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Setting up a LLC for two partners in different states, what should we look into?
[ { "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": "3f088acfd5fcc4198a9c0950ba1711b3", "text": "\"If you business is incorporated, it's up to the two of you how to do it. Typically, you will have the company write cheques (or make transfers, whatever) to each of the humans: If you want to say that each of you gets a salary of 80% of the revenue you bring in, and then tweak things with bonuses, you can. If one of you is contributing more to marketing and awareness and less to revenue, then you may prefer to pay you each the same even though the revenue you bring are different. It's up to you - it's quite literally your business. When you're not incorporated, then for tax purposes you split the income and the expenses according to your ownership share. If that doesn't seem fair to you, then a partnership is probably not as useful to you as being incorporated. In general, it's better to be incorporated once you're past any initial phase in which the business is losing money for tax purposes (acquiring depreciable assets) and the partners have taxable income from elsewhere (day jobs, or at least income from the earlier part of the year before starting the business.) I would recommend that the \"\"partnership\"\" phase of the business be very short. Get incorporated and get a shareholder agreement.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "776d1b6aa23bf68f4ab21bf947292452", "text": "If I hire someone in Utah to do sales for me over the phone, and he works out of his home, am I required to register an LLC or file my current one as a foreign entity in Utah? Yes, since you've established presence in Utah. You'll register your current LLC in Utah, no point creating another one. If my sales guy, or I, call businesses in, say, Florida, and sell a few businesses our services for online work like maybe a website design, etc. Are we required to file our LLC In Florida as either a new LLC or a foreign one? No, you need to register where you (your company, including your employees or physical offices) are physically present. You don't need to register in any state you ship products or provide services to. If no-one of your company's employees is present in Florida and you don't have an office/rent a storage there - then you have no presence in Florida. If you actually go there to provide the services - then you do.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fc59501a4df5c48c7597422b6908fbad", "text": "I suspect you will need to consult with a tax professional on this one. In New York you would need to continue to file returns even if you did no business there until the partnership is dissolved. But I have no idea if Cali has anything rules like that. I would suspect since the partnership is on going the answer is no. Even though you plan no further business in Cali the potential exists that you could return there(even if only in theory).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "362888dad7a489b2fecb115aab213605", "text": "In this case not only that you must register in California (either as domestic, or as foreign if you decided to form elsewhere), you'll also be on the hook for back-taxes if you didn't do it from the start. FTB is notorious for going after out-of-state LLCs that Californians open in other States trying to avoid the $800 fee.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f9589a3228d51c680546c138e8a52d9b", "text": "Do I pay tax to the US and then also pay it in India for my income, or does my American partner, who holds 15% of the monthly income, pay tax in the US for his income? Of course you do, what kind of question is this? You have income earned in the US by a US entity, and the entity is taxed. Since LLC is a disregarded entity - the tax shifts to you personally. You should file form 1040NR. You should also talk to a tax professional who's proficient in the Indo-US tax treaty, since it may affect your situation.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2a22f54e0e3702d1612e532a77b73e7d", "text": "You need to redomesticate it. Usually that involves filing Articles of Dissolution with your current jurisdiction of Org and Articles of Incorp or domestication with the new state. Note that there are some states that are not open to redomestication (and Cali always tends to be an oddball). You can probably call up the Secretary of States' offices in both jurisdictions and someone will give you the heads up about what to file. Google search could help. Also a CO lawyer could probably do this for about $1k. Another way around this might be to form a CO LLC and then merge the CA LLC into the surviving CO. In the event of both a redomestication or merger, you want to check your org docs and any and all outside contracts. Redomestication/merger can trigger change of control provisions that may open you up to penalties or termination of those contracts. As always the best legal advice I can give on Reddit would be to find a lawyer for this.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d96a217cfd999cfcfdccb979a8068a15", "text": "\"Q) Will I have to submit the accounts for the Swiss Business even though Im not on the payroll - and the business makes hardly any profit each year. I can of course get our accounts each year - BUT - they will be in Swiss German! You will have to submit on your income from the business. The term \"\"partnership\"\" refers to a specific business entity type in the U.S. I'm not sure if you're using it the same way. In a partnership in the U.S. you pay income tax on your share of the partnership's income whether or not you actually receive income in your personal account. There's not enough information here to know if that applies in your case. (In the U.S., the partnership itself does not pay income tax - It is a \"\"disregarded entity\"\" for tax purposes, with the tax liability passed through to the partners as individuals.) Q) Will I need to have this translated!? Is there any format/procedure to this!? Will it have to be translated by my Swiss accountants? - and if so - which parts of the documentation need to be translated!? As regards language, you will file a tax return on a U.S. form presumably in English. You will not have to submit your account information on any other form, so the fact that your documentation is in German does not matter. The only exception that comes to mind is that you could potentially get audited (just like anyone else filing taxes in the U.S.) in which case you might need to produce your documentation. That situation is rare enough that I wouldn't worry about it though. I'm not sure if they'd take it in German or force you to get a translation. I was told that if I sell the business (and property) after I aquire a greencard - that I will be liable to 15% tax of the profit I'd made. I also understand that any tax paid (on selling) in Switzerland will be deducted from the 15%!? Q) Is this correct!? The long-term capital gains rate is 15% for most people. (At very high incomes it is 20%.) It sounds like you would qualify for long-term (held for greater than 1 year) capital gains in this case, although the details might matter. There is a foreign tax credit, but I'm not completely sure if it would apply in this case. (If forced to guess, I would say that it does.) If you search for \"\"foreign tax credit\"\" and \"\"IRS\"\" you should get to the information that you need pretty quickly. I will effectively have ALL the paperwork for this - as we'll need to do the same in Switzerland. But again, it will be in Swiss German. Q) Would this be a problem if its presented in Swiss German!? Even in this case you will not need to submit any of your paperwork to the IRS, unless you get audited. See earlier comments.\"", "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": "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": "21f92446dfd048a11ba3713e97294bf3", "text": "\"No, there are no issues. When you form the corp in DE, you pick a business there to serve as your \"\"agent\"\" (essentially someone who knows to get in contact with you). The \"\"agent\"\" will notify you about taxes and any mail you get, but besides the fee they charge you for being the agent, you should file all the taxes directly with DE (franchise tax is easy to file on the web) instead of going through the agent and paying a surcharge. When your LLC files taxes, you'll do so in DE and then the LLC will issue you a federal and state K1. You'll file taxes where you reside and use the federal K1, but I think you might have to file DE state taxes (unsure about this part, feel free to edit or comment and I'll correct).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3f362f2a26d64930517bf1086d30cb0e", "text": "\"You will need to set up accounts in your chart of accounts for each of the partners. These are equity accounts where you can track your contributions, share of the profits and losses, and distributions. You're going to have to go back into the beginning years to get this right. I'm not sure what you mean by a \"\"Built-in function\"\". All the accounting software I'm familiar with requires data entry of some kind. You need to post your contributions and distributions to the correct accounts, and close properly at year end. You were indeed legally considered a partnership as soon as you started a for-profit business venture together. It's a bug in the legal system that a written partnership agreement is not necessarily required - you can form a partnership unknowingly. (BTW, a partnership actually is pretty far off from a sole proprietorship, legally and taxwise - the change from one person to two is major. It's the change from two to three or four or more that's incremental ;) I know you said you didn't want to consult a professional, but I have to say that I think it's worth the money to get your books set up by someone who has experience and can show you how to do it. And get a separate bank account for the partnership, if you haven't done so already. And check with your state to see if there are any requirements regarding partnerships. Hope this helps, Mariette IRS Circular 230 Notice: Please note that any tax advice contained in this communication is not intended to be used, and cannot be used, by anyone to avoid penalties that may be imposed under federal tax law.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1367a49ee2c1d0658bad7803398866f8", "text": "You may get some advice here, but you REALLY need to talk to a tax adviser who is familiar with the laws of both states, or possible two, one from each state. There is a significant amount of money on the line here, not just tax but penalties and interest if you get this wrong. Once you get it figured out, you probably will be able to take care of it yourself in the future, but make sure that it gets done right initially.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "12a6603099f34cd972e1f9f95e9ab8b4", "text": "I am not a lawyer or a tax accountant, but from the description provided it sounds to me like you have created two partnerships: one in which you share 50% of Bob's revenue, and another in which you share 50% of the revenue from the first partnership. If this is the case, then each partnership would need to file form K-1 and issue a copy to the partners of that partnership. I think, but I'm not sure, that each partnership would need an Employer Identification Number (EIN; you can apply for and receive these online with the IRS). You would only pay tax on the portion of profits that are assigned to you on the K-1. (If you've accidentally created a partnership without thinking through all the ramifications, you probably want to straighten this out. You can be held liable for the actions of your partners.) On the other hand, if your contract with Bob explicitly makes you a contractor and not a partner, then Bob should probably be issuing a 1099 to you. Similarly for you and Joe -- if your contract with Joe makes him a subcontractor, then you may need to get an EIN and issue him a 1099 at the end of the year. The money you pay to Joe is a business expense, and would be deducted from the profits you show on your Schedule C. In my opinion, it would be worth the $200 fee paid to a good CPA to make sure you get this right.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3c4e68fdc0aab40d75d449b9f4deae58", "text": "Thanks for your input. &gt; Are you talking about domicile? Nope, **domestication**. See #2 [here]. I've seen that term on a few places on the web. I am a single-member LLC. I think I'll probably get a biz attorney. Do you think it matters whether the attorney is within the state I currently reside as opposed to the one I'm moving to?", "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": "" } ]
fiqa
bdd4195b98757d424ac318c87dd9b9d9
What are the procedures or forms for a private loan with the sale of a vehicle?
[ { "docid": "b51589201c2d2e7f27a9572b11c42113", "text": "The Nebraska DMV web site has a neat page about this. It seems to be fairly simple, and not costly to record a lien and later release it. Just go there with the title and the sales agreement that details the terms, and pay the $7 fee.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5b2e1f0f7bd0926fa89271b2305f03c8", "text": "Draft up a promissory notes. Have a lawyer do it use one of those online contract places if you have simple needs. Your promissory note need to cover Be specific. There are probably a lot more items that can be included, and if a quick internet search is any indication it gets deep fast. http://lmbtfy.com/?q=car+sale+promissory+note (Like @LittleAdv says) Head to your DMV with the title and the promissory note. The title is signed over to you and held by the DMV. When you pay up, the seller informs the DMV and they send you the title. If you don't pay up, the seller can legally repossess the car. All butts are covered. Pay the note as agreed. When you are all paid up, your friend notifies the DMV who then mail you the title. Your butt is covered because your name is on the car, you can insure it and nobody can take it from you (legally) if you are paying the note as agreed. Your pal's butt is covered because if you stop paying half way through, he can keep whatever you have paid him and get his car back.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "19a41f572fb72c31a0e903d04b283a65", "text": "\"At this point there is not much you can do. The documentation probably points to you being the sole owner and signer on the loan. Then, any civil suit will degenerate into a \"\"he said, she said\"\" scenario. Luckily, no one was truly harmed in the scenario. Obtaining financing through a car dealer is almost always not advisable. So from here, you can do what should have been done in the first place. Go to banks and credit unions so your daughter can refinance the car. You will probably get a lower rate, and there is seldom a fee. I would start with the bank/CU where she does her checking or has some other kind of a relationship. If that fails, anywhere you can actually sit and talk with a loan officer is preferable over the big corporate type banks. Car dealers lying is nothing new, it happens to everyone. Buying a car is like a battle.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "45430766fd9e2a4c81c5db997ceef669", "text": "The advice above is generally good, but the one catch I haven't seen addressed is which specific laws apply. You said that you are in Arkansas, but the dealer is in Texas. This means that the laws of at least two different states are in play, possibly three if the contract contains a clause stating that disputes will be handled in a certain jurisdiction, and you are going to have to do some research to figure out what actually applies. One thing that may significantly impact this issue is whether you were in TX or AR when you signed the contracts. If you borrowed the money in TX, and the lender is in TX, then it is almost certain that the laws of Texas will govern. However, if you were living in AR at the time you acquired the loan, particularly if you were in AR when you signed the papers, you have a decent case for claiming that the laws of Arkansas govern. I don't know enough about either state to know if one is more favorable to the consumer than the other, but it is a question you really want to have answered. That said, I would be shocked if any state did not have provisions requiring the lender to provide a copy of the terms and a detailed statement of the account and transaction history upon request. Spend some time on the web site of the Texas attorney general and/or legislator (because that is where the lender is, they are more likely to respect Texas law) to see if you can track down any specific laws or codes that you can reference. You might also look into the federal consumer protection laws, though I can't think of one off hand that would apply in the scenario you have described. Then work on putting together a letter asking them to provide a copy of the contract and a full history of the account. As others noted, make sure you send it certified/return receipt, or better yet use a private carrier such as fedex, and check the box about requiring a signature. Above all you need to get the dialog transferred to a written form. I can not stress this point enough. Everything you tell them or ask for from here out needs to be done in a written format. If they call you about anything, tell them you want to see their issue/offer in writing before you will consider it. You do not necessarily need a lawyer to do any of this, but you do need to know the applicable laws. Do the research to know what your legal standing is. Involve a lawyer if you feel you need to, but I have successfully battled several large utility companies and collection agencies into behaving without needing one.", "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": "4df213786d0460d57a29a7a1b27d1624", "text": "The other person has to decide that they want to be wholly responsible for the loan, and they have to be able to qualify for the loan. They are in essence purchasing the car from you with the sale price being the remaining balance of the loan. You will then use the processed from the new loan to pay the old loan off completely. They will then take the bill of sale to the state DMV/MVA to register the car in their name. You should have them start with their bank for a new car loan.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ccaf4e379ae155f8f1ddd2d94784a9e7", "text": "The old truck is collateral for a loan. The place that made the loan expects that if you can't pay they can repossess that old truck. If you sell it they can't repossess it. The dealer needs clean title to be able to buy the truck from you, so they can fix up the truck and sell it to somebody else. I am assuming the the lender has filed paperwork with the state to show their lien on the title. Your options are three: As to option 2: If the deal still makes sense the new car dealer can send the $9,000 to the lender that you forgot about. That will of course increase the amount of money you have to borrow. You will also run into the problem that this loan that you forgot to mention on your credit application may cause them to rethink the decision to loan you the money.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "79ee7e90db2f1e6040e314f243def684", "text": "Not a good idea, the bank is a lean holder unless you deduct the remainder of the loan from the purchase price you will end up paying much more. Tell the seller to pay off the loan and provide you a clean title. Btw unless you're getting the deal of the century I'd walk away until I saw a clean title", "title": "" }, { "docid": "64fb7a323214f50afbc01fecc4753d61", "text": "Your first step is to talk to the current lender and ask about refinancing in the other person's name. The lender is free to say no, and if they think the other person is unlikely to pay it back, they won't refinance. If you're in this situation because the other person didn't qualify for a loan in the first place, the lender probably won't change their mind, but it's still worth asking. From the lender's point of view, you'll be selling the other person the car. If they qualify for a loan, it's as simple as getting the loan from a bank, then doing whatever is required by your state to sell a car between either private parties or between relatives (depending on who the other person is). The bank might help you with this, or your state's DMV website. Here are a few options that don't involve changing who is on the loan: Taking out a loan for another person is always a big risk. Banks have entire departments devoted to determining who is a good credit risk, and who isn't, so if a person can't get a loan from a bank, it's usually for a good reason. One good thing about your situation: you actually bought the car, and are the listed owner. Had you co-signed on a loan in the other person's name, you'd owe the money, but wouldn't even have the car's value to fall back on when they stopped paying.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "06b62f2e839c4409e58c08dab7ad9f74", "text": "1) How long have you had the car? Generally, accounts that last more than a year are kept on your credit report for 7 years, while accounts that last less than a year are only kept about 2 years (IIRC - could someone correct me if that last number is wrong?). 2) Who is the financing through? If it's through a used car dealer, there's a good chance they're not even reporting it to the credit bureaus (I had this happen to me; the dealer promised he'd report the loan so it would help my credit, I made my payments on time every time, and... nothing ever showed up. It pissed me off, because another positive account on my credit report would have really helped my score). Banks and brand name dealers are more likely to report the loan. 3) What are your expected long term gains on the stocks you're considering selling, and will you have to pay capital gains on them when you do sell them? The cost of selling those stocks could possibly be higher than the gain from paying off the car, so you'll want to run the numbers for a couple different scenarios (optimistic growth, pessimistic, etc) and see if you come out ahead or not. 4) Are there prepayment penalties or costs associated with paying off the car loan early? Most reputable financiers won't include such terms (or they'll only be in effect during the first few months of the loan), but again it depends on who the loan is through. In short: it depends. I know people hate hearing answers like that, but it's true :) Hopefully though, you'll be able to sit down and look at the specifics of your situation and make an informed decision.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d3e856d7e6912de3291f0bf813915525", "text": "\"You're supposed to be filling form 433-A. Vehicles are on line 18. You will fill there the current fair value of the car and the current balance on the loans. The last column is \"\"equity\"\", which in your case will indeed be a negative number. The \"\"value\"\" is what the car is worth. The \"\"equity\"\" is what the car is worth to you. IRS uses the \"\"equity\"\" value to calculate your solvency. Any time you fill a form to the IRS - read the instructions carefully, for each line and line. If in doubt - talk to a professional licensed in your state. I'm not a professional, and this is not a tax advice.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9f36797606cd3c5a1d9b22a6c654c87d", "text": "\"In the US, \"\"title\"\" is the document that shows ownership of the car. It is a nicely printed document you get from the DMV, that includes the information about the car and about you. You \"\"sign off the title\"\" when you sell the car - part of the title is a form on which the owner of the title can assign it to someone else. With your signature on the title, the new owner goes to the DMV which exchanges it to a new title in the new owner's name. Never sign on the title unless you got the payment for the car from the buyer. Usually, when the car is bought with a loan, the lender holds the title. Since you need to sign off the title to pass the ownership if you sell the car - lender holding on to it will prevent you from selling the car until the lender gives you the title back (when you pay off the loan). Your boss, acting as a lender, wants the title to hold on to it to prevent you from selling the car that secures your debt to him. He wants that (usually pink) piece of paper. Here's an article explaining about the title and showing a sample. Lenders holding the title will usually also add an endorsement at the DMV, so that you can't go and claim that you lost it.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f88dded301c180c38ceda078c73a1813", "text": "California bankruptcy law requires disclosure of any gift made by the person declaring bankruptcy in the past 12 months, and any asset transfers in the past 2 years (with a couple of minor exceptions). This would most certainly include the car, if it is regifted back to you. Such a claim would likely be considered fraudulent, though this would be a matter for the lawyers and bankruptcy trustee in question. There's a blog which you may wish to check out, the California Bankruptcy Blog, which has a specific entry on gifts. Now, there is a specific exemption for automobiles, but only up to a total of $2725. Legally, I believe there's nothing you can do here. If the $10K was a loan, it will be discharged in bankruptcy. If it was a gift, it'll have to be declared and the car will have to be sold. If regifted or transferred, it must be declared and will likely (but not definitely) be determined as an invalid disposal of assets. Either you or your family member will have to discuss this with a bankruptcy lawyer. I'm sorry your generous act is likely to get tangled up here. :(", "title": "" }, { "docid": "495dbb29d96221d44977ac2aa554a962", "text": "Contact the lien holder (the bank) and they'll have a procedure for you. Usually, you complete the transaction at the bank after agreeing on the purchase price: you will cut a check to the bank to pay off the loan, and then write a second check to the seller for whatever extra amount should go to him. The bank will handle the paperwork for transferring the title of the car to your name. Obviously, under no circumstances should you give all the money to the seller in the hopes that he pays off the loan. You need to follow the lender's procedures because they hold the title to the car and must be the ones to transfer it to you. Banks do this type of transaction all the time. Just call them and ask about how to proceed.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e8e6c38c95e169f5d01c19699cb2e6f0", "text": "Update: here is a message the seller just sent me. Does this make sense? I spoke with my bank again and they explained it a little better for me. I guess how it works is they will print out something for you that is called an affidavit in lieu of title that states they are no longer the lein holder and to release it to you. You then take that to the dol and they get it put in your name. He says that's how they do it all the time. When we get to the bank, the teller just verifies the check and I deposit it and they release the funds to pay off the account and that's when you would get the paperwork. You would be there for the whole process so nothing is sketchy. Sorry it's such a pain, I didn't understand how that worked. We've never sold a car with a loan on it before.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5fa642b6d1699325bda825d5440788e0", "text": "Make sure I am reading this correctly. You signed the car over to you BF, he took a loan against it and gave you the money? If so, you sold him the car and any use you have had of it since was at his consent. Outside of a written contract saying otherwise (and possibly even with one) it is now his car to do with as he pleases. It sucks that things are not working out in the manner you intended at the time, but that is the reality of the situation.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "76384f87eaa0952d8425ce9d84c3dd45", "text": "\"You have figured out most of the answers for yourself and there is not much more that can be said. From a lender's viewpoint, non-immigrant students applying for car loans are not very good risks because they are going to graduate in a short time (maybe less than the loan duration which is typically three years or more) and thus may well be leaving the country before the loan is fully paid off. In your case, the issue is exacerbated by the fact that your OPT status is due to expire in about one year's time. So the issue is not whether you are a citizen, but whether the lender can be reasonably sure that you will be gainfully employed and able to make the loan payments until the loan is fully paid off. Yes, lenders care about work history and credt scores but they also care (perhaps even care more) about the prospects for steady employment and ability to make the payments until the loan is paid off. Yes, you plan on applying for a H1-B visa but that is still in the future and whether the visa status will be adjusted is still a matter with uncertain outcome. Also, these are not matters that can be explained easily in an on-line application, or in a paper application submitted by mail to a distant bank whose name you obtained from some list of \"\"lenders who have a reliable track record of extending auto loans to non-permanent residents.\"\" For this reason, I suggested in a comment that you consider applying at a credit union, especially if there is an Employees' Credit Union for those working for your employer. If you go this route, go talk to a loan officer in person rather than trying to do this on the phone. Similarly, a local bank,and especially one where you currently have an account (hopefully in good standing), is more likely to be willing to work with you. Failing all this, there is always the auto dealer's own loan offers of financing. Finally, one possibility that you might want to consider is whether a one-year lease might work for you instead of an outright purchase, and you can buy a car after your visa issue has been settled.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
38e10204e95c0185c4dbe91afb14468a
What is the point of owning a stock without dividends if it cannot be resold?
[ { "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": "81d3eb9c34cca8052b7e5312e0a28964", "text": "If that condition is permanent -- the stock will NEVER pay dividends and you will NEVER be able to sell it -- then yes, it sounds to me like this is a worthless piece of paper. If there is some possibility that the stock will pay dividends in the future, or that a market will exist to sell it, then you are making a long-term investment. It all depends on how likely it is that the situation will change. If the investment is small, maybe it's worth it.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "d193462c2812d839a5c8e4ab18f9b52d", "text": "The benefit is not in taxes. When you sell a portion of your stock, you no longer have a portion of your stock. When you get a dividend, you still have a portion of your stock. Dividends are distributed from the net profits of a company and as such usually don't affect its growth/earning potential much (although there may be cases when they do). So while the price takes a temporary dip due to the distribution, you're likely to get the same dividends again next year, if the company continues being similarly profitable. If you sell a portion of your stock, at some point you'll end up with no more stocks to sell.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7da8771edbf816b4663db5e5ab68588d", "text": "Stock basically implies your ownership in the company. If you own 1% ownership in a company, the value of your stake becomes equal to 1% of the valuation of the entire company. Dividends are basically disbursal of company's profits to its shareholders. By holding stocks of a company, you become eligible to receiving dividends proportional to your ownership in the company. Dividends though are not guaranteed, as the company may incur losses or the management may decide to use the cash for future growth instead of disbursing it to the shareholders. For example, let's say a company called ABC Inc, is listed on NYSE and has a total of 1 million shares issued. Let's say if you purchase 100 stocks of ABC, your ownership in ABC will become Let's say that the share price at the time of purchase was $10 each. Total Investment = Stock Price * Number of Stocks Purchased = $10 * 100 = $1,000 Now, let's say that the company declares a dividend of $1 per share. Then, Dividend Yield = Dividend/Stock Price = $1/$10 = 10% If one has to draw analogy with other banking products, one can think of stock and dividend as Fixed Deposits (analogous to stock) and the interest earned on the Fixed Deposit (analogous to dividend).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9a45963e72902ae54c1c2fc3a481ed44", "text": "Stocks represent partial ownership of the company. So, if you owned 51% of the stock of the company (and therefore 51% of the company itself), you could decide to liquidate all the assets of the company, and you would be entitled to 51% of the proceeds from that sale. In the example above, it would have to be Common Stock, as preferred stock does not confer ownership. *In a situation where it is not possible to buy 51% or more of the company (for example, it's not for sale), this is not possible, so the value of the stock could be much less.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0c6d9c87fc60a8c5f72ee0140b593d35", "text": "\"A stock, at its most basic, is worth exactly what someone else will pay to buy it right now (or in the near future), just like anything else of value. However, what someone's willing to pay for it is typically based on what the person can get from it. There are a couple of ways to value a stock. The first way is on expected earnings per share, most of would normally (but not always) be paid in dividends. This is a metric that can be calculated based on the most recently reported earnings, and can be estimated based on news about the company or the industry its in (or those of suppliers, likely buyers, etc) to predict future earnings. Let's say the stock price is exactly $100 right now, and you buy one share. In one quarter, the company is expected to pay out $2 per share in dividends. That is a 2% ROI realized in 3 months. If you took that $2 and blew it on... coffee, maybe, or you stuffed it in your mattress, you'd realize a total gain of $8 in one year, or in ROI terms an annual rate of 8%. However, if you reinvested the money, you'd be making money on that money, and would have a little more. You can calculate the exact percentage using the \"\"future value\"\" formula. Conversely, if you wanted to know what you should pay, given this level of earnings per share, to realize a given rate of return, you can use the \"\"present value\"\" formula. If you wanted a 9% return on your money, you'd pay less for the stock than its current value, all other things being equal. Vice-versa if you were happy with a lesser rate of return. The current rate of return based on stock price and current earnings is what the market as a whole is willing to tolerate. This is how bonds are valued, based on a desired rate of return by the market, and it also works for stocks, with the caveat that the dividends, and what you'll get back at the \"\"end\"\", are no longer constant as they are with a bond. Now, in your case, the company doesn't pay dividends. Ever. It simply retains all the earnings it's ever made, reinvesting them into doing new things or more things. By the above method, the rate of return from dividends alone is zero, and so the future value of your investment is whatever you paid for it. People don't like it when the best case for their money is that it just sits there. However, there's another way to think of the stock's value, which is it's more core definition; a share of the company itself. If the company is profitable, and keeps all this profit, then a share of the company equals, in part, a share of that retained earnings. This is very simplistic, but if the company's assets are worth 1 billion dollars, and it has one hundred million shares of stock, each share of stock is worth $10, because that's the value of that fraction of the company as divided up among all outstanding shares. If the company then reports earnings of $100 million, the value of the company is now 1.1 billion, and its stock should go up to $11 per share, because that's the new value of one ten-millionth of the company's value. Your ROI on this stock is $1, in whatever time period the reporting happens (typically quarterly, giving this stock a roughly 4% APY). This is a totally valid way to value stocks and to shop for them; it's very similar to how commodities, for instance gold, are bought and sold. Gold never pays you dividends. Doesn't give you voting rights either. Its value at any given time is solely what someone else will pay to have it. That's just fine with a lot of people right now; gold's currently trading at around $1,700 an ounce, and it's been the biggest moneymaker in our economy since the bottom fell out of the housing market (if you'd bought gold in 2008, you would have more than doubled your money in 4 years; I challenge you to find anything else that's done nearly as well over the same time). In reality, a combination of both of these valuation methods are used to value stocks. If a stock pays dividends, then each person gets money now, but because there's less retained earnings and thus less change in the total asset value of the company, the actual share price doesn't move (much). If a stock doesn't pay dividends, then people only get money when they cash out the actual stock, but if the company is profitable (Apple, BH, etc) then one share should grow in value as the value of that small fraction of the company continues to grow. Both of these are sources of ROI, and both are seen in a company that will both retain some earnings and pay out dividends on the rest.\"", "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": "226d14004f8da97cc73ed47b9a00ca7c", "text": "The shareholders can't all re-invest their dividends -- it's not possible. Paying a dividend doesn't issue any new shares, so unless some of the existing shareholders sell their shares instead of re-investing, there aren't any shares available for the shareholders to re-invest in.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f202937ec26c18b06aa1ba3356b006ad", "text": "Yes, somebody could buy the shares, receive the dividend, and then sell the shares back. However, the price he would get when he sells the shares back is, ignoring other reasons for the price to change, exactly the amount he paid minus the dividend.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "888da6a98abd6f62d8e73f2e77d47203", "text": "Suppose the price didn't drop on the ex-dividend date. Then people wanting to make a quick return on their money would buy shares the day before, collect the dividend, and then sell them on the ex-dividend date. But all those people trying to buy on the day before would push the price up, and they would push the price down trying to sell on the date.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dde8f7266f2819fb673198020fc362f7", "text": "\"A dividend is one method of returning value to shareholders, some companies pay richer dividends than others; some companies don't typically pay a dividend. Understand that shareholders are owners of a company. When you buy a stock you now own a portion (albeit an extremely small portion) of that company. It is up to you to determine whether holding stock in a company is worth the risk inherent to equity investing over simply holding treasury notes or some other comparable no risk investment like bank savings or CDs. Investing isn't really intended to change your current life. A common phrase is \"\"investing in tomorrow.\"\" It's about holding on to money so you'll have it for tomorrow. It's about putting your money to work for you today, so you'll have it tomorrow. It's all about the future, not your current life.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3579b4d63ec37eb5c5d6bd69bc16753a", "text": "This is called the gordon growth model (or dividend discount model). This is one way to value a stock, but in practice no one uses it because the assumptions are that companies will return value to investors solely via regular dividends, and that the growth rate and the required rate of return from investors are constants; among other issues.", "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": "57ae1dabaed20e2a1c7a8d770aa3941a", "text": "\"I probably don't understand something. I think you are correct about that. :) The main way money enters the stock market is through investors investing and taking money out. Money doesn't exactly \"\"enter\"\" the stock market. Shares of stock are bought and sold by investors to investors. The market is just a mechanism for a buyer and seller to find each other. For the purposes of this question, we will only consider non-dividend stocks. Okay. When you buy stock, it is claimed that you own a small portion of the company. This statement has no backing, as you cannot exchange your stock for the company's assets. For example, if I bought $10 of Apple Stock early on, but it later went up to $399, I can't go to Apple and say \"\"I own $399 of you, here you go it back, give me an iPhone.\"\" The only way to redeem this is to sell the stock to another investor (like a Ponzi Scheme.) It is true that when you own stock, you own a small portion of the company. No, you can't just destroy your portion of the company; that wouldn't be fair to the other investors. But you can very easily sell your portion to another investor. The stock market facilitates that sale, making it very easy to either sell your shares or buy more shares. It's not a Ponzi scheme. The only reason your hypothetical share is said to be \"\"worth\"\" $399 is that there is a buyer that wants to buy it at $399. But there is a real company behind the stock, and it is making real money. There are several existing questions that discuss what gives a stock value besides a dividend: The stock market goes up only when more people invest in it. Although the stock market keeps tabs on Businesses, the profits of Businesses do not actually flow into the Stock Market. In particular, if no one puts money in the stock market, it doesn't matter how good the businesses do. The value of a stock is simply what a buyer is willing to pay for it. You are correct that there is not always a correlation between the price of a stock and how well the company is doing. But let's look at another hypothetical scenario. Let's say that I started and run a publicly-held company that sells widgets. The company is doing very well; I'm selling lots of widgets. In fact, the company is making incredible amounts of money. However, the stock price is not going up as fast as our revenues. This could be due to a number of reasons: investors might not be aware of our success, or investors might not think our success is sustainable. I, as the founder, own lots of shares myself, and if I want a return on my investment, I can do a couple of things with the large revenues of the company: I can either continue to reinvest revenue in the company, growing the company even more (in the hopes that investors will start to notice and the stock price will rise), or I can start paying a dividend. Either way, all the current stock holders benefit from the success of the company.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7fd41a325f0fb649082ee85699cff9a3", "text": "First, you need to understand that not every investor's goals are the same. Some investors are investing for income. They want to invest in a profitable company and use the profit from the company as income. If that investor invests only in stocks that do not pay a dividend, the only way he can realize income is to sell his investment. But he can invest in companies that pay a regular dividend and use that income while keeping his investment intact. Imagine this: Let's say I own a profitable company, and I offer to sell you part ownership in that company. However, I tell you this upfront: no matter how much profit our company makes, you will never get a penny from me. You will be getting a stock certificate - a piece of paper - and that's it. You can watch the company grow, and you can tell yourself you own it, but the only way you will personally benefit from your investment would be to sell your piece to someone else, who would also never see a penny in profit. Does that sound like a good investment? The fact of the matter is, stocks in companies that do not distribute dividends do have value, but this value is largely based on the potential of profits/dividends at some point in the future. If a company vows never ever to pay dividends, why would anyone invest? An investment would be more of a donation (like Kickstarter) at that point. A company that pays dividends is possibly past their growth stage. That doesn't necessarily mean that they have stopped growing altogether, but remember that an expansion project for any company does not automatically yield a good result. If a company does not have a good opportunity currently for a growth project, I as an investor would rather get a dividend than have the company blow all the profit on a ill-fated gamble.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2c22c52e4aaebff770a0c2e1acd89cf3", "text": "\"A share of stock is a share of the underlying business. If one believes the underlying business will grow in value, then one would expect the stock price to increase commensurately. Participants in the stock market, in theory, assign value based on some combination of factors like capital assets, cash on hand, revenue, cash flow, profits, dividends paid, and a bunch of other things, including \"\"intangibles\"\" like customer loyalty. A dividend stream may be more important to one investor than another. But, essentially, non-dividend paying companies (and, thus, their shares) are expected by their owners to become more valuable over time, at which point they may be sold for a profit. EDIT TO ADD: Let's take an extremely simple example of company valuation: book value, or the sum of assets (capital, cash, etc) and liabilities (debt, etc). Suppose our company has a book value of $1M today, and has 1 million shares outstanding, and so each share is priced at $1. Now, suppose the company, over the next year, puts another $1M in the bank through its profitable operation. Now, the book value is $2/share. Suppose further that the stock price did not go up, so the market capitalization is still $1M, but the underlying asset is worth $2M. Some extremely rational market participant should then immediately use his $1M to buy up all the shares of the company for $1M and sell the underlying assets for their $2M value, for an instant profit of 100%. But this rarely happens, because the existing shareholders are also rational, can read the balance sheet, and refuse to sell their shares unless they get something a lot closer to $2--likely even more if they expect the company to keep getting bigger. In reality, the valuation of shares is obviously much more complicated, but this is the essence of it. This is how one makes money from growth (as opposed to income) stocks. You are correct that you get no income stream while you hold the asset. But you do get money from selling, eventually.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "36b6507f1754160d2ab84eaad0e963a6", "text": "\"A non-trading stock or non-marketable security or unlisted security is one that does not trade continually on an exchange. For tax purposes, this can mean a whole new ball of wax which I would prefer the experts address with an edit to this answer or a new answer. For financial accounting purposes, this is when, say, one owns shares in an unlisted corporation and should be treated very carefully less one delude oneself. For trading stock, the value can be known immediately by checking any valid data provider's price and marking to market. For non-trading stock, the value has to be \"\"marked to model\"\". This can get one into Enron sized trouble. In this case, it's best to either leave the value of the stock at the purchase price and recognize gains upon sale, use a price from another honest transaction by third parties which are most likely difficult to attain, or to use some shorthand measure like applying the market P/E. Be wary of strangely high figures for value from the purchase price by using a market average, and don't throw away the shares just yet if a strangely low one arises. This method can lead to strange results.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
3dfd234ac9a8c92cf4af219d305ee408
Does setting up a company for your own improves credibility?
[ { "docid": "b228fd9c49d849a76e562c6128b35a42", "text": "The key here is that you are defacto running your own company no matter if you acknowledge it or not. In the end these questions have the goal of deciding if you can and will repay the loan. Presumably you filed taxes on your income. These can be shown to the loan officer as proof you have the ability to repay your loan. Running your freelancing as a business has advantages of being able to deduct normal expenses for running the business from your revenue. I am not sure how business cards improves your credit worthiness as they can be had for $10 in about an hour.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "eb56519181d6a8e65c0ce3a6d39eb5d7", "text": "Yep. Look at Market Basket's current debacle as a prime example. On NPR someone's opinion was that it works (there's many family-owned/run companies), but there's family issues (power disputes, control, vision, etc.) which if aren't managed/sort well can bubble up, grow, and potentially harm the company.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9d86d2dee6b62b0b7c9130b5bfe2fd4f", "text": "To be honest I don't know how any of this work in the US so my answer will be of very limited value to yourself, I suspect, but when it comes to the UK if you're going to get the same pay gross either way than being independent makes very little sense. Running your own business is hassle, is generally more risky (although possibly not in your case) and costs money. Some of the most obvious costs are the added NI, probably the need for an accountant, at around £1200 p/a for basic accountancy service, you are obliged by law to have liability insurance and you probably want professional indemnity insurance, this will be around £600 p/a minmum, and so on and so forth. On top of that, oficially anyway, as a contractor, you really shouldn't be getting any benefits from the client, and so health insurance, company car, even parking are all meant to be arranged by, and paid by, your company, and can't (or rather - shouldn't) be charged to the client. So - I would say - if you're seriously thinking about setting up a consultancy company, and this client is first of many - set up a company, but take into account the sums you need to earn. If you're really thinking about employment - be an employee.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a4ed4fb03c9a393b737c5da1e8f0a6fe", "text": "No chance. First off, unless the company provides audited financials (and they don't from what I can tell), there is no way I'm tinkering with a bunch of small business owners. Transparency is a substantial part of investing and this actually exempts or excludes these companies, from what I can tell.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f2b07a443033fca18babe360a9b3643e", "text": "\"I never said a word against going into business for yourself. The article is about the lies perpetuated by people who stand to gain from you taking \"\"the long shot\"\" instead of bootstrapping something in your spare time. You know, the stuff the VCs call \"\"little dipshit companies.\"\"\"", "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": "e0c84063098cf5ce090938ff3d6fb0a5", "text": "From what I can understand you will be paying money to buy a business with more problems than assets. If it's all about the reviews then register an LLC yourself and do some marketing work, it will cost much less. If this business had clients and constant recurring revenue then that would be a different story.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "70b440149f0ea2945f6e0a986e1c361f", "text": "In the current economy there is no upside to working for yourself. Get in a salaried position as soon as you can, and sacrifice to whatever gods you worship that you don't get made redundant. If you're already working for yourself, and wouldn't give it up for anything, hire someone, and get them off the street.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ce98c234306e5b450314f6d30b23a592", "text": "Setting up an entity that is partially foreign owned is not that difficult. It takes an additional 1-1.5 months in total, and in this particular case, you guys would be formed as a Joint Venture. It will cost a bit more (about 3-5000). If you're serious about owning a part of a business in China, you should carefully examine what he means by 'more complicated'. From my point of view, I have set up my own WOFE in China, and examined the possibilities of a JV and even considered using a friend to set up the company under their personal name as a domestic company (which is what your supervisor is doing), any difference between the three are not really a big deal anymore, and comes down to the competency of the agencies you are using and the business partner themselves. It cost me 11,000 for a WOFE including the agency and government registration fees (only Chinese speaking). You should also consider the other shareholders who may be part of this venture as well. If there are other shareholders, and you are not providing further tangible contribution, you will end up replaced and penniless (unless of course you trust them too...), because they are actually paying money to be part of the business and you are not. They will not part with equity for you. I'm not a lawyer, but think you should not rely on any promises other than what it says on a company registration paper. Good luck!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "77b663645ab63f4452a4e793fee32034", "text": "The question is not whether CFA charterholders are better investment managers but rather whether starting (or having completed) your CFA will land you a better job. It's been my experience that it does, which is why so many people pursue it", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4c7facee548aaabb2cb26d1262670226", "text": "Partnerships don’t work out unless you clearly define the roles and relationships, hence why most partnerships fail (I usually cringe when I hear partnerships). Also a background check never hurts (think citizenship ID cards). Having a good lawyer helps as well. I think demonizing an entire country/ethnicity for the failure of your partnership is misguided, but that’s usually how our thinking defaults to when we’re stressed like this. Being emotional is not a trait of good business acumen. Would it make you feel better if you were being lied to by Brits,Indians,Israelis,Nigerians,etc? You having lived in China for over 10 years should have taught you that there is a get rich quick mentality over there. Hopefully you didn’t put too much money into this venture. I would definitely look into what they are doing in China. Are they break any laws over there? Is your business in compliance with import/export controls in China &amp; US? Is this business relationship still salvageable or should you just walk away? Most people are not cut out for starting their own business. You might also need to support your wife in the infant stages of this enterprise or hire someone as her assistant. Looks like you have A LOT of work/discussing/brainstorming/debating with your wife before you even get into it with the partners.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b85a2f8355082ec269db017ff3da7393", "text": "Yes. I can by all means start my own company and name myself CEO. If Bill Gates wanted to hire me, I'll take the offer and still be CEO of my own company. Now, whether or not my company makes money and survives is another question. This is the basis of self-employed individuals who contract out their services.", "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": "" }, { "docid": "04c56082cb44a60d92fa3313cf253183", "text": "\"Credit is a racket. What is a \"\"YouTube prank channel\"\"? Because that sounds dumb. Not trying to be negative, it just sounds dumb. If you're thinking something like that TV show \"\"Jackass\"\" Aren't there like 1000 of those on Youtube now? I doubt any of them are making any real money. I bet you can think of something better to do than acting like a fool on camera.. looking for an investor sounds like a sound plan but you need to have an idea first. The best advice I've heard is try to find a problem in the world that needs solving, and find a solution for it. If it's a good solution people will buy it. And then you've done something you can feel proud of.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dc53e9074822161e167bc8405cb201f9", "text": "It's clearly a risk, but is it any different than investing in your own business? Yes, it is different. If you own a business, you determine the path of the business. You determine how much risk the business takes. You can put in extra effort to try to make the business work. You can choose to liquidate to preserve your capital. If you invest without ownership, perhaps the founder retains a 50% plus one share stake, then whomever controls the business controls all those things. So you have all the risks of owning the business (in terms of things going wrong) without the control to make things go right. This makes investing in someone else's business inherently riskier. Another problem that can occur is that you could find out that the business is fraudulent. Or the business can become fraudulent. Neither of those are risks if you are the business owner. You won't defraud yourself. Angel investing, that is to say investing in someone else's startup, is inherently risky. This is why it is difficult to find investors, even though some startups go on to become fabulously wealthy (Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Most startups fail. They offer the possibility of great returns because it's really hard to determine which ones will fail and which will succeed. Otherwise the business would just take out the same loan that Jane's getting, and leave Jane out of it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b686ae0fe2a548a07dce6642d2d9bc0c", "text": "Yes, the entire financial system is based on trust. As we have seen repeatedly, even the ratings agencies can be wrong and in collusion. You need to understand what products have any insurance/contingency/recourse if things don't go as planned. A lot of people were surprised when they found out SIPC didn't ensure futures when MF Global declared bankruptcy last fall.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
7f4a5049efd6f80b24b779c0e27afe27
Should I use an NRE or NRO account to transfer money from India to the US? Any reports needed?
[ { "docid": "f3f135d7e41659af5a99c1a91e48df9e", "text": "Deposits into NRE account can only be done from funds outside India. So your brother cannot deposit into your NRE account. He can deposit in NRO account or directly wire transfer the funds. Both these require some paper work depending on the amount.", "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": "ffcfab4133c06e206a3cc6af7ff4b0b7", "text": "How much amount can we transfer from India to the USA? Is the limit per year? As I understand your father in law is Indian Citizen and his tax paid earnings need to be transferred outside of India. Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme by RBI, one can transfer upto 2,50,000 USD. Please check with your Bank for the exact paperwork. A form 15CA and 15CB [by CA] are required to establish taxes have been paid. What documents we have to present to the bank? See above. Should money be transferred to company's account(Indian Company) to USA company? or can be transferred to my husband's account. Transfer of funds by a Indian Company to US Company has some restrictions. Please check with CA for details. If you father in law has sold the Indian Company and paid the taxes in India; he can transfer the proceeds to his son in US as per the Liberalized Remittance Scheme. Can they just gift the whole amount to my husband? What will be the tax implication on my husband's part in USA and on my father in law in India. The whole amount can be gifted by your father in law to your husband [his son]. There is no tax implication in India as being an Indian resident, gift between close relatives is tax free. There is no tax implication to your husband as he is a US Citizen and as per gift tax the person giving the gift should be paying the applicable taxes. Since the person gifting is not US Citizen; this is not applicable.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ebb874728ea5c83f7c47d5f71cbed3ed", "text": "I can't speak for India, but for US travelers abroad, using an ATM card that reimburses transaction fees is usually the most convenient and cheapest way to obtain foreign cash. There are several banks and brokerages that offer these types of ATM cards in the US. The exchange rate is competitive and because the fees are reimbursed it's cheaper and easy than going to a bank or kiosk to exchange currencies. I don't know if you can get accounts/cards like this in India that reimburse ATM fees. For purchases, using a credit card is fine, too. Some cards charge a foreign transaction fee of ~1%, some don't. The credit card I use most of the time does charge a 1% transaction fee, but I get 2% back in rewards so I still don't mind using it when traveling.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "febb57a067713cbee6ebfa09942ff56c", "text": "Your bank will gladly help you convert your Indian savings accounts into NRO savings accounts. You cannot change these accounts into NRE accounts directly; NRE accounts are supposed to be funded via deposits made from foreign currency accounts. Under the liberalized schemes available now, you can transfer the money in your regular savings account into your account abroad, converting it into foreign currency, if you (and your CA) provide proof to your bank (and the Reserve Bank of India) that you have paid all applicable taxes on the money in your savings account. And then you can transfer it all back into your NRE account. Perhaps you can combine these two steps into a single one, thereby putting the money in your regular savings account into an NRE account in one step, but I am sure that there will be lots of fees involved (e.g. you might get whacked by commissions, as well as the exchange rate differential as if you converted Indian rupees to US dollars, say, and then converted the dollars back to rupees) just as if you did the two-step conversion. There are no taxes involved in moving your own money into different accounts but there can be lots of fees and service charges.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a76276245be23f904dc51d7b091f2012", "text": "If you're exchanging cash, then the rule of thumb is generally that it's better to buy currency in the country that issues the currency. In your case that would mean buy INR in India and buy USD in the U.S. The rationale is that supply of foreign currency is generally smaller, so you get a little better price if you're holding the foreign currency. There are, of course, exceptions, like if you're going to a country with little foreign trade. (That wouldn't seem to apply to the U.S. or India.) If you are doing an electronic transfer through a bank, however, I doubt that it matters which end initiates the transfer. You're going to get their wholesale exchange rate plus fees. It seems more likely to matter what fees are charged, and that may vary more by bank than by country.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9f7c7476cb54a2419f6dbec086f8dc10", "text": "In general, deposits into an NRE account must be the proceeds of remittances from outside India. If you send your friend a cheque, denominated in Indian Rupees, drawn on your NRE account (which is an account held in a bank in India), that cheque will most likely be refused by your friend's bank for deposit into your friend's NRE account. Your friend could deposit it into an NRO account, though, but that deposit would likely draw the attention of the income tax people.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7eb30cb6efa624792fd394c546d3bf4d", "text": "Like for example I use transferwise to send $x to my dad's account in India, would it show my name as the depositor ? That would depend from bank to bank, it may or may not show your name. Would it be considered as income for my dad ? Assuming your parents are Indian Residents for tax purposes. No. It would be considered as Gift. Gifts between father and son are tax free in India and there is no limit. Any special care/precaution to take before using such services ? Not really. Just to be safe, keep a copy of the transfer instruction / details of debit to you account etc, so that if there is enquiry you have all the data handy. Edit: Clarifying the comment, if you are Resident Alien in US for tax purposes, you would be liable to Gift Tax [Not your parents as they are Indian Residents and would follow Indian tax rules]. As per IRS the liability of Gift tax is on Donor subject to limit of $14000 per year per Donee. So you and your wife can gift your father and mother $14000 each. i.e. $56000 each year. Anything more will be taxable or can be reduced from the overall estate limit.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bae67ac65d8048321000f6c000cb44a5", "text": "\"I have three savings accounts that are currently open in India in different banks. Is it legal to have savings accounts open while I am in the US? If you are NRI [from what you have stated you are], you cannot hold a \"\"Savings\"\" account in India. Please have the accounts converted as NRO at the earliest. It is a simple matter of contacting Bank and completing formalities with some paperwork. do I have to declare this fact in the tax filings in US given that my tax is already deducted? Yes, interest would be taxable in US. Does my father have to declare the additional deposits? No. Edit to reply to comment: RBI Economic Times\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a1cbe7df86eacf9f7fc6f3a637404bd5", "text": "INR held in an NRE account can be converted to non-Indian currencies without any problems. Converting money in an NRO account is more difficult but do-able. Whether it is wise for you to invest in a privately held company is a different issue.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7f88fcb019da809facd934c61dfe7b09", "text": "On my recent visit to the bank, I was told that money coming into the NRE account can only be foreign currency and for NRO accounts, the money can come in local currency but has to be a valid source of income (e.g. rent or investments in India). Yes this is correct as per FMEA regulation in India. Now if we use 3rd party remittances like Remitly or Transferwise etc, they usually covert the foreign currency into local currency like INR and then deposit it. The remittance services are better suited for transferring funds to Normal Savings accounts of your loved ones. Most remittance services would transfer funds using a domestic clearing network [NEFT] and hence the trace that funds originated outside of India is lost. There could be some generic remittance that may have direct tie-up with some banks to do direct transfers. How can we achieve this in either NRE/NRO accounts? If not, what are the other options ? You can do a Wire Transfer [SWIFT] from US to Indian NRE account. You can also use the remittance services [if available] from Banks where you hold NRE Account. For example RemittoIndia from HDFC for an NRE account in HDFC, or Money2India from ICICI for an NRE account in ICICI or QuickRemit from SBI etc. These would preserve the history that funds originated from outside India. Similarly you can also deposit a Foreign Currency Check into Indian Bank Account. The funds would take around month or so to get credited. All other funds can be deposited in NRO account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cf91d1943fd0ea2823261d687164c5fd", "text": "Since your question is very particular on the details, I'm assuming you did your research. Unfortunately you won't get a better answer here than what you've found on the Internet already. This is not a clear-cut situation as the situation you're describing has been a source to some confusion. Mainly, the question is whether the US bank account is a tangible asset or not. To the best of my knowledge, this has not yet been settled, so I suggest going to a professional tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in the US) who'd advise you the best course of action. I think it would be safer to transfer the money directly from the foreign account to the US beneficiary (although even then, if the IRS decides to start digging, it may claim that you're essentially disguising a transfer from a US account, so I suggest talking to a professional before doing anything). In any case, the US recipient will need to report the gift (if it is $100K or more) using the form 3520 with his/her tax return.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a37ba433298a25962301a4c5df8a2d03", "text": "You haven't indicated where the funds are held. They should ideally be held in NRO account. If you haven't, have this done ASAP. Once the funds are in NRO account, you can repatriate this outside of India subject to a limit of 1 million USD. A CA certificate is required. Please contact your Indian Bank and they should be able to guide you. There are no tax implications of this in US as much as I know, someone else may post the US tax aspect.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7c27632e969fad3685514e2a3c6f5149", "text": "Taxability does not depending on transfer of money to NRO. It depending on your tax status in India. Assuming you have spent more than 182 days outside India for the financial year 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2016, you would be NRI. I am transferring money from my Maldives saving account to my Indian Saving account(NRO). Will it be taxable in India? Assuming you are NRI, this is not taxable. Any interest in NRO account is taxable in India. Again I am transferring the money from my Indian savings account to my dad's Indian saving account. Will it be taxable? This is not taxable to you. To your father it would be treated as Gift. As per Gift tax, this is not taxable to your father as well. If the amount is large, keep proper documentation of the transaction. Any income that is generated i.e. interest etc on this amount will be taxable to your father.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2570c173435745bdfc94803f83bc1151", "text": "Take a look at Transferwise. I find them good for currency conversions and paying people in India from a US bank account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "525af4c7a0373197b4a72adee488f3df", "text": "The US will let you keep as much money as you want to within its borders regardless of your citizenship. You'll owe capital gains tax in the US unless you're subject to a tax treaty (which you would probably make as an election in the year of the transaction). I don't know if India has any rules about how it governs its citizens' foreign assets, but the US requires citizens to file a form annually declaring foreign accounts over $10,000. You may be subject to additional Indian taxes if India taxes global income like the US does.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "28409171ea6205d636f9f30e07fba1f0", "text": "\"Yes and no. There are two primary ways to do this. The first is known as \"\"cross listing\"\". Basically, this means that shares are listed in the home country are the primary shares, but are also traded on secondary markets using mechanisms like ADRs or Globally Registered Shares. Examples of this method include Vodafone and Research in Motion. The second is \"\"dual listing\"\". This is when two corporations that function as a single business are listed in multiple places. Examples of this include Royal Dutch Shell and Unilever. Usually companies choose this method for tax purposes when they merge or acquire an international company. Generally speaking, you can safely buy shares in whichever market makes sense to you.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
628e211962117f28eff41977a5ec05df
What's the point of a chargeback when they just ask the merchant whether they owe money to the buyer?
[ { "docid": "ced010cfdc8221b082ad29aab4e22266", "text": "When you initiate a chargeback, the merchant has the right to dispute the chargeback. If they can provide proof that the purchase actually took place, the chargeback will fail. We don't know all the details of your situation, of course, but it appears from what you have said that the tax chain probably has documents that you signed agreeing to the charges. They prepared your return (even if they did a poor job), and so from their perspective, they have decided that they deserve to be paid. Whether or not they did a good job is a matter of opinion, of course; their position might be that they did it correctly, and the second business did it poorly. The chargeback is a powerful tool, but it is not a magic button that makes a charge disappear. If the merchant can show that a sale did indeed take place and show that the proper amount was charged, the chargeback will fail. For a service, it isn't enough usually to simply state that you were unsatisfied; if you received the service at the agreed-upon price, the charge is valid. A chargeback is sort of a nuclear option when it comes to getting a refund. There are negative ramifications and expenses every time a merchant gets a chargeback (even if they ultimately win), and so often they will be willing to work something out to avoid a chargeback. You should go to the merchant first, if you can, and ask for a refund before considering the chargeback option. If you file a chargeback without even giving them the opportunity to work it out with you, the merchant will usually want to fight back.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "16c57c71a6d1dc057d984fddaa84e5e1", "text": "So, what's the point of a charge-back, if they simply take the word of the merchant? tl;dr: They don't. As both a merchant and a consumer I have been on both ends of credit card chargebacks, and have received what I consider to be mostly fair outcomes in all cases. Here are some examples: Takeaways from this: I strongly urge all consumers who are considering doing a chargeback to try to work with the merchant first, and use the CC dispute as a last resort. In general, you can think of the credit card dispute department like a judge. They hear the arguments presented by both sides, and consider them to the best of their ability. They don't always get it right, but they make their best attempt given the limited information they are provided.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "51a06b58ceff505de3b8ec804f3a9604", "text": "The point of a chargeback is to force merchants to do the paperwork. Many merchants don't, and are easy targets for chargebacks, even when they have, in fact, provided the good or service. You used a tax prep service. They may have given you poor (technical) advice, but such firms are usually very good about doing the paperwork. That's why you lost.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "30bd247ad6bb1864e00bf6ab2aaa9de3", "text": "You may be using the wrong method to get your money back. As others have said, this is not a valid use for chargeback; that is when a fraudulent charge occurred, or when a merchant charges you incorrectly. However, many cards have various kinds of guarantees, one of which might cover this situation. Particularly in some european countries, such as the United Kingdom which has Section 75 allowing you a recourse, services are included with goods. Goods are typically the only covered elements in the US, though, but check your credit card agreement to be sure. Second, you can go through the FTC. They will provide you a sample form letter to request a refund of your money, and if the merchant is not cooperative might choose to help you directly (especially if many others are in your situation).", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "b427ead79d6bc0ca641b104f8705fd3c", "text": "I would presume this goes entirely through the credit card network rather than the banking network. I am guessing that it's essentially the same operation as if you had returned something purchased on a card to the store for credit, but I'm not sure whether it really looks like a vendor credit to the network or if it is marked as a different type of transaction.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fc9e6fa705358329c493d5f29d33399b", "text": "\"Why would you consider it null and void? It might be that something went wrong and the business \"\"lost\"\" the transaction one way or another. It might be something else. It might never appear. It might appear. In one of the questions a while ago someone posted a link of a story where an account was overdrawn because of a forgotten debit card charge that resurfaced months later. Can't find the link right now, but it can definitely happen.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "229dcdc4c02910101ea85c81c214c263", "text": "\"The statement is (in laymans terms - if not in real terms) correct. Most credit cards (I know this to be true for VISA and Mastercard) have dispute processes and will do a chargeback on the merchant - ie take the money back from the supplier in cases where you don't receive the goods or other fraud - Particularly if they can't produce a signature and (for transactions which are not face-to-face) a tracking number. Your exact rights will vary by bank, but mostly they need to follow the guidelines set by the Credit Card company - and you do need to be a bit careful - if you received goods which were fake or a dispute arises you may be up for shipping the goods back to the merchant - and you have a limited - but reasonable time - in which to make the dispute. (The statement \"\"the money is the banks\"\" is not technically true, there is no money involved until you pay it, only credit [ they are very different, but almost no-one knows that, I communicated with a Minister of Finance on the topic], but this is quite technical and as a layman not something you need to worry about here)\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "18b7559a6edda684caf66c1f0c3a4e40", "text": "\"Your bank will undoubtedly charge you a fee for the \"\"chargeback\"\" and so while you will get your money back faster, you will likely end up with less than you would if you were not so impatient and just waited a few days for the refund to show up. I suppose it depends on whether you consider this a downside or not.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d0f94b9289f04a796e30009e58bc9359", "text": "Q: Where do you think the money comes from for the cash-back reward? A: The seller is charged a % transaction fee that is higher than the amount of the cash back reward. So ultimately the seller is paying the cash back award and then some. This plan wouldn't work.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "88009ffa9f0e9233ee90f4ca2dbdd79c", "text": "Keeping a receipt does allow you to verify that the expected amount was charged/debited it also can help when you need to return an item. Regarding double charging, the credit card companies look for that. If the same card is used at the same vendor for the same exact amount in a short period of time the credit card company will flag the transaction. They assume either a mistake was made, or fraud is being attempted. The most likely result is that the transaction is denied. A dishonest vendor can write down the card number, expiration date and CVV number. Then after you leave make up a new transaction for any amount they want. You of course wouldn't have a paper receipt for this fraudulent transaction. The key is reviewing your transaction history every few days: looking for unexpected amounts, locations, or number of transactions.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "25faa7c6670f215322dfd94af6b78455", "text": "Note: I am not a lawyer. This is my personal opinion and interpretation. First, your source is European Law, which obviously doesn't apply outside of the EU. The EU cannot make laws that bind entities in other countries; so you cannot claim that the VAT was needed to be mentioned. Second, if you owe something, you owe it; it doesn't matter if it was forgotten to be mentioned. At best, you can say that under those circumstances you don't want the software anymore, and i would assume you can send it back and get your money back (minus a fee for having it used for a while...) - this gets quite difficult to calculate clearly, so it's probably not a good avenue to follow for you. As the company has to send the VAT to your country (they will not be allowed to keep a dime of it, and have to bear the complete cost for the handling), it is a debt you have to your government; they are just the entity responsible for collecting it. Still, if you just ignore them, they will probably suck it up, and your government will also not do a thing to you. If they only have your email address, they have no way of knowing if you even still have/use this address; for all they know, it could be you never got it. They also cannot simply charge your card, as they probably don't have the card data any more (they are not supposed to keep it after the transaction is complete, and they thought it was complete at the time). All in all, you should be safe to ignore it. It's between you and your god/consciousness, if you feel obliged to pay it, as technically you owe it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2edf29c8d6d138c80ffaab5b810e5260", "text": "If there was some contract in place (even a verbal agreement) that he would complete the work you asked for in return for payment, then you don't have to pay him anything. He hasn't completed the work and what he did do was stolen from another person. He hasn't held up his end of the agreement, so you don't owe squat.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e138d48bd150ef9c9d160460027a7c44", "text": "Because your friend isn't going to like the ~2% charge they have to pay to the credit card company on the $10,000 purchase. Credit card companies make money off of transactions. The cardholder normally doesn't pay any transaction fees (and in fact can make a profit via rewards), but the merchant has to pay a certain amount of money to the credit card company for the transaction. In this case, the apartment owners ate the charge, likely because it was easier for them to send a check than to refund the cost of the fee through the credit card company. If you started doing this a lot to take advantage of this, I would imagine they would get smart and refuse your business (it'll be pretty obvious what you're doing if you're not signing any leases).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e57f4deb0fd8fe7f89b86f1b55d1942c", "text": "Visa, Mastercard have very strong consumer protection. I have been wondering about this question for a while but never got around to asking it here: What happens if a retailer knowingly defrauds me? My guess is the first party to ask for help is Visa, Mastercard: a retailer knowingly defrauding you is unlikely to refund you any money. However, slip-ups do happen. If this is a retailer of good repute, they will not only refund you the money but send you a gift card too! Please do followup this post with what helped you in the end, but my guess is, your first (and last) line of defense would be Visa, Mastercard. Anything that would go through the bank would take such a lot of time and effort, that you would be better off writing it off.", "title": "" }, { "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": "a447c05f8e2e9fc228d0502eeb439764", "text": "I imagine the same results would occur as with any other business that is owed money. For a short period the company will try to collect their debts directly from the consumer. If unsuccessful, the company may then sell their right to the debt over to a collections agency. The collection agency will then pursue more aggressive collections tactics and/or legal action to collect.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0088551e56693f9713c06610f68b44f1", "text": "You can't make your bank do a charge back. This function is to assist with straight up fraud, not a customer service mistake. (Think spoofed or stolen card or if a vendor intentionally acted fraudulently.) While you may believe what they did is fraud, your bank will require that you provide the vendor with the opportunity to rectify the situation themselves. Trying to call back and giving up after a long hold time won't meet their standards. If banks started letting anyone unhappy with a vendor start doing charge backs, they would be doing nothing else all day. The issues you're describing has not reached the threshold for the bank to authorize a charge back. Comcast has local and regional offices, and you could go in person to speak with someone. Maybe there isn't one near you. There are non-peak hours which wait times will be less. You'll just have to grin and bear it if you truly want the money back. Then, take your business elsewhere and post bad reviews online. Always keep in mind that when you eventually speak with someone, they will not be the person that messed up, and you should be overly nice and polite to them. I promise it will yield far better results than being surly and demanding. Another way to get Comcast's attention would be to file a complaint with the BBB. It might take longer, but I've had this work with big companies, usually with good results. Again, be nice to whomever contacts you. In reference to your recent duplicate question: Mastercard won't be able to help at all. They play no part in the transaction at all.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a34e9337f07354d312028fd984a24ae9", "text": "That all makes sense, but all of those things are the responsibility of the cardholder. If you want to pay off your balance, anything quoted would obviously not include any transaction yet to post. The problem is a creditor refusing to give the balance AND refusing to take a payment for an amount over the previous statement balance. This is essentially forcing the customer to pay more interest after they declare their intent to pay the full amount. Good points, but I don't believe those were factors in this case.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2dae3046106ad0fb5fd19585130bbb51", "text": "cost of carry is a confusing term to use but this is what i was given to work with then again, once you factor in interest rate risk and default risk (if you do), what is a better term? it's not just cost of capital at that pt", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
7b3e785e935faaeee2d5e3cbad118c52
Corporate Equity Draw vs Income
[ { "docid": "ee0f34fa27cb4ca84be860d651f060f3", "text": "You tagged with S-Corp, so I assume that you have that tax status. Under that situation, you don't get taxed on distributions regardless of what you call them. You get taxed on the portion of the net income that is attributable to you through the Schedule K that the S-Corp should distribute to you when the S-Corp files its tax return. You get taxed on that income whether or not it's distributed. If you also work for the small business, then you need to pay yourself a reasonable wage. The amount that you distribute can be one factor in determining reasonableness. That doesn't seem to be what you asked, but it is something to consider.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "0b055c497ebf3938a1c1d306b56febe6", "text": "It is. The outstanding value is the net cash flow, but it will always be higher than cash outflow due to a constant growth rate/expected return. I was slightly confused when my manager told me to find the IRR before and after cash inflows (the whole life of the investment). Especially as IRR after cash inflows is higher than the former.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c1badb1b14dffa130f4d2ae7d360fed7", "text": "You need to distinguish a company's guidance from analysts' estimates. A company will give a revenue/earnings guidance which is generally based on internal budgets. The guidance may be aggressive or conservative - some managements are known to be conservative and the market will take that into account to form actual estimates. When you see a headline saying that a company missed, it is generally by reference to the analysts' estimates. Analysts use a company's guidance as one data point among many others to form a forecast of revenue/earnings. The idea behind those headlines is that the average sales/earnings estimates of analysts is a good approximation of what the market expects (which is debatable).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "052392f5d66b263d95bf4d5e2838e319", "text": "\"Equity does not represent production divisions in a company (i.e. chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla does not make sense). In Sole proprietorship, equity represents 1 owner. In Partnership, equity has at least two sub-accounts, namely Partner 1 and Partner 2. In Corporations, equity may have Common Stockholders and Preferred Stockholders, or even different class of shares for insiders and angel investors. As you can see, equity represents who owns the company. It is not what the company does or manufactures. First and foremost, define the boundary of the firm. Are your books titled \"\"The books of the family of Doe\"\", \"\"The books of Mr & Mrs Doe\"\", or \"\"The books of Mr & Mrs Doe & Sons\"\". Ask yourself, who \"\"owns\"\" this family. If you believe that a marriage is perpetual until further notice then it does not make any sense to constantly calculate which parent owns the family more. In partnership, firm profits are attributed to partner's accounts using previously agreed ratio. For example, (60%/40% because Partner 1 is more hard working and valuable to the firm. Does your child own this family? Does he/she have any rights to use the assets, to earn income from the assets, to transfer the assets to others, or to enforce private property rights? If they don't have a part of these rights, they are certainly NOT part of Equity. So what happens to the expenses of children if you follow the \"\"partnership\"\" model? There are two ways. The first way is to attribute the Loss to the parents/family since you do not expect the children to repay. It is an unrecoverable loss written off. The second way is to create a Debtor(Asset) account to aggregate all child expense, then create a separate book called \"\"The books Children 1\"\", and classify the expense in that separate book. I advise using \"\"The family of Doe\"\" as the firm's boundary, and having 1 Equity account to simplify everything. It is ultimately up to you to decide the boundaries.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e7b44d6fb01103d972318fdd1aa04c52", "text": "\"You'll generally get a number close to market cap of a mature company if you divide profits (or more accurately its free cash flow to equity) by the cost of equity which is usually something like ~7%. The value is meant to represent the amount of cash you'd need to generate investment income off it matching the company you're looking at. Imagine it as asking \"\"How much money do I need to put into the bank so that my interest income would match the profits of the company I'm looking at\"\". Except replace the bank with the market and other forms of investments that generate higher returns of course and that value would be lower.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "829ff126b899af4b65aa225ce89badc3", "text": "Lets just get to the point...Ordinary income (gains) earned from S-Corp operations (i.e. income earned after all expenses for providing services or selling products) is passed through to the owners/shareholders and taxed at the owner's personal tax rate. Separately, if an S-Corp earns capital gains (i.e. the S-Corp buys and sells stock, earns dividends from investments, etc), those gains are passed through to the owners and taxed at a capital gains rate Capital gains are not the same as ordinary income (gains). Don't get the two confused, they are as different for S-Corp taxation as they are for personal taxation. In some cases an exception occurs, but only when the S-Corp was formally a C-Corp and the C-Corp had non-distributed earnings or losses. This is a separate issue whereas the undistributed C-Corp gains/losses are treated differently than the S-Corp gains/losses. It takes years of college coursework and work experience to grasp the vast arena of tax. It should not be so complex, but it is this complex. It is not within the scope of the non-tax professional to make sense of this stuff. The CPA exams, although very difficult and thorough, only scrape the surface of tax and accounting. I hope this provides some perspective on any questions regarding business tax for S-Corps and any other entity type. Hire a good CPA... if you can find one.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a9fbbddf99ada47cb3317b4673d6b8ca", "text": "This is fine, but I'd probably spend a moment introducing WACC and it's estimation. It's also useful to link up the enterprise value to share price, so just also mentioning the debt subtraction to get equity value and division by shares for price. Keep in mind you're usually given like a minute to answer this, so you can afford to be a bit more detailed in some parts.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e6a86727ce2c1f10f9574097f583a59e", "text": "Shareholders are the equity holders. They mean the same thing. A simplified formula for the total value of a company is the value of its equity, plus the value of its debt, less its cash (for reasons I won't get into). There are usually other things to add or subtract, but that's the basic formula.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7f56bfa4b4678efd8cc9806a01578457", "text": "Would you mind adding where that additional value comes from, if not from the losses of other investors? You asked this in a comment, but it seems to be the key to the confusion. Corporations generate money (profits, paid as dividends) from sales. Sales trade products for money. The creation of the product creates value. A car is worth more than General Motors pays for its components and inputs, even including labor and overhead as inputs. That's what profit is: added value. The dividend is the return that the stock owner gets for owning the stock. This can be a bit confusing in the sense that some stocks don't pay dividends. The theory is that the stock price is still based on the future dividends (or the liquidation price, which you could also consider a type of dividend). But the current price is mostly based on the likelihood that the stock price will increase rather than any expected dividends during ownership of the stock. A comment calls out the example of Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway is a weird case. It operates more like a mutual fund than a company. As such, investors prefer that it reinvest its money rather than pay a dividend. If investors want money from it, they sell shares to other investors. But that still isn't really a zero sum game, as the stock increases in value over time. There are other stocks that don't pay dividends. For example, Digital Equipment Corporation went through its entire existence without ever paying a dividend. It merged with Compaq, paying investors for owning the stock. Overall, you can see this in that the stock market goes up on average. It might have a few losing years, but pick a long enough time frame, and the market will increase during it. If you sell a stock today, it's because you value the money more than the stock. If it goes up tomorrow, that's the buyer's good luck. If it goes down, the buyer's bad luck. But it shouldn't matter to you. You wanted money for something. You received the money. The increase in the stock market overall is an increase in value. It is completely unrelated to trading losses. Over time, trading gains outweigh trading losses for investors as a group. Individual investors may depart from that, but the overall gain is added value. If the only way to make gains in the stock market was for someone else to take a loss, then the stock market wouldn't be able to go up. To view it as a zero sum game, we have to ignore the stocks themselves. Then each transaction is a payment (loss) for one party and a receipt (gain) for the other. But the stocks themselves do have value other than what we pay for them. The net present value of of future payments (dividends, buyouts, etc.) has an intrinsic worth. It's a risky worth. Some stocks will turn out to be worthless, but on average the gains outweigh the losses.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dbc54297aa25d0a851d8421cd7854b7c", "text": "\"In the Income Statement that you've linked to, look for the line labeled \"\"Net Income\"\". That's followed by a line labeled \"\"Preferred Dividends\"\", which is followed by \"\"Income Available to Common Excl. Extra Items\"\" and \"\"Income Available to Common Incl. Extra Items\"\". Those last two are the ones to look at. The key is that these lines reflect income minus dividends paid to preferred stockholders (of which there are none here), and that's income that's available to ordinary shareholders, i.e., \"\"earnings for the common stock\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c197ad441c09d2f3cfd1b2b06df90281", "text": "I think the most concise way to understand EV is the value of the *operating assets* of the firm. It's most generally used when using income statement or cash flow ratios that are unlevered - before applying interest expense (which if the firm is optimally financed, in theory should only impact the equity). Examples include revenue, EBIT, EBITDA, unlevered FCF, etc. In your hypothetical scenario, you would expect the equity value of the firm to increase linearly as cash builds up. In other words, in some implausible, ceteris paribus formulation of the firm, the enterprise value should remain constant.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "58fee466a1611be7e3a36f466ff3a5b7", "text": "\"Equity could mean stock options. If that's the case if the company makes it big, you'll have the option to buy stocks cheap (which can then be sold at a huge profit) How are you going to buy those without income? 5% equity is laughable. I'd be looking for 30-40% if not better without salary. Or even better, a salary. To elaborate, 5% is fine, and even normal for an early employee taking a mild pay cut in exchange for a chance at return. That chance of any return on the equity is only about 1/20 (94% of startups fail) There is no reason for an employee to work for no pay. An argument could be made for a cofounder, with direct control and influence in the company to work for equity only, but it would be a /lot/ more (that 30-40%), or an advisory role (5% is reasonable) I also just noticed you mentioned \"\"investing\"\" in the startup with cash. As an angel investor, I'd still expect far more than 5%, and preferred shares at that. More like 16-20%. Read this for more info on how equity is usually split.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d1dbe7bda5a57a5d62c4680327a932c6", "text": "It is difficult to reconcile historical balance sheets with historical cash flow statements because there are adjustments that are not always clearly disclosed. Practitioners consider activity on historical cash flow statements but generally don't invest time reconciling historical accounts, instead focusing on balancing projected balance sheets / cash flow statements. If you had non-public internal books, you could reconcile the figures (presuming they are accurate). In regards to Mike Haskel's comment, there's also a section pertaining to operating capital, not just effects on net income.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "79f388d2574f818e5c8512003c48d607", "text": "This really comes down to tax structuring (which I am not an expert on), for public companies the acquiror almost always pays for the cash to prevent any taxable drawdown of overseas accounts, dividend taxes suck, etc. For a private company, first the debt gets swept, then special dividend out - dividends received by the selling corporate entity benefit from a tax credit plus it reduces the selling price of the equity, reducing capital gains taxes.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "45b1fc2bfbffc1e40e824972d16fd3d0", "text": "First, corporate profits can grow relative to GDP. If companies succeed in growing revenue without paying much more to workers, then corporate profits and stock prices will grow relative to GDP. That has been happening for the last couple decades. If you require that we keep corporate profits vs GDP constant, then borrowing/leverage is how you do it. Companies can expand their operations on a fixed amount of shareholder equity, and as long as they can grow their profits faster than the cost of the debt, then shareholders keep the upside. But this also means that share prices will quickly fall if profits decline even a small amount, because the debt must still be paid off.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "aaa788cffd3ea02085b6090b0e9b3120", "text": "It is true that operation profit comes from gross profit however it is possible for a company to have negative net profit yet have postive cash flow , it has to do with the accounting practice A possible example is that a company has extremely high depreciation expense of fixed asset hence net profit will be negative but cash flow will be positive. Assuming the fixed asset has been fully paid for in earlier years", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
f1edc69d8843f68c46f43f9ab5ca7f1b
How quickly will the funds be available when depositing credit card checks?
[ { "docid": "6ba2969a7b4b350271253af65cef00dd", "text": "For those who don't know, credit card checks are blank checks that your credit card company sends you. When you fill them out and spend them, you are taking a cash advance on your credit card account. You should be aware that taking a cash advance on your credit card normally has extra fees and finance charges above what you have with regular credit card transactions. That having been said, when you take one of these to your bank and try to deposit them, it is entirely up to bank policy how long they will make you wait to use these funds. They want to be sure that it is a legitimate check and that it will be honored. If your teller doesn't know the answer to that question, you'll need to find someone at the bank who does. If you don't like the answer they give you, you'll need to find another bank. I would think that if the credit card is from Chase, and you are trying to deposit a credit card check into a Chase checking account, they should be able to do that instantly. However, bank policy doesn't always make sense.", "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": "fffb74ba8313f7a711cd5eb56455bbde", "text": "Navy Federal Credit Union recently added this feature. It is free for members making a deposit to their personal checking account, though you have to be a member for at least 90 days to be eligible. I have an all-in-one printer with flatbed scanner and availed myself of the service a couple of days ago. There wasn't any additional software involved as everything was done through the web browser, as shown the scan deposit demo. The only problem I had was figuring out how to align the check for it to be scanned completely (had to place the check in the middle of the scanner, aligned lengthwise; that was more of a hassle to figure out that one would suppose). That was it. I immediately received an e-mail confirmation that my deposit had been approved and processed. While Navy Federal's scan deposit FAQ is specific to them, of course, it is pretty comprehensive and gives one an idea of the general restrictions applied to the service.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "644275a147020db39087c586d7c15694", "text": "\"I don't think credit cards support depositing money into to begin with. Anyone could deposit money to a Credit Card acccount. All they need is your bank's name, Visa/Mastercard, and 16 digit number. It is done through the \"\"Pay Bills / Make Payments\"\" function in online banking. So tell me, what does it mean that PayPal will transfer the money to my VISA card You can use the new balance for spending via Credit Card, the effect is same as making a payment from your chequing account to credit card account. Will it simply just get transferred to my bank account by the local bank after that Some banks would refund the excess amount from your Credit Card to your Chequing Account after a while, but most don't. People keep credit balance on credit card to make a purchaes larger than credit limit. For example, if your credit limit is $1000, balance is $0, and you made $500 payment to the credit card, you can make a purchase of $1500 without asking for credit limit increase.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a851a49cd357b224216792c74b6ab41d", "text": "Many businesses will request that you get a bank-issued check for large amounts of money. The exception is often in cases where you're not going anywhere: you can write a 50,000 check for a deposit on a new house, and you'll never have a problem, but a car dealer will probably request a counter check for the same sum.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d145cb58025d07fff4622110a9142fbb", "text": "Just to put in one more possibility: my credit card can have a positive balance, in which case I earn interest. If more money is due, it will automatically take that from the connected checking account. If that goes into negative, of course I have to pay interest. I chose (argued with the bank in order to get) only a small credit allowance. However, I'll be able to access credit allowance + positive balance. That allows me within a day or so to make larger amounts accessible, while the possible immediate damage by credit card fraud is limited at other times. Actually, the credit card pays more interest than the checkign account. Nevertheless, I don't keep high balance there because the risk of fraud is much higher for the credit card.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e73248f402ffb618c4323fbc23863fcc", "text": "If one has established a liquid emergency fund of 3 to 6 months income as suggested in several places here as well as being recommended by many financial planners then a savings account is a great place to keep that money. All things being equal between the savings and checking account the limited transfers should be a non issue since ideally you won't be using that money and if you need to in an emergency you could move a whole months worth of expenses to checking in one transfer. The savings account gives you a place to keep the emergency fund segregated from your normal funds. Out of sight, out of mind as it were. A savings account also gives you a place to stash funds intended for short term goals away from normal use funds. One such example I can use is that I am purchasing several plane tickets for various family members to come visit for Christmas. I have those funds set aside in a savings account so they don't interfere with my budgeting of my normal living expenses. While these are just examples and your situation may vary they are both examples of where a savings account would be useful even if it is identical to a checking account. Edit: using other types of accounts can also accomplish the same thing. Since we are using the assumption that the checking and savings accounts are identical the benefit of using a savings account is that it is usually inherently linked to the associated checking account without any additional effort on the part of the account holder. Any other account type would require additional effort, however minor, on the part of the account holder to link them in such a way that would make transfers between accounts as easy as possible.", "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": "b3f7ca9a1cecf9f2c6afd951935cb3eb", "text": "I would recommend wire transfer. I was in your position some years ago, and the US$ cheque took 6 weeks to clear. Wire transfer fees are generally a few tens of pounds, depending on the banks involved.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "df4f61b877d8a4b2a47ea5f22cfe2168", "text": "\"Let's divide all bank accounts into savings and checking. The main difference is that checking is easy to get money from; savings is hard to get money from. Because of this, the federal Reserve requires that banks keep more money on hand to cover transactions in checking accounts. Here is a related question from a banking customer regarding a recent notice on their bank statement: Deposit Reclassification. It seems that the bank was moving the customer's money between hidden sub accounts to make it look like the checking account was really a savings account and thus \"\"reduce the amount of funds we are required to keep on deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank.\"\" If they didn't have to transfer the money many times the bank could keep less cash on hand. But once they did 5 hidden transactions the rest of the money in the hidden savings account would be moved by the bank. The 6 transaction limit is done to not allow you to treat savings like checking. Here is a relevant quote from the Federal Reserve Savings Deposits Savings deposits generally have no specified maturity period. They may be interest-bearing, with interest computed or paid daily, weekly, quarterly, or on any other basis. The two most significant features of savings deposits are the ‘‘reservation of right’’ requirement and the restrictions on the number of ‘‘convenient’’ transfers or withdrawals that may be made per month (or per statement cycle of at least four weeks) from the account. In order to classify an account as a ‘‘savings deposit,’’ the institution must in its account agreement with the customer reserve the right at any time to require seven days’ advance written notice of an intended withdrawal. In practice, this right is never exercised, but the institution must nevertheless reserve that right in the account agreement. In addition, for an account to be classified as a ‘‘savings deposit,’’ the depositor may make no more than six ‘‘convenient’’ transfers or withdrawals per month from the account. ‘‘Convenient’’ transfers and withdrawals, for purposes of this limit, include preauthorized, automatic transfers (including but not limited to transfers from the savings deposit for overdraft protection or for direct bill payments) and transfers and withdrawals initiated by telephone, facsimile, or computer, and transfers made by check, debit card, or other similar order made by the depositor and payable to third parties. Other, less-convenient types of transfers, such as withdrawals or transfers made in person at the bank, by mail, or by using an ATM, do not count toward the six-per-month limit and do not affect the account’s status as a savings account. Also, a withdrawal request initiated by telephone does not count toward the transfer limit when the withdrawal is disbursed via check mailed to the depositor. Examiners should be particularly wary of a bank’s practices for handling telephone transfers. As noted, an unlimited number of telephone-initiated withdrawals are allowed so long as a check for the withdrawn funds is mailed to the depositor. Otherwise, the limit is six telephone transfers per month. The limit applies to telephonic transfers to move savings deposit funds to another type of deposit account and to make payments to third parties.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7317fb4f46b375b628a969a195c49b5f", "text": "\"At least in the US, a Cashier's Check is just like a regular personal check - only it's guaranteed by the bank itself, so the person accepting it can be pretty certain the check won't be returned for insufficient funds...if the check is genuine! Most banks therefore have a policy for cashier's checks that is very similar to their policies on regular checks and money orders: if you are a member with an account in good standing, they'll make all or part of the money available to you according to their fund availability policy, which is usually anywhere from \"\"immediately\"\" to 7-10 days. With amounts over $5,000, banks will tend to put a hold on the funds to ensure it clears and they get their money. If you are not a member then many banks will refuse to cash the check at all, unless the cashier's check is drawn on on that brand of bank. So if the cashier's check is issued by, say, Chase Bank, Chase banks will usually be willing to cash out the entire check to you immediately (with properly provided ID). Because the bank is guaranteed by them they are able to check their system and ensure the check is real and can clear the check instantly. This policy isn't just up to individual banks entirely, as it is defined by United States federal banking policies and federal regulations on availability of funds. If you really must cash the check without a holding period and won't/can't have a bank account of your own to perform this, then you will generally need to go into a branch of the bank that is guaranteeing the check to be able to cash it out fully right away. Note that since the check might be issued by a bank with no branch near you, you should have a back-up plan. Generally banks will allow you to setup a special/limited savings-only account to deposit your check, even if you don't have a checking account, so if no other option works you might try that as well. The funds availability policies are the same, but at least you'll be able to cash it generally in 10 days time (and then close the account and withdraw your money).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f259be50d138b904b12baade94cba456", "text": "When debit cards were first made available one of the advertised strengths was that if you never wrote a check,and always used a debit card, you could never be overdrawn. They money would be instantly withdrawn from the account and the balance would always reflect perfectly the amount of money in the account. Of course some saw the loss of float as a weakness, but for others this instantaneous aspect was what they needed. If only that were true. I have seen debit card transactions take a couple of days to appear. I have seen a $1 hold for gas not be removed and the real amount withdrawn for 2 or 3 days. Horror stories about having a $3 coffee end up costing $30 because of overdraft fees can only occur if the transactions aren't instant. The contactless feature doesn't make the time delay any shorter. The delay for an individual transaction, assuming there are no unusual network problems, still depend on the vendor policies, the card network policies, and the bank policies. But from the viewpoint of the cashier the transaction has been completes and the customer can leave with their coffee. From the viewpoint of the bank account it may still be waiting,", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8d71273268765dcba15255bd606fe944", "text": "I had one of those banks that reordered transactions. Deposit cash first thing in the morning means you should have money in your account, right? Nah son. First they're going to take your balance at the beginning of the day, then they'll deduct all of the transactions you made that day, in order from largest to smallest. Did one of those put you in the red (ignoring the deposit)? Time to apply an overdraft fee to that one and every single one that comes after (in order of largest purchase to smallest, mind you). Only then would they apply your deposit, but, for many, that wasn't enough to cover the overdraft fees. I eventually received money from either a class action or a CFPB thing, but not enough to cover the amount they took in fees through that scheme. Thankfully, my deposits were large enough to at least cover the fees, so I didn't have those damnable daily fees on top of it all.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "820c8b08df031ebe78733f3f4e104713", "text": "In a nutshell, as long as they (Sparkasse) choose to. I work with banks where it happens the moment I submit the transaction (so the next screen already shows the new totals), and I work with banks that make it take 3 days. In the past, Sparkasse and Raifeissenkassen were especially famous to take a looong time ('Wir nehmen mehr als Geld und Zinsen...' - they supposedly work with the money inbetween, as it is gone from the source account but not arrived in the target account yet); that might have changed (or not). Probably Sparkasse has a statement in their fineprint on how long they make it take. I would expect one business day in today's environment, but I didn't look it up.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "07442b678168e578b73bde5a1fd0fb25", "text": "My bank (USAA) moves money to and from a USAA brokerage account instantly. They also have instant transfers from their money market funds to checking, savings, and brokerage. It takes the 3 days to go to another institution, though.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1e4de5ee34553d4e9d81d02d02bd3b5c", "text": "My card keeps a separate 'cash advance' limit, that's lower than the regular rate. I believe balance transfers also trigger that limit and (much higher) interest rate.", "title": "" } ]
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8986d6f513886b3771b95a564367ec12
Are credit cards not viewed as credit until you miss one payment?
