts. You'll also need to know that forwards are done on currency pairs, so you'll need to pick the currency to pair your NOK against. Most likely you'll want EUR/NOK simply for the larger liquidity of that pair over other possible pairs. A quote on a forward will usually just be known by the standard currency pair ticker with a settlement date different from spot. E.g. \"\"EUR/NOK 12M\"\" for the 12 month settlement. Futures, on the other hand, are exchange traded and more standardized. The vast majority through the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange). Your broker will need access to one of these exchanges and you simply need to \"\"qualify\"\" for futures trading (process depends on your broker). Futures generally have highest liquidity for the next \"\"IMM\"\" expiration (quarterly expiration on well known standard dates), but I believe they're defined for more years out than forwards. At one FX desk I've knowledge of, they had 6 years worth of quarterly expirations in their system at any one time. Futures are generally known by a ticker composed of a \"\"globex\"\" or \"\"cme\"\" code for the currency concatenated with another code representing the expiration. For example, \"\"NOKH6\"\" is 'NOK' for Norwegian Krone, 'H' for March, and '6' for the nearest future date's year that ends in '6' (i.e. 2016). Note that you'll be legally liable to deliver the contracted size of Krone if you hold through expiration! So the common trade is to hold the future, and net out just before expiration when the price more accurately reflects the current spot market.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c6608fe20149388b7b6e8d705c69432f",
"text": "Here are some pretty big name news agencies which have a section dedicated to commodities: CNN Bloomberg Reuters",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dfd8a1a50537d16df5f1e082ddfefc2d",
"text": "I'm answering in a perspective of an End-User within the United Kingdom. Most stockbrokers won't provide Real-time information without 'Level 2' access, however this comes free for most who trade over a certain threshold. If you're like me, who trade within their ISA Holding each year, you need to look elsewhere. I personally use IG.com. They've recently began a stockbroking service, whereas this comes with realtime information etc with a paid account without any 'threshold'. Additionally, you may want to look into CFDs/Spreadbets as these, won't include the heavy 'fees' and tax liabilities that trading with stocks may bring.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c75297b62f73553ec352cda7a9fff1b6",
"text": "\"I've done exactly what you say at one of my brokers. With the restriction that I have to deposit the money in the \"\"right\"\" way, and I don't do it too often. The broker is meant to be a trading firm and not a currency exchange house after all. I usually do the exchange the opposite of you, so I do USD -> GBP, but that shouldn't make any difference. I put \"\"right\"\" in quotes not to indicate there is anything illegal going on, but to indicate the broker does put restrictions on transferring out for some forms of deposits. So the key is to not ACH the money in, nor send a check, nor bill pay it, but rather to wire it in. A wire deposit with them has no holds and no time limits on withdrawal locations. My US bank originates a wire, I trade at spot in the opposite direction of you (USD -> GBP), wait 2 days for the trade to settle, then wire the money out to my UK bank. Commissions and fees for this process are low. All told, I pay about $20 USD per xfer and get spot rates, though it does take approx 3 trading days for the whole process (assuming you don't try to wait for a target rate but rather take market rate.)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d1b4070ae8f86c7d172defb39f9cd1a7",
"text": "Rates are arrived at by the cumulative buying and selling on the foreign exchange market, much the same way that stock prices are arrived at. If there are more people wanting to buy dollars with euros, EUR/USD goes down. If more people want to buy euros with dollars, then EUR/USD goes up. The initial rate was about $1.18 per euro when it began trading on January 1st, 1999. It replaced the European Currency Unit at that time, which was a weighted basket of currencies of (more or less) the participating countries. You're correct about the printing press in the US and other countries. The exchange rates do reflect in part how much of a relative workout those printing presses get.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ce74473919d8ee1c40037ea199392734",
"text": "An alternative to paying thousands of dollars for historical prices by the minute: Subscribe to real time data for as low as USD$1.5/month from your broker, then browse the chart.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "21cef6e11914c95fd0ec6207b10be7a6",
"text": "Yes, one such provider is: https://www.fxcompared.com/ They allow you to compare a number of foreign currency providers, and take into account all of the fees and spreads, and give you a simple number which you can use to compare them - the amount of foreign currency you get for your domestic currency.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "031f7677868338ead3397e82547dabd7",
"text": "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-sterling-idUSKBN1AR0M9) reduced by 75%. (I'm a bot) ***** > LONDON - Sterling fell to a fresh 10-month low against the euro on Friday as investors added bearish bets against the British currency on concerns the economy may be struggling to gain momentum. > Sterling fell 0.2 percent to 90.92 pence against the euro, its lowest level since October 2016. > It has fallen for two consecutive weeks and has weakened nearly 9 percent against the euro since early May. Morgan Stanley strategists are predicting euro parity with the pound in the first quarter of 2018. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6thf3f/british_pound_further_down/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~190040 tl;drs so far.\"\") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr \"\"PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.\"\") | *Top* *keywords*: **against**^#1 **since**^#2 **Sterling**^#3 **week**^#4 **euro**^#5\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
878b2b8959b4cbe93b44e0411a13322e
|
How can I make a one-time income tax-prepayment to the US Treasury?
|
[
{
"docid": "dd96b5b2a38b28fa6a4a9581dda69b19",
"text": "\"You can make estimated tax payments on Form 1040-ES. Most people who make such payments need to do it quarterly because the typical reasons for making estimated payments is something like self-employment income that a person will get throughout the year. If you have a one-time event like a single, large sale of stock, however, there's nothing wrong with doing it just one quarter out of the year. When it comes time to file your taxes, part of the calculate is whether you were timely quarter-by-quarter not just for the entire year, so if you do have a big \"\"one-time\"\" event mid-year, don't wait until the end of the year to file an estimated payment. Of course, if the event is at the end of the year, then you can make it a 4th quarter estimated payment.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "7156a9fde48c1a3aec096bab435c99e9",
"text": "Yes, you can do what you are contemplating doing, and it works quite well. Just don't get the university's payroll office too riled by going in each June, July, August and September to adjust your payroll withholding! Do it at the end of the summer when perhaps most of your contract income for the year has already been received and you have a fairly good estimate for what your tax bill will be for the coming year. Don't forget to include Social Security and Medicare taxes (both employee's share as well as employer's share) on your contract income in estimating the tax due. The nice thing about paying estimated taxes via payroll deduction is that all that tax money can be counted as having been paid in four equal and timely quarterly payments of estimated tax, regardless of when the money was actually withheld from your university paycheck. You could (if you wanted to, and had a fat salary from the university, heh heh) have all the tax due on your contract income withheld from just your last paycheck of the year! But whether you increase the withholding in August or in December, do remember to change it back after the last paycheck of the year has been received so that next year's withholding starts out at a more mellow pace.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0f0b2c79bb09d455414ec58c07ec0f51",
"text": "\"Yes, it is, but first let me address this sentence: my current withholding on my W4 is already at 0 so I can't make it lower You definitely can make it lower. On W4, in addition to the allowances (that what you meant by \"\"already at 0\"\"), there's also a line called \"\"additional withholding\"\". There, you put the dollar amount that you want your payroll to withhold from your paycheck each pay period. So the easiest way to \"\"send\"\" a one time payment to the IRS, if you're a W2 employee, would be to adjust that line with the amount you want to send, and change it back to 0 next pay period. You can also send a check directly to the IRS - follow the instructions to form 1040-ES. That is exactly what that form is designed to be used for.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3fe97da3da12776e31cfb58e16e57f81",
"text": "\"It's likely you don't have to make estimated tax payments if this is your first year of contracting (extra income), and your existing salary is already having taxes withheld. If you look at the 1040-ES: General Rule In most cases, you must pay estimated tax for 2014 if both of the following apply. This is easier to understand if you look at the worksheet. Look at line 14b/14c and the associated instructions. 14b is your required annual payment based on last year's tax. 14c is the lesser of that number and 14a, so 14b is your \"\"worst case\"\". 14c is the amount of tax you need to prepay (withholding counts as prepayment). I'm going to apply this to your situation based on my understanding, because it's not easy to parse:\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "28e724bb8a999cbde510325dd4f5afad",
"text": "\"The pure numbers answer says you want the refund to be close to $0. You can even argue, as some answers have, that you want to try to maximize the payment without receiving any sanctions for underpaying during the year. If you trace the money, it's easy to see why. Let's say you get a paycheck. Tag some of the dollars for Uncle Sam. These are the dollars that, eventually, will be given to the IRS. Now consider the following scenarios: From the raw numbers like this, its clear that you lose utility by setting yourself up for a large refund check. The money was yours the entire time, but you chose to give it to Uncle Sam instead. However, the raw numbers are only part of the puzzle. If you're a cold steely-gazed numbers person, they're the part that matters. When the billionares are playing their tax evasion games, this is the only thing they are paying attention to. However, real humans have a few psychological reasons they may choose to lose utility in terms of raw dollars in exchange for psychological assistance: These attitudes exist, and may be ideal for any one person. Obviously the financially savvy answer of \"\"minimize your refund\"\" is the ideal answer from a dollars and cents perspective, but its up to you to see whether that attitude is right when you account for all of the non-measurable things, like stress. In general, I would lead anyone to \"\"minimize your refund,\"\" but I would be remiss if I didn't include the very real psychological reasons people choose to deviate from it.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e14cb4c06d785d9ab927ff0914196dcc",
"text": "This is wrong. It should be or Now, to get back to self-employment tax. Self-employment tax is weird. It's a business tax. From the IRS perspective, any self-employed person is a business. So, take your income X and divide by 1.0765 (6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare). This gives your personal income. Now, to calculate the tax that you have to pay, multiply that by .153 (since you have to pay both the worker and employer shares of the tax). So new calculation or they actually let you do which is better for you (smaller). And your other calculations change apace. And like I said, you can simplify Q1se to and your payment would be Now, to get to the second quarter. Like I said, I'd calculate the income through the second quarter. So recalculate A based on your new numbers and use that to calculate Q2i. or Note that this includes income from both the first and second quarters. We'll reduce to just the second quarter later. This also has you paying for all of June even though you may not have been paid when you make the withholding payment. That's what they want you to do. But we aren't done yet. Your actual payment should be or Because Q2ft and Q2se are what you owe for the year so far. Q1ft + Q1se is what you've already paid. So you subtract those from what you need to pay in the second quarter. In future quarters, this would be All that said, don't stress about it. As a practical matter, so long as you don't owe $1000 or more when you file your actual tax return, they aren't going to care. So just make sure that your total payments match by the payment you make January 15th. I'm not going to try to calculate for the state. For one thing, I don't know if your state uses Q1i or Q1pi as its base. Different states may have different rules on that. If you can't figure it out, just use Q1i, as that's the bigger one. Fix it when you file your annual return. The difference in withholding is going to be relatively small anyway, less than 1% of your income.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "51b98857496db91ad880cc721db0c57c",
"text": "\"That's a very clear explanation, thanks! So a few additional things if anyone will humor my curiosity... 1. By \"\"one-time\"\" tax, does that mean a company that has, say, $5B overseas could bring that back into the US and just be taxed $500M, then keep the remaining $4.5B? 2. Could a company choose a percentage of their overseas money to transfer into the US? Like, only bring in 8% of that $5B ($400M) and be taxed $40M, while keeping all the rest outside the US? Or would it be mandatory to bring it all over? 3. Would most companies just start that same practice of routing to tax havens again after this tax is implented?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bd6eecc9738b213f4a0e3ccc7411900f",
"text": "You have two different operations going on: They each have of a set of rules regarding amounts, timelines, taxes, and penalties. The excess money can't be recharacterized except during a specific window of time. I would see a tax professional to work through all the details.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ea582ead73b55789e8dd68ef14643254",
"text": "I don't believe you can do that. From the IRS: Finally, certain types of property are specifically excluded from Section 1031 treatment. Section 1031 does not apply to exchanges of: I highlighted the relevant items for emphasis.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7195053464f2555973061c1a472f0ed3",
"text": "You should probably get a professional tax advice, as it is very specific to the Philipines tax laws and the US-Philippine tax treaty. What I know, however, is that if it was the other way around - you paying a foreigner coming to the US to consult you - you would be withholding 30% of their pay for the IRS which they would be claiming for refund on their own later. So if the US does it to others - I'm not surprised to hear that others do it to the US. Get a professional advice on what and how you should be doing. In any case, foreign taxes paid can be used to offset your US taxes using form 1116 up to some extent.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a41026f655a49f32a9b2a065fe080f00",
"text": "\"You can simply use the previous year's tax liability as your basis for payments. Take the amount of tax you owed the previous year, divide by four, and use that amount for your estimated payments. As long as you're paying 100% of what you owed last year, you won't have any penalty. Except if your AGI is above a certain limit ($150k for married filing jointly in 2011), then you have to pay 110%. See IRS Pub 505 for details (general rule, special rule, under \"\"Higher Income Taxpayers\"\"). (H/T to @Dilip Sarwate for pointing out the 110% exception in a comment below.)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "278761b17fa57982144a46c66491ce57",
"text": "Like-kind of exchanges have a list of requirements. The IRS has not issued formal guidance in the matter. I recommend to be aggressive and claim the exchange, while justifying it with a good analogy to prove good faith (and persuade the IRS official reading it the risk of losing in tax court would be to high). Worst case the IRS will attempt to reject the exchange, at which point you could still pony up to get rid of the problem, interest being the only real risk. For example: Past tax court rulings have stated that collectable gold coins are not like kind to gold bars, and unlike silver coins, but investment grade gold coins are like kind to gold bars. So you could use a justification like this: I hold Bitcoin to be like-kind to Litecoin, because they use the same fundamental technology with just a tweak in the math, as if exchanging different grades of gold bars, which has been approved by tax court ruling #xxxxx. Note that it doesn't matter whether any of this actually makes sense, it just has be reasonable enough for you to believe, and look like it is not worth pursuing to an overworked IRS official glancing at it. I haven't tried this yet, so up to now this is a guess, but it's a good enough guess in my estimation that I will be using it on some rather significant amounts next year.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ca45fdfb71adf33769492b71c096b555",
"text": "There is a shortcut you can use when calculating federal estimated taxes. Some states may allow the same type of estimation, but I know at least one (my own--Illinois) that does not. The shortcut: you can completely base your estimated taxes for this year on last year's tax return and avoid any underpayment penalty. A quick summary can be found here (emphasis mine): If your prior year Adjusted Gross Income was $150,000 or less, then you can avoid a penalty if you pay either 90 percent of this year's income tax liability or 100 percent of your income tax liability from last year (dividing what you paid last year into four quarterly payments). This rule helps if you have a big spike in income one year, say, because you sell an investment for a huge gain or win the lottery. If wage withholding for the year equals the amount of tax you owed in the previous year, then you wouldn't need to pay estimated taxes, no matter how much extra tax you owe on your windfall. Note that this does not mean you will not owe money when you file your return next April; this shortcut ensures that you pay at least the minimum allowed to avoid penalty. You can see this for yourself by filling out the worksheet on form 1040ES. Line 14a is what your expected tax this year will be, based on your estimated income. Line 14b is your total tax from last year, possibly with some other modifications. Line 14c then asks you to take the lesser of the two numbers. So even if your expected tax this year is one million dollars, you can still base your estimated payments on last year's tax.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "62be4077a8b5f99137d2c3ca9b8a3ae0",
"text": "You have made a good start because you are looking at your options. Because you know that if you do nothing you will have a big tax bill in April 2017, you want to make sure that you avoid the underpayment penalty. One way to avoid it is to make estimated payments. But even if you do that you could still make a mistake and overpay or underpay. I think the easiest way to handle it is to reach the safe harbor. If your withholding from your regular jobs and any estimated taxes you pay in 2016 equal or exceed your total taxes for 2015, then even if you owe a lot in April 2017 you can avoid the underpayment penalty. If you AGI is over 150K you have to make sure your withholding is 110% of your 2015 taxes. Then set aside what you think you will owe in your bank account until you have to pay your taxes in April 2017. You only have to adjust your withholding to make the safe harbor. You can make sure easily enough once your file this years taxes. You only have to make sure that you reach the 100% or 110% threshold. From IRS PUB 17 Who Must Pay Estimated Tax If you owe additional tax for 2015, you may have to pay estimated tax for 2016. You can use the following general rule as a guide during the year to see if you will have enough withholding, or if you should increase your withholding or make estimated tax payments. General rule. In most cases, you must pay estimated tax for 2016 if both of the following apply. You expect to owe at least $1,000 in tax for 2016, after subtracting your withholding and refundable credits. You expect your withholding plus your refundable credits to be less than the smaller of: a. 90% of the tax to be shown on your 2016 tax return, or b. 100% of the tax shown on your 2015 tax return (but see Special rules for farmers, fishermen, and higher income taxpayers , later). Your 2015 tax return must cover all 12 months. Reminders Estimated tax safe harbor for higher income taxpayers. If your 2015 adjusted gross income was more than $150,000 ($75,000 if you are married filing a separate return), you must pay the smaller of 90% of your expected tax for 2016 or 110% of the tax shown on your 2015 return to avoid an estimated tax penalty.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bc9c200f6660dd9981ab887eb936190c",
"text": "I think the IRS doc you want is http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2010_publink100010601 I believe the answers are:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7e974e9c76ecdd9f3ffe8704ae2d3f48",
"text": "\"How can I avoid this, so we are taxed as if we are making the $60k/yr that we want to receive? You can't. In the US the income is taxed when received, not when used. If you receive 1M this year, taking out 60K doesn't mean the other 940K \"\"weren't received\"\". They were, and are taxable. Create a pension fund in the corporation, feed it all profits, and pay out $60k/yr of \"\"pension\"\". I doubt that the corporation could deduct a million a year in pension funding. You cannot do that. You can only deposit to a pension plan up to 100% of your salary, and no more than $50K total (maybe a little more this year, its adjusted to inflation). Buy a million dollars in \"\"business equipment\"\" of some sort each year to get a deduction, then sell it over time to fund a $60k/yr salary. I doubt such a vehicle exists. If there's no real business purpose, it will be disallowed and you'll be penalized. Your only purpose is tax avoidance, meaning you're trying to shift income using your business to avoid paying taxes - that's illegal. Do crazy Section 79 life insurance schemes to tax-defer the income. The law caps this so I can only deduct < $100k of the $1 million annually, and there are other problems with this approach.\\ Yes. Wouldn't go there. Added: From what I understand, this is a term life insurance plan sponsored by the employer for the employee. This is not a deferral of income, but rather a deduction: instead of paying your term life insurance with your own after tax money, your employer pays with their pre-tax. It has a limit of $50K per employee, and is only available for employees. There are non-discrimination limitations that may affect your ability to use it, but I don't see how it is at all helpful for you. It gives you a deduction, but its money spent, not money in your pocket. End added. Do some tax avoidance like Facebook does with its Double Irish trick, storing the income in some foreign subsidiary and drawing $60k/yr in salary to be taxed at $60k/yr rates. This is probably cost-prohibitive for a $1MM/yr company. You're not Facebook. What works with a billion, will not work with a million. Keep in mind that you're a one-man business, things that huge corporations like Google or Facebook can get away with are a no-no for a sole-proprietor (even if incorporated). Bottom line you'll probably have to pay the taxes. Get a good tax professional to help you identify as much deductions as possible, and if you can plan income ahead - plan it better.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
4d8ac841b2c504de46d78d0641b40d12
|
Do altcoin trades count as like-kind exchanges? (Deferred capital gains tax)
|
[
{
"docid": "3e22751def8b89bb10e4d0bed0c140c5",
"text": "\"In June 2016 the American Institute of CPAs sent a letter to the IRS requesting guidance on this question. Quoting from section 4 of this letter, which is available at https://www.aicpa.org/advocacy/tax/downloadabledocuments/aicpa-comment-letter-on-notice-2014-21-virtual-currency-6-10-16.pdf If the IRS believes any property transaction rules should apply differently to virtual currency than to other types of property, taxpayers will need additional guidance in order to properly distinguish the rules and regulations. Section 4, Q&A-1 of Notice 2014-21 states that “general tax principles applicable to property transactions apply to transactions using virtual currency,” which is guidance that is generally helpful in determining the tax consequences of most virtual currency transactions. However, if there are particular factors that distinguish one virtual currency as like-kind to another virtual currency for section 1031 purposes, the IRS should clarify these details (e.g., allowing the treatment of virtual currency held for investment or business as like-kind to another virtual currency) in the form of published guidance. Similarly, taxpayers need specific guidance of special rules or statutory interpretations if the IRS determines that the installment method of section 453 is applied differently for virtual currency than for other types of property. So, at the very least, a peer-reviewed committee of CPAs finds like-kind treatment to have possible grounds for allowance. I would disagree with calling this a \"\"loophole,\"\" however (edit: at least from the viewpoint of the taxpayer.) At a base technological level, a virtual currency-to-virtual currency exchange consists of exchanging knowledge of one sequence of binary digits (private key) for another. What could be more \"\"like-kind\"\" than this?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e042e3439f9834513f29dee86999b6e3",
"text": "Just a thought because this is a really good question: Would the buying and selling of blockchain based digital currency, using other blockchain based digital currencies, be subject to like kind treatment and exempt from capital gains until exchanged for a non-blockchain based good or service (or national currency) Suppose someone sells 1 bitcoin to buy 100 monero. Monero's price and bitcoin's price then change to where the 100 monero are 3 bitcoins. The person gets their bitcoin back and has 66.67 monero remaining. This scenario could be: Suppose someone sells 1 bitcoin at $1000 to buy 100 monero at $10. Bitcoin crashes 80% to $200 while monero crashes to only $6 per monero. $6 times 100 is $600 and if the person gets their bitcoin back (at $200 per bitcoi), they still lost money when measured in US Dollars if they move that bitcoin back to US dollars. In reading the IRS on bitcoin, they only care about the US dollar value of bitcoin or monero and in this example, the US dollar value is less. The person may have more bitcoins, but they still lost money if they sell.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "278761b17fa57982144a46c66491ce57",
"text": "Like-kind of exchanges have a list of requirements. The IRS has not issued formal guidance in the matter. I recommend to be aggressive and claim the exchange, while justifying it with a good analogy to prove good faith (and persuade the IRS official reading it the risk of losing in tax court would be to high). Worst case the IRS will attempt to reject the exchange, at which point you could still pony up to get rid of the problem, interest being the only real risk. For example: Past tax court rulings have stated that collectable gold coins are not like kind to gold bars, and unlike silver coins, but investment grade gold coins are like kind to gold bars. So you could use a justification like this: I hold Bitcoin to be like-kind to Litecoin, because they use the same fundamental technology with just a tweak in the math, as if exchanging different grades of gold bars, which has been approved by tax court ruling #xxxxx. Note that it doesn't matter whether any of this actually makes sense, it just has be reasonable enough for you to believe, and look like it is not worth pursuing to an overworked IRS official glancing at it. I haven't tried this yet, so up to now this is a guess, but it's a good enough guess in my estimation that I will be using it on some rather significant amounts next year.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "e4400a7636443a8fdf6a27512a0d7910",
"text": "I would think you need proof that you actually bought it when it was cheaper, but that's a guess. You are supposed to pay the capital gains tax on bitcoin gains, same as if you made money on a stock https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/02/21/if-you-traded-bitcoin-you-should-report-capital-gains-to-the-irs/amp/",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f72e4c4ced09e034dd3fe9a774d88945",
"text": "\"You're right. I did include \"\"is it reasonable\"\" in the title. Therefore that brings in the acceptability of those taxes. However I am making the case that I would like capital gains to be taxed most similarly to regular income (or at least in a parallel bracket), which is independent of the amount needed to be brought in. I think parallel brackets would be the most productive since it would encourage people to both produce and invest, because you would get the lowest taxes by maximizing both.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "011e9897d17a8fb2bdf51334643d8c69",
"text": "1031 is a section of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service Code that allows investors to defer capital gains taxes on any exchange of like-kind properties for business or investment purposes. Taxes on capital gains are not charged on the sale of a property if the money is being used to purchase another property - the payment of tax is deferred until property is sold with no re-investment.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f824112e5846e465882fb442b9ec6dd2",
"text": "\"As an exercise, I want to give this a shot. I'm not involved in a firm that cares about liquidity so all this stuff is outside my purview. As I understand it, it goes something like this: buy side fund puts an order to the market as a whole (all or most possibly exchanges). HFTs see that order hit the first exchange but have connectivity to exchanges further down the pipe that is faster than the buy side fund. They immediately send their own order in, which reaches exchanges and executes before the buy side fund's order can. They immediately put up an ask, and buy side fund's order hits that ask and is filled (I guess I'm assuming the order was a market order from the beginning). This is in effect the HFT front running the buy side fund. Is this accurate? Even if true, whether I have a genuine issue with this... I'm not sure. Has anyone on the \"\"pro-HFT\"\" side written a solid rebuttal to Lewis and Katsuyama that has solid research behind it?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3fa31b1975e0d7a3e9f65372d31635a5",
"text": "Capital losses do mirror capital gains within their holding periods. An asset or investment this is certainly held for a year into the day or less, and sold at a loss, will create a short-term capital loss. A sale of any asset held for over a year to your day, and sold at a loss, will create a loss that is long-term. When capital gains and losses are reported from the tax return, the taxpayer must first categorize all gains and losses between long and short term, and then aggregate the sum total amounts for every single regarding the four categories. Then the gains that are long-term losses are netted against each other, therefore the same is done for short-term gains and losses. Then your net gain that is long-term loss is netted against the net short-term gain or loss. This final net number is then reported on Form 1040. Example Frank has the following gains and losses from his stock trading for the year: Short-term gains - $6,000 Long-term gains - $4,000 Short-term losses - $2,000 Long-term losses - $5,000 Net short-term gain/loss - $4,000 ST gain ($6,000 ST gain - $2,000 ST loss) Net long-term gain/loss - $1,000 LT loss ($4,000 LT gain - $5,000 LT loss) Final net gain/loss - $3,000 short-term gain ($4,000 ST gain - $1,000 LT loss) Again, Frank can only deduct $3,000 of final net short- or long-term losses against other types of income for that year and must carry forward any remaining balance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9c913aa51881967e18ada87b98694a77",
"text": "\"It sounds like this is an entirely unsettled question, unfortunately. In the examples you provide, I think it is safe to say that none of those are 'substantially identical'; a small overlap or no overlap certainly should not be considered such by a reasonable interpretation of the rule. This article on Kitces goes into some detail on the topic. A few specifics. First, Former publication 564 explains: Ordinarily, shares issued by one mutual fund are not considered to be substantially identical to shares issued by another mutual fund. Of course, what \"\"ordinarily\"\" means is unspecified (and this is no longer a current publication, so, who knows). The Kitces article goes on to explain that the IRS hasn't really gone after wash sales for mutual funds: Over the years, the IRS has not pursued wash sale abuses against mutual funds, perhaps because it just wasn’t very feasible to crack down on them, or perhaps because it just wasn’t perceived as that big of an abuse. After all, while the rules might allow you to loss-harvest a particular stock you couldn’t have otherwise, it also limits you from harvesting ANY losses if the overall fund is up in the aggregate, since losses on individual stocks can’t pass through to the mutual fund shareholders. But then goes to explain about ETFs being very different: sell SPY, buy IVV or VTI, and you're basically buying/selling the identical thing (99% or so correlation in stocks owned). The recommendation by the article is to look at the correlation in owned stocks, and stay away from things over 95%; that seems reasonable in my book as well. Ultimately, there will no doubt be a large number of “grey” and murky situations, but I suspect that until the IRS provides better guidance (or Congress rewrites/updates the wash sale rules altogether!), in the near term the easiest “red flag” warning is simply to look at the correlation between the original investment being loss-harvested, and the replacement security; at correlations above 0.95, and especially at 0.99+, it’s difficult to argue that the securities are not ”substantially identical” to each other in performance. Basically - use common sense, and don't do anything you think would be hard to defend in an audit, but otherwise you should be okay.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b3371f553b12a1b7800b33aa60fbd97b",
"text": "Yes (most likely). If you are exchanging investments for cash, you will have to pay tax on that - disregarding capital losses, capital loss carryovers, AGI thresholds, and other special rules (which there is no indication of in your question). You will have to calculate the gain on Schedule D, and report that as income on your 1040. This is the case whether you buy different or same stocks.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "be6286192952ce5f265cd62cc87a30a8",
"text": "\"For restricted stock, I think the vesting date meets the requirements of the second wash sale trigger from IRS Pub 550: Wash Sales: Acquire substantially identical stock or securities in a fully taxable trade I base this on these two quotes from IRS Pub 525: Restricted Property: any income from the property, or the right to use the property, is included in your income as additional compensation in the year you receive the income or have the right to use the property. - Until the property becomes substantially vested, it is owned by the person who makes the transfer to you, usually your employer. So on the vest date: The transfer is taxable Ownership is transferred to you That seems close enough to \"\"a fully taxable trade\"\" for me. Maybe this changes if you pay the tax on the stock on the grant date. See Pub 525: Restricted Property: Choosing to include in income for year of transfer. Obviously, if this is important you should consult your tax advisor. Technicalities aside, I don't think it passes the sniff test. You're getting salable shares when the restricted stock vests. If you're selling other shares at a loss within 30 days of the vesting date, that smells like a wash sale to me.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "473172c8942be1448d8003049b914273",
"text": "short answer: no, not to my knowledge long answer: why do you want to do that? crypto are very volatile and, in my opinion, if you are looking for a speculative exercise, you are better off seeking to understand basic technical analysis and trading stocks based on that",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7272c31978e10ac0038691e7e9e1f605",
"text": "\"The only \"\"authoritative document\"\" issued by the IRS to date relating to Cryptocurrencies is Notice 2014-21. It has this to say as the first Q&A: Q-1: How is virtual currency treated for federal tax purposes? A-1: For federal tax purposes, virtual currency is treated as property. General tax principles applicable to property transactions apply to transactions using virtual currency. That is to say, it should be treated as property like any other asset. Basis reporting the same as any other property would apply, as described in IRS documentation like Publication 550, Investment Income and Expenses and Publication 551, Basis of Assets. You should be able to use the same basis tracking method as you would use for any other capital asset like stocks or bonds. Per Publication 550 \"\"How To Figure Gain or Loss\"\", You figure gain or loss on a sale or trade of property by comparing the amount you realize with the adjusted basis of the property. Gain. If the amount you realize from a sale or trade is more than the adjusted basis of the property you transfer, the difference is a gain. Loss. If the adjusted basis of the property you transfer is more than the amount you realize, the difference is a loss. That is, the assumption with property is that you would be using specific identification. There are specific rules for mutual funds to allow for using average cost or defaulting to FIFO, but for general \"\"property\"\", including individual stocks and bonds, there is just Specific Identification or FIFO (and FIFO is just making an assumption about what you're choosing to sell first in the absence of any further information). You don't need to track exactly \"\"which Bitcoin\"\" was sold in terms of exactly how the transactions are on the Bitcoin ledger, it's just that you bought x bitcoins on date d, and when you sell a lot of up to x bitcoins you specify in your own records that the sale was of those specific bitcoins that you bought on date d and report it on your tax forms accordingly and keep track of how much of that lot is remaining. It works just like with stocks, where once you buy a share of XYZ Corp on one date and two shares on another date, you don't need to track the movement of stock certificates and ensure that you sell that exact certificate, you just identify which purchase lot is being sold at the time of sale.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2344c287634cb6e22a4b35f37aee3997",
"text": "Sale of a stock creates a capital gain. It can be offset with losses, up to $3000 more than the gains. It can be deferred when held within a retirement account. When you gift appreciated stock, the basis follows. So when I gifted my daughter's trust shares, there was still tax due upon sale. The kiddy tax helped reduce but not eliminate it. And there was no quotes around ownership. The money is gone, her account is for college. No 1031 exchange exists for stock.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b2ba7e62423d2a5034918ec4625a3eab",
"text": "It looks like it has to deal with an expiration of rights as a taxable event. I found this link via google, which states that Not only does the PSEC shareholder have a TAXABLE EVENT, but he has TWO taxable events. The net effect of these two taxable events has DIFFERENT CONSEQUENCES for DIFFERENT SHAREHOLDERS depending upon their peculiar TAX SITUATIONS. The CORRECT STATEMENT of the tax treatment of unexercised PYLDR rights is in the N-2 on page 32, which reads in relevant part as follows: “…, if you receive a Subscription Right from PSEC and do not sell or exercise that right before it expires, you should generally expect to have (1) taxable dividend income equal to the fair market value (if any) of the Subscription Right on the date of its distribution by PSEC to the extent of PSEC’s current and accumulated earnings and profits and (2) a capital loss upon the expiration of such right in an amount equal to your adjusted tax basis (if any) in such right (which should generally equal the fair market value (if any) of the Subscription Right on the date of its distribution by PSEC).” Please note, for quarterly “estimated taxes” purposes, that the DIVIDEND taxable events occur “ON THE DATE OF ITS DISTRIBUTION BY PSEC (my emphasis),” while the CAPITAL LOSS occurs “UPON EXPIRATION OF SUCH RIGHT” (my emphasis). They do NOT occur on 31 December 2015 or some other date. However, to my knowledge, neither of the taxable events he mentions would be taxed by 4/15. If you are worried about it, I would recommend seeing a tax professional. Otherwise I'd wait to see the tax forms sent by your brokerage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8958b5c15f7245431cc66cdfeca66ed0",
"text": "Questrade is a Canada based broker offering US stock exchange transactions as well. It says this right on their homepage. ETFs are traded like stocks, so the answer is yes. Why did you think they only offered funds?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "891a71c4b58b0b1d82e65a1683241bf6",
"text": "As long as the tax rate is below 100%, there is still money to make. You pay taxes on your gain, not on your trading volume. Taxed income is still income - many people seem to get that wrong.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "174500b2d286ea36587834083f1490ed",
"text": "Different exchanges sometimes offer different order types, and of course have different trading fees. But once a trade is finished, it should not matter where it was executed.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
74477f435b7914ca348a9548ee590053
|
Pros and cons of using a personal assistant service to manage your personal finances?