[ { "docid": "49136c4aa863e265570541bc1bcd0c3a", "text": "K, welcome to Money.SE. You knew enough to add good tags to the question. Now, you should search on the dozens of questions with those tags to understand (in less than an hour) far more than that banker knows about credit and credit scores. My advice is first, never miss a payment. Ever. The advice your father passed on to you is nonsense, plain and simple. I'm just a few chapters shy of being able to write a book about the incorrect advice I'd heard bank people give their customers. The second bit of advice is that you don't need to pay interest to have credit cards show good payment history. i.e. if you choose to use credit cards, use them for the convenience, cash/rebates, tracking, and guarantees they can offer. Pay in full each bill. Last - use a free service, first, AnnualCreditReport.com to get a copy of your credit report, and then a service like Credit Karma for a simulated FICO score and advice on how to improve it. As member @Agop has commented, Discover (not just for cardholders) offers a look at your actual score, as do a number of other credit cards for members. (By the way, I wouldn't be inclined to discuss this with dad. Most people take offense that you'd believe strangers more than them. Most of the answers here are well documented with links to IRS, etc, and if not, quickly peer-reviewed. When I make a mistake, a top-rated member will correct me within a day, if not just minutes)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5bf8916a07958f21f05d6bdb91a0000f", "text": "\"First, a note of my personal experience: up until a year ago, my credit lines were composed exclusively of credit cards with perfect payment histories, and my credit score is fine. If you mean that credit cards have no impact on a person's credit score until they miss a payment, that is certainly not correct. FICO's website identifies \"\"payment history\"\" as 35% of your FICO score: The first thing any lender wants to know is whether you’ve paid past credit accounts on time. This is one of the most important factors in a FICO® Score. ... Credit payment history on many types of accounts Account types considered for payment history include: ... Details on late or missed payments (\"\"delinquencies\"\") and public record and collection items FICO® Scores consider: How many accounts show no late payment A good track record on most of your credit accounts will increase your FICO® Scores. Clearly, from the last item alone, we see that credit lines (a category which includes credit cards) with no late payments is a factor in computing your FICO score, and certainly other credit bureaus behave similarly. Possibly the banker was trying to explain some other point, like \"\"If you're careful not to spend more on your card than you have in the bank, you can functionally treat your credit card as a debit line,\"\" but did so in a confusing way.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2f560364d881177a7d1d519a65e37090", "text": "\"Not sure what you mean by \"\"missing\"\". Credit card debt can be paid back in full when you get the bill, or you can \"\"take a loan\"\" and \"\"pay in installments\"\". If you do the latter, and pay back at least the minimum required amount on time, you are not \"\"missing\"\" your payment. Technically, you are taking a small, but expensive loan, and if you pay that loan back according to the terms and conditions that apply to your credit card, this is reported to the credit bureau and improves your credit. If you are really \"\"missing your payment\"\", paying late (more than a few days), less than minimum or nothing at all, this won't help to improve your credit. A \"\"first-time offender\"\" won't always be reported to the credit bureau, but if he is, it won't be a positive report.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1a5a1da92420013f72c201f2ccd6593c", "text": "\"I can't think of any conceivable circumstance in which the banker's advice would be true. (edit: Actually, yes I can, but things haven't worked that way since 1899 so his information is a little stale. Credit bureaus got their start by only reporting information about bad debtors.) The bureaus only store on your file what gets reported to them by the institution who extended you the credit. This reporting tends to happen at 30, 60 or 90-day intervals, depending on the contract the bureau has with that institution. All credit accounts are \"\"real\"\" from the day you open them. I suspect the banker might be under the misguided impression the account doesn't show up on your report (become \"\"real\"\") until you miss a payment, which forces the institution to report it, but this is incorrect-- the institution won't report it until the 30-day mark at the earliest, whether or not you miss a payment or pay it in full. The cynic in me suspects this banker might give customers such advice to sabotage their credit so he can sell them higher-interest loans. UDAAP laws were created for a reason.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "211b1169133afa5b202361a6293b5274", "text": "Of course credit cards are viewed as credit. If you're using money on a credit card, you are not directly paying for your transactions on goods/services immediately: this is the act of borrowing credit to pay for them. Debit cards, on the other hand, work where the funds are taken from an account immediately (or subject to a small delay - but usually no more than 24 hours - depending on various factors). You should never miss credit card payments, as that will affect your credit rating. If you have unpaid money on your card this is debt - plain and simple. But to answer your question succinctly - yes, credit cards are a form of credit, as the name suggests. When you apply for a mortgage any unpaid credit (debt) is considered and would adversely affect you if you have such debts. The level to which it affects you depends on the amount of debt. This is how it works in the UK, but to my knowledge it is the same in the US and most other countries. Please clarify if you think this is incorrect.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fe0be5fcc377b7e9be1d90b3354721ab", "text": "\"There's a difference between missing a payment and \"\"carrying a balance\"\" (making an on-time payments that are less than the full balance due). I have heard mortgage brokers claim that, if you have no other credit history, carrying a small balance here and there on a credit card may improve your score. (\"\"Small\"\" is in relation to your available credit and your ability to pay it off.) But actually missing a payment will probably hurt your score. Example: You have a card with a credit limit of $1000. In July you charge $300 worth of stuff. You get the next statement and it shows the balance due of $300 and a minimum payment of $100. If you pay the entire $300 balance in that cycle, most cards won't charge you any interest. You are not carrying a balance, so the credit scores may not reflect that you actually took a $300 loan and paid it off. If you instead pay $200, you'll be in good standing (because $200 is greater than the minimum payment). But you'll be carrying a $100 balance into the next statement cycle. Plus interest will accrue on that $100. If you do this regularly, your credit score will probably take into account that you've taken a small loan and made the payments. For those with no other credit history, this may be an appropriate way to increase your credit score. (But you're paying interest, so it's not free.) And if the average balance you carry is considered high relative to your ability to pay or to the total credit available to you, then this could adversely affect your score (or, at least, the amount of credit another provider is willing to extend to you). If you instead actually miss a payment, or make a payment that's less than the minimum payment, that will almost certainly hurt your credit score. It will also incur penalties as well as interest. You want to avoid that whenever possible. My guess is that, in the game of telephone from the banker to you, the \"\"carrying a balance\"\" was misinterpreted as \"\"missing a payment.\"\"\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "85d7d61feca0b602611f1e99f4aa8a53", "text": "\"This does not directly address the question, but how the Bank views your behaviour is not the same as a credit reporting bureau. If you do not \"\"go deep\"\" on your card at all, you may be deemed not to be exercising the facility, indeed they may ask you to reduce your credit limit. This is not the same as \"\"missing a payment\"\". At the same time, do not just make the minimum payment. Ideally you should clear it within 3 months. Think of it as a very short term line of credit. Not clearing the balance within three months (or turning it over) demonstrates a cash flow problem, as does clearing it from another card. Some banks call this \"\"kite flying\"\" after similar behaviour in older days with cheque accounts. If you use the credit and show you can pay it off, you should never need to ask for a credit increase, it will be offered. The Bureau will be informed of these offers. Also, depending upon how much the bank trusts you, the Bureau may see a \"\"monthly\"\" periodic credit review, which is good if you have no delinquencies. Amex does this as a rule.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "5ae6030c0973f904173c87926a641503", "text": "\"Not only does the interest get charged from Day 1 on new purchases as long as you have a revolving balance, but the credit card agreement often says something to the effect that any partial payment is applied first to the interest to date, and then transfer balances on which no interest is being charged and so the bank is losing money on it, then to other transfer balances and cash advances (and no refund of that 3% fee that was collected up front on the cash advance) and finally to the purchases starting from the most recent back to the oldest one. Even the FAQ on my card site says in simple language \"\"We apply payments and credits at our discretion, including in a manner most favorable or convenient for us.\"\" (see mhoran_psprep's answer). The moral is indeed what Dheer has already told you: do not carry a revolving balance on a credit card and if you have a revolving balance, pay it off as soon as possible, Do not wait for the end of the grace period; if possible, pay it off the day the statement is issued, or if you can make only a partial payment, make it as soon as possible. Make multiple partial payments each month if you have cash flow problems, or improve your cash flow by forgoing one or more of the many Grande Vente Mocharino Espresso Lattes you consume each day. Credit card debt is close to the worst kind of debt that you can have, and it is best to get out from under as soon as possible. Remember, there is effectively no grace period as long as you have a revolving balance on your credit card. You are paying interest for every one of those days.\"", "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": "ef4ca974efeceed7a18e5432039f3b5f", "text": "Technically, yes but, in practice, no. I use a card for everything and pay it off every month. Sometimes, several times a month depending on how the month is going. In the last 10 years, I've paid a total of $8 in interest because I legitimately forgot to pay my balance before the statement came out when I was out of town. I wasn't late, I just didn't beat the statement and had a small interest charge that I couldn't successfully argue off. In the same time period, I've had one card cancelled at the banks request. The reason was that I hadn't used it in two years so they cancelled me. I never pay annual fees, I get cards with great rewards programs and I (almost) never pay interest. If your bank cancels your card because you're too responsible, find a better bank.", "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": "707710b1f52ebd3e174ecd48ca16ad0c", "text": "\"I have never had a credit card and have been able to function perfectly well without one for 30 years. I borrowed money twice, once for a school loan that was countersigned, and once for my mortgage. In both cases my application was accepted. You only need to have \"\"good credit\"\" if you want to borrow money. Credit scores are usually only relevant for people with irregular income or a past history of delinquency. Assuming the debtor has no history of delinquency, the only thing the bank really cares about is the income level of the applicant. In the old days it could be difficult to rent a car without a credit car and this was the only major problem for me before about 2010. Usually I would have to make a cash deposit of $400 or something like that before a rental agency would rent me a car. This is no longer a problem and I never get asked for a deposit anymore to rent cars. Other than car rentals, I never had a problem not having a credit card.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a27715be676e47c2c991c5717c23bdfa", "text": "\"I'm not sure if this answer is going to win me many friends on reddit, but here goes... There's no good reason why they couldn't have just told him the current balance shown on their records, BUT... **There are some good reasons why they can't quote a definitive \"\"payoff\"\" balance to instantly settle the account:** It's very possible to charge something today, and not have it show up on Chase's records until tomorrow, or Monday, or later. There are still places that process paper credit-card transactions, or that deal with 3rd-party payment processors who reconcile transactions M-F, 9-5ish, and so on. - Most transactions these days are authorized the instant you swipe the card, and the merchant won't process until they get authorization back from the CC company. But sometimes those authorizations come from third-party processors who don't bill Chase until later. Some of them might not process a Friday afternoon transaction until close-of-business Monday. - Also, there are things like taxicab fares that might be collected when you exit the cab, but the record exists only in the taxi's onboard machine until they plug it into something else at the end of the shift. - There are still some situations (outdoor flea-markets, auctions, etc) where the merchant takes a paper imprint, and doesn't actually process the payment until they physically mail it in or whatever. - Some small businesses have information-security routines in place where only one person is allowed to process credit-card payments, but where multiple customer service reps are allowed to accept the CC info, write it down on one piece of paper, then either physically hand the paper to the person with processing rights, or deposit the paper in a locked office or mail-slot for later processing. This is obviously not an instant-update system for Chase. (Believe it or not, this system is actually considered to be *more* secure than retaining computerized records unless the business has very rigorous end-to-end info security). So... there are a bunch of legit reasons why a CC company can't necessarily tell you this instant that you only need to pay $x and no more to close the account (although there is no good reason why they shouldn't be able to quote your current balance). What happens when you \"\"close an account\"\" is basically that they stop accepting new charges that were *made* after your notification, but they will still accept and bill you for legit charges that you incurred before you gave them notice. So basically, they \"\"turn off\"\" the credit-card, but they can't guarantee how much you owe until the next billing cycle after this one closes: - You notify them to \"\"close\"\" the account. They stop authorizing new charges. - Their merchant agreements basically give the merchant a certain window to process charges. The CC company process legit charges that were made prior to \"\"closing\"\" the account. - The CC company sends you the final statement *after* that window for any charges has expired, - When that final statement is paid (or if it is zero), *THAT* is when the account is settled and reported to Equifax etc as \"\"paid\"\". So it's hard to tell from your post who was being overly semantic/unreasonable. If the CC company refused to tell the current balance, they were just being dickheads. But if they refused to promise that the current balance shown is enough to instantly settle the account forever, they had legit reasons. Hope that helps.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "28349274456d5728c148fd4f35165880", "text": "This is a question with a flawed premise. Credit cards do have two-factor authentication on transactions they consider more at risk to be fraudulent. I've had several times when I bought something relatively expensive and unusual for me, where the CC either initially declined and sent me a text asking to confirm immediately (after which they would approve the charges), or approved but sent me a text right away asking to confirm (after which they'd automatically dispute if I told them to). The first is legitimately what you are asking for; the second is presumably for less risky but still some risk transactions). Ultimately, the reason they don't allow it for every transaction is that not enough people would make use of it to be worth their time to implement it. Particularly given it slows down the transaction significantly (and look at the complaints at the ~10-15 seconds extra EMV authentication takes, imagine that as a minute or more), I think you'd get a single digit percentage of people using that service.", "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": "9be0004f5f7cefe478ac7e9dc888bd62", "text": "\"The short answer is no, it's probably not ok. The longer answer is, it might be, if you are very disciplined. You need to make sure that you have enough money to pay off the card after a year, and that you pay the card on time, every month, without exception. There may also be balance transfer or other fees that only make it worth while if the interest rate or balance on the other loan is high. The problem is most of these offers will raise your rates to very high levels (think 20% or more) if you are even one day late with one payment. Some of them also will back charge you interest starting from day one, although I have only seen this on store credit \"\"one year, same as cash\"\" type offers. In the end you need to balance the possible payoff against how much it will cost you if you do it wrong. Remember, the banks are not in the business of lending out free money. They wouldn't do this unless enough people didn't pay it back in one year for them to make a profit.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e7cbcdb950e3d7d98704510e40c5d6cb", "text": "Yes, as long as you are responsible with the payments and treat it as a cash substitute, and not a loan. I waited until I was 21 to apply for my first credit card, which gave me a later start to my credit history. That led to an embarrassing credit rejection when I went to buy some furniture after I graduated college. You'd think $700 split into three interest-free payments wouldn't be too big of a risk, but I was rejected since my credit history was only 4 months long, even though I had zero late payments. So I ended up paying cash for the furniture instead, but it was still a horrible feeling when the sales rep came back to me and quietly told me my credit application had been denied.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e17891853f8ba14a06247af56ef889c3", "text": "\"No. Credit card companies will typically not care about your individual credit card account. Instead they look either at a \"\"package\"\" of card accounts opened at roughly the same time, or of \"\"slices\"\" of cardholder accounts by credit rating. If an entire package's or slice's balance drops significantly, they'll take a look, and will adjust rates accordingly (often they may actually decrease rates as an incentive to increase you use of the card). Because credit card debt is unstructured debt, the bank cannot impose an \"\"early payment penalty\"\" of any kind (there's no schedule for paying it off, so there's no way to prove that they're missing out on $X in interest because you paid early). Generally, banks don't like CC debt anyway; it's very risky debt, and they often end up writing large balances off for pennies on the dollar. So, when you pay down your balance by a significant amount, the banks breathe a sigh of relief. The real money, the stable money, is in the usage fees; every time you swipe your card, the business who accepted it owes the credit card company 3% of your purchase, and sometimes more.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "982b0e6b01ce7b090e517328f0d42af6", "text": "\"With the scenario that you laid out (ie. 5% and 10% loans), it makes no sense at all. The problem is, when you're in trouble the rates are never 5% or 10%. Getting behind on credit cards sucks and is really hard to recover from. The problem with multiple accounts is that as the banks tack on fees and raise your interest rate to the default rate (usually 30%) when you give them any excuse (late payment, over the limit, etc). The banks will also cut your credit lines as you make payments, making it more likely that you will bump over the limit and be back in \"\"default\"\" status. One payment, even at a slightly higher rate is preferable when you're deep in the hole because you can actually pay enough to hit principal. If you have assets like a house, you'll get a much better rate as well. In a scenario where you're paying 22-25% interest, your minimum payment will be $150-200 a month, and that is mostly interest and penalty. \"\"One big loan\"\" will usually result in a smaller payment, and you don't end up in a situation where the banks are jockeying for position so they get paid first. The danger of consolidation is that you'll stop triggering defaults and keep making your payments, so your credit score will improve. Then the vultures will start circling and offering you more credit cards. EDIT: Mea Culpa. I wrote this based on experiences of close friends whom I've helped out over the years, not realizing how the law changed in 2009. Back around 2004, a single late payment would trigger universal default on most cards, jacking all rates up to 30% and slashing credit lines, resulting in over the limit and other fees. Credit card banks generally apply payments (in order, to interest on penalties, penalties, interest on principal, principal) in a way that makes it very difficult to pay down principal for people deep in debt. They would also offer \"\"payment plans\"\" to entice you to pay Bank B vs. Bank A, which would trigger overlimit fees from Bank A. Another change is that minimum payments were generally 2% of statement balance, which often didn't cover the monthly finance charge. The new law changed that, resulting in a payment of 1% of balance + accrued interest. Under the old regime, consolidation made it less likely that various circumstances would trigger default, and gave the struggling debtor one throat to choke. With the new rules, there are definitely a smaller number of scenarios where consolidation actually makes sense.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "765030ab89ad614b11797593a102d108", "text": "Cancelled cards don't fall off the system for a long time, up to ten years. Card terms change, with notice of course, but it can happen at any time. I had a card with a crazy perk, 5% back in Apple Gift cards. This was pre-iPod days, but it was great to get a new computer every two years for free. But it was short lived. Three years into it, the cards were changed, a no-perk card from the bank. That is now my oldest account, and it goes unused. Instead of holding cards like this, I wish I had flipped it to a different card years ago. Ideally, your mix of cards should provide value to you, and if they all do, then when one perk goes away, it's time to refresh that card. This is a snapshot from my report at CreditKarma. (Disclosure, I like these guys, I've met their PR folk. I have no business relationship with them) Elsewhere on the page it's noted that average card age is a 'medium impact' item. I am 50, but I use the strategy above to keep the cards working for me. My current score is 784, so this B on the report isn't hurting too much. The tens of thousands I've saved in mortgage interest by being a serial refinancer was worth the hit on account age, as was the credit card with a 10% rebate for 90 days, the 'newest account' you see in the snapshot. In the end, the score manipulation is a bit of a game. And some of it is counter-intuitive. Your score can take a minor hit for actions that would seem responsible, but your goal should be to have the right mix of cards, and the lowest interest (long term) loans.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1971e56ed94ccd46fa6b3bcda6e5db3a", "text": "In a traditional IRA (or 401k or equivalent), income tax is not taken on the money when it is deposited or when dividends are reinvested, but money you take out (after you can do do without penalty) is taxed as if it were ordinary income. (I believe that's true; I don't think you get to take the long-term investment rate.) Note that Roth is the opposite: you pay income tax up front before putting money into the retirement account, but you will eventually withdraw without paying any additional tax at that time. Unlike normal investments, neither of these requires tracking the details to know how much tax to pay. There are no taxes due on the reinvested dividends, and you don't need to track cost basis.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c6a6d74cd53d39bcc7907a768865a60e", "text": "Go to your local bank or credit union before talking to a dealership. Ask them if putting both names on the loan makes a difference regarding rates and maximum loan you qualify for. Ask them to run the loan application both ways. Having both names on the loan helps build the credit of the spouse that has a lower score. You may find that both incomes are needed for a car loan if the couple has a mortgage or other joint obligations. The lender will treat the entire mortgage payment or rent payment as a liability against the person applying for the loan, they won't split the housing payment in half if only one name will be on the car loan. Therefore sometimes the 2nd persons income is needed even if their credit is not as good. That additional income without a significant increase in liabilities can make a huge difference regarding the loan they can qualify for. Once the car is in your possession, it doesn't matter who drives it. In general the insurance company will put both spouses as authorized drivers. Note: it is almost always better to ask your bank or credit union about a car loan before going to the dealership. That gives you a solid data point regarding a loan, and removes a major complexity to the negotiations at the dealership.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
44132a4a5950e80b7619a23548746cfd
Who buys variable annuities?
[ { "docid": "314f393a566100e923915478d09d23a5", "text": "\"An annuity makes sense in a few different scenarios: In general, they are not the best deal around (and are often ripoffs), and will almost certainly be a bad deal if pitched by a tax preparer, insurance salesman, etc. Keep in mind that any \"\"guarantees\"\" offered are guarantees made by an insurance company. The only backing up of that claim in the event of a company failing is protection from your state's Guaranty Association. (ie. not the Feds)\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "09848b9331b52609b3aa51f93f586f3a", "text": "There is always some fine print, read it. I doubt there is any product out there that can guarantee an 8% return. As a counter example - a 70 yr old can get 6% in a fixed immediate annuity. On death, the original premium is retained by the insurance company. Whenever I read the prospectus of a VA, I find the actual math betrays a salesman who misrepresented the product. I'd be really curious to read the details for this one.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "997f8451ade04287f29418523900a1e7", "text": "\"Two types of people: (1) Suckers (2) People who feel that investment advisors/brokers make too little money and want to help out by paying insane commissions. Think I'm kidding. Check out this article: \"\"Variable Annuity Pros and Cons\"\" Seriously, for 99% of us, they are a raw deal for everyone except the person selling them.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2d2648553afc74223f8d5ccddfdf22e8", "text": "I wrote a detailed answer about variable annuities on another question, but I want to include one specific situation where a variable annuity may be the right course of action. (For the sake of simplicity, I'm quoting directly from that answer): Three-quarters of US states protect variable annuity assets from creditors. Regular IRA's don't benefit from protection under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and may therefore be more vulnerable to creditors. If you're a potential target for lawsuits, e.g. a doctor worried about medical malpractice suits, variable annuities may be an option for you. As always, you should consult a legal/tax professional to see if this might be a good option for you to consider. The SEC also has a fantastic publication on variable annuities that provides a great deal of information. It's not directly related to this question because it doesn't necessarily focus on the circumstances in which they might be a good fit for you, but it's educational nevertheless and should give you more than enough information to properly evaluate any policy you're looking to buy.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "86fe07e011ffb2aa561483dc03932b88", "text": "\"Your relatively young age and the current very low bond interest rates make annuities a very poor buy. And most of the other suggestions you have mentioned have very low diversification, which exposes you to imprudent risks. Buying shares for dividend income can solve the diversification problem by averaging out your totals as different shares change by different amounts. There is no really good solution to the problem of share price volatility except to ignore it: Take your dividends and pretty much ignore the bouncing around of the share price. They usually recover in a year or three. Owning shares of companies that reliably increase their dividend payouts is the only investment type that gives you both diversification and regularly increasing income to counteract inflation over the years. Read some investment books and consider consulting with a financial advisor who charges a fee for the advice. I.e., you don't want \"\"free\"\" advice.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "40e08223ac41fd50cdae1dcf1e7cebc1", "text": "The reason for such differences is that there's no source to get this information. The companies do not (and cannot) report who are their shareholders except for large shareholders and stakes of interest. These, in the case of GoPro, were identified during the IPO (you can look the filings up on EDGAR). You can get information from this or that publicly traded mutual fund about their larger holdings from their reports, but private investors don't provide even that. Institutional (public) investors buy and sell shares all the time and only report large investments. So there's no reliable way to get a snapshot picture you're looking for.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f6afaace264db953883616071a4e578d", "text": "This is literally the worst article ever. First dividends are not guaranteed, and the higher the yield the higher the risk for a dividend paying stock. When buying a stock that pays dividends make sure they have the cash flows to cover it long term. Utility stocks are interest rate sensitive. If we head into a period of high interest rates, utility stocks are going to underperform, if not get killed. Exchange traded funds can be extremely risky, and some have much higher fees than mutual funds. Variable Annuities should never be purchased unless you have exhausted all other tax deferred strategies, and then probably still to be avoided because of high fees. Money markets and CDs aren't really investments. They're a cash alternatives that May not keep up with inflation.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1d47943357af338c19a8947599ba63ef", "text": "\"(1) I think the phrase \"\"Variable Annuity\"\" is a glowing red flag. A corollary to that is that any strategy that uses insurance for a purpose (e.g. tax avoidance) other than protecting against loss rates at least a yellow flag. (2) The other really obvious indicator is a return that is completely out of whack with the level of risk they are saying the investment has. For example, if someone promises a 10% annual return that is \"\"Completely Safe\"\" or \"\"Very low risk\"\", Run. (3) If it is advertised on tv/radio, or all your friends are talking about it at parties. Stay away. Example: Investing in Gold Coins or the hot Tech IPO. (4) The whole sales pitch relies on past returns as proof that the investment will do well without any real discussion of other reasons it will continue to to well. Beware the gambler's fallacy. (5) Finally, be very wary of anyone who has some sort of great investment plan that they will teach you if you just pay $X or go to their seminar. Fee based advice is fine, but people selling a get rich quick vehicle typically know the real way to get rich is to get suckers to pay for their seminars.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "58d12be977589164580793608e7d3fea", "text": "Also a layman, and I didnt read the article because it did the whole 'screw you for blocking my ads' thing. But judging from the title, I'd guess someone bought a massive amount of call options for VIX, the stock that tracks volatility in the market. Whenever the market crashes or goes through difficult times, the VIX fund prospers. The 'by october' part makes me think it was call options that he purchased: basically he paid a premium for each share (a fraction of the shares cost) for the right to buy that share at today's price, from now until october. So if the share increases in value, for each call option he has, he can buy one share at todays price, and sell it at the price it is that day. Options can catapult your profit into the next dimension but if the share decreases in value or even stays the same price, he loses everything. Vicious redditors, please correct the mistakes ive made here with utmost discrimination", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e08777a31b5b1789c6b236753f6e9b77", "text": "The example from the following website: Investopedia - Calculating The Present And Future Value Of Annuities specifically the section 'Calculating the Present Value of an Annuity Due' shows how the calculation is made. Using their figures, if five payments of $1000 are made over five years and depreciation (inflation) is 5%, the present value is $4545.95 There is also a formula for this summation, (ref. finance formulas)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5f45d01927c79b6f74f74be100f036a2", "text": "Instead of buying in bulk, I invest the money in equity mutual funds, for an expected return of 12%, which is more than inflation. So, I make more returns. But at the cost of a slight risk, which I'm comfortable with.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "25ecfa8f3c795681212ee83de19234fc", "text": "Private investors as mutual funds are a minority of the market. Institutional investors make up a substantial portion of the long term holdings. These include pension funds, insurance companies, and even corporations managing their money, as well as individuals rich enough to actively manage their own investments. From Business Insider, with some aggregation: Numbers don't add to 100% because of rounding. Also, I pulled insurance out of household because it's not household managed. Another source is the Tax Policy Center, which shows that about 50% of corporate stock is owned by individuals (25%) and individually managed retirement accounts (25%). Another issue is that household can be a bit confusing. While some of these may be people choosing stocks and investing their money, this also includes Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOP) and company founders. For example, Jeff Bezos owns about 17% of Amazon.com according to Wikipedia. That would show up under household even though that is not an investment account. Jeff Bezos is not going to sell his company and buy equity in an index fund. Anyway, the most generous description puts individuals as controlling about half of all stocks. Even if they switched all of that to index funds, the other half of stocks are still owned by others. In particular, about 26% is owned by institutional investors that actively manage their portfolios. In addition, day traders buy and sell stocks on a daily basis, not appearing in these numbers. Both active institutional investors and day traders would hop on misvalued stocks, either shorting the overvalued or buying the undervalued. It doesn't take that much of the market to control prices, so long as it is the active trading market. The passive market doesn't make frequent trades. They usually only need to buy or sell as money is invested or withdrawn. So while they dominate the ownership stake numbers, they are much lower on the trading volume numbers. TL;DR: there is more than enough active investment by organizations or individuals who would not switch to index funds to offset those that do. Unless that changes, this is not a big issue.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "753edf69dcb054f73313522bf717bcc9", "text": "There isn't a general reason why you should not be able to do this, but it is hard to answer without knowing the specifics of your variable annuity. I would start by calling Hartford and asking them how to go about rolling your money to a different IRA and what fees would be assessed.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8177505fb3f012694faa2ced7ad40d4d", "text": "\"There are a few questions that need qualification, and a bit on the understanding of what is being 'purchased'. There are two axioms that require re-iteraton, Death, and Taxes. Now, The First is eventually inevitable, as most people will eventually die. It depends what is happening now, that determines what will happen tomorrow, and the concept of certainty. The Second Is a pay as you go plan. If you are contemplating what will heppen tomorrow, you have to look at what types of \"\"Insurance\"\" are available, and why they were invented in the first place. The High seas can be a rough travelling ground, and Not every shipment of goods and passengers arrived on time, and one piece. This was the origin of \"\"insurance\"\", when speculators would gamble on the safe arrival of a ship laden with goods, at the destination, and for this they received a 'cut' on the value of the goods shipped. Thus the concept of 'Underwriting', and the VALUE associated with the cargo, and the method of transport. Based on an example gallion of good repair and a well seasoned Captain and crew, a lower rate of 'insurance' was deemed needed, prior to shipment, than some other 'rating agency - or underwriter'. Now, I bring this up, because, it depends on the Underwriter that you choose as to the payout, and the associated Guarantee of Funds, that you will receive if you happen to need to 'collect' on the 'Insurance Contract'. In the case of 'Death Benefit' insurance, You will never see the benefit, at the end, however, while the policy is in force (The Term), it IS an Asset, that would be considered in any 'Estate Planning' exercise. First, you have to consider, your Occupation, and the incidence of death due to occupational hazards. Generally this is considered in your employment negotiations, and is either reflected in the salary, or if it is a state sponsored Employer funded, it is determined by your occupational risk, and assessed to the employer, and forms part of the 'Cost-of-doing-business', in that this component or 'Occupational Insurance' is covered by that program. The problem, is 'disability' and what is deemed the same by the experience of the particular 'Underwriter', in your location. For Death Benefits, Where there is an Accident, for Motor Vehicle Accidents (and 50,000 People in the US die annually) these are covered by Motor Vehicle Policy contracts, and vary from State to State. Check the Registrar of State Insurance Co's for your state to see who are the market leaders and the claim /payout ratios, compared to insurance in force. Depending on the particular, 'Underwiriter' there may be significant differences, and different results in premium, depending on your employer. (Warren Buffet did not Invest in GEICO, because of his benevolence to those who purchase Insurance Policies with GEICO). The original Poster mentions some paramaters such as Age, Smoking, and other 'Risk factors'.... , but does not mention the 'Soft Factors' that are not mentioned. They are, 'Risk Factors' such, as Incidence of Murder, in the region you live, the Zip Code, you live at, and the endeavours that you enjoy when you are not in your occupation. From the Time you get up in the morning, till the time you fall asleep (And then some), you are 'AT Risk' , not from a event standpoint, but from a 'Fianancial risk' standpoint. This is the reason that all of the insurance contracts, stipulate exclusions, and limits on when they will pay out. This is what is meant by the 'Soft Risk Factors', and need to be ascertained. IF you are in an occupation that has a limited exposure to getting killed 'on the job', then you will be paying a lower premium, than someone who has a high risk occupation. IT used to be that 'SkySkraper Iron Workers', had a high incidence of injury and death , but over the last 50 years, this has changed. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics lists these 10 jobs as the highest for death (per 100,000 workers). The scales tilt the other way for these occupations: (In Canada, the Cheapest Rate for Occupational Insurance is Lawyer, and Politician) So, for the rest in Sales, management etc, the national average is 3 to 3.5 depending on the region, of deaths per 100,000 employed in that occupation. So, for a 30 year old bank worker, the premium is more like a 'forced savings plan', in the sense that you are paying towards something in the future. The 'Risk of Payout' in Less than 6 months is slim. For a Logging Worker or Fisher(Men&Women) , the risk is very high that they might not return from that voyage for fish and seafood. If you partake in 'Extreme Sports' or similar risk factors, then consider getting 'Whole Term- Life' , where the premium is spread out over your working lifetime, and once you hit retirement (55 or 65) then the occupational risk is less, and the plan will payout at the age of 65, if you make it that far, and you get a partial benefit. IF you have a 'Pension Plan', then that also needs to be factored in, and be part of a compreshensive thinking on where you want to be 5 years from today.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1f3dc5f3342791a9c6385b702ab00e25", "text": "Accredited investors are required to have 1 million in assets (not including primary residence) or $200,000/yr income for the last 3 years. These kinds of regulations come from the SEC, not the company involved, which means the SEC thinks it's a risky investment. If I recall correctly, [someone I know] had to submit evidence of being an accredited investor to trade options on [his] IRA. It may be that this is related to the classification of the options.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4fd5b5ed5fb4dd0fcbd1af43c9b6ee97", "text": "Some investors (pension funds or insurance companies) need to pay out a certain amount of money to their clients. They need cash on a periodical basis, and thus prefer dividend paying stock more.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5d7be5ad5ea9d477522e1a2195170154", "text": "See the following information: http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Treasury_Inflation_Protected_Security You can buy individual bonds or you can purchase many of them together as a mutual fund or ETF. These bonds are designed to keep pace with inflation. Buying individual inflation-protected US government bonds is about as safe as you can get in the investment world. The mutual fund or ETF approach exposes you to interest rate risk - the fund's value can (and sometimes does) drop. Its value can also increase if interest rates fall.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0a3e1f76db959025e5bcc8a31cf63f2e", "text": "\"This answer is provided mostly to answer your question \"\"what is it?\"\" A variable annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company. The insurance company takes a bunch of money up front as a lump sum, and will pay you some money yearly - like earning interest. (In this case, they will probably be paying you the money into the account itself). How much they return is, as the name suggests, variable. It can be anything, depending on what the contract says. Mostly, there will be some formula based on the stock market - frequently, the performance of the Standard & Poors 500 Index. There will typically be some minimum returns and maximum returns - if the stock market tanks, your annuity will not lose a ton of value, but if the stock market goes up a lot in one year (as it frequently does), you will not gain a lot of value either. If you are going to be in the market for a long amount of time (decades, e.g. \"\"a few years out of college\"\" and then a little), it makes a lot more sense to invest in the stock market directly. This is essentially what the insurance company is going to do, except you can cut out the middleman. You can get a lot more money that way. You are essentially paying the insurance company to take on some stock market risk for you - you are buying some safety. Buying safety like this is expensive. Variable annuities are the right investment for a few people in a few circumstances - mostly, if you're near retirement, it's one way to have an option for a \"\"safe\"\" investment, for a portion (but not all) of your portfolio. Maybe. Depending on the specifics, a lot. If you are under, like, 50 or so? Almost certainly a terrible investment which will gradually waste your money (by not growing it as fast as it deserves to be grown). Since you want to transfer it to Vanguard, you can probably call Vanguard, ask to open a Roth IRA, and request assistance rolling it over from the place it is held now. There should be no legal restrictions or tax consequences from transferring the money from one Roth IRA account to another.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "03bdcd1b1605b952c67b41e225da099a", "text": "\"The end result is basically the same, it's just a choice of whether you want to base the final amount you receive on your salary, or on the stock market. You pay in a set proportion of your salary, and receive a set proportion of your salary in return. The pension (both contributions and benefit) are based on your career earnings. You get x% of your salary every year from retirement until death. These are just a private investment, basically: you pay a set amount in, and whatever is there is what you get at the end. Normally you would buy an annuity with the final sum, which pays you a set amount per year from retirement until death, as with the above. The amount you receive depends on how much you pay in, and the performance of the investment. If the stock market does well, you'll get more. If it does badly, you could actually end up with less. In general (in as much as anything relating to the stock market and investment can be generalised), a Defined Benefit plan is usually considered better for \"\"security\"\" - or at least, public sector ones, and a majority of people in my experience would prefer one, but it entirely depends on your personal attitude to risk. I'm on a defined benefit plan and like the fact that I basically get a benefit based on a proportion of my salary and that the amount is guaranteed, no matter what happens to the stock market in the meantime. I pay in 9% of my salary get 2% of my salary as pension, for each year I pay into the pension: no questions, no if's or buts, no performance indicators. Others prefer a defined contribution scheme because they know that it is based on the amount they pay in, not the amount they earn (although to an extent it is still based on earnings, as that's what defines how much you pay in), and because it has the potential to grow significantly based on the stock market. Unfortunately, nobody can give you a \"\"which is best\"\" answer - if I knew how pension funds were going to perform over the next 10-50 years, I wouldn't be on StackExchange, I'd be out there making a (rather large) fortune on the stock market.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
5269f6ee19c8bbe6c50442fc437ab93b
Why does AAPL trade at such low multiples?
[ { "docid": "73c1c16bf47ebca4d43da55668d981a9", "text": "This is also an opinion, the iPhone makes up too much of the company's total revenue. Last quarter results were very well received because of the somewhat dramatic increase in service revenue indicating that maybe the company can shift from relying so heavily on the iPhone. As it stands, Apple is a single product company and that hinders long term prospects, hence the relatively low multiple. And the company has missed estimates, in fact one of those large dips was an earnings miss. Additionally, if you're looking at the charts another one of the recent dips was likely caused by the brexit vote because everything was clobbered for a couple of days after that.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3e93b98b04d8829f902ef2af64c30c25", "text": "\"This is an opinion, but I think it has more to do with the market's uncertainty about the long-term future of the company without Steve Jobs. Apple hasn't released anything more than incremental upgrades to its existing product lines since Jobs passed, and while some people would argue about the Apple watch, Jobs played a significant role in its development prior to his death, so that doesn't really count. Whether you like or hate Apple, you had to admire Jobs' passion and creativity, and there's real question as to whether the company can sustain its dominance in the market without the Jobs vision over the long haul. My guess is that the market is leaning slightly toward the \"\"no\"\" column, but only ever so slightly. The company continues to deliver fantastic results, but how long will that last of their next products don't wow consumers the way previous ones have? This skepticism manifests itself in a stock that trades at a lower P/E than it deserves to, but this is just my opinion. I hope this helps. Good luck!\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "0bc934b26cd5698a318b31ef671dd898", "text": "\"Simple answer is because the stocks don't split. Most stocks would have a similar high price per share if they didn't split occasionally. Why don't they split? A better way to ask this is probably, why DO most stocks split? The standard answer is that it gives the appearance that stocks are \"\"cheap\"\" again and encourages investors to buy them. Some people, Warren Buffett (of Berkshire Hathaway) don't want any part of these shenanigans and refuse to split their stocks. Buffett also has commented that he thinks splitting a stock also adds unnecessary volatility.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a217cbaefeb85839cd9f343a46cad2d9", "text": "\"The simple answer could be that one or more \"\"people\"\" decided to buy. By \"\"people,\"\" I don't mean individual buyers of 100 shares like you or me, but typically large institutional investors like Fidelity, who might buy millions of shares at a time. Or if you're talking about a human person, perhaps someone like Warren Buffett. In a \"\"thinly\"\" traded small cap stock that typically trades a few hundred shares in a day, an order for \"\"thousands\"\" could significantly move the price. This is one situation where more or less \"\"average\"\" people could move a single stock.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0742672d02cfccdb4f5d353d0b45f498", "text": "The main reason I'm aware of that very few individuals do this sort of trading is that you're not taking into account the transaction costs, which can and will be considerable for a small-time investor. Say your transaction costs you $12, that means in order to come out ahead you'll have to have a fairly large position in a given instrument to make that fee back and some money. Most smaller investors wouldn't really want to tie up 5-6 figures for a day on the chance that you'll get $100 back. The economics change for investment firms, especially market makers that get special low fees for being a market maker (ie, offering liquidity by quoting all the time).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2caad8bac7884678d9bc58880974f4d1", "text": "While on the surface it may seem that the warrant you described is trading below intrinsic value, there are many reasons why that might not be the case. It's more likely that you are lacking information, than having identified a derivative instrument that the market has failed to reasonably price. For instance, might there be a conversion ratio on the warrants other than the 1:1 ratio that you seem to be assuming? Sometimes, warrant terms are such that multiple warrants are required to buy one share of stock. Consider: The conversion ratio is the number of warrants needed in order to buy (or sell) one investment unit. Therefore, if the conversion ratio to buy stock XYZ is 3:1, this means that the holder needs three warrants in order to purchase one share. Usually, if the conversion ratio is high, the price of the share will be low, and vice versa. (source) Conversion ratios are sometimes used so that warrants can be issued on a 1:1 basis to existing stockholders, but where the potential number of new shares to be issued is much less. Conversion ratio is just one such example that could lead to perceived mispricing, and there may be other restrictions on exercise. Warrants are not issued by an options exchange using standardized option contract terms, and so warrant terms vary considerably from issuer to issuer. Even series of warrants from the same issuer may have differing terms. Always look beyond any warrant quote to find a definitive source of the warrant's precise terms — and read those terms carefully before taking any position.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e922f76f4b55236cf0889571e37fab4d", "text": "It is simply an average of what each analyst covering that stock are recommending, and since they usually only recommend Hold or Buy (rarely Sell), the value will float between Hold and Buy. Not very useful IMHO.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "13d344c7642c5990a4d0b92f3dcccdf9", "text": "A bit of poking around brought me to this thread on the Motley Fool, asking the same basic question: I think the problem is the stock price. For a stock to be sold short, it has to be marginable which means it has to trade over $ 5.00. The broker, therefore, can't borrow the stock for you to sell short because it isn't held in their clients' margin accounts. My guess is that Etrade, along with other brokers, simply exclude these stocks for short selling. Ivestopedia has an explanation of non-marginable securities. Specific to stocks under $5: Other securities, such as stocks with share prices under $5 or with extremely high betas, may be excluded at the discretion of the broker itself.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0d69da49ccfe79928a6c24a92c7f75c9", "text": "From a theoretical POV, it's in part due to Beta. Beta is a measure of volatility compared to the market. If the market returns 10%, and the risk free is 5%, then a company that has a beta 2 will have 2*(10%-5%) + 5% = 15% return. Usually it's not that great a measure for individual stocks because of the lack of diversification, eg if a company has a beta of 1, ie same expected returns as the market, and then it has a really bad earnings report, obviously is still going to go down even if the market is going up. Fixed equation, Forgot to add RF back in.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3b028ff834b19af321fd99ce9009ac14", "text": "AAPL will not drop out of NASDAQ100 tomorrow. From your own quote: The fund and the index are rebalanced quarterly and reconstituted annually", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0dcf27f71de383975b0639ac33ada7d5", "text": "the implications are that the company's earnings per share may seem greater, (after the company buys them there will be less shares outstanding), giving wall street the impression that there is more growth potential than there really is. its an accounting gimmick that can work for a few quarters while the company evaluates how else to impress wall street", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d6bf11b0627d73cbea9659cfedae9210", "text": "\"The calculation and theory are explained in the other answers, but it should be pointed out that the video is the equivalent of watching a magic trick. The secret is: \"\"Stock A and B are perfectly negatively correlated.\"\" The video glasses over that fact that without that fact the risk doesn't drop to zero. The rule is that true diversification does decrease risk. That is why you are advised to spread year investments across small-cap, large-cap, bonds, international, commodities, real estate. Getting two S&P 500 indexes isn't diversification. Your mix of investments will still have risk, because return and risk are backward calculations, not a guarantee of future performance. Changes that were not anticipated will change future performance. What kind of changes: technology, outsourcing, currency, political, scandal.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9e1c1d248918ff767562b5549d2a3218", "text": "\"According to Yahoo, AAPL was trading at $113.26 at 1:10 PM on 11/13/15, which is the approximate time of your option quote. You provided a quote for AAPL at 4:15, and the stock happened to keep going down most of the that afternoon. To make a sensible comparison, you need to take contemporary prices on both the stock and the option. The quote on the option also shows the \"\"price\"\" being outside of the bid-ask range, which suggests that the option was trading thinly and that the last price occurred sometime earlier in the day. If you use a price in the bid-ask range ($21.90-$22.30) and use the price of AAPL at the time of the put quote, you'll come up with a price that's much closer to your expectation.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2203128e094a95e27e80cf38a2ef57c7", "text": "\"Often these types of trades fall into two different categories. An error by broker or exchange. Exchange clearing out part of their books incorrectly is an example. Most exchanges make firms reopen their positions for after market hours. There may have been an issue doing so or exchange could incorrectly cancel positions. I was in the direct feed industry for years and this was a big issue. At the same time the broker can issue a no limit buy on accident (or has software that is prospecting and said software has a bug or written poorly). unscrupulous parties looking to feign an upswing or downswing in market. Let's say you hold 500k shares in a stock that sells for $11. You could possibly buy 100 shares for $13. Trust me you will find a seller. Then you are hoping that people see that trade as a \"\"norm\"\" and trade from there, allowing you to rake in $1M for spending an extra $200 - NOTE this is not normal and an extreme example. This was so common in the early days of NASDAQ after hours that they discontinued using the after hours trades as part of historical information that they keep like daily/yearly high or closing price. The liquidity allows for manipulation. It isn't seen as much now since this has been done a million times but it does still happen.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e302b03f30b9eddbdda22282b45ba6e9", "text": "Not directly an answer to your question, but somewhat related: There are derivatives (whose English name I sadly don't know) that allow to profit from breaking through an upper or alternatively a lower barrier. If the trade range does not hit either barrier you lose. This kind of derivative is useful if you expect a strong movement in either direction, which typically occurs at high volume.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "52e41eaf6ab2a990bfe7c69d2d688a11", "text": "There are lots of good answers on here already. There are actually lots of answers for this question. Lots. I have years of experience on the exchange feed side and there are hundreds and thousands of variables. All of these variables are funneled into systems owned by large financial institutions (I used to manage these - and only a few companies in the world do this so not hard to guess who I work for). Their computers then make trades based on all of these variables and equations. There are variables as whacky as how many times was a company mentioned in an aggregate news feed down to your basic company financials. But if there is a way to measure a company (or to just guess) there is an equation for it plugged into a super computer at a big bank. Now there are two important factors on why you see this mad dash in the morning: Now most of the rest of the day is also automated trades but by the time you are an hour into market open the computers for the most part have fulfilled their calendar buys. Everyone else's answer is right too. There is futures contracts that change, global exchange info changes, options expiring, basic news, whatever but all of these are amplified by the calendar day changing.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d1368ff9eae4bc580a900ba04e19cb65", "text": "This all happens at once and quickly. Not in order. So the HFT floods the exchange with orders. This is independent of anything. They would be doing this no matter what. Simply in anticipation of finding someone who will want what they're trying to buy. They then notice someone wants what they have a buy order for. They, at the same time, cancel all orders that don't fit this criteria. At the same time, they're testing this guy to see what his price is. So while they're testing this guy they're cancelling all orders that are above his strike price for that stock. They let the right order go through, for a lower price. If they can't get a lower price, they just forget it. However, they probably can because they were in line first. They're buying before this guy and AFTER they know what he wants to pay. Then, they sell it to him.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
775e9c55f307b84170da24025cd25175
Can the Standard Deduction still apply to a Traditional IRA early withdrawal?
[ { "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": "de9f45b8acc39f4bc9c42744ee75b90b", "text": "I remember reading in an earlier version of Pub 590 (or possibly the Instructions for Form 8606) that timely contributions for Year X to an IRA are deemed to have been made on January 1 of Year X regardless of when they were actually made, but I don't seem to be able to find it now in current versions of Pubs 590a or 590b and so cannot include a citation of chapter and verse. Be that as it may, the calculations on on Form 8606 Part I effectively track basis on an annual basis rather than on a daily basis, and so the fact that the Traditional IRA has a zero balance (and basis 0 too) at some time during the year doesn't matter in the least. In detail (though you didn't ask for it) Note that the whole $6500 that you put in remains non-deductible in its entirety, but you owe taxes on only $93,900 of that $100K that you rolled over into a Roth IRA and not on the whole $100K as you were assuming would have been the case. So, in effect, of that $6500 nondeductible contribution to your Traditional IRA, you did really get to deduct $6100 from your taxable income for 2016, and make only a $400 nondeductible contribution, exactly equal to your basis in your Traditional IRA as per the Form 8606 calculations. I can only assume that the software package that you are using reproduces the above calculations exactly and does what the IRS says you must do on Form 8606 rather than what you get by tracking the basis on a daily basis. IRS regulations and instructions are not necessarily the same as what the tax law says; they are interpretations of the tax law based on what the IRS understands the tax law to say. People have challenged various specific IRS regulations and interpretations as being different from what the law says in Tax Court and been successful in some cases and failed in others. If you believe that tracking basis on a daily basis is what the law says (instead of just being reasonable and rational: reasonableness and rationality are not required either of Congress in the laws that they write or the IRS regulations that interpret the laws), you should take up the matter with the IRS or the Tax Court.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "878a472b03f4ef818d9be6494476f2dc", "text": "Yes. Look at form 1040 AGI is line 37, and it comes well after you report your schedule D cap gains. I read this question as meaning you wish to contribute to a traditional IRA pretax. There is no income limit to contribute to an IRA and not take the deduction.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "79f3d2a1c18ab3374007ebd4c17e6373", "text": "Yes. In fact, it's explicitly mentioned in Publication 590-A that you can file before making the contribution, as long as you make the contribution before the deadline. Filing before a contribution is made. You can file your return claiming a traditional IRA contribution before the contribution is actually made. Generally, the contribution must be made by the due date of your return, not including extensions.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2e2d52f1b31187212c283b925bd819b8", "text": "The law says that you cannot make a contribution (whether tax-deductible or not) to a Traditional IRA for any year unless you (or your spouse if you are filing a joint tax return) have taxable compensation (income earned from the sweat of your brow such as wages, salary, self-employment income, commissions on sales, and also alimony or separate maintenance payments received under a divorce decree, etc) during that year, and you will not be 70.5 years old by the end of the year for which you are making the contribution. The contribution, of course, can be made up to Tax Day of the following year, and is limited to the lesser of the total compensation and $5500 ($6500 for people over 50). Assuming that you are OK on the compensation and age issue, yes, you can make a contribution to a Traditional IRA for an year in which you take a distribution from a Roth IRA. Whether you can deduct the Traditional IRA contribution depends on other factors such as your income and whether or not you or your spouse is covered by a workplace retirement plan.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b3da46ba29da550afad79b5dc35a53a4", "text": "\"1) Indeed, if referring to a Roth as the question is, you are right on. But - You can deposit to an Traditional IRA (TIRA). You just can't deduct it. You are then permitted to convert that to a Roth any time. Now, this would appear to negate income issues, right? Not so fast. When you convert, all TIRA accounts must be considered. In other words, when it comes to the TIRA, you only have One TIRA, the \"\"A\"\" actually standing for Arrangement, not account. That TIRA may then be spread over as many accounts as you have time to set up. So, if there is any pretax money and/or untaxed gain, it will be prorated and taxed based on your conversion amount. If any of this is not 110% clear, please comment and I will update the answer. No 401(k) at work? Note: I edited as my original wording misunderstood the response, and in turn, appeared a bit unkind. Not my intention.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5e20fcec6c8c6bffd7c63b45263466c2", "text": "\"I think there are several issues here. First, there's the contribution. As littleadv said, there is no excess contribution. Excess contribution is only if you exceed the contribution limit. The contribution limit for Traditional IRAs does not depend on how high your income goes or whether you have a 401(k). It's the deduction limit that may depend on those things. Not deducting it is perfectly legitimate, and is completely different than an \"\"excess contribution\"\", which has a penalty. Second, the withdrawal. You are allowed to withdraw contributions made during a year, plus any earnings from those contributions, before the tax filing deadline for the taxes of that year (which is April 15 of the following year, or even up to October 15 of the following year), and it will be treated as if the contribution never happened. No penalties. The earnings will be taxed as regular income (as if you put it in a bank account). That sounds like what you did. So the withdrawal was not an \"\"early withdrawal\"\", and the 1099-R should reflect that (what distribution code did they put?). Third, even if (and it does not sound like the case, but if) it doesn't qualify as a return of contributions before the tax due date as described above (maybe you withdrew it after October 15 of the following year), as littleadv mentioned, your contribution was a non-deductible contribution, and when withdrawing it, only the earnings portion (which after such a short time should only be a very small part of the distribution) would be subject to tax and penalty.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "79151757da264ff03765eb054820c95d", "text": "The rules are complex. See How to Deduct IRA Losses, at Smart Money. You must liquidate the entire account (bad) and the loss is subject to the amount exceeding 2% of your AGI. If you are subject to AMT, you may lose any or all of that remaining amount.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1d5d70263a9125dd0bacf63062f78f2d", "text": "You do not have to wait 5 years from when a particular dollar was earned to withdraw it. To be a qualified distribution from a Roth IRA, A) the Roth IRA must have been opened for 5 years (which yours was), and B) you must be 59.5 years old, or meet one of the other exceptions (and $10,000 for a first-time home purchase is one of the exceptions). Since it is a qualified distribution, there is no tax or penalty.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0c8f6d2bd1d6024b282ac335082e1290", "text": "\"A withdrawal from an IRA has a 60 day period during which time you may roll it over to another IRA, effectively \"\"borrowing\"\" and returning the money. Once that time has passed, the transaction is complete. Your question asks in one place about deposit, then withdrawal. You might edit to clarify the timing of your situation and your intentions.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a4c0d2d16b3592e2800408a3cb76c312", "text": "\"Yes, you can withdraw the excess contribution (or actually any amount you contributed for 2015, not necessarily an excess), plus earnings from that withdrawn contribution, by April 15, and not incur a penalty for the excess contribution. It would count as if you did not contribute that amount at all. The earnings would be taxed as regular income, and the earnings may incur a penalty. Yes, you can \"\"recharacterize\"\" (all or part of) your Roth IRA contribution as a Traditional IRA contribution (or vice versa) by April 15. Recharacterization means you pretend the contribution was originally made as a Traditional IRA contribution, and did not involve Roth IRA at all. (\"\"Conversion\"\" is something very different and can only go from Traditional to Roth, not the other way around.) You are likely not eligible to deduct that Traditional IRA contribution, so you will have to report it as a non-deductible Traditional IRA contribution on a 2015 Form 8606 Part 1. Note that after you've recharacterized it as a Traditional IRA contribution, you can also then \"\"convert\"\" that Traditional IRA money to a Roth IRA if you want, achieving the same state as what you have now. Contributing to a Traditional IRA and then converting to a Roth IRA is called a \"\"backdoor Roth IRA contribution\"\"; if you don't have any existing pre-tax money in Traditional IRA or other IRAs, then this achieves the same as a regular Roth IRA contribution except with no income limits. When you convert, the earnings you have made since contributing will be taxed as income. If you had done the backdoor originally to begin with (convert right after contributing), you would have had no earnings in between and no tax to pay, but since if you do the conversion now you have waited so long, you are disadvantaged by having to pay tax on the earnings in between. If you convert, you will have to fill out Form 8606 Part 2 for the year you convert (2016).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6fb93580c5457890126504ee2b5209bb", "text": "You're misunderstanding the concept of retirement savings. IRA distributions are taxed, in their entirety, as ordinary income. If you withdraw before the retirement age, additional 10% penalty is added. Investment income has preferential treatment - long term capital gains and qualified dividends are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. However, IRA contributions are tax deductible. I.e.: you don't pay taxes on the amounts contributed to the IRA when you earned the money, only when you withdraw. In the mean time, the money is growing, tax free, based on your investments. Anything inside the IRA is tax free, including dividends, distributions (from funds to your IRA, not from IRA to you), capital gains, etc. This is very powerful, when taking into account the compounding effect of reinvesting your dividends/sale proceeds without taking a chunk out for taxes. Consider you make an investment in a fund that appreciated 100% in half a year. You cash out to reinvest in something less volatile to lock the gains. In a regular account - you pay taxes when you sell, based on your brackets. In the IRA you reinvest all of your sale proceeds. That would be ~25-35% more of the gains to reinvest and continue working for you! However, if you decide to withdraw - you pay ordinary rate taxes on the whole amount. If you would invest in a single fund for 30 years in a regular account - you'd pay 20% capital gains tax (on the appreciation, not the dividends). In the IRA, if you invest in the same fund for the same period - you'll pay your ordinary income rates. However, the benefit of reinvesting dividends tax-free softens the blow somewhat, but that's much harder to quantify. Bottom line: if you want to plan for retirement - plan for retirment. Otherwise - IRA is not an investment vehicle. Also consider Roth IRA/conversions. Roth IRA has the benefit of tax free distributions at retirement. If your current tax bracket is at 20%, for example, contributing $5K to Roth IRA instead of a traditional will cost you $1K of taxes now, but will save you all the taxes during the retirement (for the distributions from the Roth IRA). It may be very much worth your while, especially if you can contribute directly to Roth IRA (there are some income limitations and phaseouts). You can withdraw contributions (but not earnings) from Roth IRA - something you cannot do with a traditional IRA.", "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": "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": "449e601fbc8fcbbad27d7ee51bb87e9e", "text": "\"There is not a special rate for short-term capital gains. Only long-term gains have a special rate. Short-term gains are taxed at your ordinary-income rate (see here). Hence if you're in the 25% bracket, your short-term gain would be taxed at 25%. The IRA withdrawal, as you already mentioned, would be taxed at 25%, plus a 10% penalty, for 35% total. Thus the bite on the IRA withdrawal is larger than that on a non-IRA withdrawal. As for the estimated tax issue, I don't think there will be a significant difference there. The reason is that (traditional) IRA withdrawals count as ordinary taxable income (see here). This means that, when you withdraw the funds from your IRA, you will increase your income. If that increase pushes you too far beyond what your withholding is accounting for, then you owe estimated tax. In other words, whether you get the money by selling stocks in a taxable account or by withdrawing them from an IRA, you still increase your taxable income, and thus potentially expose yourself to the estimated tax obligation. (In fact, there may be a difference. As you note, you will pay tax at the capital gains rate on gains from selling in a taxable account. But if you sell the stocks inside the IRA and withdraw, that is ordinary income. However, since ordinary income is taxed at a higher rate than long-term capital gains, you will potentially pay more tax on the IRA withdrawal, since it will be taxed at the higher rate, if your gains are long-term rather than short term. This is doubly true if you withdraw early, incurring the extra 10% penalty. See this question for some more discussion of this issue.) In addition, I think you may be somewhat misunderstanding the nature of estimated tax. The IRS will not \"\"ask\"\" you for a quarterly estimated tax when you sell stock. The IRS does not monitor your activity and send you a bill each quarter. They may indeed check whether your reported income jibes with info they received from your bank, etc., but they'll still do that regardless of whether you got that income by selling in a taxable account or withdrawing money from an IRA, because both of those increase your taxable income. Quarterly estimated tax is not an extra tax; it is just you paying your normal income tax over the course of the year instead of all at once. If your withholdings will not cover enough of your tax liability, you must figure that out yourself and pay the estimated tax (see here); if you don't do so, you may be assessed a penalty. It doesn't matter how you got the money; if your taxable income is too high relative to your withheld tax, then you have to pay the estimated tax. Typically tax will be withheld from your IRA distribution, but if it's not withheld, you'll still owe it as estimated tax.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ccc59d257311b512fe3377b472a7bb2f", "text": "In simple terms, this is how the shares are traded, however most of the times market orders are placed. Consider below scenario( hypothetical scenario, there are just 2 traders) Buyer is ready to buy 10 shares @ 5$ and seller is ready to sell 10 shares @ 5.10$, both the orders will remain in open state, unless one wish to change his price, this is an example of limit order. Market orders If seller is ready to sell 10 shares @ 5$ and another 10 shares @5.05$, if buyer wants to buy 20 shares @ market price, then the trade will be executed for 10 shares @ 5$ and another 10 shares @ 5.05$", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
aa4bd60227161da39eb8b9637712abfb
Limited Liability Partnership capital calculation
[ { "docid": "b8763fac73b9c4be5794c15172547797", "text": "Retained earnings is different from partner capital accounts. You can draw the money however the partners agree. Unless money is specifically transferred to the capital funds, earnings will not show up there.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "d304ada0eec7878085696ff363929bd9", "text": "\"To calculate the balance (not just principal) remaining, type into your favorite spreadsheet program: It is important that the periods for \"\"Periods\"\" and \"\"Rate\"\" match up. If you use your annual rate with quarterly periods, you will get a horribly wrong answer. So, if you invest $1000 today, expect 6% interest per year (0.5% interest per month), withdraw $10 at the end of each month, and want to know what your investment balance will be 2 years (24 months) from now, you would type: And you would get a result of $872.84. Or, to compute it manually, use the formula found here by poster uart: This is often taught in high-school here as a application of geomentric series. The derivation goes like this. Using the notation : r = 1 + interest_rate_per_term_as_decimal p = present value a = payment per term eot1 denotes the FV at end of term 1 etc. eot1: rp + a eot2: r(rp + a) + a = r^2p + ra + a eot3: r(r^2p + ra + a) + a = r^3p + r^2a + ra + a ... eotn: r^np + (r^(n-1) + r^(n-2) + ... 1)a = p r^n + a (r^n - 1)/(r-1) That is, FV = p r^n + a (r^n - 1)/(r-1). This is precisely what exel [sic] computes for the case of payments made at the end of each term (payment type = 0). It's easy enough to repeat the calculations as above for the case of payments made at the beginning of each term. This won't work for changing interest rates or changing withdrawal amounts. For something like that, it would be better for you (if you don't want online calculators) to set up a table in a spreadsheet so you can adjust different periods manually.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "181412d0dfd9b6ebf68ab4c0aa3b8b44", "text": "There is no generic formula as such, but you can work it out using all known incomes and expenses and by making some educated assuption. You should generaly know your buying costs, which include the purchase price, legal fees, taxes (in Australia we have Stamp Duty, which is a large state based tax when you purchase a property). Other things to consider include estimates for any repairs and/or renovations. Also, you should look at the long term growth in your area and use this as an estimate of your potential growth over the period you wish to hold the property, and estimate the agent fees if you were to sell, and the depreciation on the building. These things, including the agent fees when selling and building depreciation, will all be added or deducted to your cost base to determine the amount of capital gain when and if you sell the property. You then need to multiply this gain by the capital gains tax rate to determine the capital gains tax you may have to pay. From all the items above you will be able to estimate the net capital gain (after all taxes) you could expect to make on the property over the period you are looking to hold it for. In regards to holding and renting the property, things you will need to consider include the rent, the long term growth of rent in your area, and all the expenses including, loan fees and interest, insurance, rates, land tax, and an estimate of the annual maintenance cost per year. Also, you would need to consider any depreciation deductions you can claim. Other things you will need to consider, is the change in these values as time goes by, and provide an estimate for these in your calculations. Any increase in the value of land will increase the amount of rates and the land tax you pay, and generally your insurance and maintenance costs will increase with time. However, your interest and mortgage repayments will reduce over time. Will your rent increases cover your increases in the expenses. From all the items above you should be able to work out an estimate of your net rental gain or loss for each year. Again do this for the number of years you are looking to hold the property for and then sum up the total to give a net profit or loss. If there is a net loss from the income, then you need to consider if the net capital gain will cover these losses and still give you a reasonable return over the period you will own the property. Below is a sample calculation showing most of the variables I have discussed.", "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": "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": "36933c8b079e518d1fe172462a6c9355", "text": "It's better to use the accounting equation concept: Asset + Expenses = Capital + Liabilities + Income If you purchase an asset: Suppose you purchased a laptop of $ 500, then its journal will be: If you sell the same Laptop for $ 500, then its entry will be:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a1f8e1e935ad365e016e2e6468cf4797", "text": "Adding assets (equity) and liabilities (debt) never gives you anything useful. The value of a company is its assets (including equity) minus its liabilities (including debt). However this is a purely theoretical calculation. In the real world things are much more complicated, and this isn't going to give you a good idea of much a company's shares are worth in the real world", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2ff2c8d04f80b637da2b51de86a1c16e", "text": "First, determine the workload he will expect. Will you have to quit your other work, either for time or for competition? How much of your current business will be subsumed into his business, if any? Make sure to understand what he wants from you. If you make an agreement, set it in writing and set some clear expectations about what will happen to your business (e.g. it continues and is not part of your association with the client). Because he was a client for your current business, it can blur the lines. Second, if you join him, make sure there is a business entity. By working together for profit, you will have already formed a partnership for tax purposes. Best to get an entity, both for the legal protection and also for the clarity of law and accounting. LLCs are simplest for small ventures; C corps are useful if you have lots of early losses and owners that can't use them personally, or if you want to be properly formed for easy consumption by a strategic. Most VCs and super-angels prefer everybody be a straight C. Again, remember to define, as necessary, what you are contributing to be an owner and what you are retaining (your original business, which for simplicity may already be in an entity). As part of this process, make sure he defines the cap table and any outstanding loans. Auntie June and Cousin Steve might think their gifts to him were loans or equity purchases; best to clear this issue up early before there's any more money in it. Third, with regard to price, that is an intensely variable question. It matters what the cap table looks like, how early you are, how much work he's already done, how much work remains to be done, and how much it will pay off. Also, if you do it, expect to be diluted by other employees, angels, VCs, other investors, strategics, and so on. Luckily, more investors usually indicates a growing pie, so the dilution may not be at all painful. But it should still be on your horizon. You also need to consider your faith in your prospective partner's ability to run the business and to be a trustworthy partner (so you don't get Zuckerberg'd), and to market the business and the product to customers and investors. If you don't like the prospects, then opt for cash. If you like the business but want to hedge, ask for compensation plus equity. There are other tricks you could use to get out early, like forced redemption, but they probably wouldn't help either because it'd sour your relationship or the first VC or knowledgeable angel to come along will want you to relinquish that sort of right. It probably comes down to a basic question of your need for cash, his willingness to let you pursue outside work (hopefully high) and your appraisal of the business' prospects.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "19e274619afa82cd02d9aab9f56d1ebc", "text": "\"You are confining the way you and the other co-founders are paid for guaranteeing the loan to capital shares. Trying to determine payments by equity distribution is hard. It is a practice that many small companies particularly the ones in their initial stage fall into. I always advise against trying to make payments with equity, weather it is for unpaid salary or for guaranteeing a loan such as your case. Instead of thinking about a super sophisticated algorithm to distribute the new shares between the cofounders and the new investors, given a set of constraints, which will most probably fail to make the satisfactory split, you should simply view the co-founders as debt lenders for the company and the shareholders as a capital contributor. If the co-founders are treated as debt lenders, it will be much easier to determine the risk compensation for guaranteeing the loan because it is now assessed in monetary units and this compensation is equal to the risk premium you see fit \"\"taking into consideration the probability of default \"\". On the other hand, capital contributors will gain capital shares as a percentage of the total value of the company after adding SBA loan.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e6a86727ce2c1f10f9574097f583a59e", "text": "Shareholders are the equity holders. They mean the same thing. A simplified formula for the total value of a company is the value of its equity, plus the value of its debt, less its cash (for reasons I won't get into). There are usually other things to add or subtract, but that's the basic formula.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "37528e2711eafb0e0573772a2bf49083", "text": "The equation is the same one used for mortgage amortization. You first want to calculate the PV (present value) for a stream of $50K payments over 20 years at a10% rate. Then that value is the FV (future value) that you want to save for, and you are looking to solve the payment stream needed to create that future value. Good luck achieving the 10% return, and in knowing your mortality down to the exact year. Unless this is a homework assignment, which need not reflect real life. Edit - as indicated above, the first step is to get that value in 20 years: The image is the user-friendly entry screen for the PV calculation. It walks you though the need to enter rate as per period, therefore I enter .1/12 as the rate. The payment you desire is $50K/yr, and since it's a payment, it's a negative number. The equation in excel that results is: =PV(0.1/12,240,-50000/12,0) and the sum calculated is $431,769 Next you wish to know the payments to make to arrive at this number: In this case, you start at zero PV with a known FV calculated above, and known rate. This solves for the payment needed to get this number, $568.59 The excel equation is: =PMT(0.1/12,240,0,431769) Most people have access to excel or a public domain spreadsheet application (e.g. Openoffice). If you are often needing to perform such calculations, a business finance calculator is recommended. TI used to make a model BA-35 finance calculator, no longer in production, still on eBay, used. One more update- these equations whether in excel or a calculator are geared toward per period interest, i.e. when you state 10%, they assume a monthly 10/12%. With that said, you required a 20 year deposit period and 20 year withdrawal period. We know you wish to take out $4166.67 per month. The equation to calculate deposit required becomes - 4166.67/(1.00833333)^240= 568.59 HA! Exact same answer, far less work. To be clear, this works only because you required 240 deposits to produce 240 withdrawals in the future.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7af4f32798568d7e60f0dbc247e02a37", "text": "The price-earnings ratio is calculated as the market value per share divided by the earnings per share over the past 12 months. In your example, you state that the company earned $0.35 over the past quarter. That is insufficient to calculate the price-earnings ratio, and probably why the PE is just given as 20. So, if you have transcribed the formula correctly, the calculation given the numbers in your example would be: 0.35 * 4 * 20 = $28.00 As to CVRR, I'm not sure your PE is correct. According to Yahoo, the PE for CVRR is 3.92 at the time of writing, not 10.54. Using the formula above, this would lead to: 2.3 * 4 * 3.92 = $36.06 That stock has a 52-week high of $35.98, so $36.06 is not laughably unrealistic. I'm more than a little dubious of the validity of that formula, however, and urge you not to base your investing decisions on it.", "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": "e65ca832826c13679b69f21901aa6230", "text": "First, you should probably have a proper consultation with a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State). In fact you should have had it before you started, but that ship has sailed. You're talking about start-up expenses. You can generally deduct up to $5000 in the year your business starts, and the expenses in excess will be amortized over 180 months (15 years). This is per the IRC Sec. 195. The amortization starts when your business is active (i.e.: you can buy the property, but not actually open the restaurant - you cannot start the depreciation). I have a couple questions about accounting - should all the money I spent be a part of capital spending? Or is it just a part of it? If it qualifies as start-up/organizational expenses - it should be capitalized. If it is spent on capital assets - then it should also be capitalized, but for different reasons and differently. For example, costs of filing paperwork for permits is a start-up expense. Buying a commercial oven is a capital asset purchase which should be depreciated separately, as buying the tables and silverware. If it is a salary expense to your employees - then it is a current expense and shouldn't be capitalized. Our company is LLC if this matters. It matters to how it affects your personal tax return.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7aec2e5d1480a09c5e8c8671d32c6e8d", "text": "\"A bit strange but okay. The way I would think about this is again that you need to determine for what purpose you're computing this, in much the same way you would if you were to build out the model. The IPO valuation is not going to be relevant to the accretion/dilution analysis unless you're trying to determine whether the transaction was net accretive at exit. But that's a weird analysis to do. For longer holding periods like that you're more likely to look at IRR, not EPS. EPS is something investors look at over the short to medium term to get a sense of whether the company is making good acquisition decisions. And to do that short-to-medium term analysis, they look at earnings. Damodaran would say this is a shitty way of looking at things and that you should probably be looking at some measure of ROIC instead, and I tend to agree, but I don't get paid to think like an investor, I get paid to sell shit to them (if only in indirect fashion). The short answer to your question is that no, you should not incorporate what you are calling liquidation value when determining accretion/dilution, but only because the market typically computes accretion/dilution on a 3-year basis tops. I've never put together a book or seen a press release in my admittedly short time in finance that says \"\"the transaction is estimated to be X% accretive within 4 years\"\" - that just seems like an absurd timeline. Final point is just that from an accounting perspective, a gain on a sale of an asset is not going to get booked in either EBITDA or OCF, so just mechanically there's no way for the IPO value to flow into your accretion/dilution analysis there, even if you are looking at EBITDA/shares. You could figure the gain on sale into some kind of adjusted EBITDA/shares version of EPS, but this is neither something I've ever seen nor something that really makes sense in the context of using EPS as a standardized metric across the market. Typically we take OUT non-recurring shit in EPS, we don't add it in. Adding something like this in would be much more appropriate to measuring the success of an acquisition/investing vehicle like a private equity fund, not a standalone operating company that reports operational earnings in addition to cash flow from investing. And as I suggest above, that's an analysis for which the IRR metric is more ideally situated. And just a semantic thing - we typically wouldn't call the exit value a \"\"liquidation value\"\". That term is usually reserved for dissolution of a corporate entity and selling off its physical or intangible assets in piecemeal fashion (i.e. not accounting for operational synergies across the business). IPO value is actually just going to be a measure of market value of equity.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d60325706e4d14e7d6c127256acf0b12", "text": "No. The above calculation does not hold good. When financial statements are prepared they are prepared on a going concern basis, i.e. a business will run normally in the foreseeable future. Valuation of assets and liabilities is done according to this principle. When a bankruptcy takes places or a business closes down, immediately the valuation method will change. For assets, the realizable value will be more relevant. For example, if you hold 100 computers, in an normal situation, they will depreciated at the normal rate. Every year, some portion of the cost is written off as depreciation. When you actually go to sell these computers you are likely to realize much less than what is shown in the statement. Similarly, for a building, the actual realizable value may be more. For liabilities, they tend to increase in such situation. Hence just a plain computation can give you a very broad idea but the actual figure may be different.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
813c19381f6d0651c31c95ddc53c4270
FTB sent refund check for 2011 during audit; Does this really mean that whole audit is over for 2011?
[ { "docid": "c743f8e5cf7a21d3fc9d381bb59847ad", "text": "Not it doesn't, and yes they can. If the audit is closed, you should have received invitation to attend the closing conference, and get the summary of decisions from that meeting in writing. I suggest you check with your tax representative about this refund check before cashing it.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "afe19c20847f0e7a9a756d6cabf039b6", "text": "Having a large state return also means that there is a potential income tax liability created at the federal level for the following year, as the situation resulted from the deduction of more on one's federal return than should have been deducted. The state refund is treated as federal income in the year it is refunded. http://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/is-my-state-tax-refund-taxable-and-why-90/", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e5d3f0e0a1b880afa3dcb267594e6ea3", "text": "Assuming the US, if a human assessor audited you, could you show a future profit motive or will they conclude you are expensing a hobby? If you answer yes, you are likely to only be deducting limited expenses this year, carrying forward losses to your profitable years. See the examples in pub 535: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch01.html#en_US_2014_publink1000208633", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9ab83502b801dfa3023ad27ef9d55d5d", "text": "It's my understanding that the grace period is only for filing - the actual procedure/purchase must be performed CY2011 to be paid out from the 2011 FSA money, etc.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6f001f812032181c7036b08d9fa31e68", "text": "Well, if you were a business, and your food and rent and travel expenses were business expenses, and you paid out less money than you earned, you *would* get a refund. If you can prove that an expense is tax deductible, then that's just what it is. For businesses, a net operating loss is tax deductible.", "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": "1619a2901c8114a352d54227320b8370", "text": "\"It is not allowed to pay refunds to anyone other than the taxpayer. This is due to various tax return fraud schemes that were running around. Banks are required to enforce this. If the direct deposit is denied, a check will be issued. In her name, obviously. What she does with it when she gets it is her business - but I believe that tax refund checks may not be just \"\"endorsed\"\", the bank will likely want to see her when you deposit it to your account, even if it is endorsed. For the same reason.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "718905db40990ac18df585bab389f3f1", "text": "Your argument with elvendude happened because your comment makes it appear that you think that if a business has less cash at the end of a year than at the beginning, the business does not need to pay taxes. elvendude is trying to show you that this isn't true.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "11df2c61d4b972e329f7d49fe185d5b9", "text": "I am no expert on the situation nor do I pretend to act like one, but, as a business owner, allow me to give you my personal opinion. Option 3 is closest to what you want. Why? Well: This way, you have both the record of everything that was done, and also IRS can see exactly what happened. Another suggestion would be to ask the GnuCash maintainers and community directly. You can have a chat with them on their IRC channel #gnucash, send them an email, maybe find the answer in the documentation or wiki. Popular software apps usually have both support people and a helpful community, so if the above method is in any way inconvenient for you, you can give this one a try. Hope this helps! Robert", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4ab20df3a05c2cdb9689393a7069ec67", "text": "Here is an article that claims to know something about it. Here are a selection of quotes: The IRS says there are several ways a return can be selected for audit and the first is via the agency's computer-scoring system known as Discriminant Information Function, or DIF. The IRS evaluates tax returns based on IRS formulas, and DIF is based on deductions, credits and exemptions with norms for taxpayers in each of the income brackets. The actual scoring formula to determine which tax returns are most likely to be in error is a closely guarded secret. But Nath, a tax attorney in the Washington, D.C., area, says it's no mystery the system is designed to screen for returns that could put more money in the government Treasury. So what is likely to trigger a discriminant information function red flag?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "961a56e539bb9e4e246cf1fd5446db5c", "text": "The money in the checking account was already taxed. It was income this year or last, or a gift from somebody, or earned interest that will be taxed. If it was a deductible IRA you would declare it next April and get a refund from the government.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "241747652821945930d2fe18d391efe4", "text": "um, yes. the point of an audit is verification. you could have claimed to have bought fax machines and pocketed the money, and giving them a list claiming you had bought 5. without them physically inspecting, how would they know the difference? its amazing your level of distrust for government yet trust of others", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a2d5e6b7e5deae151ee10a507e866417", "text": "\"I had the same thing happen to me in late 2010. I contacted the big company's bored-sounding payroll department - after wading through the phone menu, and more than one \"\"all of our operators are busy, please call back later <click>\"\" - and told them I had this extra money. The guy in India told me that my petition would be investigated and that a ticket would be opened. I heard nothing for a couple of weeks. I followed up with payroll. They said that my petition investigation had determined that I did indeed get paid extra, and they'd be sending me a letter demanding the overpayment. I received no letter, and a month later (January 2011) I got a W-2 with the paycheck included on it. I decided that I'd spent enough of my own time and effort on it, and if they wanted it back, the ball was in their court. I changed my bank account numbers to prevent them from auto-debiting my account, and spent the money as if it was mine. I have not heard anything about it since then. From what I was able to determine, once I'd made a good-faith effort to return it, I was in the clear. And for what it's worth, it's not like you can just \"\"return\"\" it. Among other things: I certainly wasn't just going to mail the company a check and hope for the best.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "37b07e27cba9a5a24efa1324f1259eb4", "text": "\"Now today I received another refund in the same amount for the same property. What can legally happen if I cash it? Legally the money is not yours. The best course for you is to return the check via certified mail, notifying them that you were already paid. Just because someone made an error, does not mean the money belongs to you. If you don't and rather cash the check; sooner or later depending on the amount, it would be found out by the company as part of reconciliation/audit; they will/can then demand the same back from you. It is up to the company to decide if simply refund is sufficient; or refund plus some interest or start a legal proceeding against you as \"\"intentional theft\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6fb9db6a85c47bc9588ec41ab70589e1", "text": "To be to ally fair, the audit that is done on the Fed every year does not include foreign bailouts, foreign swaps, gold reserves and their leasing or sales, it does not include loans to Primary Dealer Banks. In fact it doesn't include anything that would let us see the extent or type of transactions that are taking place.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e1067b2eafc8a402c2c1389c22c2f781", "text": "Ironically, anyone can say anything, but it doesn't make it true. In normal times, the IRS can audit you for 3 years, or up to 6 for certain cases of fraud - From the IRS site - How far back can the IRS go to audit my return? Generally, the IRS can include returns filed within the last three years in an audit. If we identify a substantial error, we may add additional years. We usually don’t go back more than the last six years. HSA spending is reported each year, just like any Schedule A deductions. Each year, I have my charitable receipts, and they are not sent in. They are there in case of audit. I don't need to save them forever, nor does one need their medical bills forever. 3 years. 6 if you wish to be paranoid. The EOBs should be enough. The HSA is unique in that you deposit pretax dollars (like a traditional IRA or 401(k)) yet withdrawals for qualified expenses come out tax free (like a Roth). In my opinion, as long as your medical plan qualifies you for an HSA, I'd maximize its use. The older you get, the more bills you'll have, and at some point, you'll be grateful to your younger self that you did this.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
b0c32de1a834a759779b62d5ff0c3644
I just “paid” online with a debit card with no funds. What now?
[ { "docid": "3109d70095ef776217692620465fdf6f", "text": "There are a few factors at play here. Depending on the bank that has offered you the card there are different types of overdraft protection that may have been set up. Typically, if they attempt to run the card with no money, if one of these is in play, you will be spared any overdraft fees by the transaction charging to a designated overdraft account, usually savings, or by the transaction failing due to insufficient funds. If you know the transaction went through, and you know there were not enough funds in the account to cover the transactions, then you have a few options. If you have overdraft protection that auto charges insufficient funds charges to a separate account, then you have nothing to worry about. If you do not, most banks offer a grace period where you have until the end of the day to zero out your account, that is to say pay the overdraft amount and bring your balance to at least $0. If this is a charge that occurred in the past, and you have already been charged an overdraft fee, there may still be hope. I cannot speak for all banks, but I know that Chase Bank offers a once per year overdraft forgiveness, where they will get rid of the charges if you agree to bring the account out of the negative. There is a chance other banks will do the same if you call their customer service.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "74cb59c84c8f5b2738b01dd113047091", "text": "You should contact the Company who purchased your visa balance and ask/write the following questions: 1. Dispute the charge from Emusic.com as invalid. 2. Instruct that no future charges will be accepted. 3. How come Emusic.com was allowed to debit your account? 4. When did they purchased your visa account? 5. Ask for written verification that they purchased your account from the original company? such as a bill of sale? 6. Ask if the company is a registered debt collector in your state? 7. The FAIR DEBT COLLECTION PRACTICES ACT (FDCPA) may apply to your circumstance(s) and provide for $1,000 in damages to the consumer and $1,000 attorney fees from a third party debt collector per violation. You may want to seek the advice of an attorney to help determine if you have a good cause to sue the company and Emusic. If you did not receive anything form Emusic.com or your contract/agreement ended without a cancelation/early termination fee, ALso, file a written dispute with Emusic.com. Check your credit report. Many companies automatically charge your accounts through automatic payments after termination of the agreement because they get away with it in the U.S., if the consumer does not take steps to dispute the current charge and stop future charges from occurring in the future. Never use auto pay unless required and the service is essential. When using auto pay use a dedicated account not your main checking account. It is less of a pain in the neck to close the account if its your 2nd or 3rd checking account and not your only account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "79a2d8b1549b3a317c82b6fcfc5919d6", "text": "In the US you can walk into some retail stores and use your paypal to pay directly. Some of them sell prepaid debit card. By one and use it to pay your bill. If you're not in the US - check if some local retailers allow that. I believe in the UK they have some that allow paypal as well.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "92bc54545894a84958a397e020d8c194", "text": "\"Nowadays, some banks in some countries offer things like temporary virtual cards for online payments. They are issued either free of charge or at a negligible charge, immediately, via bank's web interface (access to which might either be free or not, this varies). You get a separate account for the newly-issued \"\"card\"\" (the \"\"card\"\" being just a set of numbers), you transfer some money there (same web-interface), you use it to make payment(s), you leave $0 on that \"\"card\"\" and within a day or a month, it expires. Somewhat convenient and your possible loss is limited tightly. Check if your local banks offer this kind of service.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "15e81937680d2671eb52c2d6fc94e93e", "text": "If the debit card is associated with the account, there is nowhere else it could go. The chance is nil that there is another account with that 16-digit number. So either it goes there, or the transfer fails and it is right back where it came from, though this could take some days. If you don't want to risk a wait, talk to your bank now.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b22c43df93a0084679c59c07aac9a9f1", "text": "\"You should immediately tell your bank you've been scammed, request for the transactions' cancellation or revocation and get back most - if not all - of the money transferred. I've placed numerous orders online in the past and was always very careful about their trace-ability but I have to admit once I acted carelessly and got scammed. I didn't think of it much before placing an order for a very low priced laptop through a private seller on Amazon. I'd never purchased anything this way before but thought \"\"Amazon will protect me if anything goes wrong...\"\" so I sent an e-mail to the seller. He gave me his bank details (with Spanish IBAN) via a non-suspicious e-mail with the usual logos and e-mail address domain name, made the payment and guy came back to me saying he'll ship the laptop once he sees the funds received. Waited max. 2 days, trying to contact him but no response. Contacted Amazon giving the seller's ID and the \"\"transaction\"\"'s ID I'd received from him and they told me there's nothing they can do as that transaction is not recorded on their systems. Immediately after realizing I've been scammed and done my goof, I contacted my bank via e-mail explaining the situation. I was informed that the transaction can be cancelled but they cannot guarantee the return of the entire amount. After 2-3 days, I saw my balance richer by €950 and the payment I'd made to the scum was €1,000. I'd highly recommend that you check the fraud protection policy of your bank and in case there's something that can be done, then just get in contact with them explaining the situation.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "37f1468d33edbdf2cc73c45e8868ae69", "text": "\"Actually in Finland on some bank + debit/credit card + online retailer combinations you type in your card details as you normally do, but after clicking \"\"Buy\"\" you get directed to your own bank's website which asks you to authenticate yourself with online banking credentials. It also displays the amount of money and to which account it is being paid to. After authentication you get directed back to the retailer's website. Cannot say why banks in US haven't implemented this.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "eda654a3b47a1c8594cbe7b7f1e97e0c", "text": "Sounds questionable to me. If there is no way around this I would suggest opening a new account with only the minimum balance necessary and sending them the debit card associated with that account. If anything goes wrong then the amount of damage they can do will be limited. I would definitely be looking for other options though. Maybe they can just mail you a check or something?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "616cfa5f882b172a949cfe5e2f270f35", "text": "If it's just an ordinary credit card I'd think he could merely dispute the charges, since he's saying they 'created' (which I presume means applied for and received) a card, it should not affect his accounts directly. And especially since application details may be bogus, he should be able to prove it was not him. Even if they got HIS credit card number, he should be able to dispute those charges that are not his, especially if they went to a different address, or were charged someplace (like another city) where he was not present at that time. OTOH, if they created a DEBIT card that was linked to his bank account somehow, well then, that could be a lot more difficult to recover from, but even then, if it's not his signature that was used to apply for the card, or on any charges that had to be signed for etc, he should be able to dispute it and get the bank to put the money back in his account since it will be a case of forgery etc. The big problem with ID theft is people tend to ruin your credit rating, and you end up having to fend off bill collectors etc. The primary thing it costs you (speaking from experience of having checks stolen and forged using a fake drivers license) is the TIME and hassle of getting everything straightened out and put right. In my case it took a few hours at the credit union, and all the money was back, in a new account (the old one having been closed) when I left. Dealing with all the poor merchants that were taken, and with bill collectors on the other hand took months. but I never once in the process needed 'quick money' from anyone. So the need for 'quick money' seems a bit doubtful. I'd want a lot more details of exactly why he needs money from you. Refer your friend to this Federal Trade Commission site and make sure he takes the steps listed, and especially pays attention to the parts about keeping notes of every single person he talks with, including name, date, time, and pertinent details of the conversation. If he has some idea HOW this happened (as in a robbery) then report it to the proper authorities, and insist on getting a case number. talking with bill collectors is the worst, just trying to get ahold of them when they send you letters (and talk to a person, not a recorded number with instructions on how to pay them) is sometimes nearly impossible (google was my friend) and a lot of times they didn't want to back off till I gave them the case number with the police, that somehow magically made it 'real' to them and not just my telling them a story.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "aecd9a79e0a24c997501c2a542cb02ab", "text": "\"I don't understand why he couldn't just log onto his account online, see the \"\"current balance\"\" and pay that? I've got 4-5 credit cards (2 of them are Chase) and they *ALL* have an online portal which will show you a daily-calculated \"\"current balance\"\" right on your screen... you can then enter in your checking account and transfer over that amount to pay the whole thing off virtually instantly. Does Chase continue to charge interest even after the balance goes to $0?\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cca176d56c7f5661cc84926585f6417a", "text": "\"You should dispute the transaction with the credit card. Describe the story and attach the cash payment receipt, and dispute it as a duplicate charge. There will be no impact on your score, but if you don't have the cash receipt or any other proof of the alternative payment - it's your word against the merchant, and he has proof that you actually used your card there. So worst case - you just paid twice. If you dispute the charge and it is accepted - the merchant will pay a penalty. If it is not accepted - you may pay the penalty (on top of the original charge, depending on your credit card issuer - some charge for \"\"frivolous\"\" charge backs). It will take several more years for either the European merchants to learn how to deal with the US half-baked chip cards, or the American banks to start issue proper chip-and-PIN card as everywhere else. Either way, until then - if the merchant doesn't know how to handle signatures with the American credit cards - just don't use them. Pay cash. Given the controversy in the comments - my intention was not to say \"\"no, don't talk to the merchant\"\". From the description of the situation it didn't strike me as the merchant would even bother to consider the situation. A less than honest merchant knows that you have no leverage, and since you're a tourist and will probably not be returning there anyway - what's the worst you can do to them? A bad yelp review? You can definitely get in touch with the merchant and ask for a refund, but I would not expect much to come out from that.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ffd92d990a6b96092871ac822eef4a57", "text": "\"This is not a normal occurrence, and you have every right to be annoyed, but the technical way it usually happens goes like this: What can happen is when the merchant incorrectly completes the transaction without referencing the pre-authorization transaction. The bank effectively doesn't \"\"know\"\" this is the same transaction, so they process it the same way they process any other purchase, and it has no effect on the pre-authorization and related held/pending transaction. As far as the bank knows, you purchased a second set of blinds in the store for $200 and are still waiting on the first order to come in, they have no idea the store screwed up. The reason this is possible is the purpose of the pre-auth in the first place is that it is a contractual agreement between the bank (credit card) and the merchant that the funds are available, will be available except under rare special circumstances, and thus they can go ahead and process the order. This lets the merchant be secure in the knowledge that they can collect their payment, but you aren't paying interest or monthly payments on something you haven't even gotten yet! This system works reasonably well for everyone - right up until someone screws up and fails to properly release a hold, makes a second transaction instead of properly referencing the first one, or the bank screws up their system and fails to correctly match referenced pre-authorization codes to purchases. The problem is that this should not be a normal occurrence, and the people you are speaking with to try to sort out the issue often do not have the authority or knowledge necessary to properly fix the issue, or its such a hassle for them that they hope you just go away and time fixes the issue on its own. The only sure-fire solution to this is: make sure you have so much extra credit line that this doesn't effect you and you can safely let it time out on its own, or stop doing business with this combination of merchant/payment that creates the problem. Back when my credit limits were being pushed, I would never pay at gas pumps because their hold polices were so weird and unpredictable, and I would only pre-pay inside or with cash to avoid the holds.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b8843fe9bca74bcb7d197cc97362eaae", "text": "I found a german article describing the legal situation in Germany. To summarize As outlined by the many possible reasons in the other answer, it is unclear from the information I have, whether condition 1 holds. Also condition 2 may not hold since the credit card was frozen. I suppose this makes a good argument to MasterCard and my bank, but I also suspect they will not care unless it comes with a attorney letterhead.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c27b0051ac85e22b49fa005196d2d05b", "text": "You still owe the money because there is a high probability that some other organization bough the account and assets of the failed creditor. That means they will have bought your debt. I have to assume there is language in your note that explains that they might sell your debt. But what should one do if they don't know who bought the entity? You can't pay a non-existent entity, but if you don't have an address, how can you pay the new owner of the debt? First step, is to assume there will be a new owner. A government, a company, an individual; somebody will buy that debt. Read the news and see if you can't figure out what other entity owns your note. You might have to contact them to enquire about where to send payment. Keep records of any such contact. If you put in an honest effort, but just cannot figure out who owns your note, I'd suggest continuing to make regular on-time payments. But put your payments into a new bank account that you open just for this purpose. So when the new owner of the debt does come calling, you'll have reasonable proof you were attempting to pay. You simply settle up from the special account. Any reasonable company will just take the money, and if anybody gets unreasonable and you have to appear in court, you have a paper trail indicating your attempts to honour the debt. You'd have to consult a lawyer if nobody comes asking for the money. There are probably statutes of limitation, but I wouldn't count on that ever happening.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "540ad14306a6ab98c337a396e981a398", "text": "Even for those of us who aren't at risk of over drafting, direct debit is a less-than-stellar option. Direct debit is a great way to begin ignoring how large your bills are. By explicitly paying them through my bank's online billpay, I notice immediately when a bill is larger than it ought to be. This is often caused by a billing error. In which case I've found it far easier to resolve disputes when the money is still in my hands. It's significantly harder to convince an internet provider, cell phone service, or utility to reverse an incorrect charge after it's been paid than it is before. The other times, it's because I've been using the service more than normal. For example, sending text messages more frequently or using more electricity. Explicitly paying these bills makes me realize upfront that there's been a change in my behavior and I can either reduce my expenses or accept the higher cost for higher service. My own experience leads me to believe that paying your bills automatically every month is a great way to ignore these events, and leak money like a sieve. Online bill pay makes doing this as trivial as I could hope for, and the risk of missing a payment is essentially nil.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a7b363cdad4a083eaa1df0cc545c2294", "text": "While in London for a month about a year ago, I had similar issues. I ended up getting a prepaid chip-and-pin card that was filled with cash. I don't remember the retailer that sold me this, but I figure it'll give you something to start your search.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
23fcf1260eaf05c4316b5d1135a83c14
Made more than $600. Company does not issue 1099-MISC's. Enter income as general income?
[ { "docid": "82643f07a5220a97f0efa5551e0b2d39", "text": "I'm not sure how this gets entered in TurboTax, but this income from the company should be included in the Schedule C (or C-EZ) Line 1 Gross Receipts total, along with all of your 1099-MISC income from your business and any other income that your business took in. You don't need a 1099 from them, and the IRS doesn't care (at least from your perspective) if you got a 1099 or not; in fact, they probably expect you to have some non-1099 income. We don't know why the company chose not to issue 1099 forms, but luckily it isn't your concern. You can fill out your tax return properly without it. Note: This answer assumes that you didn't have any tax withheld from your checks from this company. If you did have tax withheld, you'll need to insist on a 1099 to show that.", "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": "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": "" }, { "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": "" }, { "docid": "563440e7c3bd9c4100cc7605236340c8", "text": "\"I agree that you should have received both a 1099 and a W2 from your employer. They may be reluctant to do that because some people believe that could trigger an IRS audit. The reason is that independent contractor vs employee is supposed to be defined by your job function, not by your choice. If you were a contractor and then switched to be an employee without changing your job description, then the IRS could claim that you should have always been an employee the entire time, and so should every one of the other contractors that work for that company with a similar job function. It's a hornet's nest that the employer may not want to poke. But that's not your problem; what should you do about it? When you say \"\"he added my Federal and FICA W/H together\"\", do you mean that total appears in box 4 of your 1099? If so, it sounds like the employer is expecting you to re-pay the employer portion of FICA. Can you ask them if they actually paid it? If they did, then I don't see them having a choice but to issue a W2, since the IRS would be expecting one. If they didn't pay your FICA, then the amount this will cost you is 7.65% of what would have been your W2 wages. IMHO it would be reasonable for you to request that they send you a check for that extra amount. Note: even though that amount will be less than $600 and you won't receive a 1099 in 2017 for it, legally you'll still have to pay tax on that amount so I think a good estimate would be to call it 10% instead. Depending on your personality and your relationship with the employer, if they choose not to \"\"make you whole\"\", you could threaten to fill out form SS-8. Additional Info: (Thank you Bobson for bringing this up.) The situation you find yourself in is similar to the concept of \"\"Contract-to-Hire\"\". You start off as a contractor, and later convert to an employee. In order to avoid issuing a 1099 and W2 to the same person in a single tax year, companies typically utilize one of the following strategies: Your particular situation is closest to situation 2, but the reverse. Instead of retroactively calling you a W2 employee the entire time, your employer is cheating and attempting to classify you as a 1099 contractor the entire time. This is frowned upon by the IRS, as well as the employee since as you discovered it costs you more money in the form of employer FICA. From your description it sounds like your employer was trying to do you a favor and didn't quite follow through with it. What they should have done was never switch you to W2 in the first place (if you really should have been a contractor), or they should have done the conversion properly without stringing you along.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "27be59dd2f4445169ef9d91862353b69", "text": "It would be unusual but it is possible that the expenses could be very high compared to your income. The IRS in pub 529 explains the deduction. You can deduct only unreimbursed employee expenses that are: Paid or incurred during your tax year, For carrying on your trade or business of being an employee, and Ordinary and necessary. An expense is ordinary if it is common and accepted in your trade, business, or profession. An expense is necessary if it is appropriate and helpful to your business. An expense doesn't have to be required to be considered necessary. The next part lists examples. I have cut the list down to highlight ones that could be large. You may be able to deduct the following items as unreimbursed employee expenses. Damages paid to a former employer for breach of an employment contract. Job search expenses in your present occupation. Legal fees related to your job. Licenses and regulatory fees. Malpractice insurance premiums. Research expenses of a college professor. Rural mail carriers' vehicle expenses. Tools and supplies used in your work. Work clothes and uniforms if required and not suitable for everyday use. Work-related education. If the term of employment was only part of the year, one or more of the these could dwarf your income for the year. Before deducting something that large be sure you can document it. I believe the IRS computers would flag the return and I wouldn't be surprised if they ask for additional proof.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cf1c0c8f4ce07239858da167fbbcade1", "text": "You can and are supposed to report self-employment income on Schedule C (or C-EZ if eligible, which a programmer likely is) even when the payer isn't required to give you 1099-MISC (or 1099-K for a payment network now). From there, after deducting permitted expenses, it flows to 1040 (for income tax) and Schedule SE (for self-employment tax). See https://www.irs.gov/individuals/self-employed for some basics and lots of useful links. If this income is large enough your tax on it will be more than $1000, you may need to make quarterly estimated payments (OR if you also have a 'day job' have that employer increase your withholding) to avoid an underpayment penalty. But if this is the first year you have significant self-employment income (or other taxable but unwithheld income like realized capital gains) and your economic/tax situation is otherwise unchanged -- i.e. you have the same (or more) payroll income with the same (or more) withholding -- then there is a 'safe harbor': if your withholding plus estimated payments this year is too low to pay this year's tax but it is enough to pay last year's tax you escape the penalty. (You still need to pay the tax due, of course, so keep the funds available for that.) At the end of the first year when you prepare your return you will see how the numbers work out and can more easily do a good estimate for the following year(s). A single-member LLC or 'S' corp is usually disregarded for tax purposes, although you can elect otherwise, while a (traditional) 'C' corp is more complicated and AIUI out-of-scope for this Stack; see https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/business-structures for more.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5cd255593318509c2eba3620efead98a", "text": "You wouldn't fill out a 1099, your employer would or possibly whoever manages the stock account. The 1099-B imported from E-Trade says I had a transaction with sell price ~$4,500. Yes. You sold ~$4500 of stock to pay income taxes. Both the cost basis and the sale price would probably be ~$4500, so no capital gain. This is because you received and sold the stock at the same time. If they waited a little, you could have had a small gain or loss. The remainder of the stock has a cost basis of ~$5500. There are at least two transactions here. In the future you may sell the remaining stock. It has a cost basis of ~$5500. Sale price of course unknown until then. You may break that into different pieces. So you might sell $500 of cost basis for $1000 with a ~$500 capital gain. Then later sell the remainder for $15,000 for a capital gain of ~$10,000.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f61047fb54b551445d857275dd22d5d3", "text": "\"These kinds of questions can be rather tricky. I've struggled with this sort of thing in the past when I had income from a hobby, and I wanted to ensure that it was indeed \"\"hobby income\"\" and I didn't need to call it \"\"self-employment\"\". Here are a few resources from the IRS: There's a lot of overlap among these resources, of course. Here's the relevant portion of Publication 535, which I think is reasonable guidance on how the IRS looks at things: In determining whether you are carrying on an activity for profit, several factors are taken into account. No one factor alone is decisive. Among the factors to consider are whether: Most of the guidance looks to be centered around what one would need to do to convince the IRS that an activity actually is a business, because then one can deduct the \"\"business expenses\"\", even if that brings the total \"\"business income\"\" negative (and I'm guessing that's a fraud problem the IRS needs to deal with more often). There's not nearly as much about how to convince the IRS that an activity isn't a business and thus can be thrown into \"\"Other Income\"\" instead of needing to pay self-employment tax. Presumably the same principles should apply going either way, though. If after reading through the information they provide, you decide in good faith that your activity is really just \"\"Other income\"\" and not \"\"a business you're in on the side\"\", I would find it likely that the IRS would agree with you if they ever questioned you on it and you provided your reasoning, assuming your reasoning is reasonable. (Though it's always possible that reasonable people could end up disagreeing on some things even given the same set of facts.) Just keep good records about what you did and why, and don't get too panicked about it once you've done your due diligence. Just file based on all the information you know.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fabde7d45795614312a71467bc92b461", "text": "\"It is legal. They're probably going to give you a 1099-MISC, which is required of businesses for many cash payments over $600 in value to all sorts of counterparties. (Probably box 3 of 1099-MISC as is typical in \"\"cash for keys\"\" situations where one is paid to vacate early) A 1099-MISC is not necessarily pure income, but in this case, you do have money coming in. This money isn't a return of your security deposit or a gift. The payment could possibly be construed by you as a payment to make you whole, but the accounting for this would be on you. This is not a typical situation for IRS reporting. However, if you are uncomfortable with potentially explaining to the IRS how you implemented advice from strangers over the internet, the safest course is to report it all as income. Look at it this way: you did enter into a mutual contract, where you were paid consideration to release your leasehold interests in the property.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "34a9082d8d05827f9fda9ec540a53c71", "text": "W9 is required for any payments. However, in your case - these are not payments, but refunds, i.e.: you're not receiving any income from the company that is subject to tax or withholding rules, you're receiving money that is yours already. I do not think they have a right to demand W9 as a condition of refund, and as Joe suggested - would dispute the charge as fraudulent.", "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": "658d4b5adf3b6766285e8e5966b9fa94", "text": "So I learned that your employer CAN force you to make employee contributions. However, this source seems to think that the mandatory employee contributions do not count against the 402(g) limit of $18,000.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3d7833f48df0b9d829546e90aeb990ef", "text": "\"I have a related issue, since I have some income which is large enough to matter and hard to predict. Start with a best guess. Check what tax bracket you were in last year and withhold that percentage of the expected non-withheld income. Adjust upward a bit, if desired, to reflect the fact that you're getting paid more at the new job. Adjust again, either up or down, to reflect whether you were over-withheld or under-withheld last year (whether the IRS owed you a refund or you had to send a check with your return). Repeat that process next year after next tax season, when you see how well your guess worked out. (You could try pre-calculating the entire tax return based on your expected income and then divide any underpayment into per-paycheck additional withholding... but I don't think it's worth the effort.) I don't worry about trying to get this exactly correct. I don't stress about lost interest if I've over-withheld a bit, and as long as your withholding was reasonably close and you have the cash float available to send them a check for the rest when it comes due, the IRS generally doesn't grumble if your withholding was a bit low. (It would be really nice if the IRS paid us interest on over-withholding, to mirror the fact that they charge us interest if we're late in returning our forms. Oh well.) Despite all the stories, the IRS really is fairly reasonable; if you aren't deliberately trying to get away with something, the process is annoying but shouldn't be scary. The one time they mail-audited me, it was several thousand dollars in my favor; I'd forgotten to claim some investment losses, and their computers noticed the error. Though I still say the motto of the next revolution will be \"\"No taxation without proper instructions!\"\"\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5d814567aa5f5a1eaf61596718a3f55d", "text": "If you didn't receive the money in 2012 or have constructive receipt you really can't claim the income. If the company is going to give you a 1099 for the work they aren't going to give you one until next year and if you claim it this year you will have a hard time explaining the income difference. On the other hand if this isn't miscellaneous income, but rather self employment income and expenses you should be able to claim the expenses in 2012 and if you have a loss that would carry over to 2013. Note it is possible to use an accrual basis if you are running a business (which would allow you to do this), but it is more complex than the cash accounting individual tax payers use.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "afbca4d29419bb73a19199c8112612b3", "text": "\"If you are in the US, you legally must file taxes on any income whatsoever. How much you will pay in taxes, if any, will depend on your total taxable income. Now, for small transactions, the payments are often not reported to the IRS so some people do not file or pay. The threshold at which they payer is required to send a 1099 to the IRS is $600. Patreon considers each donation a separate transaction and therefore does not send a 1099 to the IRS unless you make more than $20,000 in a calendar year. If they do not report it, the IRS will not know about it unless they audit you or something. However, you are technically and legally responsible to report income whether the IRS knows about it or not. -------- EDIT ------- Note that the payer files a 1099, not the recipient. In order to report your patreon income you will either use schedule C or add it to the amount on 1040 line 21 (\"\"other income\"\") depending on whether you consider this a business or a hobby. If it's a business and it's a lot of money you should consider sending in quarterly payments using a 1040-ES in order to avoid a penalty for too little withholding.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
605f98fd509e1bfad1491d2db7d9a148
My employer doesn't provide an electronic pay stub and I need one to get a car loan
[ { "docid": "632a0ece15cf3dadbd5fe45fd5f93376", "text": "You have a few options and sometimes challenges help us improve our situation. First, you can not borrow to buy a car. Reducing the massive depreciation that cars undergo will help you be wealthier. It is hard to find a good use car that you can buy for cash, but it will play out best for your finances in the long run. If your heart is set on borrowing, I would encourage you to go to the bank/credit union where you have your checking account. They will see your history of deposits and may grant you a loan based on that. Also you are likely to get a better deal from the bank than from the car dealer. Thirdly, you can simply go to your employer's HR department and ask them. Surely someone has applied for a loan during the company's history. What did they do for them?", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "b4585c86d5566947354fbb2697a2c873", "text": "You're knowingly providing a payment method which has insufficient funds to meet the terms of the contract, because you are too lazy to comply with the contract. That's unethical and fraudulent behavior. Will you get in trouble? I don't know. I'd suggest getting acquainted with an electronic calendar that can remind you to do things.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e50f6d3b54844133f771525f6a664b3b", "text": "\"Anyone can walk into a bank, say \"\"Hi, I'm a messenger, I have an endorsed check and a filled out deposit slip for Joe Blow who has an account here, please deposit this check for him, as he is incapacitated. Straight deposit.\"\" They'll fiddle on their computer, to see if they can identify the deposit account definitively, and if they can, and the check looks legit, \"\"thanks for taking care of our customer sir.\"\" Of course, getting a balance or cashback is out of the question since you are not authenticated as the customer. I have done the same with balance transfer paperwork, in that case the bank knew the customer and the balance transfer was his usual. If the friend does not have an account there, then s/he should maybe open an account at an \"\"online bank\"\" that allows deposit by snapping photos on a phone, or phone up a branch, describe her/his situation and see if they have any options. Alternately, s/he could get a PayPal account. Or get one of those \"\"credit card swipe on your phone\"\" deals like Square or PayPal Here, which have fees very close to nil, normally cards are swiped but you can hand-enter the numbers. Those are fairly easy to get even if you have troubles with creditworthiness. S/he would need to return the check to the payer and ask the payer to pay her/him one of those ways. The payer may not be able to, e.g. if they are a large corporation. A last possibility is if the check is from a large corporation with whom s/he continues to do business with. For instance, the electric company cashiers out your account after you terminate service at your old location. But then you provision service at a new location and get a new bill, you can send their check right back to them and say \"\"Please apply this to my new account\"\". If s/he is unable to get any of those because of more serious problems like being in the country illegally, then, lawful behavior has its privileges, sorry. There are lots of unbanked people, and they pay through the nose for banking services at those ghastly check-cashing places, at least in America. I don't have a good answer for how to get a check cashed in that situation.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a894bdc3aeb02c67796eae016c835cea", "text": "\"A paycheck is simply a check for your salary. It's just like a rent check, or a birthday check, or a grocery check... I've had \"\"paychecks\"\" that were personal checks from the owner of the business, I've had ones that are printed in the office I worked in and signed right there, and I've had paychecks that are printed through a third party company and mailed to me (my favorite, of course, is to forgo the \"\"paycheck\"\" entirely and get direct deposit :) ). Really, they're all just checks. Although that's a little disingenuous, because banks are often slightly more trusting of paychecks. However, this has little to do with it being a \"\"paycheck,\"\" per se, and more to do with the fact that they see you getting the same check for (roughly) the same amount on a regular basis; having seen you get a paycheck for the same amount from the same company for the last 12 months, there is less risk of the check bouncing or being returned unpaid, so you can often get banks to waive their hold policy and just give you the money.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5640f5ba637dfb74c203c5419634b3b5", "text": "A lot of companies now do credit checks before employment. They may decide that you are untrustworthy by having shoddy credit after a foreclosure/bankruptcy. The past 2 jobs I have they did a credit check. I wonder how companies use that information in the hiring process.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "69a0138a7f9ca95cd3a5d881abff6dca", "text": "No, they cannot refuse to provide you with the current balance or a balance history. The other answers point you to resources that are available to help you put pressure on the dealership. The bottom line is that you now know that you have the right to the details and to audit their recording of the transactions. You should now use that information and demand a better response in writing. If they have to give you a response in writing, they can't deny the answer they gave in a court of law later on. They understand this, and they will take you more seriously if you send a letter. Make sure to keep copies of the letter and send it with certified delivery.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "89435a96181136431689538c7ba0448b", "text": "\"The thing to recall here is that auto-pay is a convenience, not a guarantee. Auto-pay withdrawals, notices that a bill is due, all of these are niceties that the lender uses to try to make sure you consistently pay your bill on time, as all businesses enjoy steady cash flows. Now, what all of these \"\"quality of life\"\" features don't do is mitigate your responsibility, as outlined when you first took out the loan, to pay it back in a timely manner and according to the terms and conditions of the loan. If your original contract for the loan states you shall make \"\"a payment of $X.XX each calendar month\"\", then you are required to make that payment one way or another. If auto-pay fails, you are still obligated to monitor that and correct the payment to ensure you meet your contractual obligation. It's less than pleasant that they didn't notify you, but you were already aware you had an obligation to pay back the loan, and knew what the terms of the loan were. Any forgiveness of interest or penalties for late fees is entirely up to the CSR and the company's internal policies, not the law.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6aa022f401826c82028f3335f5cd8c4d", "text": "I'm going to give the checkmark to Joe, but I wanted to convey my personal experience. I bank with TD in New Jersey and was informed by the teller that I simply needed to endorse the check myself and indicate Parent of Minor. I cannot attest if other banks will accept this, but it at least works for TD and my situation in particular.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "442f6360ae50ff4b798ebf87fc1120c4", "text": "The first thing is to look at the monthly cost of the loan. The one from the company is interest free. While it is unlikely that a bank will have a zero percent loan, you will also have to look at what the seller will offer. The next thing to look at is the term of the loan. When comparing two loans with the same interest rate the shorter term loan will cost more per month. Many times when an auto dealer offers a zero percent loan they also have a very short term: 12-24 months; Many people can't afford the monthly payments with that short a term. You said you could afford to save the other $2000 in about six months. That means you could set aside $333 a month to do it in six months. If the loan from the employer has a term longer than 6 months you should be able to afford the loan. Keep in mind that the employer will probably be taking the money right out of your paychecks. You do have to look at the conditions attached to the loan. What does accepting the loan do to your employment situation? If you leave early do they want you to pay it back in 30 days, or will they take the rest from the final paycheck, or do you have longer? You do have to look at the term of the loan, and see if you can pay it off early. If they require a 12 month term can you end it earlier, or change the monthly payment to end it early? The reason why you care about the term is that if the term is 24 months then after a year you still owe them $1000; which if you have to pay back immediately if you quit, it may make it hard for you to leave the company. A minor note: They probably are not reporting it to the credit reporting agencies therefore it wont help your credit score. This is probably not a big issue since you are considering going without a loan.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "51e02e18fe8ff18b3bbd421ca9eeee5c", "text": "As a follow-up, I was able to find a bank that gave me a loan. I just called several banks listed on Yelp, and one ended up working with me. It is also possible that the previous banks misunderstood me and assumed I was 1099 and not W2. I made it very clear to this guy that I was W2, and there was absolutely no problem. Also, it turned out the recruiter I work for has special paperwork their employees can give to lenders to verify W2 employment. So, I have been in my condo since January. And, the condo was a little under $250K. Anyway, I still think it's ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS that banks would not give a loan to a web developer who is in super high demand and making well over 100K/year -- even if I am 1099. I have never, ever in my life been late on a single payment for anything, and I have an 800 credit score. To even question that I could not make payments is ludicrous. Whenever I put my resume on monster.com (just one web site), I receive about 20 phone calls daily -- and I am not exaggerating even slightly.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1b45c7e6a0aa16d13a1411268ae1350b", "text": "An auto title loans are typically utilized by those that wish to obtain a funding with bad credit rating or no credit in any way. An auto-mobile title lending frequently called a vehicle title lending or merely title funding as well as pink slip funding’s. You merely should have a vehicle that is paid off or nearly paid off and also you could make use of the auto title as security to obtain the cash money you require, enabling you to continue driving your vehicle while paying your loan. Get Auto Car Title Loans Torrance CA and nearby cities Provide Car Title Loans, Auto Title Loans, Mobile Home Title Loans, RV/Motor Home Title Loans, Big Rigs Truck Title Loans, Motor Cycle Title Loans, Online Title Loans Near me, Bad Credit Loans, Personal Loans, Quick cash Loans Contact Us: Get Auto Car Title Loans Torrance CA 1148 W Clarion Dr, Torrance, CA 90502 Phone : 424-306-1531 Email : [email protected] http://getautotitleloans.com/car-and-auto-title-loans-torrance-ca", "title": "" }, { "docid": "63792b296af0765c2debb64c8e9bc54d", "text": "A traditional bank is not likely to give you a loan if you have no source of income. Credit card application forms also ask for your current income level and may reject you based on not having a job. You might want to make a list of income and expenses and look closely at which expenses can be reduced or eliminated. Use 6 months of your actual bills to calculate this list. Also make a list of your assets and liabilities. A sheet that lists income/expenses and assets/liabilities is called a Financial Statement. This is the most basic tool you'll need to get your expenses under control. There are many other options for raising capital to pay for your monthly expenses: Sell off your possessions that you no longer need or can't afford Ask for short term loan help from family and friends Advertise for short term loan help on websites such as Kijiji Start a part-time business doing something that you like and people need. Tutoring, dog-walking, photography, you make the list and pick from it. Look into unemployment insurance. Apply as soon as you are out of work. The folks at the unemployment office are willing to answer all your questions and help you get what you need. Dip into your retirement fund. To reduce your expenses, here are a few things you may not have considered: If you own your home, make an appointment with your bank to discuss renegotiation of your mortgage payments. The bank will be more interested in helping you before you start missing payments than after. Depending on how much equity you have in your home, you may be able to significantly reduce payments by extending the life of the mortgage. Your banker will be impressed if you can bring them a balance sheet that shows your assets, liabilities, income and expenses. As above, for car payments as well. Call your phone, cable, credit card, and internet service providers and tell them you want to cancel your service. This will immediately connect you to Customer Retention. Let them know that you are having a hard time paying your bill and will either have to negotiate a lower payment or cancel the service. This tactic can significantly reduce your payments. When you have your new job, there are some things you can do to make sure this doesn't happen again: Set aside 10% of your income in a savings account. Have it automatically deducted from your income at source if you can. 75% of Americans are 4 weeks away from bankruptcy. You can avoid this by forcing yourself to save enough to manage your household finances for 3 - 6 months, a year is better. If you own your own home, take out a line of credit against it based on the available equity. Your bank can help you with that. It won't cost you anything as long as you don't use it. This is emergency money; do not use it for vacations or car repairs. There will always be little emergencies in life, this line of credit is not for that. Pay off your credit cards and loans, most expensive rate first. Use 10% of your income to do this. When the first one is paid off, use the 10% plus the interest you are now saving to pay off the next most expensive card/loan. Create a budget you can stick to. You can find a great budget calculator here: http://www.gailvazoxlade.com/resources/interactive_budget_worksheet.html Note I have no affiliation with the above-mentioned site, and have a great respect for this woman's ability to teach people about how to handle money.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ee5f6b1e55b3705774b05f716500f72a", "text": "Just tell the buyer that there is a lien and explain the situation. Give them the car with a bill of sale after they buy the car from you. They can get a temporary tag at least in the State of Florida during this period of time. Take the buyer's money and deposit the check. Pay off your loan. Ask your bank to expedite the electronic title by paying a fee. I did this in March 2012 with no hassle at all. I was the seller. Some buyers may balk at this idea so just keep this in mind.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "37c92235ba646978f24e7933ffa9da44", "text": "No, we did not apply for the loan. So, this is why we thought it was a bit strange a company just sending you a real check for $30K. It does not say anywhere in big red letters that it is a loan. Probably something in very small letters on a back of a paper. This is really horrible. Especially,if your customers do pay you by check and small business relies on online statement to determine who paid what. I can easily imagine a small outfit that just takes all the checks to the bank, cash them, and then use online statement to update their books. I do not see how it is helpful to businesses to receive pre-approved credit that is so poorly marked. Especially in the age of electronic transfers!!! I am trying to understand why I feel so offended by this, and I guess it all comes down to disgust: I refuse to believe that any serious company would use these sort of tactics and instead of us spending more time developing a better product, we have to put more time and effort into ensuring we do not fall victim to this.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "83d700ae94fb9917fc1904ecdd1d0877", "text": "\"If you're really interested in the long-term success of your business, and you can get by in your personal finances without taking anything from the business for the time being, then don't. There is no \"\"legal requirement\"\" to pay yourself a prevailing wage if doing so would put the company out of business. it is common for a company's principals not to draw wages from the business until it is viable enough to sustain payroll. I was in that situation when I first began my business, so the notion that somehow I'm violating a law by being fiscally responsible for my own company is nonsense. Be wise with your new business. You didn't state why you feel the need to take some kind of payment out, but this can be a crucial mistake if it imperils your business or if that money could be better spent on marketing or some other areas which improve revenues. You can always create a salary deferral agreement between yourself and your own company which basically states that the company owes you wages but you are, for the time being, willing to defer accepting them until such time that the company has sufficient revenues to pay you. That's one solution, but the simplest answer is, if you don't need the money you're thinking of paying yourself, don't do it. Let that money work for you in the business so that it pays off better in the long run. Good luck!\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f1b045c543a90f25c4cfb615618dd4e6", "text": "I don't know, ask the various companies I'm forced to do business with why in the hell they want me to stop by their office so I can drop a check off vs just using some means of digital payment. I would fucking LOVE to ditch paper checks.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
1fd3e4540a8230043a6deb0c62243b70
In your 20s how much money should you have and how to properly use & manage it?
[ { "docid": "e52bc2668eb149758d54afde4e70f428", "text": "You need a budget. You need to know how much you make and how much you spend. How much you earn and what you choose to spend you money on is your choice. You have your own tolerance for risk and your own taste and style, so lifestyle and what you own isn't something that we can answer. The key to your budget is to really understand where you money goes. Maybe you are the sort of person who needs to know down to the penny, maybe you are a person who rounds off. Either way you should have some idea. How should I make a budget? and How can I come up with a good personal (daily) budget? Once you know what you budget is, here are some pretty standard steps to get started. Each point is a full question in of itself, but these are to give you a place to start thinking and learning. You might have other priorities like a charity or other organizations that go into your priority like. Regardless of your career path and salary, you will need a budget to understand where you money is, where it goes, and how you can reach your goals and which goals are reasonable to have.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9f74e0f2510e2c556ac7aaa5dbe9e819", "text": "\"If you are just barely scraping by on your current income, then you shouldn't be thinking about buying a car or house unless you can present (at least to yourself) clear evidence that doing so will actually lower your monthly expenses. Yes, there are times when even buying depreciating assets such as a car can lower your expenses, but you need to think hard about whether that is the case or if it is just something you want to get because you feel you \"\"should\"\". Remember the old adage that rich people buy themselves income streams (investments that either earn money or reduce expenses), while poor people buy expenses. If you are in the situation of barely scraping by on your current income, then the first step in my mind is to find out exactly what you are spending your money on (do this for a month or two, and then try to include non-regular or rarely-occuring bills such as subscriptions, insurance, perhaps utilities, and so on). Once you know where your money is going right now, outline that in a budget. At this point, you aren't judging your spending, but rather simply looking at the facts. Once you have a decent idea of where your money is going, only then try to think about what you can cut back on. Some things will be easier than others to change (it's much easier to cancel a premium TV channels package than to move to cheaper living quarters, for example, although in some cases simply picking the low-hanging fruit alone won't help you). Make a revised budget for the next month based on the new numbers, and try to live by it. Keep writing down what you actually spend your money on, then rinse and repeat. (Of course, you can make a budget for whatever period of time works for you; if you get paid every two weeks, budgeting per two weeks might be easier than budgeting per month.) The bottom line is that a budget is useless without a follow-up process to see how well your spending actually matches the budgeted amounts, so you need to spend some time following up on it and making adjustments. No budget will ever match reality exactly; think of the budget as a map, not a footstep-by-footstep guide for getting from A to B. When you find some wiggle room in your budget (for example, let's say you decide to cancel the premium TV channels package you got some time ago because it turns out you aren't watching much TV anyway), don't put that money into a \"\"discretionary spending\"\" category. There is an old rule in personal finance that says pay yourself first. If you are able to find $5/month of wiggle room, put it into savings of some kind. If you are unsure what kind of savings vehicle you should use, I'd suggest starting off with a simple savings account; it certainly won't earn you a great return (you'll be lucky if you can keep up with inflation), but it will get you into the habit of saving which at this point is a lot more important. And make that savings transfer as soon as the money hits your account. If you can, get the depositor to put a portion of your income directly into the savings account; if you cannot, make the transfer yourself immediately afterwards. And try to force yourself to live with the money that's left, not touching the savings account. Ideally, you should save a decent fraction of your income - I've seen figures everywhere from 10% to 25% of your after-tax income recommended by various people - and start out by budgeting that to savings and then working with whatever is left. In practice, saving anything and putting the money anywhere is much better than saving nothing. Just make sure that the savings are liquid (easy to convert to cash and withdraw without a penalty, should the need arise), set up a regular bank transfer for whatever amount you can find in that budget, and try to forget about it until you get the bank statement for the savings account and get that warm, fuzzy feeling for actually having a decent amount of money set aside should something ever happen making you need it. Then, later, you can decide whether to use the money to buy a car, start a company, take early retirement, or something entirely different. Having the money will give you the options, and you can decide what is more important to you yourself. Just keep on saving.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "af223850d5c390d6a986d4bdb93cfedf", "text": "Establish good saving and spending habits. Build up your savings so that when you do buy a car, you can pay cash. Make spending decisions, especially for housing, transportation and entertainment, that allow you to save a substantial portion of your income. The goal is to get yourself to a place where you have enough net worth that the return on your assets is greater than the amount you can earn by working. (BTW, this is basically what I did. I put my two sons through top colleges on my dime and retired six years ago at the age of 56).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c2c923b73acb20d13c877daff38b68aa", "text": "\"I disagree with the selected answer. There's no one rule of thumb and certainly not simple ones like \"\"20 cents of every dollar if you're 35\"\". You've made a good start by making a budget of your expected expenses. If you read the Mr. Money Mustache blogpost titled The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement, you will understand that it is usually a mistake to think of your expenses as a fixed percentage of your income. In most cases, it makes more sense to keep your expenses as low as possible, regardless of your actual income. In the financial independence community, it is a common principle that one typically needs 25-30 times one's annual spending to have enough money to sustain oneself forever off the investment returns that those savings generate (this is based on the assumption of a 7% average annual return, 4% after inflation). So the real answer to your question is this: UPDATE Keats brought to my attention that this formula doesn't work that well when the savings rates are low (20% range). This is because it assumes that money you save earns no returns for the entire period that you are saving. This is obviously not true; investment returns should also count toward your 25-times annual spending goal. For that reason, it's probably better to refer to the blog post that I linked to in the answer above for precise calculations. That's where I got the \"\"37 years at 20% savings rate\"\" figure from. Depending on how large and small x and y are, you could have enough saved up to retire in 7 years (at a 75% savings rate), 17 years (at a 50% savings rate), or 37 years! (at the suggested 20% savings rate for 35-year olds). As you go through life, your expenses may increase (eg. starting a family, starting a new business, unexpected health event etc) or decrease (kid wins full scholarship to college). So could your income. However, in general, you should negotiate the highest salary possible (if you are salaried), use the 25x rule, and consider your life and career goals to decide how much you want to save. And stop thinking of expenses as a percentage of income.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4c00e188521bb82ead41c19c72e51825", "text": "\"Aggressiveness in a retirement portfolio is usually a function of your age and your risk tolerance. Your portfolio is usually a mix of the following asset classes: You can break down these asset classes further, but each one is a topic unto itself. If you are young, you want to invest in things that have a higher return, but are more volatile, because market fluctuations (like the current financial meltdown) will be long gone before you reach retirement age. This means that at a younger age, you should be investing more in stocks and foreign/developing countries. If you are older, you need to be into more conservative investments (bonds, money market, etc). If you were in your 50s-60s and still heavily invested in stock, something like the current financial crisis could have ruined your retirement plans. (A lot of baby boomers learned this the hard way.) For most of your life, you will probably be somewhere in between these two. Start aggressive, and gradually get more conservative as you get older. You will probably need to re-check your asset allocation once every 5 years or so. As for how much of each investment class, there are no hard and fast rules. The idea is to maximize return while accepting a certain amount of risk. There are two big unknowns in there: (1) how much return do you expect from the various investments, and (2) how much risk are you willing to accept. #1 is a big guess, and #2 is personal opinion. A general portfolio guideline is \"\"100 minus your age\"\". This means if you are 20, you should have 80% of your retirement portfolio in stocks. If you are 60, your retirement portfolio should be 40% stock. Over the years, the \"\"100\"\" number has varied. Some financial advisor types have suggested \"\"150\"\" or \"\"200\"\". Unfortunately, that's why a lot of baby boomers can't retire now. Above all, re-balance your portfolio regularly. At least once a year, perhaps quarterly if the market is going wild. Make sure you are still in-line with your desired asset allocation. If the stock market tanks and you are under-invested in stocks, buy more stock, selling off other funds if necessary. (I've read interviews with fund managers who say failure to rebalance in a down stock market is one of the big mistakes people make when managing a retirement portfolio.) As for specific mutual fund suggestions, I'm not going to do that, because it depends on what your 401k or IRA has available as investment options. I do suggest that your focus on selecting a \"\"passive\"\" index fund, not an actively managed fund with a high expense ratio. Personally, I like \"\"total market\"\" funds to give you the broadest allocation of small and big companies. (This makes your question about large/small cap stocks moot.) The next best choice would be an S&P 500 index fund. You should also be able to find a low-cost Bond Index Fund that will give you a healthy mix of different bond types. However, you need to look at expense ratios to make an informed decision. A better-performing fund is pointless if you lose it all to fees! Also, watch out for overlap between your fund choices. Investing in both a Total Market fund, and an S&P 500 fund undermines the idea of a diversified portfolio. An aggressive portfolio usually includes some Foreign/Developing Nation investments. There aren't many index fund options here, so you may have to go with an actively-managed fund (with a much higher expense ratio). However, this kind of investment can be worth it to take advantage of the economic growth in places like China. http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2009/04/27/how-to-create-your-own-target-date-mutual-fund/\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dd0dd85bad94d6fbb950e2764c032786", "text": "\"I posted a comment in another answer and it seems to be approved by others, so I have converted this into an answer. If you're talking about young adults who just graduated college and worked through it. I would recommend you tell them to keep the same budget as what they were living on before they got a full-time job. This way, as far as their spending habits go, nothing changes since they only have a $500 budget (random figure) and everything else goes into savings and investments. If as a student you made $500/month and you suddenly get $2000/month, that's a lot of money you get to blow on drinks. Now, if you put $500 in savings (until 6-12 month of living expenses), $500 in investments for the long run and $500 in vacation funds or \"\"big expenses\"\" funds (Ideally with a cap and dump the extra in investments). That's $18,000/yr you are saving. At this stage in your life, you have not gotten used to spending that extra $18,000/yr. Don't touch the side money except for the vacation fund when you want to treat yourself. Your friends will call you cheap, but that's not your problem. Take that head start and build that down payment on your dream house. The way I set it up, is (in this case) I have automatics every day after my paychecks come in for the set amounts. I never see it, but I need to make sure I have the money in there. Note: Numbers are there for the sake of simplicity. Adjust accordingly. PS: This is anecdotal evidence that has worked for me. Parents taught me this philosophy and it has worked wonders for me. This is the extent of my financial wisdom.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "43e29fa4421236af230cf2f47a04c70e", "text": "\"I would like to add my accolades in saving $3000, it is an accomplishment that the majority of US households are unable to achieve. source While it is something, in some ways it is hardly anything. Working part time at a entry level job will earn you almost three times this amount per year, and with the same job you can earn about as much in two weeks as this investment is likely to earn, in the market in one year. All this leads to one thing: At your age you should be looking to increase your income. No matter if it is college or a high paying trade, whatever you can do to increase your life time earning potential would be the best investment for this money. I would advocate a more patient approach. Stick the money in the bank until you complete your education enough for an \"\"adult job\"\". Use it, if needed, for training to get that adult job. Get a car, a place of your own, and a sufficient enough wardrobe. Save an emergency fund. Then invest with impunity. Imagine two versions of yourself. One with basic education, a average to below average salary, that uses this money to invest in the stock market. Eventually that money will be needed and it will probably be pulled out of the market at an in opportune time. It might worth less than the original 3K! Now imagine a second version of yourself that has an above average salary due to some good education or training. Perhaps that 3K was used to help provide that education. However, this second version will probably earn 25,000 to 75,000 per year then the first version. Which one do you want to be? Which one do you think will be wealthier? Better educated people not only earn more, they are out of work less. You may want to look at this chart.\"", "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": "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": "54572d665f17daa6265547ad4047434a", "text": "\"Money management is data-driven. You've been operating on \"\"how you feel\"\" and \"\"what should be\"\", and that's why it hasn't been working. First you collect data on how you actually are spending money. Record every expenditure and categorize what it was used for. Go back 6-12 months if you can. You don't need blistering detail, in fact I adjusted my lifestyle to make that easy. Fast food meals, movie tickets, USB cables, anything too small to bother recording, I just pay cash for that. Everything else: check, ACH or credit card. It is not excessive to do it in Quickbooks or similar if you know the app. Whatever is most efficient for you. Now you have a log of what you've been spending on what in a time oeriod, and a log of your income. Congratulations, you have a \"\"Profit & Loss Statement\"\", a basic financial planning tool. Now you can look at it accurately, decide if the money you are spending in each department brings the value and joy that fits the expenditure, and change what you want. You may decide you'd rather save $1000/mo than run a $200/mo deficit. Changing is simply coming up with different numbers that you think are achievable. Congratulations, you have a budget or spending plan. Again, data driven. The point is, your spending plan is based on your actual experience with past expenditures, not blind-guessing. Then, go out and make it happen.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "996b732e38a70f90a62d98cbc95f0edd", "text": "A person who always saves and appropriately invests 20% of their income can expect to have a secure retirement. If you start early enough, you don't need anything close to 20%. Now, there are many good reasons to save for things other than just retirement, of course. You say that you can save 80% of your income, and you expect most people could save at least 50% without problems. That's just unrealistic for most people. Taxes, rent (or mortgage payments), utilities, food, and other such mandatory expenses take far more than 50% of your income. Most people simply don't have the ability to save (or invest) 50% of their income. Or even 25% of their income.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e1ac63c2ee53b60ddd1be6b29be37ba6", "text": "\"but there's that risk of me simply logging on to my online banking and transferring extra cash over if I cave in. Yep, there's no reasonable substitute for self-control. You could pay someone else to manage your money and dole out an allowance for your discretionary spending, but that's not reasonable for most people. Your money will be accessible to you, you don't need it inaccessible, you need to change the way you think about your available money. Many people struggle with turning a corner when it comes to saving, a tool that helps many is a proper budget. Plan ahead how all of your money will be used, including entertainment. If you want to spend £200/month on entertainment, then plan for it in a budget, and track your spending to help keep within that budget. It's a discipline thing, but a budget makes it easier to be disciplined, having a defined plan makes it easier to say \"\"I can't\"\" rather than \"\"I shouldn't, but... okay!\"\" There are many budgeting tools, just pick one that has you planning how all your money is spent, you want to be proactive and plan for saving, not hoping you have some leftover at the end of the month. Here's a good article on How and Why to Use a Zero-Sum Budget. Some people have envelopes of cash for various budget items, and that can be helpful if you struggle to stick to your budget, once the entertainment envelope is empty, you can't spend on entertainment until next month, but it won't stop you from blowing the budget by just getting more cash, as you mentioned.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "343d01b5f2726763ff0f0cd166d76d57", "text": "\"I'm still recommending that you go to a professional. However, I'm going to talk about what you should probably expect the professional to be telling you. These are generalities. It sounds like you're going to keep working for a while. (If nothing else, it'll stave off boredom.) If that's the case, and you don't touch that $1.4 million otherwise, you're pretty much set for retirement and never need to save another penny, and you can afford to treat your girl to a nice dinner on the rest of your income. If you're going to buy expensive things, though - like California real estate and boats and fancy cars and college educations and small businesses - you can dip into that money but things will get trickier. If not, then it's a question of \"\"how do I structure my savings?\"\". A typical structure: Anywho. If you can research general principles in advance, you'll be better prepared.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e256880a79a54701a562389d0a2fd2ab", "text": "If you spent your whole life earning the same portfolio that amounts $20,000, the variance and volatility of watching your life savings drop to $10,000 overnight has a greater consequence than for someone who is young. This is why riskier portfolios aren't advised for older people closer to or within retirement age, the obvious complementary group being younger people who could lose more with lesser permanent consequence. Your high risk investment choices have nothing to do with your ability to manage other people's money, unless you fail to make a noteworthy investment return, then your high risk approach will be the death knell to your fund managing aspirations.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "482d51606548f12a512f4ea8051c8227", "text": "Your attitude is great, but be careful to temper your (awesome) ambition with a dose of reality. Saving is investing is great, the earlier the better, and seeing retirement at a young age with smooth lots of life's troubles; saving is smart and we all know it. But as a college junior, be honest with yourself. Don't you want to screw around and play with some of that money? Your first time with real income, don't you want to blow it on a big TV, vacation, or computer? Budget out those items with realistic costs. See the pros and cons of spending that money keeping in mind the opportunity cost. For example, when I was in college, getting a new laptop for $2000 (!) was easily more important to me than retirement. I don't regret that. I do regret buying my new truck too soon and borrowing money to do it. These are judgment calls. Here is the classic recipe: Adjust the numbers or businesses to your personal preferences. I threw out suggestions so you can research them and get an idea of what to compare. And most importantly of all. DO NOT GET INTO CREDIT CARD DEBT. Use credit if you wish, but do not carry a balance.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dd019320e6613b5bc253cc262b746579", "text": "First, as Dheer mentioned above, there is no right answer as investment avenues for a person is dicteted by many subjective considerations. Given that below a few of my thoughts (strictly thoughts): 1) Have a plan for how much money you would need in next 5-7 years, one hint is, do you plan you buy a house, car, get married ... Try to project this requirement 2) Related to the above, if you have some idea on point 1, then it would be possible for you to determine how much you need to save now to achieve the above (possibly with a loan thrown in). It will also give you some indication as to where and how much of your current cash holding that you should invest now 3) From an investment perspective there are many instruments, some more risky some less. The exact mix of instruments that you should consider is based on many things, one among them is your risk apetite and fund requirement projections 4) Usually (not as a rule of thumb) the % of savings corresponding to your age should go into low risk investments and 100-the % into higher risk investment 5) You could talk to some professional invetment planners, all banks offer the service Hope this helps, I reiterate as Dheer did, there is truely no right answer for your question all the answers would be rather contextual.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b11df8886bfc15acff79643c963ad347", "text": "\"You ask a few different, though not unrelated, questions. Everywhere you turn today, you hear people talk about how much they need to save or how important it is to find a good deal on things \"\"in this economy\"\". They use phrases like \"\"now more than ever\"\" and \"\"in these uncertain times\"\". It seems to be a lot of doom and gloom. Some of this is marketing spiel. You may notice that when the economy goes south the number of ads for the cheaper alternatives goes north. (e.g. hair clippers, discount grocery stores, discount just about anything) Truth is, we should always be looking for ways to save money on goods and services we purchase. The question is, what is acceptable to you for your desired lifestyle. (And, is that desired lifestyle reasonable for your income, age and personal situation.) Generally speaking, the harder times are the more we find discounted/cheaper alternatives acceptable. Is there really a good reason that people should be saving more than spending right now? How much you are putting away is a personal matter. I can still remember my dad griping whenever he couldn't save half of his paycheck. That said, putting away half your paycheck may lead to a rather austere lifestyle. This, of course, depends on the size of your paycheck and your desired lifestyle. You could be raking it, living simply and potentially put away more than half your income with relative ease. If you have a stable job, and a decent cash reserve, is it anymore \"\"dangerous\"\" to make a large purchase now than it was seven years ago? Who knows? Honestly, no one. Predicting the future is a fool's errand. (If you are interested in reading more on this view point, I suggest The Black Swan.) You mention the correct approach in this question. Ensure that you have liquid assets (cash or cash equivalents, i.e. money that you can draw on immediately and isn't credit) which covers at least 3-6 months of your necessary expenses (rent/mortgage, bills, car payments, food). (There is no reason that you couldn't try to increase this to 1 year, especially \"\"in this economy.\"\") You should also strive to have money available for emergencies that don't necessarily include loss of income. Of course, make sure you're putting away for retirement, as appropriate for your retirement goals. After that should come discretionary items, including investing, entertainment, the large purchase you mentioned, etc. You should never use money that you may need immediately (5-10 years) for investing. This doesn't necessarily include the large purchase you are contemplating. For example, if you are considering purchasing a home, the down-payment may be one of the items for which you need money in the \"\"immediate\"\" future. Is it really only because of unemployment numbers? This is probably the big one that is the focus of everyone's attention. That said, the human attention span is limited. We have a natural need to simplify things. This is one of the reasons that we tend to focus on a few, hopefully important, things. However, the unemployment numbers are not that the only thing of concern. Credit is still pretty hard to come by these days. The overall economy is still hurting, even if we are technically no longer in a recession. There are also concerns about U.S. government borrowing, consumer spending, recent trucking numbers, etc. (It may not be obvious, but trucking is used as a barometer of economic activity. If there aren't as many trucks carting goods across the country, it probably means that there is less economic activity.) The headline number these days is unemployment, as most census workers have now been returned to the pool. To answer the overall question, we should always be saving money, in good times or in bad. Be that by squeezing more value out of our purchases or by putting some money away. We should always try to reduce our risks, by having an emergency \"\"cash\"\" cushion. We should always be saving for retirement. Truth be told, it is probably more important to put money away in good times, before the hardships hit.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
b2f5acc645fa3fd51bafb3cbff2fc91a
Credit Card Points from Refund
[ { "docid": "e138d48bd150ef9c9d160460027a7c44", "text": "Because your friend isn't going to like the ~2% charge they have to pay to the credit card company on the $10,000 purchase. Credit card companies make money off of transactions. The cardholder normally doesn't pay any transaction fees (and in fact can make a profit via rewards), but the merchant has to pay a certain amount of money to the credit card company for the transaction. In this case, the apartment owners ate the charge, likely because it was easier for them to send a check than to refund the cost of the fee through the credit card company. If you started doing this a lot to take advantage of this, I would imagine they would get smart and refuse your business (it'll be pretty obvious what you're doing if you're not signing any leases).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "22d806018b64100f766b4cb2237967d7", "text": "That transaction probably cost the merchant $0.50 + 3% or close to $5. They should have refunded your credit card so they could have recouped some of the fees. (I imagine that's why big-box retailers like Home Depot always prefer to put it back on your card than give you store credit) Consider yourself lucky you made out with $0.15 this time. (Had they refunded your card, the 1% of $150 credit would have gone against next month's reward) Once upon a time folks were buying money from the US Mint by the tens of thousands $ range and receiving credit card rewards, then depositing the money to pay it off.. They figured that out and put a stop to it.", "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": "324dec77ef8d8f5f9ab800ddf5fdd5be", "text": "Some credit card rewards programs will not give you rewards for balances paid off early. I have a Capitol One Platinum card, and once paid off the full balance; both the full amount due for the recently ended billing period, and the amount that had accrued for the current billing period. I never received any reward points for the additional amount. Though this sounds like it's paying even earlier than you're talking about.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c2aca31aee9480b820d042d7aafb6474", "text": "Dumb Coder has already given you a link to a website that explains your rights. The only thing that remains is how to execute the return without getting more grief from the dealer. Though the legal aspects are different, I believe the principle is the same. I had a case where I had to rescind the sale of a vehicle in the US. I was within my legal rights to do so, but I knew that when I returned to the dealership they would not be pleased with my decision. I executed my plan by writing a letter announcing my intention to return the vehicle siting the relevant laws involved with a space at the bottom of the letter for the sales person to acknowledge receipt of the letter and indicate that there was no visible damage to the car when the vehicle was returned. I printed two copies of the letter, one for them to keep, and one for me to keep with the signed acknowledgement of receipt. As expected, they asked me to meet with the finance manager who told me that I wouldn't be able to return the car. I thanked him for meeting with me and told him that I would be happy to meet in court if I didn't receive a check within 7 days. (That was his obligation under the local laws that applied.)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e8ac7c336553d8cc5346b8e340e22fd2", "text": "\"A bona-fide company never needs your credit card details, certainly not your 3-digit-on-back-of-card #, to issue a refund. On an older charge, they might have to work with their merchant provider. But they should be able to do it within the credit card handling system, and in fact are required to. Asking for details via email doesn't pass the \"\"sniff test\"\" either. To get a credit card merchant account, a company needs to go through a security assessment process called PCI-DSS. Security gets drummed into you pretty good. Of course they could be using one of the dumbed-down services like Square, but those services make refunds ridiculously easy. How did you come to be corresponding on this email address? Did they initially contact you? Did you find it on a third party website? Some of those are fraudulent and many others, like Yelp, it's very easy to insert false contact information for a business. Consumer forums, even moreso. You might take another swing at finding a proper contact for the company. Stop asking for a cheque. That also circumvents the credit card system. And obviously a scammer won't send a check... at least not one you'd want! If all else fails: call your bank and tell them you want to do a chargeback on that transaction. This is where the bank intervenes to reverse the charge. It's rather straightforward (especially if the merchant has agreed in principle to a refund) but requires some paperwork or e-paperwork. Don't chargeback lightly. Don't use it casually or out of laziness or unwillingness to speak with the merchant, e.g. to cancel an order. The bank charges the merchant a $20 or larger investigation fee, separate from the refund. Each chargeback is also a \"\"strike\"\"; too many \"\"strikes\"\" and the merchant is barred from taking credit cards. It's serious business. As a merchant, I would never send a cheque to an angry customer. Because if I did, they'd cash the cheque and still do a chargeback, so then I'd be out the money twice, plus the investigation fee to boot.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7c3f579b87cbfc4c757f73a01266ff8a", "text": "\"(I agree with the answers above; would just like to make a couple of additional points.) It's a good and simple strategy to try it out with a small amount as suggested by @JoeTaxpayer♦. It's also generally safe to assert that card issuers currently don't receive or actively look at itemized transaction details. But that does not mean they cannot in the future. Some stores utilize level 3 data processing, which tells the card issuers exactly what you bought in a transaction. An example of level 3 data being utilized to reject rewards is with Discover, which announced a 10% cashback reward for any transactions made with Apple Pay last year. It later introduced an additional term to exclude gift card purchases. And this has been verified to be effective - no more reward on gift card purchases; clawback of cashback on existing gift card transactions. As far as I know, Amex does receive and look at some level 3 data retrospectively. That does not necessarily mean they will claw back your cashback after initially rewarding the 6%. But it might show up if you ever trigger an account review, and be used as evidence of your \"\"abuse\"\" of the program (which BTW is defined rather subjectively). There has been many cases of account shutdowns because of this. Card issuers are also trying to do a better job preventing \"\"abuses\"\" by proactively setting caps on rewards (as opposed to closing those accounts afterwards and taking the rewards away altogether). Given the trend in recent years, I have to speculate that at some point the card issuers would put clear language in the terms against gift card purchase and enforce it effectively (if they haven't already). This reward game is constantly changing. It's good while it lasts. Just be prepared and don't get surprised when things go south.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9f81f51f5862d9a2b8d785002aca6a28", "text": "Usually points have different value depending on what you use it for and how much of them you convert. For many providers, if you have enough (10000+ usually) points, it is possible to convert them 1:1 (which means 1 point converted to 1 cent) to either cash or something that is almost as good as cash ($100 gift card for some popular store or $100 Amazon.com certificate, etc.). Some cards have more exotic ways of getting best value - such as transferring money to pay student loans, retirement accounts, etc. So to get the best value, I'd recommend to make a list of what you can get from your program (most types of reward are uniform - i.e., many gift cards with the same price, so the work may be less than it seems) and calculate point values of each of those. If you want to be really precise take into account that if you buy something with points, you do not earn points on that, which reduces the value a little. In general, these days it is very rare to get a card that produces more than 1% back, though some have up to 5% for certain categories of purchases.", "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": "0e099e701dd6df16a91d3ffbb155fbb2", "text": "I would behave exactly as I would expect it from others. If you were the one giving away too many points by accident you would be thankful if somebody notifies you about this error. You can write a letter or call them. I would not use the points (of course only not use the points which are added in error). Other options are possible but I would advise against them. It's just about fair play and the points are clearly not yours.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d7ced92773d31e6a383a1fca45b76489", "text": "It will be considered 'unused credit'. I have tried it yeas ago. They just report zero usage.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7dcbbcc78bd1561999720f4fd276ad02", "text": "Yeah I have credit cards now but his credit line got me jumped up from maybe a 200 to a 650 in a few months or a year or so. My bad I figured I posted it in the wrong sub! So if he cancels it, will this cause me to lose points? Considering the credit line is about 20K?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "14a5c1fa8ba40025c86bfdd6cf559442", "text": "If you ended at your second paragraph, no. It's simply a refund of your own money. Same as any time I get any cash back, whether due to a credit card reward program or price match. But. Your 4th paragraph changes this. Yes, you owe tax, as it's clearly not your own money coming back. Even barter income is taxable. Per the new comments appearing, this is not a case of bartering. I cited bartering as an understandable example of when there's no cash and yet, tax is owed. In this situation, value is received, and it counts as income similar to the barter situations. Just because the value isn't in cash doesn't negate the tax due. I'd rhetorically ask how OP pays his rent/mortgage, utilities, cell phone bill, etc. The answer is simple, non-traditional income, as OP puts it, has a tax due.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "39ce77a9a6f73da8194f996943405e13", "text": "\"It's very straightforward for an honest vendor to refund the charge, and the transaction only costs him a few pennies at most. If you initiate a chargeback, the merchant is immediately charged an irreversible fee of about $20 simply as an administrative fee. He'll also have to refund the charge if it's reversed. To an honest merchant who would've happily refunded you, it's unfair and hurtful. In any case, now that he's out-of-pocket on the administrative fee, his best bet is to fight the chargeback - since he's already paid for the privilege to fight. Also, a chargeback is a \"\"strike\"\" against the merchant. If his chargeback rate is higher than the norm in his industry, they may raise his fees, or ban him entirely from taking Visa/MC. For a small merchant doing a small volume, a single chargeback can have an impact on his overall chargeback rate. The \"\"threshold of proof\"\" for a chargeback varies by patterns of fraud and the merchant's ability to recover. If you bought something readily fungible to cash - like a gift card, casino chips, concert tickets etc., forget it. Likewise if you already extracted the value (last month's Netflix bill). Credit card chargeback only withdraws a payment method. Your bill is still due and payable. The merchant is within his rights to \"\"dun\"\" you for payment and send you to collections or court. Most merchants don't bother, because they know it'll be a fight, an unpleasant distraction and bad for business. But they'd be within their rights. Working with the merchant to settle the matter is a final resolution.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "722cfe37451e536106593be9c7467805", "text": "\"Summary: The corporation pays 33.3% tax on dividends it receives and gets a tax refund at the same rate when it pays dividends out. According to http://www.kpmg.com/Ca/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/TaxRates/Federal-and-Provincial-Territorial-Tax-Rates-for-Income-Earned-CCPC-2015-Dec-31.pdf the corporate tax rates for 2015 are: According to page 3: The federal and provincial tax rates shown in the tables apply to investment income earned by a CCPC, other than capital gains and dividends received from Canadian corporations. The rates that apply to capital gains are one-half of the rates shown in the tables. Dividends received from Canadian corporations are deductible in computing regular Part I tax, but may be subject to Part IV tax, calculated at a rate of 33 1/3%. If I understand that correctly, this means that a Corporation in Quebec pays 46.6% on investment income other than capital gains and dividends, 23.3% on capital gains and 33.33% on dividends. I'm marking this answer as community wiki so anyone can correct these numbers if they are incorrect. UPDATE: According to http://www.pwc.com/ca/en/tax/publications/pwc-facts-figures-2014-07-en.pdf page 22 the tax rate on taxable dividends received from certain Canadian corporations is 33 1/3%. Further, this is refunded to the corporation through the \"\"refundable dividend tax on hand\"\" (RDTOH) mechanism at a rate of $1 for every $3 of taxable dividends paid. My interpretation is as follows: if the corporation receives $100 of dividends from another company, it pays $33.33 tax. If that corporation then pays out $100 of dividends at a later time, it receives a tax refund of $33.33. Meaning, the original tax gets refunded. Note the first line is for the 2015 tax year while the second link is for the 2014 tax year. The numbers might be a little different but the tax/refund process remains the same.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "51a06b58ceff505de3b8ec804f3a9604", "text": "The point of a chargeback is to force merchants to do the paperwork. Many merchants don't, and are easy targets for chargebacks, even when they have, in fact, provided the good or service. You used a tax prep service. They may have given you poor (technical) advice, but such firms are usually very good about doing the paperwork. That's why you lost.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "985816976e0c1eedbb681adf9708ede7", "text": "You are, somewhat hysterically, a creditor. Babies R Us owes you. As such, you have *some* sort of claim. Now, Toys R Us is undergoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which means the company *isn't* going away into the dust from whence it came. At least not yet. You should be able to either utilize the credit still at stores. Converting to cash may depend on how you hold the credit. Is it on account with the store, or is it through gift cards or something? You can certainly sell the gift cards. You may sell at face value or, possibly, at a discount. If you don't have gift cards, you can use the credit to purchase merchandise and then sell that to others. That will translate into inventory risk.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
c308d82779a0ab9b16df98faf3b2ab3f
What is the name of inverse of synergy? (finance)
[ { "docid": "f6d96c3c07bcf9d17687582be245c8ad", "text": "\"You could call it \"\"multiple streams of income\"\" a la Robert Allen and others. Or you could call it \"\"Do once, sell many\"\" or something like that.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8a3237946bbb31c267c8c9f20eb00e3c", "text": "I'd probably call it an intangible or indirect benefit. Not sure what the trade term is.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "d35a806d809e126734f6cb26f5db9d49", "text": "\"It does depend, but in the effort to be efficient we usually just add back Depreciation, Amortization, and Stock Based Comp. [Although adding back SBC is hotly debated](https://www.wallstreetprep.com/blog/stock-based-compensation-treatment-dcf-almost-always-wrong/), we usually still add it back at my firm. Keep in mind I'm in M&amp;A, so we don't really concern ourselves with creating the \"\"purest\"\" valuation... * EBIAT * Add Depreciation * Add Amort * Add SBC * Subtract Capex * Add the decrease in NWC * Subtract the increase in NWC * = FCFF\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "22b1ea9120af491bb5ea89dbba820eb4", "text": "\"Thanks for pointing out [the study](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1748851). It's a slightly different cause than what I was describing when I posted this. Specifically, they show an effect not when the names get confused, but rather when the name similarity simply brings more attention to the stock. I was surprised nobody mentioned that in response to my post. But also interesting is that they had to control for simple confusion between stock symbols, which implies that ticker confusion has a known effect. So I dug into research on that and quickly found [this study](http://www.efmaefm.org/0EFMAMEETINGS/EFMA%20ANNUAL%20MEETINGS/2010-Aarhus/EFMA2010_0161_fullpaper.pdf) found \"\"a high positive correlation between returns on two matching stocks with similar ticker symbols\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2e6ffcf7409d456e200ca9836aa9a124", "text": "Credit products and securitized debt. Credit/debt is the flip side of equity but has less volatility. In today's investing environment people are not looking for a big return as much as less risk with a modest return. Another trend I think you will see is the disappearance of the wall between interest rate products/fixed income and credit products.", "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&amp;message=Excludeme&amp;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": "08731cc1aa3d6b5299b0f83c6ebf6b87", "text": "I was looking at NAT and NAO, NAT owns 20% of NAO. They trade opposite each other on the price of oil, low is good for NAT, bad for NAO. In bad times the other company's stock would probably rise, so they could trim excess shares to keep a stable monetary holding. This would create cash in bad times, in good times they could buy more, creating a floor as well for the other.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7d8a54ce401b8444a25daaee08bf9786", "text": "Empirial evidence for the second scenario: Can banks individually create money out of nothing? — The theories and the empirical evidence. Excerpt: It was examined whether in the process of making money available to the borrower the bank transfers these funds from other accounts (within or outside the bank). In the process of making loaned money available in the borrower's bank account, it was found that the bank did not transfer the money away from other internal or external accounts, resulting in a rejection of both the fractional reserve theory and the financial intermediation theory. Instead, it was found that the bank newly ‘invented’ the funds by crediting the borrower's account with a deposit, although no such deposit had taken place. This is in line with the claims of the credit creation theory. Thus it can now be said with confidence for the first time – possibly in the 5000 years' history of banking - that it has been empirically demonstrated that each individual bank creates credit and money out of nothing, when it extends what is called a ‘bank loan’. The bank does not loan any existing money, but instead creates new money. The money supply is created as ‘fairy dust’ produced by the banks out of thin air.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3297e004a36457593c6d869c77ebc8c6", "text": "For the case of spinoffs it reflects the market as activities as the specific steps that have to be followed take place. For example the spinoff of Leidos from SAIC in 2013. (I picked this one becasue I knew some of the details) On September 9, 2013, the Board of Directors of SAIC, Inc.(Ticker Symbol (NYSE):SAI) approved the following: The separation of its technical, engineering and enterprise information technology services business through the distribution of shares of SAIC Gemini, Inc. to stockholders. Each stockholder of record of SAIC, Inc. as of September 19, 2013 (Record Date) will receive one (1) share of SAIC Gemini, Inc. common stock for every seven (7) shares of SAIC, Inc. common stock held by such stockholder as of the Record Date. This distribution will be effective after market close on September 27, 2013 (Distribution Date). After the Distribution Date, SAIC Gemini, Inc. will be renamed Science Applications International Corporation (New SAIC). A one (1) for four (4) reverse stock split of the SAIC, Inc. common stock effective as of Distribution Date. After the Distribution Date, SAIC, Inc. will be renamed Leidos Holdings, Inc. (Leidos). Q 11: What are the different trading markets that may occur between Record Date and Distribution Date? A: Beginning two days prior to the Record Date of September 19, 2013 through the Distribution Date on September 27, 2013, there may be three different trading markets available with respect to SAIC, Inc. and the separation. Stock Ticker – SAI (Regular Way Trading with Due Bills): Shares of SAI common stock that trade on the regular-way market will trade with an entitlement to shares of the New SAIC common stock distributed on the Distribution Date. Purchasers in this market are purchasing both the shares of Leidos and New SAIC common stock. Form of Stock Ticker –SAIC (When Issued Trading): Shares of New SAIC common stock may be traded on a “when-issued” basis. These transactions are made conditionally because the security has been authorized, but not yet issued. Purchasers in this market are only purchasing the shares of New SAIC common stock distributed on the Distribution Date. Form of Stock Ticker – LDOS (Ex-Distribution Trading): Shares that trade on the ex-distribution market will trade without an entitlement to shares of New SAIC common stock distributed on the Distribution Date. Purchasers in this market are only purchasing the shares of Leidos common stock. So the stock price for New SAIC starts a few days before the record date of 19 September 2013, while LDOS (new name for the old SAIC) goes back much earlier. But the company didn't split until after the close of business on 27 September 2013. http://investors.saic.com/sites/saic.investorhq.businesswire.com/files/doc_library/file/GeneralStockholder-QuestionsandAnswers.pdf", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d7818ae9d9068f5953344459e340be74", "text": "\"In a way yes but I doubt you'd want that. A \"\"Stop-Limit\"\" order has both stop and limit components to it but I doubt this gives you what you want. In your example, if the stock falls to $1/share then the limit order of $3/share would be triggered but this isn't quite what I'd think you'd want to see. I'd suggest considering having 2 orders: A stop order to limit losses and a limit order to sell that are separate rather than fusing them together that likely isn't going to work.\"", "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": "f84c94ad004b29e8147168170dafdae1", "text": "Upstream is into businesses that supply the original business; downstream is into businesses that make use of the original product. So in that description, what they are saying is that the original business received products from plantations and sent products to manufacturing. This is also called vertical integration. Meaning that they are diversifying along their supply chain so that they control more of it. This is in contrast with horizontal integration, where they move into new products that either compete with the existing products or which are entirely separate. In general, the upside of vertical integration is that a company is less reliant on suppliers (and intermediate consumers) and has more control over its supply chain. The downside is that they have less opportunity to partner with other companies in the same supply chain, as they compete with them. Some companies are better at managing to do both. For example, Amazon.com has integrated fulfillment and sales. But partners can still do their own fulfillment and/or sales, choosing how much to send out to Amazon. If you are investing in individual stocks, integrated companies can be problematic in that they cut across diversification areas. So they can be harder to balance with other stocks. You can either buy plantations, transport, and manufacturing together or not buy at all. If your investment strategy says to increase plantations and reduce manufacturing, this can be difficult to implement with an integrated company. Of course, everyone else has the same problem, which can lead to integrated companies being undervalued. So they may be an opportunity as a value stock.", "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": "bca5b955ad21c09521f36d07d7b490dd", "text": "Sure let's say we're starting with the equity value of a public company. Fully diluted shares times market price. We add debt and subtract all cash to give us enterprise value. Calculate a multiple on that. Look what we did up there, we subtracted out all cash. The DCF approach assumes we have an operating level of cash when it calculates a value. You're saying that the DCF spits out an enterprise value. It cannot be an enterprise value if the DCF approach assumes we hold cash. We would have to subtract out an operating level of cash from the DCF concluded value to compare it apples to apples to the cashless enterprise values we derived from the market approach multiples.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5ec6f6d74a9946f9c7b7f8f7132d8642", "text": "I guess I wasn't clear. I want to modestly leverage (3-4x) my portfolio using options. I believe long deep-in-the-money calls would be the best way to do this? (Let me know if not.) It's important to me that the covariance matrix from the equity portfolio scales up but doesn't fundamentally change. (I liken it to systemic change as opposed to idiosyncratic change.) This is what I was thinking: * For the same expiry date, find each positions lowest lambda. * Match all option to the the highest of the lowest lambda. * Adjust number of contracts to compensate for higher leverage. I don't think this will work because if I matched the lowest lambda of options on bond etfs to my equity options they would be out-of-the-money. By the way, thanks for your time.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c7626296dd8470e5e61b10acdd3c2c3f", "text": "\"The complete opposite of \"\"sunk cost\"\" is the term \"\"unrealized gain\"\"; until you sell it, then it is a \"\"realized gain\"\". There is also a term \"\"paper profit\"\" to point out the ephemeral nature of some of these unrealized gains.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e4c507a80e084edb607b3096f6e1e8cf", "text": "It's a good answer. I was alluding to cryptocurrency such as bitcoin which was a pretty genius invention (blockchain and mining) to solve the honesty problem (counterparty risk) you outlined when there's no trusted middleman to help keep people honest. Sounds like a dodgy cat though!", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
0f7fa9af4dd536c4ad814768d144622e
My Boss owes money but I am named on letter from debt collection agency (UK)
[ { "docid": "06741791d286fe079a92f0570f498adc", "text": "I would not be overly concerned unless they started contacting you directly on your personal time or it showed up on your credit report. It is very likely that you are listed simply for their own records. This is correct for them to do, since you spoke to them in the past as an agent of your company. There should not be any legal connection to your personal finances. If it continues to be a concern, I would question whether I wanted to work for such an employer. I do not know your entire situation, but this kind of misbehavior is a red flag if not addressed.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1c078e3e2c590ecdfa98f55f8df34470", "text": "You havent signed a contract, so you are only an authorised contact so you have nothing to worry about at all. Your credit reference can only be affected if you are a signed party on the contract. I would imagine that they wont remove your details as you may assist them by contacting your emplorer, and effectively chase the debt for them especially if you seem to be family member or a friend of the business owner. How did you find out about the debt, did they phone you? If you really want peace of mind, you could write to them and confirm that you are not authorised to be contacted by phone or in writing regarding the debt, and that you are not in anyway liable for the debt and that your contact details must be put beyond use, and as you are concerned, say that if they take any further action against you such as affect your credit ref etc then you will take them to 'your' local magistrates court to seek compensation. Use strong terms and insist they must do what you ask rather than just say that you would like something done etc. Say that you 'Will' take further action which is generic, and that you 'May' do specific things so that it sounds strong but you haven't have committed to any thing in particular. This would most likely be more than enough to stop further contact.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "cf395ba4cd893fe297222a85e755771d", "text": "Better suited to /r/personalfinance, but you definitely owe the money. Unless you had something in writing that they were going to send a bill to a certain address, it's your responsibility to pay. Hell, even if you did have something in writing that said they'd send the bill somewhere else it's still your responsibility to pay even if the bill doesn't show up. You know you owed them money. When your parents didn't get the bill, you should have called the company to ask about it. It's your responsibility to follow up since you're the one that owes the money. What did you think would happen when you went 5 months without paying $312 that you knew you owed?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d995044ad18c80b473c60f26809a2562", "text": "\"I disagree with the previous answer based upon your particular situation. If the column states something like \"\"Amount Due to you\"\", and is a negative number, then you owe that amount. Much like the previous poster states that a Balance would be money you owe, and if it was negative then the school owes you the same can be said for the column in question. If the number was positive, the school would owe you that amount, if negative then you owe them. Keep in mind you could always post a pic of the document blacking out personal information.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a3719477ad64b7269bc0b419adfe42a0", "text": "I can only speak for germany/europe. Inkasso companies/lawyer would write a letter with a bill, those letters have register numbers. If in doubt, one would call the company, ask who is the debtor/what is the origin of the bill. I certainly would not react on a phone call. However, if an official entity or lawyer is contacting you, you have to take action asap, at least calling them.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8f1831a82af5d517f86b946c720d2d22", "text": "One issue is whether it is a scam or the collector has a right to collect. Another issue is the statute of limitations period on the debt. If it has expired, the creditor cannot get a court judgement against the borrower (if the borrower contests it). However, if the borrower makes a payment, or promises to pay, the time resets to zero, starting a new period subject to valid court action. In the U.S. the length of this period varies by state. (This period is different from the amount of time a debt can be listed on a credit report.)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e18a6ca79cdbe05daed214257d18350c", "text": "\"This is somewhat unbelievable. I mean if you had a business of collecting debts, wouldn't you want to collect said debts? Rather than attempting to browbeat people with these delinquent debts into paying, you have someone volunteering to pay. Would you want to service that client? This would not happen in just about any other industry, but such is the lunacy of debt collecting. The big question is why do you need this cleared off your credit? If it is just for a credit score, it probably is not as important as your more recent entries. I would just wait it out, until 7 years has passed, and you can then write the reporting agencies to remove it from your credit. If you are attempting to buy a home or similarly large purpose and the mortgage company is insisting that you deal with this, then I would do the following: Write the company to address the issue. This has to be certified/return receipt requested. If they respond, pay it and insist that it be marked as paid in full on your credit. I would do this with a money order or cashiers check. Done. Dispute the charge with the credit reporting agencies, providing the documentation of no response. This should remove the item from your credit. Provide this documentation to the mortgage broker. This should remove any hangup they might have. Optional: Sue the company in small claims court. This will take a bit of time and money, but it should yield a profit. There was a post on here a few days ago about how to do this. Make part of any settlement to have your name cleared of the debt. It is counterproductive to fall into the trap of the pursuit of a perfect credit score. A person with a 750 often receives the same rate options as a person with 850. Also your relationship with a particular lender could trump your credit score. Currently I am \"\"enjoying\"\" the highest credit score of my life, over 820. Do you know how I did it? I got out of debt (including paying off the mortgage) and I have no intentions of ever going into debt for anything. So why does it matter? It is a bit ridiculous.\"", "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": "317dbb114a5eba000b67f7f3e049d057", "text": "There are two different liabilities here. You signed, so the bank can rightfully demand the money from you. Even though it is not your debt. You signed, so you have to pay. However, it's really the business that is responsible for the account, so you can ask the business to refund the money. You might ask them to pay the bank instead if you haven't paid yet.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "980174a8516f4301efe9e2c32e54e137", "text": "Do not provide any personal information. If the debt is not yours, ask the caller to provide all the identifying information they have over the phone to verify whether they have your information, or are just following up on similar names. Even if they have information that is yours, do not provide more information. Always make them tell you what they know. If they provide information that is not yours, simply state that it is not your information and politely end the call. If they persist in calling you, there are local agencies you can report them to. If they have your information, then ask for all of the details of the debt -- who is it owed to, when was the debt incurred, what was the original amount of the debt, what is the current balance, when was the last activity on the account, what is their relation to creditor. Once you know the creditor, you can contact them directly for more information. It is possible they may have written off the account and closed it, selling it to a debt collector in order to get some sort of return on debt. If they truly have a debt that is yours, and you did not incur it, then you will need to file a police report for a case of identity theft. Be prepared for some scrutiny.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "93565ede13943b8898b52b53fc5b8260", "text": "\"I don't know the details of whether or not you should pay this money, or who is at fault. But clearly, you believe that you do not owe the money, and the bank investigation seems to agree with you, since they gave you your money back. Since you have your money, and they haven't sued you, the only issue yet remaining is your credit report. Here is what I would suggest. First, make sure you check all three credit reports, to see which reports the collection appears on. Then dispute the report with each credit bureau reporting the problem. There is an article on CreditKarma that explains the process. When you file your dispute with the credit bureau(s), they will investigate. This usually involves asking the creditor for proof of the debt, and if you didn't sign anything, they probably won't have any proof. Hopefully, the credit bureaus will come to the same conclusion as the bank did, and remove the collection from your credit reports. In my opinion, it doesn't make sense to pay them now, if you don't believe you owe it. Paying them won't remove all the bad stuff from your credit report (but it will improve it), and you don't want to pay them and then immediately sue them. If, however, the credit bureaus side with the landlord and leave this on your report, paying the $300 is better on your report than leaving the \"\"unpaid debt\"\" on there.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7e62680cb5119476d36137287a51679e", "text": "This seems very suspicious, as if it were fraud, and not a legitimate collector. Garnishing wages takes a court order. A court would require a bit more proof than a name. Names can easily be common, I know sets of first cousins named after the common grandparent, 4 pairs in my extended family, along with 2 triples. The court would certainly look for a social security number match. Your own credit history will show no activity in that state. A legitimate debt collector would handle this very differently.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6ba706c8c818d2b2b72005061275a4ff", "text": "\"OK, reading between the lines here it looks like the services offered by your company are of an \"\"adult\"\" (possibly illegal?) nature and that this individual has actually paid you in full for the services rendered up to this point. The wrinkle here is that you say that you've been offered large cash \"\"gifts\"\" in return for unspecified future favours, but that your client hasn't provided a real Paypal account to do so. When you pressed him on it, he sent a fake email and invented a \"\"financial adviser\"\" to fob you off, then hasn't contacted you since. It's pretty clear that he hasn't got any intention of making these payments to you. What you're now proposing to do is to use his known banking details to collect money to cover those verbal promises. In pretty much every part of the world, that's a crime. Without a written agreement to use that payment method for those promises, he could easily call the police and have you arrested for theft of funds. The further wrinkle is that his actions (claiming to have made payment via paypal, forged email headers, etc) strongly suggest that this individual is involved in cyber-crime and may well have used a fake bank account to pay for your initial services. The bottom line here is that you need real legal advice, from an actual lawyer.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "25faa7c6670f215322dfd94af6b78455", "text": "Note: I am not a lawyer. This is my personal opinion and interpretation. First, your source is European Law, which obviously doesn't apply outside of the EU. The EU cannot make laws that bind entities in other countries; so you cannot claim that the VAT was needed to be mentioned. Second, if you owe something, you owe it; it doesn't matter if it was forgotten to be mentioned. At best, you can say that under those circumstances you don't want the software anymore, and i would assume you can send it back and get your money back (minus a fee for having it used for a while...) - this gets quite difficult to calculate clearly, so it's probably not a good avenue to follow for you. As the company has to send the VAT to your country (they will not be allowed to keep a dime of it, and have to bear the complete cost for the handling), it is a debt you have to your government; they are just the entity responsible for collecting it. Still, if you just ignore them, they will probably suck it up, and your government will also not do a thing to you. If they only have your email address, they have no way of knowing if you even still have/use this address; for all they know, it could be you never got it. They also cannot simply charge your card, as they probably don't have the card data any more (they are not supposed to keep it after the transaction is complete, and they thought it was complete at the time). All in all, you should be safe to ignore it. It's between you and your god/consciousness, if you feel obliged to pay it, as technically you owe it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4e93e2ae3614116bb408f1dff585a5e2", "text": "\"The debt collection agency needs to see a copy of the notice from the bank that the $300 charge is a disputed and fraudulent charge. Also require them to provide proof. To reduce your stress, you should contact a lawyer to handle the debt collection agency. Disputing the information on your credit report is exactly the way to \"\"fix\"\" that issue. All they need to see is the bank letter stating that the charges were fraudulent. The credit reports should show that item as disputed for at least a month if not remove it entirely. The bank should be able to provide with copies although you may have to pay a research charge if the information is old enough. I recommend talking to your local branch manager to get what you need.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6e4a9ace831c80718775e4787438e8b9", "text": "Are you being paid through a limited company or an umbrella company ? Are you self employed If not what they are doing is illegal. If you are being paid a salary, then the employer has to contribute their part of National Insurance. I believe they are treating you as self employed, hence asking you to generate invoices. Check your contract wordings properly. Or get help from Citizens Advice. Call them or visit their local office. Or else do call up HMRC. But if you are invoicing them, I would assume you are self employed and you have to do your self assessment. Get in contact with HMRC and ask them to generate your Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR). THey will send you the UTR and using this you can fill your tax returns. It looks like cumbersome now, but it isn't so. You can do it yourself, I do mine. Or at the end of the financial year, get an accountant to do the returns for you, probably should charge you £100-£150. Keep all your invoices, bills, bank statements safely. This is some help from HMRC website", "title": "" }, { "docid": "25c80accc613ec73f5527afe291d030d", "text": "\"The wording of this question is very confusing because \"\"primary signer\"\" would, in ordinary parlance, mean the person borrowing the money and the co-signer (not consigner) would mean the one who is guaranteeing the repayment of the loan: if the borrower does not pay, the co-signer is liable for making the payments. Whose name is on the title of the car? Who borrowed the money to buy the car? Is the loan in your name and your son co-signed the loan to induce the bank to loan you money to purchase the car, or is it the other way around, that your son borrowed the money and you co-signed the loan in order to induce the bank to loan your son the money? If the car title and the loan are in your name, are you defaulting on the loan and so your son is making the loan payments that should have come from you? Or is it that your son borrowed the money to buy the car, his name is on the title, he is making the payments, and you are no longer interested in backing him up in case he defaults and the bank comes after you for the money?\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
a941bdf98501ac9c5f606d6d6f16b7b3
How do I claim HST compensation on my personal Ontario income taxes?