|
[
{
"docid": "9f3741441e2ffe131f5a60b552372369",
"text": "Years ago I hired someone part time (not virtual however) to help me with all sorts of things. Yes it helps free up some time. However particularly with finances, it does take a leap of faith. If you have high value accounts that this person will be dealing with you can always get them bonded. Getting an individual with a clean credit history and no criminal background bonded usually costs < $600 a year (depending on $ risk exposure). I would start out small with tasks that do not directly put that person in control of your money. In my case I didn't have an official business, I worked a normal 9-5 job, but I owned several rental units, and an interest in a bar. My assistant also had a normal 9-5 job and worked 5-10 hours a week for me on various things. Small stuff at first like managing my calendar, reminding me when bills were due, shipping packages, even calling to set up a hair cut. At some point she moved to contacting tenants, meeting with contractors, showing apartments, etc... I paid her a fixed about each week plus expenses. I would pay her extra if I needed her more (say showing an apartment on a Saturday, or meeting a plumber). She would handled all sorts of stuff for me, and I gave her the flexibility when needed to fit things in with her schedule. After about a month I did get her a credit card for expenses. Obviously a virtual assistant would not be able to do some of these things but I think you get the point. Eventually when the trust had been built up I put her on most of my accounts and gave her some fiduciary responsibilities as well. I'm not sure that this level of trust would be possible to get to with a virtual assistant. However, with a virtual assistant you might be able to avoid one really big danger of hiring an assistant.... You see, several years later when I sold off my apartment buildings I no longer needed an assistant, so I married her. Now one good thing about that is I don't have to pay her now. ;)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e7ecc10268766997672000064e46af68",
"text": "\"Not knowing anything about your situation or what makes it so complex, I would have to agree with the other commenters. If your accountant screws up your business goes under, but at least your personal finances are safe from that and you'll recover (unless all your wealth is tied up in your business). If your virtual assistant uses your personal information to take all your money, ruin your credit, or any number of other things, you're going to spend a loooong time trying to get things \"\"back to normal\"\". If the few hours per month spent managing your finances is starting to add up, I might suggest looking into other ways to automate and manage them. For instance, are all of your bills (or as many as you can) e-bills that can be issued electronically to your bank? Have you set up online bill pay with your bank, so that you can automatically pay all the bills when they arrive? Have you tried using any number of online services (Mint, Thrive, your bank's \"\"virtual wallet/portfolio\"\") to help with budget, expense tracking, etc.? Again, I don't know your exact situation, but hopefully some of these suggestions help. Once I started automating my savings and a lot of my bill paying, it gave me a lot of peace of mind.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "886833d12cd46731b76208dad290f407",
"text": "When you want to hire personal assistants, you must be sure that you are hiring in a trusted company or the person you talk to have been proven by a lot of people. You must be wise in choosing one because these people will handle some of your personal things and data.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "4eb21a693fbd8bfccffd42ad8ca2d72a",
"text": "I use mint.com for tracking my finances. It works on mobile phones, tablets, and in a browser. If you don't mind the initial hassle of putting in the credentials you use to access your account online, you'll find that you're able to build a comprehensive picture of the state of your finances relatively quickly. It does a great job of separating the various types of financial transactions you engage in, and also lets you customize those classifications with tags. It's ad-supported, so there's no out-of-pocket cost to you, and it doesn't preclude you from using the personal finance software you already have on your phone.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5ed2cb583c94cdfb5b01560cfa611d27",
"text": "So long as you don't hate what you are doing, I'd say the price is somewhere in the neighborhood of $100-200 year of income to be worth the bookkeeping. I'd only say more than that if you have a ridiculously complex tax situation, you have an irrational hatred of filling out a few forms once a year, or if you just have such a stupidly large amount of money that even having a few hundred dollars a year to donate to people in desperate need just doesn't mean anything to you. Or if you are under special income limits and just a few dollars of income would put you in a bad situation (like a loss of medical benefits, etc). The reason is actually quite simple: the taxes aren't really that hard or time consuming. I've handled three self-employment businesses in my life, and unless you are trying to itemize every last dollar of business deductions and expenses, or you really want to scrape out every last cent from minor deductions that require considerable extra paperwork, it's a few extra forms on your taxes. Most of the extra taxes are as a percentage, so it reduces the benefits, but really not by much. You don't have to make it extra complicated if the extra complexity doesn't give you a big payoff in benefit. I would suggest you pick the simplest imaginable possible system for accounting for this, so that you might only spend an extra few hours per year on the books and taxes. Don't keep $10 sheet music receipts if you feel it's a burden to try to itemize expenses, etc. Instead, the decision should be if you (or in this case your wife) would enjoy doing it, and bringing in money can just be nice in it's own way. I'd suggest she keep some out for little extra niceties, earmark some for feel-good charitable giving, and then of course sock away the rest. Don't let extra income be an unnecessary burden that prevents you from getting it in the first place.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8cb3cc79ade469823657cee0a47b0478",
"text": "I have used TurboTax successfully for a couple of years. In addition to things already mentioned, it has some forums where you can get some simple questions answered (with complex ones it's always better to consult the professional) and it can import some data from your salary provider if you're lucky (some companies are supported, some aren't) - then you save time on filling out W2s, and can allow you to track your donations with sister site ItsDeductible.com, compare data with last year, etc. Not sure how desktop software compares. So far I didn't see any downsides except for, of course, the fact that your information is available online. But in our times most companies offer online access to earnings statements, etc., anyway, and so far the weakest link for the financial information has proven to be retailers, not tax preparers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "02d85f7e04b21aed3be88ef5151f5718",
"text": "Well the idea of 'good practice' is subjective so obviously there won't be an objectively correct answer. I suspect that whatever article you read was making this recommendation as a budgeting tool to physically isolate your reserve of cash from your spending account(s) as a means to keep spending in check. This is a common idea that I've heard often enough, though I don't think I am alone in believing that it's unnecessary except in the case of a habitual spender who cannot be trusted to stay within a budget. I suppose there is a very small argument to be made about security where if you use a bank account for daily spending and that account is somehow compromised, the short-term damage is limited. In the end, I would argue that if you're in control of spending and budgeting, have a single source of income that is from regular employment, and you use a credit card for most of your daily spending, there's no compelling reason to have more than one bank account. Some people have a checking and savings account simply for the psychological effect of separating their money, some couples have 3-4 accounts for income, personal spending, and savings, other people have separate accounts for business/self-employment funds, and a few people like having many accounts that act as hard limits for spending in different categories. Of course, the other submitted answer is correct in noting that the more accounts that you have, the more you are opening yourself up to accounting issues if funds don't transfer the way you expect them to (assuming you're emptying the accounts often). Some banks are more lenient with this, however, and may offer you the option to freely 'overdraft' by pulling funding from another pre-designated account that you also hold at the same bank.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eaa2180e94ca419c10d2db37381389b7",
"text": "I'm not directly affiliated with the company (I work for one of the add-on partners) but I can wholeheartedly recommend Xero for both personal and business finances. Their basis is to make accounting simple and clean, without sacrificing any of the power behind having the figures there in the first place.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2da9c6cb77c6d43459a25ff16f45edfb",
"text": "I'll chime in and say that my wife and I thought this was a really dumb idea, until we tried it. I was keeping track of everything in my checkbook ledger, but having the physical money in the envelopes really does work! We thought it would be more hassle than it's worth, and there were hiccups the first month or two, but in the end we both agree this is what started our movement towards responsible money management and debt reduction. We have the following Categories: Obviously, ymmv, but the point is to take any categories in your budget that are hard to budget for, as they vary from month to month, and just set aside an amount form your paycheck, in cash, for each one of those categories in an envelope. What I've noticed is that by putting the money aside up front, it's MUCH easier to stick to the budget. We'll often shuffle money around in the envelopes if priorities change for a particular month as well, so rather than taking money away from an extra payment on a debt or our planned savings transfer, which would have been our default action pre-envelopes, we can just move $XX from Date Night into Groceries if we have to, hence, planning out how we'll spend our money, budgeting, has gotten a LOT easier since adopting this system.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d7b4f03d1e0956ca87f51146a917da16",
"text": "I like Quicken for personal use, and they have a small business edition if you don't want to move into QuickBooks.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d6ac6bef5e8fc21dc420d50a8854bbe2",
"text": "It is absolutely worth it. My wife and I have two of these accounts (different banks). We are required to use our cards 20 times for one bank, and 15 for the other. We have yet to miss the required transactions in a month (over 15 months of use now), and are actually considering getting a third account. Between the two of us, we simply have to use our card on average once a day. Getting gas? Use your debit card. Getting stamps? Use your debit card? Self checkout? Use your debit card twice. Eating out? Use your debit card. If married, split the bill. As soon as we reach the minimum, we stop using the debit cards and switch to credit cards to further boost the rewards. Maybe it's easier for us since we don't have kids and are out a lot, but 12 transactions is really simple to obtain. We receive ~$100 a month from our two accounts, all for doing something we already do.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "90b0557ba3649538e4ef1b972e18f484",
"text": "Mint.com is a fantastic free personal finance software that can assist you with managing your money, planning budgets and setting financial goals. I've found the features to be more than adequate with keeping me informed of my financial situation. The advantage with Mint over Microsoft Money is that all of your debit/credit transactions are automatically imported and categorized (imperfectly but good enough). Mint is capable of handling bank accounts, credit card accounts, loans, and assets (such as cars, houses, etc). The downsides are:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ce8676528e1a2a117a0179043c2db82d",
"text": "\"Money is a token that you can trade to other people for favors. Debt is a tool that allows you to ask for favors earlier than you might otherwise. What you have currently is: If the very worst were to happen, such as: You would owe $23,000 favors, and your \"\"salary\"\" wouldn't make a difference. What is a responsible amount to put toward a car? This is a tricky question to answer. Statistically speaking the very worst isn't worth your consideration. Only the \"\"very bad\"\", or \"\"kinda annoying\"\" circumstances are worth worrying about. The things that have a >5% chance of actually happening to you. Some of the \"\"very bad\"\" things that could happen (10k+ favors): Some of the \"\"kinda annoying\"\" things that could happen (~5k favors): So now that these issues are identified, we can settle on a time frame. This is very important. Your $30,000 in favors owed are not due in the next year. If your student loans have a typical 10-year payoff, then your risk management strategy only requires that you keep $3,000 in favors (approx) because that's how many are due in the next year. Except you have more than student loans for favors owed to others. You have rent. You eat food. You need to socialize. You need to meet your various needs. Each of these things will cost a certain number of favors in the next year. Add all of them up. Pretending that this data was correct (it obviously isn't) you'd owe $27,500 in favors if you made no money. Up until this point, I've been treating the data as though there's no income. So how does your income work with all of this? Simple, until you've saved 6-12 months of your expenses (not salary) in an FDIC or NCUSIF insured savings account, you have no free income. If you don't have savings to save yourself when bad things happen, you will start having more stress (what if something breaks? how will I survive till my next paycheck? etc.). Stress reduces your life expectancy. If you have no free income, and you need to buy a car, you need to buy the cheapest car that will meet your most basic needs. Consider carpooling. Consider walking or biking or public transit. You listed your salary at \"\"$95k\"\", but that isn't really $95k. It's more like $63k after taxes have been taken out. If you only needed to save ~$35k in favors, and the previous data was accurate (it isn't, do your own math): Per month you owe $2,875 in favors (34,500 / 12) Per month you gain $5,250 in favors (63,000 / 12) You have $7,000 in initial capital--I mean--favors You net $2,375 each month (5,250 - 2,875) To get $34,500 in favors will take you 12 months ( ⌈(34,500 - 7,000) / 2,375⌉ ) After 12 months you will have $2,375 in free income each month. You no longer need to save all of it (Although you may still need to save some of it. Be sure recalculate your expenses regularly to reevaluate if you need additional savings). What you do with your free income is up to you. You've got a safety net in saved earnings to get you through rough times, so if you want to buy a $100,000 sports car, all you have to do is account for it in your savings and expenses in all further calculations as you pay it off. To come up with a reasonable number, decide on how much you want to spend per month on a car. $500 is a nice round number that's less than $2,375. How many years do you want to save for the car? OR How many years do you want to pay off a car loan? 4 is a nice even number. $500 * 12 * 4 = $24,000 Now reduce that number 10% for taxes and fees $24,000 * 0.9 = $21,600 If you're getting a loan, deduct the cost of interest (using 5% as a ballpark here) $21,600 * 0.95 = $20,520 So according to my napkin math you can afford a car that costs ~$20k if you're willing to save/owe $500/month, but only after you've saved enough to be financially secure.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0e6906c71943738fc5f8b7d44652ea27",
"text": "Here are the pros and cons and an analytical framework for making a decision. Pros of walking away: Cons: Here's the framework: compare the value of first and second sections for you [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/business/30serviceside.html?_r=0 [2] http://www.mortgagecalculator.org/",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1ee3149b12c0eb37a8beb933962a0205",
"text": "I recently made the switch to keeping track of my finance (Because I found an app that does almost everything for me). Before, my situation was fairly simple: I was unable to come up with a clear picture of how much I was spending vs saving (altho I had a rough idea). Now I here is what it changes: What I can do now: Is it useful ? Since I don't actually need to save more than I do (I am already saving 60-75% of my income), 1) isn't important. Since I don't have any visibility on my personal situation within a few years, 2) and 3) are not important. Conclusion: Since I don't actually spend any time building theses informations I am happy to use this app. It's kind of fun. If I did'nt had that tool... It would be a waste of time for me. Depends on your situation ? Nb: the app is Moneytree. Works only in Japan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "43971a28889cd01e188d721a276ae8a9",
"text": "Money Manager Ex PROS: CONS",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9e73b8c9ad91cf3c650c89a14d2f62db",
"text": "Quicken has tools for this, but they have some quirks so i hesitate to actually recommend it on that basis.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "65df9092082134e7c1aca2e76080ff15",
"text": "Disadvantages: Advantages: In my opinion, the convenience and price (free!) of online options make doing your taxes online worth the negligible risks.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
823845f3198645d6d96724057bc1c38f
|
What's the difference when asked for “debit or credit” by a store when using credit and debit cards?
|
[
{
"docid": "5b341f79c0872469203a249e72a7f18f",
"text": "\"These are two different ways of processing payments. They go through different systems many times, and are treated differently by the banks, credit card issuers and the stores. Merchants pay different fees on transactions paid by debit cards and by credit cards. Debit transactions require PIN, and are deducted from your bank account directly. In order to achieve that, the transaction has to reach the bank in real time, otherwise it will be declined. This means, that the merchant has to have a line of communications open to the relevant processor, that in turn has to be able to connect to the bank and get the authorization - all that while on-line. The bank verifies the PIN, authorizes the transaction, and deducts the amount from your account, while you're still at the counter. Many times these transactions cannot be reversed, and the fraud protections and warranties are different from credit transactions. Credit transactions don't have to go to your card issuer at all. The merchant can accept credit payment without calling anyone, and without getting prior authorizations. Even if the merchant sends the transaction for authorization with its processor, if the processor cannot reach the issuing bank - they can still approve the transaction under certain conditions. This is, however, never true with debit cards (even if used as \"\"credit\"\"). They're not deducted from your bank account, but accumulated on your credit card account. They're posted there when the actual transaction reaches the card issuer, which may be many days (and even many months) after the transaction took place. Credit transactions can be reversed (in some cases very easily), and enjoy from a higher level of fraud protection. In some countries (and most, if not all, of the EU) fraudulent credit transactions are never the consumer's problem, always the bank's. Not so with debit transactions. Banks may be encouraging you to use debit for several reasons: Merchants will probably prefer credit because: Consumers will probably be better off with credit because:\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3884d8045ae2d4c7950e7bd887f9b506",
"text": "It depends on your bank and your terms of service, but using the card one way or the other may affect things such as how long it takes to process, what buyer protections you have, etc. It also affects the store as I believe they are charged differently for debit vs credit transactions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f9ecbd20ba2f2a878ed7134224091f9b",
"text": "\"When using a debit card in a \"\"credit\"\" way, you don't need to enter your PIN, which protects you from skimmers and similar nastiness. Also, assuming it's a Visa or Mastercard debit card, you now have access to all of the fraud protection and other things that you would get with a credit card. The downside for the merchant is that credit card transaction fees are typically higher than debit card transaction fees. I'm less familiar with using a credit card in a \"\"debit\"\" way, so don't have anything to offer on that part of your question.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b7f05c59befb3907f059b801dc96e45b",
"text": "I'm surprised by all the pro-credit answers here, debit has some definite advantages. Most importantly, when you pay with a credit card, the merchant pays around 3% of the transaction to the credit company. In many states, they are forced to charge you the same amount, and this is frequently toted as ''consumer protection''. But consider what this means for the business: they loose money for every credit transaction, and they're legally forbidden to do anything about it. So you're taking 3% from a business and handing it over to a massive cooperation. To make matters worse, the buisness is inevitably going to have to raise their prices (albiet by a small amount), so in the end the average consumer has gained nothing. On the other hand, the credit card company wins big, and they use their profits to pay lobbyists and lawyers to keep these rules in place. To put in the worst possible light, it's essentially legal extortion, verging on corruption. As for the fraud protection offered, while it may be true that credit cards will offer a more hassle-free reimbursement (i.e. you just don't have to pay the bill) if your card is stolen, consumer protection laws also extend to debit: in many cases your bank is legally required to cut you a check for all the money you lost.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "83f758c9b6e7d0361a0f2e31ea2af083",
"text": "\"Just to add about using debit card as \"\"credit\"\" vs \"\"debit\"\" way: In addition to the difference of having to enter the PIN when using \"\"debit\"\" mode (vs having to sign in \"\"credit\"\" mode), for stores that offer cash back (i.e. get cash out of your account at the same time as paying), you can only get cash back when using \"\"debit\"\" mode.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2092a8787b318cab157e958b640b32f3",
"text": "Credit in debit way - the card simply functions like a debit card for that transaction - pulling cash from your checking account. No difference. You've simply discovered the fact that some banks are using the same piece of plastic for two functions, debit which draws funds directly from your checking, and credit which offers you time to pay a bill the comes in some time later. It's a personal choice.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "6c5de5165e603a04b0787b43b08c245c",
"text": "In most cases, the brand on the card, eg Visa or MasterCard, is a middleman. The company processes the transaction, transferring $xx from the bank to the seller, and telling the bank to debit the buyer's account. The bank is at risk, not the company transacting the purchase. What's interesting is that American Express started as both. My first Amex card, issued in 1979 (long expired, but in my box of memorabilia) had no bank. American Express offered a card that offered no extended credit, it was pay in full each month. Since then, Amex started offering extended credit, i.e. with annual interest, and minimum payments, and more recently, offering transaction processing for banks which take on the credit risk, essentially becoming very similar to MasterCard and Visa.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4571505cd5e76a598b1090e109add091",
"text": "\"A lot of credit card companies these days uses what they call \"\"daily interest\"\" where they charge the interest rate for the number of days till you pay off what you spent. This allows them to make more money than the \"\"period billing\"\". The idea of credit, theoretically, is that there isn't really a day when you can borrow without paying interest - in theory\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d45bfce38b0fdd281e087adfda5cb3e8",
"text": "Here's a simple answer: If your debit card has a visa or mc logo, it can be used as a 'credit card'. In order to do so, you shouldn't enter the pin, instead choose 'credit' and sign for it. Unlike a credit card, you can't spend money you don't have but like a credit card, your purchase is protected by the credit card company (visa/mc) and gives you privileges like zero fraud liability and purchase disputes. http://www.moneycone.com/should-you-sign-for-a-debit-card-purchase-or-use-your-pin/",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9e88c6e1c6c8ea228540df3db741c995",
"text": "\"You ask about the difference between credit and debit, but that may be because you're missing something important. Regardless of credit/debit, there is value in carrying two different cards associated with two different accounts. The reason is simply that because of loss, fraud, or your own mismanagement, or even the bank's technical error, any card can become unusable for some period of time. Exactly how long depends what happened, but just sending you a new card can easily take more than one business day, which might well be longer than you'd like to go without access to any funds. In that situation you would be glad of a credit card, and you would equally be glad of a second debit card on a separate account. So if your question is \"\"I have one bank account with one debit card, and the only options I'm willing to contemplate are (a) do nothing or (b) take a credit card as well\"\", then the answer is yes, take a credit card as well, regardless of the pros or cons of credit vs debit. Even if you only use the credit card in the event that you drop your debit card down a drain. So what you can now consider is the pros and cons of a credit card vs managing an additional bank account -- unless you seriously hate one or more of the cons of credit cards, the credit card is likely to win. My bank has given me a debit card on a cash savings account, which is a little scary, but would cover most emergencies if I didn't have a credit card too. Of course the interest rate is rubbish and I sometimes empty my savings account into a better investment, so I don't use it as backup, but I could. Your final question \"\"can a merchant know if I give him number of debit or credit card\"\" is already asked: Can merchants tell the difference between a credit card and embossed debit card? Yes they can, and yes there are a few things you can't (or might prefer not to) do with debit. The same could even be said of Visa vs. Mastercard, leading to the conclusion that if you have a Visa debit you should look for a Mastercard credit. But that seems to be less of an issue as time goes on and almost everywhere in Europe apparently takes both or neither. If you travel a lot outside the EU then you might want to be loaded down with every card under the sun, and three different kinds of cash, but you'd already know that without asking ;-)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "962d60ed03237014702ed48726e48e7d",
"text": "Is there a debit card accessing this account? When you spend money on a debit card for certain item, including, but not limited to gas, restaurant, hotel, a bit extra is held in reserve. For example, a $100 restaurant charge might hold $125, to allow for a tip. (You're a generous tipper, right?) The actual sales slips my take days to reconcile. It's for this reason that I've remarked how credit cards have their place. Using debit cards requires that one have more in their account than they need to spend, especially when taking a trip including hotel costs.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fe6c6b035064b9df1adf8d9f29e0d9c0",
"text": "In some case the customer wants the name to be cryptic or misleading. They don't want to advertise the true nature of the business they visited. In other cases the transaction may be reported through another business. A few years ago the local PTA was having a silent auction as a fundraiser. A local business allowed the PTA to use their credit card reader to process transactions over a certain amount. Of course when the credit card statement arrived it looked like you spent $500 at the florist. I have seen PayPal listed when donating to some small charities. I have noted another case where confusion can occur. I used a debit card to buy a soda from a vending machine: the name and location were the name of the vending machine company and the location of their main office. It didn't say soda machine city A. It said Joe's vending company city B. In most cases the business and the credit card company want to make it easy to identify the transactions to keep the cost of research and charge backs to a minimum.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "56835c16340b124ccf9801b3f8d8f94b",
"text": "My reason for not using direct debit is #4 on Dheer's list. I just don't know where exactly I'm going to have what balance on what day, because I usually don't leave more than $100-$200 on my checking, all my cash is in Savings. I also don't want to direct debit from Savings in order to not break the 6-withdrawals limit accidentally. I use direct debit to my credit card where its available, but most places charge for that and I don't want to pay the extra fee. So, I prefer to pay my bills manually. What I don't understand is the people who pay the credit card bills when the statement arrives. I haven't received a credit card statement in years. Don't they have on-line access? Can't they set reminders there? If so - throw the card away, and get a normal one. Same with mailing checks, by the way. I'm still not even half done with the free checks I got from Washington Mutual 5 years ago. I almost never write checks. All the bills are paid online, whether through bill-pay service or an ACH transfer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "00784d70261597cf764bc79c19735260",
"text": "Credited to your account means amount has been deposited to your account(this will be your income). Debited from your account means withdrawn from your account(This will be your expense). Hope this clarifies your question. Regards Jayanthi",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0a84d9ac4bc17b2abe46675a8f89df9c",
"text": "Cash is king. PIN-based debit transactions are cheap. In terms of credit cards, a regular (ie. not a gold card) with no rewards has the lowest rates. Bigger merchants with lots of card volume likely have better deals that make the differences less pronounced.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0fcc289f55e8fd85bb987f6f218ff4fe",
"text": "If you are solvent enough, and organised enough to pay your credit card bill in full each month, then use the credit card. There are no disadvantages and several plus points, already mentioned. Use the debit card when you would be surcharged for using the credit card, or where you can negotiate a discount for not subjecting the vendor to credit card commission.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3369ef70fc77b2dbaa0460f96c37ed79",
"text": "For many folks these days, not having a credit card is just not practical. Personally, I do quite a bit of shopping online for things not available locally. Cash is not an option in these cases and I don't want to give out my debit card number. So, a strategy is this: use a credit card for a purchase. Then immediately, or within a couple days, pay the credit card with that amount. Sounds simple but it takes a little effort to do it. This strategy gives you the convenience of a credit card and decreases the interest enormously.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d76b0aa423ae2d10652b65376f7b65d4",
"text": "\"I'll assume United States as the country; the answer may (probably does) vary somewhat if this is not correct. Also, I preface this with the caveat that I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant. However, this is my understanding: You must recognize the revenue at the time the credits are purchased (when money changes hands), and charge sales tax on the full amount at that time. This is because the customer has pre-paid and purchased a service (i.e. the \"\"credits\"\", which are units of time available in the application). This is clearly a complete transaction. The use of the credits is irrelevant. This is equivalent to a customer purchasing a box of widgets for future delivery; the payment is made and the widgets are available but have simply not been shipped (and therefore used). This mirrors many online service providers (say, NetFlix) in business model. This is different from the case in which a customer purchases a \"\"gift card\"\" or \"\"reloadable debit card\"\". In this case, sales tax is NOT collected (because this is technically not a purchase). Revenue is also not booked at this time. Instead, the revenue is booked when the gift card's balance is used to pay for a good or service, and at that time the tax is collected (usually from the funds on the card). To do otherwise would greatly complicate the tax basis (suppose the gift card is used in a different state or county, where sales tax is charged differently? Suppose the gift card is used to purchase a tax-exempt item?) For justification, see bankruptcy consideration of the two cases. In the former, the customer has \"\"ownership\"\" of an asset (the credits), which cannot be taken from him (although it might be unusable). In the latter, the holder of the debit card is technically an unsecured creditor of the company - and is last in line if the company's assets are liquidated for repayment. Consider also the case where the cost of the \"\"credits\"\" is increased part-way through the year (say, from $10 per credit to $20 per credit) or if a discount promotion is applied (buy 5 credits, get one free). The customer has a \"\"tangible\"\" item (one credit) which gets the same functionality regardless of price. This would be different if instead of \"\"credits\"\" you instead maintain an \"\"account\"\" where the user deposited $1000 and was billed for usage; in this case you fall back to the \"\"gift card\"\" scenario (but usage is charged at the current rate) and revenue is booked when the usage is purchased; similarly, tax is collected on the purchase of the service. For this model to work, the \"\"credit\"\" would likely have to be refundable, and could not expire (see gift cards, above), and must be usable on a variety of \"\"services\"\". You may have particular responsibility in the handling of this \"\"deposit\"\" as well.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fd4e136401631719b477bcecbdb36789",
"text": "\"Yes and No. There's always a \"\"fee\"\". The difference in credit vs debit usually determines how much that fee is and how it's paid. Each vendor who accepts the major credit card is under contract to pay for equipment and meet certain standards. The same is true for debt card transactions. How much the \"\"fee\"\" is can vary based on the contract the vendor has with MasterCard/Visa/AMEX. But in general most debt transactions go back to the bank who distributed the card.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ecc28786d6578b97f8d7ad09ab5ea1b2",
"text": "\"There may be a confusion here: I don't think you can get cash back at a register with a credit card. See http://www.cardratings.com/can-i-get-cash-back-when-i-buy-something-with-a-credit-card.html Cash back is only available with a debit card. With a debit card, the money comes directly out of your account at the moment of the transaction. With a credit card, the CC company loans the money to you and you get a monthly bill. You can get cash advances at ATM machines, but typically comes with hefty fees and exorbitant interest rates, so I strongly advice against this. There are \"\"Cash Back\"\" credit cards, but that means that you get a percentage of your purchases refunded as cash (or points).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6ac871a44f02d05727d0da370515bfe2",
"text": "\"In general, following the W-4 instructions should result in withholdings that are fairly close to the amount of taxes that you will owe for the year, particularly if your situation is relatively uncomplicated. Claiming less withholdings than the form suggests can help ensure that you end up saving money in your \"\"interest-free IRS savings account\"\" and get a refund at the end of the year, which some people prefer so they don't need to budget separately for a tax payment. I'm guessing that the HR employee either prefers doing so himself or has on occasion received complaints from other employees that they \"\"didn't take enough out\"\". Personally, I'd prefer to claim as many withholdings as I can, and be sure to have some money aside in case it turns out that I have to owe a little bit, since it means I get more take-home pay throughout the year. It's good to keep in mind that a W-4 isn't written in stone. If it turns out that too much or too little is being taken out, you can always change it. You can also try playing around with the IRS withholding calculator to try some scenarios.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
6a2ddca71d05f22735a2e723c5a5df45
|
Giving kids annual tax free gift of $28,000
|
[
{
"docid": "6824a94d1bb6405c0a1cb9c114b590e3",
"text": "Why limit yourself to $28K per year? If you pay the tuition directly to the institution, it does not count against your annual or lifetime gift-giving totals. You could pay the entire tuition each year with no tax consequences. The only thing you can't do if you want to go this route is give the money to your children; that's what causes the gift tax to kick in. The money must be paid directly to the school.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6bde4f83c9800288a078596c981ea9c7",