[ { "docid": "aefc603ba21f1c779d66ebe3855f09a8", "text": "\"Your income and expenses for the business should be independent of HST. That is, if you charged somebody 100 + 13 HST, you have revenue of 100. You're going to send the 13 to the government later, it's not part of your revenue. If you go out and buy something for 10 + 1.30 HST, you record 10 as an expense. You're going to take the 1.3 off the 13 you would have sent the government, it's not part of your expenses. And so on. I am not sure what you mean by \"\"HST compensation\"\" but if it came from the government, and it needs to be declared as income, there will be information to that end in the letter that comes with the cheque. (For example, if they pay you interest on your refund, the letter reminds you to include that money in next year's income.)\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "6e4a9ace831c80718775e4787438e8b9", "text": "Are you being paid through a limited company or an umbrella company ? Are you self employed If not what they are doing is illegal. If you are being paid a salary, then the employer has to contribute their part of National Insurance. I believe they are treating you as self employed, hence asking you to generate invoices. Check your contract wordings properly. Or get help from Citizens Advice. Call them or visit their local office. Or else do call up HMRC. But if you are invoicing them, I would assume you are self employed and you have to do your self assessment. Get in contact with HMRC and ask them to generate your Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR). THey will send you the UTR and using this you can fill your tax returns. It looks like cumbersome now, but it isn't so. You can do it yourself, I do mine. Or at the end of the financial year, get an accountant to do the returns for you, probably should charge you £100-£150. Keep all your invoices, bills, bank statements safely. This is some help from HMRC website", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0d9adc60f378407650f408e7231ebb76", "text": "To bring more clarity to the issue, Viriato will be entitle to deduct property tax depending upon whether he is claiming standard deduction (which varies on some factors including filling as married or single) or itemized deduction. If he is claiming, itemized deduction Example 1 is correct. Example 2 suffers from another mistake. He can get refund of only income tax portion of $5000 and not $5000.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a03156df5f0b04b4961d56ac075f92a1", "text": "I think you are overcomplicating the scenario by assuming a benefit that doesn't exist. Assume an employee earns 50k, before considering the MSP. The corporation wants to cover the MSP. They have two options: increase the salary to $50,900, or keep the salary the same and pay for the MSP directly. Both options increase the employee's taxable income by $900. Both options decrease the corporation's income by $900. Net tax for each is unchanged. *Note - I couldn't find any specific reference to the MSP in income tax documentation on either BC Finance's or CRA's website. I am assuming that it is treated as a regular cash benefit, though I am not 100% convinced this is the case. If I am wrong in this please provide a comment below.", "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": "f5bb48681b5df3512b1d651714b729d6", "text": "When you itemize your deductions, you get to deduct all the state income tax that was taken out of your paycheck last year (not how much was owed, but how much was withheld). If you deducted this last year, then you need to add in any amount that you received in state income tax refunds last year to your taxes this year, to make up for the fact that you ended up deducting more state income tax than was really due to the state. If you took the standard deduction last year instead of itemizing, then you didn't deduct your state income tax withholding last year and you don't need to claim your refund as income this year. Also, if you itemized, but chose to take the state sales tax deduction instead of the state income tax deduction, you also don't need to add in the refund as income. For whatever reason, Illinois decided that you don't get a 1099-G. It might be that the amount of the refund was too small to warrant the paperwork. It might be that they screwed up. But if you deducted your state income tax withholding on last year's tax return, then you need to add the state tax refund you got last year on line 10 of this year's 1040, whether or not the state issued you a form or not. Take a look at the Line 10 instructions starting on page 22 of the 1040 instructions to see if you have any unusual situations covered there that you didn't mention here. (For example, if you received a refund check for multiple years last year.) Then check your tax return from last year to verify that you deducted your state income tax withholding on Schedule A. If you did, then this year add the refund you got from the state to line 10 of this year's 1040.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "141cacd17d8b5d3bc1b174b087f8a5ab", "text": "Depends whom the 1099 was issued to. If it was issued to your corporation - then its your corporation's income, not yours. Why would it go to your tax return? Your corporation and you are two separate legal entities. You will have to file the 1120S, whether you have corporate income or not, it has to be filed each year. So why make a mess of your reporting and not just report the corporation income on its return and your personal income on your own return? If you no longer use the corporation and all the 1099's are issued to you personally, then just dissolve it so that you won't have to file an empty 1120S every year and pay additional fees for maintaining it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "181f6afa002a86cdc1cedb96cc24d2d4", "text": "\"CP14h Shared Responsibility payments for Health Care should be paid online at IRS.gov/payments using the Health Care - Form 1040 selection for the appropriate tax year. A normal CP14 is paid online using the \"\"Tax Return or Notice (1040)\"\" selection.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e477d83f05f0972355b5b26f40f70211", "text": "You are going to have to talk to your benefits office to understand all the deadlines and rules for their program. While the IRS does enforce the law, there are enough local variations in the rules to make it quite complex. The first thing you need to know is the source of the funds: the employer or the employee. Then you need to know the deadline for applying for the program, how you specify the monthly expenses in advance, and when the funds expire. The way you pay for commuting and parking makes a difference: per-ride on the subway, van pool, monthly transit pass; daily parking at a lot, monthly hang tag, or at meter; These options determine how to expend the funds and how they give you the funds. You can't get money for missed months. So you need to know what you have to do in October to get money for November.", "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": "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": "e57ff339907d168af251b2d992a72958", "text": "First off, the basics on HST/GST: You don't need to collect HST, if you don't want to, until you hit 30k in a particular three month period (assuming you're not regularly passing $30k). You then need to collect on the sale that takes you over $30k plus all sales after that. See the H&R Block page on GST/HST for example: [B]usiness goes through the roof, generating more than $30,000 in one particular three-month period. In this case, the day the sale goes through that took you over that $30,000 threshold becomes the day you cease to be a small supplier. You must charge GST/HST on the sale that put you over the $30,000 limit, and on all sales after that, even if you are not yet registered. You now have 29 days to register with the government. Alternately, if you hit 30k over four three-month periods (i.e., a year), then you are exempt until the end of that fourth three-month period, after which you must register and collect HST the month after: [R]evenues in excess of $30,000 during four (or fewer) previous, consecutive three-month periods. You will be considered to be a small supplier for those four calendar three-month periods, plus the next month. Your first sale after that additional month, and all sales thereafter, will have to include GST/HST. You will have 29 days from the first day of the second month to register. However, many businesses do collect HST/GST even under that limit, in particular as it means you can collect tax refunds for your input HST/GST paid. If you do so, then you simply register from the start, and then you don't need to worry about it. You do need to remit those taxes collected, though. If you don't remit, you won't be able to collect tax rebates for your input HST/GST. You decide to become a GST/HST registrant when you start your business. You expect to exceed the $30,000 threshold at some time in the near future. You also want to receive any GST/HST paid back from the government on all expenditures especially those high startup costs. And, as Grant Thornton recommends: In most cases, it’s generally a good idea to register for GST/HST as soon as your business is established. Provided that your business makes (or will make) taxable or zero-rated supplies, early registration ensures that GST/HST paid on costs incurred is recoverable since tax paid prior to registration is generally not recoverable except on the purchase of inventory, capital property and prepaid services still on hand at the time of registration. Be sure to register early because, in many situations, registering late can result in the loss of recoverable GST paid before registration.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c01f6134cede65f12425fb5a39d1ce54", "text": "1) The easy way is to find a job and they will assign you an SSN. 2) Here's the hard way. If you're Canadian, open a TD Boarderless account in the U.S. Put a small investment into any investment that would generate some type of income, such as capital gain, dividends, interest and etc... Then you will need to file a US tax return to declare your income if you receive U.S. tax slips (although you're likely below the min filing requirement) at year end. To file a U.S. tax return, you may need what's called an ITIN or individual tax id number. With the ITIN, you can get credit from the US TD boarderless account (only). Consider getting a prepaid US credit card with the TD account to futher build credit at that specific bank. It's not much credit, but you do start with creating a history.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ee7ce70e7cfa4bfd66922df73eb2a6c4", "text": "\"Sorry, even if you never file a claim for Employment Insurance (EI), you don't get your premiums back. So, yes, if you paid into EI and never filed a claim, your contributions are, as you put it, \"\"wasted\"\" – insofar that your premiums provided no direct benefit to you. However, your premiums may have provided a benefit to society, perhaps even your previous colleagues. Yet, some would point out that a good chunk of EI premiums are likely wasted on excessive administration of the program itself. That's government. A couple of cases I'm aware of where you may be refunded some of the EI premiums paid are: Meaning, a legal way to avoid paying into the EI system altogether is to run your own business. Of course, you won't be able to file an EI claim if your business evaporates overnight. Other kinds of claims unavailable to those who don't pay into EI include maternity, parental*, and sickness benefits .. although they recently made some changes to permit the self-employed to opt-in for some special benefits. * except in the province of Quebec, where there is a separate Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP) that also covers the self-employed.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6ba7e9cc2946fa22d42e2c0a8d0ac1c4", "text": "I would just take $2000 and multiply by your marginal tax rate, weight that between the 5 other people according to their share of the prize money and ask them to give you that. From your question it seems like you all have a good working relationship, I'm sure the other partners would agree to that. I think it's the simplest solution that is also fair and equitable. Basically, you pay the tax on 2000 and they pay you back for their share of the tax. Much easier than trying to pass it through your tax return for 5 separate people for a minimal amount of $'s. In hindsight, the best way to do it would have been to 1099 the person with the lowest marginal tax rate for the year to minimize the total tax paid on the 2000. Probably only would've been a few dollars difference but still the most efficient way to do it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0e0ae1e5e3f2fc011f870fc4b608327e", "text": "\"You can list it as other income reported on line 21 of form 1040. In TurboTax, enter at: - Federal Taxes tab (Personal in Home & Business) - Wages & Income -“I’ll choose what I work on” Button Scroll down to: -Less Common Income -Misc Income, 1099-A, 1099-C. -The next screen will give you several choices. Choose \"\"Other reportable Income\"\". You will reach a screen where you can type a description of the income and the amount. Type in the amount of income and categorize as Tutoring.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
52cec544629ae286d6b6be32de6d884e
How do I receive payment from the USA to my current account in India
[ { "docid": "d30b6a6a3cc52d3c894e076b53b6c1f1", "text": "There is nothing called best; Depending on the amounts there are several options and each will cost some money. If your business is still small customers are individuals try PayPal it will be easy for everyone. The other options are accepting Credit Card, you would need to set-up card gateway on your website etc Simple wire transfer, it will cost more both for your customers and to you.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "ebb874728ea5c83f7c47d5f71cbed3ed", "text": "I can't speak for India, but for US travelers abroad, using an ATM card that reimburses transaction fees is usually the most convenient and cheapest way to obtain foreign cash. There are several banks and brokerages that offer these types of ATM cards in the US. The exchange rate is competitive and because the fees are reimbursed it's cheaper and easy than going to a bank or kiosk to exchange currencies. I don't know if you can get accounts/cards like this in India that reimburse ATM fees. For purchases, using a credit card is fine, too. Some cards charge a foreign transaction fee of ~1%, some don't. The credit card I use most of the time does charge a 1% transaction fee, but I get 2% back in rewards so I still don't mind using it when traveling.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "882feb570228ae176ed2072547a97f86", "text": "Ask them to send a SWIFT payment [aka International Wire]. You would need to give them your bank details, essentially Bank Account, Bank Name & Address, SWIFT BIC, etc. Almost all Public Sector Bank and all leading Private scetor banks are members of SWIFT and can give you a the SWIFT BIC. If you are not sure about other party, it would be wise to open a new account and give the details of this account rather than your normal account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6d6e851041eb6a6aa5d1b35b740e4d31", "text": "You would need to pay tax on the 10% gain. Was this money loaned from your NRE account? Is there paperwork to show that there was this loan given? If yes then it would be easy to get this back into NRE account. Once in NRE account you can move this back to US without any issue. If not, then you can get this into NRO account. From NRO account you would need to consult a CA to do some paperwork [essentially certifying that you have paid all taxes due] so that funds can be remitted outside. Edit: Looks like you have completed all formalities. A credit to NRE Account can only happen from funds outside of India. However a credit from India into NRE account can happen under some circumstances, like Loan give and received back. You would need a CA in India to help you complete the formalities. The tax is due in India as this was due to gain in India. As you are US resident for tax purposes, and US taxes global income, this is taxable in US as well. You can claim relief in US to the extent of taxes paid in India. India and US have DTAA.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f6d60f4dba811af0fb506943dfa626a1", "text": "You could use: SWIFT transfer : ask your counterparty for his bank SWIFT code and beneficiary account numbers; you can do a SWIFT transfer to most countries from your Indian bank). You will need to fill a form where they ask you what you're transferring the money for, etc. Most Indian banks provide this facility. Western Union: I'm not sure if WU is in China, but they are very simple to use. Paypal: They charge heavy fees, but may be the fastest way to get your money across.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9c220364399a19ad2f56f3069efd44dd", "text": "I am on employment based visa in USA and want to send dollars from USA to India from my savings (after paying Tax). How much maximum dollars I can send in a day? month? or in a year regularly? There is no such limit. You can transfer as money you like to yourself anywhere. To pay the Bank Loan-student Loan how much maximum dollars I can send in a day, in a month or in a year? to pay that I have to pay directly to that Bank Account or in any account I can send money? You can transfer to your NRE account in India and move it further. You can also send it directly to the Loan Account [Check with the Bank, they may not be able to receive funds from outside for a Loan Account] My mother is having Green Card. She is not working. She has a NRE account in India. Can I send dollars from my USA Bank account to her NRE account in India? what are the rules for that? any Tax or limit for that? Or I have to get any permission before sending it? If you are sending money to your mother, it would come under Gift Tax act in US. There is no issue in India. Suggest you transfer to your own NRE account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "648e81484cd103fb3610a2d9383a7d04", "text": "\"Read the terms by your Travel Card issuer. Travel Card cannot be used to transfer USD to an Indian Bank Account. You have to spend outside India and if there is a balance you have to request the card issuers in writing for a refund Salaries should not be credited on \"\"Travel Card\"\"\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "56a51834c97003723af0acd774fa6198", "text": "My account is with Indian Bank, if that's relevant. Indian Bank already has SWIFT BIC. Is there any way I can receive such international transfers in my account if the bank branch itself is not SWIFT enabled? The Branch need not be SWIFT enabled. However the Bank needs to be SWIFT enabled. Indian Bank is SWIFT enabled and has several Correspondent Banks in US. See this link on Indian Bank Website Select USD as filter in bottom page. It will list quite a few Banks that are correspondent to the Indian Bank. Click on the Link and it will give you more details. For example with Citi Bank as Correspondent. In the Beneficiary account details fill in your account details etc and send this to the company and they should be able to send you a payment based on this.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d6366fe7d18a72bc67b5c60778b0edc1", "text": "There is no best way, you can send the money to India or invest into shares in US. It depends on the risk you are ready to take.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "69215acbca7cb211aa3819f52979f193", "text": "Yes. You may be subjected to the US gift tax (if you transfer to anyone other than your legally married spouse or yourself). The receivers will have to deal with the Indian tax laws, which I'm not familiar with.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fe1eb8501e5dedebc8147c92190186d9", "text": "First of all, you need to tell Paypal people that you've changed your country of residence & your tax residency no longer is India. Then they'll tell you to create a new paypal account & get it verified. And then you can transfer the older paypal account money to that new paypal account & tell them to close the older paypal account. Then use remittance services to transfer to NRE. That's the legal process as far as I know, because Paypal would want to keep its records updated, or else it'd be against its Anti Money Laundering policy.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6fe59b73bc4ebfe8b534e03f3f4cc6a5", "text": "\"Yes, many banks offer such a service. Often such payments can be made through their \"\"bill pay\"\" interface. You log in to your account on the bank's website, enter the recipient's routing and account numbers, and off you go. You could ask your bank whether they offer this. If not, you could change banks to one that does.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5b2fe2d74750a319ba7f3e89da773762", "text": "\"If you want your bank to pay $1 to a beneficiary Bob, then the service (no matter how implemented) needs to result in Bob's bank saying to Bob \"\"Hey, I owe you $1\"\". The usual way how this is done consists of two parts - your bank needs to somehow tell Bob's bank \"\"hey guys, do us a favor and please give Bob $1 with a message from the sender\"\", and your bank needs to convince the other bank that they'll pay for (cover) that. This is the main source for the delays in international payments - there are thousands of banks, and most of possible pairs have no legal contact between themselves whatsoever, no bilateral agreements, no trust and no reasonable enforcement mechanism for small claims. If I'm Bob's bank, then a random bank from anywhere from Switzerland to Nigeria can send me an instruction \"\"give Bob $1, we'll make it up for you\"\", the SWIFT network is a common way of doing this. However, most likely I'm going to give Bob the money only after I receive the funds somehow, which means that they have given the money to some institution I work with. For payments within a single country, it often is a centralized exchange or a central bank, and the payment speed is then determined by the details of that particular single payment network - e.g. UK Faster Payments or the various systems used in USA. For international payments, it may require a chain of multiple intermediaries (correspondent banks) - for example, a payment of $1mm from Kazakhstan to China will likely involve the Kazakhstan bank asking their main correspondent in USA (some major bank such as Chase JPMorgan) to give the money to the relevant chinese bank's correspondent in USA (say, Citi) to then give the money to that chinese bank to then give the money to the actual recipient. Each of those steps can happen because those entities have bilateral agreements, trust and accounts with each other; and each of those steps generally takes time and verification. If you want all payments to happen instantly, then you need all institutions to join a single binding payment system. It's not as easy as it sounds, as it is a nightmare of jurisdiction - for example, if you'd want me (as Bob's bank) to credit Bob instantly, then the system needs to provide solid guarantees that I would get paid even if (a) the payer institution changes its mind, made a mistake or intentional fraud; (b) the payer institution goes insolvent; (c) the system provider gets insolvent. Providing such guarantees is expensive, they need to be backed by multi-billion capital, and they're unrealistic to enforce across jurisdictions (e.g. would an Iranian bank get recourse if some funds got blocked because of USA sanctions). The biggest such project as far as I know is SEPA, across most of Europe. Visa and MasterCard networks perform the same function - a merchant gets paid by the CC network even if the payer can't pay his CC bill or the paying bank goes insolvent.\"", "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": "" }, { "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": "a854018240159da1d1efd29a2f1ce651", "text": "Can I Send the money back to my personal account of my mother/father in India? Why not? A huge number of Indians working in US are sending money to their parents. There may be multiple reasons like paying a mortgage/loan or sister's wedding or any personal reasons. Usually, there may be a reason column when you send money through any Remittance company. Do I need to pay any tax here in US or my parents back in India? Parents are direct dependents in India. So you can share your money with your dependents. Your parents have to pay tax for whatever they are earning in India based on the tax slab and age they fit in. So you can even give them the power of Attorney to control your properties in India.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
d66cb93e5718852cf2c532e6b29a53ff
What securities is Return of Capital applicable to?
[ { "docid": "de2b0f54bb412b964dac669ed6ced647", "text": "\"Off the top of my head, I don't know of any publicly-traded companies that routinely earmark distributions as return of capital, but theoretically, it's certainly applicable to any publicly-traded company. The Wikipedia article gives one situation in which a publicly-traded company may use return of capital: Public business may return capital as a means to increase the debt/equity ratio and increase their leverage (risk profile). Since return of capital is a distribution, it shrinks the firm's equity, thus increasing its leverage. Investopedia also has an article, Dividend Facts You May Not Know, that gives an example of when return of capital might be used: Sometimes, especially in the case of a special, large dividend, part of the dividend is actually declared by the company to be a return of capital. In this case, instead of being taxed at the time of distribution, the return of capital is used to reduce the basis of the stock, making for a larger capital gain down the road, assuming the selling price is higher than the basis. For instance, if you buy shares with a basis of $10 each and you get a $1 special dividend, 55 cents of which is return of capital, the taxable dividend is 45 cents, the new basis is $9.45 and you will pay capital gains tax on that 55 cents when you sell your shares sometime in the future. A company may choose to earmark some or all of its distribution as return of capital in order to provide shareholders with a more beneficial tax treatment. The IRS describes this different tax treatment: Distributions that qualify as a return of capital are not dividends. A return of capital is a return of some or all of your investment in the stock of the company. A return of capital reduces the basis of your stock. These distributions don't necessarily count as taxable income, except in some instances: Once the basis of your stock has been reduced to zero, any further non-dividend distribution is capital gain. The IRS also states: A distribution generally qualifies as a return of capital if the corporation making the distribution does not have any accumulated or current year earnings and profits. In this case, the firm is lowering its equity because it's paying distributions out of that equity instead of accumulated earnings/profits. A company may use return of capital to maintain a distribution even in times of financial difficulty. In the context of closed-end funds, however, return of capital can be much more complicated and can affect the fund's performance and reputation in numerous ways. Also, JB King is correct in cautioning you that \"\"return of capital\"\" is not the same thing as \"\"return on capital*. The latter is a method for valuing a company and determining \"\"how efficient a company is where it comes to using its resources.\"\" (to quote JB King's comment again).\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "425ca438f571c50d943009d1bf53592a", "text": "Do what's outlined here. The capital asset pricing model will reveal how an asset (a stock in this instance) performed relative to the market performance for that time period. This by itself will answer your assignment's question but allowing you to traverse much deeper in the intricate details of the field. You'll learn a few interesting things on the way! Good luck :)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bb40365ea193ef944818cd92378da144", "text": "He said he's using MSCI World as a benchmark. MSCI World is not an exchange. The point is the same security listed in different places has different prices, so how do you describe the equity beta of the company to MSCI World if you have multiple and different return streams? This is a real problem to consider and you just dismiss it entirely.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "83ee753bf0e789e557df6966e4cfcbc9", "text": "You could take these definitions from MSCI as an example of how to proceed. They calculate price indices (PR) and total return indices (including dividends). For performance benchmarks the net total return (NR) indices are usually the most relevant. In your example the gross total return (TR) is 25%. From the MSCI Index Defintions page :- The MSCI Price Indexes measure the price performance of markets without including dividends. On any given day, the price return of an index captures the sum of its constituents’ free float-weighted market capitalization returns. The MSCI Total Return Indexes measure the price performance of markets with the income from constituent dividend payments. The MSCI Daily Total Return (DTR) Methodology reinvests an index constituent’s dividends at the close of trading on the day the security is quoted ex-dividend (the ex-date). Two variants of MSCI Total Return Indices are calculated: With Gross Dividends: Gross total return indexes reinvest as much as possible of a company’s dividend distributions. The reinvested amount is equal to the total dividend amount distributed to persons residing in the country of the dividend-paying company. Gross total return indexes do not, however, include any tax credits. With Net Dividends: Net total return indexes reinvest dividends after the deduction of withholding taxes, using (for international indexes) a tax rate applicable to non-resident institutional investors who do not benefit from double taxation treaties.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7cd4bc1c1743be97be65b364924cfbaa", "text": "\"I don't know if it's common or necessary to include capital stock as a liability? Yes, if you look at the title of the nonasset part of the balance sheet it actually is titled \"\"Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity\"\". Your capital stock is a component of Equity. This sounds like it was reported in a reasonable manner. \"\"$2,582 listed under Loans from Shareholders (Line 19).\"\" Did you have a basis issue with your distributions? That is did you take shareholder distributions more than your adjusted basis that you have been taxed on? I have seen the practice of considering distributions in excess of basis as short term loans to prevent the additional taxation of the excess distribution. Be careful when you adjust this entry, your balance sheet had to roll from one year to the next. You must have a reasonable transaction to substantiate the removal of the shareholder loan.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3ffd7588e47bdcfbf842058ec577af8f", "text": "\"Answering this question is weird, because it is not really precise in what you mean. Do you want all stocks in the US? Do you want a selection of stocks according to parameters? Do you just want a cool looking graph? However, your possible misuse of the word derivative piqued my interest. Your reference to gold and silver seems to indicate that you do not know what a derivative actually is. Or what it would do in a portfolio. The straightforward way to \"\"see\"\" an efficient frontier is to do the following. For a set of stocks (in this case six \"\"randomly\"\" selected ones): library(quantmod) library(fPortfolio) library(PerformanceAnalytics) getSymbols(c(\"\"STZ\"\", \"\"RAI\"\", \"\"AMZN\"\", \"\"MSFT\"\", \"\"TWX\"\", \"\"RHT\"\"), from = \"\"2012-06-01\"\", to = \"\"2017-06-01\"\") returns &lt;- NULL tickerlist &lt;- c(\"\"STZ\"\", \"\"RAI\"\", \"\"AMZN\"\", \"\"MSFT\"\", \"\"TWX\"\", \"\"RHT\"\") for (ticker in tickerlist){ returns &lt;- cbind(returns, monthlyReturn(Ad(eval(as.symbol(ticker))))) } colnames(returns) &lt;- tickerlist returns &lt;- as.timeSeries(returns) frontier &lt;- portfolioFrontier(returns) png(\"\"frontier.png\"\", width = 800, height = 600) plot(frontier, which = \"\"all\"\") dev.off() minvariancePortfolio(returns, constraints = \"\"LongOnly\"\") Portfolio Weights: STZ RAI AMZN MSFT TWX RHT 0.1140 0.3912 0.0000 0.1421 0.1476 0.2051 Covariance Risk Budgets: STZ RAI AMZN MSFT TWX RHT 0.1140 0.3912 0.0000 0.1421 0.1476 0.2051 Target Returns and Risks: mean Cov CVaR VaR 0.0232 0.0354 0.0455 0.0360 https://imgur.com/QIxDdEI The minimum variance portfolio of these six assets has a mean return is 0.0232 and variance is 0.0360. AMZN does not get any weight in the portfolio. It kind of means that the other assets span it and it does not provide any additional diversification benefit. Let us add two ETFs that track gold and silver to the mix, and see how little difference it makes: getSymbols(c(\"\"GLD\"\", \"\"SLV\"\"), from = \"\"2012-06-01\"\", to = \"\"2017-06-01\"\") returns &lt;- NULL tickerlist &lt;- c(\"\"STZ\"\", \"\"RAI\"\", \"\"AMZN\"\", \"\"MSFT\"\", \"\"TWX\"\", \"\"RHT\"\", \"\"GLD\"\", \"\"SLV\"\") for (ticker in tickerlist){ returns &lt;- cbind(returns, monthlyReturn(Ad(eval(as.symbol(ticker))))) } colnames(returns) &lt;- tickerlist returns &lt;- as.timeSeries(returns) frontier &lt;- portfolioFrontier(returns) png(\"\"weights.png\"\", width = 800, height = 600) weightsPlot(frontier) dev.off() # Optimal weights out &lt;- minvariancePortfolio(returns, constraints = \"\"LongOnly\"\") wghts &lt;- getWeights(out) portret1 &lt;- returns%*%wghts portret1 &lt;- cbind(monthprc, portret1)[,3] colnames(portret1) &lt;- \"\"Optimal portfolio\"\" # Equal weights wghts &lt;- rep(1/8, 8) portret2 &lt;- returns%*%wghts portret2 &lt;- cbind(monthprc, portret2)[,3] colnames(portret2) &lt;- \"\"Equal weights portfolio\"\" png(\"\"performance_both.png\"\", width = 800, height = 600) par(mfrow=c(2,2)) chart.CumReturns(portret1, ylim = c(0, 2)) chart.CumReturns(portret2, ylim = c(0, 2)) chart.Drawdown(portret1, main = \"\"Drawdown\"\", ylim = c(-0.06, 0)) chart.Drawdown(portret2, main = \"\"Drawdown\"\", ylim = c(-0.06, 0)) dev.off() https://imgur.com/sBHGz7s Adding gold changes the minimum variance mean return to 0.0116 and the variance stays about the same 0.0332. You can see how the weights change at different return and variance profiles in the picture. The takeaway is that adding gold decreases the return but does not do a lot for the risk of the portfolio. You also notice that silver does not get included in the minimum variance efficient portfolio (and neither does AMZN). https://imgur.com/rXPbXau We can also compare the optimal weights to an equally weighted portfolio and see that the latter would have performed better but had much larger drawdowns. Which is because it has a higher volatility, which might be undesirable. --- Everything below here is false, but illustrative. So what about the derivative part? Let us assume you bought an out of the money call option with a strike of 50 on MSFT at the beginning of the time series and held it to the end. We need to decide on the the annualized cost-of-carry rate, the annualized rate of interest, the time to maturity is measured in years, the annualized volatility of the underlying security is proxied by the historical volatility. library(fOptions) monthprc &lt;- Ad(MSFT)[endpoints(MSFT, \"\"months\"\")] T &lt;- length(monthprc) # 60 months, 5 years vol &lt;- sd(returns$MSFT)*sqrt(12) # annualized volatility optprc &lt;- matrix(NA, 60, 1) for (t in 1:60) { s &lt;- as.numeric(monthprc[t]) optval &lt;- GBSOption(TypeFlag = \"\"c\"\", S = s, X = 50, Time = (T - t) / 12, r = 0.001, b = 0.001, sigma = vol) optprc[t] &lt;- optval@price } monthprc &lt;- cbind(monthprc, optprc) colnames(monthprc) &lt;- c(\"\"MSFT\"\", \"\"MSFTCall50\"\") MSFTCall50rets &lt;- monthlyReturn(monthprc[,2]) colnames(MSFTCall50rets) &lt;- \"\"MSFTCall50rets\"\" returns &lt;- merge(returns, MSFTCall50rets) wghts &lt;- rep(1/9, 9) portret3 &lt;- returns%*%wghts portret3 &lt;- cbind(monthprc, portret3)[,3] colnames(portret3) &lt;- \"\"Equal weights derivative portfolio\"\" png(\"\"performance_deriv.png\"\", width = 800, height = 600) par(mfrow=c(2,2)) chart.CumReturns(portret2, ylim = c(0, 4.5)) chart.CumReturns(portret3, ylim = c(0, 4.5)) chart.Drawdown(portret2, main = \"\"Drawdown\"\", ylim = c(-0.09, 0)) chart.Drawdown(portret3, main = \"\"Drawdown\"\", ylim = c(-0.09, 0)) dev.off() https://imgur.com/SZ1xrYx Even though we have a massively profitable instrument in the derivative. The portfolio analysis does not include it because of the high volatility. However, if we just use equal weighting and essentially take a massive position in the out of the money call (which would not be possible in real life), we get huge drawdowns and volatility, but the returns are almost two fold. But nobody will sell you a five year call. Others can correct any mistakes or misunderstandings in the above. It hopefully gives a starting point. Read more at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_(finance) The imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/LoBEY\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4571314d35b39aaa79c3fad8a33a7265", "text": "Yes, just set aside the amount of money. If you buy a cfd long in a stock for a 1000$, set aside 1000$. If you buy a cfd short, set aside the same amount and include a stoploss at the value at which the money is depleted. In this case however, you can stil lose more, because of opening gaps. By doing this, you replicate the stock return, apart from the charged interest rate.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "28f13758cf91f1e70e60d49db4f80a9b", "text": "\"According to page 56 of the 2015 IRS Publication 550 on Investment Income and Expenses: Wash sales. Your holding period for substantially identical stock or securities you acquire in a wash sale includes the period you held the old stock or securities. It looks like the rule applies to stocks and other securities, including options. It seems like the key is \"\"substantially identical\"\". For your brokerage / trading platform to handle these periods correctly for reporting to IRS, it seems best to trade the same security instead of trying to use something substantially identical.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d3ad5c3e23220983ecf4990d8cae163b", "text": "\"The wash sale rule only applies when the sale in question is at a loss. So the rule does not apply at all to your cases 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, and 16, which all start with a gain. You get a capital gain at the first sale and then a separately computed gain / loss at the second sale, depending on the case, BUT any gain or loss in the IRA is not a taxable event due to the usual tax-advantaged rules for the IRA. The wash sale does not apply to \"\"first\"\" sales in your IRA because there is no taxable gain or loss in that case. That means that you wouldn't be seeking a deduction anyway, and there is nothing to get rolled into the repurchase. This means that the rule does not apply to 1-8. For 5-8, where the second sale is in your brokerage account, you have a \"\"usual\"\" capital gain / loss as if the sale in the IRA didn't happen. (For 1-4, again, the second sale is in the IRA, so that sale is not taxable.) What's left are 9-10 (Brokerage -> IRA) and 13-14 (Brokerage -> Brokerage). The easier two are 13-14. In this case, you cannot take a capital loss deduction for the first sale at a loss. The loss gets added to the basis of the repurchase instead. When you ultimately close the position with the second sale, then you compute your gain or loss based on the modified basis. Note that this means you need to be careful about what you mean by \"\"gain\"\" or \"\"loss\"\" at the second sale, because you need to be careful about when you account for the basis adjustment due to the wash sale. Example 1: All buys and sells are in your brokerage account. You buy initially at $10 and sell at $8, creating a $2 loss. But you buy again within the wash sale window at $9 and sell that at $12. You get no deduction after the first sale because it's wash. You have a $1 capital gain at the second sale because your basis is $11 = $9 + $2 due to the $2 basis adjustment from wash sale. Example 2: Same as Example 1, except that final sale is at $8 instead of at $12. In this case you appear to have taken a $2 loss on the first buy-sell and another $1 loss on the second buy-sell. For taxes however, you cannot claim the loss at the first sale due to the wash. At the second sale, your basis is still $11 (as in Example 1), so your overall capital loss is the $3 dollars that you might expect, computed as the $8 final sale price minus the $11 (wash-adjusted) basis. Now for 9-10 (Brokerage->IRA), things are a little more complicated. In the IRA, you don't worry about the basis of individual stocks that you hold because of the way that tax advantages of those accounts work. You do need to worry about the basis of the IRA account as a whole, however, in some cases. The most common case would be if you have non-deductable contributions to your traditional IRA. When you eventually withdraw, you don't pay tax on any distributions that are attributable to those nondeductible contributions (because you already paid tax on that part). There are other cases where basis of your account matters, but that's a whole question in itself - It's enough for now to understand 1. Basis in your IRA as a whole is a well-defined concept with tax implications, and 2. Basis in individual holdings within your account don't matter. So with the brokerage-IRA wash sale, there are two questions: 1. Can you take the capital loss on the brokerage side? 2. If no because of the wash sale, does this increase the basis of your IRA account (as a whole)? The answer to both is \"\"no,\"\" although the reason is not obvious. The IRS actually put out a Special Bulletin to answer the question specifically because it was unclear in the law. Bottom line for 9-10 is that you apparently are losing your tax deduction completely in that case. In addition, if you were counting on an increase in the basis of your IRA to avoid early distribution penalties, you don't get that either, which will result in yet more tax if you actually take the early distribution. In addition to the Special Bulletin noted above, Publication 550, which talks about wash sale rules for individuals, may also help some.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ec2cecd148f5a36061685e5c592c6bf3", "text": "I found the following on a stock to mutual conversion for insurance firms for Ohio. Pulling from that link, Any domestic stock life insurance corporation, incorporated under a general law, may become a mutual life insurance corporation, and to that end may carry out a plan for the acquisition of shares of its capital stock, provided such plan: (A) Has been adopted by a vote of a majority of the directors of such corporation; (B) Has been approved by a vote of stockholders representing a majority of the capital stock then outstanding at a meeting of stockholders called for the purpose; (C) Has been approved by a majority of the policyholders voting at a meeting of policyholders called for the purpose, each of whom is insured in a sum of at least one thousand dollars and whose insurance shall then be in force and shall have been in force for at least one year prior to such meeting. and Any stockholder who has assented to the plan or who has been concluded by the vote of the assenting stockholders, and any stockholder who has objected and made demand in writing for the fair cash value of his shares subsequent to which an agreement has been reached fixing such fair cash value, but who fails to surrender his certificates for cancellation upon payment of the amount to which he is entitled, may be ordered to do so by a decree of the court of common pleas for the county in which the principal office of such corporation is located after notice and hearing in an action instituted by the corporation for that purpose, and such decree may provide that, upon the failure of the stockholder to surrender such certificates for cancellation, the decree shall stand in lieu of such surrender and cancellation. Since they successfully became a mutual insurance company, I would guess that those stocks were acquired back by the company, and are leftover from the conversion. They would not represent an ownership in the company, but might have value to a collector.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8e437a2c62972a44657f449075e12786", "text": "\"Debt is nominal, which means when inflation happens, the value of the money owed goes down. This is great for the borrower and bad for the lender. \"\"Investing\"\" can mean a lot of different things. Frequently it is used to describe buying common stock, which is an ownership claim on a company. A company is not a nominally fixed asset, by which I mean if there was a bunch of inflation and nothing else happened (i.e., the inflation was not the cause or result of some other economic change) then the nominal value of the company will go up along with the prices of other things. Based on the above, I'd say you are incorrect to treat debt and investment returns the same way with respect to inflation. When we say equity returns 9%, we mean it returns a real 7% plus 2% inflation or whatever. If the rate of inflation increased to 10% and nothing else happened in the economy, the same equity would be expected to return 17%. In fact, the company's (nominally fixed) debts would be worth less, increasing the real value of the company at the expense of their debt-holders. On the other hand, if we entered a period of high inflation, your debt liability would go way down and you would have benefited greatly from borrowing and investing at the same time. If you are expecting inflation in the abstract sense, then borrowing and investing in common stock is a great idea. Inflation is frequently the result (or cause) of a period of economic trouble, so please be aware that the above makes sense if we treat inflation as the only thing that changed. If inflation came about because OPEC makes oil crazy expensive, millennials just stop working, all of our factories got bombed to hades, or trade wars have shut down international commerce, then the value of stocks would most definitely be affected. In that case it's not really \"\"inflation\"\" that affected the stock returns, though.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e3c2583945301f8f9b14c9f8f0af19fa", "text": "S & P's site has a methodology link that contains the following which may be of use: Market Capitalization. Unadjusted market capitalization of US$ 4.6 billion or more for the S&P 500, US$ 1.2 billion to US$ 5.1 billion for the S&P MidCap 400, and US$ 350 million to US$ 1.6 billion for the S&P SmallCap 600. The market cap of a potential addition to an index is looked at in the context of its short- and medium-term historical trends, as well as those of its industry. These ranges are reviewed from time to time to assure consistency with market conditions. Liquidity. Adequate liquidity and reasonable price – the ratio of annual dollar value traded to float adjusted market capitalization should be 1.00 or greater, and the company should trade a minimum of 250,000 shares in each of the six months leading up to the evaluation date. Domicile. U.S. companies. For index purposes, a U.S. company has the following characteristics: The final determination of domicile eligibility is made by the U.S. Index Committee.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3221ea586106f111e68b463d6aeb1d53", "text": "Efficient Frontier has an article from years ago about the small-cap and value premiums out there that would be worth noting here using the Fama and French data. Eugene Fama and Kenneth French (F/F) have shown that one can explain almost all of the returns of equity portfolios based on only three factors: market exposure, market capitalization (size), and price-to-book (value). Wikipedia link to the factor model which was the result of the F/F research.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4d6f7aaab66362044861af30f6dad102", "text": "I find the reg, at last. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=Cornerstone+Strategic+Value+Fund&owner=exclude&action=getcompany Yes, its a common stock.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "289270da721e0e136ede814135c932bf", "text": "\"Re. question 2 If I buy 20 shares every year, how do I get proper IRR? ... (I would have multiple purchase dates) Use the money-weighted return calculation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_of_return#Internal_rate_of_return where t is the fraction of the time period and Ct is the cash flow at that time period. For the treatment of dividends, if they are reinvested then there should not be an external cash flow for the dividend. They are included in the final value and the return is termed \"\"total return\"\". If the dividends are taken in cash, the return based on the final value is \"\"net return\"\". The money-weighted return for question 2, with reinvested dividends, can be found by solving for r, the rate for the whole 431 day period, in the NPV summation. Now annualising And in Excel\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c6b369eb3203921bb4621f9398674518", "text": "While the issuer of the security such as a stock or bond not the short is responsible for the credit risk, the issuer and the short of a derivative is one. In all cases, it is more than likely that a trader is owed securities by an agent such as a broker or exchange or clearinghouse. Legally, only the Options Clearing Corporation clears openly traded options. With stocks and bonds, brokerages can clear with each other if approved. While a trader is expected to fund margin, the legal responsibility is shared by all in the agent chain. Clearinghouses are liable to exchanges. Exchanges are liable to members. Traders are liable to brokerages. Both ways and so on. Clearinghouses are usually ultimately liable for counterparty risk to the long counterparty, and the short counterparty is ultimately liable to the clearinghouse. Clearinghouses are not responsible for the credit risk of stocks and bonds because the issuers are not short those securities on the exchange, thus no margin is required. Credit risk for stocks and bonds is mitigated away from the clearing process.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
f20a3db66a8ae0b11b7cfd0a2b906fc4
How to save money on currency conversion
[ { "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": "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": "2ebc7fc2fe6982e3c3c583336b0bc7fb", "text": "There's a possibility to lose money in exchange rate shifts, but just as much chance to gain money (Efficient Market Hypothesis and all that). If you're worried about it, you should buy a stock in Canada and short sell the US version at the same time. Then journal the Canadian stock over to the US stock exchange and use it to settle your short sell. Or you can use derivatives to accomplish the same thing.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "78bb47fd959da4d5ff70d18bba75043b", "text": "If you're already in Australia you can just put your money in a savings account. The type of trade you're describing is called a carry trade, it makes money on the interest rate difference but gives you exposure to risk that the exchange rates change. You can, of course, leverage your money to get an even greater return at a higher risk. What you do is *borrow* USD, convert to AUD, and put in an Australian bank. In FX lingo this would be long AUDUSD.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b36c234151124c34fb9189a4356e13d3", "text": "Either way you'll be converting to US Dollars somewhere along the line. You are seeking something that is very redundant", "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": "b0c5d572daf63971196fc6cffc133484", "text": "If your savings are in USD and will be making purchases using USD, then it will no longer go as far as it used to. I assume most Americans currently have their savings accounts in USD, so the value of those accounts will decrease. If you have investments in stocks or foreign currencies, your exposure may be less, but it depends. For example, stocks in companies that hold a lot of USD will also be hit hard, as will be currencies of nations that are still holding a lot of USD if the value of the USD is crashing. If you have a lot of debt measured in USD, while have a lot of assets that have nothing to do with USD, then you might make out like a bandit, since if you assume the value of the USD is falling, then it would become easier to sell off your other assets to pay off the debt.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ea86fd7b4d8b9b47a0d883a41209fb7c", "text": "Yes, if all my savings were in Euro, I would absolutely be converting everything to US dollars, and possibly some gold. You probably don't want to sit around with lots of Euros while watching the shit hit fan. Talk to your bank, possibly they can open a US dollar bank account in your own country for you. Definitely any bank that has an international presence, like HSBC, should be able to do this for you. And if not US dollars, British Pounds would also be another option.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "44714eb2b7b27e40ad6de9cdbbec0533", "text": "\"I'll try to give you some clues on how to find an answer to your question, rather than answering directly the question asked. Why not answer it directly? Well, I can, but it won't help you (or anyone else) much in two months when the rates change again. Generally, you won't find such in brick-and-mortar banks. You can save some time and only look at online banks. Examples: ING Direct (CapitalOne), CapitalOne, Amex FSB, E*Trade, Ally, etc. There are plenty. Go to their web sites, look for promotions, and compare. Sometimes you can find coupons/promotions which will yield more than the actual savings rate. For example, ING frequently have a $50 promotion for opening a new account. You need to understand that rates change frequently, and the highest rate account today may become barely average in a week. There are plenty of sites that offer various levels of comparison information. One of the most comprehensive ones (IMHO) is Bankrate.com. Another place to look is MoneyRates.com. These sites provide various comparisons, and you can also find some promotions advertised there. There are more similar sites. Also, search the Internet and you can find various blog posts with additional promotions – frequently banks give \"\"referral bonuses\"\" to provide incentive for clients to promote the banks. Do some due diligence on the results that appear promising. Not much. You won't find any savings account that would keep the value (purchasing power) of your money over the long term. Keeping money in savings accounts is a sure way to lose value because the inflation rate is much higher than even high-yield savings accounts. But, savings accounts are safe (insured by FDIC/NCUA up to the limit), and very convenient to keep short term savings – such as an emergency fund – that you cannot afford to lose to investments. Sometimes you'll get slightly better rates by locking up your money in a Certificate of Deposit (CD), but not significantly higher when the CD is short-term.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "76def0924a473ee8754ddbcfa1ab06b3", "text": "If possible, I would open a Canadian bank account with a bank such as TD Canada Trust. You can then have your payments wired into that account without incurring costs on receipt. They also allow access to their US ATM network via TD Bank without additional costs. So you could use the American Affiliate to pull the funds out via a US teller while only bearing the cost of currency conversion. If that option can't work then the best route would be to choose a US bank account that doesn't charge for incoming wire transfers and request that the money be wired to your account (you'll still get charged the conversion rate when the wire is in CAD and the account is in USD).", "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": "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": "b376cf28548b9fb41e44db2115279686", "text": "There are peer to peer services these days which work by trying to match someone who wants to convert currency X to currency Y with other people who want to convert Y to X. Obviously this works better with major currencies. They tend to give you the midmarket interbank rate banks use to trade with each less their commission of 1-2%. Banks can charge up to 5% and use different rates for buying and selling. Transfers may take a day or two, although you may be able to do it faster if you pay extra. Transferwise, CurrencyFair and MidPoint are examples of such services though there are many others. Here's a link to a newspaper article with more details.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a6f3673e71cdfeb5998f0abfae96975d", "text": "In general, to someone in a similar circumstance I might suggest that the lowest-risk option is to immediately convert your excess currency into the currency you will be spending. Note that 'risk' here refers only to the variance in possible outcomes. By converting to EUR now (assuming you are moving to an EU country using the EUR), you eliminate the chance that the GBP will weaken. But you also eliminate the chance that the GBP will strengthen. Thus, you have reduced the variance in possible outcomes so that you have a 'known' amount of EUR. To put money in a different currency than what you will be using is a form of investing, and it is one that can be considered high risk. Invest in a UK company while you plan on staying in the UK, and you take on the risk of stock ownership only. But invest in a German company while you plan on staying in the UK, you take on the risk of stock ownership + the risk of currency volatility. If you are prepared for this type of risk and understand it, you may want to take on this type of risk - but you really must understand what you're getting into before you do this. For most people, I think it's fair to say that fx investing is more accurately called gambling [See more comments on the risk of fx trading here: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/76482/44232]. However, this risk reduction only truly applies if you are certain that you will be moving to an EUR country. If you invest in EUR but then move to the US, you have not 'solved' your currency volatility problem, you have simply replaced your GBP risk with EUR risk. If you had your plane ticket in hand and nothing could stop you, then you know what your currency needs will be in 2 years. But if you have any doubt, then exchanging currency now may not be reducing your risk at all. What if you exchange for EUR today, and in a year you decide (for all the various reasons that circumstances in life may change) that you will stay in the UK after all. And during that time, what if the GBP strengthened again? You will have taken on risk unnecessarily. So, if you lack full confidence in your move, you may want to avoid fully trading your GBP today. Perhaps you could put away some amount every month into EUR (if you plan on moving to an EUR country), and leave some/most in GBP. This would not fully eliminate your currency risk if you move, but it would also not fully expose yourself to risk if you end up not moving. Just remember that doing this is not a guarantee that the EUR will strengthen and the GBP will weaken.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0fa6c81a8ef6708e1285d62e7d01d454", "text": "\"The \"\"hidden\"\" fees in any transfer are usually: Foreign exchange transfer services are usually the cheapest option for sending money abroad when a conversion is involved. They tend to offer ways to get the money to or from them cheaply or for free and they typically offer low or no fees plus much better exchange rates than the alternatives. My preferred foreign exchange service is XE Trade. It looks like they support CAD to ZAR transfers so you might check them out. In my experience, they have not set a minimum on the amount I send although it does impact the exchange rate they will offer. The rate is still better than other alternatives available to me though. Note that for large enough transfers, the exchange rate difference will dominate all other costs. For example, if you transfer $10,000 and you pay $100 for the transfer plus $50 in wire fees ($150 in fees) but get a 2% better exchange rate than a \"\"free\"\" service, you would save $50 by choosing the non free service.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b6f497d0d1f37a618b3d6ef7938703e3", "text": "Wire transfers are the best method. Costs can vary from $10 to $100 or more, depending on the banks and countries involved. There's rarely any saving using the same bank, although HSBC may have reduced charges if you have Premier accounts in both countries (for a one-off transaction, it may not be worth the effort to open an account). However, that cost is insignificant compared to your possible losses on the currency exchange. Assuming your money is currently in Hong Kong Dollars (HKD), it will need to be converted to US Dollars (USD). One place where it could be converted is at your Hong Kong bank. You'll get their retail rate. Make sure you are aware of the rate they will use, and any fees, in advance. Expect to pay around 2-3% from the mid-market rate (the rate you see quoted online, which doesn't fluctuate much for HKD-USD as the currencies are linked). Another place where the currency could be converted is at your US bank. You really don't get any control over that if it arrives as HKD and is then automatically converted into your USD. The rate and fees could be quite poor, especially if it is a minor US bank that has to deal with anther bank for foreign currency. For amounts of this size, it's worthwhile using a specialist currency conversion company instead. Currency Fair in Ireland is one. It's a peer-to-peer exchange that is generally the best deal (at least for the currency pairs I use). You wire the money to them, do the exchange on their site at a rate that is much closer to 0.5% from the midrate, then the money is transferred out by wire for a few dollars. Adds a few days to the process, but will possibly save you close to US$1000. Another established option is Currency Online in New Zealand. There are probably also specialist currency exchange companies in Hong Kong. The basic rule is, don't let the banks exchange currencies at rates that suit them, use a third party that offers a better rate and lower fees.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
00f127b8e61274eddf0d38aa4ee766d4
Buying a house 50/50
[ { "docid": "49b7553d244543856932b6f64b282728", "text": "This question is really a variation of rent vs buy. Try looking at it this way - If you bought it 50/50 and rented it out, what would you both get? Now, moved in, you are effectively collecting that rent, but half is your own money, half is from the partner. Is the half you are getting the from the partner equal to 1/4 of the mortgage. This sounds convoluted, but once you spell all the numbers out, it would be clear. Without the deal as you present it, you'd be paying the partner to 'live in his half.'", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ba2dda2440aab1b0940b723689abe424", "text": "I don't like it using percentages makes no sense. Find out what market value is for rent and pay 1/2 of that to your partner, adjust annually. You partner should be protected from inflation if he is going to invest in real estate.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "b2b74b5cd2be5c6afc1c3fe45820c19c", "text": "\"The current mortgaged owner would typically not have the right to sell any portion of the house without approval from the bank. The bank doesn't \"\"own\"\" the house through the mortgage, but they do have a series of rights that, in some cases, look similar to ownership. Remember that a mortgage is just a loan that uses a house as collateral, to reduce the risk to the lender in the event of default. If it was just a personal loan, without collateral, then there would be a much higher risk of default (and therefore the interest rate would be closer to 20% than 2%). But because the loan was taken with collateral, that collateral can't be sold without the bank's permission. If the bank allowed this to happen, then one risk would be exactly as you say - that the mortgagee stops paying the bank, and the bank no longer is able to recover the full value of the loan on selling the remaining 50% of the house owed as collateral.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "98b07a3bada1706a14716f012eaff827", "text": "\"Accounting for this properly is not a trivial matter, and you would be wise to pay a little extra to talk with a lawyer and/or CPA to ensure the precise wording. How best to structure such an arrangement will depend upon your particular jurisdiction, as this is not a federal matter - you need someone licensed to advise in your particular state at least. The law of real estate co-ownership (as defined on a deed) is not sufficient for the task you are asking of it - you need something more sophisticated. Family Partnership (we'll call it FP) is created (LLC, LLP, whatever). We'll say April + A-Husband gets 50%, and Sister gets 50% equity (how you should handle ownership with your husband is outside the scope of this answer, but you should probably talk it over with a lawyer and this will depend on your state!). A loan is taken out to buy the property, in this case with all partners personally guaranteeing the loan equally, but the loan is really being taken out by FP. The mortgage should probably show 100% ownership by FP, not by any of you individually - you will only be guaranteeing the loan, and your ownership is purely through the partnership. You and your husband put $20,000 into the partnership. The FP now lists a $20,000 liability to you, and a $20,000 asset in cash. FP buys the $320,000 house (increase assets) with a $300,000 mortgage (liability) and $20,000 cash (decrease assets). Equity in the partnership is $0 right now. The ownership at present is clear. You own 50% of $0, and your sister owns 50% of $0. Where'd your money go?! Simple - it's a liability of the partnership, so you and your husband are together owed $20,000 by the partnership before any equity exists. Everything balances nicely at this point. Note that you should account for paying closing costs the same as you considered the down payment - that money should be paid back to you before any is doled out as investment profit! Now, how do you handle mortgage payments? This actually isn't as hard as it sounds, thanks to the nature of a partnership and proper business accounting. With a good foundation the rest of the building proceeds quite cleanly. On month 1 your sister pays $1400 into the partnership, while you pay $645 into the partnership. FP will record an increase in assets (cash) of $1800, an increase in liability to your sister of $1400, and an increase in liability to you of $645. FP will then record a decrease in cash assets of $1800 to pay the mortgage, with a matching increase in cost account for the mortgage. No net change in equity, but your individual contributions are still preserved. Let's say that now after only 1 month you decide to sell the property - someone makes an offer you just can't refuse of $350,000 dollars (we'll pretend all the closing costs disappeared in buying and selling, but it should be clear how to account for those as I mention earlier). Now what happens? FP gets an increase in cash assets of $350,000, decreases the house asset ($320,000 - original purchase price), and pays off the mortgage - for simplicity let's pretend it's still $300,000 somehow. Now there's $50,000 in cash left in the partnership - who's money is it? By accounting for the house this way, the answer is easily determined. First all investments are paid back - so you get back $20,000 for the down payment, $645 for your mortgage payments so far, and your sister gets back $1400 for her mortgage payment. There is now $27,995 left, and by being equal partners you get to split it - 13,977 to you and your husband and the same amount to your sister (I'm keeping the extra dollar for my advice to talk to a lawyer/CPA). What About Getting To Live There? The fact is that your sister is getting a little something extra out of the deal - she get's the live there! How do you account for that? Well, you might just be calling it a gift. The problem is you aren't in any way, shape, or form putting that in writing, assigning it a value, nothing. Also, what do you do if you want to sell/cash out or at least get rid of the mortgage, as it will be showing up as a debt on your credit report and will effect your ability to secure financing of your own in the future if you decide to buy a house for your husband and yourself? Now this is the kind of stuff where families get in trouble. You are mixing personal lives and business arrangements, and some things are not written down (like the right to occupy the property) and this can really get messy. Would evicting your sister to sell the house before you all go bankrupt on a bad deal make future family gatherings tense? I'm betting it might. There should be a carefully worded lease probably from the partnership to your sister. That would help protect you from extra court costs in trying to determine who has the rights to occupy the property, especially if it's also written up as part of the partnership agreement...but now you are building the potential for eviction proceedings against your sister right into an investment deal? Ugh, what a potential nightmare! And done right, there should probably be some dollar value assigned to the right to live there and use the property. Unless you just want to really gift that to your sister, but this can be a kind of invisible and poorly quantified gift - and those don't usually work very well psychologically. And it also means she's going to be getting an awfully larger benefit from this \"\"investment\"\" than you and your husband - do you think that might cause animosity over dozens and dozens of writing out the check to pay for the property while not realizing any direct benefit while you pay to keep up your own living circumstances too? In short, you need a legal structure that can properly account for the fact that you are starting out in-equal contributors to your scheme, and ongoing contributions will be different over time too. What if she falls on hard times and you make a few of the mortgage payments? What if she wants to redo the bathroom and insists on paying for the whole thing herself or with her own loan, etc? With a properly documented partnership - or equivalent such business entity - these questions are easily resolved. They can be equitably handled by a court in event of family squabble, divorce, death, bankruptcy, emergency liquidation, early sale, refinance - you name it. No percentage of simple co-ownership recorded on a deed can do any of this for you. No math can provide you the proper protection that a properly organized business entity can. I would thus strongly advise you, your husband, and your sister to spend the comparatively tiny amount of extra money to get advice from a real estate/investment lawyer/CPA to get you set up right. Keep all receipts and you can pay a book keeper or the accountant to do end of the year taxes, and answer questions that will come up like how to properly account for things like depreciation on taxes. Your intuition that you should make sure things are formally written up in times when everyone is on good terms is extremely wise, so please follow it up with in-person paid consultation from an expert. And no matter what, this deal as presently structured has a really large built-in potential for heartache as you have three partners AND one of the partners is also renting the property partially from themselves while putting no money down? This has a great potential to be a train wreck, so please do look into what would happen if these went wrong into some more detail and write up in advance - in a legally binding way - what all parties rights and responsibilities are.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "48868ffe482149e6978a8f1257960eff", "text": "The calculations you suggest have some issues, but I think they are not necessary to answer the question: It sounds like you are buying the house either way. So the question really is simply whether to pay toward your house first or your loan first. In that case, the answer is simple: pay whichever has the highest interest rate first. Make the minimum payment on the other until the first is paid off. Remember this and make it your mantra for the rest of your life. If you have any debts (such as credit cards) that charge a rate higher than the two options you have presented, do them first. Now, be careful as you compute the interest rates. Most likely you can deduct interest on your mortgage, so its effective interest rate is lower [it is (1-T)*R instead of R, where T is your marginal tax rate]. For a while, the cost of mortgage insurance will make your effective mortgage rate artificially high, but it sounds like you intend to get to that 20% hurdle pretty fast, so my guess is that this is not a big factor. Congratulations on your bonus and good luck with your new home.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6a8e2de27f93330982b24ba00ec571de", "text": "Split the money 50/50. Split the costs 50/50. Prioritize your relationship over a couple of dollars here and there.", "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": "d93fb5ceb668a6644a34fddd340476ab", "text": "It would be good to know which country you are in? You are basically on the right track with your last point. Usually when you buy your first property you need to come up with a deposit and then borrow the remainder to have enough to purchase the property. In most cases (and most places) the standard percentage of loan to deposit is 80% to 20%. This is expressed as the Loan to Value Ratio (LVR) which in this case would be 80%. (This being the amount of the loan to the value of the property). Some banks and lenders will lend you more than the 80% but this can usually come with extra costs (in Australia the banks charge an extra percentage when you borrow called Loan Mortgage Insurance (LMI) if you borrow over 80% and the LMI gets more expensive the higher LVR you borrow). Also this practice of lending more than 80% LVR has been tightened up since the GFC. So if you are borrowing 80% of the value of the property you will need to come up with the remainder 20% deposit plus the additional closing costs (taxes - in Australia we have to pay Stamp Duty, solicitor or conveyancing fees, loan application fees, building and pest inspection costs, etc.). If you then want to buy a second property you will need to come up with the same deposit and other closing costs again. Most people cannot afford to do this any time soon, especially since the a good majority of the money they used to save before is now going to pay the mortgage and upkeep of your first property (especially if you used to say live with your parents and now live in the property and not rent it out). So what a lot of people do who want to buy more properties is wait until the LVR of the property has dropped to say below 60%. This is achieved by the value of the property going up in value and the mortgage principle being reduced by your mortgage payments. Once you have enough, as you say, collateral or equity in the first property, then you can refinance your mortgage and use this equity in your existing property and the value of the new property you want to buy to basically borrow 100% of the value of the new property plus closing costs. As long as the LVR of the total borrowings versus the value of both properties remains at or below 80% this should be achievable. You can do this in two ways. Firstly you could refinance your first mortgage and borrow up to 80% LVR again and use this additional funds as your deposit and closing costs for the second property, for which you would then get a second mortgage. The second way is to refinance one mortgage over the two properties. The first method is preferred as your mortgages and properties are separated so if something does go wrong you don't have to sell everything up all at once. This process can be quite slow at the start, as you might have to wait a few years to build up equity in one property (especially if you live in it). But as you accumulate more and more properties it becomes easier and quicker to do as your equity will increase quicker with tenants paying a good portion of your costs if not all (if you are positively geared). Of course you do want to be careful if property prices fall (as this may drastically reduce your equity and increase your total LVR or the LVR on individual properties) and have a safety net. For example, I try to keep my LVR to 60% or below, currently they are below 50%.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c83e47cb9631f83ce924a41ea510ae86", "text": "\"You are suggesting that a 1% return per month is huge. There are those who suggest that one should assume (a rule of thumb here) that you should assume expenses of half the rent. 6% per year in this case. With a mortgage cost of 4.5% on a rental, you have a forecast profit of 1.5%/yr. that's $4500 on a $300K house. If you buy 20 of these, you'll have a decent income, and a frequently ringing phone. There's no free lunch, rental property can be a full time business. And very lucrative, but it's rarely a slam dunk. In response to OP's comment - First, while I do claim to know finance fairly well, I don't consider myself at 'expert' level when it comes to real estate. In the US, the ratio varies quite a bit from area to area. The 1% (rent) you observe may turn out to be great. Actual repair costs low, long term tenants, rising home prices, etc. Improve the 1.5%/yr to 2% on the 20% down, and you have a 10% return, ignoring appreciation and principal paydown. And this example of leverage is how investors seem to get such high returns. The flip side is bad luck with tenants. An eviction can mean no rent for a few months, and damage that needs fixing. A house has a number of long term replacement costs that good numbers often ignore. Roof, exterior painting, all appliances, heat, AC, etc. That's how that \"\"50% of rent to costs\"\" rule comes into play.\"", "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": "ca439f4a6582d3c83baf1e7055724e58", "text": "Even post meltdown, there are banks that will lend money based on a low loan to value, so 50% might not be a problem. But such loans come at a price. The current 30 year fixed rated is 4.5% or so, but you might see quite a bit higher than this on the loan.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f8d5c327ce6e719e6a82fda9724475de", "text": "While I agree with the existing bulk of comments and answers that you can't tell the lender the $7k is a gift, I do think you might have luck finding a mortgage broker who can help you get a loan as a group. (You might consider as an LLC or other form of corporation if no one will take you otherwise.) That is, each of you will be an owner of the house and appear on the mortgage. IIRC, as long as the downpayment only comes from the collective group, and the income-to-debt ratio of the group as a whole is acceptable, and the strongest credit rating of the group is good, you should be able to find a loan. (You may need a formal ownership agreement to get this accepted by the lender.) That said, I don't know if your income will trump your brother's situation (presumably high debt ratio or lower than 100% multiplier on his income dues to its source), but it will certainly help. As to how to structure the deal for fairness, I think whatever the two of you agree to and put down in writing is fine. If you each think you're helping the other, than a 50/50 split on profits at the sale of the property seems reasonable to me. I'd recommend that you actually include in your write up a defined maximum period for ownership (e.g. 5yr, or 10yr, etc,) and explain how things will be resolved if one side doesn't want to sell at that point but the other side does. Just remember that whatever percentages you agree to as ownership won't effect the lender's view of payment requirements. The lender will consider each member of the group fully and independently responsible for the loan. That is, if something happens to your brother, or he just flakes out on you, you will be on the hook for 100% of the loan. And vice-versa. Your write up ought to document what happens if one of you flakes out on paying agreed upon amounts, but still expects there ownership share at the time of sale. That said, if you're trying to be mathematically fair about apportioning ownership, you could do something like the below to try and factor in the various issues into the money flow: The above has the benefit that you can start with a different ownership split (34/66, 25/75, etc.) if one of you wants to own more of the property.", "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": "9cb8d2713786a67c691618f992ccd148", "text": "The assumption that house value appreciates 5% per year is unrealistic. Over the very long term, real house prices has stayed approximately constant. A house that is 10 years old today is 11 years old a year after, so this phenomenon of real house prices staying constant applies only to the market as a whole and not to an individual house, unless the individual house is maintained well. One house is an extremely poorly diversified investment. What if the house you buy turns out to have a mold problem? You can lose your investment almost overnight. In contrast to this, it is extremely unlikely that the same could happen on a well-diversified stock portfolio (although it can happen on an individual stock). Thus, if non-leveraged stock portfolio has a nominal return of 8% over the long term, I would demand higher return, say 10%, from a non-leveraged investment to an individual house because of the greater risks. If you have the ability to diversify your real estate investments, a portfolio of diversified real estate investments is safer than a diversified stock portfolio, so I would demand a nominal return of 6% over the long term from such a diversified portfolio. To decide if it's better to buy a house or to live in rental property, you need to gather all of the costs of both options (including the opportunity cost of the capital which you could otherwise invest elsewhere). The real return of buying a house instead of renting it comes from the fact that you do not need to pay rent, not from the fact that house prices tend to appreciate (which they won't do more than inflation over a very long term). For my case, I live in Finland in a special case of near-rental property where you pay 15% of the building cost when moving in (and get the 15% payment back when moving out) and then pay a monthly rent that is lower than the market rent. The property is subsidized by government-provided loans. I have calculated that for my case, living in this property makes more sense than purchasing a market-priced house, but your situation may be different.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6df9282dbf866387ec766e5cdbf9b750", "text": "I don't have a solid data-backed answer, but this is too lengthy for a comment. I've read that on average, about 1-2% is what you can get as a cash discount on a home purchase, all else being equal, but no hard data to back that. In certain situations it makes sense for a cash discount to be much greater than that, for instance, if the seller is in a hurry to close and your cash offer has no inspection clause. Similarly, if a house has been re-listed after a sale fell through you might get a greater cash-discount, or if an owner just over-values the advantages of a cash-offer. Anecdotally, I had a neighbor take a cash offer 5% below asking and they had multiple offers at asking, they took the cash offer so they could close faster (15 days). Also, I've lost out to a cash offer, also at 5% below asking, and they also had a short-closing period and no-inspection, my offer was over asking on that one, so total cash discount > 5%. There can be more volatility in the luxury home market, but I wouldn't guess that changes the cash vs financed evaluation much. Would love to see if anyone finds a good source, but even if they do, an average is only so helpful.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4b9d593b1a04755bdf0903d4018edc79", "text": "Presumably this house is a great deal for you for some reason if you are willing to go to great lengths such as these to acquire it. I suggest you have your father purchase the house with cash, then you purchase the house from him. You might want to discuss this with the title company, it's possible that there are some fees that they will waive if you close both sales through them in a short period of time. If the home will appraise for a higher amount than purchase, then you may be able to get a mortgage without a significant down-payment. If not, then you will need to owe your father at least the amount of the down-payment at closing time.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5b290e20dbb771f105b217af25c83024", "text": "You and your husband are fronting all the money upfront. I'm guessing this will cost you around 67,000 once closing costs and fees are included. So obviously you would be hundred percent owners at the beginning. You'll then pay 31% of the mortgage and have your sister pay the remaining 69%. This puts your total investment at the end at 67k + 74.4k + 31% of interest accrued, and your sisters total investment at 165.6k+69% of interest accrued. If you hold the full length of the mortgage, your sister will have invested much more than you( assuming 30 year fixed rate, and 3.75%, she'd pay 116.6k in interest as opposed to your 49.6k) She will have spent 282.2k and y'all will have spent 191k. However if you sell early, your percentage could be much higher. These calculations don't take into account the opportunity cost of fronting all the cash. It could be earning you more in the stock market or in a different investment property. Liability also could be an issue in the case of her not being able to pay. The bank can still come after you for the whole amount. Lastly and most importantly, this also doesn't include the fact that she will be living there and y'all will not. What kind of rent would she be paying to live in a similar home? If it is more than 1400, you will basically be subsidizing her living, as well as tying up funds, and increasing your risk exposure. If it is more than 1400, she shouldn't be any percent owner.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
6da85c2b5b25cbd4a4a038522540003f
What do I need as documentation in order to pay taxes in the Netherlands?