"text": "\"From the IRS' website: How many annual exclusions are available? The annual exclusion applies to gifts to each donee. In other words, if you give each of your children $11,000 in 2002-2005, $12,000 in 2006-2008, $13,000 in 2009-2012 and $14,000 on or after January 1, 2013, the annual exclusion applies to each gift. The annual exclusion for 2014, 2015, and 2016 is $14,000. What if my spouse and I want to give away property that we own together? You are each entitled to the annual exclusion amount on the gift. Together, you can give $22,000 to each donee (2002-2005) or $24,000 (2006-2008), $26,000 (2009-2012) and $28,000 on or after January 1, 2013 (including 2014, 2015, and 2016). https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/frequently-asked-questions-on-gift-taxes Basically, this means that it doesn't matter which person it specifically comes from as it's a \"\"joint\"\" gift. There is more complicated paperwork to fill out if the gift comes from a single check and needs to be \"\"split\"\" for taxes. Each parent would need to fill out a separate gift tax return form, essentially proving that both parents approve of the gift. It seems like it's easier if each parent writes a separate check, however it's not a requirement.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7b3f14aea68e7a10cc712ef26eb2dcd3",
"text": "If the child is a dependent the question is moot. It is accepted that the parent will pay for some, most, or all of the tuition. There is no tax issue for a current student. The payment of tuition helps them qualify as a dependent. There is no need to transfer the money to the child's account; it can be sent directly to the school. If the money is to be used in the future there are accounts such as 529s pre-paid accounts, and Coverdell savings accounts that can be used. All have pluses and minuses, all can impact taxes, and all can impact financial aid calculations.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "ffd08dea7dad0b41a6ed09bda545c60a",
"text": "No, any gifts you receive are not taxable to you. In fact, losing money in a scam (as this sure sounds like to me) can even be tax-deductible if you lose enough! I wouldn't recommend accepting anything. Usually people with millions are dollars are capable of setting up their own bank accounts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "525e392a0ac6242236018d295cf5f8fc",
"text": "I used TurboTax last year. It had a section for donations where it figured out the amounts of the IRS approved values for a donation. You would need to know the size of the television and the current condition it is in. He's a screenshot - though it's not from the TV section. https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/Taxes-101/Video--How-to-Estimate-the-Value-of-Clothing-for-IRS-Deductions/INF13870.html+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us TurboTax offers a free online tool called ItsDeductible that does the same thing (though I haven't tried it). Unfortunately, I don't have the current one with TV's to give you the range of amounts that apply to yours. --I am not affiliated with TurboTax and did not receive it for free for a review.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "39144d63f163fe2999ab1b3774ebda0e",
"text": "There is not any fraud involved. Anybody can gift money to another person.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eb0aaf07385a614da2199677cdbf2c77",
"text": "Look into the Coverdell Education Savings Account (ESA). This is like a Roth IRA for higher education expenses. Withdrawals are tax free when used for qualified expenses. Contributions are capped at $2000/year per beneficiary (not per account) so it works well for young kids, and not so well for kids about to go to College. This program (like all tax law) are prone to changes due to action (or inaction) in the US Congress. Currently, some of the benefits are set to sunset in 2010 though they are expected to be renewed in some form by Congress this year.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5def525b2a57b46bcad7d51eab491630",
"text": "\"Can I teach children an invaluable skill for free and provide a website or PayPal link for anyone who appreciates the result of my gift to their child and wishes to gift me money (or maybe they don’t have a child but believe in my revolutionary contribution to the future) as they see fit, up to $10K? Two immediately obvious problems with this strategy: What about when you receive gifts from people who aren't in the US? You have to declare, and pay taxes on, foreign gifts. It seems to me that these may not be gifts because they are given in connection with the service you provided rather than from \"\"detached and disinterested generosity\"\" as required to make the gift tax exempt. (See Commisioner v. Duberstein -- gift given to thank associate for a sales lead did not arise from detached generosity. See Stanton v. United States -- gift given in appreciation of services rendered may or may not be a gift for tax purposes. See also Bogardus v. Commissioner -- gifts inspired by past service can be tax exempt.)\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b13137b08509ded0d14669718b79b904",
"text": "It is correct, in general. Gift tax is indeed at 35%, but you have the first 14K of your gift exempt from it for each person you give to, yearly (verify the number, it changes every year). You can also use your lifetime exemption ($5.45M in 2016, subject to change each year), but at the amounts you're talking about it still will not be enough. Charitable (501(c)) organizations, paying for someone's tuition or medical expenses (directly to the providers), political donations, transfer between you and your spouse - these are all exempt from gift tax. If you have 10 millions to give, I'm sure you can afford a $200 consultation with a EA/CPA licensed in your state.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "98e60e1fe7071d83c46a65c9edaebb62",
"text": "When you apply for the mortgage expect that the lender will want your sister to sign a form explaining that that is a gift, otherwise the lender might be concerned that it is a loan. Be careful about the gifting of the money to a minor. You could run into an issue if the money isn't spent on something that benefits the child. The IRS does get concerned about using money transfers between child and parent to get around tax issues. Other than that you don't have a tax issue. If the gifting is done correctly your sister can gift $14,000 to you and your spouse each year. If your child has a large expenses in the near future: tuition, braces... Your sister could transfer funds to the child to pay for those items, thus freeing up some of your funds for the house.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cf058eee9c4834b7292b367fd3c1f15a",
"text": "As much as you want. There's no tax on gifts you receive. Gift tax is on the donor, i.e.: the person giving the gift. The $100K limit is for reporting. Gifts of $100K or more per year from foreign sources must be disclosed on form 3520 attached to your tax return. But there's no tax. Read more here.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3fd6b4b3098f509fe727bf7a0c5a72f0",
"text": "Canada doesn't seem to have a gift tax. http://www.taxtips.ca/personaltax/giftsandinheritances.htm",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "cd8357d402dd8084d8d89d0fc81cd792",
"text": "Of course, you've already realized that some of that is that smaller estates are more common than larger estates. But it seems unlikely that there are four times as many estates between $10 and $11 million as above that range. People who expect to die with an estate subject to inheritance tax tend to prepare. I don't know how common it is, but if the surviving member of a couple remarries, then the new spouse gets a separate exemption. And of course spouses inherit from spouses without tax. In theory this could last indefinitely. In practice, it is less likely. But if a married couple has $20 million, the first spouse could leave $15 million to the second and $5 million to other heirs. The second spouse could leave $10 million to a third spouse (after remarrying) and another $5 million to children with the first spouse. All without triggering the estate tax. People can put some of their estate into a trust. This can allow the heirs to continue to control the money while not paying inheritance tax. Supposedly Ford (of Ford Motor Company) took that route. Another common strategy is to give the maximum without gift tax each year. That's at least $14k per donor and recipient per year. So a married couple with two kids can transfer $56k per year. Plus $56k for the kids' spouses. And if there are four grandchildren, that's another $112k. Great-grandchildren count too. That's more than a million every five years. So given ten years to prepare, parents can transfer $2 million out of the estate and to the heirs without tax. Consider the case of two wealthy siblings. They've each maxed out their gifts to their own heirs. So they agree to max out their gifts to their sibling's heirs. This effectively doubles the transfer amount without tax implication. Also realize that they can pretransfer assets at the current market rate. So if a rich person has an asset that is currently undervalued, it may make sense to transfer it immediately as a gift. This will use up some of the estate exemption. But if you're going to transfer the asset eventually, you might as well do so when the value is optimal for your purpose. These are just the easy things to do. If someone wants, they can do more complicated things that make it harder for the IRS to track value. For example, the Bezos family invested in Amazon.com when Jeff Bezos was starting it. As a result, his company could survive capital losses that another company might not. The effect of this was to make him fabulously rich and his parents richer than they were. But he won't pay inheritance tax until his parents actually transfer the estate to him (and I believe they actually put it in a charitable trust). If his company had failed instead, he still would have been supported by the capital provided by his parents while it was open (e.g. his salary). But he wouldn't have paid inheritance tax on it. There are other examples of the same pattern: Fred Smith of FedEx; Donald Trump; Bill Gates of Microsoft; etc. The prime value of the estate was not in its transfer, but in working together while alive or through a family trust. The child's company became much more valuable as a result of a parent's wealth. And in two of those examples, the child was so successful that the parent became richer as a result. So the parent's estate does count. Meanwhile, another company might fail, leaving the estate below the threshold despite a great deal of parental support. And those aren't even fiddles. Those children started real companies and offered their parents real investment opportunities. A family that wants to do so can do a lot more with arrangements. Of course, the IRS may be looking for some of them. The point being that the estate might be more than $11 million earlier, but the parents can find ways to reduce it below the inheritance tax exemption by the time that they die.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "794ea32bcc14adc5586eceeeb639c9ee",
"text": "The $250K and up are not one homogeneous group. The lower end of this group benefits from normal Schedule A itemized deductions, e.g. mortgage interest, property tax, state income tax, and charitable donations. As you mention, 401(k) ($17k employee contribution limit this year), but also things like the dependent care account ($5k limit) and flexible spending account, limited usually up to $2500 in '14. The 529 deposits are limited to the gifting limit, $14K in 2014, but one can gift up to five years' deposits up front. This isn't a tax deduction, but does pull money out of one's estate and lets it grow tax free similar to a Roth IRA. The savings from such accounts is probably in the $15k - $20K range given the 20 or so year lifetime of the account and limited deposits. At the higher end, the folks making the news are those whose income is all considered capital gains. This applies both to hedge fund managers as well as CEOs whose compensation included large blocks of stock. This isn't a tax deduction, but it's how our system works, the taxation of capital gains vs. ordinary income.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bcfbda6f6efd84f91788beed892a5c23",
"text": "\"Donations, particularly those in the context of you providing a free service (software, libraries, etc.) are a notable grey area in tax code. Simply naming a button \"\"Donate\"\" doesn't necessarily classify the money transfer as a \"\"gift\"\". The IRS can decide that it's money you're being paid to continue your excellent work/service, making it taxable income (unless you're a registered non-profit organization). In the instance of Patreon, and many other crowd-funding services, you're providing a certain level of \"\"service\"\" for each tier of donations (such as early access or something, I'm not sure what you're offering), which means they're receiving consideration for their donations, which most likely makes it fall into taxable income (again, unless you're a registered non-profit organization). State tax law is even more convoluted, and you should consult your tax professional for clarification on your specific situation.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f81e91726cfe39f60d23c4b8e9cf2805",
"text": "Generally, a one time thing is considered a gift. For the donor this is obviously not a deductible expense, except for some specific cases (for example promotional gifts under $25 to vendors can be deducted, if you're a business, or charitable contributions to a recognized charity). However, if this is a regular practice - that would not be considered as a gift, but rather as a tax fraud, a criminal offense. Being attentive I would like to make a little gift or give some little (<100$) amount of money (cash/wire/online) for that Why? Generally, gift is exempt from income if no services were provided and the gift was made in good faith. In the situation you describe this doesn't hold. When the gift is exempt from income to the receiver - the donor pays the tax (in this case, below exemption the tax is zero). If the gift is not exempt from income to the receiver - it is no longer a gift and the receiver is paying income taxes, not the donor. The situation you describe is a classic tax evasion scheme. If someone does it consistently and regularly (as a receiver, donor, or both) - he would likely end up in jail.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "32440138360a245a86874a9d91b4be38",
"text": "Here's an excerpt from the Charles Schwab website which I think will help evaluate your position: The simple answer to your question is no, the value of a gift of stock for gift tax liability is NOT the donor's cost basis, but rather the fair market value of the stock at the time the gift is given. So let's say you purchased 100 shares of XYZ stock at $50 a share. Your cost basis is $5,000. Now the stock is $80 a share and you give it as a gift. The value of your gift for gift tax purposes is $8,000. In 2015, you can give up to $14,000 to an unlimited number of individuals each year without paying a gift tax or even reporting the gifts. If you give over that amount to any individual, however, you must report the gift on your tax return, but you don't have to pay taxes until you give away more than the current lifetime limit of $5,430,000—for the amount above and beyond $14,000 per person per year. So in the example above, there would be no gift tax liability. However, if the stock happened to be $150 a share, the value of the gift would be $15,000. You'd then have to report it and $1,000 would be applied toward your $5,430,000 lifetime exclusion. You will need to pay a gift tax on the current value of the stock. I'm not familiar with the tax laws in India, but if your brother was in the US, he wouldn't pay taxes on that gift until he sells the stock. The recipient doesn’t have to worry about gift taxes. It's when the recipient decides to sell the stock that the issue of valuation comes up—for income taxes. And this is where things can get a bit more complicated. In general, when valuing a gift of stock for capital gains tax liability, it's the donor's cost basis and holding period that rules. As an example, let's say you receive a gift of stock from your grandfather. He bought it for $10 a share and it's worth $15 a share on the day you receive it. If you then sell the stock, whether for a gain or a loss, your cost basis will be the same as your grandfather’s: $10 per share. Sell it at $25 and you'll pay tax (at the short- or long-term rate, depending on how long he owned the stock) on a gain of $15 a share; sell it at $8 and your capital loss will be $2 a share. Ultimately, with a gift this large that also crosses international borders, you really should hire a professional who is experienced with these types of transactions. Their fees/commission will be completely offset by the savings in risk and paperwork. http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/How-Do-You-Value-a-Gift-of-Stock-It-Depends-on-Whether-You-re-the-Giver-or-the-Receiver",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "87254cb12ea0aac29a573d7a277be58e",
"text": "There are no US taxes for receiving a gift (you). There may be US taxes for giving a gift (the gift tax), for your parents, but if they are nonresidents and the money they are giving was not situated in the US, then they do not have US gift tax. You have to report a gift from a foreign person if it exceeds $100,000.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
eee4b912e677f16de963453c4926ba99
|
why do I need an emergency fund if I already have investments?
|
[
{
"docid": "66a7fd9c6e89a27c21e0f26e9c8e3d06",
"text": "\"Emergency funds have a very specific and obvious benefit; you'll have money sitting around in case you need it. A lot of people think a big car repair or some unexpected home repair is an emergency, and that's fine. Emergency also expands up to \"\"I lost my job four months ago and we're a year in to a recession, the stock market is down 30% and I need to pay my rent or mortgage.\"\" Sure, you could just sell some of your stocks that have lost 30% and pay your rent. I know nobody likes to think about it, but the stock market can go down. I know nobody likes to think about it, but the economy can slink in to a recession. In fact, here's a small list of recent U.S. recessions: No competent investment adviser would advise that your emergency funds should be subject to market volatility because that completely defeats the purpose of an emergency fund. It's possible that this manager wants you to indicate a separate emergency fund to allocate a portion of your account to a low volatility US Treasury fund or something of the like, this would be materially different than investing in a broad market/large cap fund like VOO or VTI. The effects of inflation are not so bad that you should put your emergency money in the market. Who cares what inflation was if you have to sell an asset at a loss to pay rent? One last point. Index fund ETFs are not \"\"safe.\"\" Investing in diversified funds is safER than buying individual company stocks.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e42eb3ea9a05e96191e2a1ab5b50adcb",
"text": "My take on this is that this reduces your liquidity risk. Stocks, bonds and many other investment vehicles on secondary markets you may think of are highly liquid but they still require that markets are open and then an additional 3-5 business days to settle the transaction and for funds to make their way to your bank account. If you require funds immediately because of an emergency, this 3-5 business days (which gets longer as week-ends and holidays are in the way) can cause a lot of discomfort which may be worth a small loss in potential ROI. Think of your car breaking down or a water pipe exploding in your home and having to wait for the stock sale to process before you can make the payment. Admittedly, you have other options such as margin loans and credit cards that can help absorb the shock in such cases but they may not be sufficient or cause you to pay interest or fees if left unpaid.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "61c009824d600a359938973082715984",
"text": "\"There are a few major risks to doing something like that. First, you should never invest money you can't afford to lose. An emergency fund is money you can't afford to lose - by definition, you may need to have quick access to that money. If you determine that you need, for example, $3000 in emergency savings, that means that you need to have at least $3000 at all times - if you lose $500, then you now only have $2500 in emergency savings. Imagine what could've happened if you had invested your emergency savings during the 2008 crash, for example; you could easily have been in a position where you lost both your job and a good portion of your emergency savings at the same time, which is a terrible position to be in. If the car breaks down, you can't really say \"\"now's a bad time, wait until the stock market bounces back.\"\" Second, with brokerage accounts, there may be a delay before you can actually access the money or transfer it to an account that you can actually withdraw cash from or write checks against (but some of this depends on the exact arrangement you have with your bank). This can be a problem if you're in a situation where you need immediate access to the money - if your furnace breaks in the middle of winter, you probably don't want to wait a few days for the sale and transfer to go through before you can have it fixed. Third, you can be forced to sell the investments at an unfavorable price because you're not sure when you're going to need it. You'd also likely incur trading fees and/or early withdrawal penalties when you tried to withdraw the money. Think about it this way: if you buy a bond that matures in 5 years, you're effectively betting that you won't have an emergency for the next 5 years. If you do, you'll have to either sell the bond or, if you're allowed to get the money back early, you'll likely forfeit a good amount of the interest you earned in the process (which kind of kills the point of buying the bond in the first place). Edit: As @Barmar pointed out in the comments, you may also have to pay taxes on the profits if you sell at a favorable price. In the U.S. at least, capital gains on stuff held for less than a year is taxed at your ordinary income tax rate and stuff held longer than a year is taxed at the long-term capital gains tax rate. So, if you hold the investment for less than a year, you're opening yourself up to the risks of short-term stock fluctuations as well as potential tax penalties, so if you put your emergency fund in stocks you're essentially betting that you won't have an emergency that year (which by definition you can't know). The purpose of an emergency fund is just that - to be an emergency fund. Its purpose isn't really to make money.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "3bf43f2321a84a27029a6e197426ed56",
"text": "You're absolutely correct. If you have maxed out your retirement investment vehicles and have some additional investments in a regular taxable account, you can certainly use that as an emergency source of funds without much downside. (You can borrow from many retirement account but there are downsides.) Sure, you risk selling at a loss when/if you need the money, but I'd rather take the risk and take advantage of the investment growth that I would miss if I kept my emergency fund in cash or money market. And you can choose how much risk you're willing to take on when you invest the money.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f694ed0f5dd14110332cd21255788977",
"text": "From a budgeting perspective, the emergency fund is a category in which you've budgeted funds for the unexpected. These are things that weren't able to be predicted and budgeted for in advance, or things that exceeded the expected costs. For example you might budget $150 per month for car maintenance, and typically spend some of it while the rest builds up over time for unexpected repairs, so you have a few hundred available for that. But this month your transmission died and you have a $3,000 bill. You'll then fund most of this out of your emergency fund. This doesn't cover where to store that money though, which leads me to my next point. Emergencies are emergencies because they come without warning, without you having a chance to plan. Thefore the primary things you want in an emergency fund account are stability and quick access. You can structure investments to be whatever you think of as safe or stable but you don't want to be thinking about whether it's a good time to sell when you need the money right now. But the bigger problem is access. When you need the funds on a weekend, holiday, anytime outside of market hours, you're not going to be able to just sell some stocks and go to an ATM. This is the reason why it's recommended to have these funds in a checking or savings account usually. The reason I mentioned the budgeting side first is because I wanted to point out that if you're budgeting well, most of the unexpected expenses you have should have been expected in a sense; you can still plan for something without knowing when or if it will happen. So in the example of a car repair, ideally you're already budgeting for possible repairs, if you own a home you're budgeting for things that would go wrong, budgeting for speeding tickets, for surprise out of pocket medical costs, etc. These then become part of your normal budget: they aren't part of the emergency fund anymore. The bright side about budgeting for something unexpected is that you know what that money is for, and do you likely also know how quickly you'll need it. For example you know if you have unexpected medical costs that happen very quickly, you're not likely you need a bag of cash on a moment's notice. So those last two points lead to the fact that your actual emergency fund, the dollars that are for things you simply could not foresee, will be relatively small. A few thousand dollars or so in most cases. If you've got things structured like this, you'll be happy to have a few grand available at a moment's notice. The bulk of the money you would use for other surprise expenses (or things like 6 months of living expenses) is represented in other specific categories and you already know the timeframe in which you need it (probably enough time that it could be invested, risk to taste). In short: by expecting the unexpected, you can sidestep this issue and not worry so much about missed returns on the emergency fund.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6c33bf1dbc4fda12b28dadf262162d4b",
"text": "\"Given that the 6 answers all advocate similar information, let me offer you the alternate scenario - You earn $60K and have an employer offering a 50% match on all deposits. All deposits. (Note, I recently read a Q&A here describing such an offer. If I see it again, I'll link). Let the thought of the above settle in. You think about the fact that $42K isn't a bad salary, and decide to deposit 30%, to gain the full match on your $18K deposit. Now, you budget to live your life, pay your bills, etc, but it's tight. When you accumulate $2000, and a strong want comes up (a toy, a trip, anything, no judgement) you have a tough decision. You think to yourself, \"\"after the match, I am literally saving 45% of my income. I'm on a pace to have the ability to retire in 20 years. Why do I need to save even more?\"\" Your budget has enough discretionary spending that if you have a $2000 'emergency', you charge it and pay it off over the next 6-8 months. Much larger, and you know that your super-funded 401(k) has the ability to tap a loan. Your choice to turn away from the common wisdom has the recommended $20K (about 6 months of your spending) sitting in your 401(k), pretax deposited as $26K, and matched to nearly $40K, growing long term. Note: This is a devil's advocate answer. Had I been the first to answer, it would reflect the above. In my own experience, when I got married, we built up the proper emergency fund. As interest rates fell, we looked at our mortgage balance, and agreed that paying down the loan would enable us to refinance and save enough in mortgage interest that the net effect was as if we were getting 8% on the money. At the same time as we got that new mortgage, the bank offered a HELOC, which I never needed to use. Did we somehow create high risk? Perhaps. Given that my wife and I were both still working, and had similar incomes, it seemed reasonable.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2862e6c7df5b16e84cf1d1eb56291d89",
"text": "I treat the concept of emergency funds as a series of financial buffers. One layer is that I have various credit cards with a small positive balance, that I can max out in an emergency should I go broke and not be in employment (those have saved me once or twice) My final level of emergency funds, is kept at home in the form of cash, I've never needed it, but it protects against getting locked out of the financial system (I lose my debit cards, banking system freezes all withdrawals, zombie invasion). It also doubles as my destitution fund, as if all else fails I still have raw cash to buy food and thus I won't starve (at least for a few months).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0756241e8bf8cc0afd2d37e379c09505",
"text": "Let me first start by defining an emergency fund. This is money which is: Because emergency's usually need to be deal with ASAP, boiler breaks, gears box in a car. Generally you need these to be solved as soon as possible, because ou depend on these things working and you can't budget for this type of expenditure using just your monthly salary. This is a personal opinion but I prefer investment types that don't have another fee on access. I really don't like having another fee on top on money that I need right now. Investment Options: Market based investments should be seen as long term investments, therefore they do not really satisfy requirement one, they can also have broker fees, therefore you might pay a small extra charge for taking money out, and so do not satisfy requirement two. Investment Options for Emergency Funds You want to get the best return on your money even if it's your emergency fund. So use regular saving accounts, but from you emergency fund or use tax effective savings accounts, like a cash ISA if based in the UK. Don't think of an emergency money as just sitting there, you have options just makes sure the options fit the requirements. UPDATE Given feedback I appreciate there are levels of emergency fund, the above details things which might be about 1-2 month salary in cost, car repairs, leaks, boiler repairs. Now I have another fund which is in P2P funds which is higher risk than a deposit account but then gives me a better return and is less subject to market fluctuations and it would be the place I go to for loss of job level emergencies say 6 months of salary, this takes a bit longer to access but given I have the above emergency fund I have given myself time to get the money from the P2P account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "82a400b4e1f10bedb37481dda36b702a",
"text": "It all depends on the liquidity of your investments some examples: You can mitigate only the risk that you can control. It is always good to have:",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "5d7f244020437e6a98abac60a57ca848",
"text": "While it’s your personal choice on HOW you save for later its essential that you save. My sister works in a bank and recommended me not to put any money into retirement plans since the tax-advances seem fine but have to paid back when you take the money out of the accounts (in Switzerland, don't know about the united states). Many reasons exist that you suddenly need the money: Buying a house, needing a new car, health issues or just leaving the country forever (and the government trying to make it as hard as possible for you to get your money back). I recommend putting it on a savings account on a different bank that you normally use, without any cards and so on. In short: It can be dangerous to have money locked away – especially if you could easily have it at your hands and you know you're able to manage it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "55bcedf9148ed62eafa72d0c3547db05",
"text": "\"The mix how how you present this feels contradictory. You would pull a 'major' portion from the emergency fund (EF), but at the same time, you'll replace it in a month. The first bit scares me, this is not the purpose of that fund, and the issue is the aspect of money that's psychological. Money is a habit, if you justify this use of the EF now, it gets progressively easier for this purchase or that, and the fund loses its intended purpose. If the second half is accurate, that your income would replace that money in a month, i'd say the fund wasn't fully funded to its proper level, 6-9 months of all expenses to get you though issues as bad as a job loss. The great thing I see in your question is what's missing. You're not looking to buy a car with a loan. That puts you in a good situation, and should push those answering to cut you some slack on the one month \"\"bridge loan\"\" from your own savings. Edit - OP add 2 key points, His EF is 3 years expenses (wow, kudos to him!), but he's living like a student (i.e. with parents, which keeps his costs low). If this latter observation seems judgmental, I'll re-edit. The finances of everyone would be far better off if we adopted multigenerational living. The young could save as Fahad is doing, and when parents retire, they can know they are cared for. In the US, I'd say \"\"when you move out, your expenses will go up drastically,\"\" but in this case, that may not happen, or not soon. This is my observation the world is a big place and our answers need to fit the OP's situation, not assume our own standards apply to all. Buy the better car. You saved. You earned it.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "36e643c89da53b0e2d4622950dd89045",
"text": "I would disagree with your analysis. To me there are two purposes for a money market (MM): Your emergency fund should be from 3 to 6 months of expenses. Think of it of an insurance policy against Murphy. You may want to have some money designated for big expenses, or even sinking funds. For example, I keep some money in a MM for a car as both the wife, daughter, and I driver older vehicles. I may need to replace them. If you were planning on making a larger purchase car, house, boat, engagement ring I would put the money in a MM fund so you are not subject to the whims of the market. After that you are free to invest all your money. Its likely that you should have some money outside of tax advantaged funds so if you want to start a business you will not have to do high cost withdrawals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "289135f42bf8602686098991399ef023",
"text": "When it comes down to it, long-term investments pay better than short-term ones. If nothing else, there's less administration and less financial risk for the provider. That's why 2, 3 or 5 year savings accounts pay better than instant access ones. Higher-risk investments pay more interest (or dividends) than low-risk ones. They have to, or nobody would invest in them. So by locking yourself out of any long term and/or risky investments, you're stuck with a choice of low-interest short term ones. There are plenty of investment funds that you can sell at short notice if you want to. But they are volatile, and if you cash out at the wrong time, you can get back less than you invested. The way you lower risk is either to invest in a fund that covers a broad range of investments, or invest in several different funds.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9b9a659ee68b3baea3494b9c715fafe6",
"text": "\"For me, the emergency fund is meant to cover unexpected, but necessary expenses that I didn't budget for. The emergency fund allows me to pay for these things without going into debt. Let's say that my car breaks down, and I don't have any money in my budget for fixing it. I really need to get my car fixed, so I spend the money from my emergency fund. However, cars break down periodically. If I was doing a better job with my budget, I would allocate some money each month into a \"\"car repair/maintenance\"\" category. (In fact, I actually do this.) With my budgeting software, I can look at how much I've spent on car repairs over the last year, and budget a monthly amount for car repair expenses. Even if I do this, I might end up short if I am unlucky. Emergency fund to the rescue! If I'm budgeting correctly, I don't pay any regular bills out of this fund, as those are expected expenses. Car insurance, life insurance, and property tax are all bills that come on a regular basis, and I set aside money for each of these each month so that when the bill comes, I have the money ready to go. The recommended size of an emergency fund is usually listed as \"\"3 to 6 months of expenses.\"\" However, that is just a rough guideline. As you get better with your budget, you might find that you have a lower probability of needing it, and you can let your emergency fund fall to the lower end of the guideline range. The size of my own emergency fund is on the lower end of this scale. And if I have a true crisis (i.e. extended unemployment, severe family medical event), I can \"\"rob\"\" one of my other savings funds, such as my car replacement fund, vacation fund, etc. Don't be afraid to spend your emergency fund money if you need it. If you have an unexpected, necessary expense that you have not budgeted for, use the emergency fund money. However, your goal should be to get to the point where you never have to use it, because you have adequately accounted for all of the expenses that you can reasonably expect to have in the future.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9b06e7307088dc7210864a5d44d88371",
"text": "I am understanding the OP to mean that this is for an emergency fund savings account meant to cover 3 to 6 months of living expenses, not a 3-6 month investment horizon. Assuming this is the case, I would recommend keeping these funds in a Money Market account and not in an investment-grade bond fund for three reasons:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a688bd683b9434c0fed89aadcbbb9cb3",
"text": "\"The purpose of the emergency fund is to enable you to pay for unplanned necessary expenses without going into debt. You know that cars don't last forever and eventually need to be replaced. Ideally, you would have a \"\"car replacement fund\"\" which you contribute to a little every month. (Essentially, it is a car payment to yourself.) Then when it comes time to get a replacement car, you have money set aside for this purpose and know exactly how much you can spend. However, in your case it seems that you don't have enough money in your car replacement fund for the car that you want. There are a few different causes that might have led to this situation: Due to unforeseen circumstances, you need a replacement car before you thought you would need it. You find that your planning was not quite right, and you weren't saving as much as you need. You are trying to buy a more expensive car than you need. If a replacement car is a necessity, two of these are emergencies, one is not. If you don't have enough cash set aside for a car, it is certainly better to spend your emergency fund and pay cash than to borrow money to buy the car. Only you can decide if the car you are looking at is appropriate for you, or if you should be looking at a less expensive car. After you purchase the car, build your emergency fund back up first, then start saving for your next car.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b4cea859a9848373c95e16a60f3aeadd",
"text": "Why can't you have both? If you do have both credit and an emergency fund, and an emergency occurs, you can draw from the line of credit first. Having debt + cash is a much more stable situation than having neither, because then you have the option to use the cash to pay off the debt, or use the cash to pay other expenses. If you just have cash, when you spend it it's gone and there's no guarantee anyone is going to lend you any money at that point.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5f6ece7c89aeb6cab3a15d9aec09963b",
"text": "Before starting with investing, you should make sure you are saving enough. Living in a welfare country (France) does not exempt you from potentially needing to save large amounts of money. You state that you do not need much of an emergency day fund, but this is not true. Being dismissed unjustly from your job is not the only way to become unemployed and not all roads lead to unemployment pay. Being fired for cause or leaving your job voluntarily are two work related causes that will leave you without an income source. Unexpected major expenses are another reason you might need to dip into your emergency fund. If your emergency fund is in order, the next thing to investigate is your pension and saving for retirement. In a country with a strong pension system, you need to check how comfortable you are with its sustainability (Greece anyone?) and also whether it will adequately meet your needs. If not, there are no 401ks or IRAs in France, but there is a relatively new personal supplementary pension plan (PERP) that you might investigate contributing to. If you're comfortable with your emergency fund and your retirement savings, then preparing for buying a house is likely your next savings goal. A quick search shows that to get a mortgage to buy a house in France, banks will commonly require a downpayment of 20% plus various closing costs. See for example here. This is 40,000+ euro for a 200k euro house, which will take you several years at the rate of 500 euro / month. France has special plans (Plan d’Epargne Logement) with tax-exempt interest for saving up for a house that you might want to investigate. In your other question, you also ask about buying a cheap car. As you get older and possibly start a family, having a car will likely become more of a necessity. This is another goal you can save for rather than having to take a loan out when you buy one.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "151ec6d3e24b890cc9732e88649dfd6e",
"text": "\"What you're describing makes sense. I'd probably call the non-liquid portion something besides my \"\"emergency fund\"\", but that's semantics mostly. If you have 3 months of \"\"very liquid\"\" cash in this emergency fund and you're comfortable that this amount is good for your situation, then I don't see why you can't have additional savings in more or less liquid vehicles. Whatever you set up, you'll want to think about how to tap it when you need it. You might have a CD ladder with one maturing every three months. That would give you access to these funds after your liquid funds dry up. (Or for a small/short term emergency, you'll be able to replenish the liquid fund with the next-maturing CD.) Or set up a T Bill ladder with the same structure. This might provide you with a tax advantage.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e32fa977d20156bc3c089162770bd973",
"text": "\"It's a spin on the phrase \"\"making your money work for you\"\". before sending your money off to do the heavy lifting, you'll want to have an emergency savings account of about six months of living expenses stored in cash. Basically, he is saying before you start to invest make sure you have sufficient emergency savings.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9e8d85d78ecbeb8f53dec0110eed30fe",
"text": "There's something very important no one else has mentioned... times when the stock market falls dramatically are often the times when you're most likely to lose your job, and when it's hardest to get loans. So if you ever do need your emergency fund, it will more than likely be related to a dip in the stock market.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1344b296a3240da9185bf0b8287c5358",
"text": "The biggest problem is what happens when you make a withdrawal if an emergency occurs. If the money was a contribution from a past year, you will not be able to put those funds back into the fund until a later date. Assume the following scenario: The limits regarding maximum annual contribution and windows when you can contribute make this an inefficient way to operate the emergency fund/retirement fund. Retirement and emergency funds are both important. Don't co-mingle them, it leads to double counting the money when you guesstimate where you are regarding your financial goals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c0364ea9ed924d97f3b4e2d2d2f20006",
"text": "This is a somewhat subjective question, but if you are following a particular personal finance methodology, just do whatever they recommend. For example, I believe that Dave Ramsey's program calls for the emergency fund to be in a different account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8965f489cca99abdd4001c2050f1b79a",
"text": "I know this is heresy but if you have funds for significantly more than 6 months of expenses (let's say 12 months), how risky would it be to put it all into stock index funds? Quite risky as if you do need to dip into it, how fast could you get the cash? Also, do you realize the tax implications when you do sell the shares should you have an emergency? In the worst-case scenario, let's say you have a financial emergency at the same time the stock market crashes and loses half its value. You could still liquidate the rest and have sufficient funds for 6 months. Am I underestimating the risks of this strategy? That's not worst case scenario though. Worst case scenario would be another 9/11 where the markets are closed for nearly a week and you need the money but can't get the funds converted to cash in the bank that you can use. This is in addition to the potential wait for a settlement in the case of using ETFs if you choose to go that way. In the case of money market funds, CDs and other near cash equivalents these can be accessed relatively easily which is part of the point. A staggered approach where some cash is kept in house, some in accounts that can easily accessed and some in other investments may make sense though the breakdown would differ depending on how much risk people are willing to take. If it truly is an emergency fund then the odds of needing it should be very slim, so why live with near zero return on that money? Something to consider is what is called an emergency here? For some people a sudden $1,000 bill to fix their car that just broke down is an emergency. For others, there could be emergency trips to visit family that may have gotten into accidents or gotten a diagnosis that they may pass away soon. Consider what do you want to call an emergency here as chances are you may not be considering all that people would think is an emergency. There is the question of what other sources of money do you have to cover should issues arise.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
4e42cc0c56f12a0ddc455f6e3de256a1
|
The Benefits/Disadvantages of using a credit card
|
[
{
"docid": "dabeca4966bcc58743a28badc128b907",
"text": "There are a couple of things to consider. First, in order to avoid interest charges you generally just need to pay the statement balance before the statement due date. This is your grace period. You don't need to monitor your activity every day and send immediate payments. If you're being really tight with money, you can actually make a little profit by letting your cash sit in an interest bearing account before you pay your credit card before the due date. Second, credit card interest rates are pretty terrible, and prescribed minimum payments are comically low. If you buy furniture using your credit card you will pay some interest, be sure to pay way more than the minimum payment. You should avoid carrying a balance on a credit card. At 20% interest the approximate monthly interest charge on $1,000 is $16.67. Third, if you carry a balance on your credit card you lose the interest grace period (the first point above) on new charges. If you buy your couch, and carry the balance, when you buy a soda at 7-11, the soda begins to accrue interest immediately. If you decide to carry a balance on a credit card, stop using that card for new charges. It generally takes two consecutive billing period full balance payments to restore the grace period. Fourth, to answer your question, using a credit card to carry a balance has no impact on your score. Make your payments on time, don't exceed your limits, keep your utilization reasonable. The credit agencies have no idea if you're carrying a balance or how much interest you're paying. To Appease the people who think point four needs more words: Your credit report contains your limit, your reported balance (generally your statement balance), and approximate minimum payment. There is no indication related to whether or not the balance contains a carried balance and/or accrued interest. The mere fact of carrying a balance will not impact your credit score because the credit reporting bureaus don't know you're carrying a balance. Paying interest doesn't help or hurt your score. Obviously if your carried balance and interest charges push your utilization up that will impact your score because of the increased utilization. Make your payments on time, don't exceed your limits, keep your utilization reasonable and your score will be fine.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e6e3bd403ff62470cfd7ae67cf18581d",
"text": "\"Using the card but paying it off entirely at each billing cycle is the only \"\"Good\"\" way to use a credit card. If you feel like you will be tempted to buy more than you can pay back don't use credit. As far as furnishing the apartment, the best thing to do would be to save and pay cash, but if you want to use credit the credit available at stores would be a far better deal than carrying it on a card.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "69ba39e1c70624111401b32ce3b72bc1",
"text": "\"Credit cards have three important advantages. None of them are for day-to-day borrowing of money. Safety - Credit cards have better fraud protection than checks or cash, and better than most debit/check cards. If you buy something with a credit card, you also get the issuer's (think Visa) assurances that your will get the product you paid for, or your money back. At almost any time, if a product you buy is not what you expect, you can work with the issuer, even if the store says \"\"screw you\"\". Security - Credit cards are almost universally accepted as a \"\"security\"\" against damages to the vendor. Hotels, car rentals, boat rentals etc. will accept a credit card as a means of securing their interests. Without that, you may have to make huge deposits, or not be able to rent at all. For example, in my area (touristy) you can not rent a car on debit or cash. You must use a credit card. Around here most hotel rooms require a credit card as well. This is different from area to area, but credit cards are nearly universally accepted. Emergencies - If you're using your credit card properly, then you have some extra padding when stuff goes wrong. For example, it may be cheaper to place a bill on a credit card for a couple months while you recover from a car accident, than to deplete your bank account and have to pay fees. Bonus - Some cards have perks, like miles, points, or cash back. Some can be very beneficial. You need to be careful about the rules with these bonuses. For example, some cards only give you points if you carry a balance. Some only give miles if you shop at certain stores. But if you have a good one, these can be pretty fantastic. A 3% cash back on purchases can make a large difference over time.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "469cdfdf93fe42ed1e5dee41831d0e41",
"text": "\"paying it off over time, which I know is the point of the card That may very well be the card issuer's goal, but it need not be yours. The benefits, as your question title seems to ask for - That said, use the card, but don't spend more than you have in your checking account to pay it when the bill comes. What you may want to hear - \"\"Charge the furniture. Pay it off over the next year, even at 20%/yr, the total interest on $2000 of furniture will only be $200, if you account for the declining balance. That's $4/week for a year of enjoying the furniture.\"\" You see, you can talk yourself into a bad decision. Instead, shop, but don't buy. Lay out the plan to buy each piece as you save up for it. Consider what would happen if you buy it all on the card and then have any unexpected expenses. It just gets piled on top of that and you're down a slippery slope.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e138ff6defe2d6a89d15ee865e23745f",
"text": "\"Credit card interest rates are obscene. Try to find some other kind of loan for the furnishings; if you put things on the card, try to pay them off as quickly as possible. I should say that for most people I do recommend having a credit card. Hotels, car rental agencies, and a fair number of other businesses expect to be able to guarantee your reservation by taking the card info and it is much harder to do business with them without one. It gives you a short-term emergency fund you can tap (and then immediately pay back, or as close to immediately as possible). Credit cards are one of the safer ways to pay via internet, since they have guarantees that limit your liability if they are misused, and the bank can help you \"\"charge back\"\" to a vendor who doesn't deliver as promised. And if you have the self-discipline to pay the balance due in full every month, they can be a convenient alternative to carrying a checkbook or excessive amounts of cash. But there are definitely people who haven't learned how to use this particular tool without hurting themselves. Remember that it needs to be handled with respect and appropriate caution.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "da2aca5da58a76597741eeac1315b3d5",
"text": "Everyone else seems to have focused (rightly so) on the negatives of credit cards (high interest rates) and why it is important to pay them off before interest starts accruing. Only Marin's answer briefly touched on rewards. To me, this is the real purpose of credit cards in today's age. Most good rewards cards can get you anywhere from 1-2% cash back on ALL purchases, and sometimes more on other categories. Again, assuming you can pay the balance in full each month, and you are good at budgeting money, using a credit card is an easy way to basically discount 1-2% of all of the spending you put on your card. AGAIN - this only works to your advantage if you pay off the credit card in full; using the above example of 20% interest, that's about 1.6% interest if the interest compounds monthly, which wipes out your return on rewards if you just go one month without paying off the balance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fd1e20b22fa6c68b8901990ba6ef6ff1",
"text": "One thing that has not been pointed out as a disadvantage of using Credit Cards: people tend to spend more. You can see This Study, and this one, plus about 500 others. On average people tend to spend about 17% more with credit cards then with cash. This amount dwarphs any perks one gets by having a credit card. The safest way to use one is to only use them for purchases where you cannot make a decision to spend more. One example would be for utility bills (that don't charge a fee) or at the gas pump. Using them at Amazon might have you upgrade your purchase or add some extra items. Using them at restaurants might encourage you to order an extra drink or two. Using them at the coffee shop might have you super size your coffee or add a pastry. Of course this extra spending could lead you into a debt cycle exacerbating the financial hit many struggle with. Please tread carefully if you decide to use them.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d83a3fd3d00c80f66477d90e41b235f7",
"text": "\"Note: this answer is true for the UK, other places may vary. There are a couple of uses for credit cards. The first is to use them in a revolving manner, if you pay off the bill in full every time you get one then with the vast majority of cards you will pay no interest, effecitvely delay your expenses by a month, build your credit rating and with many credit cards you can also get rewards. Generally you should wait until the bill comes to pay it off. This ensures that your usage is reported to the credit ratings agencies. In general you should not draw out cash on credit cards as there is usually a fee and unlike purchases it will start acruing interest immediately. The second is longer term borrowing. This is where you have to be careful. Firstly the \"\"standard\"\" rate on most credit cards is arround 20% APR which is pretty high. Secondly on many cards once you are carrying a balance any purchases start acruing interest immediately. However many credit cards offer promotional rates. In contrast to the standard rates which are an expensive way to borrow the promotional rates often allow you to borrow at 0% APR for some period. Usually when it comes to promotional rates you get the best deal by opening a new credit card and using it immediately. Ideally you should plan to pay off the card before the 0% period ends, if you can't do that then a balance transfer may be an option but be aware than in a few years the market for credit cards may (or may not) have changed. Whatever you do you should ALWAYS make sure to pay at least the minimum payment and do so on time. Not doing so may trigger steep fees, loss of promotional interest rates. There is a site called moneysavingexpert that tracks the best deals.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b324d756f11286a3f2de6da4a67af60b",
"text": "\"In the UK, using a credit card adds a layer of protection for consumers. If something goes wrong or you bought something that was actually a scam, if you inform the credit card company with the necessary documents they will typically clear the balance for that purchase (essentially the burden of 'debt' is passed to them and they themselves will have to chase up the necessary people). Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act I personally use my credit card when buying anything one would consider as \"\"consumer spending\"\" (tvs, furniture ect). I then pay off the credit card immediately. This gives me the normal benefits of the credit card (if you get cashback or points) PLUS the additional consumer credit protection on all my purchases. This, in my opinion is the most effective way of using your credit card.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "22e66c320b970c5888e0ab34f57f215f",
"text": "The thing you need to keep in mind is that if you take on debt, you need to have a plan to pay it off and execute on it. You also need to understand what your carrying cost is (what you will pay in finance charges every month.) There are times when you need to take on debt in order to be a productive person. For example, in many places in the US, you need a car in order to have a job. It's ludicrous for someone to assert that you shouldn't take on any debt in order to get a reliable vehicle. That doesn't mean you go out and lease the fanciest car that you can get on your income. In this case, I'd say it's a bit of a grey area. Could you live in an unfurnished apartment for a while? Perhaps. Many people would have a hard time living like that and it could affect your ability to perform at work. I would argue that buying a decent mattress to sleep on falls under the same category as getting a car so that you can work. You don't want to be missing work because your back is in spasm from sleeping on the floor or a worn out mattress. As far as the rest of it goes, it really depends on how fast you can pay it off. If you are looking at more than a few months (6 tops) to pay off the purchase in full, you should reassess. Realize that the interest you are paying is increasing the cost of the furniture and act accordingly. As mentioned, you can often get 0% financing for a limited period. Understand that if you don't pay off the entire balance in that period, you will normally be retroactively charged interest on the entire starting amount and that interest rate will likely be quite high. The problem with credit is when you start using it and continually growing the balance. It's easy to keep saying that you will start paying it off later and the next thing you know you are buried. It's not a big one-time purchase (by itself) that normally gets people into trouble, it's continual spending beyond their means month after month.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c66ba9f4f3ff61ebd2e8c6b23ade1366",
"text": "One of the more subtle disadvantages to large credit card purposes purchases (besides what the other answer mentions), is that it makes you less prepared for emergencies. If you carry a large balance on your credit card with the idea that your income can easily handle the payments to beat the no-interest period, you never know when you'll have an unexpected emergency and you'll end up having to pay less, miss the deadline and end up paying huge interest. Even if you are fastidious about saving and budgeting, what if your family comes under a large financial burden (just as one possible example)?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "25289ea61944e5b4bafd9ae395d2a347",
"text": "\"never carry a balance on a credit card. there is almost always a cheaper way to borrow money. the exception to that rule is when you are offered a 0% promotion on a credit card, but even then watch out for cash advance fees and how payments are applied (typically to promotional balances first). paying interest on daily spending is a bad idea. generally, the only time you should pay interest is on a home loan, car loan or education loan. basically that's because those loans can either allow you to reduce an expense (e.g. apartment rent, taxi fair), or increase your income (by getting a better job). you can try to make an argument about the utility of a dollar, but all sophistry aside you are better off investing than borrowing under normal circumstances. that said, using a credit card (with no annual fee) can build credit for a future car or home loan. the biggest advantage of a credit card is cash back. if you have good credit you can get a credit card that offers at least 1% cash back on every purchase. if you don't have good credit, using a credit card with no annual fee can be a good way to build credit until you can get approved for a 2% card (e.g. citi double cash). additionally, technically, you can get close to 10% cash back by chasing sign up bonuses. however, that requires applying for new cards frequently and keeping track of minimum spend etc. credit cards also protect you from fraud. if someone uses your debit card number, you can be short on cash until your bank fixes it. but if someone uses your credit card number, you can simply dispute the charge when you get the bill. you don't have to worry about how to make rent after an unexpected 2k$ charge. side note: it is a common mis-conception that credit card issuers only make money from cardholder interest and fees. card issuers make a lot of revenue from \"\"interchange fees\"\" paid by merchants every time you use your card. some issuers (e.g. amex) make a majority of their revenue from merchants.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2a92bb207b3777dc38b829f77f1fa689",
"text": "If you can use and pay off your credit card in full every month, there are plenty of benefits including improved credit, reward points and more. Many fall into the trap of just making the minimum payments and facing high interest charges or missing payments and getting a hit on their credit reports. To start off, put something small that you know you can pay off every month. It could be your Netflix or your gas. Make sure you pay it off before any interest is accrued. Over time, you can ask for higher limits to boost your utilization rate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ba5e72b09d215ff8acab3310262b3c2c",
"text": "I just want to stress one point, which has been mentioned, but only in passing. The disadvantage of a credit card is that it makes it very easy to take on a credit. paying it off over time, which I know is the point of the card. Then you fell into the trap of the issuer of the card. They benefit if you pay off stuff over time; that's why taking up a credit seems to be so easy with a credit (sic) card. All the technical aspects aside, you are still in debt, and you never ever want to be so if you can avoid it. And, for any voluntary, non-essential, payment, you can avoid it. Buy furniture that you can pay off in full right now. If that means only buying a few pieces or used/junk stuff, then so be it. Save up money until you can buy more/better pieces.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b3224957bda477a4f0c3ac37ecb8585b",
"text": "An advantage of using a major credit card is that they act as a buffer and source of recourse between you and the merchant. Cheated and the store won’t answer you letters? Call Visa (or more accuratly, call the number on the back of the card). (That is, #2 on this answer, which you can also reference for a whole list of benefits.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e6d386b73dc66d3d6398075753f99043",
"text": "Personally the main disadvantages are perpetuation of the credit referencing system, which is massively abused and woefully under regulated, and encouraging people to think that it's ok to buy things you don't have the money to buy (either save up or question price/necessity).",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "bb61a842ce680b93e02b19b67966b87f",
"text": "The biggest advantage to small business owners paid in cash is not that it might save the 2 or 3 percent that would go to the credit card company. The biggest advantage is that they have the opportunity to keep the transaction entirely off the books and pocket the cash without paying income tax or sales tax, especially when no receipt is given, or when it's a service instead of a product being sold, or when it's an approximately-tracked inventory unit going out the door. Although it's illegal, it's widely done, and it's also often a temptation for employees to try and get away with doing it too.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "124cae85af8990ca07a7801c5d000706",
"text": "Only reason I can think of is that having a credit card, or several, is handy for buying stuff on-line, or not having to haul around a fat wallet full of cash. Of course for some of us, getting the cash back and 0% interest periods are nice, too, even if we don't really need the money. Same as for instance trying to get good mpg when you're driving, even if you could easily afford to fill up a Hummer. It's a game, really.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d6ac6bef5e8fc21dc420d50a8854bbe2",
"text": "It is absolutely worth it. My wife and I have two of these accounts (different banks). We are required to use our cards 20 times for one bank, and 15 for the other. We have yet to miss the required transactions in a month (over 15 months of use now), and are actually considering getting a third account. Between the two of us, we simply have to use our card on average once a day. Getting gas? Use your debit card. Getting stamps? Use your debit card? Self checkout? Use your debit card twice. Eating out? Use your debit card. If married, split the bill. As soon as we reach the minimum, we stop using the debit cards and switch to credit cards to further boost the rewards. Maybe it's easier for us since we don't have kids and are out a lot, but 12 transactions is really simple to obtain. We receive ~$100 a month from our two accounts, all for doing something we already do.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ce8df3b5edca7c3e7cf625537995bd2f",
"text": "Credit card companies are businesses. Businesses will make any decision that makes them money. So does it make them money to cancel your account? It's a simple cost-benefit analysis: you having an account with them will probably give them some benefit for very little cost to them. The only real cost associated with an open account is someone who uses the card but doesn't pay, but they're pretty sure you won't be doing that.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ae5cafdad1b246acddbc8c9896276c3a",
"text": "Three reasons I prefer not to use direct debit:",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2786cbf4423fa30dc7a0d1cbed87a1a5",
"text": "If you are in the U.S., without credit cards, you probably don't have a credit history. Without a credit history, you won't be able to get a loan/mortgage, and even if you do, you'll get it on very unfavorable terms. Depending on where you live you might even have great difficulty renting an apartment. So, the most important reason to have credit cards is to have a good credit score. People have already listed other advantages of having credit cards, but another thing that wasn't mentioned is fraud protection. Credit cards are better protected against fraud than debit cards. You probably shouldn't use debit cards online unless you must. Also, without a credit card or credit history, some simple and important liberties like renting a car while you are travelling might be denied to you. So, in conclusion, it's bizarre, but in modern America you need credit cards, and you need them bad.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bb0e3e99c7cda972e38413ba3620e23d",
"text": "\"There are hidden costs to using rewards cards for everything. The credit card company charges fees to the merchant every time you make a purchase. These fees are a small amount per transaction, plus a portion of the transaction amount. These fees are higher for rewards cards. (For example, the fees might be 35 cents for a PIN-transaction on a debit card, or 35 cents plus 2 percent for an ordinary credit card or signature transaction on a debit card, or 35 cents plus 3.5 percent on a rewards card.) After considering all of their expenses, merchant profit margins are often quite small. To make the same amount of profit by serving a rewards-card customer as a cash customer, the merchant needs to sell higher profit-margin items and/or more items to the rewards-card customer. People who \"\"pay with plastic\"\" tend to spend more than people who \"\"pay with cash\"\". If you pay with a rewards card, will you spend even more?\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7b000a97892cc975d572e05f9af9505f",
"text": "This is very much possible and happens quite a lot. In the US, for example, promotional offers by credit card companies where you pay no interest on the balance for a certain period are a very common thing. The lender gains a new customer on such a loan, and usually earns money from the spending via the merchant fees (specifically for credit cards, at least). The pro is obviously free money. The con is that this is usually for a short period of time (longest I've seen was 15 months) after which if you're not careful, high interest rates will be charged. In some cases, interest will be charged retroactively for the whole period if you don't pay off the balance or miss the minimum payment due.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d905851f6af654a18f454d523e3f11ce",
"text": "If we're including psychological considerations, then the question becomes much more complicated: will having a higher available credit increase the temptation to spend? Will eliminating 100% of a small debt provide more positive reinforcement than paying off 15% of a larger debt? Etc. If we're looking at the pure financial impact, the question is simpler. The only advantage I see to prioritizing the lower interest card is the float: when you buy something on a credit card, interest is often calculated for that purchase starting at the beginning of the next billing cycle, rather than immediately from the purchase date. I'm not clear on what policies credit card companies have on giving float for credit cards with a carried balance, so you should look into what your card's policy is. Other than than, paying off the higher interest rate card is better than paying off the lower interest rate. On top of that, you should look into whether you qualify for any of the following options (presented from best to worst):",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "34b428b4393f4ea8ffddd550e0bb6792",
"text": "I would like to offer a different perspective here. The standard fee for a credit card transaction is typically on the order of 30 cents + 2.5% of the amount (the actual numbers vary, but this is the ballpark). This makes small charges frequently unprofitable for small merchants. Because of this they will often have minimum purchase requirements for credit/debit card payments. The situation changes for large retailers (think Wal-mart, Target, Safeway, Home Depot). I cannot find a citation for this right now, but large retailers are able to negotiate volume discounts from credit card companies (a guy who used to work in finance at Home Depot told me this once). Their transaction fees are MUCH lower than 30 cents + 2.5%. But you get the same reward points on your credit card/debit card regardless of where you swipe it. So my personal philosophy is: large chain - swipe away without guilt for any amount. Small merchant - use cash unless it's hundreds of dollars (and then they may give you a cash discount in that case). And make sure to carry enough cash for such situations. When I was a student, that was about $20 (enough for coffee or lunch at a small place).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bc0868f993b2fbc3bd7ab7251dc90b69",
"text": "I do this, and as you say the biggest downside is not having a separate account for your savings. If you're the type of person who struggles with restraint this is not for you. On the other hand this type of account gives more interest than any other type of US Checking or Savings account I've seen, so you will benefit from the interest.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8a464b9052001d051093a8dc7cdc0325",
"text": "\"The credit card may have advantages in at least two cases: In some instances (at least in the US), a merchant will put a \"\"hold\"\" on a credit card without charging it. This happens a lot at hotels, for example, which use the hold as collateral against damages and incidental charges. On a credit card this temporarily reduces your credit limit but never appears on your bill. I've never tried to do it on a debit card, but my understanding is that they either reject the debit card for this purpose or they actually make the withdrawal and then issue a refund later. You'll actually need to account for this in your cash flow on the debit card but not on the credit card. If you get a fraudulent charge on your credit card, it impacts that account until you detect it and go through the fraud resolution process. On a debit card, the fraudulent charge may ripple through the rest of your life. The rent payment that you made by electronic transfer or (in the US) by check, for example, is now rejected because your bank account is short by the amount of the fraud even if you didn't use the debit card to pay it. Eventually this will probably get sorted out, but it has potential to create a bigger mess than is necessary. Personally, I never use my debit card. I consider it too risky with no apparent benefit.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "37f9ccbc98e620f8cafda25f86a159ee",
"text": "You don't need a credit card anymore than you need a TV or a car. There might be many circumstances where a credit card is a convenience, there might be things you give up because you don't have a credit card. There are even some upsides to a well managed card account. But no, you don't need it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "29fdf38ff4ab2c12206a69cea90ea65b",
"text": "\"good vs \"\"bad\"\" debt in the context of that post. At least in the UK this can be a good tactic to reduce the cost of credit card debt. Some things to consider\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1eb37df8d834d9a541269b26ec8971da",
"text": "\"Some features to be aware of are: How you prioritize these features will depend on your specific circumstances. For instance, if your credit score is poor, you may have to choose among cards you can get with that score, and not have much choice on other dimensions. If you frequently travel abroad, a low or zero foreign transaction fee may be important; if you never do, it probably doesn't matter. If you always pay the balance in full, interest rate is less important than it is if you carry a balance. If you frequently travel by air, an airline card may be useful to you; if you don't, you may prefer some other kind of rewards, or cash back. Cards differ along numerous dimensions, especially in the \"\"extra benefits\"\" area, which is often the most difficult area to assess, because in many cases you can't get a full description of these extra benefits until after you get the card. A lot of the choice depends on your personal preferences (e.g., whether you want airline miles, rewards points of some sort, or cash back). Lower fees and interest rates are always better, but it's up to you to decide if a higher fee of some sort outweighs the accompanying benefits (e.g., a better rewards rate). A useful site for finding good offers is NerdWallet.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
42a391aebd80606f97257e265285afc6
|
If I have no exemptions or deductions, just a simple paycheck, do I HAVE to file taxes?