[ { "docid": "83ab3e868306499be668600aaafc67c9", "text": "\"The Dutch tax office is pretty decent, although slightly overburdened. Don't expect a lot of help, but they're not generally known for making a lot of problems. Digital copies are fine, for instance. They will send you your first VAT notice. You probably would have known if your company would have been incorporated, so I'll assume you're just trading as a natural person. That means you still have to file VAT returns, but the business income is just filed annually as \"\"other income\"\". For the VAT part, you'll need to invoice your customers. Keep a copy of those invoices for your own bookkeeping, and keep track of the matching customer payments. Together these form the chief evidence of your VAT obligation. You also have a VAT deduction from your purchases (it's a Value-Added Tax, after all). Again, keep receipts. The usual VAT period is 3 months, so you'd pay VAT 4 times a year. But if you would pay less than 1883 euro, you might not need to pay at all and just need to file annually The income part is easy with the receipts you had for VAT purposes anyway. Dutch Tax Office, VAT, in English\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "f4aa07f26f949b47c07d71acff501526", "text": "Unfortunately, you are required, but most states do have agreements with neighboring states that let the states share the collected taxes without the person having to pay double taxes. So being as this is your first tax return in your current situation, you might be wise to have a professional fill it out for you this year and then next year you can use it as a template. Additionally, I really would like to see someone challenge this across state lines taxation in court. It sure seems to me that it is a inter-state tariff/duty, which the state's are expressly forbidden from doing in the constitution.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "af46f9f222b03afc70c4c684572cf355", "text": "\"For Non-Resident filers, New York taxes New York-sourced income. That includes: real or tangible personal property located in New York State (including certain gains or losses from the sale or exchange of an interest in an entity that owns real property in New York State); services performed in New York State; a business, trade, profession, or occupation carried on in New York State; and a New York S corporation in which you are a shareholder (including installment income from an IRC 453 transaction). There are some exclusions as well. It is all covered in the instructions to form IT-203. However, keep in mind that \"\"filing\"\" as non-resident doesn't make you non-resident. If you spend 184 days or more in New York State, and you have a place to stay there - you are resident. See definitions here. Even if you don't actually live there and consider yourself a CT resident.\"", "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": "c980bab86b11f8a11a08b697e3987cf5", "text": "The I-9 form is required because you are working. It is kept by the employer as proof that you have the proper documents to work. If the government was to inspect their records they can be fined if they don't have those document, in fact they have to keep them for several years after your employment is done. A w-4 form is a federal tax form. There also was probably a state version of the form. When you completed the w-4 it is used by your employer to determine how much in taxes need to be withheld. Employers don't know your tax situation. Even though you are on work study, you still could have made enough money over the summer to pay taxes. But if this is your only job, and you will not make enough money to have to pay taxes, you can fill out the form as exempt. That means that last year you didn't make enough money to have to pay taxes, and you don't expect to make enough to have to pay taxes this year. If you are exempt, no federal income tax will be withheld. They might still withhold for social security and medicare. The state w-4 can also be used to be exempt from state taxes. If they withhold any income taxes you have to file one of the 1040 tax forms to get that income tax money back. You will have to do so for the state income tax withholding. A note about social security and medicare. If you have an on campus job, at the campus you attend, during the school year; they don't withhold money for social security and medicare. That law applies to students on work study jobs, and on non-work-study jobs. for single dependents the federal threshold where you must file is: > You must file a return if any of the following apply. Your gross income was more than the larger of— a. $1,000, or b. Your earned income (up to $5,850) plus $350.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8c9b48ed7f140ddf25940da79b0bba86", "text": "The VAT number should be equivalent from the point of view of your client. The fact that you are a sole trader and not a limited liability doesn't matter when it comes down to pay VAT. They should pay the VAT to you and you will pay it to the government. I'll guess that their issue is with tax breaks, it is a bit more tricky to receive a tax break on paid taxes if you buy something abroad (at least it is here in Finland). If they won't pay you because of that, you could open a LTD or contract the services of a 'management company' which will do the job of invoicing, receiving the money and passing it back to you, for a fee.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fde0a3995bf32d9d9647f1f627bac675", "text": "Am I required to send form 1099 to non-US citizens who are not even residing in the US? Since they're not required to file US taxes, do I still have to send the form to them? That's tricky. You need to get W8/W9 from them, and act accordingly. You may need to withhold 30% (or different percentage, depending on tax treaty they claim on W8). If you withhold taxes, you also need to file form 1042. I suggest you talk to a tax professional. Is it fine to expose my ITIN (taxpayer identification number) to individuals or companies who I send the form to them. Since the form requires me to write my TIN/EIN, what would be the risks of this and what precautions should be taken to avoid inappropriate/illegal use? No, it is not OK. But if you pay these people directly - you don't have much choice, so deal with it. Get a good insurance for identity theft, and don't transact with people you don't trust. One alternative would be to pay through a payment processor (Paypal or credit cards) - see your next question. I send payments via PayPal and wire transfer. Should I send form 1099-MISC or 1099-K? Paypal is a corporation, so you don't need to send 1099 to Paypal. Whatever Paypal sends to others - it will issue the appropriate forms. Similarly if you use a credit card for payment. When you send money through Paypal - you don't send money directly to your business counterparts. You send money to Paypal.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ad545957f5af34e852059d84dd928377", "text": "\"Finally, I got response from finance center: \"\"It doesn't matter where do you study, what does matter is where you live. So, once you live in Germany, you pay taxes in Germany. And it doesn't matter who you work for.\"\" So, there are two options to pay taxes: it's paid by an employer or an employee: If I would work for Swiss company, I need to show how much money I make every month (or year) to Finance Center.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "37d6d032b29df48450256623c47872d7", "text": "Why is the US still working with paper checks when Europe went digital about a decade ago? Tax filing is just another area in which the US is lagging. Modernizing it costs money, and the US is quite close to bankruptcy (as seen by the repeated government shutdowns). Also, the US tax code is quite complicated. For instance, I doubt there's anyone who has a full and complete list of all allowed deductions. Some comments wonder about multiple incomes. This doesn't require tax filing either. My local tax authority just sends me a combined statement with data from 2 employers and 2 banks, and asks me to confirm the resulting payment. This is possible because tax number usage is strictly regulated. SSN abuse in the US presumably makes this problematic.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "52498cdd3e021fd8a072857f318318fc", "text": "Edited to add an important one that I forgot, because I don't have a TV myself. You need to: That's really about it, unless you're employing people or running a business turning over more than £81,000 per year (or doing one of a number of relatively unlikely things that require specific paperwork, such as owning a horse or farm animal (but not a dog or cat or similar)). It's not a bureaucratic country. None of those things except the driving licence/car tax/MOT test/car insurance will be a police matter if omitted, but you could be fined for them (although it's vanishingly unlikely that you'd be fined for not registering to vote and for jury service). You don't need to understand the law before being on a jury, because it's the judge's job to ensure that the jury understand the law as it relates to the case in front of them. A few pieces of paperwork jargon for you:", "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": "12ee13037b330c7b5f5e360309585221", "text": "I can't speak for the US, but I've completed direct tax payments via my online bank account (for business and personal) in two countries (South Africa and the UK). I find it easier and with a better record that the transaction took place than any of the other methods available (including going directly into a tax office to pay by cheque). Mail can go missing. Queueing in their offices takes hours and the result can still be misfiled (by them). Ditto allowing them to do a pay run on your account - they can make a mistake and you'll have difficulty proving it. A payment via my bank account gives me an electronic record and I can ensure all the details are correct myself. In addition, in the UK, paying online gives you a good few months extra grace to pay. Even in South Africa, online payments are given a few weeks grace over physical payments. Their recognising that you paying electronically saves them processing time.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6848e7ec4c1f2dd2f1436826fa588d0b", "text": "I'll start with the bottom line. Below the line I'll address the specific issues. Becoming a US tax resident is a very serious decision, that has significant consequences for any non-American with >$0 in assets. When it involves cross-border business interests, it becomes even more significant. Especially if Switzerland is involved. The US has driven at least one iconic Swiss financial institution out of business for sheltering US tax residents from the IRS/FinCEN. So in a nutshell, you need to learn and be afraid of the following abbreviations: and many more. The best thing for you would be to find a good US tax adviser (there are several large US tax firms in the UK handling the US expats there, go to one of those) and get a proper assessment of all your risks and get a proper advice. You can get burnt really hard if you don't prepare and plan properly. Now here's that bottom line. Q) Will I have to submit the accounts for the Swiss Business even though Im not on the payroll - and the business makes hardly any profit each year. I can of course get our accounts each year - BUT - they will be in Swiss German! That's actually not a trivial question. Depending on the ownership structure and your legal status within the company, all the company's bank accounts may be reportable on FBAR (see link above). You may also be required to file form 5471. Q) Will I need to have this translated!? Is there any format/procedure to this!? Will it have to be translated by my Swiss accountants? - and if so - which parts of the documentation need to be translated!? All US forms are in English. If you're required to provide supporting documentation (during audit, or if the form instructions require it with filing) - you'll need to translate it, and have the translation certified. Depending on what you need, your accountant will guide you. I was told that if I sell the business (and property) after I aquire a greencard - that I will be liable to 15% tax of the profit I'd made. Q) Is this correct!? No. You will be liable to pay income tax. The rate of the tax depends on the kind of property and the period you held it for. It may be 15%, it may be 39%. Depends on a lot of factors. It may also be 0%, in some cases. I also understand that any tax paid (on selling) in Switzerland will be deducted from the 15%!? May be. May be not. What you're talking about is called Foreign Tax Credit. The rules for calculating the credit are not exactly trivial, and from my personal experience - you can most definitely end up being paying tax in both the US and Switzerland without the ability to utilize the credit in full. Again, talk to your tax adviser ahead of time to plan things in the most optimal way for you. I will effectively have ALL the paperwork for this - as we'll need to do the same in Switzerland. But again, it will be in Swiss German. Q) Would this be a problem if its presented in Swiss German!? Of course. If you need to present it (again, most likely only in case of audit), you'll have to have a translation. Translating stuff is not a problem, usually costs $5-$20 per page, depending on complexity. Unless a lot of money involved, I doubt you'll need to translate more than balance sheet/bank statement. I know this is a very unique set of questions, so if you can shed any light on the matter, it would be greatly appreciated. Not unique at all. You're not the first and not the last to emigrate to the US. However, you need to understand that the issue is very complex. Taxes are complex everywhere, but especially so in the US. I suggest you not do anything before talking to a US-licensed CPA/EA whose practice is to work with the EU/UK expats to the US or US expats to the UK/EU.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "810d4842bdc077402c3b1d10247a8e7f", "text": "If your gross income is only $3000, then you don't need to file: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p501.pdf That said, pay careful attention to: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/taxpayers-living-abroad You should be reporting ALL income, without regard to WHERE you earned it, on your US taxes. Not doing so could indeed get you in trouble if you are audited. Your level of worry depends on how much of the tax law you are willing to dodge, and how lucky you feel.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "90544e3c1e3bf85fdd78b635d8ba2d0f", "text": "\"the state of New Mexico provides guidance in this exact situation. On page 4: Gross receipts DOES NOT include: Example: When the seller passes tax to the buyer, the seller should separate, or “back out”, that tax from the total income to arrive at \"\"Gross Receipts,\"\" the amount reported in Column D of the CRS-1 Form. (Please see the example on page 48.) and on page 48: How do I separate (“back out”) gross receipts tax from total gross receipts? See the following examples of how to separate the gross receipts tax: 1) To separate (back out) tax from total receipts at the end of the report period, first subtract deductible and exempt receipts, and then divide total receipts including the tax for the report period by one plus the applicable gross receipts tax rate. For example, if your tax rate is 5.5% and your total receipts including tax are $1,055.00 with no deductions or exemptions, divide $1,055.00 by 1.055. The result is your gross receipts excluding tax (to enter in Column D of the CRS-1 Form) or $1,000. 2) If your tax rate is 5.5%, and your total gross receipts including tax are $1,055.00, and included in that figure are $60 in deductions and another $45 in exemptions: a) Subtract $105 (the sum of your deductions and exemptions) from $1,055. The remainder is $950. This figure still includes the tax you have recovered from your buyers. b) Divide $950 by 1.055 (1 plus the 5.5% tax rate). The result is $900.47. c) In Column D enter the sum of $900.47 plus $60 (the amount of deductible receipts)*, or $960.47. This figure is your gross receipts excluding tax.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6e31671c8dc747f0d43b06df8775700a", "text": "\"You don't have to hire a tax consultant, there is a number of companies who sell software (installable or web-based) that helps you do it by asking for all relevant data interview-style. These typically cost between 15 and 25 EUR. I'm not sure whether any of them are available in English, but if you can read German well, you should be OK. taxback.com is in English, but to be honest it looks a bit dodgy to me. Now for your questions: are there some tricky fields (lines) that after filling in my taxes will be counted higher? This is rare, at least for employees you nearly always get something back. are there some tricky fields (lines) that after filling in my taxes could be counted lower? Not in general. Marriage is mentioned below, and otherwise it's all about individual deductibles. Ah, one important factor: if you have investment income and have not filed a Freistellungsauftrag with your bank, you can get some of the taxes by filling out the \"\"Anlage KAP\"\" form with data you got in the Jahressteuerbescheinigung from your bank. are there some flat-rates (Pauschals) that I could get advantage from? Absolutely. As an employee, the biggest factor is the Werbungskostenpauschale of (I think currently) 1000 EUR for general work-related expenses, which will be accepted without proof. If your expenses are higher than that and you file individual expenses, there are flat rates for work-related moving and for commuting distance. is it better to give a tax return together with my wife (who was only a girlfriend in 2013 living with me in one household) or to give it separately? It's not possible to do a joint tax filing for the time before your marriage. What you should consider is to apply for a different tax class from now on, if one of you earns significantly more than the other. when separately, do I have to fill her information in my tax return or can I just pretend there is nobody else in my apartment? As far as taxes are concerned, unmarried roommates are treated completely separately with one exception: only one of you can deduct service charges included in your rent. You have to get a Nebenkostenabrechnung from your landlord, and service charges, i.e. janitor, gardener, etc. should be marked separately. But this may not be worth bothering with, usually it results in a tax return of maybe 15 EUR. is there any guide in English that could be of help with filling in the tax return form? I couldn't find anything that looked really useful in a short search.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
3b80a6b371dfaf68db82677c58a11c59
Are American Eagle $20 gold coins considered “securities”, requiring dealers to be licensed to sell them as such?
[ { "docid": "f8fc26829c721659c31dd9dcad24000b", "text": "No. Securities brokers/dealers in the United States are licensed to broker debt and equity in corporations. (There are additional, commodities licenses to broker derivatives.) $20 American Eagle coins, or any other type of physical currency or physical precious metals can be traded or brokered by anyone without a specific license (except maybe a sales tax registration). The only situation where a securities license would be required is if a legal entity is holding the coins and you deal/broker an interest in that legal entity. For example, dealing in SPDR Gold Shares or a similar structure holding either physical assets or the right to purchase those assets (like a commodity pool) would require a securities and/or commodities dealing license.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "3080c79cd27b9f11931ebb9fee6ad440", "text": "And just as easily, someone could find a reason for such a derivative to exist. Let's say I'm a vendor of memorabilia for a given sports team, but unlike most vendors I'm only a vendor for a particular team. Given that there is a large lead time between orders placed and memorabilia received (perhaps on the order of a month between order and receipt), it is inherently risky to order large orders towards the end of a season. However, if they're going to be in the playoffs, there's a huge opportunity to sell, but if they don't, you'd be left with tons of surplus inventory. So, wouldn't it be handy for there to be a way to hedge that risk? We've actually seen times when such things aren't unreasonable. Large risks are [hedged away](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303877604577380593015786140.html), even in sports.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b30ca28a9511d1c987202b799849f608", "text": "\"The fact that your shares are of a Canadian-listed corporation (as indicated in your comment reply) and that you are located in the United States (as indicated in your bio) is highly relevant to answering the question. The restriction for needing to be a \"\"qualified institutional buyer\"\" (QIB) arises from the parent company not having registered the spin-off company rights [options] or shares (yet?) for sale in the United States. Shares sold in the U.S. must either be registered with the SEC or qualify for some exemption. See SEC Fast Answers - Securities Act Rule 144. Quoting: Selling restricted or control securities in the marketplace can be a complicated process. This is because the sales are so close to the interests of the issuing company that the law might require them to be registered. Under Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933, all offers and sales of securities must be registered with the SEC or qualify for some exemption from the registration requirements. [...] There are regulations to follow and costs involved in such registration. Perhaps the rights [options] themselves won't ever be registered (as they have a very limited lifetime), while the listed shares might be? You could contact investor relations at the parent company for more detail. (If I guessed the company correctly, there's detail in this press release. Search the text for \"\"United States\"\".)\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4b7262dc2ce7e8c5af516b49b75cc613", "text": "\"There are a few people that do this for a living. They are called \"\"market makers\"\" or \"\"specialists\"\" in a particular stock. First of all, this requires a lot of capital. You can get burned on a few trades, a process known as \"\"gambler's ruin,\"\" but if you have enough capital to weather the storm, you can make money. Second, you have to be \"\"licensed\"\" by the stock market authorities, because you need to have stock market trading experience and other credentials. Third, you are not allowed to buy and sell at will. In order to do your job, you have to \"\"balance the boat,\"\" that is buy, when others are selling, and sell, when others are buying, in order to keep the market moving in two directions. It's a tough job that requires a lot of experience, plus a license, but a few people can make a living doing this.\"", "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": "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": "f5aa4bf9c5d5c637dc8bbb26315ae07a", "text": "\"It's not consistent across the states. Most states have some implementation of these functions but fully regulated states don't have all of them and many are \"\"functions\"\" but are owned by the same entity. Look at the southeast, the rockies, the PNW, AZ there are zero or few opportunities for merchant anything.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "06347da072b82d84f07b4c9d441f3931", "text": "Assuming US,but the principles apply in many (not all) places: If the bills are legitimate and issued by the federal government, they're legal tender and you can spend or deposit them. Old bills, especially silver certificates, may be worth more than their face value to collectors (or may not). Bills issued by banks, by the confederate states, or something like that have only collector's value (which will vary depending on exactly what they are and their condition). The value of money from another country will depend on the issuing country and exchange rates, of course. There's nothing wrong with windfall cash. The IRS may ask some nosy questions about it to make sure you aren't trying to hide something, but if you aren't deliberately trying to cheat them or hide something illegal that's generally harmless at worst.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5adcb66b7facb23889a1bb9856a5e2d9", "text": "\"It sounds like maybe you want an \"\"investment club\"\". As defined by the SEC: An investment club is a group of people who pool their money to make investments. Usually, investment clubs are organized as partnerships and, after the members study different investments, the group decides to buy or sell based on a majority vote of the members. Club meetings may be educational and each member may actively participate in investment decisions. These \"\"typically\"\" do not need to register: Investment clubs usually do not have to register, or register the offer and sale of their own membership interests, with the SEC. But since each investment club is unique, each club should decide if it needs to register and comply with securities laws. There's more information from the SEC here: http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/invclub.htm The taxes depend on how you organized the club, i.e. if you organize as a partnership, I believe that you will be taxed as a partnership. (Not 100% sure.) Some online brokerages have special accounts specifically for investment clubs. Check around.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b1fb0823ce32c596a1f3590d7c2e7c0c", "text": "For Canada No distinction is made in the regulation between “naked” or “covered” short sales. However, the practice of “naked” short selling, while not specifically enumerated or proscribed as such, may violate other provisions of securities legislation or self-regulatory organization rules where the transaction fails to settle. Specifically, section 126.1 of the Securities Act prohibits activities that result or contribute “to a misleading appearance of trading activity in, or an artificial price for, a security or derivative of a security” or that perpetrate a fraud on any person or company. Part 3 of National Instrument 23-101 Trading Rules contains similar prohibitions against manipulation and fraud, although a person or company that complies with similar requirements established by a recognized exchange, quotation and trade reporting system or regulation services provider is exempt from their application. Under section 127(1) of the Securities Act, the OSC also has a “public interest jurisdiction” to make a wide range of orders that, in its opinion, are in the public interest in light of the purposes of the Securities Act (notwithstanding that the subject activity is not specifically proscribed by legislation). The TSX Rule Book also imposes certain obligations on its “participating organizations” in connection with trades that fail to settle (see, for example, Rule 5-301 Buy-Ins). In other words, shares must be located by the broker before they can be sold short. A share may not be locatable because there are none available in the broker's inventory, that it cannot lend more than what it has on the books for trade. A share may not be available because the interest rate that brokers are charging to borrow the share is considered too high by that broker, usually if it doesn't pass on borrowing costs to the customer. There could be other reasons as well. If one broker doesn't have inventory, another might. I recommend checking in on IB's list. If they can't get it, my guess would be that no one can since IB passes on the cost to finance short sales.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "434de37fd30d2297aa6e78c13433dd39", "text": "The price for securities is negotiable. You totally have a right to make a lower offer when buying or ask for a higher price when selling. Securities don't trade at a fixed price, the price goes up and down throughout the day based on the price offers made by buyers and sellers and where they find agreement. If a stock last traded for $10, someone can put out an offer to buy the stock at $9.50, if they find someone who wants to sell and will accept that price, then a deal is made. unless something is falling rapidly in price however, an offer that far below the last price is not terribly likely to be accepted. Now if you want to be assured of making a sale or purchase, you generally trade 'at the market' and for small time players that is very much encouraged as it makes it easier for everyone.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "584bd446fe497404fff91a9215141feb", "text": "\"Apartment complexes have had a long history of not accepting cash for payment of rent. This eliminates the problem of robbery and strongly reduces the risks of embezzlement. THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE Article 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution states: No State shall ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts Previous editions of banknotes stated that the notes were redeemable in gold or in lawful money. The Mint Act of 1792 set gold and silver as legal currency (and that one did not have to accept \"\"base metal coins\"\" for more than $10 which is why coin rolls only go up to $10). The Coinage Act of 1873 dropped silver and made gold the legal standard for currency. In 1933, the \"\"redeemable in gold\"\" was changed by federal statute and the legend you mention was added. Prior to 1933, someone could demand that you pay them in gold and not with a bank note. Legislation in 1933 ended that. This clause in the Constitution leads some political groups to wish to return to a gold standard. I recommend reading the book Greenback as it describes how our currency got the way it did and why that clause appears on currency.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "afddbbed11db47d06d77751f3d76f112", "text": "\"And you have hit the nail on the head of holding gold as an alternative to liquid currency. There is simply no way to reliably buy and sell physical gold at the spot price unless you have millions of dollars. Exhibit A) The stock symbol GLD is an ETF backed by gold. Its shares are redeemable for gold if you have more than 100,000 shares then you can be assisted by an \"\"Authorized Participant\"\". Read the fund's details. Less than 100,000 shares? no physical gold for you. With GLD's share price being $155.55 this would mean you need to have over 15 million dollars, and be financially solvent enough to be willing to exchange the liquidity of shares and dollars for illiquid gold, that you wouldn't be able to sell at a fair price in smaller denominations. The ETF trades at a different price than the gold spot market, so you technically are dealing with a spread here too. Exhibit B) The futures market. Accepting delivery of a gold futures contract also requires that you get 1000 units of the underlying asset. This means 1000 gold bars which are currently $1,610.70 each. This means you would need $1,610,700 that you would be comfortable with exchanging for gold bars, which: In contrast, securitized gold (gold in an ETF, for instance) can be hedged very easily, and one can sell covered calls to negate transaction fees, hedge, and collect dividends from the fund. quickly recuperating any \"\"spread tax\"\" that you encounter from opening the position. Also, leverage: no bank would grant you a loan to buy 4 to 20 times more gold than you can actually afford, but in the stock market 4 - 20 times your account value on margin is possible and in the futures market 20 times is pretty normal (\"\"initial margin and maintenance margin\"\"), effectively bringing your access to the spot market for physical gold more so within reach. caveat emptor.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "22b4698b41a63d0eb71f71fefe874e94", "text": "Gold is not legal tender. I can't walk into Walmart and buy groceries with 1/20 ounce of gold. I can't buy a TV or car with gold. And you can't *buy* money--that's not how it works. I can sell a barrel of oil or a whatever of copper in any currency, but that doesn't make either of them currencies in and of themselves.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9a3397cd7662ba48d3e675a92d3cc91e", "text": "\"First of all, it is absolutely **not** constitutional for any branch of the US government to outsource its primary functions to a private corporation. But, more to your point, the constitution provides that \"\"no state shall make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.\"\" They will argue that Federal Reserve notes are unbacked, that taxes are voluntary, that Washington D.C. is not a state, that the FED is not private, or even (sometimes) that the gold standard is still in force. But each of those is contradicted by their actions.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2d2fd0c45caf45fe21db06971a5f4f8b", "text": "At one point it was illegal to melt silver coins in the US, but it is legal now. I don't know that will happen with copper coins, but that's what happened with silver coins. Accumulating nickels and leaving them as-is (in their spendable state) is legal. It's also a way to take physical ownership of copper. I expect to see more sales of nickels based on weight. People are already selling high-copper-content cents on eBay, by weight. There are machines in production that sort the zinc ones from the copper ones. Gresham's Law has small business backing. ;) Copper cents are already worth twice their face value in the copper content. Nickels will get up there, too. They are awfully heavy and bulky relative to their value, though. Precious metals give you better bang for your ounce.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
3777c6e98debf24a723d93a84ac7fbf4
Why UK bank charges are not taken account when looking on interest for taxation?
[ { "docid": "500c95eb8f7bbe0ace7c49351a3a4d1d", "text": "\"When I left the UK four years ago, free banking is still an option and I'm pretty sure it still is. Therefore, you have chosen to have a bank account with a 5.00/month charge. In return for this charge, you will be eligible to receive certain benefits. For example; reduced borrowing costs, discounted mortgage rates, free overdraft on small amounts, \"\"rewards\"\" for paying household bills by direct debit, and things of this sort. Amongst these benefits may be preferential savings rates. However, from HMRC's point of view it will be the extra perks you are paying for with your monthly charge. You have chosen to pay for the account and HMRC is not interested in how you choose to spend your money, only in the money you earn. While I agree with you that it does have an element of unfairness, the problem is how would you divide the cost amongst the various benefits.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b70679ca9ab982c561794038ef1eb9c3", "text": "Because your profit from the capital IS 100 quid. Capital gains is not like running a business and doesn't come with tax deductions. It's up to you to pick saving scheme that maximizes your profit (either via low costs or highest possible rate).", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "5315e3f67e1da9662c3d0fca2c638700", "text": "The UK doesn't tax gifts or wealth, so you don't have to pay any tax on your existing savings or the money your parents transfer you. If your parents lived in the UK then you might be potentially liable to inheritance tax on the money if they died less than seven years after giving it to you, but if they live in Japan this won't be relevant. In theory you might have to pay tax on any interest received in the bank account while you live in the UK. However this is likely to be very small, and if you don't have any other income then it's highly unlikely this would apply, as you can get up to £16,000 of interest without paying tax: https://www.gov.uk/apply-tax-free-interest-on-savings/how-much-tax-you-pay", "title": "" }, { "docid": "113bccb501de23092ce3cb991adfb603", "text": "In addition to above points : Interest earned on NRE accounts are tax free. But you can deposit any foreign currency except INR. Nothing is taxable. While the NRO account gives you a flexibility to deposit INR too, the interest will be taxable and tax will be deducted at source at the rate of 30.9%. It is necessary to convert the existing Indian local accounts to NRO as per the Reserve Bank of India circular: RBI/2007-2008/242 Master Circular No. 03 /2007- 08 . So basically you need:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f2ba408a8166ce98d98f79578aee4e8c", "text": "One option might be to use tax certificates to save this money. At the moment they don't pay any interest (unless you deposit more than £100,000 at once), so they aren't very attractive from that point of view. But they do give you a clean way to segregate your money and for the purposes of charging penalty interest, HMRC will treat you as having made the payment at the time you purchased the certificate, if it turns out that you should have paid the actual tax earlier than you did. Another option is a regular saver account. These typically have limits of £250 per month, so you might have to open a few given the amount you have to save. That would add up to a lot of maintenance effort, particularly as you'd have to open new accounts again each year. However, they do typically offer good interest rates compared to what's available elsewhere, and the way they operate fits well with your needs (money coming in regularly and then going out all at once).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1b5543fc7de511e560dc5d64047c671a", "text": "1% is below interchange, so you either 1) take mostly debit, 2) have someone willing to literally lose money paying the banks for you, or 3) have hidden/padded fees somewhere else. Edit: Or 4) Have customers pay the fees through surcharging.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "20f3dfd40cb1bb4f27f925cc604f4f6d", "text": "Summarized article: The London-based investment bank Barclays Bank has agreed to pay penalties of $450 million to settle charges it attempted to manipulate key benchmark interest rates. The settlement is with the US Department of Justice, the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the British Financial Services Authority (FSA). Investigators found that Barclays manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) which measures how much banks will charge each other for loans, and in turn, affects the cost of loans and mortgages to consumers. Between 2005 and 2009, Barclays staff would base its estimates for the Libor on the requests of its derivatives traders, who wanted to manipulate the rate to benefit their trading positions. The traders would ask their Barclays colleagues to adjust their rate estimates up or down to post a profit for the bank. The FSA said that Barclays appeared to have a wide acceptance of its derivatives traders lobbying its colleagues and found evidence through a trail of emails and instant messages. Barclays has admitted its actions fell short of industry standards but it is unclear if there was any impact to consumers. The FSA is investigating several major banks for similar violations. * For more summarized news, subscribe to the [/r/SkimThat](http://www.reddit.com/r/SkimThat) subreddit", "title": "" }, { "docid": "af91319386ebe5b80b725da95f580534", "text": "\"The banks are making *bank* on these fees and for merchants they are not *optional.* They either have to raise their prices and charge *you* or eat the costs. The banks are doing nothing to \"\"earn\"\" this money. Now you know I am serious.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ef2668e5dfd3f9f52e5e571b9638c4c7", "text": "\"That wasn't an \"\"inheritance\"\" that arrived out of the blue and the \"\"bank\"\" contacted your girlfriend by email, was it? A UK tax code is basically an assessment of how much money you can earn in the UK before you have to pay tax on it - basically it's a coding for a tax allowance and as a UK tax payer HMRC (the UK version of the IRS) gives you one for free. If your girlfriend is not a UK tax payer she should get the necessary paperwork to show that she isn't, although I'm not sure if that's got any bearing on inheritance tax. There are no lawyers involved in that process normally, any appropriately accredited accountant can do that for you in the UK if you're not in the UK. When I had to apply for a change of tax status in the UK it certainly didn't cost me $9.6k to do so via my accountant there. In fact the whole thing cost a few pounds to pay for my accountant's time and that was it. In fact, that whole thing smells fishy to me as someone who used to live in the UK. Care to divulge the name and possibly address of the bank? Here's inheritance tax information straight from the horse's mouth. That should clear up any questions if your girlfriend is even liable for any inheritance tax in the UK in the first place. And then, given the sums involved, get the recommendation for a good lawyer and a good accountant in the UK (or an accountant who can recommend a lawyer) to make sure that that end of the transfer goes smoothly.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "84180fd41889d3c3c16c76ce39ff99b9", "text": "\"would it make sense to set up multiple bank accounts to avoid going above their thresholds? Quite possiblly yes but you need to pay attention to the fine print. I don't know what the situation is in poland but in the UK accounts that pay high interest often have strings attached. For example the santander 123 current account pays very good interest but it has an account fee and some other requirements that are difficult to meet if you are not using it as your \"\"main current account\"\". You need to read the terms carefully, if you go over the threshold does the lower rate only apply to money over the threshold? or does it apply to all the money in the account? Are there any other restrictions on how you use the account. Also I don't know if poland has any provisions for limited tax-advantaged savings (like the ISA scheme we have in the UK). If it does then that can add further complications. How to calculate how to maximize the profit here? Well in theory you would get the best account you can and fill it to the threshold. Then the next best account and so-on. You would move any interest paid in an account that was already full to the threshold to the best non-full account (or if the account strongly peanalises going over perhaps move an ammount of money equivilent to the interest just before the interest is paid). In practice that is a lot of work, so if the rates on the different accounts are similar you may want to leave some margin for interest or (in the case of an account that pays the lower rate on the overage while still paying the higher rate on money below the threshold) accepting that some of your money will earn slightly less than idea. Another option some accounts may offer is just to pay the interest to another account, avoiding the need to move it yourself. Finally you should check out your government's limits for compensation in the event of banks going bust. As a general rule you don't want to put more than that ammount in a single bank even if doing so would get you the best interest.\"", "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": "cc32f005f6bd55c22af612f16e510005", "text": "...and charge it back to the customer. So, I'm confused. Are the fines designed to discourage future transactions or simply there to provide a cost to the client? I guess the fact that no bankers have gone to jail over this answers that question.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5e9331a76e278ba1d653ff555a1b3eb1", "text": "Not for the amount in the accounts but for the interest you earn per year is taxable. But the sum of your all taxable incomes is under the limit, then you dont need to pay any income tax. The limit is available at wiki here But you should intimate your bank not to deduct TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) by submitting Form 15G/15H (which will be normally available in Bank itself), provided your total interest income for the year will not fall within overall taxable limits. You may calculate your income tax amount at Official website at here", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dc53d9760e6493e8be78fe83c5079c90", "text": "The company says it's out of their control - it isn't. All they have to do is to INSTRUCT HSBC to send a certain amount of GBP, and then HSBC MUST send GBP. Obviously the bank doesn't like that because they make money through the conversion. That's not your problem. When told to send GBP, they must send GBP. Depending on what your relationship with that company is, you lost money because they didn't send the GBP. At the very least, they sent you four percent less in Euros than they should have sent you. So send them a bill for the difference. It's unfortunate that your bank charged for the conversion Euro to GBP, but fact is that less than the agreed amount arrived at your bank, and that's the responsibility of the sender.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "29891229a6cd740290149c10ec1cbff3", "text": "\"Perhaps it's the terminology \"\"fee\"\" that makes it a little confusing. I'm not sure whether it's due legislation or if it's tradition but banks and money changers in my country don't charge \"\"fees\"\". Instead they advertise separate prices for buying and selling money. For example they'd normally advertise: USD, we buy: 4.50, we sell: 4.65. It's a business. Just like selling cars or lemonade selling money only makes sense if you sell it at a higher price than what you bought it for. Regardless of what you call it it's the profit margin for the seller.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "848ab8b6c4f59f784f99de5bb5c720c8", "text": "Unless you're running a self-employed business with a significant turnover (more than £150k), you are entitled to use cash basis accounting for your tax return, which means you would put the date of transactions as the payment date rather than the billing date or the date a debt is incurred. For payments which have a lag, e.g. a cheque that needs to be paid in or a bank transfer that takes a few days, you might also need to choose between multiple payment dates, e.g. when you initiated the payment or when it took effect. You can pick one as long as you're consistent: You can choose how you record when money is received or paid (eg the date the money enters your account or the date a cheque is written) but you must use the same method each tax year.", "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": "" } ]
fiqa
19ca0d87b579c9379fa4b71994ab41cc
How to Transition From Employee to Employer?
[ { "docid": "23632ffc0b7fb4c5e54dc104e775b87e", "text": "Having been both I see the pros and cons Employers: I personally hated all the paperwork. Government forms, legal protection, insurance, taxes, payroll, accounting, year ends, bank accounts, inventory tracking, expenses. The best bosses don't worry about the product, they worry about maintaining an environment that is good for the product. Good employees who are happy will make good products that you can sell to customers who are happy with your company. I personally went back to employee because I wanted to go home at night and forget about work. Employers cannot do that.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "942b2498730d6afbcc0e772d0157b9ff", "text": "It depends on your employer. They may not care to pursue matters if you don't give enough notice. They might be happy to see you go. Or they might be really sad to see you go, but not feel like they need to punish you. Or they might be really angry to see you go, and decide that they want to punish you to the full extent of the law just out of spite. Essentially, we can't tell you that, because different employers will behave differently. My advice? Be a mensch. Give the old employer as much notice as humanly possible so that they can find, hire, and train your replacement. Leave on as good terms as possible. Don't burn bridges. Chances are your new job can wait for another week or two.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ef1cd789f17302c426f4ba1fc64ec9d6", "text": "Learn how to do the job and don't be afraid to step in and help out. If you never do this people will assume you think you're too good to do the work they do and they won't respect you or your authority. Being good at something gives you natural authority and people will seek you out for advice/direction. Trust your employees to do their jobs until they prove otherwise. Management is a relationship and relationships are based on trust. If you want to be untrusted the very best way to go about it is to show you don't trust the other person. If you're not trusted then no one is going to follow your untrustworthy advice/direction. Stay calm even when things are going terribly. Even if you're freaking out on the inside it's best to show a calm front. If you're constantly on edge it will amplify through your employees and a chaotic workplace is obviously less efficient overtime. If you lose your cool apologize sincerely. Be positive. Always have something good to say about something and employees will more likely be able to stay positive. If you're negative all the time then again this is going to amplify through employees and if everyone is gossiping and complaining all day efficiency is going to go down. Be assertive and explain why. Sometimes you can take input from employees and negotiate, but sometimes you just have to tell them what to do and it's important to include why because if you include the why people are much more likely to comply as well as to remember what you said. All these things may not make you liked. If your goal is to be liked then quit because all bosses aren't liked by many employees. You will be more likely to be effective and at least respected.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "22e3fe0941671b4f46d625f5bcc0b578", "text": "This is excellent advice. I would make sure that you arm yourself with some solid questions about the company including reformatting some of the questions that they ask you. Interviews should be a two way conversation, the more you get them talking, the more comfortable they'll be to recommend you. Some questions to ask: 1. Tell me a bit about your (interviewer) background? This gets them talking a bit and allows you to relate with them 2. Where do you see the company moving in the next 5 years? 3. Why is this job opening available? 4. Can you tell me a bit about the corporate culture? 5. How can the company invest in me? 6. What are the qualities that will make me successful in this job? 7. Tell me a bit about our competitors (you should know some of them) and what sets this company apart? Make sure you're armed with as much information about the company as possible. One of the things that set me apart when I interviewed at the company I'm working at now was I came into the interview with the company's financial report and started asking specific questions about details on that report. Also, MAKE SURE TO GET A BUSINESS CARD OR CONTACT INFORMATION BEFORE YOU LEAVE. Thank you letters are an annoying formality, but it is necessary, don't rely on the recruiter to give you that information.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "559f69c65f4f70fbbb85fd85d7af96f7", "text": "I started out in compliance at a software company, despite having little interest in compliance. I did that for ~2.5 years, then worked with my manager to arrange to work 10 hours/week in the Marketing department, then after ~6 months of that, I moved to Marketing full time. If you kick ass in whatever job you have and work on extra skills (learning to code/improving at Excel will give you lots of options, such as software engineer or data analyst positions), you ought to be able to parlay the experience you've gained plus the other skills you have into something you're more interested in. Most companies would rather keep a good employee in the building than risk losing him/her.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "560eda302b1a45a07d2f76b7ed56f42d", "text": "so you'd rather work with someone who doesn't set boundaries and is willing to sacrifice family relationships and personal obligations? This provides short-term profitability at a substantial cost in employee morale, long-term productivity, and turnover. Yes, there are some industries that thrive on the latter (e.g, Wall Street), but most of those people have a short horizon of employability in those areas (make your fortune and scram). Startups may have the same attitude. But if you are planning to have a stable career (as an employee), or if you are an employer who wants loyal employees and long-term stability (and yes, profitability), this is just a recipe for disaster.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c1e372a8578566808b7a1e09ed61c0d5", "text": "Try and bring with you a folder full of evidence about your skills and accomplishments, many of the top blue chip companies do what's called evidence-based interviewing and it means you provide evidence to back up your assertions about how great you are. So for example, the interviewer asks how you get on with your colleagues and you provide an email thanking you for being a great team player, or they ask you about research and you show them a piece of research you did. Of course this is harder when you go for your first job, but bring what you can. As an alternative and/or alongside this you can use stories (as someone else said) as a kind of evidence if you don't have any physical evidence. Your story should show systematically how you handled a situation to get a good outcome. If they are a very conservative company they will want you to show that although you can kind of think outside the box, you are not prone to emotional reactions or knee-jerk responses and everything you do is carefully thought out and wouldn't bring them into disrepute if it got covered on the front page of a newspaper. Good luck.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9ad7770881b0bdd14d914bab9fe10349", "text": "10 years into my career. Here are my notes: 1. Don't work overtime as a salaried employee. If there's more work than people then management needs to hire more people. Sure, there are times when shit hits the fan and there's no other option, but that should be a 'once every two years' event, not a 'once every week' event. 2. Be a rockstar. If you're spending time 'looking busy' because you finished a 3 hour job in 1 hour ship the results to your manager and ask for more. Those results will be noticed and will move you from entry-level to mid-level to senior. 3. Skills pay the bills. Always work on learning new things to bring value to your employer. This is also required to move up the chain in your career, and leads into my #4. 4. Get paid what you're worth. Maintain an understanding of what similar skillsets are paying in your area and either maintain or exceed that. Your employer has an incentive to pay you as little as possible. Show them comparable salaries for the same position paying more and make them match it. If they won't match it find someone who will. 5. Don't correct your boss/salesperson when they are presenting to management/customers. Instead, let them know after the meeting. Your #2 points (both of them) are something that I struggled with when I was new in my career. It was incredibly frustrating to *know* something, but not have anyone listen due to the fact that I was a 'kid'. Unfortunately it's a part of life. If you can do #2 and #3 on my list for a couple of years people will start listening. It's a great feeling being a 24 year old kid in a room full of my boss's bosses, and my boss's boss's bosses and having them listen and consider my opinion, but it's not something that's given to everyone. You need to earn it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5c83556bbc266777726cf4b31aeb7f1d", "text": "Obviously, her new employer won't know how much was contributed from the old job, so this won't work this year. Obviously the new employer would. They will not deposit anything, unless you tell them how much you have deposited already. Somehow tell the new employer how much was contributed by her last employeer, so they can stop deducting at the right time. I'm not sure if this is even possible. Why isn't it possible? I've been in a similar situation, the employer had a form to fill on this matter as part of the paperwork for the payroll, right between the direct deposit forms and the 401K contributions form. By the way, another thing to take a look at when switching jobs is the Social Security tax. I wrote about it here.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "efabaa83b495783b6a4f3d61640cf206", "text": "Nice. Well it looks like you are pretty setup. Get that LinkedIn profile setup. Start trying to connect with executives in your industry (hard) and then grind it out. It's very unlikely you will get a C level at your current employer so get ready to make a transition and make it . Most of the C levels I have spoken with either grew with a small company over 10 years or more. OR they jumped from one company to another to get the title", "title": "" }, { "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": "ce8028227353f05b0610df8618ea6bdd", "text": "\"&gt; How did you make the transition up the \"\"ladder\"\" thus far? I applied online for jobs that were above and beyond what I was currently doing and did well enough in the interviews to get hired. For my current position, I found the hiring manager online and emailed him directly to tell him I was the person he was looking for. But I don't think that approach will get me any further. &gt;How is your LinkedIn connection with executive recruiters? I don't have one. I know that's an important next step but I'm not sure how to do it. Do I just email a bunch and introduce myself? I expect to be in my current position for at least 2 more years (realistically 4) and I would like to start cultivating the relationships but I'm not sure what to do. I think that getting on some boards would be a similar step but again I'm not sure how. &gt;Would you be willing to take a salary cut for a title change? Within reason. Maybe 10%. &gt;Does your college have a program for networking with alumni? Probably. I have a pair of Masters' Degrees in my field from a top-25 program. The issue is that the alumni I network with would need to be executives and they're harder to engage.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ea869f25aa98e74ac5751c60354dece3", "text": "Express yourself as being disloyal and see what happens next. I have been loyal to every company I have ever worked for since I started working at fourteen. I am now sixty. Some things have not worked out for me, but I own a home. I have a good job that I love. I work hard and I earn a good living. Be disloyal to your company and put *that* on your resume and see what your future holds for you. All you have to do to be loyal to your company is do your job and not betray them. Some companies I have worked for have, in fact, gone out of business while I was working for them and I lost my last paycheck, but I moved on. In my opinion if you hire me and you pay me for my work, if I understand my obligations to my employer and my employer understands its obligations to me then I am loyal and if I am not happy two weeks notice is my prerogative if there is some reason I can't negotiate a solution. I will never betray an employer. If I do not want to work somewhere I will leave.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "080fdf54f18b04cdb66b98c10cb0fab3", "text": "Ask someone in Human Resources. I seriously doubt you are the first person to ask this question for their company and they should be more than happy to help.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c8dee8604abe737c83388711bbc7a2cc", "text": "Don’t do anything that causes taxes or penalties, beyond that it’s entirely personal choice and other posters have already done a great job enumerating then. I recently switched jobs in June and rolled over a 401k from my old company to new company and the third party managing the account at the new company was much more professional and walked me through all the required steps and paperwork.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "03538801fbcda505e87c2fe7b8935bf1", "text": "The other commenters have a point. You're going to have a hard time succeeding without the right structure at work. That said, you can look into sales methodologies like MEDDIC. These methods are commonly deployed at B2B companies which it sounds like you are.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
c49c77406334532dfd08fa2ac5808016
Where are all those unsold vehicles?
[ { "docid": "f2fb9241d4e6bab34de55154a4b9bb8d", "text": "When the 2016 models come out, the dealership marks down the 2015 model and then it sells pretty fast. The process doesn't take that long in the car market because the 2015 models are just as good as the 2016 so if they are just a little cheaper, they will sell quickly. If you want a 2008 Audi that has never sold, you are going to be looking for a long time. The same thing happens in every industry. Where are the older versions of digital cameras? Cell phones? Blenders? Digital pianos? Any item that changes from year to year sits on shelves for a little while after its replacement comes out until the retailer reduces its price by enough and it sells. The only exceptions are goods that depreciate very quickly or go bad, which are recycled or thrown away (like fresh produce, for example). It seems kind of crazy at first that essentially all goods that are produced by the economy are consumed, but that's the magic of capitalism: prices make markets clear.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f0ef260b001f517c16365e6e6cec234a", "text": "Other than being reduced to clear as others have suggested quite a few get sold to large motor stores. You can often go in and find last years model with around delivery mileage at a very knocked down rate because most people would prefer the latest model direct from the dealer. Doing this allows dealers to clear old stock incredibly quickly so they can promote the newest model exclusively.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "7d981886fcd3d12405655510fc4a88ff", "text": "There are many reasons for buying new versus used vehicles. Price is not the only factor. This is an individual decision. Although interesting to examine from a macro perspective, each vehicle purchase is made by an individual, weighing many factors that vary in importance by that individual, based upon their specific needs and values. I have purchased both new and used cars, and I have weighted each of these factors as part of each decision (and the relative weightings have varied based upon my individual situation). Read Freakonomics to gain a better understanding of the reasons why you cannot find a good used car. The summary is the imbalance of knowledge between the buyer and seller, and the lack of trust. Although much of economics assumes perfect market information, margin (profit) comes from uncertainty, or an imbalance of knowledge. Buying a used car requires a certain amount of faith in people, and you cannot always trust the trading partner to be honest. Price - The price, or more precisely, the value proposition of the vehicle is a large concern for many of us (larger than we might prefer that it be). Selection - A buyer has the largest selection of vehicles when they shop for a new vehicle. Finding the color, features, and upgrades that you want on your vehicle can be much harder, even impossible, for the used buyer. And once you have found the exact vehicle you want, now you have to determine whether the vehicle has problems, and can be purchased at your price. Preference - A buyer may simply prefer to have a vehicle that looks new, smells new, is clean, and does not have all the imperfections that even a gently used vehicle would exhibit. This may include issues of pride, image, and status, where the buyer may have strong emotional or psychological needs to statisfy through ownership of a particular vehicle with particular features. Reviews - New vehicles have mountains of information available to buyers, who can read about safety and reliability ratings, learn about problems from the trade press, and even price shop and compare between brands and models. Contrasted with the minimal information available to used vehicle shoppers. Unbalanced Knowledge - The seller of a used car has much greater knowledge of the vehicle, and thus much greater power in the negotiation process. Buying a used car is going to cost you more money than the value of the car, unless the seller has poor knowledge of the market. And since many used cars are sold by dealers (who have often taken advantage of the less knowledgeable sellers in their transaction), you are unlikely to purchase the vehicle at a good price. Fear/Risk - Many people want transportation, and buying a used car comes with risk. And that risk includes both the direct cost of repairs, and the inconvenience of both the repair and the loss of work that accompanies problems. Knowing that the car has not been abused, that there are no hidden or lurking problems waiting to leave you stranded is valuable. Placing a price on the risk of a used car is hard, especially for those who only want a reliable vehicle to drive. Placing an estimate on the risk cost of a used car is one area where the seller has a distinct advantage. Warranties - New vehicles come with substantial warranties, and this is another aspect of the Fear/Risk point above. A new vehicle does not have unknown risk associated with the purchase, and also comes with peace of mind through a manufacturer warranty. You can purchase a used car warranty, but they are expensive, and often come with (different) problems. Finance Terms - A buyer can purchase a new vehicle with lower financing rate than a used vehicle. And you get nothing of value from the additional finance charges, so the difference between a new and used car also includes higher finance costs. Own versus Rent - You are assuming that people actually want to 'own' their cars. And I would suggest that people want to 'own' their car until it begins to present problems (repair and maintenance issues), and then they want a new vehicle to replace it. But renting or leasing a vehicle is an even more expensive, and less flexible means to obtain transportation. Expense Allocation - A vehicle is an expense. As the owner of a vehicle, you are willing to pay for that expense, to fill your need for transportation. Paying for the product as you use the product makes sense, and financing is one way to align the payment with the consumption of the product, and to pay for the expense of the vehicle as you enjoy the benefit of the vehicle. Capital Allocation - A buyer may need a vehicle (either to commute to work, school, doctor, or for work or business), but either lack the capital or be unwilling to commit the capital to the vehicle purchase. Vehicle financing is one area banks have been willing to lend, so buying a new vehicle may free capital to use to pay down other debts (credit cards, loans). The buyer may not have savings, but be able to obtain financing to solve that need. Remember, people need transportation. And they are willing to pay to fill their need. But they also have varying needs for all of the above factors, and each of those factors may offer value to different individuals.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "690b591bb9ac43bf175f9ab597744115", "text": "Banks have huge amounts of foreclosure or pending foreclosure properties on their books that they haven't even listed for sale yet. The ratio is something like 6 to 1. The amount of inventory held on the books, but off the market is larger than the entire MLS market. In a competitive market, a smart bank would try to dump their property now before the other banks do. But instead, all the banks are holding their properties off the market and trickling them out at a slow rate. Collusion?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "045e45748cc8ca673d561d7efa2f1562", "text": "Not all cars but just those &lt; $25k (Skoda, Nissans, VW, Ford, Renault )!! Economic class vehicles, which basically are driven by the middle class. While elite automobiles (anything above this) and to pleasure of the oligarchs and politicians, will continue to pour in. So in the &lt;$25k segment either Russian built or from non-sanctioned nations (S.Korea-? and China), the prices will obviously inflate dramatically with the decrease in supply. The poor and middle class are the only ones going to suffer with this. This fucking economics 101, if not common-sense !!! Either they are too stupid to realize this or this is just some machiavelic plan !! edit: [В Госдуме сообщили о возможном запрете на ввоз авто дешевле 800 тысяч рублей](http://lenta.ru/news/2014/08/19/avto/) -- The State Duma has reported a possible ban on the import of cheaper car 800 thousand rubles", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d2b919794de805e35ca536632b4ad47e", "text": "This same problem existed when the first gas powered cars began popping up. The problem your pointing out will get resolved as demand grows. It will actually be quite a business opportunity for some. It will surely deter some, like yourself, from being early adopters, but these things always work themselves out.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e9d3870e2934eb686c3cf6f648640c80", "text": "I learned something new, I always thought it was the camery being number selling vehicle. Why not other trucks? Why is f150 so popular by that far? Even with this kind of sales number they still needed bailout, surprised. I guess I don't know business costs.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "70581786d913098fa7ba94bfb8b6e9c6", "text": "This sounds like it has happened for other events so is it really that newsworthy? I was hoping to learn some scientific reason like eclipse sunlight will boil gasoline. Or maybe the CEO has a theory that eclipses affect gravity and he doesn't want his cars floating away. Nope... Just oversold his supply.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d62eaf61d9969c444c838eecff3eab4a", "text": "&gt;Something to watch out for if you are analyzing this stuff though is the influx of used cars into the market. Remember, more defaults means more repossessions which means more used cars on the market. I think Morgan Stanley said they expect to see up to a 50% decline in used car prices over the next four years. Edit: [Can't find the report, but here's the Market Watch summary](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-much-morgan-stanley-thinks-used-car-prices-will-crater-in-one-chart-2017-04-03)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a453b102c970df29de645d3513f34325", "text": "\"Care to elaborate? It is my understanding that any asset can be rehypothecated at least in theory. By saying these car loans \"\"aren't\"\" rehypo'd, do you mean this is not the practice, or that there is a law/regulation prohibiting it?\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1280c0f3e6babba84a53095c4c412453", "text": "Yeah, the Ford F-150 has been the top selling vehicle for over 30 years. Fun fact, farmers who receive money from the government usually burn excess cash in December. A lot of them just replace their fleets each year.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6413ee99fb81aa3983660f259b299950", "text": "Tesla is not planning to sell 100k cars in 2015, they plan to have an annualized run rate of 100k by the end of 2015. Also, the luxury market is pretty close to 50/50 between large sedans and SUVs, so Tesla figures they can sell as many SUVs as they can sell sedans, and they can almost certainly sell 50k sedans considering they're easily selling 35k without advertising whatsoever and with long wait times and barely having penetrated China or RHD markets. Also, that 100k is worldwide, not just in the US.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6a96f4fc277d1fe711b82f39518d4b41", "text": "There are many places in the US without taxis or public transportation. I don't think self driving car fleets where you call one on demand will get a foothold. It would be impractical to send a car 20 miles to pick someone up and drive them to work every day. Even with algorithms that car pool people, the cost will be high.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3197d54d9ed07151b962c1aa3035d69d", "text": "[This article](http://www.factcheck.org/2011/03/who-sells-american-gasoline/) shows that gasoline at any given station is combined in transport or processing; making it impossible to tell if your oil came from a certain company. &gt;While gasoline is sold at about 162,000 retail outlets across the nation, about one-third of these stations are “unbranded” dealers that may sell gasoline of any brand. The remainder of the outlets are “branded” stations, but may not necessarily be selling gasoline produced at that company’s refineries. This is because gasoline from different refineries is often combined for shipment by pipeline, and companies owning service stations in the same area may be purchasing gasoline at the same bulk terminal. In that case, the only difference between the gasoline at station X versus the gasoline at station Y may be the small amount of additives that those companies add to the gasoline before it gets to the pump.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3044b393f33af1be8e316432f1f93c52", "text": "Good point. Maybe someone should invent a 'trust system' similar to the one that many new companies in the 'shared economy' sector use (like Airbnb, Uber etc.) where users rate the state of the vehicle when it arrives. Those users that leave it in a bad condition will get bad ratings and will quickly find that either they have to pay a cleaning penalty, and/or the cost of the next vehicle hire increases, and/or they are declined from using the service in the future. Whereas those that consistently look after the vehicle will be incentivized with bonuses and/or discounts. If a user does find the vehicle to be uninhabitable then they would record this fact on their smart device and be offered a replacement vehicle and/or discounts etc.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "474ac34e146b0ed663a81fd99b692576", "text": "You have to consider a case where you just cannot sell it. Think of it as a bad piece of real estate in Detroit. If there are absolutely no buyers, you cannot sell it (until a buyer shows up)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6e81284e67aa3f687270883260414ac1", "text": "I work for an auto finance company and have performed some job related analysis looking into this as well. From what I can tell I don't think the numbers are there for a 2008 recession. The loans are smaller, the asset is already known to depreciate, and the auction market is pretty effective at cutting deficiencies even more. Something to watch out for if you are analyzing this stuff though is the influx of used cars into the market. Remember, more defaults means more repossessions which means more used cars on the market. I'm curious to see what happens with this influx of used, relatively reliable cars onto the market and how this impacts the constant pumping out of new vehicles that manufacturers are forced to meet. We've already seen scaling back by some big players. There's definitely something happening in the auto industry but I don't know what to make of it yet and I would hardly say we are looking at Great Recession 2.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
5e01f66293dc842a0e152ff1af8ce443
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000?
[ { "docid": "f0ecb35fe0fd0cae4ccc61b8ec1b2d5f", "text": "\"The \"\"$1000 is no money at all\"\" people are amusing me. Way back in the mists of time, a very young me invested on the order of ~$500 in a struggling electronics manufacturer I had a fondness for. An emotional investment, not much money, but enough that I could get a feel for what it was like owning stock in something. That stock's symbol was AAPL. This is admittedly a rare outcome, but $1000 invested over the long term isn't not worth doing. If for no other reason then when the OP has \"\"real\"\" money, he'll have X+$1000 invested rather than X, assuming 0% return, which I doubt. It's a small enough amount that there are special considerations, but it's a solid opportunity for learning how the market works, and making a little money. Anyway, my advice to the OP is as follows:\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bf07214dbda8b1fb2785996cb3546b8e", "text": "$1000 is not that much, and I think the best you can do with them is keeping them in a high-yield savings account (look at the online savings accounts that give 1% and more, not the regular bank savings accounts which are worthless). If you need money all of a sudden (for a school book, or rent, or bills, or some other emergency expense), you don't want to deal with selling stocks or funds (which may be at loss) or breaking into your CD's. It is usually considered a good practice to keep cash that would keep you afloat for 5-6 months in savings or some cash equivalent, as an emergency fund.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a53943674802a7f24468cb4093badfa3", "text": "\"At that sum, it essentially doesn't matter what you do, unless you just want to outright gamble the money. Let's look at some options: \"\"High\"\" interest guaranteed savings. A five year CD returns a sad 2% right now. That means if you invest all $1,000 into a CD, by 2016 you will have earned $105.08 in interest. Think about that: About a hundred bucks over the next five years. Of course, with 3% inflation, that $105.08 will be worth about $90.57. In fact, the total amount will be worth $953.25. Your \"\"doing something with your money\"\" did nothing. Stocks can return significantly more interest, but there is no guarantee. Even if you made 20% year on year, you would only make maybe $1,500 in returns or so in the next 5 years, and 20% every year is like Warren Buffet territory--totally unrealistic. That's also not taking into account inflation. And neither of these is taking into account taxes! However, if you go to a casino and gamble the $1,000, it is possible you could turn it into significantly more. It's very much unlikely, and I do not advise it at all, but it's possible. The point is, you need money to make money, and, in some sense, $1,000 is not money at all. I recommend you work on your skills, knowledge, and preparation for making money in the future, and by 25 or so you can really be cooking with gas. Don't waste your efforts trying to find a brilliant way to make a few hundred bucks over the next half decade. Save the money and find ways to try to double it by earning money on small projects. Then challenge yourself to double it again, and keep honing your skills.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "18d46b9b3ef3841eb491c2010b2fc9d4", "text": "\"If you're looking for ways to turn $1000 into more, don't just think of ways it can make money -- also consider whether there are any ways you can use it to save money. Among the advantages of this approach is that you're not taxed for reducing your expenditures. The good news is that there are a lot more ways to save a little bit of money on a $1000 budget than there are to make a little money on that budget. The bad news is that most of them will require some additional input: labor. Have you taken an economics course? Capital + Labor => output. I don't know what you spend your money on exactly, but some thoughts: You may find more opportunities for things like this as you move out from college and into your own apartment (/house) and the university isn't taking care of as many of your needs. Just don't confuse yourself about where the line is between actually saving money that you were going to spend anyway, and just consuming more. Consumption is fine in and of itself (and ultimately it's what you have money for) but doesn't make you financially better off. Also, when considering what to do with the money, don't just think \"\"I can spend $2000 on this bike and it will ultimately save me gas money\"\" unless you also know how to think \"\"I could spend $200 on a slightly lesser bike and still save all the gas money, or maybe even spend $20 on a yard sale bike.\"\". Consider borrowing kitchen equipment from the parents, instead of buying new stuff, or buy it at a yard sale. Also, make sure you actually will use the things you buy.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f36c1550e71c2316efef72a4c731496c", "text": "Put them in Cds. Better than a savings account, you won't lose capital unlike the stock market.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2f38eecf4850782e35550e424c56d93d", "text": "\"Kid, you need to start thinking in thresholds. There are several monetary thresholds that separate your class from a more well funded class. 1) You cannot use margin with less than $2000 dollars Brokers require that you have at least $2000 before they will lend to you 2) In 2010, Congress banned under 21 year olds from getting access to credit. UNLESS they get cosigned. This means that even if you have $2000, no broker will give you margin unless you have a (good) credit history already. There was a good reason for this, but its based on the assumption that everyone is stupid, not the assumption that some people are objective thinkers. 3) The brokers that will open an account for you have high commissions. The commissions are so high that it will destroy any capital gains you may make with your $1000. For the most part. 4) The pattern day trader rule. You cannot employ sophisticated risk management while being subject to the pattern day trader rule. It basically limits you from trading 3 times a day (its more complicated than that read it yourself) if you have less than $25,000 in one account. 5) Non-trade or stock related investments: Buy municipal or treasury bonds. They will give you more than a savings account would, and municipals are tax free. This isn't exactly what I would call liquid though - ie. if you wanted to access your money to invest in something else on a whim. 6) What are you studying? If its anything technical then you might get a good idea that you could risk your money on to create value. But I would stick to high growth stocks before blowing your $1000 on an idea. Thats not exactly what I would call \"\"access to capital\"\". 7) Arbitrage. Lets say you know a friend that buys the trendy collectors shoes at discount and sells them for a profit. He might do this with one $200 pair of tennis shoes, and then use the $60 profit different to go buy video games for himself. If he wanted to scale up, he couldn't because he never has more than $200 to play with. In comparison, you could do 5 pairs ($200 x 5) and immediately have a larger operation than him, making a larger profit ($60 x 5 = $300, now you have $1300 and could do it again with 6 pairs to make an even great er profit) not because you are better or worked at it, but solely because you have more capital to start with. Keep an eye out for arbitrage opportunities, usually there is a good reason they exist if you notice it: the market is too small and illiquid to scale up with, or the entire market will be saturated the next day. (Efficient Market Theory, learn about it) 8) Take everything I just taught you, and make a \"\"small investor newsletter\"\" website with subscribers. Online sites have low overhead costs.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "3ae51aec7487f3a23fc9eb5b91d38c5e", "text": "\"The $1K in funds are by default your emergency fund. If absolutely necessary, emergency funds may need to come from debt, a credit capacity, focus on building credit to leverage lower rates for living expenses eventually needed. Profitable organizations & proprietors, borrow at a lower cost of capital than their return. Join your local credit union, you're welcome to join mine online, the current rates for the first $500 in both your checking and savings is 4.07%, it's currently the fourth largest in the U.S. by assets. You may join as a \"\"family member\"\" to me (Karl Erdmann), not sure what their definition of \"\"family\"\" is, I'd be happy to trace our ancestry if need be or consider other options. Their current incentive program, like many institutions have often, will give you $100 for going through the hassle to join and establish a checking and savings. Some institutions, such as this credit union, have a lower threshold to risk, applicants may be turned down for an account if there is any negative history or a low credit score, shooting for a score of 600 before applying seems safest. The web services, as you mentioned, have significantly improved the layman's ability to cost effectively invest funds and provide liquidity. Robinhood currently seems to be providing the most affordable access to the market. It goes without saying, stay objective with your trust of any platform, as you may have noticed, there is a detailed explanation of how Robinhood makes their money on this stack exchange community, they are largely backed by venture funding, hopefully the organization is able to maintain a low enough overhead to keep the organization sustainable in the long run. The services that power this service such as Plaid, seem promising and underrated, but i digress. The platform gives access for users to learn how investing works, it seems safest to plan a diversified portfolio utilizing a mix of securities,such as low Beta stocks or \"\"blue chip\"\" companies with clear dividend policies. One intriguing feature, if you invest in equities is casting votes on decisions in shareholder meetings. Another popular investment asset class that is less liquid and perhaps something to work toward is real estate. Google the economist \"\"Matthew Rognlie\"\" for his work on income equality on this type of investment. There are many incentives for first time homeowners, saving up for a down payment is the first step. Consider adding to your portfolio a Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) to gain a market position. Another noteworthy approach to this idea is an investment commercial property cooperative organization, currently the first and only one is called NorthEast Investment Cooperative, one stock of class A is $1K. If you are interested and plan to focus on equities, consider dropping into your college's Accounting Capstone course to learn more about the the details of fundamental and technical analysis of an organization. The complexities of investing involve cyclical risk, macro and micro economic factors, understanding financial statements and their notes, cash flow forecasting - discounting, market timing, and a host of other details Wikipedia is much more helpful at detailing. It's safe to assume initial investment decisions by unsophisticated investors are mostly whimsical, and likely will only add up to learning opportunities, however risk is inherit in all things, including sitting on cash that pays a price of inflation. A promising mindset in long term investments are in organizations that focus on conscious business practices. Another way to think of investing is that you are already somewhat of a \"\"sophisticated investor\"\" and could beat the market by what you know given your background, catching wind of certain information first, or acting on a new trends or technology quickly. Move carefully with any perhaps biased \"\"bullish\"\" or \"\"bearish\"\" mindset. Thinking independently is helpful, constantly becoming familiar with different ideas from professions in a diverse set of backgrounds, and simulating decisions in portfolio's. Here is an extremely limited set of authors and outlets that may have ideas worth digging more into, MIT Tech Reviews (Informative), Bloomberg TV (it's free, informative), John Mackey (businessman), Paul Mason (provocative journalist). Google finance is a simple and free go-to application, use the \"\"cost basis\"\" feature for \"\"paper\"\" or real trades, it's easy to import transactions from a .csv. This seems sufficient to start off with. Enjoy the journey, aim for real value with your resources.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "532e53a0fb994835777206b028413f9e", "text": "\"You should certainly look into investments. If you don't expect to need the money until retirement, then I'd put it in an IRA so you get the tax advantages. It makes sense to keep some money handy \"\"just in case\"\", but $23k is a very large amount of money for an emergency fund. Of course much depends on your life situation, but I'm hard pressed to think of an unexpected emergency that would come up that would require $23k. If you're seriously planning to go back to school, then you might want to put the money in a non-retirement fund investment. As I write this -- September 2015 -- the stock market is falling, so if you expect to need the money within the next few months, putting it in the stock market may be a mistake. But long term, the stock market has always gone up, so it will almost certainly recover sooner or later. The question is just when. Investing versus paying off debts is a difficult decision. What is the interest rate on the debt? If it's more than you're likely to make on an investment, then you should pay off the debt first. (My broker recently told me that over the last few decades, the stock market has averaged 7% annual growth, so I'm using that as my working number.) If the interest rate is low, some people still prefer to pay off the debt because the interest is certain while the return on an investment is uncertain, and they're unwilling to take the risk.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cd8535f2a21689319c494ef19e6fb189", "text": "\"Most banks offer prepaid cards nowadays that should fit the bill here. I would recommend first checking with your bank to see what they offer, as that's probably the easiest, and perhaps cheapest, option. My bank, for example, has an entirely fee-free prepaid card that, while marketed towards teens, is entirely applicable for this case. Other banks seem to offer similar products; some of them have more or less fees, but almost all that I've seen are better than the commercial products you'd find in a grocery store. As an example (and I don't know anything about it so I don't specifically recommend this, just exemplifying what I mean): Note that the fees vary, some should be able to be used without ever incurring fees and some have fees you won't avoid. Most seem to have the concept of \"\"sponsor\"\", or NFCU inverts it (you are the cardholder, your dad would be the \"\"companion cardholder\"\"), but in either way it means you can load money (and generally would be the sole money loader) and your dad could then spend it. If your bank doesn't offer what you want, you may want to consider getting an account with a provider that offers what you're looking for, so to make deposits easier. Most of these allow deposits from other sources than checking accounts with that bank, but in many cases you may incur a fee or take longer for the money to clear.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "55d0352e77cbf9feac3c222d54381206", "text": "Daniel, first of all, I'm jealous of your predicament. That said, I think you've gotten some good advice already, so I won't repeat what's been said. But I will throw out a few ideas that haven't come up. My first thought is that you may be underestimating upcoming expenses. It sounds like your current expenses are low, and that's great! I'm impressed that you're living below your means, and looking for the best way to use your extra cash. But you may not be thinking of a few things. You have a girlfriend, and maybe your relationship isn't such that you are planning a wedding quite yet. But, regardless of whether your current girlfriend is your future life partner or not, if you think marriage may be in your future at all, you'll save yourself a lot of stress if you've got some savings for a wedding in place before you're ready to commit. Next, what are you driving? If it's a good car that you expect to last you another 10 years, you're probably ok right now. But if you may need to replace your vehicle in the next few years, start saving now and you may be able to buy it outright. (I expect your interest rate on financing a car would be higher than your current student loan rates, so I would save for a car before paying down loans with such beautiful rates.) A house has already been discussed, and there was also mention of additional education, and both of those require a solid financial plan that begins far in advance. In summary, I think you need a lot more than $5K in savings. Sure, have some fun, and take advantage of opportunities to travel, etc, as they come along, but if you're able to bump your savings by $500 to $1000/month, I think you'll really be glad you did. When it comes time for a new car, or you find you're ready to settle down, it will be nice to have somewhere to draw from, and if there's only $5K in your savings, you may come to regret choices you made when you were 22.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7986fd6da389b272c45d94c9feac0dcf", "text": "\"From what you say, a savings account sounds like the most appropriate option. (Of course you should keep your checking account too to use for day-to-day expenses, but put money that you want to sock away into the savings account.) The only way to guarantee you won't lose money and also guarantee that you can take the money out whenever you want is to put your money in a checking or savings account. If you put it in a savings account you will at least earn some paltry amount of interest, whereas with a checking account you wont. The amount of interest you earn with only a few hundred (or even a few thousand) dollars will be miniscule, but you know that the nominal value of your money won't go down. The real value of your money will go down, because the interest you're earning will be less than inflation. (That is, if you put $1000 in, you know there will be at least $1000 in there until you take some out. But because of inflation, that $1000 won't buy as much in the future as it does today, so the effective buying power of your money will go down.) However, there's no way to avoid this while keeping your money absolutely safe from loss and maintaining absolute freedom to take it out whenever you want. To address a couple of the alternatives you mentioned: It's good that you're thinking about this now. However, you shouldn't worry unduly about \"\"getting the most out of your money\"\" at this stage. As you said, you have $400 and will soon be making $200/week. In other words, two weeks after your job starts, you'll have earned as much as your entire savings before you started the job. Even if all your cash \"\"went down the drain\"\", you'd make it up in two weeks. Of course, you don't want to throw your money away for nothing. But when your savings are small relative to your income, it's not really worth it to agonize over investment choices to try to get the maximum possible return on your investment. Instead, you should do just what you seem to be doing: prioritize safety, both in terms of keeping your money in a safe account, and try to save rather than spending frivolously. In your current situation, you can double your savings in one month, by working at your part-time job. There's no investment anywhere there that can even come close to that. So don't worry about missing out on some secret opportunity. At this stage, you can earn far more by working than you can by investing, so you should try to build up your savings. When you have enough that you are comfortable with more risk, then you will be in a position to consider other kinds of investments (like stock market index funds), which are riskier but will earn you better returns in the long run.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b7e49e101b858efa636703835fbf943b", "text": "Only having 1200 dollars sounds extremely dangerous and in my opinion is not a sound situation to intentionally put yourself into. You have what, 11k total? That is roughly a rainy day fund, depending on your expenses and clarity of cash flow. I think you should keep that money in the bank as your new baseline. At least 10k of it. Don't touch that money unless you need to pay for an unexpected expense. Now, you have $0 to work with, but a safe-ish cushion. Then, and only then, should any extra money be used for either paying down the loan or tax advantaged accounts. A retirement account is probably the right long term financial choice. However, if it were me and I were (back) in that kind of situation, I would pay off the loan first, primarily for personal satisfaction, then start maxing retirement contributions.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "103149f9d033adf1cda71bb2ba4affe7", "text": "Don’t go crazy with your salary and try to live similar to your college lifestyle for a while. Max out tax deferred investments and any matching your company offers. Put the rest of your savings in passively managed index funds not a savings account at your bank. Buy furniture over a few months and find deals. Try to keep your total auto expense under 10% of gross monthly income and you’re housing expense under 20% of gross monthly income. After a few months you’ll figure out your other monthly expenses and how much you feel comfortable saving. You can also let your credit card company know you have this income and they may raise your CC limit. A higher limit means your utilization rate will be lower which will help your credit as well.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d1cb69170f7e03a21020382812c5b1ed", "text": "Based on your question details, I doubt you'll like this answer...but first things first, you need to focus on rebuilding your credit and your savings. $1K isn't a huge loan amount, so I'm going to assume you've made some poor decisions in the past to get to this point. I'm a small business owner, and I make it a goal to have 3-6 months of expected expenses in an account, should my circumstances ever drastically change or something happen that would keep me from working. Without knowing your living situation and daily expenses, here's some general advice on building a small business without a loan: 1) Find steady, gainful employment anywhere you can. 2) Pay off outstanding debts and rebuild a savings account to rebuild your credit score. 3) If you need fast cash, sell some stuff you don't need (gaming systems, home electronics, etc.). Also, minimize your unnecessary expenses (dining out, etc.). 4) Once your debts are paid off, create a business startup savings plan (put away as much as you can afford every week, until you reach your goal. 5) Once your goal is reached, you can begin your flipping business. Open a bank account, and separate your profits into buckets for operations, self-pay, and taxes (if you declare this income, which I hope you do). For myself, I put away 35% for income taxes, which I do not touch until my taxes are paid. I put 40% away for daily operations -- this keeps my business running, allowing me to pay for the equipment I need, the products I deliver, and advertising to keep my business running. I pay myself 25%. This is a simple method, but it works well for me.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "873098f58435c884347892c0d1afc27d", "text": "If you're absolutely certain that you won't buy a house within a year or so, I'd still be tempted to put some of the money into short-term CDs (ie, a max of 12 months). I think that at the moment CDs are a bit of a mug's game though because you'd hardly find one that offers better interest rates than some of the few savings accounts that still offer 1%+ interest. A savings account is probably where I'd put the money unless I could find a really good deal on a CD, but I think you might have to check if they've got withdrawal limits. There are a couple of savings accounts out there that pay at least 1% (yes, I know it's pitiful) so I'd seek out one or two of those. From memory, both Sallie Mae and Amex offer those and I'm sure there are a couple more. It's not great that your money is growing at less than inflation but if you're saving for something like a downpayment on a house I would think that (nominal) capital preservation is probably more important than the potential for a higher return with the associated higher risk.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "386012d7a169a7a93134e2d19a2b8b62", "text": "You have great intentions, and a great future. As far as investing goes, you're a bit early. Unless your parents or other benefactor is going to pay every dime of your expenses, you'll have costs you need to address. $1000 is the start of a nice emergency fund, but not yet enough to consider investing for the long term. If you continue to work, it's not tough to burn through $200/wk especially when you are in college and have more financial responsibility.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "144cce3a1c93590519217a7e460232ff", "text": "There are a few options that I know of, but pretty much every one of them will cost more than you want to pay in fees, probably. You should be able to write a check/cheque to yourself. You might check with your US bank branch to see how much of a limit they'd have. You can also use a Canadian ATM card at a US ATM. The final option would be to use a Canadian credit card for all of your purchases in the US, and then pay the bill from the Canadian bank account. I don't recommend the last option because if you're not careful to pay off the bill every month, you're running up debt. Also, it's hard to pay some kinds of expenses by credit card, so you'd want a way to have cash available. Another option would be to use a service like Paypal or Hyperwallet to send yourself the money. Again, you'd be paying fees, but these might be cheaper than what the bank would charge. There may be other options, but these are the ones I'm aware of. Whatever you choose, look carefully at what the fees would be, and how long you'd have to wait to get the money. If you can plan ahead a bit, and take larger chunks of money at a time, that should help keep the fees down a bit. I believe there's also a point where you start having to report these transfers to the US government. The number $10,000 stick in my head, but they may have changed that recently.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bfe9787224f701c084ffe7dbc2c998eb", "text": "\"As someone who has a very similar debt amount and environment (new grad, nice new paying job, want a car, etc), I'd like to share something with you. Life has unexpected costs. Luckily I didn't buy that new car the first few months out of college like I had planned to; I'm glad that I didn't because, as a fledgling \"\"adult\"\", despite having lived on my own while in college while working part-to-full time there are some things you just don't realize until it either happens or it happens to someone else. Here are some of those things: I could go on but I won't. $95K is good money and I would definitely recommend spending it a bit to enjoy yourself. But I would honestly tell you that taking your monthly expenses, adding a few hundred on top of that and then multiplying that sum by 3 would be a smart savings amount before picking up a car loan. Maybe that's an excessive savings but I've seen way too many people burn out over their cost-of-living and their failure to adjust appropriately when shit hits the fan. So instead of having to deal with the stab at your pride when having to lower the cost/quality of living that you'll probably grow accustomed to at a $95K salary, just prepare for the worst. Oh, and did I mention... A NEW JOB IS NOT A SECURE JOB Consider yourself to likely be the first asset dropped from the company if even the tiniest thing goes wrong. I know way too many people who were fresh hires at Intel, Boeing, and a few other big tech companies that pay around what you make and, despite being bad asses in college, they were dropped like a bad habit when their employers hit rough patches. To those even more experienced than me, please feel free to add to the list. I'd personally love to know them myself.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "992d568e9fb89ec12d5ec9d42554e089", "text": "What is your investing goal? And what do you mean by investing? Do you necessarily mean investing in the stock market or are you just looking to grow your money? Also, will you be able to add to that amount on a regular basis going forward? If you are just looking for a way to get $100 into the stock market, your best option may be DRIP investing. (DRIP stands for Dividend Re-Investment Plan.) The idea is that you buy shares in a company (typically directly from the company) and then the money from the dividends are automatically used to buy additional fractional shares. Most DRIP plans also allow you to invest additional on a monthly basis (even fractional shares). The advantages of this approach for you is that many DRIP plans have small upfront requirements. I just looked up Coca-cola's and they have a $500 minimum, but they will reduce the requirement to $50 if you continue investing $50/month. The fees for DRIP plans also generally fairly small which is going to be important to you as if you take a traditional broker approach too large a percentage of your money will be going to commissions. Other stock DRIP plans may have lower monthly requirements, but don't make your decision on which stock to buy based on who has the lowest minimum: you only want a stock that is going to grow in value. They primary disadvantages of this approach is that you will be investing in a only a single stock (I don't believe that can get started with a mutual fund or ETF with $100), you will be fairly committed to that stock, and you will be taking a long term investing approach. The Motley Fool investing website also has some information on DRIP plans : http://www.fool.com/DRIPPort/HowToInvestDRIPs.htm . It's a fairly old article, but I imagine that many of the links still work and the principles still apply If you are looking for a more medium term or balanced investment, I would advise just opening an online savings account. If you can grow that to $500 or $1,000 you will have more options available to you. Even though savings accounts don't pay significant interest right now, they can still help you grow your money by helping you segregate your money and make regular deposits into savings.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f03ab3bf6064ae72ee8f79afd2225323", "text": "\"1000 (£/$/€) is also not a lot to start with. Assuming you want to buy stocks or ETFs you will be paying fees on both ends. Even with online brokerages you are looking at 7.95 (£/$/€) a trade. That of course translates to a min of .795% x 2 = 1.59% increase in value you would need just to break even already. There is a way around some of this as a lot of the brokerages do not charge fees for their ETFs or their affiliated ones. However, I would try to hold out till at least $5000 before investing in assets such as stocks. In the meantime there are many great books out there to \"\"invest in knowledge\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9f359e430e3e8e2f14b3d2d65a4f203e", "text": "Congrats on making it this far debt free. It is rare, but nice to be in the situation that you are in. The important thing here is that you want to remain debt free. That's really what the emergency fund is all about: it keeps you from needing to go into debt should something unexpected happen. You've got 1.5 months worth of expenses saved up, and that's great. If you don't have a family or other responsibilities, that might be enough, but think about this: how are you paying for school, and what would happen if those funds stopped coming in? If you are paying for school out of your own income, what happens if you lose your job? If someone else, perhaps your parents, is paying for school, what happens if they are suddenly no longer able to do so? While you have extra cash, you want to be saving it up for situations like this. If I were you, I would build up that emergency fund until it got to the point where it could pay all your expenses and tuition until graduation. Hopefully, you won't need to touch it, but it will be there if you need it. Since you need to be able to access your money quickly, it is generally recommended to park this money in a savings account, where it is very safe. Mutual funds are a great way to invest, but they are not safe in the short term. Don't stress out about not being able to start retirement investing just yet. Making sure you can finish school debt free is the best investment you can make right now. After you graduate and land a job, you can start investing aggressively.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
63877ffc3a8ed48713c4da47f4db1c59
What is the contribution limit for a SEP-IRA?