|
[
{
"docid": "5d30f301760755861621e5260d05e183",
"text": "\"As a Canadian resident, the simple answer to your question is \"\"yes\"\" Having worked as a tax auditor and as a Certified Financial Planner, you are required to file an income tax return because you have taxable employment income. All the employer is doing is deducting it at source and remitting it on your behalf. That does not alleviate your need to file. In fact, if you don't file you will be subject to a no filing penalty. The one aspect you are missing is that taxpayers may be entitled to tax credits that may result in a refund to you depending on your personal situation (e.g spousal or minor dependents). I hope this helps.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e8fa467567be1b8c0dc0e2381ed95906",
"text": "While you are required to do so as others have said, it's actually in your interest to do so. In a recent article at GlobeInvestor, Tim Cestnick discusses the benefits of filing tax returns for teens. This situation may or may not apply to you but the message is the same. The main benefits are (1) create RRSP contribution room and (2) be eligible for GST/HST credits and other possible one-shot credits (think oil royalty surplus cheques in Alberta). Excerpt: You see, when Lincoln was 14, he filed a tax return and reported $2,000 of income that year. He paid no tax thanks to the basic personal tax credit, but he created $360 of RRSP contribution room that year. Beginning in 2003, Lincoln started working part-time in his father's business. His father agreed to pay him $6,000 each summer to work in the business, to help save money for university. Lincoln didn't pay any tax on the money he earned in those summers because his basic personal tax credit was always higher than his earnings. In addition, Lincoln added to his RRSP contribution room simply by filing a tax return each year.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "53df92d1e3b246173ac053efc87fa9d4",
"text": "Yes, you have to file a tax return in Canada. Non residents that have earned employment income in Canada are required to file a Canadian personal income tax return. Usually, your employer will have deducted sufficient taxes from your pay-cheques, resulting in a tax refund upon filing your Canadian tax return. You will also receive a tax credit on your US tax return for taxes paid in Canada.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4645e910fa7f0f30aa582dcc00e85207",
"text": "In many cases, you are required to file your taxes by law even if you won't owe. If it's anything like in the US, it's quite possible your employer is not taking the right amount and you may owe more or may even be in line for a return. http://www.usatax.ca/Pages/filing_requirement_taxes_canada.html",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1d70c66d71539d742252756e37426e4d",
"text": "If you took advantage of options like a home buyers plan (HBP) you definitely need to file since you must designate how much of the plan to repay. Your employer does not know about what you do with your money so cannot take this into account for the withheld taxes. If you do not report repayment of the HBP it will be treated as a withdrawal from your RRSP i.e. additional income for that tax year.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dfa301d072f1ede64d7a19321e3d22e0",
"text": "You are not required to file a tax return in Canada if you have no taxable income. If you do not file a return you may be requested to by Canada Revenue Agency, and then you'll need to file one. There are hundreds of thousands of Canadian residents who do not file tax returns. The Minister who overlooks the CRA may assess any amount of taxes on any resident whether they file a return or not. There are penalties for failing to file a return or filing late. The penalties are based on a percentage of the taxes owed. If you owe no taxes, then the penalties are meaningless.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "708b0a0701ed4c6db8ded6937a20599b",
"text": "\"There's no \"\"183 days\"\" rule. As a US citizen you must pay taxes on all your income, where you live is irrelevant.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "eebfd26667517727702aaec038ea12a4",
"text": "\"You file taxes as usual. W2 is a form given to you, you don't need to fill it. Similarly, 1099. Both report moneys paid to you by your employers. W2 is for actual employer (the one where you're on the payroll), 1099 is for contractors (where you invoice the entity you provide services to and get paid per contract). You need to look at form 1040 and its instructions as to how exactly to fill it. That would be the annual tax return. It has various schedules (A, B, C, D, E, F, H, etc) which you should familiarize yourself with, and various additional forms that you attach to it. If you're self employed, you're expected to make quarterly estimate payments, but if you're a salaried employee you can instruct your employer to withhold the amounts you expect to owe for taxes from your salary, instead. If you're using a tax preparation software (like TurboTax or TaxAct), it will \"\"interview\"\" you to get all the needed information and provide you with the forms filled accordingly. Alternatively you can pay someone to prepare the tax return for you.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bba32b796ac32de9786cc1594733b90f",
"text": "I filed all my tax returns when I was abroad so they know how much I made (just not how much I saved). I smell problems here. If you were compliant wrt to your filings, you must have filed FBAR forms and form 8938. Even if you were below the threshold for form 8938, you will probably be above it when you move back to the US - the threshold for people living in the US is much lower. Do I still need to declare it, even though I might not intend to use this money to help my kids through college? I believe so. Here's what they want: Nothing there suggests that it is only limited to the accounts in the US or to the money you intend to use to help your kids through college.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "65c68a828b7a4907e8704f5296b345ee",
"text": "If you're under audit - you should get a proper representation. I.e.: EA or CPA licensed in California and experienced with the FTB audit representation. There's a penalty on failure to file form 1099, but it is with the IRS, not the FTB. If I remember correctly, it's something like $50 or $100 per instance. Technically they can disqualify deductions claiming you paid under the table and no taxes were paid on the other side, however I doubt they'd do it in a case of simple omission of filing 1099 forms. Check with your licensed tax adviser. Keep in mind that for the IRS 2011 is now closed, since the 3-year statute of limitations has passed. For California the statute is 4 years, and you're almost at the end of it. However since you're already under audit they may ask you to agree to extend it.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "70cf8d23890f8f5e17526f378a4ec318",
"text": "\"In a word, no. If your income is high enough to have to file a return, you have to file a return. My accountant has a nice mindset for making it more palatable. I'll paraphrase: \"\"Our tax system is ludicrously complicated. As a result, it is your duty as an American to seek out and take advantage of every deduction and credit available to you. If our politicians and leaders put it into the tax code, use it to your advantage.\"\" A friend of mine got a free golf cart that way. It was a crazy combination of credits and loopholes for electric vehicles. That loophole has been closed, and some would say it's a great example of him exercising his patriotic duty.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "653e490ace6c1b315324cea013d7d9ef",
"text": "Not correct. First - when you say they don't tax the reimbursement, they are classifying it in a way that makes it taxable to you (just not withholding tax at that time). In effect, they are under-withholding, if these reimbursement are high enough, you'll have not just a tax bill, but penalties for not paying enough all year. My reimbursements do not produce any kind of pay stub, they are a direct deposit, and are not added to my income, not as they occur, nor at year end on W2. Have you asked them why they handle it this way? It's wrong, and it's costing you.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a7b3c9eee55e4e1aca9b47f730125171",
"text": "Your employer pays the expected (but estimated) taxes for you. So the chances are you don't own more; but that might be different if you have other sources of income that he doesn't know about (interest on savings or a side-job or whatever). Also, you could have deductions that reduce the taxes you owe, which he again doesn't know, so you overpay. If you don't file, you don't get them back. Most tax software companies offer free usage of their tool for standard filings, and you can use it to find out your tax situation, and then buy the tool only when you want to file. If you use one of those, you can type in all your data, and depending on the result, decide to buy it and file right away. Note that if it turns out you owe taxes, you must file (and pay), but of course you can do it manually instead of buying the tool. If it turns out you get money back, it is your decision to file - you probably don't care for a small amount, but if you get 1000 $ back, you might want to file - again, buying the software of doing it manually.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9c3b32d642fa5b954e6042862d04208d",
"text": "One significant reason it makes sense for filing to be the default is home ownership rates. I think far more so than investment income, Americans own homes: as there is a significant mortgage interest deduction, between that and investments a large number of Americans would have to file (about a third of Americans get the mortgage interest tax deduction, and a large chunk of the richest don't qualify but would have to file for investments anyway). We also have a very complicated tax code, with nearly everyone getting some kind of deduction. Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor (folks making, say, $30k for a family of 4 with a full-time job get several thousand dollars in refundable credits, for example), the Student Loan interest deduction, the above mortgage deduction, almost everyone gets something. Finally, your employer may not know about your family situation. As we have tax credits and deductions for families based on number of children, for example, it's possible your employer doesn't know about those (if you don't get health insurance on their behalf, they may well not know). Start reporting things like that separately... and you end up with about as much work as filing is now.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f32d820d97c3f202be1a3c1a88a1820b",
"text": "\"Does he need to file a tax return in this situation? Will the IRS be concerned that he did not file even if he received a 1099? No. However, if you don't file the IRS may come back asking why, or \"\"make up\"\" a return for you assuming that the whole amount on the 1099-MISC is your net earnings. So in the end, I suspect you'll end up filing even though you don't have to, just to prove that you don't have to. Bottom line - if you have 1099 income (or any other income reported to the IRS that brings you over the filing threshold), file a return.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4ece5a4423569b60c3f64870d4bc281f",
"text": "\"I'm assuming that you're in the US. In that case, the answer is that it depends on how your company set up its reimbursement plan. The IRS recognizes \"\"accountable\"\" and \"\"nonaccountable\"\" plans. Accountable plans have to meet certain requirements. Anything else is nonaccountable. If you are reimbursed according to an accountable plan, this is not income and should not be reported to the IRS at all. If you are reimbursed under a nonaccountable plan, then this is income but you might be able to get a deduction on your tax return if you itemize. Most established companies have accountable plans for normal business expenses. More detail from IRS: http://www.tax.gov/TaxabilityCertainFringeBenefits/pdf/Accountable_v_Nonaccountable_Plans_Methods_of_Reimbursing_Employees_for_Expense.pdf\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bc721c0bcdd095c130ae3e926407beb0",
"text": "Companies in the US will take care of paying a portion of your required income tax on your behalf based on some paperwork you fill out when starting work. However, it is up to you as an individual to submit an income tax return. This is used to ensure that you did not end up under or overpaying based on what your company did on your behalf and any other circumstances that may impact your actual tax owed. In my experience, the process is similar in Europe. I think anyone who has a family, a house or investments in Europe would need to file an income tax return as that is when things start to get complex.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b4bdf77bd6c433338ae2798676b50331",
"text": "\"There are many people who have deductions far above the standard deduction, but still don't itemize. That's their option even though it comes at a cost. It may be foolish, but it's not illegal. If @littleadv citation is correct, the 'under penalty of perjury' type issue, what of those filers who file a Schedule A but purposely leave off their donations? I've seen many people discuss charity, and write that they do not want to benefit in any way from their donation, yet, still Schedule A their mortgage and property tax. Their returns are therefore fraudulent. I am curious to find a situation in which the taxpayer benefits from such a purposeful oversight, or, better still, a cited case where they were charged with doing so. I've offered advice on filings return that wasn't \"\"truthful\"\". When you own a stock and cannot find cost basis, there are times that you might realize the basis is so low that just entering zero will cost you less than $100 in extra tax. You are not truthful, of course, but this kind of false statement isn't going to lead to any issue. If it gets noticed within an audit, no agent is going to give it more than a moment of time and perhaps suggest, \"\"you didn't even know the year it was bought?\"\" but there would be no consequence. My answer is for personal returns, I'm sure for business, accuracy to the dollar is actually important.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a8a34d5de6f3676427fdea0189bc6428",
"text": "It would be quite the trick for (a) the government to run all year and get all its revenue in April when taxes are due and (b) for people to actually save the right amount to be able to cut that check each year. W2 employers withhold the estimated federal and state taxes along with the payroll (social security) tax from each paycheck. Since the employer doesn't know how many kids you have, or how much mortgage interest, etc you will take deductions for, you can submit a W4 form to adjust withholdings. The annual Form 1040 in April is to reconcile exact numbers, some people get a refund of some of what they paid in, others owe some money. If one is self-employed, they are required to pay quarterly estimated taxes. And they, too, reconcile exact numbers in April.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9bb1b479d1d600df703dc6c48c682ae7",
"text": "Legally, do I have anything to worry about from having an incorrectly filed W-4? What you did wasn't criminal. When you submitted the form it was correct. Unfortunately as your situation changed you didn't adjust the form, that mistake does have consequences. Is there anything within my rights I can do to get the company to take responsibility for their role in this situation, or is it basically my fault? It is basically your fault. The company needs a w-4 for each employee. They will use that W-4 for every paycheck until the government changes the regulation, or your employment ends, or you submit a new form. Topic 753 - Form W-4 – Employee's Withholding Allowance Certificate If an employee qualifies, he or she can also use Form W-4 (PDF) to tell you not to deduct any federal income tax from his or her wages. To qualify for this exempt status, the employee must have had no tax liability for the previous year and must expect to have no tax liability for the current year. However, if the employee can be claimed as a dependent on a parent's or another person's tax return, additional limitations may apply; refer to the instructions for Form W-4. A Form W-4 claiming exemption from withholding is valid for only the calendar year in which it is filed with the employer. To continue to be exempt from withholding in the next year, an employee must give you a new Form W-4 claiming exempt status by February 15 of that year. If the employee does not give you a new Form W-4, withhold tax as if he or she is single, with no withholding allowances. However, if you have an earlier Form W-4 (not claiming exempt status) for this employee that is valid, withhold as you did before. (I highlighted the key part) Because you were claiming exempt they should have required you to update that form each year. In your case that may not have applied because of the timing of the events. When do you submit a new form? Anytime your situation changes. Sometimes the change is done to adjust withholding to modify the amount of a refund. Other times failure to update the form can lead to bigger complication: when your marital status changes, or the number of dependents changes. In these situations you could have a significant amount of under-withheld, which could lead to a fine later on. As a side note this is even more true for the state version of a W-4. Having a whole years worth of income tax withholding done for the wrong state will at a minimum require you to file in multiple states, it could also result in a big surprise if the forgotten state has higher tax rate. Will my (now former) employee be responsible for paying their portion of the taxes that were not withheld during the 9 months I was full-time, tax Exempt? For federal and state income taxes they are just a conduit. They take the money from your paycheck, and periodically send it to the IRS and the state capital. Unless you could show that the pay stubs said taxes were being withheld, but the w-2 said otherwise; they have no role in judging the appropriateness of your W-4 with one exception. Finally, and I am not too hopeful on this one, but is there anything I can do to ease this tax burden? I understand that the IRS is owed no matter what. You have one way it might workout. For many taxpayers who have a large increase in pay from one year to the next, they can take advantage of a safe-harbor in the tax law. If they had withheld as much money in 2015 as they paid in 2014, they have reached the safe-harbor. They avoid the penalty for under withholding. Note that 2014 number is not what you paid on tax day or what was refunded, but all your income taxes for the entire year. Because in your case your taxes for the year 2014 were ZERO, that might mean that you automatically reach the safe-harbor for 2015. That makes sense because one of the key requirements of claiming exempt is that you had no liability the year before. It won't save you from paying what you owe but it can help avoid a penalty. Lessons",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "58fd1222e8565395bee7290f7a71a3e3",
"text": "\"In the U.S., Form 1040 is known as the tax return. This is the form that is filed annually to calculate your tax due for the year, and you either claim a refund if you have overpaid your taxes or send in a payment if you have underpaid. The form is generally due on April 15 each year, but this year the due date is April 18, 2016. When it comes to filing your taxes, there are two questions you need to ask yourself: \"\"Am I required to file?\"\" and \"\"Should I file?\"\" Am I required to file? The 1040 instructions has a section called \"\"Do I have to file?\"\" with several charts that determine if you are legally required to file. It depends on your status and your gross income. If you are single, under 65, and not a dependent on someone else's return, you are not required to file if your 2015 income was less than $10,300. If you will be claimed as a dependent on someone else's return, however, you must file if your earned income (from work) was over $6300, or your unearned income (from investments) was over $1050, or your gross (total) income was more than the larger of either $1050 or your earned income + $350. See the instructions for more details. Should I file? Even if you find that you are not required to file, it may be beneficial to you to file anyway. There are two main reasons you might do this: If you have had income where tax has been taken out, you may have overpaid the tax. Filing the tax return will allow you to get a refund of the amount that you overpaid. As a student, you may be eligible for student tax credits that can get you a refund even if you did not pay any tax during the year. How to file For low income tax payers, the IRS has a program called Free File that provides free filing software options.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
4077a94b66af04d414f99862cd53313c
|
Meaning of capital market
|
[
{
"docid": "c9835dfc7ec0b879d7bda361cc073ffa",
"text": "\"Just to clarify, In wikipedia when it says It is defined as a market in which money is provided for periods longer than a year They are referring to the company which is asking for money. So for example the stock market provides money to the issuing company of an IPO, indefinitely. Meaning the company that just went public is provided with money for a period longer than a year. The definition in Investopedia basically says the same thing Wikipedia does it is just phrased slightly different and leaves out the \"\"for periods longer than a year\"\". For example Wikipedia uses the term \"\"business enterprises\"\" and \"\"governments\"\" while Investopedia uses the term private sector and public sector, in this context \"\"business enterprise\"\" is \"\"private sector\"\" and \"\"governments\"\" is \"\"public sector\"\" So in the sense of the length debt is issued yes, money market would be the opposite of a capital market but both markets still offer a place for governments and companies to raise money and both are classified as financial markets.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "86002c2881dc80cdb1d691a332a2557e",
"text": "\"1) Are the definitions for capital market from the two sources the same? Yes. They are from two different perspectives. Investopedia is looking at it primarily from the perspective of a trader and they lead-off with the secondary market. This refers to the secondary market: A market in which individuals and institutions trade financial securities. This refers to the primary market: Organizations/institutions in the public and private sectors also often sell securities on the capital markets in order to raise funds. Also, the Investopedia definition leaves much to be desired, but it is supposed to be pithy. So, you are comparing apples and oranges, to some extent. One is an article, as short as it may be, this other one is an entry in a dictionary. 2) What is the opposite of capital market, according to the definition in investopedia? It's not quite about opposites, this is not physics. However, that is not the issue here. The Investopedia definition simply does not mention any other possibilities. The Wikipedia article defines the term more thoroughly. It talks about primary/secondary markets in separate paragraph. 3) According to the Wikipedia's definition, why does stock market belong to capital market, given that stocks can be held less than one year too? If you follow the link in the Wikipedia article to money market: As money became a commodity, the money market is nowadays a component of the financial markets for assets involved in short-term borrowing, lending, buying and selling with original maturities of one year or less. The key here is original maturities of one year or less. Here's my attempt at explaining this: Financial markets are comprised of money markets and capital markets. Money is traded as if it were a commodity on the money markets. Hence, the short-term nature in its definition. They are more focused on the money itself. Capital markets are focused on the money as a means to an end. Companies seek money in these markets for longer terms in order to improve their business in some way. A business may go to the money markets to access money quickly in order to deal with a short-term cash crunch. Meanwhile, a business may go to the capital markets to seek money in order to expand its business. Note that capital markets came first and money markets are a relatively recent development. Also, we are typically speaking about the secondary (capital) market when we are talking about the stock or bond market. In this market, participants are merely trading among themselves. The company that sought money by issuing that stock/bond certificate is out of the picture at that point and has its money. So, Facebook got its money from participants in the primary market: the underwriters. The underwriters then turned around and sold that stock in an IPO to the secondary market. After the IPO, their stock trades on the secondary market where you or I have access to trade it. That money flows between traders. Facebook got its money at the \"\"beginning\"\" of the process.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "26add6882c3b0f92d535fd869f8d55ee",
"text": "\"Market caps is just the share price, multiplied by the number of shares. It doesn't represent any value (if people decide to pay more or less for the shares, the market cap goes up or down). It does represent what people think the company is worth. NAV sounds very much like book value. It basically says \"\"how much cash would we end up with if we sold everything the company owns, paid back all the debt, and closed down the business? \"\" Since closing down the business is rarely a good idea, this underestimates the value of the business enormously. Take a hairdresser who owns nothing but a pair of scissors, but has a huge number of repeat customers, charges $200 for a haircut, and makes tons of money every year. The business has a huge value, but NAV = price of one pair of used scissors.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "22f70c08e60d9f5b1375bca604d8599f",
"text": "It is ALWAYS possible for a company's valuation in the market to be larger than the market it serves, and in fact it is not uncommon. There's valid argument that Uber would be a good example of this, with a market cap of more than $60 billion. Market cap is the total value of all shares outstanding. Keep in mind that what a company's shares trade for is less a reflection of its past (or, to some degree, even present) revenue activity and more of a speculative bet on what the company will do in the future.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "02d1f2933881ff961545fe3768fdee86",
"text": "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://jacobinmag.com/2017/10/finance-capital-shareholders-profit-market) reduced by 81%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The term financialization is used all over the place, but it&#039;s usually defined in a pretty circular way: financialization means &quot;More finance,&quot; more things controlled by finance. > The role of finance in enforcing a certain kind of policy on the state, a certain kind of logic, a certain kind of organization - whether it&#039;s the bond market or whoever else we imagine here - is even more clear-cut. > To me, that&#039;s a narrower, more specific, and maybe more fruitful way of thinking about financialization than just &quot;There&#039;s more finance.\"\" ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/78t6so/the_disruptors_jacobin_magazine_via/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~235206 tl;drs so far.\"\") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr \"\"PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.\"\") | *Top* *keywords*: **logic**^#1 **More**^#2 **finance**^#3 **way**^#4 **corporation**^#5\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "66e0f00ac4ddfe238ea77d6e34291c88",
"text": "Stock markets are supposed to be about investment and providing capital to companies for operations and research. High frequency trading is only about gaming the market and nothing else. Arguments that this provides more capital or liquidity don't make any sense because the speed of trading is such that listed companies cannot take advantage and only high frequency traders are served.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6f0cb1b299c8902d05de659c56af9285",
"text": "\"In finance, form is function, and while a reason for a trade could be anything, but since the result of a trade is a change in value, it could be presumed that one seeks to receive a change in value. Stock company There may have been more esoteric examples, but currently, possession of a company (total ownership of its' assets actually) is delineated by percentage or a glorified \"\"banknote\"\" frequently called a \"\"share\"\". Percentage companies are usually sole proprietorship and partnerships, but partnerships can now trade in \"\"units\"\". Share companies are usually corporations. With shares, a company can be divided into almost totally indistinguishable units. This allows for more flexible ownership, so individuals can trade them without having to change the company contract. Considering the ease of trade, it could be assumed that common stock contract provisions were formulated to provide for such an ease. Motivation to trade This could be anything, but it seems those with the largest ownership of common stock have lots of wealth, so it could be assumed that people at least want to own stocks to own wealth. Shorting might be a little harder to reason, but I personally assume that the motivation to trade is still to increase wealth. Social benefit of the stock market Assuming that ownership in a company is socially valuable and that the total value of ownership is proportional to the social value provided, the social benefit of a stock market is that it provided the means to scale ownership through convenience, speed, and reliability.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "52fa2db38c2736e1635ef757ef6cea8a",