[ { "docid": "5e02604ba9a683a904508ddc6fb0142a", "text": "\"Both are saying essentially the same thing. The Forbes articles says \"\"as much as 20% [...] up to a maximum of $50,000\"\". This means the same as what the IRS page when it says the lesser of a percentage of your income or a total of $53,000. In other words, the $53k is a cap: you can contribute a percentage of your earnings, but you can never contribute more than $53k, even if you make so much money that 20% of your earnings would be more than that. (The difference between 20% and 25% in the two sources appears to reflect a difference in contribution limits depending on whether you are making contributions for employees, or for yourself as a self-employed individual; see Publication 560. The difference between $50k and $53k is due to the two pages being written in different years; the limits increase each year.)\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "37bf7a313c044228098e096f44d928e1", "text": "I found this website for some ammo if you need it. For plans with less than 100 participants the limit is 7 days after deduction from your paycheck, though an extension is possible with some paperwork. A DOL audit would probably land your employer in some trouble if they are regularly taking 4 weeks to deposit your funds in the 401k account.", "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": "fabef76eede8dc4c8f8152a62aeebdec", "text": "Are the $18,000 401k 2017 limit and the $5,500 IRA limit mutually exclusive for a combined limit of $23,500 (under 49)? Yes, but the amount that you can deduct from a traditional IRA depends on your gross income and marital status - See publication 590-A for details. Also note that the limit applies to your combined traditional and Roth IRA contributions (meaning you can't contribute $5,500 to both; just a total of $5,500 between the two). I'm also assuming employee match $ count towards these limits - is this correct No - the limit for combined contributions between you and your employer is $54,000 in 2017. So if you contribute $18,000 your employer can only contribute $36,000.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b58b90a49e0b20b9bd0d2f12d025d018", "text": "\"How will contribution limits rise? Contribution limits are raised based on COLA. COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) is a number based on CPI (Consumer Price Index) which is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The IRS publishes these limits annually and a simple search term to find them each year is \"\"415 limits\"\" because section 415 lists how much the various qualified plans can set aside each year. CPI is a heavily managed and very political number. It is the number that is cited when the media talks about \"\"inflation.\"\" Since it drives increases in salaries, deductions, Social Security and pension payments, there is very heavy pressure to keep the number smaller than it really is. My next step was to calculate how long that money will last One traditional rule-of-thumb is to withdraw 4% of your balance each year. Another alternative is to purchase annuities. While younger people think that annuities are horrible investments, they appeal to older people because they protect the annuitant from excessive risk of losing your capital. When you are 30, and another 2008 comes along wiping out half your savings, you have time to re-earn that money. When you are 60, and another 2008 comes along wiping out half your savings, you have very few years to recover that money. So an annuity pushes that risk onto insurance companies. If you think you will die in your 90s, then an annuity is going to be a good investment (the insurance company will be betting that you won't be living that long). I have a simple spreadsheet that I use to calculate estimated projected balances and compare them to actual performance. Don't forget that when you reach 50, the amount you can contribute goes up due to \"\"catch up contributions.\"\" There are 2 views of the same tab in this picture. There are 3 growth rates: pessimistic, nominal and optimistic. You can change the numbers to suit your own projections of future growth. Other tabs on this spreadsheet include measurements of actual performance by my 401k and IRA accounts. At the end of the year, I replace the numbers in columns F, G & H with the actual end-of-year dollar amounts. This way, future estimates do not get too far unhinged from reality. If you need more sophisticated planning, such as Monte Carlo analysis to attempt to cope with inflation, I recommend the book Engineering Your Retirement. The book is aimed at younger engineers, so there is a bit more math than the average person would want.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b109fdeeaa6932d906b448179de638fa", "text": "Yes, eligibility for contributing to a Roth IRA is determined by your Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) which is based on your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). Now, AGI includes the net capital gains from your transactions and MAGI adds back in things that were subtracted off (e.g. tuition deductions, foreign earned income exclusion) in arriving at the AGI. There is a worksheet in Publication 590 that has the details. You are always entitled to contribute to a Traditional IRA. The MAGI affects how much of your contribution is tax-deductible on that year's tax return, but not your eligibility to contribute. Both the above paragraphs assume that you have enough compensation (wages, salary, self-employment income) to contribute to an IRA: the contribution limit is $5500 or total compensation, whichever is smaller. (If you earned only $2K as wages, you can contribute all of it; not just your take-home pay which is what is left after Social Security and Medicare taxes, Federal taxes etc have been withheld from that $2K). If your entire income is from capital gains and stock dividends, you cannot contribute to any kind of IRA at all.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "96b99a04d53ca89aba986c32e6a62ad2", "text": "\"IRA contribution must be from your earned income in the sense that you cannot contribute to IRA more than you have in earned income. If all your income is capital gains - you cannot contribute anything to IRA. Once you're within the income limit restriction, it doesn't matter what other money you have, because as you said - once in your account, its all just money. But what you're describing is basically \"\"I deposit $850 from my salary into an IRA and then go pay for my gas with the $850 I have from the capital gains\"\", so you're not paying any less taxes here. If it makes you feel any better, you can describe it to yourself the way you did. It doesn't really matter.\"", "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": "b094f1270094c90abc105c28a7c6899d", "text": "I know in the instance that if my MAGI exceeds a certain point, I can not contribute the maximum to the Roth IRA; a traditional IRA and subsequent backdoor is the way to go. My understanding is that if you ever want to do a backdoor Roth, you don't want deductible funds in a Traditional account, because you can't choose to convert only the taxable funds. From the bogleheads wiki: If you have any other (non-Roth) IRAs, the taxable portion of any conversion you make is prorated over all your IRAs; you cannot convert just the non-deductible amount. In order to benefit from the backdoor, you must either convert your other IRAs as well (which may not be a good idea, as you are usually in a high tax bracket if you need to use the backdoor), or else transfer your deductible IRA contributions to an employer plan such as a 401(k) (which may cost you if the 401(k) has poor investment options).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "878a472b03f4ef818d9be6494476f2dc", "text": "Yes. Look at form 1040 AGI is line 37, and it comes well after you report your schedule D cap gains. I read this question as meaning you wish to contribute to a traditional IRA pretax. There is no income limit to contribute to an IRA and not take the deduction.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dcfe1c3e1342af0bb67f2cc47dc3904b", "text": "There is no maximum. The only stipulation other than contribution limits is that you must take withdrawals at age 70 1/2.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "167747398d356f0b9a3ed4ff63181465", "text": "\"This is a great question! The IRS is not 100% clear on this. IRS publications do however very strongly suggest that assuming your wife has a plan providing family coverage, you can contribute up to your family maximum. If she does NOT have a family coverage plan then the answer is definitively no, you may only contribute the individual limit. Note if you have children covered by her plan then she is considered to have \"\"family coverage\"\" even if you are not covered by her plan (see here, question 12). From the 2012 IRS publication, bottom of Page 4. For 2012, if you have self-only HDHP coverage, you can contribute up to $3,100. If you have family HDHP coverage, you can contribute up to $6,250. This is presumably the referencing the definition which is introduced and discussed for married couples on Page 6: Rules for married people. If either spouse has family HDHP coverage, both spouses are treated as having family HDHP coverage. If each spouse has family coverage under a separate plan, the contribution limit for 2012 is $6,250. You must reduce the limit on contributions, before taking into account any additional contributions, by the amount contributed to both spouse's Archer MSAs. After that reduction, the contribution limit is split equally between the spouses unless you agree on a different division. Example. For 2012, Mr. Auburn and his wife are both eligible individuals. They each have family coverage under separate HDHPs. Mr. Auburn is 58 years old and Mrs. Auburn is 53. Mr. and Mrs. Auburn can split the family contribution limit ($6,250) equally or they can agree on a different division. If they split it equally, Mr. Auburn can contribute $4,125 to an HSA (one-half the maximum contribution for family coverage ($3,125) + $1,000 additional contribution) and Mrs. Auburn can contribute $3,125 to an HSA. The last example is nearly the exact situation you are in assuming your wife's plan is family coverage. The only assumption beyond what is explicitly written you need to make is that you are considered to have family coverage in the example as per the \"\"Rules for married people\"\" section, even though your plan only is a single-coverage plan. This conclusion seems to logically follow from information in the FAQs here (see Q32), as well as this document. Neither the above example nor any IRS documents referenced in this answer cover your situation completely.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "48200c2619731735e1decc0ae5936cd2", "text": "\"It seems I can make contributions as employee-elective, employer match, or profit sharing; yet they all end up in the same 401k from my money since I'm both the employer and employee in this situation. Correct. What does this mean for my allowed limits for each of the 3 types of contributions? Are all 3 types deductible? \"\"Deductible\"\"? Nothing is deductible. First you need to calculate your \"\"compensation\"\". According to the IRS, it is this: compensation is your “earned income,” which is defined as net earnings from self-employment after deducting both: So assuming (numbers for example, not real numbers) your business netted $30, and $500 is the SE tax (half). You contributed $17.5 (max) for yourself. Your compensation is thus 30-17.5-0.5=12. Your business can contribute up to 25% of that on your behalf, i.e.: $4K. Total that you can contribute in such a scenario is $21.5K. Whatever is contributed to a regular 401k is deferred, i.e.: excluded from income for the current year and taxed when you withdraw it from 401k (not \"\"deducted\"\" - deferred).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7d6960968bae59a344da844853fb3054", "text": "These are plans similar to 401k plans. 457(b) plans available for certain government and non-profit organizations, 403(b) available for certain educational, hospital, religious and non-profit organizations. Your school apparently fits into both classes, so it has both. These plans don't have to allow ROTH contributions, but they may, so you have to check if there's an option. The main (but not only) difference from IRA is the limit: for 401(k), 403(b) and 457(b) plans the contribution limit is $17500, while for IRA its $5500 (for 2013). Additional benefit of 457(b) plan is that there's no 10% penalty on early withdrawal, just taxes (at ordinal rates).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "70087fd7cec29ba6c2aa38fb0bd78780", "text": "Because you have maxed your 2011 contribution, you can't add any more for 2011. If you have 2012 income you can make a contribution anytime between now and April 2013. Only you can determine if this makes sense for you, but there doesn't appear to be any reasons to suspect you can't do this. (this was based on your comments to the original question)", "title": "" }, { "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": "" } ]
fiqa
9cea98ce3fa244217c07b60b241439a7
Where do large corporations store their massive amounts of cash?
[ { "docid": "f4e52de00689799d0a38c9951bef61de", "text": "You can find out the general types of investments by reading the public corporation 10-Q report that is filed with the SEC it can be accessed via the EDGAR system. It will not tell you what securities they have, but it does identify the short term and long term investments categories and their value.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ee7997e614fb5734ca64aa3847de7488", "text": "Short term investments, treasuries, current accounts.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "eb22f51c5e620c368ae9efe4b3d807f8", "text": "They are using several banks, hedge funds or other financial institutions, in order to diversify the risk inherent to the fact that the firm holding (a fraction of) their cash, can be insolvent which would makes them incur a really big loss. Also, the most available form of cash is very often reinvested everyday in overnight*products and any other highly liquid products, so that it can be available quickly if needed. Since they are aware that they are not likely to need all of their cash in one day, they also use longer terms or less liquid investments (bonds, stocks, etc..).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "df5f23b76dff4d3d4a7efb790e61a420", "text": "For tax optimization, cash is stored mostly overseas, according to the New York Times. For Apple, everytime a song or an app is bought in Europe, Africa or Middle East, money flows to iTunes Sàrl, in Luxemburg. Royalties on patents flow internally from Apple in California to Apple in Ireland. Then profits flow to the Carribean. The problem is that cash cannot be brought back to the USA without huge taxes.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "d4231c8ba1dee0efe017174185cea301", "text": "Generally you don't exclude cash that is needed to keep working capital going. A firm's need to cash will vary based upon it's AR and AP policies. Some companies that have beat up their vendors and extract harsh payment terms, like Dell and Walmart, often have negative working capital and can therefore be thought of as funding growth on their suppliers cash. Most companies require some amount of cash in their working capital to connect the dots from when they pay their suppliers and when their customers pay them. You need to leave that cash in your working capital calculation and on your DCF.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d25aad348b0c799e74c707363b625f45", "text": "They made their money one of two ways. Either they got a commission from the original owner (similar to how a buyer's agent in a real estate transaction gets a commission from the original owner of the house and/or a share of the seller's agent's commission), or they actually participated in the transaction directly (buying from the original owner, selling to you at a higher price). Storing it in the vault free of charge of course has an expectation that a certain percentage of those who do so will use that broker to complete the eventual sale.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b23d1bc1dc22e8aef985a8bf65abb967", "text": "\"This is second hand information as I am not a millionaire, but I work with such people everyday and have an understanding of how they handle cash: The wealthy people don't. Simple. Definitely not if they don't have to. Cash is a tool to them that they use only if they get benefit of it being a cash transaction (one of my friends is a re-seller and he gets a 10% discount from suppliers for settling lines using cash). Everything else they place on a line of credit. For people who \"\"dislike\"\" credit cards and pay using ATM or debit cards might actually have a very poor understanding of leverage. I assure you, the wealthy people have a very good understanding of it! Frankly, wealthy people pay less for everything, but they deserve it because of the extreme amount of leverage they have built for themselves. Their APRs are low, their credit limits are insanely high, they have longer billing periods and they get spoiled by credit card vendors all the time. For example, when you buy your groceries at Walmart, you pay at least a 4% markup because that's the standardized cost of processing credit cards. Even if you paid in cash! A wealthy person uses his credit card to pay for the same but earns the same percentage amount in cash back, points and what not. I am sure littleadv placed the car purchase on his credit card for similar reasons! The even more wealthy have their groceries shipped to their houses and if they pay cash I won't be surprised if they actually end up paying much less for fresh (organic) vegetables than what equivalent produce at Walmart would get them! I apologize for not being able to provide citations for these points I make as they are personal observations.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d17bceff3a511e9db65018b11d08680f", "text": "If you want to store that much money, find a good hiding place. (E-mail me the location. I'll keep it a secret. I promise!) But I think instead you want to invest that much money, in a cash-like liquid form. You can do $250,000 in a bank (beyond 2012) and then spread the rest over some big-name brokerages with money market accounts. But, as JohnFx pointed out, with that much cash you can do amazing things with it. Think bigger.", "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": "033cc75052b075d066d1a2b1420dfe42", "text": "\"This will happen automatically when you open an interest-bearing account with a bank. You didn't think that banks just kept all that cash in a vault somewhere, did you? That's not the way modern banking works. Today (and for a long, long time) banks will keep only a small fraction of their deposits on hand (called the \"\"reserve\"\") to fund daily withdrawals and other operations. The rest they routinely lend out to other customers, which is how they pay for their operations (someone has to pay all those tellers, branch managers, loan officers) and pay interest on your deposits, as well as a profit for their owners (it's not a charity service). The fees charged for loan origination, as well as the difference between the loan interest rate and the deposit rate, make up the profit. Banks rarely hold their own loans. Instead, they will sell the loans in portfolios to investors, sometimes retaining servicing rights (they continue to collect the payments and pass them on) and sometimes not (the payments are now due to someone else). This allows them to make more loans. Banks may sometimes not have enough capital on hand. In this case, they can make inter-bank loans to meet their short-term needs. In some cases, they'll take those loans from a government central bank. In the US, this is \"\"The Fed\"\", or the Federal Reserve Bank. In the US, back around the late 1920's, and again in the 1980's some banks experienced a \"\"run\"\", or a situation where people lost confidence in the bank and wanted to withdraw their money. This caused the bank to have insufficient funds to support the withdrawals, so not everyone got their money. People panicked, and others wanted to take their money out, which caused the situation to snowball. This is how many banks failed. (In the '80s, it was savings-and-loans that failed - still a kind of \"\"bank\"\".) Today, we have the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) to protect depositors. In the crashes in the early 2000's, many banks closed up one night and opened the next in a conservatorship, and then were literally doing business as a new bank without depositors (necessarily) even knowing. This protected the consumers. The bank (as a company) and its owners were not protected.\"", "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": "ec3fbd0ec37ba33932816f8fa8f9a042", "text": "Trader Joe's operates in 100% cash, no debt. No unions, no shareholders to answer to. The owners don't take any of the money. All the money is circulated back into the company. They lease small buildings and pay the rent in advance.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "21ab43bfb0013f6bec2b5d2c53dbfb29", "text": "The US does have a gold reserve. The main reserves are held at Fort Knox but there is even more gold, mostly owned by other countries, stored in the basement of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (Think Die Hard 3). The United States Bullion Depository, often known as Fort Knox, is a fortified vault building located adjacent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, used to store a large portion of United States official gold reserves and occasionally other precious items belonging or entrusted to the federal government. The United States Bullion Depository holds 4,578 metric tons (5046 tons) of gold bullion (147.2 million oz. troy). This is roughly 2.5% of all the gold ever refined throughout human history. Even so, the depository is second in the United States to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's underground vault in Manhattan, which holds 7,000 metric tons (7716 tons) of gold bullion (225.1 million oz. troy), some of it in trust for foreign nations, central banks and official international organizations. Source: Wikipedia", "title": "" }, { "docid": "524cddb28590d076ce9cdaf36faf147c", "text": "So ... how are you going to have a bank run if you got rid of cash? I suspect big investors will attempt (have already attempted?) to pull their cash, but regular people? Not like running to the ATM will do much good and I don't think they have offshore accounts. Excuse my naïveté, but that's the first thing that came to my mind...", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e8034a4cc4698ab17120162a58ee34d8", "text": "The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 requires that banks assist the U.S. Gov't in identifying and preventing money laundering. This means they're required to keep records of cash transactions of Negotiable Instruments, and report any such transactions with a daily aggregate limit of a value greater than (or equal to?) $10,000. Because of this, the business which is issuing the money order is also required to record this transaction to report it to the bank, who then holds the records in case FinCEN wants to review the transactions. EDITED: Added clarification on the $10,000 rule", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e6c0022c9123f09d4d1f69dcf4beedd4", "text": "\"In May 2011, a report to the board by Promontory Financial Group, a Washington consultant hired as part of the CFTC Dooley settlement, concluded that the firm had vastly improved\"\" its systems and risk controls, and praised management for setting \"\"a tone at the top\"\" supporting \"\"best practices.\"\" I actually did some technology work for Promontory Financial Group for a short period. What a bunch of tools. They had a nice office in a newer office building in the business district of Washington DC, not far from the Treasury. Their \"\"server room\"\" was actually a closet. The number of servers they had produced a lot of heat. It had minimal ventiliation. Their solution? Bring in a portable A/C unit. Great, but due to the humidity and the amount of heat/energy transfer, it produced a lot of condensation runoff. There was no drain. The solution? Think of the largest Rubbermaid outdoor garbage can that you can buy, and put it under the unit to collect the condensation output. It was probably 50 gallons. It filled up in about three or four days, an indication of the output. Part of the nightly cleaning crew's responsibility was to bail (literally) the water out of the can, and put it in a mop bucket, and wheel it down to the cleaning closet that did have a sink and empty it. The can had wheels, but who would want to risk rolling 400 pounds of water on tinkery casters down a lavish passageway? Problem? On long weekends/holidays, there was no cleaning crew. So they purchased a \"\"Mister Sensaphone\"\" (yes there really was such a device), so that when the can started to overflow, the moisture detector would trigger, it would page the system administrator, and they would drive into the office and bail it out. All of that because they did not want to pay $30,000 to install additional ac capacity on the roof and ventilate their server room. I think they were actually proud of this setup, like it was a demonstration of some \"\"out of the box\"\" creativity.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0cdf32009ce7d2b68f9a30325a4cce95", "text": "There's nothing particularly special about a two million dollar cheque. While they aren't commonplace, the bank certainly has experience with them. Many ATMs won't allow a deposit of that size but the bank cashiers will certainly accept them. They will typically get a supervisor to sign off on the deposit and may ask about the source of the money, for fraud prevention reasons. They may be held for longer than a smaller cheque if the bank manager chooses to do so. If there's nothing remotely suspicious (for example, it is a cheque from an insurance company for an expected payout), you should expect it will clear in about a week. On the other hand, if it is a cheque from a bank in another country and the bank manager has any reason to suspect it may not be legitimate, they may hold it for a month or more. Even then, you are not guaranteed the cheque was legitimate. This is used in a common scam.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e4516c0bdef564656983acf144d03063", "text": "\"Typical for large companies. My company isn't declaring bankruptcy but every year they \"\"run out\"\" of money for us to take legitimate business trips to support customers. Meanwhile executives are constantly flying around so they can give speeches that say nothing to people who don't care. Even if they just stopped spending so much when they traveled (international first class tickets are crazy expensive) we'd probably still have enough to go around.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "46d1e11b56a29794cf547d3707d415e6", "text": "big banks are not the only Big Money out there. In fact, big banks have way more oversight than most other businesses. Everyone uses banks for most things. It's kind of hard NOT to these days. But banks are built to handle money. That's what they do! Of COURSE banks are almost always involved in everything that requires money. I don't understand why you brought this up at all. It doesn't really support your point, and has little to do with my point.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
fda1c5c8376a66a6fe16a2c6333b5291
BoA Closed my Accounts and Froze my Funds. How can I get money back besides cashier's check?
[ { "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": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "a96543e87a7d692090fe7441ce7b12c7", "text": "I was a victim of this. I'm not sure who got my routing and account number off my check, but someone subscribed to Playboy.com using my bank account information. Luckily it was only for about $30 and the bank refunded my money. However, it was a mess in that I had to open a new checking account and keep the other one open until all checks cleared. The bank was extremely helpful and monitored the account to make sure only the checks I told them about were processed. I then had to close the old account. This is why I believe checks are much less secure than credit cards or debit cards. A paper check can lay on someone's desk for anyone to pick up or write the information down off of it. I avoid checks if at all possible. For things like Craig's list, I would try to use PayPal or some other intermediate processing service.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b5825b7937a3c46f4dad210d283bc7aa", "text": "Also see who has the authority to delete bills or items on bills. This was a huge scam with some servers I've worked with. If you can delete an entire bill that was paid in cash then that's money in your pocket.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "72d91dcb2317801f81a6ce13273e1bc3", "text": "\"I second what \"\"powercow\"\" and \"\"Osetic\"\" said. I switched away from Wells Fargo to Patelco (Pacific Telephone Company, i'm in the bay area). They are world's better. My biggest issue with WF was the overdrafts, how much they charged, and the way in which they processed incoming transactions (which they are being sued in a class action for, btw). I had my new account setup so it could never overdraft, it would just decline. In my first month with Patelco, I ordered checks. When that charge processed, it dipped my account into the negative due to it being an internal CU charge and their system not performing all the checks/balances first. They called me about 24hrs after it happened to let me know: * How sorry they were * That they would refund me the amount of the checks * That they added $10 on top of the refund to ensure I understood it was a mistake * If there was anything else they could do to make the situation right And like others here, I have shorter lines, more helpful tellers, a more inviting atmosphere, oh and free coffee. You gotta find a better CU, yo\"", "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": "83b10f0d7090aca06e4991a092758afa", "text": "I've called both BofA and Amex Customer Support, and they couldn't help. That's because you cannot. Debit card is tied to your checking account, so you can do a cash advance from your AMEX and deposit it to your BOA checking account. It will then be available to use with your debit card.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "538d00b01cd78aa88c96dc839feefdad", "text": "First, make sure you are contacting the bank directly - use an old invoice you have on hand with a phone number direct to the bank and call them. Do not use the provided number, or you may wind up being pulled into a scam (It is entirely possible that the bank is also confused at this point - so you should not rely on the number provided at all). Second, once you can confirm that your account is being closed, find out when it is being closed so you know when you need to act on it - it's possible you still have access to your account, and do not need to launch into a panic just yet. Third, get the bank to explain exactly why they are closing your account - make it clear that if they cannot explain, you will be forced to transfer to a new account and close business with them permanently - this is not a threat, this is a matter of fact because... Finally, if you cannot keep your account open, find a different bank and open up a new account. Frankly, if your current bank is closing your account and only managed to get a letter out to you a month late, you should probably find a new bank. If instead they simply cannot figure out if your bank account is closed or not, this is also a bad sign and you may want a new bank account anyway. But please, go through these steps in order, because you need to verify with your bank what is going on. Keep @Brick 's answer in mind as well, in case you need to get your money out of your account quickly.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ba32ffcbfb9be8adb5c2c2504b72937e", "text": "\"Is there any way for me to get my money bank? It would be a long drawn process. You would have to file a fraud complaint, they should be able to catch the imposter and / or get a freeze on the account you did wire transfer on [even courts would be involved in process] ... could take lot of time and money. Depending on the amount it may or may not be worth it. If so, should I talk to my bank Your Bank will not take any liability. From their point of view, you deposited a check, they sent it get cleared and reversed the transaction moment they realized it was fraud. the \"\"vendor's\"\" bank You could talk to Vendor Bank. However as you have no relationship with them, they may or may not co-operate. If its a large institution they may do their own internal investigations. If you act sooner, they maybe able to place a hold on the account. Often this is a parking account and the funds are moved elsewhere. They will not be able to refund the funds unless the legal system / process is involved. bank that the fraudulent check came from Depending on how the check was made ... the Bank can easily claim that someone printed something with their Bank's name on it and they are not responsible for it. If there are large cases, the Bank may to contain reputational damage may lodge a complaint with Police and put out some advertisement.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7317fb4f46b375b628a969a195c49b5f", "text": "\"At least in the US, a Cashier's Check is just like a regular personal check - only it's guaranteed by the bank itself, so the person accepting it can be pretty certain the check won't be returned for insufficient funds...if the check is genuine! Most banks therefore have a policy for cashier's checks that is very similar to their policies on regular checks and money orders: if you are a member with an account in good standing, they'll make all or part of the money available to you according to their fund availability policy, which is usually anywhere from \"\"immediately\"\" to 7-10 days. With amounts over $5,000, banks will tend to put a hold on the funds to ensure it clears and they get their money. If you are not a member then many banks will refuse to cash the check at all, unless the cashier's check is drawn on on that brand of bank. So if the cashier's check is issued by, say, Chase Bank, Chase banks will usually be willing to cash out the entire check to you immediately (with properly provided ID). Because the bank is guaranteed by them they are able to check their system and ensure the check is real and can clear the check instantly. This policy isn't just up to individual banks entirely, as it is defined by United States federal banking policies and federal regulations on availability of funds. If you really must cash the check without a holding period and won't/can't have a bank account of your own to perform this, then you will generally need to go into a branch of the bank that is guaranteeing the check to be able to cash it out fully right away. Note that since the check might be issued by a bank with no branch near you, you should have a back-up plan. Generally banks will allow you to setup a special/limited savings-only account to deposit your check, even if you don't have a checking account, so if no other option works you might try that as well. The funds availability policies are the same, but at least you'll be able to cash it generally in 10 days time (and then close the account and withdraw your money).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6a76319f8b71db581de878d899541507", "text": "Banks loan out money they don't have to you to get you to pay them interest. It's all just computer bits. Papier maché would require that they actually have money. If everybody told BofA that they wanted to close their accounts and to get the money in cash, it would never be able to happen.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "46691bddaf9882f2bfd4e34befd3fefa", "text": "You can't cash the check silly. How can you go off on a rant when you can't even tell the difference between a real check and a promotional tool. If you don't want to call in an get info throw it away....simple. This thread made me laugh. Thanks for that. Good day.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "56e501ad9e345426d2297fbcb1c91911", "text": "The classic Nigerian scam involves sending fraudulent cashier's checks to unwitting recipients who then deposit them in their account. The bank reverses these deposits once they discover the check is not valid. At least in the US and in the parts of the EU I'm familiar with (the Netherlands), the method of the Nigerian scam is consistent and banks will reverse the deposit after some holding period. Given this, it's unlikely that most banks will convert an arbitrary cashier's check to cash without any means to recover the amount should the check be fraudulent.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ce4f7a1447c3c7731583d3cad057c878", "text": "\"Most banks will not allow you to use online bill pay with a savings account as the funding source; rather, instead it must be funded from either a checking or money market account. The reason for this is that checks can typically be written from a money market account but not from a savings account. Update: I was having trouble wrapping my head around what the check would look like when the \"\"pay from account\"\" is an external bank, so I just called Bank of America and asked them. Basically, they do an ACH Withdrawal from your external bank account and route the money directly to the payee electronically. This means that your BofA account isn't touched and it won't show up on your BofA statement (but you can see it in the online bill pay history, and on your external bank's statement.) If the payee cannot be paid electronically, than you cannot use an external funding source. In other words, if a physical check is going to be sent, then it must have a BofA account as its funding source. Even though the ACH withdrawal should technically be allowed from a savings account, I suspect that this is forbidden since the intended purpose of the ACH is actually to streamline the writing of a check.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d5def564824c8bcbc4e68db1a556af97", "text": "\"OK, there is no way in hell that a stranger should have your contact details. there is no way in hell that a stranger should be able to determine your name from that account number unless you are previously known to them. Have they explained to your satisfaction how any previous relationship was established? It was correct to direct them back to their own bank or their branch manager if they bank with the CBA. There are procedures in place for this, and you are in the clear if the bank handles it. Even there is a previous relationship, and you are in their address book, think long and hard about their \"\"bona fides\"\". It may not have been a scam they may have had fat fingers and be genuinely out of pocket now. It is SOP that if you refuse to refund the money the banks will become less helpful. (EDIT - you have consented to retrun the money). EDIT - IF you had not consented... Disclosure: I am a former CBA employee and a 20 year veteran of NetBank, and these are my own opinions.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1f887f060715767fd16691d606e5b6b7", "text": "how safe is my money As safe as it can get. Most Banks would be registered under FDIC. See the list here if a specific bank is covered or not. Bank of America is covered. How does this work, and is there something I need to do so I am covered by it? Should I be getting a certificate or something?Is BOA under the scope of this Deposit insurance? It only covers if the bank fails, i.e. goes bankrupt. The FDIC steps in and either oversees a merger of the failed bank with another bank, or in the worst case, pays the depositors upto $250,000. Does it cover me if someone steals my money? The FDIC does not cover if someone steals your money. if someone hacks my computer and transfers all my money? This will be determined on a case to case basis. If the loss of money is because of your negligence, i.e. you gave your password etc to someone else or did not take enough precautions to safegaurd ... including allowing someone to hack you computer ... in such cases it is a crime and you would need to file police complaint and the bank will on best effort basis try and reverse the transfer. If this was due to the bank's error; i.e. Bank did not ensure right controls/security was in place resulting in loss of your money, the bank is liable and will pay you back. So cases like someone forged your signature on a check etc. are the bank's responsibility.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "47447e31ee0e6167f34a876a0ca7c73d", "text": "Both of the other answers are correct and good answers, but I think neither directly answers your question. No, you do not need to pay additional taxes on the wedding gifts simply because of the fact that they are going into a Roth IRA. Similarly, if you put them into a traditional IRA, that amount would be deductible (assuming you met the other criteria, including minimums and maximums of earned income, in both cases). The act of putting money into a Roth IRA is not what makes it taxable; its original source is. Roth simply does not reduce your current taxes any, whereas a traditional IRA would. The seeming exception to this is when rolling money from a tax-deductible source to a non-tax-deductible destination, such as transferring money from a Traditional IRA or 401(k) to a Roth IRA or 401(k). Then, the taxable event is really the distribution from the Traditional IRA or 401(k), not the deposit into a Roth IRA or 401(k), though of course if you rolled a 401(k) over to a traditional IRA it would not be taxable.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
06062aca8b4299c7ee11d876be7121bd
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a self-directed IRA?
[ { "docid": "0bc6398c3f04ee3f1e4c7f8cf593ea0e", "text": "There is nothing wrong with self directed IRA's the problem is that most of the assets they specialize in are better done in other ways. Real estate is already extremely tax advantaged in the US. Buying inside a Traditional IRA would turn longterm capital gains (currently 15%) into ordinary income taxed at your tax rate when you withdraw this may be a plus or minus, but it is more likely than not that your ordinary income tax rate is higher. You also can't do the live in each house for 2 years before selling plan to eliminate capital gains taxes (250k individual 500k married couple). The final problem is that you are going to have problems getting a mortgage (it won't be a conforming loan) and will likely have to pay cash for any real estate purchased inside your IRA. Foreign real estate is similar to above except you have additional tax complexities. The key to the ownership in a business is that there are limits on who can control the business (you and maybe your family can't control the business). If you are experienced doing angel investing this might be a viable option (assuming you have a really big IRA you want to gamble with). If you want to speculate on precious metals you will probably be better offer using ETF's in a more traditional brokerage account (lower transactions costs more liquidity).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "76dec13b2736c8e265b536a3bafca12f", "text": "\"This type of account will sell you just enough rope to hang yourself. Gold is at $1400 or so. Were you around when it first hit $800 in '79/'80? I was. No one was saying \"\"sell\"\" only forecasts of $2000. If you bought and held, you've still not broken even to inflation let alone simple market returns.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "370a026942c01c105a8f898c44d99b69", "text": "The main advantage and disadvantage I can see in a scenario like this are - how savvy and good an investor are you? It's a good way to create below-market average returns if you're not that good at investing and returns way above market average if you are...", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9a56cf08aa0055bd8866c3a1cc7284ba", "text": "Our company does a lot of research on the self-directed IRA industry. We also provide financial advice in this area. In short, we have seen a lot in this industry. You mentioned custodian fees. This can be a sore spot for many investors. However, not all custodians are expensive, you should do your research before choosing the best one. Here is a list of custodians to help with your research Here are some of the more common pros and cons that we see. Pros: 1) You can invest in virtually anything that is considered an investment. This is great if your expertise is in an area that cannot be easily invested in with traditional securities, such as horses, private company stock, tax liens and more. 2) Control- you have greater control over your investments. If you invest in GE, it is likely that you will not have much say in the running of their business. However, if you invest in a rental property, you will have a lot of control over how the investment should operate. 3) Invest in what you know. Peter lynch was fond of saying this phrase. Not everyone wants to invest in the stock market. Many people won't touch it because they are not familiar with it. Self-directed IRAs allow you to invest in assets like real estate that you know well. Cons: 1) many alternative investments are illiquid. This can present a problem if you need to access your capital for withdrawals. 2) Prohibited transactions- This is a new area for many investors who are unfamiliar with how self-directed IRAs work 3) Higher fees- in many cases, the fees associated with self-directed IRA custodians and administrators can be higher. 4) questionable investment sponsors tend to target self-directed IRA owners for fraudulent investments. The SEC put out a good PDF about the risks of fraud with self-directed IRAs. Self Directed IRAs are not the right solution for everyone, but they can help certain investors focus on the areas they know well.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "2e808270f61e48530726c53dae641c17", "text": "One big advantage that the 529 plan has is that most operate like a target date fund. As the child approaches college age the investment becomes more conservative. While you can do this by changing the mix of investments, you can't do it without capital gains taxes. Many of the issues you are concerned about are addressed: they are usable by other family members, they don't hurt financial aid offers, they address scholarships, they can be used for books or room and board. Many states also give you a tax break in the year of the contribution.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8a62de7c839adaec6cb463239c9d06ab", "text": "Years before retirement isn't related at all to the Pretax IRA/Roth IRA decision, except insomuch as income typically trends up over time for most people. If tax rates were constant (both at income levels and over time!), Roth and Pretax would be identical. Say you designate 100k for contribution, 20% tax rate. 80k contributed in Roth vs. 100k contributed in Pretax, then 20% tax rate on withdrawal, ends up with the same amount in your bank account after withdrawal - you're just moving the 20% tax grab from one time to another. If you choose Roth, it's either because you like some of the flexibility (like taking out contributions after 5 years), or because you are currently paying a lower marginal rate than you expect you will be in the future - either because you aren't making all that much this year, or because you are expecting rates to rise due to political changes in our society. Best is likely a diversified approach - some of your money pretax, some posttax. At least some should be in a pretax IRA, because you get some tax-free money each year thanks to the personal exemption. If you're working off of 100% post-tax, you are paying more tax than you ought unless you're getting enough Social Security to cover the whole 0% bucket (and probably the 10% bucket, also). So for example, you're thinking you want 70k a year. Assuming single and ignoring social security (as it's a very complicated issue - Joe Taxpayer has a nice blog article regarding it that he links to in his answer), you get $10k or so tax-free, then another $9k or so at 10% - almost certainly lower than what you pay now. So you could aim to get $19k out of your pre-tax IRA, then, and 51k out of your post-tax IRA, meaning you only pay $900 in taxes on your income. Of course, if you're in the 25% bucket now, you may want to use more pretax, since you could then take that out - all the way to around $50k (standard exemption + $40k or so point where 25% hits). But on the other hand, Social Security would probably change that equation back to using primarily Roth if you're getting a decent Social Security check.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b36177c86a000963a421bfef2ab82829", "text": "I use the self-directed option for the 457b plan at my job, which basically allows me to invest in any mutual fund or ETF. We get Schwab as a broker, so the commissions are reasonable. Personally, I think it's great, because some of the funds offered by the core plan are limited. Generally, the trustees of your plan are going to limit your investment options, as participants generally make poor investment choices (even within the limited options available in a 401k) and may sue the employer after losing their savings. If I was a decision-maker in this area, there is no way I would ever sign off to allowing employees to mess around with options.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "304819453c17e5a53069b7a6f1a7afe7", "text": "\"Whether you contribute to an IRA (Traditional or Roth) and whether you contribute to a 401k (Traditional or Roth) are independent. IRAs have one contribution limit, and 401ks have another contribution limits, and these limits are independent. I see no reason why you wouldn't maximize the amount of money in tax-advantaged accounts, if you can afford to. In your first year of work, especially if you only work for part of the year, you're likely in a lower tax bracket than in the future, so Roth is better than Traditional. Another thing to note is that the money in the Roth IRA can be part of your \"\"safety net\"\" -- contributions to a Roth IRA (but not earnings) can be withdrawn at any time without tax or penalty. So if there is an emergency you can withdraw it, and it wouldn't be any worse than in a taxable account. And if you don't need it, then it will enjoy the tax benefits of being in the IRA.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7513669b507e34a1436fd1b73c0e25b7", "text": "\"Here are the few scenarios that may be worth noting in terms of using different types of accounts: Traditional IRA. In this case, the monies would grow tax-deferred and all monies coming out will be taxed as ordinary income. Think of it as everything is in one big black box and the whole thing is coming out to be taxed. Roth IRA. In this case, you could withdraw the contributions anytime without penalty. (Source should one want it for further research.) Past 59.5, the withdrawals are tax-free in my understanding. Thus, one could access some monies earlier than retirement age if one considers all the contributions that are at least 5 years old. Taxable account. In this case, each year there will be distributions to pay taxes as well as anytime one sells shares as that will trigger capital gains. In this case, taxes are worth noting as depending on the index fund one may have various taxes to consider. For example, a bond index fund may have some interest that would be taxed that the IRA could shelter to some extent. While index funds can be a low-cost option, in some cases there may be capital gains each year to keep up with the index. For example, small-cap indices and value indices would have stocks that may \"\"outgrow\"\" the index by either becoming mid-cap or large-cap in the case of small-cap or the value stock's valuation rises enough that it becomes a growth stock that is pulled out of the index. This is why some people may prefer to use tax-advantaged accounts for those funds that may not be as tax-efficient. The Bogleheads have an article on various accounts that can also be useful as dg99's comment referenced. Disclosure: I'm not an accountant or work for the IRS.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ca29b83a6547e42e4c143c3bb5a62b26", "text": "\"In a Traditional IRA contributions are often tax-deductible. For instance, if a taxpayer contributes $4,000 to a traditional IRA and is in the twenty-five percent marginal tax bracket, then a $1,000 benefit ($1,000 reduced tax liability) will be realized for the year. So that's why they tax you as income, because they didn't tax that income before. If a taxpayer expects to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement than during the working years, then this is one advantage for using a Traditional IRA vs a Roth. Distributions are taxed as ordinary income. So it depends on your tax bracket UPDATE FOR COMMENT: Currently you may have heard on the news about \"\"the fiscal cliff\"\" - CNBC at the end of the year. This is due to the fact that the Bush tax-cuts are set to expire and if they expire. Many tax rates will change. But here is the info as of right now: Dividends: From 2003 to 2007, qualified dividends were taxed at 15% or 5% depending on the individual's ordinary income tax bracket, and from 2008 to 2012, the tax rate on qualified dividends was reduced to 0% for taxpayers in the 10% and 15% ordinary income tax brackets. After 2012, dividends will be taxed at the taxpayer's ordinary income tax rate, regardless of his or her tax bracket. - If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire. - Reference - Wikipedia Capital Gains tax rates can be seen here - the Capital Gains tax rate is relative to your Ordinary Income tax rate For Example: this year long term gains will be 0% if you fall in the 15% ordinary tax bracket. NOTE: These rates can change every year so any future rates might be different from the current year.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4485934741da1d19049bf8ec8391f61c", "text": "There are 3 account types your question discusses and each has its good/bad points. The above is a snapshot of these account types. IRAs have income restrictions that may disallow a deduction on the traditional, or any deposit to Roth, etc. If this does not address your question, please comment, and I'll edit for better clarity.", "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": "24b0b013a3385858eda59f1359a4f523", "text": "You can't do what you would like to do, unless your business has another, unrelated investor or is willing to invest an equal amount of funds + .01 into a corporation which will employ you. You will then need to set up a self-directed IRA. Additionally, you will need a trustee to account for all the disbursements from your IRA.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "196928bfe685a39adecb60dcd4ad2cd5", "text": "Advantage: more money. The financial tradeoff is usually to your benefit: Given these, for having your money locked up for the average length of the vesting periods (some is locked up for 3 months, some is locked up for nearly 0), you get a 10% return. Overall, it's like a 1.5% bonus for the year, assuming you were to sell everything right away. Of course, whether or not you wish to keep the stock depends on how you value MSFT as an investment. The disadvantage lies in a couple parts:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "49db93a60acf8d9b2a5a8d5ef79c49e5", "text": "\"I disagree with the IRA suggestion. Why IRA? You're a student, so probably won't get much tax benefits, so why locking the money for 40 years? You can do the same investments through any broker account as in IRA, but be able to cash out in need. 5 years is long enough term to put in a mutual fund or ETF and expect reasonable (>1.25%) gains. You can use the online \"\"analyst\"\" tools that brokers like ETrade or Sharebuilder provide to decide on how to spread your portfolio, 15K is enough for diversifying over several areas. If you want to keep it as cash - check the on-line savings accounts (like Capitol One, for example, or Ally, ING Direct that will merge with Capitol One and others) for better rates, brick and mortar banks can not possible compete with what you can get online.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2889ad9fd541beb4dccf1c5c25b0dfaa", "text": "You have many options, and there is no one-size-fits-all recommendation. You can contribute to your IRA in addition to your 401(k), but because you have that 401(k), it is not tax-deductable. So there is little advantage in putting money in the IRA compared to saving it in a personal investment account, where you keep full control over it. It does, however, open the option to do a backdoor-rollover from that IRA to a Roth IRA, which is a good idea to have; you will not pay any taxes if you do that conversion, if the money in the IRA was not tax deducted (which it isn't as you have the 401(k)). You can also contribute to a Roth IRA directly, if you are under the income limits for that (193k$ for married, I think, not sure for single). If this is the case, you don't need to take the detour through the IRA with the backdoor-rollover. Main advantage for Roth is that gains are tax free. There are many other answers here that give details on where to save if you have more money to save. In a nutshell, In between is 'pay off all high-interest debt', I think right after 1. - if you have any. 'High-Interest' means anything that costs more interest than you can expect when investing.", "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": "b1d966d38507f2431e2031ce742cfa87", "text": "Compared with a Sole Proprietorship, the main disadvantages of an S-Corporation or an LLC are that it adds a lot of management overhead (time, and possibly money if you don't do it all yourself), and there are fees you must pay to incorporate, as well as additional yearly maintenance fees which vary by state. You should be able to weigh the tax savings and liability protection against the extra costs and hassle, and see which way the scales tip. As a rule of thumb, the bigger your business gets or the more income you make, the more attractive incorporating becomes. Note there are some additional taxes that certain jurisdictions impose on business income. For example, IL and CA charge 1.5% tax, NY is less, but NYC is 8.85%! In NYC specifically, you could actually end up paying slightly more tax as an S-Corp than you would as a Sole Proprietorship. In most places though, the nominal local taxes will still be less than the FICA taxes you could potentially save.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0dbb3f8cfda404d02e3a98e694442773", "text": "\"So many complicated answers for a straight forward question. First to this point \"\"I am failing to see why would a person get an IRA, instead of just putting the same amount of money into a mutual fund...\"\" An IRA can be invested in a mutual fund. The IRA benefit over standard mutual fund is pre-tax contribution lowering your current tax liability. The advantage of an IRA over a 401k is control. Your employer controls where the 401k is invested, you control where your IRA is invested. Often employers have a very small number of options, because this keeps their costs with the brokerage low. 401k is AMAZING if you have employer matched contributions. Use them to the maximum your employer will match. After that OWN your IRA. Control is key when it comes to your money. On IRA's. Buy ROTH first. Contribute the calendar maximum. Then get a traditional. The benefit of ROTH is that you already paid taxes on the contribution so your withdrawal is not taxed AND they do not tax the interest earned like they do on a standard mutual fund.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
7653e1a10ccece440995172ac15cab58
Contribute to both a SEP IRA and solo Roth 401(k)?
[ { "docid": "53c1bb6b0713aa08599a51f7782a9999", "text": "In addition to the normal limits, A Solo 401(k) allows you to contribute up to 20% of net profits (sole proprietor) or 50% of salary (if a corporation), up to $49,000. Note that the fees for 401(k) accounts are higher than with the IRA. See 401(k)s for small business.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "1688f9cf850d8748e0e64f5e5f7b0f5a", "text": "If you were looking to maximize your ability to save in a qualified plan, why not setup a 401K plan in Company A and keep the SEP in B? Setup the 401K in A such that any employee can contribute 100% of their salary. Then take a salary for around 19K/year (assuming under age 50), so you can contribute and have enough to cover SS taxes. Then continue to move dividends to Company A, and continue the SEP in B. This way if you are below age 50, you can contribute 54K (SEP limit) + 18K (IRA limit) + 5500 (ROTH income dependent) to a qualified plan.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2d90d3a6220469d058a65d7a8d588c1a", "text": "Does the 457(b) plan allow for the rollover of other retirement funds into it? And do you have very specific reasons for wanting to roll over your SEP-IRA into the 457(b) plan instead of into some other IRA plan with a different custodian? For example, if you already have a Traditional IRA, is there any reason why your SEP-IRA should not be rolled over into the Traditional IRA? With regard to the question about separate accounts, once upon a time, rolling over money from an employment retirement plan (e.g. 401k) into a Traditional IRA required establishing a separate account called a Rollover Traditional IRA so that the rolled-over money (and the earnings thereon) were not commingled with standard traditional IRA money resulting from personal contributions). This was so that the account owner had the option of rolling over the separately kept money into a new employer's retirement plan (if such a rollover was permitted by the new 401k plan). If one did not want to ever roll over money into a new employer plan, one had to write a letter to the custodian telling them that commingling was OK; you never wanted to put that money into another 401k plan. The law changed some time later and the concept of Rollover IRAs holding non-commingled funds has disappeared. With that as prologue, my answer to your question is that perhaps the law did not change with respect to 457(b) plans, and so the money that you want to rollover into the 457(b) plan needs to be kept separate and not commingled with your contributions via payroll deduction to the 457(b) plan (in case you want to ever roll over the SEP-IRA money into another SEP-IRA). Hence, separate accounts are needed: one to hold your SEP-IRA money and one to hold your contributions via payroll deductions.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d6456689474126d52bc57b6a42210921", "text": "Please note that if you are self employed, then the profit sharing limit for both the SEP and Solo 401(k) is 20% of compensation, not 25%. There is no need for a SEP-IRA in this case. In addition to the 401(k) at work, you have a solo-401(k) for your consulting business. You can contribute $18,000 on the employee side across the two 401(k) plans however you wish. You can also contribute profit sharing up to 20% of compensation in your solo 401(k) plan. However, the profit sharing limit aggregates across all plans for your consulting business. If you max that out in your solo 401(k), then you cannot contribute to the SEP IRA. In other words, the solo 401(k) dominates the SEP IRA in terms of contributions and shares a limit on the profit-sharing contribution. If you have a solo 401(k), there is never a reason to have a SEP for the same company. Example reference: Can I Contribute to a solo 401(k) and SEP for the same company?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6347a4f709beea994927b81af00ec999", "text": "Short answer is fund a Roth. If you are under 50 then you can put in $5500 or $6500 if you are older. Great to have money in two buckets one pre tax and one post tax. Plus you can be aggressive putting money in it because you can always take money you put in the Roth out of the Roth with no tax or penalty. Taxes are historically low so it makes a lot of sense to diversify your retirement.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "233107d1566e41a237253de9b669439e", "text": "From Schwab - What are the eligibility requirements for a business to establish a SEP-IRA? Almost any type of business is eligible to establish a SEP-IRA, from self-employed individuals to multi-person corporations (including sole proprietors, partnerships, S and C corporations, and limited liability companies [LLCs]), tax-exempt organizations, and government agencies. What are the contribution limits? You may contribute up to 25% of compensation (20% if you’re self-employed3) or $49,000 for 2011 and $50,000 for 2012, whichever is less. If we set the PC aside, you and the son have an LLC renting office space, this addresses the ability of the LLC to offer the retirement account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c86927a383eb005d90ee36730dcda654", "text": "You setup a self-directed solo 401k by paying a one time fee for a company to setup a trust, name you the sole trustee, and file it with the IRS. None of these companies offer TPA because it opens them up to profit leaching liability. After you have your trust setup, you can open a brokerage account or several with any of the big names you want (Vanguard, Fidelity, Ameritrade, etc), or just use the money to flip houses, do P2P lending, whatever, the world is your investment oyster. If the company has recurring fees you need to ask what is going on because if they aren't offering TPA services, then what the heck could they be charging you for? I did see one company, I think it was IRA Financial Group, that had the option of having a CPA do TPA for you for a recurring fee, but I would pass on that. The IRS administration requirements are typically just the 5500-EZ that you have to file as a hard copy by July 31 if your investments are worth more than $250k, on December 31. Yes, you have to get the actual form from the IRS, write on it with a pen and mail it to them every year, barbaric. You can either have your accountant do it or do it yourself. If you're below $250k just google solo 401k rule change two or three times a year and don't try to launder money. If anything, the rules will loosen with time, I don't imagine the Republican Congress cracking down on small business owners any time soon.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a0797aab185d2e515f18e819fd107ed3", "text": "You're correct about the 401(k). Your employer's contributions don't count toward the $18k limit. You're incorrect about the IRAs though. You can contribute a maximum of $5500 total across IRA and Roth IRA, not $5500 to each. There are also limits once you reach higher levels of income. from IRS.gov: Retirement Topics - IRA Contribution Limits: For 2015, 2016, and 2017, your total contributions to all of your traditional and Roth IRAs cannot be more than:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "810eceab7edb6216ea4133d029874089", "text": "\"I humbly disagree with #2. the use of Roth or pre-tax IRA depends on your circumstance. With no match in the 401(k), I'd start with an IRA. If you have more than $5k to put in, then some 401(k) would be needed. Edit - to add detail on Roth decision. I was invited to write a guest article \"\"Roth IRAs and your retirement income\"\" some time ago. In it, I discuss the large amount of pretax savings it takes to generate the income to put you in a high bracket in retirement. This analysis leads me to believe the risk of paying tax now only to find tHat you are in a lower bracket upon retiring is far greater than the opposite. I think if there were any generalization (I hate rules of thumb, they are utterly pick-apartable) to be made, it's that if you are in the 15% bracket or lower, go Roth. As your income puts you into 25%, go pretax. I believe this would apply to the bulk of investors, 80%+.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "44161b0790cc3caf122100fa4e7dbfda", "text": "You're right, of course - But that's not something you would ever want to do *accidentally*. Five years from now, the OP may well decide to convert some of his traditional funds to Roth; for now, even though Roth was his original intent, that would mean a tax bloodbath come next April. As an aside, the biggest reason (for most people) to have Roth funds **isn't** because you expect to make more (inflation - or more importantly, tax-code - adjusted) in retirement than now. If that were the case, the entire concept would be almost worthless - Who the heck makes more *after* retiring than *before*? The best reason to have substantial Roth funds in your retirement portfolio is the way that Social Security is taxed. If you can keep your AGI under $25k (note that includes half of your SS benefits, but since the standard deduction is roughly $10k, those more-or-less cancel each other out), you don't pay a dime in taxes on your SSI. So, if you have a solid budget, take your yearly expenses, subtract out $25k, and that's what you should (sustainably) have in Roth funds. The remaining $25k is what you should have in traditional funds.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "53b1bf399946e6e878985ef0cf25bedb", "text": "\"You seem to be treating your Roth IRA as a sort of savings account for use in emergency situations. I would use a savings account for savings as withdrawing money from an IRA will have penalties under various circumstances (more than contributions, Roth IRA less than 5 years old, more than $10k for a down payment). Also, you mention folding your IRA into your 401k so that it will \"\"grow faster\"\". However, this will not have that effect. Imagine you have $30k in an IRA and $100k in a 401k and you are averaging a return of 8% / year on each. This will be identical to having a single 401k with $130k and an 8% / year return. This is not one of your questions, but employer matches are not counted in the 401k contribution limit. If your 22% calculation of your salary includes the match to reach the max contribution, you can still contribute more.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e8bee4798022bb21a67dc03738e29552", "text": "They are mutually exclusive. Provided you meet the income limits you can contribute to both. Employer match do not count toward the 18K. On the other hand traditional IRA and Roth IRA are inclusive. So if single and making having a MAGI under 118K, you could do the 18K of your own money into a 401(k), and $5,500 into a Roth. You can put in $23,500 of your own money with the employer match on top of that.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "48200c2619731735e1decc0ae5936cd2", "text": "\"It seems I can make contributions as employee-elective, employer match, or profit sharing; yet they all end up in the same 401k from my money since I'm both the employer and employee in this situation. Correct. What does this mean for my allowed limits for each of the 3 types of contributions? Are all 3 types deductible? \"\"Deductible\"\"? Nothing is deductible. First you need to calculate your \"\"compensation\"\". According to the IRS, it is this: compensation is your “earned income,” which is defined as net earnings from self-employment after deducting both: So assuming (numbers for example, not real numbers) your business netted $30, and $500 is the SE tax (half). You contributed $17.5 (max) for yourself. Your compensation is thus 30-17.5-0.5=12. Your business can contribute up to 25% of that on your behalf, i.e.: $4K. Total that you can contribute in such a scenario is $21.5K. Whatever is contributed to a regular 401k is deferred, i.e.: excluded from income for the current year and taxed when you withdraw it from 401k (not \"\"deducted\"\" - deferred).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5e6025c1beb9ef476d24e9bf4cac6ba7", "text": "The original contribution of X to Roth IRA in your reasoning is a red herring. It doesn't exist, never happened. You recharacterized it, so what you did in reality is contribute X to Traditional IRA.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4b1a79654858ab8d0ddcb37a7560699f", "text": "\"Close... Warning, I may be off a bit here; I'm sure someone will correct me if so. Traditional 401k or IRA: money goes in pre-tax (so, yes, you avoid paying tax on it now), grows untaxed, taxes are due when you retire and start taking money back out of the account -- but your income, including these withdrawals, is likely to be lower than your peak earning years so your tax rate will be lower. You don't avoid all the tax, but you delay it and hopefully reduce it, and by doing so there's more money in your account earning returns. Roth 401k or IRA: money goes in after taxes (you do pay income tax now). However, all returns on the money are untaxed (I believe), and you pay no tax when you're eligible to withdraw the funds. Either or both kinds of 401k may be eligible for some percentage of matching funds from your employer (there are some incentives for them to offer this benefit). I believe that even if you're doing a Roth 401k, the matching funds legally have to go in as traditional plan. And yes, as that implies, it is possible to split your contribution between the two styles. Note: the matching funds are \"\"free money.\"\" If your plan offers a match, it is highly recommended that you contribute enough to your 401k to capture the maximum match.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d6bc92aee3c062df68dba5a5407131de", "text": "My understanding is that to make the $18,000 elective deferral in this case, you need to pay yourself at least $18,000. There will be some tax on that for social security and Medicare, so you'll actually need to pay yourself a bit more to cover that too. The employer contribution is limited to 25% of your total compensation. The $18,000 above counts, but if you want to max out on the employer side, you'll need to pay yourself $140,000 salary since 25% of $140,000 is the $35,000 that you want to put into the 401k from the employer side. There are some examples from the IRS here that may help: https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/one-participant-401-k-plans I know that you're not a one-participant plan, but some of the examples may help anyway since they are not all specific to one-participant plans.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
f3e1bac233a85fd8a770dba4338fa6a6
How to protect myself against unauthorized recurring CC charges?
[ { "docid": "ac87f082a3a41ed46993d0840e78b8a3", "text": "\"The bank SHOULD be able to issue you a new card without letting vendors roll over the recurring payments. In fact, I've never had a bank move recurring payments to a new card automatically, or even upon request; they've always told me to contact the vendor and give them my new card number. So go back to the bank, tell them specifically that you have a security issue and you want the new card issued WITHOUT carrying over any recurring charges, and see if they can do it properly. If not: 1) Issue a \"\"charge back\"\" every time a bogus charge comes in. This costs the vendor money, and should convince them to stop trying to access your card. It's a hassle because you have to keep contacting the bank about the bad charges, but it won't cost you more than time and a phone call or letter. (The bank can tell you what their preferred process is for this.) 2) Consider moving to a bank that isn't stupidly over-helpful.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "838e19ae9cb13e06403cd63c943795b2", "text": "\"There is no way to stop any merchant from setting a recurring charge flag on a purchase. According to the following article, Mastercard and Visa encourages merchants to use this feature and even give them a better rate. I have found it impossible to stop these unauthorized transactions. The article sites that the merchant is allowed to march the charges across expired cards to find a good card that you might have as well as the article states they can cross banks to find you if you have the same type of card. Virtual account numbers will not protect you. Sorry but the only solution I have found is to close the account with the bank and move to a different type of card, mastercard to visa, or vice versa. This will only protect you for one move ,because if you have to do this again. Merchants that you thought were forgotten even years later will find you and post a charge legally. Virtual numbers from Mastercard or Visa won't stop them. I believe this is the number one reason for credit card fraud for consumers. There is no reason for a merchant to let anyone off the hook when the credit card company will side with them. The article below does state that Mastercard does have a \"\"stop recurring payment\"\" flag. Apparently no CSR tht I have talked to knows about it when I have asked to get a problem fixed. I have found that the only way to stop these charges from happening is to close all my visa and mastercard credit cards, pay with a check that you write and mail or a PayPal one time payment that is sent to pay for an invoice. Recurring Credit-Card Charges May Irk Consumers\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "5fee4c2ada624f9f9dfd3cf43e073b65", "text": "There are different ways of credit card purchase authorizations. if some choose less secure method it's their problem. Merchants are charged back if a stolen card is used.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "59c250a05c383c5e3f9f3bceaaa60434", "text": "\"In 2010, the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act was passed, which prohibited certain activities, most of which had to do with online sites sharing your CC info with third parties. However, the final part of the act deals with \"\"negative option\"\" marketing, which is basically what you're describing - \"\"We will charge you unless you say no\"\". It requires three components to allow a negative option: If you did not explicitly enroll in automatic payment, and made the initial purchase online (or made your most recent purchase online, I suspect) then it sounds like this was a violation of this act. On the other hand, the act isn't terribly careful about defining terms, and is really quite vague in a lot of places, so it's possible they would argue they are not using a 'negative option' scheme but instead simply charging your bill similar to how your phone company might use autopay. If it was not online, then this probably doesn't apply. Instead, the FTC's rule on Negative Option with regard to sale of goods applies. Title 16 Part 425 covers this; this law is much less limiting as to what the marketer can do.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8d3a8e900cecf7ac3996efc9e605a862", "text": "\"I think your confusion comes from the negative impact when a creditor writes off your bad credit and ceases attempting to collect it. \"\"Chargebacks\"\" as you call them are an attempt to undo fraudulent charges on your card, whether from stolen credit card info or from a merchant who is using shady business practices. For what it's worth, if you joined on December 20, January 20 seems like a reasonable date for the next billing cycle, with the December 31 date reflecting the fact that their system couldn't automatically bill you the day you joined. I also think it's reasonable for you to ask them to refund the bill for the second month if you do not plan to use their gym further. So the dispute seems like a reasonable one on both sides. Good luck.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "422e6a852c0f6568b2848a07cab29dfa", "text": "\"File a John Doe lawsuit, \"\"plaintiff to be determined\"\", and then subpoena the relevant information from Mastercard. John Doe doesn't countersue, so you're pretty safe doing this. But it probably won't work. Mastercard would quash your subpoena. They will claim that you lack standing to sue anyone because you did not take a loss (which is a fair point). They are after the people doing the hacking, and the security gaps which make the hacking possible. And how those gaps arise among businesses just trying to do their best. It's a hard problem. And I've done the abuse wars professionally. OpSec is a big deal. You simply cannot reveal your methods or even much of your findings, because that will expose too much of your detection method. The ugly fact is, the bad guys are not that far from winning, and catching them depends on them unwisely using the same known techniques over and over. When you get a truly novel technique, it costs a fortune in engineering time to unravel what they did and build defenses against it. If maybe 1% of attacks are this, it is manageable, but if it were 10%, you simply cannot staff an enforcement arm big enough - the trained staff don't exist to hire (unless you steal them from Visa, Amex, etc.) So as much as you'd like to tell the public, believe me, I'd like to get some credit for what I've done -- they just can't say much or they educate the bad guys, and then have a much tougher problem later. Sorry! I know how frustrating it is! The credit card companies hammered out PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards). This is a basic set of security rules and practices which should make hacking unlikely. Compliance is achievable (not easy), and if you do it, you're off the hook. That is one way Amy can be entirely not at fault. Example deleted for length, but as a small business, you just can't be a PCI security expert. You rely on the commitments of others to do a good job, like your bank and merchant account salesman. There are so many ways this can go wrong that just aren't your fault. As to the notion of saying \"\"it affected Amy's customers but it was Doofus the contractor's fault\"\", that doesn't work, the Internet lynch mob won't hear the details and will kill Amy's business. Then she's suing Mastercard for false light, a type of defamtion there the facts are true but are framed falsely. And defamation has much more serious consequences in Europe. Anyway, even a business not at fault has to pay for a PCI-DSS audit. A business at fault has lots more problems, at the very least paying $50-90 per customer to replace their cards. The simple fact is 80% of businesses in this situation go bankrupt at this point. Usually fraudsters make automated attacks using scripts they got from others. Only a few dozen attacks (on sites) succeed, and then they use other scripts to intercept payment data, which is all they want. They are cookie cutter scripts, and aren't customized for each site, and can't go after whatever personal data is particular to that site. So in most cases all they get is payment data. It's also likely that primary data, like a cloud drive, photo collection or medical records, are kept in completely separate systems with separate security, unlikely to hack both at once even if the hacker is willing to put lots and lots of engineering effort into it. Most hackers are script kiddies, able to run scripts others provided but unable to hack on their own. So it's likely that \"\"none was leaked\"\" is the reason they didn't give notification of private information leakage. Lastly, they can't get what you didn't upload. Site hacking is a well known phenomenon. A person who is concerned with privacy is cautious to not put things online that are too risky. It's also possible that this is blind guesswork on the part of Visa/MC, and they haven't positively identified any particular merchant, but are replacing your cards out of an abundance of caution.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "83e60d790859a94f8990e7919116d336", "text": "\"Abine has a product for iOS and Android (and desktop), now called called Blur, that provides credit card masking (alias credit card numbers), along with other privacy services. It's subscription-based. I've used it successfully for a number of transactions over the past year or so. To the merchant, you supply any name, Abine's address, and the specific masked credit card number and code. You can create any number of masked cards with different credit amounts, and the charges show up on your real card statement as \"\"Abine, Inc.\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "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": "ac33a013f04167de2998295a5bd240ca", "text": "If the card has no annual fee, you can keep it for as long as you like and you will never get charged. I advise you to GoPaperless so you stop getting the $0 bills every month. Many cards have the fee waived for the first year. If you have such a card, you should make sure to cancel it when you stop using it, or when the fee waiver expires.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "29d14308ca1707942c0fe3a844c420fe", "text": "I did just what you suggest. The card company honored the charge, they told me the temporary number was solely for the purpose of assigning a number to one vendor/business. So even though I set a low limit, the number was still active and the card company paid the request. Small price to pay, but it didn't go as I wished. For this purpose, I've used Visa/Mastercard gift cards. They are often on sale for face value and no additional fees.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8fbb8b1fbbb6c638987d33515a3b2523", "text": "Short of canceling the card, you could just report the card as lost and ask for a new card number on the same account. Another option is to just make a note to look for the charge and keep disputing it. It has been a while since I did credit card processing at my business, but I think the company gets dinged if too many customers dispute charges and kicks them into a higher fee schedule with the credit card company.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9dc05df9fc6e20481d08de42919c5f53", "text": "Almost every company I know of charges something like 2% per month on past due accounts. They are not financial institutions, so it's probably quite legal.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e3f1298818f20a69277756686d59e721", "text": "\"You have no recourse on the spot to do anything to the vendor other than pay the fee, pay cash, or walk away. If you're on a mission with longer-term horizon than immediate satisfaction, your options will vary by state. If you're in a state where the fees are legal and the owner is (potentially) violating an agreement with the card company, you can report the vendor to the card company. They may or may not really care. If you're in a state where the fee is actually illegal, you'd need to see what options you have with the local authorities. You should keep in mind that if the vendor is violating an agreement that's between the vendor and the card company only, you have absolutely no rights to enforce that agreement. You only have legal rights if you're a party to the agreement in question or if the law gives you some special rights specific to given circumstances. (The lawyers call this having \"\"standing.\"\") Likewise if the vendor is doing something that's not consistent with the agreement between you and the card company, you also have no claim against the vendor (because the vendor is not party to your agreement with the card company), although you might have a claim against the card company.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3c20845d1c8484de1456b7cbea74a70d", "text": "\"If I understand you correctly, no you shouldn't be charged interest. Lets say you have a billing cycle of monthly (which usually isn't true). You charge $XX per day, ending up at $1000 at the end of January. So February 1st, your bill for your January billing cycle is $1000, due by Feb 15th (lets say). On February 1st, you continue to charge $XX per day. You go to pay your bill online on Feb 14th (to be safe), and you'll usually see on your credit card website something like: You'd hit \"\"Pay my bill\"\", and you'd usually see these options: At the date your cycle was due (Feb 15th), if you haven't paid your full latest statement (lets say you paid $500), they will charge you interest on the entire balance for the period (so interest on $1000, or lets say $50). The other $500 will roll over to the next month, so your next month you'd be somewhere near a $1550 bill.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cca176d56c7f5661cc84926585f6417a", "text": "\"You should dispute the transaction with the credit card. Describe the story and attach the cash payment receipt, and dispute it as a duplicate charge. There will be no impact on your score, but if you don't have the cash receipt or any other proof of the alternative payment - it's your word against the merchant, and he has proof that you actually used your card there. So worst case - you just paid twice. If you dispute the charge and it is accepted - the merchant will pay a penalty. If it is not accepted - you may pay the penalty (on top of the original charge, depending on your credit card issuer - some charge for \"\"frivolous\"\" charge backs). It will take several more years for either the European merchants to learn how to deal with the US half-baked chip cards, or the American banks to start issue proper chip-and-PIN card as everywhere else. Either way, until then - if the merchant doesn't know how to handle signatures with the American credit cards - just don't use them. Pay cash. Given the controversy in the comments - my intention was not to say \"\"no, don't talk to the merchant\"\". From the description of the situation it didn't strike me as the merchant would even bother to consider the situation. A less than honest merchant knows that you have no leverage, and since you're a tourist and will probably not be returning there anyway - what's the worst you can do to them? A bad yelp review? You can definitely get in touch with the merchant and ask for a refund, but I would not expect much to come out from that.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "532ea8a3447f66a4dbb838a28f89c272", "text": "\"I put bills with a fixed monthly amount to my credit card, and remember to pay it every month. However, I do not let any bill with a variable amount \"\"pull\"\" access to my funds. I have to \"\"push\"\" the payment. The reason is simple: We've all heard the tale of the Electric meter that rolled past zero, and the customer got charged for $65000.00, or other similar situations. When there is pull access to my money, then I have to work to get my money back. When there is push access, I can (in the electric situation above) pay an estimated monthly amount, (say $100) to demonstrate good faith and make them come after me. When they do, I can ask them to demonstrate the accuracy of the bill. If I have to go after them, I have to demonstrate the inaccuracy.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7c5c80b89c7a12c454f67efe2fd2f61a", "text": "\"Typically, the CC company itself won't follow the customer very far upon a default (though it certainly can act as its own debt collector, or hire an agency for a fee to do the collection). What most often happens: Once they do that, assuming they win the lawsuit, they can do the following: They cannot \"\"force\"\" you into bankruptcy, but they might make it so you have no better options (if bankruptcy is less painful than the above, which it often is). They certainly can (and will) report to the credit bureaus, of course. For more information, Nolo has a decent help site on this subject. Different jurisdictions have slightly different rules, so look up yours. Here is an example (this is from Massachusetts). Not every debt is sued for, of course; particularly, pay attention to the statute of limitations in your state. (In mine, it's seven years, for example.) And it's probably worth contacting someone locally (a legitimate non-profit debt relief agency, or your state's help agency if they have one) to find local rules and regulations.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
ed587c285f4310efe025e87514fa4308
How to move (or not move) an LLC from Illinois to New Mexico?
[ { "docid": "5585aaa5c498c78f143339441300c8fa", "text": "Why not just leave it as is and register as foreign entity in New Mexico? You won't avoid the gross receipts tax, but other than that - everything stays as is. Unless Illinois has some taxes that you would otherwise not pay - just leave it there.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "21f92446dfd048a11ba3713e97294bf3", "text": "\"No, there are no issues. When you form the corp in DE, you pick a business there to serve as your \"\"agent\"\" (essentially someone who knows to get in contact with you). The \"\"agent\"\" will notify you about taxes and any mail you get, but besides the fee they charge you for being the agent, you should file all the taxes directly with DE (franchise tax is easy to file on the web) instead of going through the agent and paying a surcharge. When your LLC files taxes, you'll do so in DE and then the LLC will issue you a federal and state K1. You'll file taxes where you reside and use the federal K1, but I think you might have to file DE state taxes (unsure about this part, feel free to edit or comment and I'll correct).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5e725b58b1b28fc1dfc5ca7b43ed7c8f", "text": "\"Did it show just your address, or was your name on it as well? You didn't share how long you've lived at the address either, so it makes me wonder whether a former tenant is the one who filed that paperwork. It's also possible that someone used your address when making a filing. Whether that was deliberate or accidental is hard to discern, as is their intent if it was intentional. It could be accidental -- someone picked \"\"CA\"\" for California when they meant to pick \"\"CO\"\" for Colorado or \"\"CT\"\" for Connecticut...These things do happen. It can't make you feel any better about the situation though. You should be able to go online to the California Secretary of State's website (here) and look up everything filed by the LLC with the state. That will show who the founders were and everything else that is a matter of public record on the LLC. At the very least, you can obtain the registered agent's name and address for the LLC, which you can then use to contact them and ask why your address is listed as the LLC's business address. Once you have that info, you can then contact the Secretary of State and tell them it isn't you so they can do whatever is necessary to correct this. This doesn't sound like a difficult matter to clear up, but it's important to do your homework first and gather as much information as you can before you call the state. Answering \"\"I don't know\"\" won't get you very far with them compared to having the best answers you can about where the mistake started. I hope this helps. Good luck!\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "362888dad7a489b2fecb115aab213605", "text": "In this case not only that you must register in California (either as domestic, or as foreign if you decided to form elsewhere), you'll also be on the hook for back-taxes if you didn't do it from the start. FTB is notorious for going after out-of-state LLCs that Californians open in other States trying to avoid the $800 fee.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b11c1807668b0b0b3630b0e41f2d1cd6", "text": "You won't be able to avoid the $800 fee. CA FTB has a very specific example, which is identical to your situation (except that they use NV instead of AZ), to show that the LLC has liability in California. State of formation is of no matter, you'll just be liable for fees in that state in addition to the CA fees. This is in fact a very common situation (that's why they have this as an example to begin with). See CA FTB 568 booklet. The example is on page 14. I suggest forming the LLC in AZ/CA and registering it as a foreign entity in the other state (AZ if formed in CA, the better option IMHO, or CA if formed in AZ). You'll have tax liability in both the states, AZ taxes can be credited towards the CA taxes. Instead of forming LLC, you can cover your potential liability with sufficient insurance coverage.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8831f4e7c58254ff02b0311baf3833f4", "text": "It's not so much about time but about intent. If your intent is to move there permanently, it would be when you arrive in the state for the purposes of living there (i.e. not from a while before that when you went to check a place out or for an interview). I believe that most (if not all) states expect you to get a Driver's License from that state within 30-days of moving there. Something like a Driver's License or State ID would be proof of your residency. These things vary greatly from state to state, so you'd have to research particular states. Or find someone who's done that already. A bit of searching, specifically for Texas, brought me to this forum thread: If you / he wish to establish residency here -- here being Texas -- get a Texas Driver's License and Voter Registration here. Government issued ID with a Texas address is pretty much bulletproof defense against being found to be a resident of elsewhere. Your battle, if there is one, will not be with Texas, but with your present home of record state and/or local government if there are income taxes associated with having been a resident there during the tax year. Which brings up the other question: You would need to make sure that California does not have some provision that would cause you issues. (This isn't so much a case of income from a company in the state as it about capital gains, but it is still prudent to check.)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c630aeb467186a71cce758e33cc14d9f", "text": "ML is a brokerage firm. Tell them to sell. If you can't or don't know how to do it on-line - call them and do it over the phone. Your citizenship might come in effect when tax are withheld, you need to fill form W8-BEN if you haven't done so yet. If US taxes are withheld, you can file 1040NR to request refund, or get it credited against your local tax liabilities.", "title": "" }, { "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": "70edc1fac438a42eff7c8d79af5963bf", "text": "As far as the spam mail goes, I own a rental (in Connecticut) and live in Massachusetts, I get very little mail related to this property. I view this as a non-compelling reason. Your other reasons pick up quick in value. The protection from the rest of your assets is helpful, and the one con for most is the inability to get a loan with such a structure, but in your case, a cash purchase is mentioned. I don't know what the fees are to start an LLC, but overall, I believe the pros outweigh the cons. Yes, your Pro 4 looks good, an ongoing business with a track record will help the next purchase.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d1248d34c35232a822321595a0794fa0", "text": "This is an older question but I thought I'd give the correct response for anyone else that might look. Yes there definitely could be issues. You can form in friendly states such as Delaware and Nevada without having a physical location in the state but you can't run a business from another state without having to 'qualify' to do business in that State. To give a bit more clarification. Lets say you open a Delaware LLC. But you answer the phone when it rings on your New York phone and money comes into your New York bank account and your suppliers and vendors all use your New York address to send invoices and correspondence. Well you can pretty much count that you fall into the definition of doing business in New York and expected to pay New York taxes and qualify to do business in the state. The solution would be to set up your business to truly 'operate' from the state you would rather be in.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ee166c86d628d6354e45e2b491d31a0f", "text": "You should be careful about mingling your personal money and that of the business, even if it is a sole prop right now. It is a good habit to keep separate business and personal bank/credit accounts just so that when you change to an LLC, it is simpler for you to separate what belongs to the company and what is yours personally. What you're doing makes it more difficult (although only marginally so) to itemize business deductions that were paid with an ostensibly personal credit account. The better habit to get into now is keeping that distinct separation between personal and business. That being said, there's nothing illegal in what you're doing, but it would make an accountant cringe, that's for sure. (chuckle) Hope this helps. Good luck!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "776d1b6aa23bf68f4ab21bf947292452", "text": "If I hire someone in Utah to do sales for me over the phone, and he works out of his home, am I required to register an LLC or file my current one as a foreign entity in Utah? Yes, since you've established presence in Utah. You'll register your current LLC in Utah, no point creating another one. If my sales guy, or I, call businesses in, say, Florida, and sell a few businesses our services for online work like maybe a website design, etc. Are we required to file our LLC In Florida as either a new LLC or a foreign one? No, you need to register where you (your company, including your employees or physical offices) are physically present. You don't need to register in any state you ship products or provide services to. If no-one of your company's employees is present in Florida and you don't have an office/rent a storage there - then you have no presence in Florida. If you actually go there to provide the services - then you do.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fc267f3350b78dfbd46c7d16a0e08121", "text": "I would talk to an immigration lawyer. This sounds like the kind of thing that they'd deal with frequently. As I understand it, your concern is mostly about managing the transfer, not the sale. An immigration lawyer is going to see clients with overseas assets frequently. If this isn't something that they do themselves, they can refer you appropriately. In general when I'm looking for a lawyer, I start with the local bar association. The one for San Francisco. If that's the wrong bay area, they are normally at the county level. So you can find them by searching for bar association with the appropriate county or city name. If you explain your problem briefly, they can direct you.", "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": "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": "cc25350853bd49c0776a03e2ab19e8c9", "text": "Machine learning is definitely applied to trading, but I have not tried it myself. For now I've been focused on figuring out the platforms and how they work; I have not been trying out other strategies besides a SMAC strategy. The most machine learning-like application I've attempted was cross-validation by walk-forward analysis (I'm publishing that post on Monday). I know nothing about TensorFlow other than it's used for deep learning and that it doesn't work on Windows and thus would not work on my more powerful gaming computer, and like I said above, I have not been exploring machine learning right now. Neural networks are on my radar, on the list of things I need to read, but there was a topic on r/algotrading recently where most users said that deep learning has not demonstrated better performance than more traditional ML techniques and looks like a fad. I want to convince myself of that first, though. I'm glad you enjoyed the post and my site! Thank you!", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
58b4dbf7a0ac10fd8fe337e18ff74a9e
Helping my family sell their oil stocks. What to buy?