"text": "\"As someone that works in and with the ag and commodity markets, my understanding, is limited but I hope it helps. Aside from needing an infrastructure built to maintain the vast amounts of data, communication, pricing, banking information, having a closing time for our markets helps to ensure value and fair trade. Capitalism is centralized around creating a fair value for ventures to sell, where prospective buyers opt to purchase or invest. For example, where I attended university, there were many coffee shops close to campus, but only one stayed open all night, and as such had operational cost much higher than other shops, forcing them to charge more for a cup of coffee. While this example is crude, the idea is the same. By maintaining\"\"bank\"\" hours, product or strategies and developments meant to increase projected value are allowed to occur. I imagine that if the markets did not close, my coffee prices would skyrocket for an increased demand, that of which the supply chsin, and farmers, would struggle to meet. The same would be said of grain, salt, oils, etcetera.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "26bc7f91b8e382b3c90f5c302e9fee61",
"text": "\"Very often, the word secondary market is used synonymously with the stock market as we all know it. In this case, the primary market would be the \"\"closed\"\" world of VCs, business angels, etc to which stock market investors do not have access, e.g. the securities are not trading on a public stock market.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "796e59cd78f34a9c70642f63ecf4b371",
"text": "\"Buying (or selling) a futures contract means that you are entering into a contractual agreement to buy (or sell) the contracted commodity or financial instrument in the contracted amount (the contract size) at the price you have bought (or sold) the contract on the contract expire date (maturity date). It is important to understand that futures contracts are tradeable instruments, meaning that you are free to sell (or buy back) your contract at any time before the expiry date. For example, if you buy 1 \"\"lot\"\" (1 contract) of a gold future on the Comex exchange for the contract month of December 2016, then you entering into a contract to buy 100 ounces (the contract size) of gold at the price at which you buy the contract - not the spot price on the day of expiry when the contract comes to maturity. The December 2016 gold futures contract has an expiry date of 28 December. You are free to trade this contract at any time before its expiry by selling it back to another market participant. If you sell the contract at a price higher than you have purchased it, then you will realise a profit of 100 times the difference between the price you bought the contract and the price you sold the contract, where 100 is the contract size of the gold contract. Similarly, if you sell the contract at a price lower than the price you have purchased it, then you will realise a loss. (Commissions paid will also effect your net profit or loss). If you hold your contract until the expiry date and exercise your contract by taking (or making) delivery, then you are obliged to buy (or sell) 100 ounces of gold at the price at which you bought (or sold) the contract - not the current spot price. So long as your contract is \"\"open\"\" (i.e., prior to the expiry date and so long as you own the contract) you are required to make a \"\"good faith deposit\"\" to show that you intend to honour your contractual obligations. This deposit is usually called \"\"initial margin\"\". Typically, the initial margin amount will be about 2% of the total contract value for the gold contract. So if you buy (or sell) one contract for 100 ounces of gold at, say, $1275 an ounce, then the total contract value will be $127,500 and your deposit requirement would be about $2,500. The initial margin is returned to you when you sell (or buy) back your futures contract, or when you exercise your contract on expiry. In addition to initial margin, you will be required to maintain a second type of margin called \"\"variation margin\"\". The variation margin is the running profit or loss you are showing on your open contract. For the sake of simplicity, lets look only at the case where you have purchased a futures contract. If the futures price is higher than your contract (buy) price, then you are showing a profit on your current position and this profit (the variation margin) will be used to offset your initial margin requirement. Conversely, if the futures price has dropped below your contracted (buy) price, then you will be showing a loss on your open position and this loss (the variation margin) will be added to your initial margin and you will be called to put up more money in order to show good faith that you intend to honour your obligations. Note that neither the initial margin nor the variation margin are accounting items. In other words, these are not postings that are debited or credited to the ledger in your trading account. So in some sense \"\"you don't have to pay anything upfront\"\", but you do need to put up a refundable deposit to show good faith.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8accfe15c696a664fe3605ddf9390c52",
"text": "Most likely economics then. What I'm looking to gain is an understanding of how the market works so that I may take that knowledge and use it to make investments, buy stocks, or possibly start a business. I have a very large amount of time between my studies for my classes and I think it would be a waste to not learn these tools (to give you a reason for my interest in this).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5871566697910ffc03fc7f607eb651c9",
"text": "\"Market cap is speculative value, M = P * W, where W is stock (or other way of owning) percentage of ownership, P - price of percentage of ownership. This could include \"\"outside of exchange\"\" deals. Some funds could buy ownership percentage directly via partial ownership deal. That ownership is not stock, but fixed-type which has value too. Stock market cap is speculative value, M2 = Q * D, where D is free stocks available freely, Q - price of stock, in other words Quote number (not price of ownership). Many stock types do NOT provide actual percentage of ownership, being just another type of bond with non-fixed coupon and non-fixed price. Though such stocks do not add to company's capitalization after sold to markets, it adds to market capitalization at the moment of selling via initial price.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0390f2d24db9cccefd2200541646e809",
"text": "\"Market cap is the current value of a company's equity and is defined as the current share price multiplied by the number of shares. Please check also \"\"enterprise value\"\" for another definition of a company`s total value (enterprise value = market cap adjusted for net nebt). Regarding the second part of your question: Issuing new shares usually does not affect market cap in a significant way because the newly issued shares often result in lower share prices and dilution of the existing share holders shares.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f8192a8b59e7dc34d8ba75d13043d01f",
"text": "\"So, the term \"\"ready market\"\" simply means that a market exists in which there are legitimate buy/sell offers, meaning there are investors willing to own or trade in the security. A \"\"spot market\"\" means that the security/commodity is being delivered immediately, rather at some predetermined date in the future (hence the term \"\"futures market\"\"). So if you buy oil on the spot market, you'd better be prepared to take immediate delivery, where as when you buy a futures contract, the transaction doesn't happen until some later date. The advantage for futures contract sellers is the ability to lock in the price of what they're selling as a hedge against the possibility of a price drop between now and when they can/will deliver the commodity. In other words, a farmer can pre-sell his grain at a set price for some future delivery date so he can know what he's going to get regardless of the price of grain at the time he delivers it. The downside to the farmer is that if grain prices rise higher than what he sold them for as futures contracts then he loses that additional money. That's the advantage to the buyer, who expects the price to rise so he can resell what he bought from the farmer at a profit. When you trade on margin, you're basically borrowing the money to make a trade, whether you're trading long (buying) or short (selling) on a security. It isn't uncommon for traders to pledge securities they already own as collateral for a margin account, and if they are unable to cover a margin call then those securities can be liquidated or confiscated to satisfy the debt. There still may even be a balance due after such a liquidation if the pledged securities don't cover the margin call. Most of the time you pay a fee (or interest rate) on whatever you borrow on margin, just like taking out a bank loan, so if you're going to trade on margin, you have to include those costs in your calculations as to what you need to earn from your investment to make a profit. When I short trade, I'm selling something I don't own in the expectation I can buy it back later at a lower price and keep the difference. For instance, if I think Apple shares are going to take a steep drop at some point soon, I can short them. So imagine I short-sell 1000 shares of AAPL at the current price of $112. That means my brokerage account is credited with the proceeds of the sale ($112,000), and I now owe my broker 1000 shares of AAPL stock. If the stock drops to $100 and I \"\"cover my short\"\" (buy the shares back to repay the 1000 I borrowed) then I pay $100,000 for them and give them to my broker. I keep the difference ($12,000) between what I sold them for and what I paid to buy them back, minus any brokerage fees and fees the broker may charge me for short-selling. In conclusion, a margin trade is using someone else's money to make a trade, whether it's to buy more or to sell short. A short trade is selling shares I don't even own because I think I can make money in the process. I hope this helps.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5b7df2f8533eb68741d6c2c8395f6fd4",
"text": "The economic utility of markets results from price discovery (and the corresponding capital allocation.) Information which changes the material value of a business can come to light, be processed by sentient beings capable of rational thought, and conveyed to the market in the form of a price in an hour. That can't happen in a millisecond. And don't try to argue about liquidity, because HFT liquidity evaporates in milliseconds in adverse conditions (i.e. when liquidity matters.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "8586796e8d64cc6ebeb5ef6bc6cc0f27",
"text": "Yes and no, P2P Capital Markets is similar concept but is more geared towards business loans. Community Lend used to offer this service but has stopped.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "55cc730f8d9d75acf4c420503348d4c4",
"text": "HFT allows those with access to leverage sub-second propagation delays in pricing, which screws those without access to HFT systems. And since market-based capital gains are a ponzi scheme, this means that HFT essentially creates a money funnel from those without to those with. I honestly don't see how HFT benefits the market at all - it only benefits those with HFT systems to the detriment of those without. A transaction tax that makes HFT untenable simply removes HFT systems from the equation. The markets stay liquid; stocks stay fungible. The markets ran just fine for almost a century without HFT.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
41d834b5971555878fa3a1ee3a27e522
|
Should I be claiming more than 1 exemption?
|
[
{
"docid": "ece04d2bd05cd3126ea8db90f178fe7e",
"text": "\"It's not possible to determine whether you can \"\"expect a refund\"\" or whether you are claiming the right number of exemptions from the information given. If your wife were not working and you did not do independent contracting, then the answer would be much simpler. However, in this case, we must also factor in how much your contracting brings in (since you must pay income tax on that, as well as Medicare and, probably, Social Security), whether you are filing jointly or separately, and your wife's income from her business. There are also other factors such as whether you'll be claiming certain child care expenses, and certain tax credits which may phase out depending on your income. If you can accurately estimate your total household income for the year, and separate that into income from wages, contracting, and your wife's business, as well as your expenses for things like state and local income and property taxes, then you can make a very reasonable estimate about your total tax burden (including the self-employment taxes on your non-wage income) and then determine whether you are having enough tax withheld from your paycheck. Some people may find that they should have additional tax withheld to compensate for these expenses (see IRS W-4 Line #6).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dc1e070074bf5d6aebec9e63615dea20",
"text": "\"J - Approaching the answer from the W4 perspective (for calculation purposes) may be more trouble that it's worth. I'd strongly suggest you use tax software, whether it's the 2016 SW or a current year one, on line, to get an estimate of your total tax bill for the year. You can then look at your current run rate of tax paid in to see if you are on track. If you have a large shortfall, you can easily adjust your withholdings. If you are on track to get a large refund, make the adjustment so next year will track better. Note, a withholding allowance is equal to a personal exemption. Some think that \"\"4\"\" means 4 people in the house, but it actually means \"\"don't tax 4 x $4050\"\" as I have $16200 in combined people or tax deductions.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "6936be415fe93cd7e0a9c018dfd788e4",
"text": "The difference is that if you end up owing more than $1k in taxes come April, you **will** be mandated for withholding next year (that's at the federal level, I don't know CA law in particular); and if this isn't the first time you've done it, you may owe additional penalties as well. Your actual tax liability comes out the same either way; you're *probably* better off just letting Uncle Sam have an interest-free loan for a few months and getting the difference back in April, than risking it; but if you've done the math and know you'll only owe exactly $999.99, you can do what you want. :)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "18709a398b2b7066a205463a07181a42",
"text": "There's a couple issues to consider: When you sell your primary home, the IRS gives you a $500k exemption (married, filing jointly) on gain. If you decide not to sell your current house now, and you subsequently fall outside the ownership/use tests, then you may owe taxes on any gains when you sell the house. Rather than being concerned about your net debt, you should be concerned about your monthly debt payments. Generally speaking, you cannot have debt payments of more than 36% of your monthly income. If you can secure a renter for your current property, then you may be able to reach this ratio for your next (third) property. Also, only 75% of your expected monthly rental income is considered for calculating your 36% number. (This is not an exhaustive list of risks you expose yourself to). The largest risk is if you or your spouse find yourself without income (e.g. lost job, accident/injury, no renter), then you may be hurting to make your monthly debt payments. You will need to be confident that you can pay all your debts. A good rule that I hear is having the ability to pay 6 months worth of debt. This may not necessarily mean having 6 months worth of cash on hand, but access to that money through personal lines of credit, borrowing against assets, selling stocks/investments, etc. You also want to make sure that your insurance policies fully cover you in the event that a tenant sues you, damages property, etc. You also don't want to face a situation where you are sued because of discrimination. Hiring a property management company to take care of these things may be a good peace-of-mind.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b069d22b7c968294f963f273dd8ee0a9",
"text": "Yes, if you can split your income up over multiple years it will be to your advantage over earning it all in one year. The reasons are as you mentioned, you get to apply multiple deductions/credits/exemptions to the same income. Rather than just 1 standard deduction, you get to deduct 2 standard deductions, you can double the max saved in an IRA, you benefit more from any non-refundable credits etc. This is partly due to the fact that when you are filing your taxes in Year 1, you can't include anything from Year 2 since it hasn't happened yet. It doesn't make sense for the Government to take into account actions that may or may not happen when calculating your tax bill. There are factors where other year profit/loss can affect your tax liability, however as far as I know these are limited to businesses. Look into Loss Carry Forwarded/Back if you want to know more. Regarding the '30% simple rate', I think you are confusing something that is simple to say with something that is simple to implement. Are we going to go change the rules on people who expected their mortgage deduction to continue? There are few ways I can think of that are more sure to cause home prices to plummet than to eliminate the Mortgage Interest Deduction. What about removing Student Loan Interest? Under a 30% 'simple' rate, what tools would the government use to encourage trade in specific areas? Will state income tax deduction also be removed? This is going to punish those in a state with a high income tax more than those in states without income tax. Those are all just 'common' deductions that affect a lot of people, you could easily say 'no' to all of them and just piss off a bunch of people, but what about selling stock though? I paid $100 for the stock and I sold it for $120, do I need to pay $36 tax on that because it is a 'simple' 30% tax rate or are we allowing the cost of goods sold deduction (it's called something else I believe when talking about stocks but it's the same idea?) What about if I travel for work to tutor individuals, can I deduct my mileage expenses? Do I need to pay 30% income tax on my earnings and principal from a Roth IRA? A lot of people have contributed to a Roth with the understanding that withdrawals will be tax free, changing those rules are punishing people for using vehicles intentionally created by the government. Are we going to go around and dismantle all non-profits that subsist entirely on tax-deductible donations? Do I need to pay taxes on the employer's cost of my health insurance? What about 401k's and IRA's? Being true to a 'simple' 30% tax will eliminate all 'benefits' from every job as you would need to pay taxes on the value of the benefits. I should mention that this isn't exactly too crazy, there was a relatively recent IRS publication about businesses needing to withhold taxes from their employees for the cost of company supplied food but I don't know if it was ultimately accepted. At the end of the day, the concept of simplifying the tax law isn't without merit, but realize that the complexities of tax law are there due to the complexities of life. The vast majority of tax laws were written for a reason other than to benefit special interests, and for that reason they cannot easily be ignored.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "29079941bcf673433726120d468485ea",
"text": "If you have multiple accounts, you have to empty them all before you can deduct any losses. Your loss is not a capital loss, its a deduction. It is calculated based on the total amount you have withdrawn from all your Roth IRA's, minus the total basis. It will be subject to the 2% AGI treshhold (i.e.: if your AGI is > 100K, none of it is deductible, and you have to itemize to get it). Bottom line - think twice. Summarizing the discussion in comments: If you have a very low AGI, I would guess that your tax liability is pretty low as well. Even if you deduct the whole $2K, and all of it is above the other deductions you have (which in turn is above the standard deduction of almost $6K), you save say $300 if you're in 15% tax bracket. That's the most savings you have. However I'm assuming something here: I'm assuming that you're itemizing your deductions already and they're above the standard deduction. This is very unlikely, with such a low income. You don't have state taxes to deduct, you probably don't spend a lot to deduct sales taxes, and I would argue that with the low AGI you probably don't own property, and if you do - you don't have a mortgage with a significant interest on it. You can be in 15% bracket with AGI between (roughly) $8K and $35K, i.e.: you cannot deduct between $160 and $750 of the $2K, so it's already less than the maximum $300. If your AGI is $8K, the deduction doesn't matter, EIC might cover all of your taxes anyway. If your AGI is $30K, you can deduct only $1400, so if you're in the 15% bracket - you saved $210. That, again, assuming it's above your other deductions, which in turn are already above the standard deduction. Highly unlikely. As I said in the comments - I do not think you can realistically save on taxes because of this loss in such a manner.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4cf29d950fdc42da450810e87d3e1eac",
"text": "\"I am not aware of any place that the tax forms ask, \"\"How many people live in your house?\"\" They ask how many dependants you have, and not everyone who lives in your house is your dependant. There are very specific rules about that. If your girlfriend is being claimed as a dependent on her parents' tax return, then she cannot also be claimed on anyone else's return, and there's no need to investigate further. To claim someone as a dependent, they have to meet a number of conditions. I am not a lawyer. See IRS Publication 17. But the gist of it is that they must, (a) either be a relative (there's a list of what sorts of relatives qualify) or live with you all year; (b) Living with you must not violate local law; (c) Must make less than $4000 per year; and (d) You must provide over half of their support. Your girlfriend may meet the \"\"live with you all year\"\" or maybe not. But the real stumper is likely to be (d). Unless your parents are paying her tuition, they almost certainly don't meet this test.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b19b22ee8d55cec0980dff641e6ca784",
"text": "I would not expect any problems. Your interest will have tax deducted at 20% which I don't think you would be entitled to reclaim because you don't get a personal allowance if you aren't resident in the UK, and unless you have a huge amount of UK earnings you would not be legally liable to any higher rates of tax so there would be no issues there. If you were liable to more tax you would be obliged to inform the Inland Revenue.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ba1e15889ae2cea42d3c1ef7f74f9ef1",
"text": "Many reasons mentioned already. The reason why I have multiple is missing: I have a personal card for my private use and a company card for company use.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "848f96c11dba0694cc5c7388bd4ed21b",
"text": "I am a very light TurboTax user and have expensed a laptop in the past (since it was used exclusively for work) and used the itemized deduction there and has no issues. Just not sure if there was a limit or anything of note to realize ahead of time. Thanks!",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c4da0f6689c697989f3e85d5e528ac56",
"text": "\"It says that you are exempt \"\"as long as such interest income is not effectively connected with a United States trade or business\"\". So the interest is from money earned from doing business with/through AirBnb, a US company. So you will have to report it. Even if your bank doesn't send you a 1099-INT, you have to report it, unless it is under $0.49 because the IRS allows rounding.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a1041cb736e051ec679ade47727045f5",
"text": "\"Yes, this is a miscellaneous itemized deduction. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p529/ar02.html For this to impact your taxes, you have to be itemizing deductions (have total deductions greater than standard deduction), and the total of all miscellaneous deductions needs to exceed the \"\"2% floor\"\" described in the IRS link above.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b4bdf77bd6c433338ae2798676b50331",
"text": "\"There are many people who have deductions far above the standard deduction, but still don't itemize. That's their option even though it comes at a cost. It may be foolish, but it's not illegal. If @littleadv citation is correct, the 'under penalty of perjury' type issue, what of those filers who file a Schedule A but purposely leave off their donations? I've seen many people discuss charity, and write that they do not want to benefit in any way from their donation, yet, still Schedule A their mortgage and property tax. Their returns are therefore fraudulent. I am curious to find a situation in which the taxpayer benefits from such a purposeful oversight, or, better still, a cited case where they were charged with doing so. I've offered advice on filings return that wasn't \"\"truthful\"\". When you own a stock and cannot find cost basis, there are times that you might realize the basis is so low that just entering zero will cost you less than $100 in extra tax. You are not truthful, of course, but this kind of false statement isn't going to lead to any issue. If it gets noticed within an audit, no agent is going to give it more than a moment of time and perhaps suggest, \"\"you didn't even know the year it was bought?\"\" but there would be no consequence. My answer is for personal returns, I'm sure for business, accuracy to the dollar is actually important.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e629aeec2a87432b98553c98ecbe93d9",
"text": "Ask the company if they can make an adjustment for the next paycheck. If they can't then do the following: Increase the number of Federal exemptions by 1. In 2014 a personal exemption reduces your apparent income by $3950. If you are in the 10 % tax bracket and you are paid every two weeks you will see the amount of taxes withheld drop by ($3950*0.10/26) or ~$15. The 13 Paychecks later change it back. If you are in the 15 % tax bracket and you are paid every two weeks you will see the amount of taxes withheld drop by ($3950*0.15/26) or ~$23. Then 9 Paychecks later change it back If you are in the 25 % tax bracket and you are paid every two weeks you will see the amount of taxes withheld drop by ($3950*0.10/26) or ~$38. Then 5 paychecks later change it back. Remember the money isn't gone, it has just been transferred prematurely to the federal treasury. You could also wait until you complete your taxes this spring, then see if you needed to make an adjustment to your exemptions. If you normally get a large refund then you should be increasing your exemptions anyway. If you are always writing a check to the IRS then you weren't getting enough withheld. Also make sure that payroll has the correct numbers. Most companies include the number of federal and state exemptions on the paycheck stub, or the pdf of the stub.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "088598ffdbbf738ec5c4f533240a86ac",
"text": "I understand that if I have multiple health insurance policies, I can only make claim from only one of them if ever I incur medical expenses (I'm from the Philippines). In the US, you cannot simultaneously submit a claim for payment of a medical bill, or request reimbursement for a bill already paid, to multiple insurance companies, but if you are covered by more than one policy, then any part of a claim not paid by one company can be submitted to another company that is also covering you. In fact, if you have employer-paid or employer-provided coverage, most insurance companies will want your employer-provided insurance company to be billed first, and will cover whatever is not paid by the employer coverage. For example, if the employer coverage pays 80% of your doctor's bill, the private insurance will pay the remaining 20%. But, the private insurance policies are also quite expensive. Some professional groups in the US offer major medical coverage to their US members, and might be offering this to non-US members as well (though I suspect not). These policies have large deductibles so that coverage kicks in only when the total medical expenses in that year (whether wholly or partially reimbursed, or not reimbursed at all) exceed the large deductible. These types of policies actually pay out to only a few people - if you have more than, say, $20,000 of medical expenses in a year, you have been quite ill, and thus the premiums are usually much smaller than full-fledged coverage insurance policies which pay out much more frequently because of much smaller deductibles.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bd143bca25c6456b86a9972ccf736e22",
"text": "Also, is seems the wife that's doing the taxes is very reluctant on giving me access to the statements. As an owner, I do have the legal right to those statements do I not? What power would a majority owner of a bar (40%) hold over the other two minority owners (each with 30%)? According to her, she's broken even on her investment, whereas I've collected not even half of my initial investment. The fact that you feel this is fishy reconfirms my belief that she not being truthful to some degree.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4c892cba300873f5baeab9eae1e8c11f",
"text": "I appreciate all the responses, but again, I have NO experience or education in the field. I haven't started any major related college courses yet and do not have a job in the field. I am looking for beginner, introduction level reading material to start reading up on to start understanding the field before I even start school.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
575e2612b210843011891d0356cdc9d2
|
Can I transfer my West Australian rock lobster quota units into my SMSF?
|
[
{
"docid": "15e97da772c632dd4122a70b3431aac5",
"text": "SMSFs are generally prohibited from acquiring assets from related parties (whether it is purchased by the SMSF or contributed into the fund). There are some exceptions to the above rule for acquiring related party assets, including: • Listed securities (ie shares, units or bonds listed on an approved stock exchange, such as the ASX) acquired at market value. • Business real property (ie freehold or leasehold interests in real property used exclusively in one or more businesses) acquired at market value. • An in-house asset where the acquisition would not result in the level of the fund’s in-house assets exceeding 5%. • Units in a widely held unit trust, such as a retail ,managed fund. In-house asset rules An ‘in-house asset’ is generally defined as: • An investment by an SMSF in a related company or trust (ie a fund owns shares in a related company or units in a related trust). • An asset of an SMSF that is leased to a related party. • A loan made by an SMSF to a related company or trust. An investment, lease or loan that is an in-house asset is not prohibited, but is limited to 5% of the market value of the fund’s assets. The Answer: If your pre-owned Western Australian Rock Lobster fishery quota units are not included in the exceptions then you cannot transfer them into your SMSF.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "b6457cfdb5e67f41d9270a82b34af5ee",
"text": "If so how to do it. Ask CIBC to open the new RRSP account, and ask CIBC to contact GWL to tell GWL to move your money from the GWL account into the CIBC account.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "001308bb6898cc328653575ba51889b7",
"text": "Not to my knowledge. Often the specific location is diversified out of the fund because each major building company or real estate company attempts to diversify risk by spreading it over multiple geographical locations. Also, buyers of these smaller portfolios will again diversify by creating a larger fund to sell to the general public. That being said, you can sometimes drill down to the specific assets held by a real estate fund. That takes a lot of work: You can also look for the issuer of the bond that the construction or real estate company issued to find out if it is region specific. Hope that helps.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dc36a99ffea70f0b1e78475c3ad6fcb7",
"text": "Yes. You incur income tax on the RSU on they date they vest. At this point you own the actual shares and you can decide to sell them or to hold them. If you hold them for the required period, and sell them later, the difference between your price at vesting and the sales price would be taxed as long term capital gains. Caution: if you decide to hold, you are still liable to pay income tax in the year they vest. You have to pay taxes on income that you haven't made yet. This is fairly dangerous: if the stock goes down, you may lose a lot of this tax payment. Technically you could recover some of this through claiming capital losses, but that this is severely restricted: the IRS makes it much easier to increase taxes through gains than reducing taxes through losses.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5e43d052df5460eb9c1e6625c9febeee",
"text": "Here are your options. While you remain an Australian citizen you cannot withdraw super just because you are residing overseas. You could renounce your citizenship - just make sure you have another one to fall back on.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b96a22753213aa47f8e72a5c927db89c",
"text": "\"How do I get my money from India to UAE account – what are the options, can I do bank transfer from my mom SB account to my international account. As you have transferred money directly to your Mothers account, getting the money back would need some paper work. Consult a CA and Bank in India, they should be able to help you. There are various limits under FEMA that would be applicable. As the amount is small a self declaration would also suffice. If yes how much do I loose in case of 20 lac due to currency conversion and commission (approximate) Not sure I understand this question, are you asking if you had converted X AED into Rs 20 lacs and now you have 20 lacs will you get back \"\"x\"\" AED or how much less? If you Buy and Sell on the same day, typically there is a spread of 3-5% depending on the currency pair. However rates would have move up or down since then and hence this cannot be answered. You would have to see what the rates are. b. can exchange with Friends in UAE and deposit the same in INR to their SB account in india. Stick to Banks or authorized remittance services [like Western Union / Money Gram / etc]. Any other method you are circumventing law. One is not authorized to convert currency outside the normal Banking Channel.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2beabeee5253deb288ef55349de184f8",
"text": "\"A lot of ISA's allow both shares and funds as well as gilts, Hargreaves Lansdown comes to mind as does the Alliance Trust. Some penalise (charging wise) securities vs UT (unit trusts) funds but in that case just go for a low cost IT (Investment Trust) ISA and hold individual shares as well as pooled investments in the Big IT's. I think you might have to be an \"\"approved investor\"\" to buy gilts.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "792e994786ab815266aae52e7b5afef9",
"text": "The $500 minimum is a policy of the ASX. As such any broker that offered a different policy would not be offering direct purchase of exchange traded shares. Note however that this policy applies only to the initial purchase. From the CMC FAQs: The ASX requires a minimum parcel of $500 to be traded if you don’t currently hold that particular security. Once you have $500 worth of an individual security, you can purchase any value of shares you like.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bd76b9c659a84acc192bdc6541303df9",
"text": "the pots will be negligible, however this capital could be used better elsewhere if I was to withdraw them. You won't be able to withdraw the money. Notwithstanding the recent 'pension freedom' changes, money put into a pension is still inaccessible until age 55 at the very earliest, and probably later by the time you get there. You should have been Advised of this every time you enrolled into a scheme, although it may well have been buried in something you were given to read. The best you can do (and what I would recommend, although of course this post isn't Advice) is to transfer the pensions to a personal pension, for example a SIPP, wherein you will be able to control where the money is invested. Most SIPP providers will gladly help you with such transfers. Would it be beneficial to keep these smaller pots with their respected schemes The reason I suggest transferring is that leaving the funds in workplace schemes that are no longer being contributed to is a surefire way of finding yourself invested in poorly-performing neglected funds, earning money for no one beyond the scheme provider.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1c06d4979519343b62cea20210071cd7",
"text": "It depends on the exact level of risk that you want, but if you want to keep your risk close to zero you're pretty much stuck with the banks (and those rates don't look to be going up any time soon). If you're willing to accept a little more risk, you can invest in some index tracking ETFs instead, with the main providers in Australia being Vanguard, Street State and Betashares. A useful tool for for an overview of the Australian ETF market is offered by StockSpot. The index funds reduce your level of risk by investing in an index of the market, e.g. the S&P 200 tracked by STW. If the market as a whole rises, then your investment will too, even though within that index individual companies will rise and fall. This limits your potential rate of return as well, and is still significantly more risky than leaving your cash in an Aussie bank (after all, the whole market can fall), but it might strike the right balance for you. If you're getting started, HSBC, Nabtrade, Commsec and Westpac were all offering a couple of months of free trades up to a certain value. Once the free trades are done, you'll do better to move to another broker (you can migrate your shares to the others to take advantage of their free trades too) or to a cheaper broker like CMC Markets.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7d96ffa27caec8d874570b6eff6a9c68",
"text": "\"The portfolio described in that post has a blend of small slices of Vanguard sector funds, such as Vanguard Pacific Stock Index (VPACX). And the theory is that rebalancing across them will give you a good risk-return tradeoff. (Caveat: I haven't read the book, only the post you link to.) Similar ETFs are available from Vanguard, iShares, and State Street. If you want to replicate the GFP exactly, pick from them. (If you have questions about how to match specific funds in Australia, just ask another question.) So I think you could match it fairly exactly if you wanted to. However, I think trying to exactly replicate the Gone Fishin Portfolio in Australia would not be a good move for most people, for a few reasons: Brokerage and management fees are generally higher in Australia (smaller market), so dividing your investment across ten different securities, and rebalancing, is going to be somewhat more expensive. If you have a \"\"middle-class-sized\"\" portfolio of somewhere in the tens of thousands to low millions of dollars, you're cutting it into fairly small slices to manually allocate 5% to various sectors. To keep brokerage costs low you probably want to buy each ETF only once every one-two years or so. You also need to keep track of the tax consequences of each of them. If you are earning and spending Australian dollars, and looking at the portfolio in Australian dollars, a lot of those assets are going to move together as the Australian dollar moves, regardless of changes in the underlying assets. So there is effectively less diversification than you would have in the US. The post doesn't mention the GFP's approach to tax. I expect they do consider it, but it's not going to be directly applicable to Australia. If you are more interested in implementing the general approach of GFP rather than the specific details, what I would recommend is: The Vanguard and superannuation diversified funds have a very similar internal split to the GFP with a mix of local, first-world and emerging market shares, bonds, and property trusts. This is pretty much fire-and-forget: contribute every month and they will take care of rebalancing, spreading across asset classes, and tax calculations. By my calculations the cost is very similar, the diversification is very similar, and it's much easier. The only thing they don't generally cover is a precious metals allocation, and if you want that, just put 5% of your money into the ASX:GOLD ETF, or something similar.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "92a7a528eaa4f83c37ae06739846b0d0",
"text": "In international transfers there are quite a few charges that come into picture. 1. Your Bank's charges, you mentioned its GBP 20. 2. The Fx conversion margin. So your GBP 317.90 became 500 AUD 3. The Charges of St. George's. Normally it is recovered from Beneficiary. Typically it would show up as 2 entries, one credit for AUD 500 and second a debit. Typically in the range of AUD 10 to 25. However incaes of return, St George will deduct 2 charges from AUD 500; - The Original Charges for transfer that it would have recovered from Beneficiary. - Additional Return charges, again in the range of AUD 10 to 20. Thus the amount they would have sent back to your Bank would be less than AUD 500. Your Bank would have converted and possibly again charged you a return fee. Since these are cross border payments there is no regulation and Bank are free to charge as they please and at time do charge excess. What you can do is disptue with the Bank on the points that; - The Beneficiary account was not closed, and its a deficiency of service. - Request for an itemized statement as to what was the amount returned by St George.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ea582ead73b55789e8dd68ef14643254",
"text": "I don't believe you can do that. From the IRS: Finally, certain types of property are specifically excluded from Section 1031 treatment. Section 1031 does not apply to exchanges of: I highlighted the relevant items for emphasis.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "42419f06c71eda63a7955d18a0d1cd59",
"text": "You've mostly got it figured out, but there are a couple of more points to consider: You'll be permanently losing a corresponding amount of your RRSP contribution room allowance, because the re-deposit of your funds into the new RRSP would count as a new contribution, the way you're proposing to things. For a small amount, it might not matter much, and if you're like a lot of people, you may have more accumulated RRSP room than you can reasonably use up. There may be complications if spousal contributions were made into your account during the previous three years.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "4abdf55b8e3aee2b6ddfaed7e3f5b5ee",
"text": "Your biggest concern will be what happens during the transition period. In the past when my employer made a switch there has been a lockout period where you couldn't move money between funds. Then over a weekend the money moved from investment company A to investment Company B. All the moves were mapped so that you knew which funds your money would be invested in, then staring Monday morning you could switch them if you didn't like the mapping. No money is lost because the transfer is actually done in $'s. Imagine both investment companies had the same S&P 500 fund, and that the transfer takes a week. If when the first accounts are closed the S&P500 fund has a share value of $100 your 10 hares account has a value of $1000. If the dividend/capital gains are distributed during that week; the price per share when the money arrives in the second investment company will now be $99. So that instead of 10 shares @ $100 you now will buy 10.101 shares @ $99. No money was lost. You want that lookout period to be small, and you want the number of days you are not invested in the market to be zero. The lockout limits your ability to make investment changes, if for instance the central bank raises rates. The number of days out of the market is important if during that period of time there is a big price increase, you wouldn't want to miss it. Of course the market could also go lower during that time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2fcd7fb040ef740738e216a493f8cccd",
"text": "You have to file an application with PF Office. Normally your existing Organisation [which you just quit] helps you with the formalities. If not you would have to complete the same and submit it to the EPFO.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
5f8bb341fa74065e28374670d69d6b43
|
Does investing money in other currencies help pad losses in case of a stock market crash?
|
[
{
"docid": "5fc6449416d4cd15fa5c851bc0040ca0",
"text": "If the equity market in the USA crashed, its very likely equity markets everywhere else would crash. The USA has a high number of the world's largest businesses and there are correlations between equity markets. So you need to think of equities as a global asset class, not regional. Your question is then a question about the correlation between equity markets and currency markets. Here's a guess: If equity markets crashed, you would see a lot of panic selling of stocks denominated in many currencies, but probably the most in USD, due to the large number of the world's largest businesses trading on US stock exchanges. Therefore, when the rest of the world sells US equities they receive cash USD, which they might sell for their local currency. That selling pressure would cause USD to fall. But, when equity markets crash there's a move to safety of the bond markets. The world's largest bond markets are denominated in which currency? Probably USD. So those who receive USD for their equities are going to spend that USD on bonds. In which case there is probably no correlation between equity markets and currency markets at all. A quick google search shows this kind of thing",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "45c3cb28491d6b35f3219f442d3100a6",
"text": "\"These have the potential to become \"\"end-of-the-world\"\" scenarios, so I'll keep this very clear. If you start to feel that any particular investment may suddenly become worthless then it is wise to liquidate that asset and transfer your wealth somewhere else. If your wealth happens to be invested in cash then transferring that wealth into something else is still valid. Digging a hole in the ground isn't useful and running for the border probably won't be necessary. Consider countries that have suffered actual currency collapse and debt default. Take Zimbabwe, for example. Even as inflation went into the millions of percent, the Zimbabwe stock exchange soared as investors were prepared to spend ever-more of their devaluing currency to buy stable stocks in a small number of locally listed companies. Even if the Euro were to suffer a critical fall, European companies would probably be ok. If you didn't panic and dig caches in the back garden over the fall of dotcom, there is no need to panic over the decline of certain currencies. Just diversify your risk and buy non-cash (or euro) assets. Update: A few ideas re diversification: The problem for Greece isn't really a euro problem; it is local. Local property, local companies ... these can be affected by default because no-one believes in the entirety of the Greek economy, not just the currency it happens to be using - so diversification really means buying things that are outside Greece.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "7847578cee6631c25a5d983b43d22e33",
"text": "\"On contrary of what Mike Scott suggested, I think in case of EURO DOOM it's a lot safer if your savings were changed into another currency in advance. Beware that bringing your money into an EURO CORE country (like Finland, Austria, Germany, Nethereland) it's useful if you think those banks are safer, but totally useless to avoid the conversion of your saving from Euro into your national currency. In case of EURO CRASH, only the Central Bank will decide what happens to ALL the Euro deposited wherever, single banks, even if they are Deutsche Bank or BNP or ING, can not decide what to do on their own. ECB (European Central Bank) might decide to convert EURO into local currencies based on the account's owner nationality. Therefor if you are Greek and you moved your saving in a German bank, the ECB might decide that your Euro are converted into New Dracma even if they sit in a German bank account. The funniest thing is that if you ask to a Finland bank: \"\"In case of Euro crash, would you convert my Euro into New Dracma?\"\", they sure would answer \"\"No, we can't!\"\", which is true, they can not because it's only the ECB (Europe Central Bank) the one that decides how an ordered Euro crash has to be manged, and the ECB might decide as I explained you above. Other Central Banks (Swiss, FED, etc.) would only follow the decisions of the ECB. Moreover in case of EURO DOOM, it's highly probable that the Euro currency looses a tremendous value compared to other currencies, the loss would be huge in case the Euro Crash happens in a disordered way (i.e. a strong country like Germany and their banks decides to get out and they start printing their own money w/o listening to the ECB anymore). So even if your saving are in Euro in Germany they would loose so much value (compared to other currencies) that you will regreat forever not to have converted them into another currency when you had the time to do it. Couple of advises: 1) If you want to change you savings into another currency you don't need to bring them into another bank/country (like US), you could simply buy US Shares/Bonds at your local bank. Shares/Bonds of a US company/US gov will always be worth their value in dollars no matter in what new pathetic currency your account will be converted. 2) But is there a drawback in converting my saving into another currency (i.e. buying dollars in the form of US treasury bonds)? Unfortunately yes, the drawback is that in case this Euro drama comes finally to an happy ending and Germans decide to open their wallets for the nth time to save the currency, the Euro might suddenly increase its value compared to other currencies, therefor if you changed your saving into another currency you might loose money (i.e. US dollars looses value against the Euro).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b1226b18f17ae68a16316ef098513605",
"text": "Very likely this refers to trading/speculating on leverage, not investing. Of course, as soon as you put leverage into the equation this perfectly makes sense. 2007-2009 for example, if one bought the $SPX at its highs in 2007 at ~$1560.00 - to the lows from 2009 at ~$683.00 - implicating that with only 2:1 leverage a $1560.00 account would have received a margin call. At least here in Europe I can trade index CFD's and other leveraged products. If i trade lets say >50:1 leverage it doesn’t take much to get a margin call and/or position closed by the broker. No doubt, depending on which investments you choose there’s always risk, but currency is a position too. TO answer the question, I find it very unlikely that >90% of investors (referring to stocks) lose money / purchasing power. Anyway, I would not deny that where speculators (not investors) use leverage or try to trade swings, news etc. have a very high risk of losing money (purchasing power).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "39992fa71ba6c1794c6d2f65443b5d45",
"text": "\"Unless you are buying a significant value of your goods in USD then the relative strength of USD versus your local currency will have little to no effect on what the value of your investments is worth to you. In fact only (de|in)flation will effect your purchasing power. If your investments are in your local currency and your future expenses (usage of the returns on the investments) will be in your local currency FX has no effect. To answer your question, however, since all investments involve flows of money there can be no investment (other than perhaps gold which is really a form of currency) that isn't bound to at least one currency. In general investments are expected to be valued against the investor's home currency (I tend to call it \"\"fund currency\"\" as I work with hedge funds) as the return on the investment will be paid out in the fund currency and returns will be compared on the same basis. If investments are to be made internationally then it is necessary to reduce, or \"\"hedge\"\" the exchange rate risk. This is normally done using FX swaps or futures that allow an exchange rate in the future to be locked in today. Far from being unbound from FX moves these derivatives are closely bound to any moves but crucially are bound in the opposite direction to the hoped for FX move. an example of this would be if I'm investing 100GBP (my local currency) in a US company XYZ corp which I expect to do well. Suppose I get 200USD for my 100GBP and so buy 1 * 200USD shares in XYZ. No matter what happens to XYZ stock any move in GBP/USD will affect my P&L so I buy a future that allows me to exchange 200USD for 100GBP in 6 month's time. If GBP rises I can sell the future and make money on both the higher exchange rate and the increase in XYZ corp. If GBP falls I can keep the future until maturity and exchange the 200USD from XYZ corp for 100GBP so I only take the foreign exchange hit on any profits. If I expect my profits to be 10USD I can even buy futures such that I can lock in the exchange rate for 110USD in 6 months so that I will lose even less of my profit from the exchange rate move.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e92639dfe3b96ba834caa1456ea2c9d2",
"text": "Cash would be the better alternative assuming both stocks take a major hit in ALL categories AND the Fed raise rates at the same time for some reason. Money market funds that may have relatively low yields at the moment would likely be one of the few securities not to be repriced downward as interest rates rising would decrease bond values which could be another crash as I could somewhat question how broad of a crash are you talking here. There are more than a few different market segments so that while some parts may get hit really hard in a crash, would you really want to claim everything goes down? Blackrock's graphic shows in 2008 how bonds did the best and only it and cash had positive returns in that year but there is something to be said for how big is a crash: 20%, 50%, 90%?",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d62e3a39316e279e4ee8a1655d33359f",
"text": "\"If you don't use leverage you can't lose more than you invested because you \"\"play\"\" with your own money. But even with leverage when you reach a certain limit (maintenance margin) you will receive a margin call from your broker to add more funds to your account. If you don't comply with this (meaning you don't add funds) the broker will liquidate some of the assets (in this case the currency) and it will restore the balance of the account to meet with his/her maintenance margin. At least, this is valid for assets like stocks and derivatives. Hope it helps! Edit: I should mention that\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a86ac339b5503e4547a79a0d3386e8dc",
"text": "There are also currency hedged ETFs. These operate similarly to what gengren mentioned. For example, a currency hedged Japan equities ETF has an inherent short yen/usd position on it in addition to the equity position, so the effects of a falling yen are negated. Note that it will still be denominated in dollars, however. AED is pegged to the dollar though, isnt it? If your broker is charging you a crazy price maybe try again a different day, or get a new broker. http://www.ishares.com/us/strategies/hedge-currency-impact",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f6b490195aee0c5351658b1edfd90ba3",
"text": "If you're referring to investment hedging, then you should diversify into things that would profit if expected event hit. For example alternative energy sources would benefit greatly from increased evidence of global warming, or the onset of peak oil. Preparing for calamities that would render the stock market inaccessible, the answer is quite different. Simply own more of things that people would want than you need. A list of possibilities would include: Precious metals are also a way to secure value outside the financial markets, but would not be readily sellable until the immediate calamity had passed. All this should be balanced on an honest evaluation of the risks, including the risk of nothing happening. I've heard of people not saving for retirement because they don't expect the financial markets to be available then, but that's not a risk I'm willing to take.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "b7b84c856eb772803ebfa337eef126f3",
"text": "\"Yes, you're still exposed to currency risk when you purchase the stock on company B's exchange. I'm assuming you're buying the shares on B's stock exchange through an ADR, GDR, or similar instrument. The risk occurs as a result of the process through which the ADR is created. In its simplest form, the process works like this: I'll illustrate this with an example. I've separated the conversion rate into the exchange rate and a generic \"\"ADR conversion rate\"\" which includes all other factors the bank takes into account when deciding how many ADR shares to sell. The fact that the units line up is a nice check to make sure the calculation is logically correct. My example starts with these assumptions: I made up the generic ADR conversion rate; it will remain constant throughout this example. This is the simplified version of the calculation of the ADR share price from the European share price: Let's assume that the euro appreciates against the US dollar, and is now worth 1.4 USD (this is a major appreciation, but it makes a good example): The currency appreciation alone raised the share price of the ADR, even though the price of the share on the European exchange was unchanged. Now let's look at what happens if the euro appreciates further to 1.5 USD/EUR, but the company's share price on the European exchange falls: Even though the euro appreciated, the decline in the share price on the European exchange offset the currency risk in this case, leaving the ADR's share price on the US exchange unchanged. Finally, what happens if the euro experiences a major depreciation and the company's share price decreases significantly in the European market? This is a realistic situation that has occurred several times during the European sovereign debt crisis. Assuming this occurred immediately after the first example, European shareholders in the company experienced a (43.50 - 50) / 50 = -13% return, but American holders of the ADR experienced a (15.95 - 21.5093) / 21.5093 = -25.9% return. The currency shock was the primary cause of this magnified loss. Another point to keep in mind is that the foreign company itself may be exposed to currency risk if it conducts a lot of business in market with different currencies. Ideally the company has hedged against this, but if you invest in a foreign company through an ADR (or a GDR or another similar instrument), you may take on whatever risk the company hasn't hedged in addition to the currency risk that's present in the ADR/GDR conversion process. Here are a few articles that discuss currency risk specifically in the context of ADR's: (1), (2). Nestle, a Swiss company that is traded on US exchanges through an ADR, even addresses this issue in their FAQ for investors. There are other risks associated with instruments like ADR's and cross-listed companies, but normally arbitrageurs will remove these discontinuities quickly. Especially for cross-listed companies, this should keep the prices of highly liquid securities relatively synchronized.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "28fed650e9e4cc59a4dba20e8648f303",
"text": "Typically, the higher interest rates in local currency cover about the potential gain from the currency exchange rate change - if not, people would make money out of it. However, you only know this after the fact, so either way you are taking a risk. Depending on where the local economy goes, it is more secure to go with US$, or more risky. Your guess is as good as anyone. If you see a chance for a serious meltdown of the local economy, with 100+% inflation ratios and possibly new money, you are probably better off with US$. On the other hand, if the economy develops better than expected, you might have lost some percentage of gain. Generally, investing in a more stable currency gets you slightly less, but for less risk.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "0f7e3492cf4cc9b19031d374d516784f",
"text": "You have currency risk either way. The only question is deal with it now or later. No one can tell you which action is better until we look at it in hindsight. You could hedge and move some now, some later. Invest your USD in US equities and move some to EUR and invest that in EUR companies. I'd suggest having your money in the same currency as where you are living, since for the most part, you'll be in the same boat as your peers and neighbors. If you have high inflation, so will your friends and neighbors and you won't feel so bad. And if your currency gets stronger, then so will the currency of the people you are hanging out with. It's similar to betting on Don't Pass in craps. If you bet against the rest of the table, you could win when they lose, but then all your friends will be sad and you'll be happy. And vice versa, when your friends are high-fiving, you'll be in the dumps. I'd say it's better to be in the same boat as your peers since that's usually how we judge our happiness when we compare our situation to others.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "df23c140202eec107b9a1e27a3e56147",
"text": "This is the exactly wrong thing to do especially in the age of algorithmic trading. Consider this event from 2010: Chart Source Another similar event occurred in 2015 and there was also a currency flash crash in that year. As you can see the S&P 500 (and basically the entire market) dropped nearly 7% in a matter of minutes. It regained most of that value within 15 minutes. If you are tempted to think that 7% isn't that big of a deal, you need to understand that specific securities will have a much bigger drop during such events. For example the PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF (SPLV) was down 45% at one point on Aug 24, 2015 but closed less than 6% down. Consider what effect a stop loss order would have on your portfolio in that circumstance. You would not be able to react fast enough to buy at the bottom. The advantage of long-term investing is that you are immune to such aberrations. Additionally, as asked by others, what do you do once you've pulled out your money. Do you wait for a big jump in the market and hop back in? The risk here is that you are on the sidelines for the gains. By missing out on just a small number of big days, you can really hurt your long-term returns.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "51876fb7fa8f2f1b1c5fc654650a5ef4",
"text": "The other obvious suggestion I guess is to buy cheap stocks and bonds (maybe in a dollar denominated fund). If the US dollar rises you'd then get both the fund's US gains plus currency gains. However, no guarantee the US dollar will rise or when. Perhaps a more prudent approach is to simply diversify. Buy both domestic and foreign stocks and bonds. Rebalance regularly.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e9479291259074533e355387dc6805eb",
"text": "\"The difference is in the interrelation between the varied investments you make. Hedging is about specifically offsetting a possible loss in an investment by making another related investment that will increase in value for the same reasons that the original investment would lose value. Gold, for instance, is often regarded as the ultimate hedge. Its value is typically inversely correlated to the rest of the market as a whole, because its status as a material, durable store of value makes it a preferred \"\"safe haven\"\" to move money into in times of economic downturn, when stock prices, bond yields and similar investments are losing value. That specific behavior makes investing in gold alongside stocks and bonds a \"\"hedge\"\"; the increase in value of gold as stock prices and bond yields fall limits losses in those other areas. Investment of cash in gold is also specifically a hedge against currency inflation; paper money, account balances, and even debt instruments like bonds and CDs can lose real value over time in a \"\"hot\"\" economy where there's more money than things to buy with it. By keeping a store of value in something other than currency, the price of that good will rise as the currencies used to buy it decrease in real value, maintaining your level of real wealth. Other hedges are more localized. One might, for example, trade oil futures as a hedge on a position in transportation stocks; when oil prices rise, trucking and airline companies suffer in the short term as their margins get squeezed due to fuel costs. Currency futures are another popular hedge; a company in international business will often trade options on the currencies of the companies it does business in, to limit the \"\"jitters\"\" seen in the FOREX spot market caused by speculation and other transient changes in market demand. Diversification, by contrast, is about choosing multiple unrelated investments, the idea being to limit losses due to a localized change in the market. Companies' stocks gain and lose value every day, and those companies can also go out of business without bringing the entire economy to its knees. By spreading your wealth among investments in multiple industries and companies of various sizes and global locations, you insulate yourself against the risk that any one of them will fail. If, tomorrow, Kroger grocery stores went bankrupt and shuttered all its stores, people in the regions it serves might be inconvenienced, but the market as a whole will move on. You, however, would have lost everything if you'd bet your retirement on that one stock. Nobody does that in the real world; instead, you put some of your money in Kroger, some in Microsoft, some in Home Depot, some in ALCOA, some in PG&E, etc etc. By investing in stocks that would be more or less unaffected by a downturn in another, if Kroger went bankrupt tomorrow you would still have, say, 95% of your investment next egg still alive, well and continuing to pay you dividends. The flip side is that if tomorrow, Kroger announced an exclusive deal with the Girl Scouts to sell their cookies, making them the only place in the country you can get them, you would miss out on the full possible amount of gains you'd get from the price spike if you had bet everything on Kroger. Hindsight's always 20/20; I could have spent some beer money to buy Bitcoins when they were changing hands for pennies apiece, and I'd be a multi-millionaire right now. You can't think that way when investing, because it's \"\"survivor bias\"\"; you see the successes topping the index charts, not the failures. You could just as easily have invested in any of the hundreds of Internet startups that don't last a year.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "30152e0feec6c0a9cef953d3c3199026",
"text": "The collapse of the US economic system is one of the many things I am preparing for. To answer the how, me personally I am doing some investing in gold and silver. However I am investing more in the tools, goods and gear that will help me be independent of the system around me. In short nothing will change for me if the US dollar goes belly up. A book I recommend is Possum Living (http://www.possumliving.net/). Other than that I am investing in trade goods such as liquor, cigarettes, medical supplies.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
979271796533e194facb1b23fe28c062
|
Bank will not accept loose change. Is this legal?