[ { "docid": "8cb84fc641cf335e2101b55a343905e7", "text": "\"*(\"\"Fee-only\"\" meaning the only money they make is the fee your folks pay directly; no kickbacks from financial products they're selling.) The answer to this is: for God's sake, leave it alone! I commend you on wanting to help your family avoid more losses. You are right, that having most of one's retirement in one stock or sector is just silly. And again yes, if they're retired, they probably need some bonds. But here's the thing, if they follow your advise and it doesn't work out, it will be a SERIOUS strain on your relationship. Of course you'll still be a family and they'll still love you, but emotionally, you are the reason they lost the money, and that will an elephant in between you. This is especially the case since we're talking about a lot of money here (presumably), and retirement money to boot. You must understand the risk you're taking with your relationships. If you/they lose, at best it'll make things awkward, and you'll feel guilty about their impoverished retirement. At worst it can destroy your relationship with your folks. What about if you win? Won't you be feted and appreciated by your folks for saving them from themselves? Yes, for a short while. Then life moves on. Everything returns to normal. But here's the thing. You won't win. You can't. Because even if you're right here, and they win, that means both they and you will be eager for you to do it again. And at some point they'll take a hit based on your advise. Can I be blunt here? You didn't even know that you can't avoid capital gains taxes by reinvesting stock gains. You don't know enough, and worse, you're not experienced enough. I deduce you're either a college student, or a recent grad. Which means you don't have experience investing your own money. You don't know how the market moves, you just know the theory. You know who you are? You're me, 20 years ago. And thank God my grandparents ignored my advise. I was right about their utilities stocks back then, too. But I know from what I learned in the years afterwards, investing on my own account, that at some point I would have hurt them. And I would have had a very hard time living with that. So, tell your folks to go visit a fee-only financial adviser to create a retirement plan. Perhaps I'm reading into your post, but it seems like you're enthusiastic about investing; stocks, bonds, building wealth, etc. I love that. My advise -- go for it! Pull some money together, and open your own stock account. Do some trading! As much as people grouse about it, the market really is glorious. It's like playing Monopoly, but for keeps. I mean that in the best way possible. It's fun, you can build wealth doing it, and it provides a very useful social purpose. In the spirit of that, check out these ideas (just for you, not for your folks!), based on ideas in your post: Good luck.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "901f587ef6b4da5a2caa0612bf66b160", "text": "I think following the professional money managers is a strategy worth considering. The buys from your favorite investors can be taken as strong signals. But you should never buy any stock blindly just because someone else bought it. Be sure do your due diligence before the purchase. The most important question is not what they bought, but why they bought it and how much. To add/comment on Freiheit's points:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6821015b22bf903e1176699de9ec2480", "text": "Buy puts on stock holdings buy puts on indexes look at volatility etfs and silver/gold etf s. Calling a market top is hard people hVe tried for 8 years now. 90 of protection via options expires worthless. Who knows if we have another crash. I don't call tops or bottoms if we start falling then I'll look at protection and play the downside", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4aa168633643cee09f0b068d172e8db9", "text": "A couple of thoughts from someone who's kind of been there... Is the business viable at all? A lot of people do miss the jumping-off point where the should stop throwing good money after bad and just pull the plug on the business. If the business is not that viable, then selling it might not be an option. If the business is still viable (and I'd get advice from a good accountant on this) then I'd be tempted to try and pull through to until I'd get a good offer for the business. Don't just try to sell it for any price because times are bad if it's self-sustaining and hopefully makes a little profit. I does sound like their business is on the up again and if that's a trend and not a fluke, IMHO pouring more energy into (not money) would be the way to go. Don't make the mistake of buying high and selling low, so to speak. I'm also a little confused re their house - do they own it or do they still owe money on it? If they owe money on it, how are they making their payments? If they close the business, do they have enough income to make the payments still? Before they find another job, even if it's just a part-time job? As to paying off their debts or at least helping with paying them off, I'd only do that if I was in a financial position to gift them the money; anything else is going to wreak havoc with the family dynamics (including co-signing debt for them) and everybody will wish they didn't go there. Ask me how I know. Re debt consolidation, I don't think it's going to do much for them, apart from costing them more money for something they could do themselves. Bankruptcy - well, are they bankrupt or are they looking for the get-out-of-debt-free card? Sorry to be so blunt, but if they're so deep in the hole that they truly have no chance whatsoever to pay off their debt ever, then they're bankrupt. From what you're saying they're able to make the minimum payments they're not really what I'd consider bankrupt... Are your parents on a budget? As duffbeer703 said, depending on how much money the business is making they should be able to pay off the debt within a reasonable amount of time (which again doesn't make them bankrupt).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "08731cc1aa3d6b5299b0f83c6ebf6b87", "text": "I was looking at NAT and NAO, NAT owns 20% of NAO. They trade opposite each other on the price of oil, low is good for NAT, bad for NAO. In bad times the other company's stock would probably rise, so they could trim excess shares to keep a stable monetary holding. This would create cash in bad times, in good times they could buy more, creating a floor as well for the other.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7b9e1b14c98aa0813d39fed38251fb95", "text": "\"My advice would be to invest that 50k in 25% batches across 4 different money markets. Batch 1: Lend using a peer-to-peer account - 12.5k The interest rates offered by banks aren't that appealing to investors anymore, at least in the UK. Peer to peer lending brokers such as ZOPA provide 5% to 6% annual returns if you're willing to hold on to your investment for a couple of years. Despite your pre-conceptions, these investments are relatively safe (although not guaranteed - I must stress this). Zopa state on their website that they haven't lost any money provided from their investors since the company's inception 10 years ago, and have a Safeguard trust that will be used to pay out investors if a large number of borrowers defaulted. I'm not sure if this service is available in Australia but aim for an interest rate of 5-6% with a trusted peer-to-peer lender that has a strong track record. Batch 2: The stock market - 12.5k An obvious choice. This is by far the most exciting way to grow your money. The next question arising from this will likely be \"\"how do I pick stocks?\"\". This 12.5k needs to be further divided into 5 or so different stocks. My strategy for picking stock at the current time will be to have 20% of your holdings in blue-chip companies with a strong track record of performance, and ideally, a dividend that is paid bi-anually/quarterly. Another type of stock that you should invest in should be companies that are relatively newly listed on the stock market, but have monopolistic qualities - that is - that they are the biggest, best, and only provider of their new and unique service. Examples of this would be Tesla, Worldpay, and Just-eat. Moreover, I'd advise another type of stock you should purchase be a 'sin stock' to hedge against bad economic times (if they arise). A sin stock is one associated with sin, i.e. cigarette manufacturers, alcohol suppliers, providers of gambling products. These often perform good while the economy is doing well, but even better when the economy experiences a 2007-2008, and 2001-dotcom type of meltdown. Finally, another category I'd advise would be large-cap energy provider companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP, Duke Energy - primarily because these are currently cheaper than they were a few months ago - and the demand for energy is likely to grow with the population (which is definitely growing rapidly). Batch 3: Funds - 12.5k Having some of your money in Funds is really a no-brainer. A managed fund is traditionally a collection of stocks that have been selected within a particular market. At this time, I'd advise at least 20% of the 12.5k in Emerging market funds (as the prices are ridiculously low having fallen about 60% - unless China/Brazil/India just self destruct or get nuked they will slowly grow again within the next 5 years - I imagine quite high returns can be had in this type of funds). The rest of your funds should be high dividend payers - but I'll let you do your own research. Batch 4: Property - 12.5k The property market is too good to not get into, but let's be honest you're not going to be able to buy a flat/house/apartment for 12.5k. The idea therefore would be to find a crowd-funding platform that allows you to own a part of a property (alongside other owners). The UK has platforms such as Property Partner that are great for this and I'm sure Australia also has some such platforms. Invest in the capital city in areas as close to the city's center as possible, as that's unlikely to change - barring some kind of economic collapse or an asteroid strike. I think the above methods of investing provide the following: 1) Diversified portfolio of investments 2) Hedging against difficult economic times should they occur And the only way you'll lose out with diversification such as this is if the whole economic system collapses or all-out nuclear war (although I think your investments will be the least of your worries in a nuclear war). Anyway, this is the method of investing I've chosen for myself and you can see my reasoning above. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ccd605b3bc6a3e996150716450fc9cee", "text": "\"(Note: out of my depth here, but in case this helps...) While not a direct answer to your question, I'll point out that in the inverse situation - a U.S. investor who wants to buy individual stocks of companies headquartered outside US - you would buy ADRs, which are $-denominated \"\"wrapper\"\" stocks. They can be listed with one or multiple brokerages. One alternative I'd offer the person in my example would be, \"\"Are you really sure you want to directly buy individual stocks?\"\" One less targeted approach available in the US is to buy ETFs targeted for a given country (or region). Maybe there's something similar there in Asia that would eliminate the (somewhat) higher fees associated with trading foreign stocks.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a7d40b71488cb83dad50f64980f559a9", "text": "\"I'd also look into index funds (eg Vanguard) as they have low management fees. you can buy these as ETFs as well - so you can buy in at a very low starting amount. An index fund can also be a talking point for your kids about what an industry index is and how it relates to the companies that fall into it. Also about how mutual funds try to \"\"beat the market\"\" - and often fail.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "118e5a811dd63b88e6aef7db892525db", "text": "\"Most financial \"\"advisors\"\" are actually financial-product salesmen. Their job is to sweet-talk you into parting with as much money as possible - either in management fees, or in commissions (kickbacks) on high-fee investment products** (which come from fees charged to you, inside the investment.) This is a scrappy, cutthroat business for the salesmen themselves. Realistically that is how they feed their family, and I empathize, but I can't afford to buy their product. I wish they would sell something else. These people prey on people's financial lack of knowledge. For instance, you put too much importance on \"\"returns\"\". Why? because the salesman told you that's important. It's not. The market goes up and down, that's normal. The question is how much of your investment is being consumed by fees. How do you tell that (and generally if you're invested well)? You compare your money's performance to an index that's relevant to you. You've heard of the S&P 500, that's an index, relevant to US investors. Take 2015. The S&P 500 was $2058.20 on January 2, 2015. It was $2043.94 on December 31, 2015. So it was flat; it dropped 0.7%. If your US investments dropped 0.7%, you broke even. If you made less, that was lost to the expenses within the investment, or the investment performing worse than the S&P 500 index. I lost 0.8% in 2015, the extra 0.1% being expenses of the investment. Try 2013: S&P 500 was $1402.43 on December 28, 2012 and $1841.10 on Dec. 27, 2013. That's 31.2% growth. That's amazing, but it also means 31.2% is holding even with the market. If your salesman proudly announced that you made 18%... problem! All this to say: when you say the investments performed \"\"poorly\"\", don't go by absolute numbers. Find a suitable index and compare to the index. A lot of markets were down in 2015-16, and that is not your investment's fault. You want to know if were down compared to your index. Because that reflects either a lousy funds manager, or high fees. This may leave you wondering \"\"where can I invest that is safe and has sensible fees? I don't know your market, but here we have \"\"discount brokers\"\" which allow self-selection of investments, charge no custodial fees, and simply charge by the trade (commonly $10). Many mutual funds and ETFs are \"\"index funds\"\" with very low annual fees, 0.20% (1 in 500) or even less. How do you pick investments? Look at any of numerous books, starting with John Bogle's classic \"\"Common Sense on Mutual Funds\"\" book which is the seminal work on the value of keeping fees low. If you need the cool, confident professional to hand-hold you through the process, a fee-only advisor is a true financial advisor who actually acts in your best interest. They honestly recommend what's best for you. But beware: many commission-driven salespeople pretend to be fee-only advisors. The good advisor will be happy to advise investment types, and let you pick the brand (Fidelity vs Vanguard) and buy it in your own discount brokerage account with a password you don't share. Frankly, finance is not that hard. But it's made hard by impossibly complex products that don't need to exist, and are designed to confuse people to conceal hidden fees. Avoid those products. You just don't need them. Now, you really need to take a harder look at what this investment is. Like I say, they make these things unnecessarily complex specifically to make them confusing, and I am confused. Although it doesn't seem like much of a question to me. 1.5% a quarter is 6% a year or 60% in 10 years (to ignore compounding). If the market grows 6% a year on average so growth just pays the fees, they will consume 60% of the $220,000, or $132,000. As far as the $60,000, for that kind of money it's definitely worth talking to a good lawyer because it sounds like they misrepresented something to get your friend to sign up in the first place. Put some legal pressure on them, that $60k penalty might get a lot smaller. ** For instance they'll recommend JAMCX, which has a 5.25% buy-in fee (front-end load) and a 1.23% per year fee (expense ratio). Compare to VIMSX with zero load and a 0.20% fee. That front-end load is kicked back to your broker as commission, so he literally can't recommend VIMSX - there's no commission! His company would, and should, fire him for doing so.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9035e3042845744753020ebe12989ddf", "text": "I can't provide a list, but when I took out my Stocks and Shares, I extensively researched for a good, cheap, flexible option and I went with FoolShareDealing. I've found them to be good, and their online trading system works well. I hope that's still the case.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d07b7887dc667881835e9251cf86b105", "text": "&gt; The only problem I see with stock options is that they expire You're on to something: the reason why some prefer to write (sell) options instead of buying. Neutral to bullish on crude oil? Sell puts on /CL at 90-95% probability OTM. You keep your money if the underlying moves up or does nothing, within the days to expiration.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6a7ad0dfe6e58a699a893680ecdf1566", "text": "\"They may be confused. The combination of \"\"my wife received stock when younger\"\" and \"\"her father just died\"\" leaves questions. A completed gift, when she was a kid, means she has a basis (cost) same as the original owner of that stock. This may need to be researched. The other choice is that she gets a price based on the date of dad's death, a stepped up basis, if it was his, but she got it when he passed. No offense to them, but brokers are not always qualified to offer tax advice. How/when exactly did she get to own the stock. Upon second reading it appears I answered this from a tax perspective. You seem to have issues of ownership. What exactly does the broker tell you? In whose name is the statement for the account holding these shares? Scott, saw your update. For the accounts I have for my 13 year old, I am custodian, but the tax ID is her social security number. When 21, she doesn't need my permission to sell anything, just valid ID. What exactly does the broker tell her?\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5db2500544c713428b4b849702c8e351", "text": "In order to see whether you can buy or sell some given quantity of a stock at the current bid price, you need a counterparty (a buyer) who is willing to buy the number of stocks you are wishing to offload. To see whether such a counterparty exists, you can look at the stock's order book, or level two feed. The order book shows all the people who have placed buy or sell orders, the price they are willing to pay, and the quantity they demand at that price. Here is the order book from earlier this morning for the British pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline PLC. Let's start by looking at the left-hand blue part of the book, beneath the yellow strip. This is called the Buy side. The book is sorted with the highest price at the top, because this is the best price that a seller can presently obtain. If several buyers bid at the same price, then the oldest entry on the book takes precedence. You can see we have five buyers each willing to pay 1543.0 p (that's 1543 British pence, or £15.43) per share. Therefore the current bid price for this instrument is 1543.0. The first buyer wants 175 shares, the next, 300, and so on. The total volume that is demanded at 1543.0p is 2435 shares. This information is summarized on the yellow strip: 5 buyers, total volume of 2435, at 1543.0. These are all buyers who want to buy right now and the exchange will make the trade happen immediately if you put in a sell order for 1543.0 p or less. If you want to sell 2435 shares or fewer, you are good to go. The important thing to note is that once you sell these bidders a total of 2435 shares, then their orders are fulfilled and they will be removed from the order book. At this point, the next bidder is promoted up the book; but his price is 1542.5, 0.5 p lower than before. Absent any further changes to the order book, the bid price will decrease to 1542.5 p. This makes sense because you are selling a lot of shares so you'd expect the market price to be depressed. This information will be disseminated to the level one feed and the level one graph of the stock price will be updated. Thus if you have more than 2435 shares to sell, you cannot expect to execute your order at the bid price in one go. Of course, the more shares you are trying to get rid of, the further down the buy side you will have to go. In reality for a highly liquid stock as this, the order book receives many amendments per second and it is unlikely that your trade would make much difference. On the right hand side of the display you can see the recent trades: these are the times the trades were done (or notified to the exchange), the price of the trade, the volume and the trade type (AT means automatic trade). GlaxoSmithKline is a highly liquid stock with many willing buyers and sellers. But some stocks are less liquid. In order to enable traders to find a counterparty at short notice, exchanges often require less liquid stocks to have market makers. A market maker places buy and sell orders simultaneously, with a spread between the two prices so that they can profit from each transaction. For instance Diurnal Group PLC has had no trades today and no quotes. It has a more complicated order book, enabling both ordinary buyers and sellers to list if they wish, but market makers are separated out at the top. Here you can see that three market makers are providing liquidity on this stock, Peel Hunt (PEEL), Numis (NUMS) and Winterflood (WINS). They have a very unpalatable spread of over 5% between their bid and offer prices. Further in each case the sum total that they are willing to trade is 3000 shares. If you have more than three thousand Dirunal Group shares to sell, you would have to wait for the market makers to come back with a new quote after you'd sold the first 3000.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5bf35ef2b2a563b6f8e40d18a6661541", "text": "So many retards in here. How hard is it to understand: import oil, add value through refining, export petroleum product. Also, two words - crack spread. Refine WTI and sell the product, competing with Brent refined product which costs more because of higher input costs. Get less ignorant", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2484d028f125112aeb17887465fbfe08", "text": "\"I think that you really have to take the deal, as the gas company will extract the land from neighboring parcels anyway. Talk to an attorney about trusts or other vehicles to shelter the money. It may be possible to transfer the land into a trust to benefit your parents when they need the money. Also, this may be one of those rare circumstances where some sort of life insurance arrangement may be in order. Also, pull the documentation from the pharmaceutical company -- what do they define as income? The payments from mining are usually referred to as \"\"royalties\"\". In any event, seek professional advice.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a58078ab7f833f0906be1b19c3205f03", "text": "Your son can gift you unlimited amount of money. It does not fall under income tax. It falls under gift tax. As per gift tax there is no tax for you. Any interest you earn on this is taxable to you. Your son transferred into savings account... if your son is NRI he can't hold savings account. Ask him to open a NRE account and convert savings account to NRO account.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
bd96b1e039cc5af85e2cd29dc53ffda3
Value investing
[ { "docid": "547c5288c6257859afa48a19b2a24f88", "text": "\"As an aside, why does it seem to be difficult to get a conclusive answer to this question? I'm going to start by trying to answer this question and I think the answer here will help answer the other questions. Here is a incomplete list of the challenges involved: So my question is, is there any evidence that value investing actually beats the market? Yes there is a lot of evidence that it works and there is a lot of evidence that it does not. timday's has a great link on this. Some rules/methods work over some periods some work during others. The most famous evidence for value investing probably comes from Fama and French who were very careful and clever in solving many of the above problems and had a large persistent data set, but their idea is very different from Damodaran's, for instance, and hard to implement though getting easier. Is the whole field a waste of time? Because of the above problems this is a hard question. Some people like Warren Buffet have clearly made a lot of money doing this. Though it is worth remembering a good amount of the money these famous investors make is off of fees for investing other peoples' money. If you understand fundamental analysis well you can get a job making a lot of money doing it for a company investing other peoples' money. The markets are very random that it is very hard for people to tell if you are good at it and since markets generally go up it is easy to claim you are making money for people, but clearly banks and hedge funds see significant value in good analysts so it is likely not entirely random. Especially if you are a good writer you can make a more money here than most other jobs. Is it worth it for the average investor saving for retirement? Very, very hard to say. Your time might be better spent on your day job if you have one. Remember because of the fees and added risk involved over say index investing more \"\"Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth.\"\"\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dabc7412a6bb3aa6b04232e77185d57a", "text": "\"The June 2014 issue of Barclays Wealth's Compass magazine had a very nice succinct article on this topic: \"\"Value investing – does a rules-based approach work?\"\". It examines the performance of value and growth styles of investment in the MSCI World and S&P500 arenas for a few decades back, and reveals a surprisingly complicated picture, depending on sector, region and time-period. Their summary is basically: A closer look however shows that the overall success of value strategies derives mainly from the 1970s and 1980s. ... in the US, value has underperformed growth for over 25 years since peaking in July 1988. Globally, value experienced a 30% setback in the late 1990s so that there are now periods with a length of nearly 13 years over which growth has outperformed. So the answer to \"\"does it beat the market?\"\" is \"\"it depends...\"\". Update in response to comment below: the question of risk adjusted returns is interesting. To quote another couple of fragments from the piece: Since December 1974, [MSCI world] value has outperformed growth by 2.6% annually, with lower risk. This outperformance on a risk-adjusted basis is the so-called value premium that Eugene Fama and Kenneth French first identified in 1992... and That outperformance has, however, come with more risk. Historical volatility of the pure style indices has been 21-22% compared to 16% for the market. ... From a maximum drawdown perspective, the 69% drop of pure value during the financial crisis exceeded the 51% drop of the overall market.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "887b3200296cd2619401dfefffaeee33", "text": "One aspect of this - no matter which valuation method you choose - is that there are limited shares available to buy. Other people already know those valuation methods and have decided to buy those shares, paying higher than the previous person to notice this and take a risk. So this means that even after you have calculated the company's assets and future growth, you will be possibly buying shares that are way more expensive and overvalued than they will be in the future. You have to consider that, or you may be stuck with a loss for decades. And during that time, the company will get new management or their industry will change, completely undermining whatever fundamentals you originally considered.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "54284d2a3c8a95d3298247d368e50224", "text": "\"The Investment Entertainment Pricing Theory (INEPT) has this bit to note: The returns of small growth stocks are ridiculously low—just 2.18 percent per year since 1927 (versus 17.47 percent for small value, 10.06 percent for large growth, and 13.99 percent for large value). Where the S & P 500 would be a blend of large-cap growth and value so does that meet your \"\"beat the market over the long term\"\" as 1927-1999 would be long for most people.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "70591461ef9fce7e7b32b7b259bf14f6", "text": "The quant aspect '''''. This is the kind of math I was wondering if it existed, but now it sounds like it is much more complex in reality then optimizing by evaluating different cost of capital. Thank you for sharing", "title": "" }, { "docid": "081512f0aaafbef6ec324b5e271c4821", "text": "\"Check out Professor Damodaran's website: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ . Tons of good stuff there to get you started. If you want more depth, he's written what is widely considered the bible on the subject of valuation: \"\"Investment Valuation\"\". DCF is very well suited to stock analysis. One doesn't need to know, or forecast the future stock price to use it. In fact, it's the opposite. Business fundamentals are forecasted to estimate the sum total of future cash flows from the company, discounted back to the present. Divide that by shares outstanding, and you have the value of the stock. The key is to remember that DCF calculations are very sensitive to inputs. Be conservative in your estimates of future revenue growth, earnings margins, and capital investment. I usually develop three forecasts: pessimistic, neutral, optimistic. This delivers a range of value instead of a false-precision single number. This may seem odd: I find the DCF invaluable, but for the process, not so much the result. The input sensitivity requires careful work, and while a range of value is useful, the real benefit comes from being required to answer the questions to build the forecast. It provides a framework to analyze a business. You're just trying to properly fill in the boxes, estimate the unguessable. To do so, you pore through the financials. Skimming, reading with a purpose. In the end you come away with a fairly deep understanding of the business, how they make money, why they'll continue to make money, etc.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ae5328d39b4595fdc2abf63ff7bdfb46", "text": "I wouldn't read into the title too much. We live in a world of click bait. I'd agree with your statement, that really the point is that reading fiction makes you better at understanding human emotion which makes you better at investing because the market is very emotional by nature. Of course I'd say if this is your position I'd be taking some long straddle positions on options leading up to conference meetings on big companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla and calling it a day.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "89d0451472da336c5b36dca90f59adb4", "text": "Many good sources on YouTube that you can find easily once you know what to look for. Start following the stock market, present value / future value, annuities &amp; perpetuities, bonds, financial ratios, balance sheets and P&amp;L statements, ROI, ROA, ROE, cash flows, net present value and IRR, forecasting, Monte Carlo simulation (heavy on stats but useful in finance), the list goes on. If you can find a cheap textbook, it'll help with the concepts. Investopedia is sometimes useful in learning concepts but not really on application. Khan Academy is a good YouTube channel. The Intelligent Investor is a good foundational book for investing. There are several good case studies on Harvard Business Review to practice with. I've found that case studies are most helpful in learning how to apply concept and think outside the box. Discover how you can apply it to aspects of your everyday life. Finance is a great profession to pursue. Good luck on your studies!", "title": "" }, { "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": "68ad2d6cc4afb29c1b2f1b4a8f0d38f1", "text": "All you have to do is ask Warren Buffet that question and you'll have your answer! (grin) He is the very definition of someone who relies on the fundamentals as a major part of his investment decisions. Investors who rely on analysis of fundamentals tend to be more long-term strategic planners than most other investors, who seem more focused on momentum-based thinking. There are some industries which have historically low P/E ratios, such as utilities, but I don't think that implies poor growth prospects. How often does a utility go out of business? I think oftentimes if you really look into the numbers, there are companies reporting higher earnings and earnings growth, but is that top-line growth, or is it the result of cost-cutting and other measures which artificially imply a healthy and growing company? A healthy company is one which shows year-over-year organic growth in revenues and earnings from sales, not one which has to continually make new acquisitions or use accounting tricks to dress up the bottom line. Is it possible to do well by investing in companies with solid fundamentals? Absolutely. You may not realize the same rate of short-term returns as others who use momentum-based trading strategies, but over the long haul I'm willing to bet you'll see a better overall average return than they do.", "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": "20fb453bd63f1f4ded5fa3e211933994", "text": "Value investing is just an investment strategy, it's an alternative to technical investing. Buffet made money picking stocks. It's not obvious how that adds value, but it does. Everything about the stock market is ultimately about IPOs. Without active trading, of stocks after issue, no one would buy at the IPO. The purpose of an IPO is to finance the long-term growth of a business, which is the point in the process where the value to the people gets created. There is a group of elites that needs to be dealt with, you're correct, but I worry that your definition of this group is overly broad.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "25e56af0f5cbdab0fbbef9de4082a0b0", "text": "Hey, you seem like you read a lot about what a quant does on the Internet... I'm guessing zerohedge mostly and maybe some financial pop culture books about the financial crisis. Why don't you leave that out of this discussion as it is pretty misleading. Quants price relative risk and that is important for a number of reasons.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ebb20a00f7a59b2682b77987bd4151f6", "text": "The steps you outlined are fine by themselves. Step 5, seeking criticism can be less helpful than one may think. See stocktwits.com There are a lot of opposing opinions all of which can be correct over different time-frames. Try and quantify your confidence and develop different strategies for different confidence levels. I was never smart enough or patient with follow through to be a successful value investor. It was very frustrating to watch stocks trade sideways for years before the company's intrinsic value was better reflected in the market. Also, you could make an excellent pick, but a macro change and slump could set you back a year and raise doubts. In my experience portfolio management techniques like asset allocation and dollar-cost-averaging is what made my version of value investing work. Your interest in 10k/10q is something to applaud. Is there something specific about 10k/10q that you do not understand? Context is key, these types of reports are more relevant and understandable when compared to competitors in the same sector. It is good to assess over confidence! It is also good to diversify your knowledge and the effort put into Securities Analysis 6th edition will help with other books in the field. I see a bit of myself in your post, and if you are like me, than subsequent readings, and full mastery of the concepts in 'Securities & Analysis 6th ed.' will lead to over confidence, or a false understanding as there are many factors at play in the market. So many, that even the most scientific approaches to investing can just as equally be described as an 'art'. I'm not aware of the details of your situation, but in general, for you to fully realize the benefits from applying the principals of value investing shared by Graham and more recently Warren Buffett, you must invest on the level that requires use of the consolidation or equity method of accounting, e.g. > 20% ownership. Sure, the same principals used by Buffett can work on a smaller scale, but a small scale investor is best served by wealth accumulation, which can take many forms. Not the addition of instant equity via acquisitions to their consolidated financials. Lastly, to test what you have learned about value investing, and order execution, try the inverse. At least on paper. Short a stock with low value and a high P/E. TWTR may be a good example? Learn what it is like to have your resources at stake, and the anguish of market and security volatility. It would be a lot easier to wait it out as a long-term value investor from a beach house in Santa Barbara :)", "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": "f6b93d56422824ec67ede47fd8faf611", "text": "Very interesting. I would like to expand beyond just precious metals and stocks, but I am not ready just to jump in just yet (I am a relatively young investor, but have been playing around with stocks for 4 years on and off). The problem I often find is that the stock market is often too overvalued to play Ben Graham type strategy/ PE/B, so I would like to expand my knowledge of investing so I can invest in any market and still find value. After reading Jim Rogers, I was really interested in commodities as an alternative to stocks, but I like to play really conservative (generally). Thank you for your insight. If you don't mind, I would like to add you as a friend, since you seem quite above average in the strategy department.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ed94c996ea2eda52c332ab82b4541cd4", "text": "I really like Value Investing by Bruce Greenwald. It's not a textbook so you can probably pick it up for about $20. While it is dense, I think with some patience you might be able to understand it at the undergrad level. The process outlined in the VI book is very different from the conventional corp finance way of valuing a company. A typical corp finance model would probably have you model cash flows 5 or 10 years out and then assume some sort of terminal growth. The VI book argues that it's nearly impossible to predict things that far out accurately so build your valuation on what we know. Start with the balance sheet. Then look at this year's earnings. Is that sustainable? This is a simplification of course but I describe it only so you can get the idea. I think it's definitely a worthwhile read.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4fb93947461cf2614b37f4ea50bbec9b", "text": "Googling vanguard target asset allocation led me to this page on the Bogleheads wiki which has detailed breakdowns of the Target Retirement funds; that page in turn has a link to this Vanguard PDF which goes into a good level of detail on the construction of these funds' portfolios. I excerpt: (To the question of why so much weight in equities:) In our view, two important considerations justify an expectation of an equity risk premium. The first is the historical record: In the past, and in many countries, stock market investors have been rewarded with such a premium. ... Historically, bond returns have lagged equity returns by about 5–6 percentage points, annualized—amounting to an enormous return differential in most circumstances over longer time periods. Consequently, retirement savers investing only in “safe” assets must dramatically increase their savings rates to compensate for the lower expected returns those investments offer. ... The second strategic principle underlying our glidepath construction—that younger investors are better able to withstand risk—recognizes that an individual’s total net worth consists of both their current financial holdings and their future work earnings. For younger individuals, the majority of their ultimate retirement wealth is in the form of what they will earn in the future, or their “human capital.” Therefore, a large commitment to stocks in a younger person’s portfolio may be appropriate to balance and diversify risk exposure to work-related earnings (To the question of how the exact allocations were decided:) As part of the process of evaluating and identifying an appropriate glide path given this theoretical framework, we ran various financial simulations using the Vanguard Capital Markets Model. We examined different risk-reward scenarios and the potential implications of different glide paths and TDF approaches. The PDF is highly readable, I would say, and includes references to quant articles, for those that like that sort of thing.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0dcb7260f7b813b016081465372c8589", "text": "Berkshire Hathaway's earnings for the last reported quarter were $6.395 billion, which works out to $822 in profit per second, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is directly the result of about 50 years of carefully applying the value investing philosophy.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
ad7eef5eaf1ff856a5bc2e220317e7d3
Is it acceptable to receive payment from U.S. in Indian saving bank account via PayPal?
[ { "docid": "3e11f0e7ab671c5e2e7a3c86eb356e1f", "text": "It is fine to receive payments into Indian Savings Bank account. There are no restriction on deposits. There are only restrictions on number of withdrawls in a quarter. A Current[a.k.a Checking] account makes it easier to manage. You haven't asked about tax, but I you may already know you would need to pay taxes irrespective of whether you got the money in Savings or Current account. Edit: Any individual can open a Current Account on individual's name. There is no restriction. There are multiple aspects to determine whether the activity you are doing is a service as defined by the Service Tax Rules. Please consult a CA to guide you. For less than 5K INR he would not only advice you but also do everything required to file taxes.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "118b7cdb68dfddbd40d4ac3fb00c6b6b", "text": "Yes, you can transfer money to your account, any bank will do it. The conversion charges will be there i.e. the diff between USD and the rate at which the bank sells it, usually Rs. 2/-, appx. In addition, transaction charge (not very high). As for taking from friends & repaying in India, check UAE tax treatement for taking money from friends (is it considered as your income & are you liable for taxes). As for giving back, get some documentation done as a loan, otherwise your friends may be considered to be taking gift/consideration/income from you and taxed. Most straight forward way is to transfer the money from your mother's account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5b290195b7de9cc800442e2563e6ddbc", "text": "\"HSBC, also known as \"\"The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation\"\" has banks in India. I would imagine that might be a place to start. Paypal, which is commonly used to pay for items on eBay -- is also available in both India and China. You should, of course, respect any laws regulating this kind of money transfer.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "202dc5cefb400162d5f5ac4b27711e5d", "text": "You cannot directly transfer money from your Bank Account. You can use Debit Card to make payments to your paypal account. Just enter the details of the payment and amount, it would make the necessary deduction from your debit card. Indian regulations do not allow you to store value in your paypal account. This credits have to be transfered to a Bank account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fb5105cef9bf56d1edb545ff9441e282", "text": "The data provided in your question is irrelevant. The data that you provided in the comments (that you're physically present in the US while doing the work) is the only relevant information needed to answer your question. You will need to pay taxes in the US for the earnings. The company invoicing the US client will also need to pay taxes in the US for its earnings from these invoices. You can transfer between bank accounts and deposit whatever you want anywhere you want, no-one cares (with respect to the US taxes, check with Indian tax accountant about Indian requirements).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ac8abccf51bd6ddeaff31ce498e4be7b", "text": "\"You are right in insisting upon a proper B2B contract in any business relationship. You wish to reduce your risk and be compensated fairly. In addition to the cost and complexity of international wire transfers, the US companies may also be considering the fact that as an international contractor in a relatively hard-to-reach jurisdiction, payments to you place the company at higher risk than payments to a domestic contractor. By insisting upon PayPal or similar transmitters, they are reducing their internal complexity and reducing their financial exposure to unfulfilled/disputed contract terms. Therefore, wire payments are \"\"hard\"\" in an internal business sense, as well as in a remittance transfer reporting sense. The internal business procedure will likely be the hardest to overcome--changing risk management is harder than filling out forms.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "08248f5214e8b3782b0d58a4351d7af1", "text": "He cannot get money from someone else account. Your US resident friend in New York can send money to your Indian friend in Atlanta via Western Union which has presence in almost every corner of the US. Most definitely in the city of Atlanta. Your Indian friend can receive the Western Union transfer, in cash, within minutes after the friend in New York sends it. Here's the site for location search. The sender doesn't need to go anywhere, can send online, so your New York friend doesn't even need to waste much time. In fact - you don't need to bother your friend in New York, you can send it online yourself (assuming you're American/have US bank account). In order to receive the money, your Indian friend will obviously need a proper identification (i.e.: passport).", "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": "b5c208aa15db85fd959b6995ab8b9298", "text": "In short getting funds converted outside of the Banking channel is illegal in India as Foreign Exchange is still regulated. If you show only a credit from your friend's NRE account to your NRO account [note it can't be your NRE account], it would be treated as GIFT and taxed accordingly, else you would have to show it as loan and pay back. You may show the payback in USD. But then there is a limit of Fx every individual can get converted/repatriate out of India and there is a purpose of remittance, all these complicate this further.", "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": "08921e6ff179ad1d23307d2cf828f157", "text": "\"This is not a problem. SWIFT does not need the Beneficiary Account Currency. The settlement account [or the Instruction amount] is of interest to the Banks. As I understand your agreement with client is they pay you \"\"X\"\" EUR. That is what would be specified on the SWIFT along with your details as beneficiary [Account Number etc]. Once the funds are received by your bank in Turkey, they will get EUR. When they apply these funds to your account in USD, they will convert using the standard rates. Unless you are a large customer and have special instructions [like do not credit if funds are received in NON-USD or give me a special rate or Call me and ask me what I want to do etc]. It typically takes 3-5 days for an international wire depending on the countries and currencies involved. Wait for few more days and then if not received, you have to ask your Client to mention to his Bank that Beneficiary is claiming non-receipt of funds. The Bank that initiated the transfer can track the wire not the your bank which is supposed to receive the funds.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3dae5d8ea7f05dd0a8e89d8773b90495", "text": "I can't address Indian law but US law has no problems with you having savings accounts in India. Furthermore, there are no tax consequences from paying off the student loan. However there is big problem here--while the US has no rules against foreign bank accounts it has reporting rules that you certainly have violated (if you hadn't violated them you wouldn't be asking the question.) 1) Those foreign bank accounts must be listed on your tax return. 2) Those foreign bank accounts must be listed on a PDF that's filed with the (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. (Yes, it's very stupid they need identical information sent to two different departments.) 2) The interest you earned on that bank account is income that should have been reported on your return. As for what to do about it--this is the realm where you get professional help. As for the outcome--since you didn't set out to cheat they have a much less harsh system set up. Expect to amend your 2012 and 2013 returns (and 2014 if you've already filed it), pay interest and late-payment penalties on the additional tax caused by the interest and pay a penalty of 5% of the highest total value of the accounts. Since the discovery of large amounts of money being hidden from the taxman in Swiss bank accounts Congress has gone 1000# gorilla about it and been pressuring foreign banks to cough up the details on any US-citizen or US-resident depositors.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a3dda95b6fe5e60b7c1a455d81fc346f", "text": "\"I cannot speak for Paypal specifically and I doubt anyone who doesn't actually work on their internal automated payment systems could. However, I can speak from experiencing in working on automated forex transaction systems and tell you what many institutions do and it is often NOT based on live rates. There is no law stating an institution must honor a specific market exchange rate. Institutions can determine their own rates how and when they want to. However, there is some useful information on their website: https://www.paypal.com/an/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/mc/mc_convert-outside \"\"The most readily available information on currency exchange rates is based on interbank exchange rates. Interbank exchange rates are established in the course of currency trading among a global network of over 1,000 banks, and are not available through consumer or retail channels.\"\" This leads me to believe they pull exchange rates from either Oanda or XE periodically and then use these rates throughout the day to conduct business. Paypal does not disclose who they use to determine rates. And it's highly doubtful they do this for every transaction (using live rates). Even if they did, there would be no way for you to check and be certain of a particular exchange rate as paypal states: \"\" Consumers may use these rates as a reference, but should not expect to use interbank rates in transactions that involve currency conversion. To obtain actual retail rates, contact your local financial institution or currency exchange, or check the rate displayed in your PayPal transaction.\"\" This is partly because rates can change by the second just like stock prices or anything else which is susceptible to the open market's variables of supply, demand news events etc. So, even if you check the rates on Oanda (which you can do here: http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/) you are not going to get a 100% accurate representation of what you would get by doing an exchange immediately afterwards from Paypal or any other financial institution. However, if you want to estimate, using Oanda's currency converter will likely get you close in most scenarios. That is assuming Paypal doesn't charge a premium for the exchange, which they may. That is also assuming they use live rates, it's also possible they only update their rates based on market rates periodically and not for every transaction. You may want to test this by checking the exchange rate on your transaction and comparing that to the Oanda rates at the same time.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "08714b4e965257c6b6b9472a64777a3e", "text": "From my experience using PayPal for selling products on eBay (and for the last two, experiences of a friend)... Can paypal get money from my Bank Account without my authorization. This is assuming they have transferred the funds to me. They can't pull money from your bank account without your authorization. They will, however, take the money from your PayPal account if it's still there, or leave you with a negative balance if you've already withdrawn. They will do this as soon as there is a claim against you and will only release the funds if the investigation ends in your favor. Any money received would first be used to satisfy the negative balance. What actions can paypal takes against me if charge back amount is very high and I don't agree / pay them. They will send it to a collections agency. Is there any case it is going to effect my bank account, i.e. is there any chance paypal can block my bank account in India. They will block you from using PayPal. If you try to sign up again with a different bank account or credit card and they recognize you as the account holder, they will block that account as well.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b71820880b93dab670918282f1115cc2", "text": "I wouldn't send it to India in the first place because their financial system is a bit sketchy, I would look into countries like Germany to send the money to you if you're looking to avoid high taxes with a very stable financial system", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9c220364399a19ad2f56f3069efd44dd", "text": "I am on employment based visa in USA and want to send dollars from USA to India from my savings (after paying Tax). How much maximum dollars I can send in a day? month? or in a year regularly? There is no such limit. You can transfer as money you like to yourself anywhere. To pay the Bank Loan-student Loan how much maximum dollars I can send in a day, in a month or in a year? to pay that I have to pay directly to that Bank Account or in any account I can send money? You can transfer to your NRE account in India and move it further. You can also send it directly to the Loan Account [Check with the Bank, they may not be able to receive funds from outside for a Loan Account] My mother is having Green Card. She is not working. She has a NRE account in India. Can I send dollars from my USA Bank account to her NRE account in India? what are the rules for that? any Tax or limit for that? Or I have to get any permission before sending it? If you are sending money to your mother, it would come under Gift Tax act in US. There is no issue in India. Suggest you transfer to your own NRE account.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
5b45f8477f30c847f0d3ce24b8aaa04a
H&R Block says form 1120 not finalized? IRS won't take it yet?
[ { "docid": "b891606bf041cfd022f36635be258918", "text": "This form is due March 15. This year, the 15th is Saturday, so the deadline is Monday March 17th. Keep in mind, the software guys would have two choices, wait until every last form is finalized before releasing, or put the software out by late November when 80%+ are good to go. Nothing is broken in this process. Keep in mind that there are different needs depending on the individual. I like to grab a copy in early December, and have a preliminary idea of what my return with look like. I'll also know if I'll owe so much that I should send in a quarterly tax payment. The IRS isn't accepting any return until 1/31 I believe, so you've lost no time. When you open the program, it usually ask to 'phone home' and update. In a couple weeks, all should be well. (Disclosure - I have guest posted on tax issues at both TurboTax and H&R Block's blogs. The above are my own views.)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7dcc82bbb9e4ab6690ff1f44442fe6d8", "text": "\"The forms get updated every year, and the software providers need to get approved by the IRS every year. \"\"Form is not yet finalized\"\" means that this year form hasn't been approved yet. IRS starts accepting returns on January 31st anyway, nothing to be worried about. Why are you nearing a deadline? The deadline for 1120 (corporate tax return) is 2 and 1/2 months after your corp year end, which if you're a calendar year corp is March 15th. If your year end is in November/December - you can use the prior year forms, those are finalized.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "49fcb429b4cc17c2db360a6d3770a84a", "text": "Real world case: IRS: You owe us $x. You didn't report your income from job y. My mother: I didn't work for y. I don't even know who y is. IRS: If the W-2 is wrong, talk to them to get it fixed. My mother: I can't find y. Please give me an address or phone. IRS: We can't. You talk to them and get it fixed. I know this dragged on for more than a year, they never mentioned the final outcome and they're gone now so I can't ask.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6545f8a617a6d8d28f68332b30b60eeb", "text": "They will not send a bill, though there's a chance they will eventually send an accusatory letter. You must proactively pay your taxes. The simplest route is to send a check to each taxing authority with the respective full amounts due. I wouldn't bother calling them. You could also file amended returns with each containing the correct information. As a general rule, tax advisors tend to counsel against giving bank account information to the IRS for payment purposes (as opposed to refund purposes), both to protect the timing of payment and to make it slightly more difficult for them to seize or lien your account. If you choose to send a check, you can use Form 1040-V and NY Form IT-201-V. Please triple check your Social Security Number matches your tax return SSN, so they correctly credit you for payment. You may include an explanation of the closed account if you are feeling either fearful or contrite, but if the amount due is paid in full, then neither taxing authority should really care about your error.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a5aa979140c977b298717a423bd1af39", "text": "\"I don't think there's a rule -- (I can't comment) but Brick cited IRS rules...but IMO Brick missed one thing -- @ashur668 is not looking for a distribution, but is looking for a rollover. My best guess: that this part of the ruleset is not well defined, and your (and my) employer have chosen to interpret any withdrawl as a \"\"distribution\"\", even if better characterized a rollover. A few months ago, I went so far as to explore if I could use a loophole -- my company had just gone through a merger; I was hoping I could rollover some or maybe all of my 401k to my IRA (I remember now, it would have been everything before starting roth 401k contributions). My company asserted this was not permitted, and further asserted that the rumors I had heard were mistaken that when we went through a company spin-off a few years before, that nobody under 59 1/2 was permitted to roll over. I did a quick search and found IRS topic 413 As far as I can tell, this topic is silent on the matter at hand. Topic 413 referred me to IRS Publication 575, where I started looking at the section on rollovers. I read some of it then got bored. Note that we're one step removed -- we are reading IRS publications and interpretations of IRS rules. I don't know that anybody here has read the actual tax law. There may be something in there that prevents companies from rolling over before 59 1/2 that is not well codified in IRS publications.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8513ca6e72c64c75066de5109e156db0", "text": "(I am making the assumption that this is a US based question). Keep in mind that the alternative is to amend your tax forms from 2010, and 2011. The IRS and the State will want their money, they might not to wait for 78 paychecks. That is 3 years. Ask for lots of documentation, so you understand what they are doing.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a0209db1bcc1e629fe3e36d770f2e637", "text": "\"According to the article, the IRS issued a \"\"stop-work Order\"\" for the contract with Equifax while it undertakes an investigation. I have to assume that the contract laid out termination provisions, so it's likely that the IRS is making sure that they don't do anything which appears to be a breach of contract and gives fuel to Equifax to sue (frustrating, I know). What I really like is the statement released by Equifax following the decision by the IRS: “We remain confident that we are the best party to perform the services required in this contract.\"\" How delusional do you have to be to make a bold statement like that after what happened?\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2d85c285b00fc847c24726b4047723ea", "text": "This is a common occurrence, I know people who moved and then only remember the next spring during tax season that they never filed a new state version of a W-4. Which means for 3 or 4 months in the new year money is sent to the wrong state capital, and way too much was sent the previous year. In the spring of 2016 you should have filed a non-resident tax form with Michigan. On that form you would specify your total income numbers, your Michigan income numbers, and your other-state income numbers; with Michigan + other equal to total. That should have resulted in getting all the state taxes that were sent to Michigan returned. It is possible that the online software is unable to complete the non-resident tax form. Not all forms and situations can be addressed by the software. So you may need to fill out paper forms. You should be able to find what you need on the state of Michigan website for 2015 Taxes. A quick read shows that you will probably need the Michigan 1040, schedule 1 and Schedule NR You may run into an issue if your license, car registration, voter registration, and other documentation point to you being a resident for the part of the year you earned that income. That means you will have to submit Form 3799 Statement to Determine State of Domicile You want to do this soon because there are deadlines that limit how far back you can files taxes. The state may also get tax information from the IRS and could decide that all your income from 2015 should have applied to them, so they will be sending you a tax bill plus penalties for failure to file.", "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": "c10e214548196928e0dcb64923a2b50f", "text": "According to this, if your employer will not refund FICA taxes withheld in error, you need to file forms 843 and 8316 with IRS. Unfortunately, I have heard that it sometimes takes years for them to respond to those.", "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": "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": "0f02d14b3b88c6a19f10f13209e2455d", "text": "I've talked to several very experienced accountants that deal with startup shares, stock 83(b)'s, etc. weekly (based in SF, CA) as this issue would have had a massive impact on me. The most important part of filing an 83(b) is notifying the IRS within 30 days. The law requires the written notification within the 30 day window. Adding it to that years tax return is an IRS procedure. Forgetting to include a copy of that years tax return is apparently a common occurrence when no tax was owed (0 spread, you actually paid the FMV). And the accepted method to resolve this is to simply file a blank amendment for that years return and include the copy of the 83(b) election.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "798b7e6bc74d6616c7519f59123450e2", "text": "\"The IRS provides a little more information on the subject on this FAQ: Will I be charged interest and penalties for filing and paying my taxes late?: If you did not pay your tax on time, you will generally have to pay a late-payment penalty, which is also called a failure to pay penalty. Some guidance on what constitutes \"\"reasonable cause\"\" is found on the IRS page Penalty Relief Due to Reasonable Cause: The IRS will consider any sound reason for failing to file a tax return, make a deposit, or pay tax when due. Sound reasons, if established, include: Note: A lack of funds, in and of itself, is not reasonable cause for failure to file or pay on time. However, the reasons for the lack of funds may meet reasonable cause criteria for the failure-to-pay penalty. In this article from U.S. News and World Report, it is suggested that the IRS will generally waive the penalty one time, if you have a clean tax history and ask for the penalty to be waived. It is definitely worth asking them to waive the penalty.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d3e856d7e6912de3291f0bf813915525", "text": "\"You're supposed to be filling form 433-A. Vehicles are on line 18. You will fill there the current fair value of the car and the current balance on the loans. The last column is \"\"equity\"\", which in your case will indeed be a negative number. The \"\"value\"\" is what the car is worth. The \"\"equity\"\" is what the car is worth to you. IRS uses the \"\"equity\"\" value to calculate your solvency. Any time you fill a form to the IRS - read the instructions carefully, for each line and line. If in doubt - talk to a professional licensed in your state. I'm not a professional, and this is not a tax advice.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b29218638d78e9b10227d3fdda3655af", "text": "\"I am very late to this forum and post - but will just respond that I am a sole proprietor, who was just audited by the IRS for 2009, and this is one of the items that they disallowed. My husband lost his job in 2008, I was unable to get health insurance on my own due to pre-existing ( not) conditions and so we had to stay on the Cobra system. None of the cost was funded by the employer and so I took it as a SE HI deduction on Line 29. It was disallowed and unfortunately, due to AGI limits, I get nothing by taking it on Sch. A. The auditor made it very clear that if the plan was not in my name, or the company's name, I could not take the deduction above the line. In his words, \"\"it's not fair, but it is the law!\"\"\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "243200f0f80b9ffc1d80c711c6d2a058", "text": "I assume you kept the receipt for your money order, in which case there's no reason you can't call the issuer and find out if the money order has been posted for payment. It does beg the question as to why you didn't send it registered mail or by some other means which would allow you to at least verify it was received by the IRS. As someone else mentioned, why can't you simply call the IRS and ask them if the money order was received and applied?", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
e654c6e0410d1ace3a1140d4a6493bd9
Can I locate the name of an account holder by the account number and sort code? (U.K.)
[ { "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": "8e67b6911d14a79d53b0b47b4fdd2ac1", "text": "\"Accounts track value: at any given time, a given account will have a given value. The type of account indicates what the value represents. Roughly: On a balance sheet (a listing of accounts and their values at a given point in time), there is typically only one equity account, representing net worth, I don't know much about GNUCash, though. Income and expenses accounts do not go on the balance sheet, but to find out more, either someone else or the GNUCash manual will have to describe how they work in detail. Equity is more similar to a liability than to assets. The equation Assets = Equity + Liabilities should always hold; you can think of assets as being \"\"what my stuff is worth\"\" and equity and liabilities together as being \"\"who owns it.\"\" The part other people own is liability, and the part you own is equity. See balance sheet, accounting equation, and double-entry bookkeeping for more information. (A corporate balance sheet might actually have more than one equity entry. The purpose of the breakdown is to show how much of their net worth came from investors and how much was earned. That's only relevant if you're trying to assess how a company has performed to date; it's not important for a family's finances.)\"", "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": "dd41897ff6e235a6fe27bf154a7bdade", "text": "Of course not, this is confidential information in the same way that I cannot phone up your bank and ask to see a list of the transactions that you have made. Any bank has to be extremely careful about protecting the private transactions of it's customers and would be subject to heavy fines if it revealed this information without the customer's consent.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1d2099b9473e1b692d5d0916ea617bc7", "text": "\"To the best of my knowledge the UK's online banking systems look purely at the Sort Code and Account Number when routing transfers. The name is not cross-checked to ensure it matches. This is why it's so easy to misdirect transfers if you make an error entering the numbers and inadvertently enter the details for a valid account belonging to the wrong person. So in your case so long as you're sure you have the correct account number and sort code it doesn't matter what you put in the name field - it'll end up in the account to which those numbers apply. Of course you might as well put your \"\"best guess\"\" into the name field since it doesn't hurt, and in the event that something does go wrong it's backup evidence of your intentions.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9aaf3e6f3d48e0e891852acee4964319", "text": "I think you'll find that a credit card does have an account number and sort code, I have had a Visa card previously and currently have a Mastercard. Both were paid by Direct Debit, and I could then transfer money to the account when I wanted to pay more than the minimum payment off. Check the introductory letter from the card provider, it should be on there, failing that, contact the provider and ask them for the details, how to pay, or a direct debit mandate for either the whole amount or the minimum amount.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2d32ccf220435358c890dd86b7bce3e2", "text": "\"Generally, it would be an accountant. Specifically in the case of very \"\"private\"\" (or unorganized, which is even worse) person - forensic accountant. Since there's no will - it will probably require a lawyer as well to gain access to all the accounts the accountant discovers. I would start with a good estate attorney, who in turn will hire a forensic accountant to trace the accounts.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "73af9a56905b7f5768ee9ac3b6b2a344", "text": "You need to report your accounts, not other persons. However, if you have a joint account with another person - it is your account, jointly. So the joint account has to be reported, your girlfriend's personal accounts - not (unless the money there is yours or you have signature authority, of course). For a joint account - you need to report who are the joint holders, yes.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "93651496bbc8ad51ee18fb100f61dfbc", "text": "I used to use Quicken, but support for that has been suspended in the UK. I had started using Mvelopes, but support for that was suspended as well! What I use now is an IPhone app called IXpenseit to track my spending.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ec25ffcf96bd8f2078cb0d47209194f4", "text": "My bank claims they cannot trace since the money never reached them. Your bank is right. They can't generally trace this. I asked the sender to initiate a trace with Natwest, but no results for 3 days now. Natwest should be able to trace and confirm it. This usually takes anywhere from 7 to 10 days.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "169f26454c7338aaed54ac233d34d34a", "text": "Be interesting to see how this falls in line with new rules on data protection in the EU (and probably more relevant, the UK as it's maintaining them after Brexit..). Some of the data being held may well not be shareable without consent and if someone turns a spotlight on banks sharing data it could get quite ugly quite quickly.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "250776fdc7608cf2ad194f982553b759", "text": "\"In Europe in most of the countries there is also a thing called ACH. In UK there is a thing called BACS and in other countires there are other things. Essentially every country has what is called a \"\"Low value Net Settlement System\"\" that is used to transfer funds between accounts of different banks. In US there is rounting number, in UK there is a Sort Code, in Indonesia there is a sort code. Essentially a Bank Identifier that is issued by the Governing body within respective countires. Certian identifiers like SWIFT BIC [Bank Identification Code] are Unique across world.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9840638aad3cf96aee25bd53d600d8d4", "text": "\"Shares do not themselves carry any identity. Official shareholders are kept at the registrar. In the UK, this may be kept up to date and publicly accessible. In the US, it is not, but this doesn't matter because most shares are held \"\"in street name\"\". For a fully detailed history, one would need access to all exchange records, brokerage records, and any trades transacted off exchange. These records are almost totally unavailable.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1d6a0684c5d2fd9d65960fd64b8dac44", "text": "It appears all you have to do is submit a form. It might be better if she submitted it herself instead of you doing it on her behalf. All natural persons (individuals) and non-natural persons (businesses) are entitled to access and inspect the data held on record about them in the Central Credit Information System (KHR).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c6b8189320edc6bd23ad212fbdbfe276", "text": "\"It's generally not possible to open a business account in the UK remotely. It's even difficult (near impossible) for a non-resident (even if a citizen) to open a business or personal bank account while visiting the UK. A recent report says that it may be possible to open an account via Barclays Offshore in the Isle of Man. This requires a large deposit, and probably lots of paperwork and fees (most offshore locations have stricter \"\"know your customer\"\" rules than major countries). Note that while the Isle of Man is inside the UK banking system (for sort codes, account numbers), it is a separate territory that doesn't have the same deposit guarantees as the UK. There is no legal reason why a UK company has to bank within the UK banking system, although many companies paying the company would expect it or require it, and an account in anything other than sterling would complicate the accounts. It could have an account in your home country. It's not even a legal requirement that the company has an account in its own name at all. Some people use a (separate) personal account for this purpose. There are plenty of reasons why this is a bad idea (for example it's unclear who/what owns the money in the account, and can give the appearance of director's loans), but it's a work-around. Most inbound electronic payments only require a sort code and account number, the account owner name is not checked. The UK does have a much simpler and cheaper company registry than most European countries, but the near-impossibility of opening a bank account for a business in the UK as a non-resident has made it an unsuitable place to register a small international company.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "29c4fa7248e6e93f50bbdd0f550d20a0", "text": "If iban and name don't match. This shud have been refunded. Logic says so. Otherwise they just ask for iban without other details if they won't be considered", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
90978b2d56358d6c73bd33a51952f2be
Opening and funding an IRA in three days - is this feasible?
[ { "docid": "28c015e40f21afd564d8efc574e4880e", "text": "Some banks and credit unions have IRA accounts. They pay interest like a savings account or a CD but they are an IRA. After the 15th you can roll them over into a IRA at one of the big investment companies so you can get invest in an index or Target Retirement Fund. But it is not too late. Opening an account at one of the big companies takes ten minutes (you need to know your social security number and your bank account info) they can pull it out of your bank account. I helped my kid do the same thing this week. We went on-line Tuesday night, and they pulled the money from his account on Thursday morning. Also know which type you want (Roth or regular) before you start. Also make sure you specify that the money is for 2013 not 2014.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ad74fc7ccea45d74458baf62555dcbf5", "text": "A few years ago, I did something like this at a Wells Fargo; I realized I could put money into an IRA a few days before 4/15, and was able to walk in to the main branch and do the whole thing in under an hour.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "ded0e3e2ae24f3120d1de379d488bdd6", "text": "\"You are not wrong - just about anything can be charged and paid off in 30 days with a sale of non-liquid investments. So there are not any emergencies I can think of that require completely liquid funds (cash). For me, the risks are more behavioral than financial: I'm not saying it's a ridiculous, stupid idea, and these are all \"\"what-if\"\"s that can be countered with discipline and wise decisions, but having an emergency fund in cash certainly makes all of this simpler and reduces risk. If you have investments that you would have no hesitation liquidating to cover an emergency, then you can make it work. For most people, the choice is either paying cash, or charging it without having investment funds to pay it off, and they're back in the cycle of paying minimum payments for months and drowning in debt.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "401c061194dac9da8592747cd33c6a11", "text": "With a Roth IRA, you can withdraw the contributions at any time without penalty as long as you don't withdraw the earnings/interest. There are some circumstances where you can withdraw the earnings such as disability (and maybe first home). Also, the Roth IRA doesn't need to go through your employer and I wouldn't do it through your employer. I have mine setup through Fidelity though I'm not sure if they have any guaranteed 3% return unless it was a CD. All of mine is in stocks. Your wife could also setup a Roth IRA so over 2 years, you could contribute $20,000. If I was you, I would just max out any 403-b matches (which you surely are at 25% of gross income) and then save my down payment money in a normal money market/savings account. You are doing good contributing almost 25% to the 403-b. There are also some income limitations on Roth IRAs. I believe for a married couple, it is $160k.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d891b17a4ba041626126c90c2c58810c", "text": "If your SIMPLE IRA is over two years old then you can roll your money to another qualified account such as a rollover IRA. The usual rollover rules apply. You have 60 days to deposit the funds in another qualified account and you are only allowed one such rollover in a 12 month window. If you are still within two years of opening your SIMPLE IRA, you can roll your funds to a SIMPLE IRA with another vendor, but you would then have to wait until that account is two years old before rolling it elsewhere. If you roll the money another type of IRA before your SIMPLE IRA account is two-years old, and under 59 1/2 years old, you will be subject to a 25% penalty (which is much higher than for other types of accounts). Many of the early distribution exceptions apply such as disability, etc. Edit: The first document linked above covers rules for running a SIMPLE IRA. All the specific regulations linked in the second document apply to all IRAs of all types. There is no specific prohibition from rolling only a portion of the money to another qualified account. There are prohibitions against rolling money more than one time in a 12 month period. The usual obstacle to rolling money from a retirement account--like a 401(k)--is that the 401(k) plan is written to prohibit withdrawals while the employee is still employed at the company.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "60c9eac57d227944f7dd9dfc37899a80", "text": "\"First, to mention one thing - better analysis calls for analyzing a range of outcomes, not just one; assigning a probability on each, and comparing the expected values. Then moderating the choice based on risk tolerance. But now, just look at the outcome or scenario of 3% and time frame of 2 days. Let's assume your investable capital is exactly $1000 (multiply everything by 5 for $5,000, etc.). A. Buy stock: the value goes to 103; your investment goes to $1030; net return is $30, minus let's say $20 commission (you should compare these between brokers; I use one that charges 9.99 plus a trivial government fee). B. Buy an call option at 100 for $0.40 per share, with an expiration 30 days away (December 23). This is a more complicated. To evaluate this, you need to estimate the movement of the value of a 100 call, $0 in and out of the money, 30 days remaining, to the value of a 100 call, $3 in the money, 28 days remaining. That movement will vary based on the volatility of the underlying stock, an advanced topic; but there are techniques to estimate that, which become simple to use after you get the hang of it. At any rate, let's say that the expected movement of the option price in this scenario is from $0.40 to $3.20. Since you bought 2500 share options for $1000, the gain would be 2500 times 2.8 = 7000. C. Buy an call option at 102 for $0.125 per share, with an expiration 30 days away (December 23). To evaluate this, you need to estimate the movement of the value of a 102 call, $2 out of the money, 30 days remaining, to the value of a 102 call, $1 in the money, 28 days remaining. That movement will vary based on the volatility of the underlying stock, an advanced topic; but there are techniques to estimate that, which become simple to use after you get the hang of it. At any rate, let's say that the expected movement of the option price in this scenario is from $0.125 to $ 1.50. Since you bought 8000 share options for $1000, the gain would be 8000 times 1.375 = 11000. D. Same thing but starting with a 98 call. E. Same thing but starting with a 101 call expiring 60 days out. F., ... Etc. - other option choices. Again, getting the numbers right for the above is an advanced topic, one reason why brokerages warn you that options are risky (if you do your math wrong, you can lose. Even doing that math right, with a bad outcome, loses). Anyway you need to \"\"score\"\" as many options as needed to find the optimal point. But back to the first paragraph, you should then run the whole analysis on a 2% gain. Or 5%. Or 5% in 4 days instead of 2 days. Do as many as are fruitful. Assess likelihoods. Then pull the trigger and buy it. Try these techniques in simulation before diving in! Please! One last point, you don't HAVE to understand how to evaluate projected option price movements if you have software that does that for you. I'll punt on that process, except to mention it. Get the general idea? Edit P.S. I forgot to mention that brokers need love for handling Options too. Check those commission rates in your analysis as well.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7feef94803435e063d8492df0e70b52f", "text": "Why not just roll over part of your IRA to a bank? I don't know about Capital One, but Bank of America seems to offer a bank-based IRA. In broker-based IRAs, the closest that I've seen to a savings account is a money market fund. They often set those as the default investment until money is allocated to more specific funds. It is conceivably possible that a money market could lose money, but it has never happened.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1c9569033a3d0a5bd57b3b256ee4b5f2", "text": "You can buy stocks in the IRA, similarly to your regular investment account. Generally, when you open an account with a retail provider like TDAmeritrade, all the options available for you on that account are allowable. Keep in mind that you cannot just deposit money to IRA. There's a limit on how much you can deposit a year ($5500 as of 2015, $6500 for those 50 or older), and there's also a limit on top of that - the amount you deposit into an IRA cannot be more than your total earned income (i.e. income from work). In addition, there are limits on how much of your contribution you can deduct (depending on your income and whether you/your spouse have an employer-sponsored retirement plan).", "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": "c7efc2dd021ddf9a2a03b9622a11cf2a", "text": "I have managed two IRA accounts; one I inherited from my wife's 401K and my own's 457B. I managed actively my wife's 401 at Tradestation which doesn't restrict on Options except level 5 as naked puts and calls. I moved half of my 457B funds to TDAmeritrade, the only broker authorized by my employer, to open a Self Directed account. However, my 457 plan disallows me from using a Cash-secured Puts, only Covered Calls. For those who does not know investing, I resent the contention that participants to these IRAs should not be messing around with their IRA funds. For years, I left my 401k/457B funds with my current fund custodian, Great West Financial. I checked it's current values once or twice a year. These last years, the market dived in the last 2 quarters of 2015 and another dive early January and February of 2016. I lost a total of $40K leaving my portfolio with my current custodian choosing all 30 products they offer, 90% of them are ETFs and the rest are bonds. If you don't know investing, better leave it with the pros - right? But no one can predict the future of the market. Even the pros are at the mercy of the market. So, I you know how to invest and choose your stocks, I don't think your plan administrator has to limit you on how you manage your funds. For example, if you are not allowed to place a Cash-Secured Puts and you just Buy the stocks or EFT at market or even limit order, you buy the securities at their market value. If you sell a Cash-secured puts against the stocks/ETF you are interested in buying, you will receive a credit in fraction of a dollar in a specific time frame. In average, your cost to owning a stock/ETF is lesser if you buy it at market or even a limit order. Most of the participants of the IRA funds rely too much on their portfolio manager because they don't know how to manage. If you try to educate yourself at a minimum, you will have a good understanding of how your IRA funds are tied up to the market. If you know how to trade in bear market compared to bull market, then you are good at managing your investments. When I started contributing to my employer's deferred comp account (457B) as a public employee, I have no idea of how my portfolio works. Year after year as I looked at my investment, I was happy because it continued to grow. Without scrutinizing how much it grew yearly, and my regular payroll contribution, I am happy even it only grew 2% per year. And at this age that I am ready to retire at 60, I started taking investment classes and attended pre-retirement seminars. Then I knew that it was not totally a good decision to leave your retirement funds in the hands of the portfolio manager since they don't really care if it tanked out on some years as long at overall it grew to a meager 1%-4% because they managers are pretty conservative on picking the equities they invest. You can generalize that maybe 90% of IRA investors don't know about investing and have poor decision making actions which securities/ETF to buy and hold. For those who would like to remain as one, that is fine. But for those who spent time and money to study and know how to invest, I don't think the plan manager can limit the participants ability to manage their own portfolio especially if the funds have no matching from the employer like mine. All I can say to all who have IRA or any retirement accounts, educate yourself early because if you leave it all to your portfolio managers, you lost a lot. Don't believe much in what those commercial fund managers also show in their presentation just to move your funds for them to manage. Be proactive. If you start learning how to invest now when you are young, JUST DO IT!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1629f6705d59eb17771626de602e8a18", "text": "The contribution limits for an IRA extend across both traditional and Roth IRAs. If you have both a Traditional and Roth, you are limited to $5000 in contributions to both ($2500 in each, $5000 in one and $0 in the other, etc). Opening another IRA in this case wouldn't really help you out. I've always heard the conventional wisdom to be:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ee11814d8241b9c20bfa447f2388a983", "text": "I have asked myself this exact same question many times. The analysis would be simple if you invested all your money in a single day, but I did not and therefore I would need to convert your cash transactions into Index fund buys/sells. I got tired of trying to do this using Yahoo's data and excel so I built a website in my spare time. I humbly suggest you try my website out in the hopes that it helps you perform this computation: http://www.amibeatingthemarket.com/", "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": "157d52236b32461bc35b82cf9fec9fe6", "text": "\"The Tax Court ruling Todd mentioned was that you can only do one roll-over in a 12-months period. I.e.: if you have already done a roll over (even if it is between different accounts) - you cannot do it again between any of your IRA accounts for 12 months. So for the \"\"60-days loan\"\" trick to work you must ensure that: You haven't done a roll-over within the last 12 months; and You're not going to do a roll-over within the next 12 months. Note, that the Tax Court took into the consideration that the IRS pub. 590 was explicitly saying that you can do multiple roll-overs as long as different accounts are involved. The Court ruled, that the IRS instructions are NOT a legal authority. I.e.: the IRS can write in the instructions whatever they want, but if it contradicts the law (as it did in this case) - the law always prevails. This is only for indirect rollovers (where you actually get the money and then re-deposit it within 60 days), trustee to trustee rollovers are not limited. This limitation is codified in 26 U.S. Code § 408(d)3(B).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "876b598f5ea78adf444348f7f7188616", "text": "You have to wait for three (business) days. That's the time it takes for the settlement to complete and for the money to get to your account. If you don't wait - brokers will still allow you to buy a new stock, but may limit your ability to sell it until the previous sale is settled. Here's a FAQ from Schwab on the issue.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4f912f5d1f133a5faf79a635365990fb", "text": "\"Because it takes 3 business days for the actual transfer of stock to occur after you buy or sell to the next owner, your cash is tied up until that happens. This is called the settlement period. Therefore, brokers offer \"\"margin\"\", which is a form of credit, or loan, to allow you to keep trading while the settlement period occurs, and in other situations unrelated to the presented question. To do this you need a \"\"margin account\"\", you currently have a \"\"cash account\"\". The caveat of having a retail margin account (distinct from a professional margin account) is that there is a limited amount of same-day trades you can make if you have less than $25,000 in the account. This is called the Pattern Day Trader (PDT) rule. You don't need $25k to day trade, you will just wish you had it, as it is easy to get your account frozen or downgraded to a cash account. The way around THAT is to have multiple margin accounts at different brokerages. This will greatly increase the number of same day trades you can make. Many brokers that offer a \"\"solution\"\" to PDT to people that don't have 25k to invest, are offering professional trading accounts, which have additional fees for data, which is free for retail trading accounts. This problem has nothing to do with: So be careful of the advice you get on the internet. It is mostly white noise. Feel free to verify\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7cd60ad2ae043e9c944af2dfb322ec67", "text": "Congratulations on deciding to save for retirement. Since you cite Dave Ramsey as the source of your 15% number, what does he have to say about where to invest the money? If you want to have instantaneous penalty-free access to your retirement money, all you need to do is set up one or more ordinary accounts that you think of as your retirement money. Just be careful not to put the money into CDs since Federal law requires a penalty of three months interest if you cash in the CD before its maturity date (penalty!) or put the money into those pesky mutual funds that charge a redemption fee (penalty!) if you take the money out within x months of investing it where x can be anywhere from 3 to 24 or more. In Federal tax law (and in most state tax laws as well) a retirement account has special privileges accorded to it in that the interest, dividends, capital gains, etc earned on the money in your retirement account are not taxed in the year earned (as they would be in a non-retirement account), but the tax is either deferred till you withdraw money from the account (Traditional IRAs, 401ks etc) or is waived completely (Roth IRAs, Roth 401ks etc). In return for this special treatment, penalties are imposed (in addition to tax) if you withdraw money from your retirement account before age 59.5 which presumably is on the distant horizon for you. (There are some exceptions (including first-time home buying and extraordinary medical expenses) to this rule that I won't bother going into). But You are not required to invest your retirement money into such a specially privileged retirement account. It is perfectly legal to keep your retirement money in an ordinary savings account if you wish, and pay taxes on the interest each year. You can invest your retirement money into municipal bonds whose interest is free of Federal tax (and usually free of state tax as well if the municipality is located in your state of residence) if you like. You can keep your retirement money in a sock under your mattress if you like, or buy a collectible item (e.g. a painting) with it (this is not permitted in an IRA), etc. In short, if you are concerned about the penalties imposed by retirement accounts on early withdrawals, forgo the benefits of these accounts and put your retirement money elsewhere where there is no penalty for instant access. If you use a money management program such as Mint or Quicken, all you need to do is name one or more accounts or a portfolio as MyRetirementMoney and voila, it is done. But those accounts/portfolios don't have to be retirement accounts in the sense of tax law; they can be anything at all.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
87b1c1d2ac9e7d5271e914fb1fef8d01
How does one's personal credit history affect one's own company's credit rating?
[ { "docid": "ed6909b1d2486a0cd9e6aaf638528c16", "text": "\"For a newly registered business, you'll be using your \"\"personal\"\" credit score to get the credit. You will need to sign for the credit card personally so that if your business goes under, they still get paid. Your idea of opening a business card to increase your credit score is not a sound one. Business plastic might not show up on your personal credit history. While some issuers report business accounts on a consumer's personal credit history, others don't. This cuts both ways. Some entrepreneurs want business cards on their personal reports, believing those nice high limits and good payment histories will boost their scores. Other small business owners, especially those who keep high running balances, know that including that credit line could potentially lower their personal credit scores even if they pay off the cards in full every month. There is one instance in which the card will show up on your personal credit history: if you go into default. You're not entitled to a positive mark, \"\"but if you get a negative mark, it will go on your personal report,\"\" Frank says. And some further information related to evaluating a business for a credit card: If an issuer is evaluating you for a business card, the company should be asking about your business, says Frank. In addition, there \"\"should be something on the application that indicates it's for business use,\"\" he says. Bottom line: If it's a business card, expect that the issuer will want at least some information pertaining to your business. There is additional underwriting for small business cards, says Alfonso. In addition to personal salary and credit scores, business owners \"\"can share financials with us, and we evaluate the entire business financial background in order to give them larger lines,\"\" she says. Anticipate that the issuer will check your personal credit, too. \"\"The vast majority of business cards are based on a personal credit score,\"\" says Frank. In addition, many issuers ask entrepreneurs to personally guarantee the accounts. That means even if the businesses go bust, the owners promise to repay the debts. Source\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "88fde363be152b7f7dd7406505cf9fb2", "text": "FICO score tracks credit, not checking or savings. Unless there was a credit line attached, no impact at all.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "160c33cef70d54dbee73af39f0c42327", "text": "No. I have several that I haven't used in a year or so (legacy of the time when they gave you money to sign up :-)), and credit rating's something over 800 last I checked.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d6853aa831d7e77c035022106df4bb13", "text": "Banks calculate the total they can present to you chiefly on your net review earnings. They get into explanation their preceding experience and your present track record which would point to whether you have taken any other loan or you have had a awful credit history and effects like your investments history and your existing investments before making a choice as to how much they will lend to you.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "01dc966313e526b2e674d4f246e477e0", "text": "Absolutely nothing will happen. These credit history companies have no scruples and no reason to give a damn about consumers. Every recourse you have to fix inaccuracies in your credit history were won with legislation or litigation. They don't care about you.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4f7d7b47297fe882b41f5d99354d601a", "text": "\"Credit Unions have long advocated their services based on the fact that they consider your \"\"character.\"\" Unfortunately, they are then at a loss to explain how they determine the value of your character, other than to say that you're buddies & play pool together so they'll give you a loan. Your Credit History / Score is as accurate a representation of your character in business dealings as can be meaningfully quantified. It tracks your ability to effectively use and manage debt, and your propensity to pay it back responsibly or default on obligations. While it isn't perfect, it is certainly one of the best means currently available for determining someone's trustworthiness when it comes to financial matters.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "32d72da103ae8a43c1c999c9c204cb7e", "text": "I feel the change should not be to remove the stigma from personal default. It should be to add it, in very large amounts, to corporate default. Every member of a defaulting corporation should be ashamed to be seen in public. The have let their culture down and should be mortified. So if you defaulted on your mortgage, yeah, that's not great. If you're Donald Trump, that filed 11 a couple times, he can go fuck himself.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7d52181990d4799e59fe11a2646d80fe", "text": "\"Hard pulls you give your explicit permission to run do affect your credit. Soft pulls do not. While hard pulls affect your score, they don't affect it much. Maybe a couple few point for a little while. In your daily activities, it is inconsequential. If you are prepping to get a mortgage, you should be mindful. Similar type hard pulls in a certain time window will only count once, because it is assume you are shopping. For example, mortgage shopping will result in a lot of hard pulls, but if they are all done in a fortnight, they only count against once. (I believe the time window is actually a month, but I have always had two weeks in my head as the safe window.) The reason soft pulls don't matter is because businesses typically won't make credit decisions based on them. A soft pull is so a business can find a list of people to make offers to, but that doesn't mean they ACTUALLY qualify. Only the information in a hard pull will tell them that. I don't know, but I suspect it is more along the lines of \"\"give me everybody who is between 600 and 800 and lives in zip code 12344\"\" not \"\"what is series0ne's credit score?\"\" A hard pull will lower your score because of a scenario where you open up many many lines of credit in a short period of time. The credit scoring models assume (I am guessing) that you are going to implode. You are either attempting to cover obligations you can't handle, or you are about to create a bunch of obligations you can't handle. Credit should be used as a convenient method of payment, not a source of wealth. As such, each credit line you open in a short time lowers the score. You are disincentivized to continue opening lines, and lenders at the end of your credit line opening spree will see you as riskier than the first.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "54a054381c61a8a014d7aec236cfb8c2", "text": "The biggest issue with personal bankruptcy is the guilt. We generally are brought up to believe that we should be responsible for our debts. Bankruptcy is a direct contradiction to that concept. Once a debtor realizes that corporations don't necessarily view bankruptcy as failure, but merely a financial tool, that makes it a lot easier to let go of the guilt. Once that happens, all a debtor needs to get used to is the idea that s/he'll be dealing with a cash economy for a while. Which isn't a particularly bad thing at all. Inconvenient at times, but that's about it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "aa381432a94c74fa8cc9b5ffd9ec4751", "text": "Owning a stock via a fund and selling it short simultaneously should have the same net financial effect as not owning the stock. This should work both for your personal finances as well as the impact of (not) owning the shares has on the stock's price. To use an extreme example, suppose there are 4 million outstanding shares of Evil Oil Company. Suppose a group of concerned index fund investors owns 25% of the stock and sells short the same amount. They've borrowed someone else's 25% of the company and sold it to a third party. It should have the same effect as selling their own shares of the company, which they can't otherwise do. Now when 25% of the company's stock becomes available for purchase at market price, what happens to the stock? It falls, of course. Regarding how it affects your own finances, suppose the stock price rises and the investors have to return the shares to the lender. They buy 1 million shares at market price, pushing the stock price up, give them back, and then sell another million shares short, subsequently pushing the stock price back down. If enough people do this to effect the share price of a stock or asset class, the managers at the companies might be forced into behaving in a way that satisfies the investors. In your case, perhaps the company could issue a press release and fire the employee that tried to extort money from your wife's estate in order to win your investment business back. Okay, well maybe that's a stretch.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "59f650ab89664f2869c7fc1035ed48a4", "text": "In finance you are taught that debt financing is cheaper than equity financing. Also to improve your credit rating, showing that you can carry debt responsibly and pay it off without a hitch sends dog whistle that the corporation is operating well.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1a5a1da92420013f72c201f2ccd6593c", "text": "\"I can't think of any conceivable circumstance in which the banker's advice would be true. (edit: Actually, yes I can, but things haven't worked that way since 1899 so his information is a little stale. Credit bureaus got their start by only reporting information about bad debtors.) The bureaus only store on your file what gets reported to them by the institution who extended you the credit. This reporting tends to happen at 30, 60 or 90-day intervals, depending on the contract the bureau has with that institution. All credit accounts are \"\"real\"\" from the day you open them. I suspect the banker might be under the misguided impression the account doesn't show up on your report (become \"\"real\"\") until you miss a payment, which forces the institution to report it, but this is incorrect-- the institution won't report it until the 30-day mark at the earliest, whether or not you miss a payment or pay it in full. The cynic in me suspects this banker might give customers such advice to sabotage their credit so he can sell them higher-interest loans. UDAAP laws were created for a reason.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "90aa732c8acaa39ca745a812f96591f0", "text": "Apart from the reasons currently given (which have to do with personal relations), wouldn't a good reason to take the loan from the bank be to build up a credit history and/or improve your credit score?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0c55e3a59ed350bb458ccdc6cf148804", "text": "The biggest issue with personal bankruptcy is that your credit rating determines a lot more than whether someone will lend you money. In particular, someone with bad credit will find it *extremely* difficult to rent a house or apartment, something that will be of utmost importance if you've just turned in your home as collateral.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "99de5b0c36477dac1660a6960ede1752", "text": "In case you didn't see over the past few years, especially in banks, falling stock prices often lead to ratings downgrades. The logic is that a bank who's stock price is low, or falling, is suffering from a decrease in their ability to tap the equity markets in times of need. With less ability to tap the equity markets in times of need, this means it is less likely the bank can raise funds to pay off debt, and thus, makes their debt more risky. It's unfair for me to imply a 100% causal relationship here, because that's not the case, but each of the markets interact with each other in some way. You will at least notice that, whether leading or trailing, companies that have a decreasing stock price also often have a decreasing credit rating. You'll also notice that stocks which slip under $5 often times get put on credit watch. The logic could go any which way around the circle, but a company that cuts its dividend may lose some investors who were in it for the dividend. This can cause stock price to fall. Credit agencies, depending on the situation, may approve of companies that cut their dividend (more cash to pay off debt), or, may indicate the dividend cut is not enough to make up for the company's falling profits. In the absence of full information, a cut in the dividend is often seen as a sign of weakness or a sign of tough times for the company in the future. Companies which have changes in dividend are looked at as less stable, more unpredictable, blah blah blah. Again, I'm not implying a 100% causal relationship here, but, each of these markets work with each other somehow, and a bank which cuts its dividend may be expecting lower profitability, slower growth, need the funds to cover lawsuit payouts or settlements with insert-regulatory-agency, or any number of other situations.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "22954e82dac6da86bb9c8a17320a9098", "text": "The answer to your question is governed by the structure of the company and your ownership or lack thereof in the business. Australian business can be structured the same way U.S. ones are, as a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, or company. If you are only on the board and have no equity, you cannot be affected. You must have some amount of equity in the business to have any chance of being affected. If the business is a sole proprietorship, then the single individual running the business is personally responsible for all debt and the inability to pay obligations would result in personal bankruptcy which would in all likelihood affect your credit score (it would in the U.S.). If it is a partnership, then anyone holding stock in the company is likewise personally responsible for a portion of the debt, and can be subject to bankruptcy and credit score implications. If the business is structured as a limited liability company or a corporation, a stakeholder's personal finances are separate from the business's and their credit score cannot be affected.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
c0b51b86e94e35b93eae075b41c33d4d
Simple income and expense report in gnucash
[ { "docid": "e2556cddd3a3db377c1f4eef65198dbc", "text": "\"The official guide can be found here, but that can be a little in depth as well. To make good use of you need at least a little knowledge of double-entry bookkeeping. Double-entry bookkeeping, in accounting, is a system of bookkeeping so named because every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry to a different account. From Wikipedia Another way to think of it is that everything is an account. You'll need to set up accounts for lots of things that aren't accounts at your bank to make the double-entry system work. For example you'll need to set up various expense accounts like \"\"office supplies\"\" even though you'll never have a bank account by that name. Generally an imbalanced transfer is when you have a from or to account specified, but not both. If I have imbalanced transactions I usually work them from the imbalance \"\"account\"\", and work each transaction to have its appropriate tying account, at which point it will no longer be listed under imbalance.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "b274dcbeca8aaf4a0d475b7e2101809b", "text": "Mint has worked fairly well for tracking budgets and expenses, but I use GnuCash to plug in the holes. It offers MSFT$ like registers; the ability to track cash expenses, assets, and liabilities; and the option to track individual investment transactions. I also use GnuCash reports for my taxes since it gives a clearer picture of my finances than Mint does.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4f7d9c6d9bd9a85810ebab48a59bacba", "text": "Because a paying down a liability and thus gaining asset equity is not technically an expense, GnuCash will not include it in any expense reports. However, you can abuse the system a bit to do what you want. The mortgage payment should be divided into principle, interest, and escrow / tax / insurance accounts. For example: A mortgage payment will then be a split transaction that puts money into these accounts from your bank account: For completeness, the escrow account will periodically be used to pay actual expenses, which just moves the expense from escrow into insurance or tax. This is nice so that expenses for a month aren't inflated due to a tax payment being made: Now, this is all fairly typical and results in all but the principle part of the mortgage payment being included in expense reports. The trick then is to duplicate the principle portion in a way that it makes its way into your expenses. One way to do this is to create a principle expense account and also a fictional equity account that provides the funds to pay it: Every time you record a mortgage payment, add a transfer from this equity account into the Principle Payments expense account. This will mess things up at some level, since you're inventing an expense that does not truly exist, but if you're using GnuCash more to monitor monthly cash flow, it causes the Income/Expense report to finally make sense. Example transaction split:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "87c9d0ed048118e676a8196605eb034b", "text": "A computer is a special case because the IRS thinks that you might be using it for personal applications. You may need to keep a log, or be able to state that you also have another computer for non-business use. That said, if your schedule C shows a small profit then you don't need to itemize expenses, just state the total.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b80a4da09befcb5e2df91a2c39fd52a4", "text": "\"You report it when the expense was incurred/accrued. Which is, in your case, 2014. There's no such thing as \"\"accounts payable\"\" on tax forms, it is an account on balance sheet, but most likely it is irrelevant for you since your LLC is probably cash-based. The reimbursement is a red-herring, what matters is when you paid the money.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "149e6975ec0ef8dc8574c0e317133818", "text": "\"For anyone that's curious, I had a number of chats with Quickbooks who recommended I import only the relevant business transactions from my personal account & personal credit card in order to lower the tax liability. This way money \"\"paid\"\" from the business account to myself rightly shows up as a transfer and not as income. This means when generating a tax report, it calculates the correct rate of tax to be paid based on income minus allowable expenses, regardless which account they came from.\"", "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": "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": "1592c9cd0da3961ba90df07a51f28241", "text": "Instead of gnucash i suggest you to use kmymoney. It's easier", "title": "" }, { "docid": "aacdae478cdb8a98b2b69eed4440805e", "text": "In general you need to ask yourself how serious you are about tracking your finances. If your GNUCash 'cleared' balance doesn't match your statement, it represents an error on either your part or much less likely the banks part. Tracking down this error might be a real pain, but you will also likely learn from it. So to answer your question - find the entry or entries that don't match and fix them. That said, sometimes indeed this can be very tedious, time consuming and frustrating, especially if it is for a relatively small dollar amount. Time too is money, so in these cases, the 'Expense:Adjustment' might be a reasonable approach.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8e67b6911d14a79d53b0b47b4fdd2ac1", "text": "\"Accounts track value: at any given time, a given account will have a given value. The type of account indicates what the value represents. Roughly: On a balance sheet (a listing of accounts and their values at a given point in time), there is typically only one equity account, representing net worth, I don't know much about GNUCash, though. Income and expenses accounts do not go on the balance sheet, but to find out more, either someone else or the GNUCash manual will have to describe how they work in detail. Equity is more similar to a liability than to assets. The equation Assets = Equity + Liabilities should always hold; you can think of assets as being \"\"what my stuff is worth\"\" and equity and liabilities together as being \"\"who owns it.\"\" The part other people own is liability, and the part you own is equity. See balance sheet, accounting equation, and double-entry bookkeeping for more information. (A corporate balance sheet might actually have more than one equity entry. The purpose of the breakdown is to show how much of their net worth came from investors and how much was earned. That's only relevant if you're trying to assess how a company has performed to date; it's not important for a family's finances.)\"", "title": "" }, { "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": "f2001e382087977d58faadeb8485548a", "text": "I'm not familiar with Gnucash, but I can discuss double-entry bookkeeping in general. I think the typical solution to something like this is to create an Asset account for what this other person owes you. This represents the money that he owes you. It's an Accounts Receivable. Method 1: Do you have/need separate accounts for each company that you are paying for this person? Do you need to record where the money is going? If not, then all you need is: When you pay a bill, you credit (subtract from) Checking and debit (add to) Friend Account. When he pays you, you credit (subtract from) Friend Account and debit (add to) Checking. That is, when you pay a bill for your friend you are turning one asset, cash, into a different kind of asset, receivable. When he pays you, you are doing the reverse. There's no need to create a new account each time you pay a bill. Just keep a rolling balance on this My Friend account. It's like a credit card: you don't get a new card each time you make a purchase, you just add to the balance. When you make a payment, you subtract from the balance. Method 2: If you need to record where the money is going, then you'd have to create accounts for each of the companies that you pay bills to. These would be Expense accounts. Then you'd need to create two accounts for your friend: An Asset account for the money he owes you, and an Income account for the stream of money coming in. So when you pay a bill, you'd credit Checking, debit My Friend Owes Me, credit the company expense account, and debit the Money from My Friend income account. When he repays you, you'd credit My Friend Owes Me and debit Checking. You don't change the income or expense accounts. Method 3: You could enter bills when they're received as a liability and then eliminate the liability when you pay them. This is probably more work than you want to go to.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "86d35eb31c8cdc76b6c33c4a7c9da582", "text": "I agree with mbhunter's suggestion of labeling your columns, 'income' and 'expenses'. However, to answer your question, money coming in (a paycheque, for example) is credited to your account. Money going out (a utility bill, for example) is debited from your account. There's no real 'why'... this is simply the definition of the words.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dba4f638e967cf689e1b735cc9daed10", "text": "No, it would not show up on the income statement as it isn't income. It would show up in the cash flow statement as a result of financing activities.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "719c0a7c4a90b1bc43da880d1d4a1584", "text": "There are quite a few questions as to how you are recording your income and expenses. If you are running the bakery as a Sole Proprietor, with all the income and expense in a business account; then things are easy. You just have to pay tax on the profit [as per the standard tax bracket]. If you running it as individual, you are still only liable to pay tax on profit and not turnover, however you need to keep a proper book of accounts showing income and expense. Get a Accountant to do this for you there are some thing your can claim as expense, some you can't.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
436d6cc688b9fa9e573c3359f9eb6a2e
US Expatriate, do I have to file for an extension, or do I automatically get it, as in without doing anything?