|
[
{
"docid": "d3a3089e2ce15824c40e5d7da0c02e29",
"text": "Is this even legal? How can a bank refuse to deposit legal tender in the United States? Legal for all debts, public or private, doesn't mean quite what I used to think, either. Per The Fed: This statute means that all United States money as identified above is a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether to accept cash unless there is a state law which says otherwise. Yes, they can refuse loose change. Also, they aren't refusing your deposit, just requiring that it be rolled. What do I do with my change? I do not want to spend the time rolling it, and I am not going to pay a fee to cash my change. There aren't many other options, change is a nuisance. I believe Coinstar machines reduce/remove their fee if you exchange coins for gift cards, so that might be the best option for convenience and retaining value.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c3c2aed57ee5fbf0d1db32a4a7e0c190",
"text": "They cannot refuse to accept coins and demand some other payment after providing a good or service. Legal tender is legal tender for all debts. But until they provide the good or service, they don't have to accept it. In this case, you want the service of depositing money. But by its nature, they have to accept the payment first. In that situation, they can refuse it. There is no law that banks have to accept your deposits. If they don't want you as a customer, that's their problem. Consider switching banks. Historically this was easier and some banks may still do things the old way. Call your local banks and ask. Perhaps you'll find someone happy to do business with you, on your terms. As already said, some coin rolling machines will pay you with gift certificates. If you plan to buy a sufficient amount from the place that accepts the gift certificate, this can get that place to play the fee. That may help you, although it is obviously a limited solution. The goal is to make it so that you only make purchases that you would have anyway. The seller obviously has a different goal. It's possible to buy coin sorters. Heck, you could buy one with a gift certificate from a public machine. Cheap ones require extra work to get the coins rolled and may jam a lot. More expensive ones do more of the work for you. Note that a given sorter that works better may be cheaper than another that doesn't work as well. Cheap is more of a qualitative judgment than a financial measure in this case. If you carry a small amount of change with you, pretty much everywhere accepts small amounts of change for purchases. So if you have been always paying with dollars and dumping the change in a jar, instead always give the correct change (coins). They may still give you dollars in change, but at least you won't get new coins. And you'll use some of your existing coins. Of course, this doesn't scale well. For small purchases, say $1.50, you can often pay the whole thing in change without argument. Or if something is $18.50, you might give them $10, $5, two $1 bills, and the rest in change. If you are buying something and can see that they have little change in one of the coin buckets, offer to swap some change for bills. Sometimes places find that easier than breaking a roll. With vending machines, use change instead of dollar bills. Especially use exact change so as not to convert bills to change. They usually don't take pennies, but they're great with nickels and above. This won't allow you to use change as a way to force yourself to save. But it will keep your change down to a manageable level going forward. And you might be able to use up your existing store. I'm assuming that this isn't a fifty year coin collection that you are just now starting to process. But if you have six months of change, you should be able to use it up in a year or so. I tend to do this. So I rarely have more than a couple dollars in change. No one ever tells me that they don't take change, because I don't give anyone a lot. Maybe $.99 here but more likely $.43 there. Sometimes I give them, e.g., $.07 so as to get $.25 in change rather than $.18. It's a little more work at every transaction, but it saves the big clump of work of rolling the coins. And you don't have to buy wrappers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f1aaa74c59276c42b007d62864909bd5",
"text": "The bank certainly doesn't have to take it for a deposit; that's not a debt. There have been several cases where disgruntled debtors have attempted deliberately annoying ways to pay their debts; the apocryphal example being pennies. Courts are not likely to support such efforts since it's obvious that a) the action is malicious and (relevant to you) b) it's really on you to maintain your money in a wieldy form. If you allow your money to become unwieldy, nobody owes you anything. I wonder about the meta-meaning of that. And whether, in that light it really makes sense to worry about 5% or rolling. As far as getting rid of it, when I bought out a girlfriend's piggybank at par, I just made sure to walk out of the house with $5 in change in my pocket and unload $2-3 at every retailer, none ever objected and some appreciated. Quarters were traded to coin laundry users. When going on transit I brought a bunch, the machines never grumbled. I burned through the cache much faster than expected.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "fa70890a59cb856eb8e66c48a3ef4e05",
"text": "I was forced to give my bank permission to cover any overdrafts out of my savings accounts. Or pay the bank a fee. After 6 months I discovered they were still taking out a fee, when I confronted them they said it wasn't the overdraft fee it was just an administrative fee. Banks need to burn in hell.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d81ccba684d73402c54dbdbd18286fb3",
"text": "Once you declare the amount, the CBP officials will ask you the source and purpose of funds. You must be able to demonstrate that the source of funds is legitimate and not the proceeds of crime and it is not for the purposes of financing terrorism. Once they have determined that the source and purpose is legitimate, they will take you to a private room where two officers will count and validate the amount (as it is a large amount); and then return the currency to you. For nominal amounts they count it at the CBP officer's inspection desk. Once they have done that, you are free to go on your way. The rule (for the US) is any currency or monetary instrument that is above the equivalent of 10,000 USD. So this will also apply if you are carrying a combination of GBP, EUR and USD that totals to more than $10,000.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dbd62be03bb002ae46dc41aa9b2276eb",
"text": "I've been hearing storied from Germans that this is happening in Germany, too, but at the bank level. All anecdotal, people I've met telling me their personal stories, but they follow the same pattern. Go to the bank, try to take out a few grand for a vacation or large purchase, bank tells them they can't have that much and that they just have to do with less, even if the account balance covers the withdrawal.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "979874a2e7d72457723c267c0fd231de",
"text": "\"Yes, your privacy is invaded, that's the law in many jurisdictions. The goal is to make money laundering and financing Evil Things harder. That's why banks are required to request proof for every money transfer larger than a specific sum. This is only a minor issue most of the time. You will have some kind of agreement with that Money Management company and this agreement (or a copy of it) will serve as a proof of your lawful reason to transfer money. It works just like that - you get to the bank and say you want to initiate a money transfer, the clerk asks you to show the \"\"proof\"\", you give them your agreement or a bill that requests you to pay or whatever else document you may have that proves that you're bound by some kind of contract with the recipient of money. The clerk then makes a copy of the \"\"proof\"\" and it stays in the bank to back the transfer until it is completed. The copy is then stored for some time and later destroyed - that's up to how the bank handles documents.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "c94c26639d33108d45b4df3e1118d66c",
"text": "\"You've touched on a very abstract concept that exist partly due to fractional-reserves and directly due to currency having no base (ex. not backed by gold), money can and does just pop into existence. To answer your question, we have to understand that the criminal is irrelevant. \"\"Can't a cyber criminal increase/decrease a bank's holdings just by changing a number in a computerized ledger book?\"\" The bank wouldn't need the cyber criminal's aid, they could change their own holdings. They have their own computers after all. Money's value is derived from trust. A bank that would change its own books would be black-balled. Similarly, a bank that un/consciously allows a cyber criminal change their holdings would lose trust. If this was a small transaction, they bank bottom line is unaffected. If these scandal is large enough to affect a bank's bottom line, the difference would be noticeable and raise suspicion.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "929c9780f0983ec66c646c287e974ea4",
"text": "\"Congratulations! You see the problem. You can't get away from unstable currencies. The other problem is that the US will shut down anything that appears to be providing a replacement for the US Dollar. Once a token or medallion or gift certificate or whatever starts being used outside the confines of one business or one network of businesses, it will be shut down, quickly. It happened with Las Vegas gambling tokens. Another more recent attempt was with the Liberty Dollar, gold and silver coins and certificates that not only had precious metal backing, but whose proponents encouraged taking them to retailers and paying with them as if they were US Dollars. There were other problems with this idea, but it was the competitive stature of the Liberty dollar that got the headquarters raided and the main site shut down. Basically, all signs point toward dealing with currencies and their state of being systematically eroded over time. If you do find one that appears to exist, be wary, because the rules can change at any time, and the \"\"money\"\" will be nowhere near as liquid as a proper currency.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "109ca3b612a0ed712240453010ca9c4f",
"text": "This happened to me in the mid 90's. I wanted to withdraw enough cash from my account to buy a new car and they nearly panicked. I took a bank draft instead. I discovered afterward that they can require up to a week's notice for any withdrawl.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "825156a90272a528d94fe4809b03d1ff",
"text": "\"Since all the other answers thus far seem to downplay the risk (likelihood) of the money being seized, I figure I may as well make my comment an answer. Unless you happen to have your legal team travelling with you and your suitcase of cash, you should expect that you'll be questioned extensively, so that any sign of nervousness, inconsistency in your answers or anything you say that doesn't \"\"make sense\"\" to the officer will be used as an excuse to seize your money, and you'll learn an expensive lesson in civil asset forfeiture. The government will file a complaint against your money, leading to a ridiculously named case, such as United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency. Worth noting that while the outcome in this case was not in the government's favor, in the vast majority of cases, the government keeps the cash. Between 9/11 and 2014, U.S police forces have seized over 2.5 billion dollars in cash without search warrants or indictments and returned the money in less than 10% of cases. That last link is kind of a long read, but contains cases where people with completely legitimate money and documentation for their money had it seized anyway, and were only able to recover it after months or years in court.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5ffeb4e741fb823d17a81aa85e8c2ea3",
"text": "Once, back when I had a bank account, I tried to pay a large emergency dental bill with my debit card. It rejected it as it turned out the bill was less than a dollar over what I had in the account. I thought there was enough money so I tried again, 3 times. They charged me an overdraft for each attempt even though the debit never went through. This was without overdraft protection, as overdraft protection would have allowed the debit and charged me one overdraft. I don't know the details but federal regulations have changed how they do this. To me overdraft protection rejects any debit that attempts to overdraft my account and doesn't charge me with an overdraft that didn't actually occur as a result of the charge being rejected, but that's not how it works.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2ad51e8c65e69992273de0ca51db38e6",
"text": "I had great difficulty buying my $17,000 truck for cash. One TD Canada Trust branch only let me have $5,000, the other branch down the street only $3,000. They both said they were low on cash. They kept trying to convince me to use a bank draft, but I didn't have a name or total amount as I was still shopping around. I don't think banks carry much cash and it wouldn't take much to clean them out.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a65fc91a3ca55f1c0bd429d5487b7e8c",
"text": "The laws of the United States of America require that the federal currency issued is accepted as legal tender for all goods and services anywhere within this country. One really has to wonder what the motivation behind this story is. VISA obviously knows that such a move is illegal. I am skeptical that there's any truth to the article at all.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f5827ececad5a61f0f7966888a3a9d00",
"text": "\"You state \"\"Any info will be appreciated\"\", so here's some background information on my answer (you can skip to my answer): When I worked for banks, I was required to submit suspicious activity to the people above me by filling out a form with a customer's name, SSN, account number(s) and ID. You may hear in media that it is $10K or sometimes $5K. The truth is that it could be lower than that, depending on what the institution defines as suspicious. Every year we were required to take a \"\"course\"\" which implied that terrorists and criminals use cash regularly - whether we agree or disagree is irrelevant - this is what the course implied. It's important to understand that many people use cash-only budgets because it's easier than relying on the banking system which charges overdraft fees for going over, or in some cases, you pay more at merchants because of card usage (some merchants give discounts for cash). If someone has a budget of $10K a month and they choose to use cash, that's perfectly fine. Also, why is it anyone's business what someone does with their private property? This created an interesting contrast among differently aged Americans - older Americans saw the banking system as tyrannical busybodies whereas young Americans didn't care. This is part of why I eventually left the banking system; I felt sick that I had to report this information, but it's amazing how quick everyone is to accept the new rules. Notice how one of the comments asks you what you intend to do with the money, as if it's any of their business. Welcome to the New America©! My answer: If you withdraw $100,000, here is what will more than likely happen: Now, watch the anger at this answer because I'm telling you the truth. This article will explain why. Your very question had a negative 1, as if asking what you're asking is wrong (see the absurdity)! If Joseph Stalin ran for president in the United States, the majority of Americans would welcome him. You have good reason to be concerned; others at this site have noticed this as well.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "90a56315d20bf81e78a7647eb7bea497",
"text": "While on a completely different scale to what you boys are talking about couple of years ago I was a relationship manager in retail banking and would on the reg have to sign away ~400k out of the tellers boxes and into the safe. After a few months of that you kind of view it as lego to fuck around with... [Australian money](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=australian+money&hl=en&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=OquAUO2SD82ciAfSnoDgCA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1006&bih=502)",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "bb31aa53139708b7c3827e7e98a67dc2",
"text": "\"As others have noted, US law says that if you have over half the bill, it's worth the full value, under half is worth nothing. I presume if it is very close to half, if even careful measurements show that you have 50.5%, you'll have difficulty cashing it in, precisely because the government and the banking system aren't going to allow themselves to be easily fooled by someone cutting bills in half and then trying to redeem both halves. I've seen several comments on here about how you'd explain to the bank how so many bills were cut in half. What if you just told them the truth? Not the part about killing someone, of course, but tell them that you made a deal, neither of you wanted to bother with complex contracts and having to go to court if the other side didn't pay up, so your buddy cut all the bills in half, etc. As you now have both halves and they clearly have the same serial number, this no real evidence of fraud. Okay, this is technically illegal -- 18 US Code Section 333, \"\"Whoever mutilates, CUTS, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.\"\" But you didn't do it, the other guy did. I presume the point of this law is to say that you can't get a hold of currency belonging to someone else and mutilate it so as to make it worthless. As he's now given you both halves, I doubt anyone would bother to track him down and prosecute him. Just BTW, while checking up on the details of the law, I stumbled across 18 USC 336, which says that it's illegal to write a check for less than $1, with penalties of 6 months in prison. I just got a check from AT&T for 15 cents for one of those class action suits where the lawyers get $100 million and the victims get 15 cents each. Apparently that was illegal.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "6bcd6fc62d1f29e86f26fab0153d16a1",
"text": "> From what I hear and know you sell when you're up and buy when it's down. That *is* how profit is attained. However, if you're looking to *invest,* both buy and sell decisions should be made after extensive research and, generally, there should be some time between the two offsetting transactions. If you personally decide to *trade*, which is more often and less likely to succeed (per se), that's up to you.",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
ac2d16cb54806c32216e133a8007f9bc
|
60% Downpayment on house?
|
[
{
"docid": "44aaaaed94c2fcc169b1218230d3f12f",
"text": "Keep in mind, this is a matter of preference, and the answers here are going to give you a look at the choices and the member's view on the positive/negative for each one. My opinion is to put 20% down (to avoid PMI) if the bank will lend you the full 80%. Then, buy the house, move in, and furnish it. Keep track of your spending for 2 years minimum. It's the anti-budget. Not a list of constraints you have for each category of spending, but a rear-view mirror of what you spend. This will help tell you if, in the new house, you are still saving well beyond that 401(k) and other retirement accounts, or dipping into that large reserve. At that point, start to think about where kids fit into your plans. People in million dollar homes tend to have child care that's 3-5x the cost the middle class has. (Disclosure - 10 years ago, our's cost $30K/year). Today, your rate will be about 4%, and federal marginal tax rate of 25%+, meaning a real cost of 3%. Just under the long term inflation rate, 3.2% over the last 100 years. I am 53, and for my childhood right through college, the daily passbook rate was 5%. Long term government debt is also at a record low level. This is the chart for 30 year bonds. I'd also suggest you get an understanding of the long term stock market return. Long term, 10%, but with periods as long as 10 years where the return can be negative. Once you are at that point, 2-3 years in the house, you can look at the pile of cash, and have 3 choices. We are in interesting times right now. For much of my life I'd have said the potential positive return wasn't worth the risk, but then the mortgage rate was well above 6-7%. Very different today.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "5efb6240c4f3e22fb6f64f933cf1d4dc",
"text": "\"I put about that down on my place. I could have purchased it for cash, but since my investments were returning more interest than the loan was costing me (much easier to achieve now!), this was one of the safest possible ways of making \"\"leverage\"\" work for me. I could have put less down and increased the leverage, but tjis was what I felt most comfortable with. Definitely make enough of a down payment to avoid mortgage insurance. You may want to make enough of a down payment that the bank trusts you to handle your property insurance and taxes yourself rather than insisting on an escrow account and building that into the loan payments; I trust myself to mail the checks on time much more than I trust the bank. Beyond that it's very much a matter of personal preference and what else you might do with the money.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "e60aa8f39c72585636d736297b6773ed",
"text": "Voluntarily assuming a loan is a bad idea, especially for a non-investment purpose. It would be one thing to take on a loan to operate a business or buy a piece of capital equipment, like a machine that would make you money. Borrowing money to have a more luxurious house is foolish. The smart move is to buy a good quality home that will meet your needs for as little as possible. Having $800,000 leaves a quit a bit of leeway in that department. You don't say where you live, but if this occurred in my area (eastern Massachusetts) I would buy a house for $500,000 and then invest the remaining $300,000. If I lived in the California bay area, it might be necessary to spend the whole $800,000. Either way there should be no need to borrow money. Also, if you buy a house for cash, often you can get a substantially better deal than if you have to involve a bank. Not owing anyone money is a huge psychological advantage in business and in life in general. View being debt-free as a springboard to success and happiness.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9950469cf36e87e3363ce390d3a061af",
"text": "Strictly by the numbers, putting more than 20% down is a losing proposition. With interest rates still near all time lows, you're likely able to get a mortgage for less than 4%. The real rate of a return on the market (subtracting inflation and taxes) is going to be somewhere around 5-6%. So by this math, you'd be best off paying the minimum to get out of PMI, and then investing the remainder in a low fee index fund. The question becomes how much that 1-2% is worth to you vs how much the job flexibility is worth. It boils down to your personal risk preference, life conditions, etc. so it is difficult to give good advice. The 1-2% difference in your rate of return is not going to be catastrophic. Personally, I would run the numbers with your fiance. Build a spreadsheet tracking your estimated net worth under the assumption that you make a 20% down payment and invest the rest. Then hold all other factors equal, and re-build the spreadsheet with the higher down payment. Factor in one of you losing your job for a few years, or one of you taking off for a while to raise the kids. You can make a judgement call based how the two of you feel about those numbers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9de8f0783ba1c957f67372755fbe0cdf",
"text": "I would lean towards making a smaller down payment and hanging onto savings for flexibility. Questions to think about: If you have enough cash that you can make a huge down payment and still have all the other bases covered, then it comes down to your risk tolerance and personal style. You can almost definitely build a portfolio that will beat your mortgage rate on average over the long term, but with more risk and volatility. Heck, you could make a 20% down payment on another house and rent it out.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2afd676bda3cbc1e3c24aac9c5a2ab01",
"text": "If you decide you need the extra money, you can always go refinance and get more cash out. At the end of the day, though, if you pay off your house sooner you can invest more of your income sooner; that's just a matter of discipline.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "f77bea6504e2658ecacee68247b78a63",
"text": "Peace of mind is the key to your question. Just before the US housing bust of 2007, I had someone try to convince me to take all the equity from my house which was overvalued in an overheated market. The idea was to put that money in the stock market for a bigger return than the interest on the house. Many people did that and found themselves out of jobs as the economy crashed. Unfortunately, they couldn't sell their homes because they owed more than they were worth. I never lost a night of sleep over the money I didn't make in the stock market. I did manage to trade up to a house twice the size by buying another when the housing market bottomed out, but waiting for a market recovery to sell the smaller house. The outcome of my good fortune is a very nice house with no mortgage worth about 1/3 of my total net worth. That's probably a larger percentage than most money managers would recommend, but it is steadily decreasing because now, all the money that would go to a mortgage payment instead gets deposited in retirement accounts, and it still has 30 years to grow before I start drawing it down. I almost don't remember the burden of a mortgage hanging over my head each month. Almost.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "fa9651ecd8b5e06c2bca0c7386e774cc",
"text": "To answer your precise question, your plans are not at all misguided, and are in fact very reasonable. You are clearly financially very comfortable, and from the tone of your post it sounds like you value security and simplicity over maximizing your investment return over the coming years. If money was the most important thing to you then you would stay shackled to your high paying jobs. @JoeTaxpayer's answer has some great information for a person who is interested in maximizing their investment return. If you followed that advice, you might increase your return on investments by up to 1%/year (I'm just throwing a ball park number out there). So your choice is simple. Peace of mind on one hand and perhaps 1% additional return on investments on the other hand.",
"title": ""
}
] |
[
{
"docid": "b068ed80d2622176669138ee89886956",
"text": "\"Your Spidey senses are good. A good friend would not put you in such a position. It's simple, to skirt some issue (we'll get to that in a second) you are being asked to lie. All for a 15% return on your $$$$. <<< How much is that? You can easily lend him the money, and have a better paper trail. But the bank is not going to like that, and requires this money from friends or family to be a gift. I've heard mortgage guys at the bank say \"\"It's just a formality, we need this paperwork to sell the loan to the investors.\"\" These bankers belong in jail, or at least fired and barred from the industry. They broke the economy in 2008, and should be stopped from doing it again.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ba86c7f1bf3e182b2c65610c2a93369b",
"text": "Just echoing the other answers here. You're not ready yet. 3% down, or no money down loans are what got so many of us into trouble these last few years. It sounds like you make a pretty good living and are able to squirrel away money despite paying rent. Let me suggest something that I haven't seen here yet. Save up for a 20% down payment. You will get better rates, won't have to buy mortgage insurance and it will give you enough of a cushion on your payment that you could better weather a job loss or other loss of income. Your priority for saving are, in order: Home prices aren't going up any time soon, so you're not going to miss out on a great deal. Keep your expenses low, treat yourself and your kids once in a while and keep saving.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d1341e48962baac52755c3d92cdd4d9c",
"text": "the total principal is also dropping - you mean you're paying it down, right? All else the same, if you found a house whose payments are less than rent, and planned to stay long term, buying can make sense. But let's not forget the other costs and risks. How badly do you want to be a homeowner? Adding image from another post here: This shows that housing prices have fallen below the long term trend line and equilibrium level.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "1ae3cb543558e6c150f706998416094c",
"text": "You want to buy a house for $150,000. It may be possible to do this with $10,000 and a 3.5% downpayment, but it would be a lot better to have $40,000 and make a 20% downpayment. That would give you a cushion in case house prices fall, and there are often advantages to a 20% downpayment (lower rate; less mandatory insurance). You have an income of $35,000 and expenses of $23,000 (if you are careful with the money--what if you aren't?). You should have savings of either $17,500 or $11,500 in case of emergencies. Perhaps you simply weren't mentioning that. Note that you also need at least $137 * 26 = $3562 more to cover mortgage payments, so $15,062 by the expenses standard. This is in addition to the $40,000 for downpayment and closing costs. What do you plan to do if there is a problem with the new house, e.g. you need a new roof? Or smaller expenses like a new furnace or appliance? A plumbing problem? Damages from a storm? What if the tenants' teenage child has a party and trashes the place? What if your tenants stop paying rent but refuse to move out, trashing the place while being evicted? Your emergency savings need to be able to cover those situations. You checked comps (comparable properties). Great! But notice that you are looking at a one bathroom property for $150,000 and comparing to $180,000 houses. Consider that you may not get the $235 for that house, which is cheaper. Perhaps the rent for that house will only be $195 or less, because one bathroom doesn't really support three bedrooms of people. While real estate can be part of a portfolio, balance would suggest that much more of your portfolio be in things like stocks and bonds. What are you doing for retirement? Are you maxing out any tax-advantaged options that you have available? It might be better to do that before entering the real estate market. I am a 23 year old Australian man with a degree in computer science and a steady job from home working as a web developer. I'm a bit unclear on this. What makes the job steady? Is it employment with a large company? Are you self-employed with what has been a steady flow of customers? Regardless of which it is, consider the possibility of a recession. The company can lay you off (presumably you are at the bottom of the seniority). The new customers may be reluctant to start new projects while their cash flow is restrained. And your tenants may move out. At the same time. What will you do then? A mortgage is an obligation. You have to pay it regardless. While currently flush, are you the kind of flush that can weather a major setback? I would feel a lot better about an investment like this if you had $600,000 in savings and were using this as a complementary investment to broaden your portfolio. Even if you had $60,000 in savings and would still have substantial savings after the purchase. This feels more like you are trying to maximize your purchase. Money burning a hole in your pocket and trying to escape. It would be a lot safer to stick to securities. The worst that happens there is that you lose your investment (and it's more likely that the value will be reduced but recover). With mortgages, you can lose your entire investment and then some. Yes, the price may recover, but it may do so after the bank forecloses on the mortgage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "9bcc0c9036c690555368b96512ef7ed8",
"text": "\"A Tweep friend asked me a similar question. In her case it was in the larger context of a marriage and house purchase. In reply I wrote a detail article Student Loans and Your First Mortgage. The loan payment easily fit between the generally accepted qualifying debt ratios, 28% for house/36 for all debt. If the loan payment has no effect on the mortgage one qualifies for, that's one thing, but taking say $20K to pay it off will impact the house you can buy. For a 20% down purchase, this multiplies up to $100k less house. Or worse, a lower down payment percent then requiring PMI. Clearly, I had a specific situation to address, which ultimately becomes part of the list for \"\"pay off student loan? Pro / Con\"\" Absent the scenario I offered, I'd line up debt, highest to lowest rate (tax adjusted of course) and hack away at it all. It's part of the big picture like any other debt, save for the cases where it can be cancelled. Personal finance is exactly that, personal. Advisors (the good ones) make their money by looking carefully at the big picture and not offering a cookie-cutter approach.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "97ee126f81b81e9394033cbffba6ed84",
"text": "Since I have 10k in my account after down-payment, will I get a good interest rate on the loan? When the bank considers your loan, they will see $70K. Regardless, they will want to see certain amount of savings that would allow you to continue paying your loan in case of an emergency, and $10K might not be enough. I was planning to put down 15%, but I have been told that I should buy something called PMI to satisfy the rest 5% and if I take that my interest will be more and sometimes, bank will not go for anybody who pays less than 20%. Is that true? Yes. After downpayment + closing costs, how much money in the savings accounts, is the bank looking for to say that I am a good buyer? Depends on the bank, my wild guess would be they're looking for several months' worth of loan payments (you should have ~6 months worth of savings for emergencies, regardless of loans).",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d9f61c3c251be6934c53b4e584cac7d1",
"text": "\"This doesn't say the whole story (like the length of the HELOC). if you have 15 years left on a mortgage and \"\"refinance\"\" into a 30 year HELOC then yes, your payments maybe 20% lower, but you add 15 years to pay it off. Just remember that interest occurs daily on what you owe. If you move 100K of debt from 5% mortgage to 6% HELOC you'll be paying more to the banks no matter how you slice it.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "dd865e96fd492e3189f843200cf4f59a",
"text": "Lenders pay attention to where your down payment money comes from. If they see a large transfer of money into your bank account within about a year before your purchase, this WILL cause an issue for you. Down payments are not just there to make the principal smaller; they are primarily used as an underwriting data-point to assess your quality as a borrower. If you take the money as loan, it will count against your credit worthiness. If you take the money as a gift, it will raise some other red flags. All of this is done for a reason: if you can't get a down payment, you are a higher credit risk (poor discipline, lack of consistent income), even if you can (currently) pay the monthly cost of a mortgage. (PS - The cost of home ownership is much higher than the monthly mortgage payment.) Will all this mean you WON'T get a loan? Of course not. You can almost always get SOME loan. But it will likely be at a higher rate than you otherwise would qualify for if you just waited a little bit and saved money for a down payment. (Another option: cheaper house.) EDIT: The below comments provide examples where gifts were/are NOT a problem. My experience from buying a house just a few years ago (and my several friends who bought house in the same period, some with family gifts and some without) is that it IS an issue. Your best bet is to TALK, IN PERSON with an actual mortgage broker in your area who can go through the options with you, and the downsides to various approaches.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "2496a1379b1d804b89bcf3e6c0b4205c",
"text": "Sorry, I don't think a bounty is the issue here. You seem to understand LTV means the bank you are talking to will lend you 60% of the value of the home you wish to purchase. You can't take the dollars calculated and simply buy a smaller house. To keep the numbers simple, you can get a $600K mortgage on a $1M house. That's it. You can get a $540K mortgage on a $900K house, etc. Now, 60% LTV is pretty low. It might be what I'd expect for rental property or for someone with bad or very young credit history. The question and path you're on need to change. You should understand that the 'normal' LTV is 80%, and for extra cost, in the form of PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance) you can even go higher. As an agent, I just sold a home to a buyer who paid 3% down. The way you originally asked the question has a simple answer. You can't do what you're asking.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ad9c8354dd526a1f94c6ca1f2ff3a52c",
"text": "A bigger down payment is good, because it insulates you from the swings in the real estate market. If you get FHA loan with 3% down and end up being forced to move during a down market, you'll be in a real bind, as you'll need to scrape up some cash or borrow funds to get out of your mortgage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "51c48c3c858a292ef20050113ff62cf3",
"text": "There is some element of truth to what your realtor said. The seller takes the house off the market after the offer is accepted but the contract is contingent upon, among other things, buyer securing the financing. A lower down payment can mean a higher chance of failing that. The buyer might be going through FHA, VA or other programs that have additional restrictions. If the buyer fails to secure a financing, that's weeks and months lost to the seller. In a seller's market, this can be an important factor in how your bid is perceived by the seller. Sometimes it even helps to disclose your credit score, for the same reason. Of course for your situation you will have to assess whether this is the case. Certainly do not let your realtor push you around to do things you are not comfortable with. Edit: A higher down payment also helps in the situation where the house appraisal does not fare well. As @Dilip Sarwate has pointed out, the particular area you are interested in is probably a seller's market, thus giving sellers more leverage in picking bids. All else equal, if you are the seller with multiple offers coming in at similar price level, would you pick the one with 20% down or 5% down? While it is true that realtors have their own motives to push through a deal as quickly as possible, the sellers can also be in the same boat. One less mortgage payment is not trivial to many. It's a complicated issue, as every party involved have different interests. Again, do your own due diligence, be educated, and make informed decisions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "33b302d80d4aec200d913ed4957c9d97",
"text": "If your debt will all be less than 25% gross (yes, I see you said take home) you are in great shape. I'd get the car and not worry. The well written mortgage is 20% down, with a housing payment (which of course includes prop tax and insurance, as noted by mhoran, below) under 28% and total debt under 36%. You are well within the limits, not even close. That's great.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "a0b313dc70955d4dd6322d735b89def0",
"text": "Don't do it. I would sell one of my investment houses and use the equity to pay down your primary mortgage. Then I would refinance my primary mortgage in order to lower the payments.",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "d8d5943e8a900961f65f90ebb0a258e2",
"text": "\"You can't get a HELOC, to the best of my knowledge, without actually \"\"owning\"\" the house. If you get an 80% mortgage (of the purchase price - not the appraised value, btw), you still need 20% as a down payment. Once you own the home, you can apply for a HELOC ... presuming you have enough equity (eg, the purchase price is $40k less than the appraised value). We haven't looked at the norm, at least where I live, of 5% down for a traditional mortgage and 3.5% for an FHA (which your question touches on). If you can do 5% down, on a $1,000,000 mortgage you need $50,000 on the day of closing. If the home is worth (ie appraises for) $1,250,000, you're getting 20% of the house \"\"for free\"\". Presuming the bank(s) will go for it, you could likely then open a HELOC for as much as $250,000 (again, depending on individual lender rules). tl;dr: If you don't have the money ready on the day of signing (via seasoning, if it is a loan/gift, or because you have been saving), you cannot afford the house. To clarify from comments with the OP, I am in no way speaking to the buyer's ability to afford the monthly payments - this is only about affording the initial costs associated with the home buying process (down payment, closing, whatever else the bank(s) require, etc).\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"docid": "ff1b45edc4eca37b570b308f78dab670",
"text": "\"The house that sells for $200,000 might rent for a range of monthly numbers. 3% would be $6000/yr or $500/mo. This is absurdly low, and favors renting, not buying. 9% is $1500/mo in which case buying the house to live in or rent out (as a landlord) is the better choice. At this level \"\"paying rent\"\" should be avoided. I'm simply explaining the author's view, not advocating it. A quote from the article - annual rent / purchase price = 3% means do not buy, prices are too high annual rent / purchase price = 6% means borderline annual rent / purchase price = 9% means ok to buy, prices are reasonable Edit to respond to Chuck's comment - Mortgage rates for qualified applicants are pretty tight from low to high, the 30 year is about 4.4% and the 15, 3.45%. Of course, a number of factors might mean paying more, but this is the average rate. And it changes over time. But the rent and purchase price in a given area will be different. Very different based on location. See what you'd pay for 2000 sq feet in Manhattan vs a nice town in the Mid-West. One can imagine a 'heat' map, when an area might show an $800 rent on a house selling for $40,000 as a \"\"4.16\"\" (The home price divided by annual rent) and another area as a \"\"20\"\", where the $200K house might rent for $1667/mo. It's not homogeneous through the US. As I said, I'm not taking a position, just discussing how the author formulated his approach. The author makes some assertions that can be debatable, e.g. that low rates are a bad time to buy because they already pushed the price too high. In my opinion, the US has had the crash, but the rates are still low. Buying is a personal decision, and the own/rent ratios are only one tool to be added to a list of factors in making the decision. Of course the article, as written, does the math based on the rates at time of publication (4%/30years). And the ratio of income to mortgage one can afford is tied to the current rate. The $60K couple, at 4%, can afford just over a $260K mortgage, but at 6%, $208K, and 8%, $170K. The struggle isn't with the payment, but the downpayment. The analysis isn't too different for a purchase to invest. If the rent exceeds 1% of the home price, an investor should be able to turn a profit after expenses.\"",
"title": ""
}
] |
fiqa
|
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