[ { "docid": "353f51db94cf8b7edbcf4dbdb335d8b7", "text": "\"The 2 months extension is automatic, you just need to tell them that you're using it by attaching a statement to the return, as Pete Becker mentioned in the comments. From the IRS pub 54: How to get the extension. To use this automatic 2-month extension, you must attach a statement to your return explaining which of the two situations listed earlier qualified you for the extension. The \"\"regular\"\" 6 months extension though is granted automatically, upon request, so if you cannot make it by June deadline you should file the form 4868 to request a further extension. Automatic 6-month extension. If you are not able to file your return by the due date, you generally can get an automatic 6-month extension of time to file (but not of time to pay). To get this automatic extension, you must file a paper Form 4868 or use IRS e-file (electronic filing). For more information about filing electronically, see E-file options , later. Keep in mind that the due date is still April 15th (18th this year), so the 6-month extension pushes it back to October. Previous 2-month extension. If you cannot file your return within the automatic 2-month extension period, you generally can get an additional 4 months to file your return, for a total of 6 months. The 2-month period and the 6-month period start at the same time. You have to request the additional 4 months by the new due date allowed by the 2-month extension. You can ask an additional 2 months extension (this is no longer automatic) to push it further to December. See the publication. These are extension to file, not to pay. With the form 4868 you're also expected to submit a payment that will cover your tax liability (at least in the ballpark). The interest is pretty low (less than 1% right now), but there's also a penalty which may be pretty substantial if you don't pay enough by the due date. See the IRS tax topic 301. There are \"\"safe harbor\"\" rules to avoid the penalty.\"", "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": "97311f295ea1deb9e67480d11a99e1bd", "text": "If you already filed the DC return, you can try and wait with filing the NJ return until you get the answer from DC. You can file an extension request with the NJ division of taxation here. Or, you can file without claiming the credit, and worst case amend later and claim it if DC refuse to refund. I find it highly unlikely that DC will decide that a person staying for a couple of months over the year in hotels will count as a resident.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c98378d3e1e48e723e605a6d1c1b2014", "text": "You're not subject to the US tax laws, and since the income is not US-sourced, it is not subject to withholding. Your employer doesn't need any form, but if they insist - you can provide them a W8-BEN to certify your non-resident status. Keep in mind that if you do come to the US, the money you earn while in the US is US-sourced and subject to the US taxes and withholding, even if you're non-resident.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4fb23bd799c61ed8b37fa617d8ef07d1", "text": "\"Can the companies from USA give job to me (I am from New Zealand)? Job as being employee - may be tricky. This depends on the labor laws in New Zealand, but most likely will trigger \"\"nexus\"\" clause and will force the employer to register in the country, which most won't want to do. Instead you can be hired as a contractor (i.e.: being self-employed, from NZ legal perspective). If so, what are the legal documents i have to provide to the USA for any taxes? If you're employed as a contractor, you'll need to provide form W8-BEN to your US employer on which you'll have to certify your tax status. Unless you're a US citizen/green card holder, you're probably a non-US person for tax purposes, and as such will not be paying any tax in the US as long as you work in New Zealand. If you travel to the US for work, things may become tricky, and tax treaties may be needed. Will I have to pay tax to New Zealand Government? Most likely, as a self-employed. Check how this works locally. As for recommendations, since these are highly subjective opinions that may change over time, they're considered off-topic here. Check on Yelp, Google, or any local NZ professional review site.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "28f92e26dcc503d4c07d8bac7f07e7a4", "text": "\"The examples you provide in the question are completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter where the brokerage is or where is the company you own stocks in. For a fairly standard case of an non-resident alien international student living full time in the US - your capital gains are US sourced. Let me quote the following text a couple of paragraphs down the line you quoted on the same page: Gain or loss from the sale or exchange of personal property generally has its source in the United States if the alien has a tax home in the United States. The key factor in determining if an individual is a U.S. resident for purposes of the sourcing of capital gains is whether the alien's \"\"tax home\"\" has shifted to the United States. If an alien does not have a tax home in the United States, then the alien’s U.S. source capital gains would be treated as foreign-source and thus nontaxable. In general, under the \"\"tax home\"\" rules, a person who is away (or who intends to be away) from his tax home for longer than 1 year has shifted tax homes to his new location upon his arrival in that new location. See Chapter 1 of Publication 463, Travel, Entertainment, Gift, and Car Expenses I'll assume you've read this and just want an explanation on what it means. What it means is that if you move to the US for a significant period of time (expected length of 1 year or more), your tax home is assumed to have shifted to the US and the capital gains are sourced to the US from the start of your move. For example: you are a foreign diplomat, and your 4-year assignment started in May. Year-end - you're not US tax resident (diplomats exempt), but you've stayed in the US for more than 183 days, and since your assignment is longer than 1 year - your tax home is now in the US. You'll pay the 30% flat tax. Another example: You're a foreign airline pilot, coming to the US every other day flying the airline aircraft. You end up staying in the US 184 days, but your tax home hasn't shifted, nor you're a US tax resident - you don't pay the flat tax. Keep in mind, that tax treaties may alter the situation since in many cases they also cover the capital gains situation for non-residents.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e316d41336ca3bda6eb126bcc4115790", "text": "\"Can I use the foreign earned income exclusion in my situation? Only partially, since the days you spent in the US should be excluded. You'll have to prorate your exclusion limit, and only apply it to the income earned while not in the US. If not, how should I go about this to avoid being doubly taxed for 2014? The amounts you cannot exclude are taxable in the US, and you can use a portion of your Norwegian tax to offset the US tax liability. Use form 1116 for that. Form 1116 with form 2555 on the same return will require some arithmetic exercises, but there are worksheets for that in the instructions. In addition, US-Norwegian treaty may come into play, so check that out. It may help you reduce the tax liability in the US or claim credit on the US taxes in Norway. It seems that Norway has a bilateral tax treaty with the US, that, if I'm reading it correctly, seems to indicate that \"\"visiting researchers to universities\"\" (which really seems like I would qualify as) should not be taxed by either country for the duration of their stay. The relevant portion of the treaty is Article 16. Article 16(2)(b) allows you $5000 exemption for up to a year stay in the US for your salary from the Norwegian school. You will still be taxed in Norway. To claim the treaty benefit you need to attach form 8833 to your tax return, and deduct the appropriate amount on line 21 of your form 1040. However, since you're a US citizen, that article doesn't apply to you (See the \"\"savings clause\"\" in the Article 22). I didn't even give a thought to state taxes; those should only apply to income sourced from the state I lived in, right (AKA $0)? I don't know what State you were in, so hard to say, but yes - the State you were in is the one to tax you. Note that the tax treaty between Norway and the US is between Norway and the Federal government, and doesn't apply to States. So the income you earned while in the US will be taxable by the State you were at, and you'll need to file a \"\"non-resident\"\" return there (if that State has income taxes - not all do).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "caac26bdd391f8e851b7ad6108cc0407", "text": "Yes, you do. Depending on your country's laws and regulations, since you're not an employee but a self employed, you're likely to be required to file some kind of a tax return with your country's tax authority, and pay the income taxes on the money you earn. You'll have to tell us more about the situation, at least let us know what country you're in, for more information.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9c68cedbd4aa170b06821aa99ccc65c1", "text": "\"There are two different issues that you need to consider: and The answers to these two questions are not always the same. The answer to the first is described in some detail in Publication 17 available on the IRS website. In the absence of any details about your situation other than what is in your question (e.g. is either salary from self-employment wages that you or your spouse is paying you, are you or your spouse eligible to be claimed as a dependent by someone else, are you an alien, etc), which of the various rule(s) apply to you cannot be determined, and so I will not state a specific number or confirm that what you assert in your question is correct. Furthermore, even if you are not required to file an income-tax return, you might want to choose to file a tax return anyway. The most common reason for this is that if your employer withheld income tax from your salary (and sent it to the IRS on your behalf) but your tax liability for the year is zero, then, in the absence of a filed tax return, the IRS will not refund the tax withheld to you. Nor will your employer return the withheld money to you saying \"\"Oops, we made a mistake last year\"\". That money is gone: an unacknowledged (and non-tax-deductible) gift from you to the US government. So, while \"\"I am not required to file an income tax return and I refuse to do voluntarily what I am not required to do\"\" is a very principled stand to take, it can have monetary consequences. Another reason to file a tax return even when one is not required to do so is to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) if you qualify for it. As Publication 17 says in Chapter 36, qualified persons must File a tax return, even if you: (a) Do not owe any tax, (b) Did not earn enough money to file a return, or (c) Did not have income taxes withheld from your pay. in order to claim the credit. In short, read Publication 17 for yourself, and decide whether you are required to file an income tax return, and if you are not, whether it is worth your while to file the tax return anyway. Note to readers preparing to down-vote: this answer is prolix and says things that are far too \"\"well-known to everybody\"\" (and especially to you), but please remember that they might not be quite so well-known to the OP.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ac752fb104fc90705e42850f151aec14", "text": "What I'm going to write is far too long for a comment, so I'll put it here even though its not an answer. That's the closest thing to an answer you'll get here, I'm afraid. I'm not a tax professional, and you cannot rely on anything I say, as you undoubtedly know. But I'll give you some pointers. Things you should be researching when you have international clients: Check if Sec. 402 can apply to the pension funds, if so your life may become much easier. If not, and you have no idea what you're doing - consider referring the client elsewhere. You can end up with quite a liability suit if you make a mistake here, because the penalties on not filing the right piece of paper are enormous.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6848e7ec4c1f2dd2f1436826fa588d0b", "text": "I'll start with the bottom line. Below the line I'll address the specific issues. Becoming a US tax resident is a very serious decision, that has significant consequences for any non-American with >$0 in assets. When it involves cross-border business interests, it becomes even more significant. Especially if Switzerland is involved. The US has driven at least one iconic Swiss financial institution out of business for sheltering US tax residents from the IRS/FinCEN. So in a nutshell, you need to learn and be afraid of the following abbreviations: and many more. The best thing for you would be to find a good US tax adviser (there are several large US tax firms in the UK handling the US expats there, go to one of those) and get a proper assessment of all your risks and get a proper advice. You can get burnt really hard if you don't prepare and plan properly. Now here's that bottom line. Q) Will I have to submit the accounts for the Swiss Business even though Im not on the payroll - and the business makes hardly any profit each year. I can of course get our accounts each year - BUT - they will be in Swiss German! That's actually not a trivial question. Depending on the ownership structure and your legal status within the company, all the company's bank accounts may be reportable on FBAR (see link above). You may also be required to file form 5471. Q) Will I need to have this translated!? Is there any format/procedure to this!? Will it have to be translated by my Swiss accountants? - and if so - which parts of the documentation need to be translated!? All US forms are in English. If you're required to provide supporting documentation (during audit, or if the form instructions require it with filing) - you'll need to translate it, and have the translation certified. Depending on what you need, your accountant will guide you. I was told that if I sell the business (and property) after I aquire a greencard - that I will be liable to 15% tax of the profit I'd made. Q) Is this correct!? No. You will be liable to pay income tax. The rate of the tax depends on the kind of property and the period you held it for. It may be 15%, it may be 39%. Depends on a lot of factors. It may also be 0%, in some cases. I also understand that any tax paid (on selling) in Switzerland will be deducted from the 15%!? May be. May be not. What you're talking about is called Foreign Tax Credit. The rules for calculating the credit are not exactly trivial, and from my personal experience - you can most definitely end up being paying tax in both the US and Switzerland without the ability to utilize the credit in full. Again, talk to your tax adviser ahead of time to plan things in the most optimal way for you. I will effectively have ALL the paperwork for this - as we'll need to do the same in Switzerland. But again, it will be in Swiss German. Q) Would this be a problem if its presented in Swiss German!? Of course. If you need to present it (again, most likely only in case of audit), you'll have to have a translation. Translating stuff is not a problem, usually costs $5-$20 per page, depending on complexity. Unless a lot of money involved, I doubt you'll need to translate more than balance sheet/bank statement. I know this is a very unique set of questions, so if you can shed any light on the matter, it would be greatly appreciated. Not unique at all. You're not the first and not the last to emigrate to the US. However, you need to understand that the issue is very complex. Taxes are complex everywhere, but especially so in the US. I suggest you not do anything before talking to a US-licensed CPA/EA whose practice is to work with the EU/UK expats to the US or US expats to the UK/EU.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6f299c03202c1956ad89ba6b7c3a29e2", "text": "You can always take deduction for foreign tax paid on Schedule A, or calculate foreign tax credit using form 1116. Credit is usually more beneficial, but in some cases you will be better of with a deduction. However, in very specific cases, you can claim the credit directly on your 1040 without using the form 1116. Look at the 1040 instructions for line 47: Exception. You do not have to complete Form 1116 to take this credit if all of the following apply. All of your foreign source gross income was from interest and dividends and all of that income and the foreign tax paid on it were reported to you on Form 1099-INT, Form 1099-DIV, or Schedule K-1 (or substitute statement). The total of your foreign taxes was not more than $300 (not more than $600 if married filing jointly). You held the stock or bonds on which the dividends or interest were paid for at least 16 days and were not obligated to pay these amounts to someone else. You are not filing Form 4563 or excluding income from sources within Puerto Rico. All of your foreign taxes were: Legally owed and not eligible for a refund or reduced tax rate under a tax treaty, and Paid to countries that are recognized by the United States and do not support terrorism. For more details on these requirements, see the Instructions for Form 1116.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "819197acdc0e88afc44350dcccd999eb", "text": "\"I believe you have to file a tax return, because state tax refund is considered income effectively connected with US trade or business, and the 1040NR instructions section \"\"Who Must File\"\" includes people who were engaged in trade or business in the US and had a gross income. You won't end up having to pay any taxes as the income is less than your personal exemption of $4050.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9cf63e0a6b14a3f437fae3eb24f15d04", "text": "\"Can I write off the $56,000 based on demand letters? Or do I need to finish suing him to write-off the loss? No and no. You didn't pay taxes on the money (since you didn't file tax returns...), so what are you writing off? If you didn't get the income - you didn't get the income. Nothing to write off. Individuals in the US are usually cash-based, so you don't write off income \"\"accrued but never received\"\" since you don't pay taxes on accrued income, only income you've actually received. Should I file the 2012 taxes now? Or wait until the lawsuit finishes? You should have filed by April 2013, more than a year ago. You might have asked for an extension till October 2013, more than half a year ago. Now - you're very very late, and should file your tax return ASAP. If you have some tax due - you're going to get hit with high penalties for underpaying and late filing. If the lawsuit finishes in 2014, does it apply to the 2012 taxes? Probably not, but talk to your lawyer. In any case - it is irrelevant to the question whether to file the tax return or not. If because of the lawsuit results something changes - you file an amended return.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "787ae81a2e565ab1184f5ab004479841", "text": "\"I assume you are filing US taxes because you are a US citizen, resident alien, or other \"\"US person\"\". If you have a total of $10,000 or more in assets in non-US accounts, you are required to file FinCEN Form 114, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, also known as FBAR, to report those accounts. See Comparison of Form 8938 and FBAR Requirements. Note this refers to the total balance in the account (combined with any other accounts you may have); the amount you transferred this year is not relevant. Also note that the FBAR is filed separately from your income tax return (it does not go to the IRS), though if you have over $50,000 in offshore assets you may also have to file IRS Form 8938. Simply reporting those accounts does not necessarily mean you will owe extra taxes. Most US taxes are based on income, not assets. According to the page linked, the maximum penalty for a \"\"willful\"\" failure to report such accounts is a fine of $100,000 or 50% of the assets in question, whichever is greater, in addition to possible criminal sanctions. There may be other US filing requirements that I don't know about, so you may want to consult a tax professional. I do not know anything about your filing requirements under Indian law.\"", "title": "" }, { "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": "" } ]
fiqa
2b2776b95bbe0f68b9371085344c9b43
How to declare foreign gift of nearly $10,000
[ { "docid": "b06c4c5629a4c4f0af1e5c054ff97484", "text": "Actually banks aren't required to (and don't) report on 8300 because they already report $10k+ cash transactions to FinCEN as a Currency Transaction Report (CTR), which is substantively similar; see the first item under Exceptions in the second column of page 3 of the actual form. Yes, 8300 is for businesses, that's why the form title is '... Received In A Trade Or Business'. You did not receive the money as part of a trade or business, and it's not taxable income to you, so you aren't required to report receiving it. Your tenses are unclear, but assuming you haven't deposited yet, when you do the bank will confirm your identity and file their CTR. It is extremely unlikely the government will investigate you for a single transaction close to $10k -- they're after whales and killer sharks, not minnows (metaphorically) -- but if they do, when they do, you simply explain where the money came from. The IRS abuses were with respect to people (mostly small businesses) that made numerous cash deposits slightly under $10k, which can be (but in the abuse cases actually was not) an attempt to avoid reporting, which is called 'structuring'. As long as you cooperate with the bank's required reporting and don't avoid it, you are fine.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "970bf827c2ba21f4e4be22f0c766713e", "text": "As the college education is very costly, I want to send USD 25,000 to him as a gift. What is the procedure and what Indian and American tax laws are involved ? This transaction will be treated as gift. As per Indian law you can transfer unlimited amount to your close relative [son-in-law/grandchildren/daughter/etc]. In US the gift tax is on donor, as you are no US citizen you are not bound by this. As your son-in-law/grandchildren are US citizens, there is no tax to them. Your son-in-law may still need to declare this in Form 3250 or such relevant returns. Under the Liberalized remittance scheme [Refer Q3], you can transfer upto USD 250,000 per year. There maybe some forms that you need to fill. Ask your Bank. If the amount is more than USD 25,000 a CA certificate along with 15CA, 15CB need to be filled. Essentially the CA certifies that taxes on the funds being transferred have already been paid to Govt of India. Can I send money to him directly or to his father who is submitting tax returns in USA? This does not make any difference in India. Someone else may answer this question if it makes a difference in US.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9100a3e1cee41f47fc7d15a0ffe99996", "text": "So I want to sell my 100 shares of AAPL to him at a price of 10 or even 1 US Dollar. Is that legal/allowed? Of course. It's your stocks - do with it what you want. if the two persons are not served by a same broker. You'll have to talk to your broker about the technicalities of the transaction. if the person who sell are US citizen and the person who buy are not, and and vice-versa Since you asked specifically about US citizenship, I'll assume you're in the US or the transaction is taking place in the US. Citizenship has nothing to do with it (except may be for economic sanctions against Russians or Iranians that may come into play). What is important is the tax residency status. Such a transfer is essentially a gift, and if you're a US tax resident (which doesn't correlate to your immigration status necessarily) - you'll have to deal with the gift tax consequences on the discount value. For example - you have 100 shares of AAPL which you sold to your friend for $1 each when the fair market value (FMV) was $501. So essentially, the friend got $50,100 value for $100. I.e.: $50K gift. Since this amount is above the annual $14K exemption - you'll have to deal with the gift tax and file gift tax return. There are also consequences for the capital gains tax for both you and your friend. I suggest you talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) about the specifics given your circumstances. If you (or the recipient) are also a foreign citizen/tax resident - then that country's laws also may affect your situation.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "800c5783f99b60b8c046861416bb28c6", "text": "If you trust the other party, an international bank wire would be the quickest, easiest, and cheapest option. It is the standard way to pay for something overseas from the United States. Unfortunately, in most cases, they are not reversible. I don't believe Paypal is an option for an amount that large. Escrow companies do exist, but you would have to research those on a case by case basis to see if any fit the criteria for your transaction and the countries involved. I'll also add: If it were me, and there was no way to get references or verify the person's identity and intent to my satisfaction, then I would probably consider hopping on a plane. For that amount of money, I would verify the person and items are legitimate, in person, and then wire the money.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c8e90732e325599af6175216e695a35f", "text": "It would be better for you to sell yourself and pay capital gains tax than to transfer to your parents and pay the gift tax. Also, sham transfer (you transfer to your mother only so that she could sell and transfer back to you without you paying taxes) will be probably categorized as tax evasion, which is a criminal offense that could lead to your deportation. What the US should or should not claim you can take to your congressman, but the fact is that the US does claim tax on capital gains even if you bought the asset before becoming US tax resident, and that's the current law.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cf91d1943fd0ea2823261d687164c5fd", "text": "Since your question is very particular on the details, I'm assuming you did your research. Unfortunately you won't get a better answer here than what you've found on the Internet already. This is not a clear-cut situation as the situation you're describing has been a source to some confusion. Mainly, the question is whether the US bank account is a tangible asset or not. To the best of my knowledge, this has not yet been settled, so I suggest going to a professional tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in the US) who'd advise you the best course of action. I think it would be safer to transfer the money directly from the foreign account to the US beneficiary (although even then, if the IRS decides to start digging, it may claim that you're essentially disguising a transfer from a US account, so I suggest talking to a professional before doing anything). In any case, the US recipient will need to report the gift (if it is $100K or more) using the form 3520 with his/her tax return.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d6e23a040a11669cd162671a3ea1a597", "text": "This is a case where you sit down with an advisor or two. There are legal, and tax issues. When you deposit the cash, or buy a car with it, the large cash transaction will trigger a notice to the US Government. So they will eventually find out. Before you get to that point you need to know what obligations and consequences you will be facing. Because you don't know if it was a gift, or found money, or if the owner will be back looking for you to return it; therefore you need expert advice.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c319314829325f38c1d037dea17cd4fe", "text": "My understanding is that the only tax implication is that any interest income earned on foreign accounts is still taxable in the US if held by a US citizen. If the total across foreign accounts totals more than $10,000 you'll have to report those accounts to the Treasury via FinCEN Form 114, this doesn't create any additional tax obligations, it's just a regulatory measure to stop people from hiding money overseas and not paying tax on those earnings. If the US account is only in your husband's name, and the Australian account is only in your name, there may not be any reporting requirement to the Treasury. Money transferred between spouses is not subjected to gift-tax.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2947f7492ade177b57d15dc7816b08c5", "text": "If you are looking to transfer money to another person in the US, you can do do with no tax consequence. The current annual gift limit is $14k per year per person, so for example, my wife and I can gift $56k to another couple with no tax and no forms. For larger amounts, there is a lifetime exclusion that taps into your $5M+ estate tax. It requires submitting a form 709, but just paperwork, no tax would be due. This is the simplest way to gift a large sum and not have any convoluted tracking or structured loan with annual forgiveness. One form and done. (If the sum is well over $5M you should consider a professional to guide you, not a Q&A board)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "acf18cccc864a82e84d9a39617284fb5", "text": "What you are describing is perfectly legal, and is well under the threshold to attract the attention of the IRS ($10K+). The money is not income, because it is repayment for goods provided or a loan made to your friends. I do this myself oftentimes to take advantage of the rewards on my credit cards. With cash to cover expenses coming in immediately from friends/family, there is virtually no risk. If you are concerned and want to protect against questions in the future about the source of the money, you ought to start keeping records of dates, times, locations, amounts, and the names of people involved when the charges are made. Then track the dates when the cash is deposited into your bank account. That way you can demonstrate the cash flow (Charge -> Repayment -> Deposit) to anyone who needs to know.", "title": "" }, { "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": "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": "0cf9d33d378ff00799e461f26c6fa9f9", "text": "You say that you inherited the money from your mother, and are now paying these people using money that is already yours. Because of that, the money is considered a gift from you to them, and the fact that you are doing it in accordance with your mother's wishes doesn't change that. For it to be considered a bequest from your mother's estate directly to these beneficiaries, it would have had to be handled via the regular by-the-book inheritance procedure and been given to them directly rather than bequeathed to you with informal instructions to pass it on to them. If one gives another person more than $14K in any calendar year, there is the potential gift tax issue to address. I'll explain why it's more a matter of 'addressing' than 'paying', as there are a number of legal ways around this. Form 709 is what you'll use. In the end, you'll report the gifts over $14K but no tax will be due as they'll simply go against your lifetime gifting allowance, currently $5.49M per person. Note, 2 ways to avoid even this obligation. If you have a spouse, you have a combined $28K/yr gifting (per recipient) with no reporting required. Similarly, if the recipient has a spouse, you can gift them $14K. i.e. couple to couple can gift $56K/yr. Last, why not just gift $14K before December, and in January, give the second installment? If I had money coming in separate from a will, I'd be happy that you honored a verbal request, and wouldn't be so greedy as to expect you to risk a dime of your own finances to transfer the funds immediately.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3a867c6f052ff0ca6c6709e1a4dfacbe", "text": "The LLC portion is completely irrelevant. Don't know why you want it. You can create a joint/partnership trading account without the additional complexity of having LLC. What liability are you trying to limit here? Her sisters will file tax returns in the us using the form 1040NR, and only reporting the dividends they received, everything else will be taxed by Vietnam. You'll have to investigate how to file tax returns there as well. That said, you'll need about $500,000 each to invest in the regional centers. So you're talking about 1.5 million of US dollars at least. From a couple of $14K gifts to $1.5M just by trading? I don't see how this is feasible.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c9bd68162d80c19b631cbddb1dec4916", "text": "I can't speak to New Zealand law, but under US law, it's not a gift, so there is no tax. But there are some practical considerations. How good a relationship do you have with the banks on each end of the transfer? Transfers in the neighborhood of USD$10,000 are automatically considered suspicious and the banks are required to take extra steps to ensure you are not laundering the proceeds of criminal activity, funding terrorism, evading taxes, etc. You will have to fill out quite a bit of paperwork.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9f1f658e19c7b94b3ca6f5101aac3daf", "text": "As I understand it, US federal gift tax doesn't kick in at all until one person gives more than about $14,000 in a single year. (So a couple can give someone $28,000.) If you want to give more than that in a lump sum while avoiding gift tax, one workaround is to structure it as an intra-family loan. Basically, you write (and formally register) a loan for the amount, then gift them with up to the limit for them to pay off that loan. The IRS requires that you charge interest on this loan, but the rates are pretty minimal and of course you can incorporate that in the gift. The downside is that the interest income you're required to take is taxable, but that's a comparitively small sum. (On the other hand, if the loan is a mortgage against real property, and properly filed as such, the interest paid may be deductable for the person you're giving the money to.) Doing this properly requires a tax accountant or lawyer who has a clue about the right legalese to make it work. However, there are starting to be some services which specialize in this, doing it for a fixed fee. I used one of those recently, which is why I'm somewhat familiar with this process; they made it about as much of a fill-out-the-forms process as they could, but it still took a few weeks for me to figure out which options were best for my needs.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
39e98447b82ec542697a4e9354e40a72
Should I pay myself a dividend or a salary?
[ { "docid": "7d1306a254ef3c211c21b48d9f1c434c", "text": "In cases like this you should be aware that tax treaties may exist and that countries are generally willing to enter into them. Their purpose is to help prevent double taxation. Tax treaties often times give you a better tax rate than even being a resident of the countries in question! (For instance, the Italy to US tax rate is lower than simply doing business in many United States) This should guide your google search, here is something I found for Germany/Spain http://tmagazine.ey.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2011G_CM2300_Spain-Germany-sign-new-tax-treaty.pdf It appears that the dividend tax rate under that treaty is 5% , to my understanding, the income tax rates are often multiples higher! I read that spain's income tax rate is 18% So what I would do is see if there is the possibility of deferring taxes in the lower tax jurisidiction and then doing a large one time dividend when conveninet. But Germany isn't really known for its low taxes, being a Federal Republic, the taxes are levied by both the states and the federal government. Look to see if your business structure can avoid being taxed as the entity level: ie. your business' earnings are always distributed to the owners - which are not germany citizens or residents - as dividends. So this way you avoid Germany's 15% federal corporate tax, and you avoid Spain's 18% income tax, and instead get Spanish dividends at 5% tax. Anyway, contact a tax attorney to help interpret the use of the regulations, but this is the frame of mind you should be thinking in. Because it looks like spain is willing to do a tax credit if you pay taxes in germany, several options here to lower your tax footprint.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "0dac24e12eefbe65efdfe988ff4c2aa6", "text": "\"If you sold the stock for a profit, you will owe tax on that profit. Whether it is taxed as short-term or long-term capital gains depends on how long you held the stock before selling it. Presumably you're going to invest this money into mutual funds or something of that sort. Those may pay dividends which can be reinvested, and will grow in value (you hope) just as the individual stock shares would (you hope). Assuming the advice you've been given is at all reasonable, there's no need for buyer's remorse here; you're just changing your investing style to a different point on the risk-versus-return curve. (If you have to ask this question, I tend to agree that you should do more homework before playing with shares in individual companieS ... unless you're getting thess shares at employee discount, in which case you should still seriously consider selling them fairly quickly and reinvesting the money in a more structured manner. In a very real sense your job is itself an \"\"investment\"\" in your employer; if they ever get into trouble you don't want that to hit both your income and investments.)\"", "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": "e86ce0a96fa86c9a6148bec403e66783", "text": "\"The $100,000 is taxed separately as \"\"ordinary income\"\". The $350,000 is taxed at long-term capital gains of 15%. Capital gains is not taxed at 20% until $415,050. Even though $100,000 + 350,000 = $450,000, only $350,000 can be taxed at capital gains. The total ordinary income tax burden will be $31,986 if single, in California. Caveat: By creating a holdings corporation (C-corp), you can section 351 that $100,000 into the C-corp for tax deferment, which won't be taxed until you take money from the corporation. Since you will hold 100% of the voting stock, all distributions will be considered pro rata. Additionally, you can issue yourself a dividend under the rules of 26 USC §§243-246 (a greather-than-80% shareholder who receives a dividend can write-off 100% of said dividend). As long as that dividend doesn't trigger §§1.243-246 of The Regulations by keeping the distribution just under 10% of E&P i.e. $10,000. Wages are deductible against basis so pay yourself $35,000 and keep $55,000 in the corporation and you can decrease the total liabilities down to $22,000 from $31,000, which includes the CA franchise tax. You don't have to pay yourself any money out a corporation to use the money.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c7b3e7692fed18720326764c41804733", "text": "I'm assuming your talking USA. There are two ways to look. If you know you should pay on the cap gains, the best way to handle that separately from your salary is to file a quarterly tax payment. That, I understand, is what the self-employed have to do. I'm in the situation where at some point, probably this year, the company that employs me will be bought out, and I will owe capital gains taxes on my shares gobbled up in the buy-out. It's a cash-for-stock transaction. So, in my case, I've just adjusted my W-4 to take advantage of the safe-harbor provision related to taxes I payed in 2016 and my salary. The details vary depending on your situation, but in my case, I've calculated what it will take in W-4 allowances to make sure I pay 110% of my 2016 tax payment (after refund). I'm not worrying about what the actual taxes on those shares of company stock will be, because I've met the rules for safe-harbor. Safe harbor just means that they can't penalize you for under-withholding or underpayment. It doesn't mean I won't have to write a check on april 15.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "67bc3979d4e8d6e5a329e82b5f8ab282", "text": "Join me for a look at the Quote for SPY. A yield of 1.82%. So over a year's time, your $100K investment will give you $1820 in dividends. The Top 10 holdings show that Apple is now 3% of the S&P. With a current dividend of 2.3%. Every stock in the S&P has its own different dividend. (Although the zeros are all the same. Not every stock has a dividend.) The aggregate gets you to the 1.82% current dividend. Dividends are accumulated and paid out quarterly, regardless of which months the individual stocks pay.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d682ec08327aec0e660ebd6bf5b50850", "text": "\"I agree with all the people cautioning against working for free, but I'll also have a go at answering the question: When do I see money related to that 5%? Is it only when they get bought, or is there some sort of quarterly payout of profits? It's up to the shareholders of the company whether and when it pays dividends. A new startup will typically have a small number of people, perhaps 1-3, who between them control any shareholder vote (the founder(s) and an investor). If they're offering you 5%, chances are they've made sure your vote will not matter, but some companies (an equity partnership springs to mind) might be structured such that control is genuinely distributed. You would want to check what the particular situation is in this company. Assuming the founders/main investors have control, those people (or that person) will decide whether to pay dividends, so you can ask them their plans to realise money from the company. It is very rare for startups to pay any dividends. This is firstly because they're rarely profitable, but even when they are profitable the whole point of a startup is to grow, so there are plenty of things to spend cash on other than payouts to shareholders. Paying anything out to shareholders is the opposite of receiving investment. So unless you're in the very unusual position of a startup that will quickly make so much money that it doesn't need investment, and is planning to pay out to shareholders rather than spend on growth, then no, it will not pay out. One way for a shareholder to exit is to be bought out by other shareholders. For example if they want to get rid of you then they might make you an offer for your 5%. This can be any amount they think you'll take, given the situation at the time. If you don't take it, there may be things they can do in future to reduce its value to you (see below). If you do take it then your 5% would pay you once, when you leave. If the company succeeds, commonly it will be wholly or partly sold (either privately or by IPO). At this point, if it's wholly sold then the soon-to-be-ex-shareholders at the time will receive the proceeds of the sale. If it's partly sold then as with an investment round it's up for negotiation what happens. For example I believe the cash from an IPO of X% of the company could be taken into the company, leaving the shareholders with no immediate direct payout but (100-X)% of shares in their names that they're more-or-less free to sell, or retain and receive future dividends. Alternatively, if the company settles down as a small private business that's no longer in startup mode, it might start paying out without a sale. If the company fails, as most startups do, it will never pay anything. It's very important to remember that it's the shareholders at the time who receive money in proportion to their holding (or as defined by the company articles, if there are different classes of share). Just because you have 5% now doesn't mean you'll have 5% by that time, because any new investment into the company in the mean time will \"\"dilute\"\" your shareholding. It works like this: Note that I've assumed for simplicity that the new investment comes in at equal value to the old investment. This isn't necessarily the case, it can be more or less according to the terms of the new investment voted for by the shareholders, so the first line really is \"\"nominal value\"\", not necessarily the actual cash the founders put in. Therefore, you should not think of your 5% as 5% of what you imagine a company like yours might eventually exit for. At best, think of it as 5% of what a company like yours might exit for, if it receives no further investment whatsoever. Ah, but won't the founders also have their holdings diluted and lose control of the company, so they wouldn't do that? Well, not necessarily. Look carefully at whether you're being offered the same class of shares as the founders. If not consider whether they can dilute your shares without diluting their own. Look also at whether a new investor could use the founders' executive positions to give them new equity in the same way they gave you old equity, without giving you any new equity. Look at whether the founders will themselves participate in future investment rounds using sacks of cash that they own from other ventures, when you can't afford to keep up. Look at whether new investors will receive a priority class of share that's guaranteed at exit to pay out a certain multiple of the money invested before the older, inferior classes of shares receive anything (VCs like to do this, at least in the UK). Look at any other tricks they can legally pull: even if the founders aren't inclined to be tricky, they may eventually be forced to consider pulling them by a future new investor. And when I say \"\"look\"\", I mean get your lawyer to look. If your shareholding survives until exit, then it will pay out at exit. But repeated dilutions and investors with priority classes of shares could mean that your holding doesn't survive to exit even if the company does. Your 5% could turn into a nominal holding that hasn't really \"\"survived\"\", that entitles you to 0.5% of any sale value over $100 million. Then if the company sells for $50 million you get $0, while other investors are getting a good return. All of this is why you should not work for equity unless you can afford to work for free. And even then you need to lawyer up, now and during any future investment, so your lawyer can explain to you what your investment actually is, which almost certainly is different from what it looks like at a casual uninformed glance.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "af4679f4a8afd4be7e354e3d1b5d4410", "text": "Small companies need not pay out heft dividends. It makes much more sense to invest it directly in to the company to build a stronger company and produce future results. For example just say Mike see's a company called Milk Inc. Milk inc is doing very well and for the last three year's the amount the profits are increasing by has been going up by 10% the company is still small and doesn't do dividends. Mike see's opportunity and snatches up 1000 at 2.20 , He knows this company does not pay dividends. 10 years pass and this company is absolutely booming profits are still going up the company has decided to start paying hefty dividends as it no longer needs as much money to invest in it's growth. Shares are now valued at 6.80 . Mike banks.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3b24411e84ecc56597e67ce068060d8d", "text": "It is a bit more complicated than whether it pays more or less dividends. You should make your decision based on how well the company is performing both fundamentally and technically. Concentrating mainly on the fundamental performance for this question, most good and healthy companies make enough profits to both pay out dividends and invest back into the company to keep growing the company and profits. In fact a good indication of a well performing company is when their dividend per share and earnings per share are both growing each year and the dividends per share are less than the earnings per share (that way you know dividends are being paid out from new profits and not existing cash holdings). This information can give you an indication of both a stable and growing company. I would rather invest in a company that pays little or no dividends but is increasing profits and growing year after year than a company that pays higher dividends but its profits are decreasing year after year. How long will the company continue to pay dividends for, if it starts making less and less profits to pay them with? You should never invest in a company solely because they pay dividends, if you do you will end up losing money. It is no use making $1 in dividends if you lose $2+ because the share price drops. The annual returns from dividends are often between 1% and 6%, and, in some cases, up to 10%. However, annual returns from capital gains can be 20%, 50%, 100% or more for a stable and growing company.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "edc7ef593efc8e63c3943b0bccda0122", "text": "Instead of giving part of their profits back as dividends, management puts it back into the company so the company can grow and produce higher profits. When these companies do well, there is high demand for them as in the long term higher profits equates to a higher share price. So if a company invests in itself to grow its profits higher and higher, one of the main reasons investors will buy the shares, is in the expectation of future capital gains. In fact just because a company pays a dividend, would you still buy it if the share price kept decreasing year after year? Lets put it this way: Company A makes record profits year after year, continually keeps beating market expectations, its share price keeps going up, but it pays no dividend instead reinvests its profits to continually grow the business. Company B pays a dividend instead of reinvesting to grow the business, it has been surprising the market on the downside for a few years now, it has had some profit warnings lately and its share price has consistently been dropping for over a year. Which company would you be interested in buying out of the two? I know I would be interested in buying Company A, and I would definitely stay away from Company B. Company A may or may not pay dividends in the future, but if Company B continues on this path it will soon run out of money to pay dividends. Most market gains are made through capital gains rather than dividends, and most people invest in the hope the shares they buy go up in price over time. Dividends can be one attractant to investors but they are not the only one.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dd88013d135507b19b21b17d512fc998", "text": "\"My father imparted this advice to me when I was a teenager, and it hasn't failed me yet. > Pay yourself first What this means is that the first \"\"bill\"\" you pay should always be your savings. Preferably in a way that automatically comes out of your paycheck or account without requiring you to take an active step to make it happen. I save a ton of money, but I am no more disciplined than anyone else. I just realized that over the years of progressing in my career that I gradually got higher and higher salaries, yet never had a substantial increase in the money I had leftover in my bank at the end of the month despite the fact that I make about 8x the money I used to live reasonably comfortably on. Therein is the point, we spend whatever money we see, so you almost have to hide it from yourself. First, participate to the fullest in your company's 401k if they offer it. After a while you will adjust naturally to the net take home pay and won't miss the savings you are accumulating. Absent that, or in addition to that, set up a separate bank or investment account and arrange an automatic transfer from your checking account every month. Then set up automatic investing in CD's or some other less-liquid-than-cash investment so you it is just enough hassle to get at the money that you won't do it on a whim. It sounds too simple, but it works.\"", "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": "84da3bf13c478784b8698f72765551b7", "text": "In theory the integration of taxes make the tax implications of paying salary or dividends equal. This is what happens when you calculate the taxes using a generic tax calculator, however, the theory breaks down in certain cases. If you are earning less than $100k there is very little difference and paying out a salary is usually the better option. In a large stable company the most efficient option is almost always a mix of both. If you are earning more than $100k a year it depends on a number of factors: 1) Are your companies annual earnings over $500,000? In Canada, private companies that earn more than $500,000 annually are taxed at a higher rate than those earning less than $500,000. If the earnings are above $500,000 generally you should reduce the earning to under $500,000 by paying a salary. However, this depends on the province, the other income of the owners are and how much more than $500,000 your company earns. 2) Are you eligible for deductions or benefits only available on earned income? Earned income is income that you have worked for, which does not include dividends. RRSP contribution room, child care expense deductions, CPP, and many other benefits under the CRA rules are only available to people who have an earned income. It is worth taking advantage of these deductions when they are available. 3) Is your company eligible for any tax deductions? The same as with your personal tax deductions and your personal benefits of earning income, having a corporate income is also a benefit. There are a number of tax credits and tax deductions that corporations can take advantage of and when available these should be taken advantage of before paying everything out in salary. Once all these questions are answered the calculation is based on your marginal tax rate and the tax rate of the Corporation. One other reason to have at least a portion of you salary as a dividend is that if you incur capital loss in your corporation you can pass them to your personal taxes. If you were payed 100% in salary this does not work. Other strategies to be more tax efficient: Income splitting (Pay a salary/dividend to yourself, your wife, your children your parents, or anyone you support). Rolling-over property with taxable gains into your private corporation. Buying insurance policies that gives a return of premium or increase your Capital Dividend Account (CDA).", "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": "9c243d1eac92836b54948f6676ef8da4", "text": "I also reckon the tax situation is a relevant difference. I'd rather take shares over a wage when, you know, I'm not / minimally taxed for capital gains, at a rate way lower than what I should be paying for the equivalent as income tax.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5cf0c6ed1f95bedb09ad7b7b301a971d", "text": "However, you have to remember that not all dividends are paid quarterly. For example one stock I recently purchased has a price of $8.03 and the Div/yield = 0.08/11.9 . $.08 * 4 = $0.32 which is only 3.9% (But this stock pays monthly dividends). $.08 * 12 = $0.96 which is 11.9 %. So over the course of a year assuming the stock price and the dividends didn't change you would make 11.9%", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
463e22ab662e633c7ded29055311a5fa
Owned house for less than 2 years - 1031 exchange?
[ { "docid": "faa34371d5e2536da37e935804852217", "text": "Yes, your realtor is a moron. (I am a realtor, and sorry you have such a bad one) Every industry has its good and bad. You really should find a new realtor, a good one. You know the 1031 exchange is for rental property only. And that saving $2000 isn't worth staying in the house to complete the two years required occupancy.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "10e458738a27e9fc183cb73f5ba96c9f", "text": "\"Disclaimer: I am neither a lawyer nor a tax-expert This page on the HMRC site lists several pages that appear to be relevant, starting with CG78401 - Foreign currency: delayed remittances and on to CG78408 - Foreign currency: example which seems pertinent to your case [paraphrased]: A property bought in 1983 is sold for a [taxable] gain in one tax-year (1986/87) but the proceeds cannot be released/remitted to the UK until later (1991/92), by which time currency fluctuations have created a second [taxable] gain. The size of the first gain (selling the property) is determined by the exchange rate in effect at the time of the sale but because of local restrictions, this can be deferred. The size of the second gain (currency movement) is determined by the change in exchange-rate between the time of the sale and the time of conversion. In your case, the first \"\"gain\"\" was actually a loss, so I believe you should be able to use this to offset any tax due second gain. This page states that losses can be claimed up to four years after the end of the tax-year in which they were incurred, so you are probably still OK. (The example makes application under TCGA92/S279 to defer the gain made on the original sale [because of the inability to transfer funds], but as I understand it, this is primarily to avoid a tax liability in that year. Since you made a loss on the sale, there wouldn't have been a tax liability, so there would be no need to defer it).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d090e456a27088b6844ae132bb20c829", "text": "\"You mention \"\"early exercise\"\" in your title, but you seem to misunderstand what early exercise really means. Some companies offer stock options that vest over a number of years, but which can be exercised before they are vested. That is early exercise. You have vested stock options, so early exercise is not relevant. (It may or may not be the case that your stock options could have been early exercised before they vested, but regardless, you didn't exercise them, so the point is moot.) As littleadv said, 83(b) election is for restricted stocks, often from exercising unvested stock options. Your options are already vested, so they won't be restricted stock. So 83(b) election is not relevant for you. A taxable event happen when you exercise. The point of the 83(b) election is that exercising unvested stock options is not a taxable event, so 83(b) election allows you to force it to be a taxable event. But for you, with vested stock options, there is no need to do this. You mention that you want it not to be taxable upon exercise. But that's what Incentive Stock Options (ISOs) are for. ISOs were designed for the purpose of not being taxable for regular income tax purposes when you exercise (although it is still taxable upon exercise for AMT purposes), and it is only taxed when you sell. However, you have Non-qualified Stock Options. Were you given the option to get ISOs at the beginning? Why did your company give you NQSOs? I don't know the specifics of your situation, but since you mentioned \"\"early exercise\"\" and 83(b) elections, I have a hypothesis as to what might have happened. For people who early-exercise (for plans that allow early-exercise), there is a slight advantage to having NQSOs compared to ISOs. This is because if you early exercise immediately upon grant and do 83(b) election, you pay no taxes upon exercise (because the difference between strike price and FMV is 0), and there are no taxes upon vesting (for regular or AMT), and if you hold it for at least 1 year, upon sale it will be long-term capital gains. On the other hand, for ISOs, it's the same except that for long-term capital gains, you have to hold it 2 years after grant and 1 year after exercise, so the period for long-term capital gains is longer. So companies that allow early exercise will often offer employees either NQSOs or ISOs, where you would choose NQSO if you intend to early-exercise, or ISO otherwise. If (hypothetically) that's what happened, then you chose wrong because you got NQSOs and didn't early exercise.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "584d4fc1a1307f5a2858d74f936892f4", "text": "And he has to pay for it every home repair and every month the property sets empty. His loss each month is not $250, but probably closer to $500. In generally you need to clear at least $200 ABOVE PTI (principle, taxes and interest) to cover repair and the like to property. From your post, it sounds like your dad was forced into the land-lord business by the recession. Unless he plans to hold the property until its rental value has increased by $500 a month, he should consider selling it and writing-off the loss. Losing money bit by bit on a house isn't a tax write-off event. Selling a property for less than you bought it for generally is. FYI, I got the $500/month loss by assuming that repairs/emptiness/etc will cost you about $200 a month, and added $50 for your dad's time managing the property.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "00ead6e1e4accaf77de20977700dc957", "text": "\"There some specific circumstances when you would have a long-term gain. Option 1: If you meet all of these conditions: Then you've got a long-term gain on the stock. The premium on the option gets rolled into the capital gain on the stock and is not taxed separately. From the IRS: If a call you write is exercised and you sell the underlying stock, increase your amount realized on the sale of the stock by the amount you received for the call when figuring your gain or loss. The gain or loss is long term or short term depending on your holding period of the stock. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2015_publink100010630 Option 2: If you didn't hold the underlying and the exercise of the call that you wrote resulted in a short position, you might also be able to get to a long-term gain by buying the underlying while keeping your short position open and then \"\"crossing\"\" them to close both positions after one year. (In other words, don't \"\"buy to cover\"\" just \"\"buy\"\" so that your account shows both a long and a short position in the same security. Your broker probably allows this, but if not you, could buy in a different account than the one with the short position.) That would get you to this rule: As a general rule, you determine whether you have short-term or long-term capital gain or loss on a short sale by the amount of time you actually hold the property eventually delivered to the lender to close the short sale. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2015_publink100010586 Option 1 is probably reasonably common. Option 2, I would guess, is uncommon and likely not worthwhile. I do not think that the wash sale rules can help string along options from expiration to expiration though. Option 1 has some elements of what you wrote in italics (I find that paragraph a bit confusing), but the wash sale does not help you out.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "181f3b8463231927b92a460b4f3e114f", "text": "\"Let's illustrate how typical mortgage and its insurance works, from the very beginning. few years pass You're at the last point now. The whole point of the insurance was to preserve value of bank's collateral, at least from its point of view. By making a claim you have testified that a damage has occurred and some value of the property was lost. It's only reasonable for the bank that it wants the value of the asset to be restored to the value of the loan. Or the other way around. Bank doesn't really care if your deck is repaired, it only cares to have right side equal left side in the books. By taking the mortgage you've agreed to preserve the value of the property. There are many ways out of this situation, but pocketing the money isn't one of them. There is no need to fight the mortgage company, because they're right. Talk with them in good faith and walk through available options. If you feel that you can live with the deck as it is, then paying back part of the loan might be a good idea. You don't \"\"lose\"\" the money this way, you're still 2k ahead - just not now, but in 20 years. Afterthought: it's possible that it would be \"\"enough\"\" to re-evaluate the house to ensure it's still worth its original value even with damaged deck (eg due to other improvements you've made over the years or general property prices rising in the area). I put quotes, because you have to count costs of reevaluation which may be too big to make it worth. AND it might turn out it's worth even less, eg if the prices dropped. Or add another collateral, but that means signing another lien which also costs money.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "44a4da7d3f9b0a853729ea4b848174d9", "text": "This new roof should go on the 2016 LLC business return, but you probably won't be able to expense the entire roof as a repair. A new roof is most likely a capital improvement, which means that it would need to be depreciated over many years instead of expensed all in 2016. The depreciation period for a residential rental property is 27.5 years. Please consider seeking a CPA or Enrolled Agent for the preparation of your LLC business return. See also: IRS Tangible Property Regulations FAQ list When you made the loan to the LLC (by paying the contractor and making a contract with the LLC), did you state an interest rate? If not, you and your brother should correct the contract so that an interest rate is stated, then follow it. The LLC needs to pay you interest until the loan is paid off. You need to report the interest income on your personal return, and the LLC needs to report the interest expense in its business return.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "eed532144938a0446170198dc5d2e6cc", "text": "I don't see anything in this forum on the leverage aspect, so I'll toss that out for discussion. Using generic numbers, say you make a $10k down payment on a $100,000 house. The house appreciates 3% per year. First year, it's $103,000. Second year, $106090, third it's 109,272.70. (Assuming straight line appreciation.) End of three years, you've made $9,272.70 on your initial $10,000 investment, assuming you have managed the property well enough to have a neutral or positive cash flow. You can claim depreciation of the property over those rental years, which could help your tax situation. Of course, if you sell, closing costs will be a big factor. Plus... after three years, the dreaded capital gains tax jumps in as mentioned earlier, unless you do a 1031 exchange to defer it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fc09d8675e7a137134ff1d0a644c9e67", "text": "$100K is not a lot for my $335K house (now appraised at $389K after 2 years...wtf), with Taxes close to $11500 per year. I'm paying 30K per year JUST for the house+escrow. Now factor in utilities, food, cars, insurance, healthcare, etc.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8ec3d486bed7c5634b0d1916cbc1b54c", "text": "If you held the shares directly, the transfer agent, Computershare, should have had you registered and your address from some point on file. I have some experience with Computershare, it turned out when Qwest restarted dividends and the checks mailed to the childhood home my parents no longer owned, they were able to reissue all to my new address with one telephone call. I can't tell you what their international transfer policies or fees might be, but if they have your money, at least its found. Transfer Agent Computershare Investor Services serves as the stock transfer agent for Tellabs. If you need to transfer stock, change ownership, report lost or stolen certificates, or change your address, please contact Computershare Investor Services at +1.312.360.5389.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "134c8643c7d0968b1b1f1b35db13137e", "text": "\"I've found that once people \"\"fall in love\"\" with a home or the idea of a home, there's little chance they will chance course. I'd implore you to do some reading about individuals and families trapped in an underwater mortgage and having lost a job -- now they can't move for work, and they can't refinance or sell. In short, they are trapped and will be foreclosed upon (or, at best, will short-sell). If you want to play knife-catcher (e.g., trying to buy an asset while its value is falling) then at least don't go in blind or kid yourself about the risks. Of course, many folks believe the housing market has bottomed - if that's true then there's no harm in waiting 6 or 12 months and verifying that premise. At most, you'll lose a couple of points in equity. On the other hand, you may well discover that all is not well, and suddenly you can \"\"afford\"\" even \"\"more\"\" house. It is not hyperbole to say that the housing market in the USA has financially destroyed millions of people -- be careful out there especially as Europe comes unglued.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c02bdf6aeb4bfdfa3d5984e2b27f6d83", "text": "If there are a lot of houses for sale, can you be sure that in a year or two you can sell yours? How long does the average house in that area stay on the market before it is sold? What percentage of houses never get sold? If it can't be sold due to the crowded market you will be forced to rent the house. The question for you then is how much rental income can you get? Compare the rental income to your monthly cost of owning, and managing the house. One benefit to buying a house in a market that is easy to rent a house would be if you are forced to move quickly, then you aren't stuck being 3 months into a 12 month lease. Keep in mind that markets can change rather dramatically in just a few years. Housing costs were flat for much of the 90's, then rocketed up in the first half of the last decade, and after a big drop, they are one a slow climb back up. But the actual path they are on depends on the part of the US you are in. The rule of thumb in the past was based on the fact that over a few years the price would rise enough overcome the closing costs on the two transactions. Unfortunately the slow growth in the 90's meant that many had to bring checks to closing because the equity gained wasn't enough to overcome the closing costs due to low down payment loans. The fast growth period meant that people got into exotic loans to maximize the potential income when prices were going up 10-20% a year. When prices dropped some found that they bought houses they couldn't afford, but couldn't sell to break even on the transaction. They were stuck and had to default on the mortgage. In fact I have never seen a time frame when the rule of thumb ever applied.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dca1a33a7f94d8ef59daa6de936c28c3", "text": "\"If it was me, I would sell the house and use the proceeds to work on/pay off the second. You don't speak to your income, but it must be pretty darn healthy to convince someone to lend you ~$809K on two homes. Given this situation, I am not sure what income I would have to have to feel comfortable. I am thinking around 500K/year would start to make me feel okay, but I would probably want it higher than that. think I can rent out the 1st house for $1500, and after property management fees, take home about $435 per month. That is not including any additional taxes on that income, or deductions based on repair work, etc. So this is why. Given that your income is probably pretty high, would something less than $435 really move your net worth needle? No. It is worth the reduction in risk to give up that amount of \"\"passive\"\" income. Keeping the home opens you up to all kinds of risk. Your $435 per month could easily evaporate into something negative given taxes, likely rise in insurance rates and repairs. You have a great shovel to build wealth there is no reason to assume this kind of exposure. You will become wealthy if you invest and work to reduce your debt.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f796d5c8aa19f1d95d5f4880474445de", "text": "One piece of information you didn't mention is how much you paid for the original home. If you hold onto that home for too long you will have to pay capital gains on the difference between sale price and original price. This can be a TON of money, thousands of dollars easily. The rule is: If you lived in a home for 2 out of the past 5 years, you don't have to pay the capital gains tax. So if you just moved, you have 3 years to sell. Perhaps as a compromise you can try renting it for 3 years and then selling it a few months before the deadline.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "234cf72f241171d43cbde38967aed249", "text": "Where I am you pay annual taxes on a house, pay state and county transfer taxes when you buy/sell, and then have to pay capital gains the year you sell if it appreciated and you don't meet one of the exemptions. So I think your whole premise may be flawed.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "476ea35f4210276c453ccac381ef5b21", "text": "When you sell a house around between 7-10% of the sales price will go to various fees. Mostly to the agents, but also to county fees, city fees, deed tax, and possibly covering closing costs for the buyers. So if you sell a $400k house for the same price you buy, just in fees, you're out $40k. Mortgages are structured so that the frontend is very interest heavy, while at the end you're mostly paying towards principal. So for the first two years you will pay down very little of the principal. Figure around $2500 for the mortgage, and without running the numbers I bet you would pay an average for the first two years of around $1800/month in interest. $43,200. Mortgage interest is tax deductible, so you'll get some of that back. That's also $16,800 in equity you'll have on the house, so you'll get that back out when you sell. Rough numbers, I would be you lose around $50k buying the house and selling for the same price two years later. That doesn't take into account having to do any maintenance. And it assumes you can sell quickly when you want to. Renting is not throwing away money. You don't lose any money. You get a place to live in exchange. You don't build equity, sure, but you don't need to worry about maintenance and other related issues. When you're looking to be somewhere short term renting is generally the best idea.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
143674e8b4404040260e74b4a68e3fa1
Online Return Policies
[ { "docid": "74ded6dd78fe60fbf4c8d1202d6086bd", "text": "If you paid by credit card, file a dispute with the credit card company. They will credit you the money immediately while they investigate. The burden of proof will then be on the merchant. Keep your documents handy in case you need them: USPS receipt, proof of delivery, copies of all correspondance, etc. File the credit card chargeback now, because there are time limits. The FTC has more information.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "eb9b830ba43c5a42c6f41b9e1714634b", "text": "PayPal will be contacting you shortly, I'm sure. You'll see the reversal on their site in a few days as well as a fee from their end I bet.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "236b97e9e5dd8a6f097d409ca9308076", "text": "What happens would depend on company culture. At the very least they could pass it on to their manager. Or maybe the company just pays support staff by number of answered emails in which case you get the quickest pre-canned answer they can provide. But the net effect is they will continue to lose to alternatives because of this issue. They have been given customer feedback. And their culture is to ignore it. The results are self inflicted.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "178101f7c84416728780a1ec5650eb73", "text": "Yeah, I had a guy one time send me 6 faxes in the span of 2 days - along with 6 followup calls, of course. We had a double-your-money-back guarantee at the time and even with that, it was just easier to refund the $200 than to keep dealing with him.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b6088456fab65cad84e6a54bbf6e1bf7", "text": "I don't see this article being about the merit of the customers claim but rather the condition of sale: &gt; You agree not to file any complaint, chargeback, claim, dispute, or make any public forum post, review, Better Business Bureau complaint, social media post, or any public statement regarding the order, our website, or any issue regarding your order, for any reason, within this 90 day period, or to threaten to do so within the 90 day period, or it is a breach of the terms of sale, creating liability for damages in the amount of $250, plus any additional fees, damages - both consequential and incidental, calculated on an ongoing basis. I'm happy to rally my pitchfork against any company that includes these conditions.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0fa551007df57ee79f9e08751ab3fbd8", "text": "Amazon announced this last month. Only at Kohls and Whole Foods. They are the ones who needed this service not Walmart. http://mashable.com/2017/09/20/amazon-returns-kohls/ Walmart returns are pretty easy. Bought some bike tires and rim that were too small, but I tried putting them on anyway. The tire ripped and tubes popped. They asked nothing just took it back I was so glad I didn't have to explain that.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4dbcfbae459b4e5185a6e4a3cfff06d5", "text": "I didn't see on the website if the previous years model worked. The solution they offered in the end didn't cost you any more. You would be credited for the purchase. At any point in the store when you went back did you talk to a manager? Did you talk to a manager after any of the initial phone calls? The sales people have limited power. I'm sure a manager would have settled this much quicker than blindly emailing the execs.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0d74c216e02d90b3f91895ccfafc87b9", "text": "Yeah, but they have a price match policy; have them price match themselves or go home and order it online. Or hell, use your smart phone on their free wifi to place the order so the sales person doesn't get credit for the sale and can't harass you for a warranty.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2a31ba428664731ef088f2af47e4f0f2", "text": "\"For 60 days I got $2,958. What you have is how much it would cost you over a 3 month period ASSUMING that ALL of your receivables were paid at 30 days rather than 60. But I'm confused by \"\"our return is 3.6%\"\", is that the interest you're charging the customer for paying late? Would the invoice be 3.6/30 n-60? I'm not sure\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "18fc339279a168216568ea7feace6c69", "text": "Thank you for the summary! I live in a small city where it would never take more than 10 minutes to walk into the store and get your refund, so I don't see a huge advantage to this. Maybe for bigger and busier stores.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6bac8c4cd357365d77c44c35de37bb63", "text": "Ideally, warranty returns should be handled by the manufacturer because in theory returns give them feedback to improve their products. If a certain model of DVD player is always being returned 6-12 months after sale, there's a problem with it, and having the returned, failed units on hand provides the engineers with evidence to improve their products. Of course, with razor-thin margins and price pressure, the ideas above are a luxury and pretty much a thing of the past, I guess.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f59c2644669e158fcd62eead224b5bb6", "text": "\"Yeh sure! You will drive your car, hope the store will have what you look for, in the right size and color, and pay more. Rather than buy on-line. What's next? You will say \"\"it's the fault of the consumer\"\" that they chose to drive cars instead of horses with buggies? Brick and mortar retail can not be the same if you can shop and have huge selection on-line from anywhere were you live.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f01ac9040d034a225e6753268db9bf51", "text": "\"Sales tax and luxury tax is what you will have to pay tax wise, and they are non-refundable (in most cases but the rules vary area to area). This really tripped up some friends of mine I had come from England. The rules are complicated and regional. Sales tax is anywhere from 0% to 10.25% and are not usually applied to raw foods. Luxury taxes are usually state level and only apply to things most people consider a large purchase. Jewelry, cars, houses, etc. Not things your likely to buy. (Small, \"\"normal\"\" jewelry usually doesn't count. Diamond covered flava-flav clock ... probably has a luxury tax.) For sales tax, it can change a lot. Don't be afraid to ask. People ask all the time. It's normal. I personally add 10% to what I buy. Sales tax in my city is 7%, county is 6.5%, state is 6%. So you can get different rates depending on what side of the street you shop on some times. Under normal circumstances you do not get a refund on these taxes. Some states do give refunds. Usually however the trouble of getting that refund isn't worth it unless making a large purchase. You are not exempt from paying sales tax. (Depending on where you go you may get asked). Business are exempt if they are purchasing things to re-sell. Only the end customer pays sales tax. Depending on where you go, online purchases may not be subject to sales tax. Though they might. That, again, depends on city, county, and state laws. Normally, you will have to pay sales tax at the register. It will be calculated into your total, and show as a line item on your receipt. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yAvAm2BQ3xs/TudY-lfLDzI/AAAAAAAAAGs/gYG8wJeaohw/s1600/great%2Boutdoors%2Breceipt%2BQR-%2Bbefore%2Band%2Bafter.jpg Also some products have other non-refundable taxes. Rental car taxes, fuel taxes and road taxes are all likely taxes you will have to pay. Areas that have a lot of tourists, usually (but not always) have more of these kinds of taxes. Friendly note. DON'T BUY DVDs HERE! They won't work when you get home. I know you didn't ask but this catches a lot of people. Same for electronics (in many cases, specially optical drives and wireless).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "110ff4bdb09ae6e0f7abbf4f69e4a6c5", "text": "Sure, just saying. It does exist. Also I don't understand why people need to return stuff so much. Only thing I can see it being needed so much is people buying something solely to use it for a one time use then getting their money back. Or simply over shopping and not controlling their budget and need their money back after they realize they spent too much on shit they don't need. I mean, if I need to buy something, I do some research, find the best product for the price and get the best offer the first time. Unless it's broken or defective I've never had to return anything. Then again I'm also not a compulsive shopper that blows my budget on shit I don't need. I don't know. Doesn't seem like a make or break feature for me and won't sway which service I use either way.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "84bd84638b9c26447e6e35d4917ebf4a", "text": "I agree that it sounds like a lot. The last time I read about it someone had been banned for violating the threshold. They were very angry. Their point was that it fails to account for volume of purchases or cost of items returned. They had been buying everything through amazon, so it was particularly harsh to be cut off, but they thought it was unfair since some people are able to exceed the amount of value returned comparatively several times over without violating the magic threshold. (i.e. return 40 $1 items and lose your account, but return 10 $1k items and you're fine).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6b4974a2ba3e437480d01d0fc7847b5a", "text": "Former Walmart associate here. As long as you have a receipt and it hasn't been more than 90 days, they will take back almost anything. I've seen stained baby clothes and totally destroyed sneakers written off so that the customer could have their full refund.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
86d2abfdbbe6df80ab03af10c40bc47a
How to teach personal reconciliation and book balancing
[ { "docid": "b441841b26ec7155d2b9b6ec9ed71bce", "text": "\"If you are wanting to teach your kids basic accounting principles there is some good stuff on Khan Academy. However most of the stuff takes practice to really make it hit home and its kinda boring (Especially to kids who may or may not care about it). Maybe if you help them set up an account on Mint so that they are at least aware of their finances. Think it also has a heap of videos you can watch that teaches basic personal finance. If you actually want them to understand the techniques and methods behind creating & maintaining a personal ledger/journal and reconciling it against a bank account you are getting into what undergraduates study and there are plenty of first year textbooks around. Look around for a second hand one that is a few revisions old and they are usually dirt cheap (I scored one for only a dollar not that long ago). I feel like the mindset is what matters most. Journals and all that jazz are easy if you have the right mindset. That is something that you really have to demonstrate to your children rather than teach. Meaning you yourself keeping your finances in order and showing them how you organise and file your bills/ credit cards etc. (So they learn the importance of keeping financial records; meaning in the future when its talked about it doesn't fall on deaf ears) Emphasize the whole \"\"living within your means\"\" because even if they don't understand bookkeeping or learn anything else at least their finances won't turn out too bad.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "d386dfb9f2e94e0e3a0fd7e218374406", "text": "A system comparing students to themselves a year ago is what I think would work best. Therefore you are graded based off the students you have, not the grade you are in. This would mean if I was in 2nd grade and read at a 1st grade level then went to 3rd grade and read at a 4th grade level, then the teacher would receive higher marks. This would of course be averaged out throughout the class with outliers left off (because some students always get A's, and some... not so much). Its not a perfect system, but its better than saying that the only performance indicators are not touching children and keeping your job long enough to get tenure", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f30b325e1344b9d7c98ba83b0580d12f", "text": "How to win friends &amp; influence people is even more so just common knowledge and common courtesy than Art of War, but sometimes seeing that stuff written or presented a certain way can be very impactful. I know it was for me, with both books.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2d0c00de68f83aef59cf18c2b6020505", "text": "This is a big and complex topic, but it's one I think people get wrong a lot. There's a lot of ways to treat a child's pocket money: Tell a kid that they're getting $10/week allowance. Help them keep it safe, but don't give them access to it: Put it in a drawer in your office, or a piggie bank on a high shelf. Encourage them to save up for a big purchase. Help them decide what to spend it on. When they find something they want, talk it over with them to make sure it's right for them. This seems like a good approach, because it encourages thrift, long term thinking, savings, and other important elements of real life. But it's a TERRIBLE idea. All it does is make the child think of it as if it wasn't really their money. The child gets no benefits from this, and will certainly not learn anything about savings. Give the kid $10/week. Full stop. This seems like a bad idea, because the kid is just going to waste it. Which they will. :) That's the point! There's NO way to learn except by experience. Try and shift control of discretionary spending to the child as and when appropriate. Give them some money for clothes, or a present for their birthday, and let them spend it. If they're going to be spending all day at some event, give them money for lunch. And if they misspend it - tough! No kid is going to starve in one day because the spend their lunch money at a video arcade, but they will learn a valuable lesson. :) You have to be careful here of two mistakes. First, only do this for truly discretionary spending. If your kid needs clothes for school, then you better make sure they actually buy it. Second, make sure that you don't end up filling in the gaps. What you're teaching here is opportunity costs, and that won't work if your child gets to have his cake and eat it too. (Or go to the movies and STILL get that new Xbox game.) Have them get a job. And, it should go without saying, give them control of the money. It's incredibly tempting to force them to save, be responsible, etc. But all this does is force them to look responsible...for as long as their under your thumb. Nothing will impart the lessons about why being responsible is important like being irresponsible. And it's sure as hell better to learn that lesson with some paper route money when your 14 than with your rent money when your 24...", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ed0a834861a6e3accdc94feb5d815429", "text": "If these are children that may be employed, in a few years, it may well be worth walking them through some basics of the deductions around employment, some basic taxes, uses of banks, and give them enough of a basis in how the economy of the world works. For example, if you get a job and get paid $10/hour, that may sound good but how much do various things eat at that so your take-home pay may be much lower? While this does presume that the kids will get jobs somewhere along the way and have to deal with this, it is worth making this part of the education system on some level rather than shocking them otherwise. Rather than focusing on calculations, I'd be more tempted to consider various scenarios like how do you use a bank, what makes insurance worth having(Life, health, car, and any others may be worth teaching on some level), and how does the government and taxes fit into things. While I may be swinging more for the practical, it is worth considering if these kids will be away in college or university in a few years, how will they handle being away from the parents that may supply the money to meet all the financial needs?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7a1e9beaf2d832307057a7fc45b9e550", "text": "Each of us has experienced, at one time or another, the chaotic, turbulent and uncertain feelings and body states associated with the moment-by-moment onslaught of telephone calls, emails, meetings and to-do lists that are so common in our daily lives. During such times and experiences a person becomes stressed, de-centered and unfocused. How can one get a perspective on and transform these states-of-mind and body? Simply put, by becoming more mindfully-minded.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f9ebf5857c82f15383a8c9fa5fe76d8b", "text": "\"&gt;The odd thing about primary school education (that I hear from talking to teachers) is that the materials used in the classroom are all bought under some sort of district wide (or even state wide, in the case of texas) decision for which program to use. It didn't used to be that way, but yes, that is pretty much how it is done these days... basically \"\"central planning\"\" and \"\"one size fits all\"\" as I said. &gt;For reading they generally include a set of books (or single book) with a sequence of things to be taught. Teacher's who've been teaching for a long time will know which series has useful properties for teaching the material. They might refer to them by names, but it really just comes down to a set of materials and sequence of introducing material. And of course none of that really has ANYTHING to do with actual \"\"reading\"\". &gt;When one teacher says to another \"\"I used $X to supplement the required $Y\"\" it'd be like a software engineer saying \"\"I used a hash map instead of a map for that case because it had better performance for the use case\"\" - there's a fair amount of baggage in the statement, but another software engineer would understand the differences and know what tradeoffs were being made. No. That's a rather poor analogy. A better analogy would be: \"\"We used to use SAP, but then we got bought out by XYZ corporation, and now we have to build everything around Oracle.\"\" (And the reality is that both choices are crap.) &gt;As to the \"\"Master's in Reading\"\" - there's a lot of goofy degrees offered through the Education departments at state schools. A large part of it is because the union pay scales include things like education level. They tend to be equivalent to any terminal masters program you'd find in other subjects - including MBA. \"\"Take these classes - part time and summers over the next 3 years, and if you pass them all, we give you a piece of paper that says \"\"Masters of Education - Reading\"\" or similar. It comes down to something like 45 credit hours with a focus on something. It's also a result of the \"\"requirement for continuing education\"\" to maintain Teaching licenses/certifications. And yeah, it has created a lot of \"\"Underwater Basket Weaving Experts\"\" -- the problem is that they ACTUALLY *SINCERELY* BELIEVE that they have some significant \"\"expertise\"\"... even though it can *not* be shown in their results (if it could, they would be \"\"all about\"\" merit pay). &gt;I actually doubt that. It's going to come down to the sets of materials they have available for teaching. Some work, some don't. The structure of the system discourages improvisation, unfortunately, and the teachers often feel that they have their hands tied. Young, beginning teachers feel they have their hands tied -- those types either leave teaching, or they succumb to the system. The teacher in question (with the \"\"Masters\"\" in \"\"Reading\"\") succumbed to the system long, long ago. And that teacher's whole concern was really just a \"\"brand X\"\" versus \"\"brand Y\"\" thing -- the teacher knows \"\"brand X\"\" and so can (and probably does) \"\"teach\"\" it while half-asleep. Most long tenure teachers tend to get in a comfortable \"\"rut\"\" -- comfortable in no small because it is not only familiar, but also because it then requires little work to update their curricula or prepare anything new -- disrupting that (i.e. switching from \"\"brand X\"\" to \"\"brand Y\"\" is therefore nearly always met with either opposition or grumbling &amp; grudging compliance). **It is INDEED \"\"the system\"\", but one must keep in mind that it is the \"\"teachers\"\" (collectively, in aggregate over time) that have essentially created that system.**\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d5eb254f9e7824ad0cb64f6bd61d68cb", "text": "You could of course do the same yourself, but it is often tough to keep the discipline, and sometimes it gets really forgotten. Only you can say if you would be disciplined enough... Otherwise, it is a useful help, and it is free, so why not. There are no disadvantages.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3e1626a8841ae03410334dd28d884510", "text": "\"If one takes a slightly more expansive view of the word \"\"saving\"\" to include most forms of durable asset accumulation, I think the reason some do and most don't is a matter of a few factors, I will include the three that seem obvious to me: Education Most schools in the US where I live do not offer personal finance courses, and even when they do, there is no opportunity for a student to practice good financial habits in that classroom setting. I think a simple assignment that required students to track every penny that they spend over the period of a few months would help them open their eyes to how much money is spent on trivial things that they don't need. Perhaps this would be more effective in a university setting where the students are usually away from home and therefore more responsible for the spending that occurs on their own behalf. Beyond simple education about personal finances, most people have no clue how the various financial markets work. If they understood, they would not allow inflation to eat away at their savings, but that's a separate topic from why people do not save. Culture Since much of the education above isn't happening, children get their primary financial education from their parents. This means that those who are wealthy teach their children how to be wealthy, and those who are poor pass on their habits to children who often also end up poor. Erroneous ideas about consumption vs. investment and its economic effects also causes some bad policy encouraging people to live beyond their means and use credit unwisely, but if you live in a country where the average person expects to eat out regularly and trade in their automobiles as soon as they experienced their highest rate of depreciation, it can be hard to recognize bad financial behavior for what it is. Collective savings rates reflect a lot of individuals who are emulating each other's bad behavior. Discipline Even when someone is educated about finances, they may not establish good habits of budgeting regularly, tracking spending, and setting financial goals. For me, it helps to be married to someone who has similar financial goals, because we budget monthly and any major purchases (over $100 or so) must be agreed upon at the beginning of the month (with obvious exceptions for emergencies). This eliminates any impulsive spending, which is probably 90% of the battle for me. Some people do not need to account to someone else in order to spend wisely, but everyone should find a system that works for them and helps them to maintain some financial discipline.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "77f02c752cf76dd6c0f47158a874e9c0", "text": "Business is a really broad category of disciplines that no one book could ever possibly cover. Given your background in psychology though, you might be into marketing or behavioral economics. Try out **Switch: How to Change Hard Things When Change is Hard** by Chip and Dan Heath. Also, try out Planet Money episodes.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "518ae175e86ff4bc6e42557bf93a9603", "text": "\"Great response, thanks! I'll do my best to answer your questions. 1. I'm a genuine believer that everything, from calculus to charisma, can be taught to *most* people. Some people don't have the intelligence to ever learn calculus, for example, and some people will only ever be average at it. But most people can at least improve in most areas through education. The messed up part is that professors are never formally taught to teach. Some of the things I listed I implicitly learned in grad school (e.g., when doing research, I learned how to filter out inaccurate information; when writing research papers, I learned how to organize information). I learned theories of motivation because I was in an org psych program, but I never learned how to apply them, especially in a classroom setting. I had to figure that out myself. But, yes, I do believe it's something that can be learned. 2. I think the vast majority of work related skills that people develop are learned on the job, as you mentioned. There are some generic skills students learn in college that can be applied to their work, however. I'm thinking of communication and social skills (although I'm probably biased, since those are the two topics I teach). College, it seems to me, is more about learning how to follow directions, figure things out for yourself, and work effectively in groups than any particular subject matter. And I think those skills do transfer well to the workplace. 3. I 100% agree with this. We're pressured to pass students and inflate grades. Character issues, including being disorganized, being dishonest, or just being rude, are diagnosed as psychological disorders and we have to \"\"accommodate\"\" students with these \"\"disabilities\"\" (to be clear, I 100% believe in psychological disorders, and I 100% support accommodating students with these disorders- I just think they are over-/ misdiagnosed these days). Totally agree with your last paragraph.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "323d05dd99f151313c26ea1b718eb8e8", "text": "Thank you for replying. I assumed since I’m the one asking for advice from him I should be leading the conversation with questions mostly. Wondering if you have an examples of what questions. I have some prepared but any extra insight is helpful.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fb39c0d2d349a7757629bc457283981b", "text": "What are you talking about? There are plenty of slaves who taught themselves to read and successfully hid their efforts from their owners. Hell, others decided to just leave. These slaves pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and were examples to other slaves. Clearly there is no context, environment, and system that people exist in.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e04d9bd2f8e0286cee97e550d281ad51", "text": "We started with our son about age 5 or so. He was at the time old enough to understand that you buy stuff using money. We don't give allowance, rather we made up a job chart that he can put checks on, and give him a small amount for each job that he does. This is meant to enforce the idea of 'work and get paid, don't work don't get paid', and associate the concept of work and money. We also try to teach him the concept of giving, spending and saving, by having envelopes with those words on them and dividing the 'commission' money between them. The give money is used for a charitable organization. The save money is used in a couple of ways - either to save for a large item that he wants, or to put into a savings account. The spend it money he is free to buy whatever he wants with. We got this plan from the Dave Ramsey Show, and it has been really good so far. The best thing about it is that when we are at the store and he sees something he wants, we can ask 'did you bring your money?' This keeps the begging down to a minimum and also helps us teach him to make a list of stuff he wants and can save for.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2d04baf88ce26a5a86b0af5c0651030c", "text": "Horrible plan. You are asking for a massive family feud over money. Don't mix extended family and money. You need to be able to make unemotional decisions about your finances and debt and you likely won't be able to make hard decisions that may be required if they would negatively impact your family. You don't want your brain and heart to fight. You will wind up losing your relationships with family, money, or most likely both.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5ee52f42b68fe1bbe8e8667e6a2d8eb9", "text": "I had a chat with a coworker whose spouse also teaches music lessons. One interesting insight was that after raising prices, the children were much more likely to come prepared because the parents felt more invested when it cost them more. They were also less likely to cancel the lessons at the last minute. This is an argument in favor of TTT's suggestion to charge something even if we donate the income to charity. Along those lines it might also make sense to give discounts if the child comes prepared having practiced daily. I agree that it's not a lot of paperwork for some additional pay, the problem is that I would also be tempted to buy a new piano and find other expenses to reduce the income. That's a discussion for another day. I think the break-even point is probably somewhere around $1000/year when I weigh record-keeping time verses the income. So as long as we exceed that, I will probably encourage her to charge for the lessons even if she charges below the market for them. I will consider setting up a charitable giving account that they can pay to instead of paying us directly.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
562a8138443d05f8cf5a2249ad752e3e
Determining the minimum dividend that should be paid from my S corporation
[ { "docid": "da9ecf6147e0082b20047381cdb41141", "text": "\"There are no dividends from S-Corp. There are distributions. Big difference. S-Corps fill form 1120S and schedule K-1 per shareholder. In the schedule all the income of your S-Corp will be assigned to various categories that you will later copy to your personal tax return as your personal income. It is not dividend income. The reason people prefer to take distributions from their S-Corps instead of salary is because you don't pay SE taxes on the distributions. That is also the reason why the IRS forces you to pay yourself a reasonable salary. But the tax rate on the income, all of it, is your regular income tax rate, unless the S-Corp income is categorized in a preferred category. The fact that its an S-Corp income doesn't, by itself, allow any preferential treatment. If you're learning the stuff as you go - you should probably get in touch with a tax professional to advise you. All the S-Corp income must be distributed. Its not a matter of \"\"avoiding paying the tax\"\", its the matter of \"\"you must do it\"\". Not a choice. My answer was not intended or written to be used, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer, for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer (circ 230 disclaimer).\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "e86ce0a96fa86c9a6148bec403e66783", "text": "\"The $100,000 is taxed separately as \"\"ordinary income\"\". The $350,000 is taxed at long-term capital gains of 15%. Capital gains is not taxed at 20% until $415,050. Even though $100,000 + 350,000 = $450,000, only $350,000 can be taxed at capital gains. The total ordinary income tax burden will be $31,986 if single, in California. Caveat: By creating a holdings corporation (C-corp), you can section 351 that $100,000 into the C-corp for tax deferment, which won't be taxed until you take money from the corporation. Since you will hold 100% of the voting stock, all distributions will be considered pro rata. Additionally, you can issue yourself a dividend under the rules of 26 USC §§243-246 (a greather-than-80% shareholder who receives a dividend can write-off 100% of said dividend). As long as that dividend doesn't trigger §§1.243-246 of The Regulations by keeping the distribution just under 10% of E&P i.e. $10,000. Wages are deductible against basis so pay yourself $35,000 and keep $55,000 in the corporation and you can decrease the total liabilities down to $22,000 from $31,000, which includes the CA franchise tax. You don't have to pay yourself any money out a corporation to use the money.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "01146864ca51d161601ebe09cd8359b9", "text": "First of all, this is a situation when a consultation with a EA working with S-Corporations in California, CA-licensed CPA or tax preparer (California licenses tax preparers as well) is in order. I'm neither of those, and my answer is not a tax advice of any kind. You're looking at schedule CA line 17 (see page 42 in the 540NR booklet). The instructions refer you to form 3885A. You need to read the instructions carefully. California is notorious for not conforming to the Federal tax law. Specifically, to the issue of the interest attributable to investment in S-Corp, I do not know if CA conforms. I couldn't find any sources saying that it doesn't, but then again - I'm not a professional. It may be that there's an obscure provision invalidating this deduction, living in California myself - I wouldn't be surprised. So I suggest hiring a CA-licensed tax preparer to do this tax return for you, at least for the first year.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ebd7b8b4d4c3a2ee667131466eae36f4", "text": "I second @DumbCoder, every company seems to have its own way of displaying the next dividend date and the actual dividend. I keep track of this information and try my best to make it available for free through my little iphone web app here http://divies.nazabe.com", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0dba28ff9b2908da6f4be7d5ec49557e", "text": "Let's take a step back. My fictional company 'A' is a solid, old, established company. It's in consumer staples, so people buy the products in good times and bad. It has a dividend of $1/yr. Only knowing this, you have to decide how much you would be willing to pay for one share. You might decide that $20 is fair. Why? Because that's a 5% return on your money, 1/20 = 5%, and given the current rates, you're happy for a 5% dividend. But this company doesn't give out all its earnings as a dividend. It really earns $1.50, so the P/E you are willing to pay is 20/1.5 or 13.3. Many companies offer no dividend, but of course they still might have earnings, and the P/E is one metric that used to judge whether one wishes to buy a stock. A high P/E implies the buyers think the stock will have future growth, and they are wiling to pay more today to hold it. A low P/E might be a sign the company is solid, but not growing, if such a thing is possible.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "baff06bf28cd635f0ae8ac8f028df2fb", "text": "It's whatever you decide. Taking money out of an S-Corp via distribution isn't a taxable event. Practically speaking, yes, you should make sure you have enough money to afford the distribution after paying your expenses, lest you have to put money back a few days later in to pay the phone bill. You might not want to distribute every penny of profit the moment you book it, either -- keeping some money in the business checking account is probably a good idea. If you have consistent cash flow you could distribute monthly or quarterly profits 30 or 60 days in arrears, for example, and then still have cash on hand for operations. Your net profit is reflected on the Schedule K for inclusion on your personal tax return. As an S-Corp, the profit is passed through to the shareholders and is taxable whether or not you actually distributed the money. You owe taxes on the profit reported on the Schedule K, not the amounts distributed. You really should get a tax accountant. Long-term, you'll save money by having your books set up correctly from the start rather than have to go back and fix any mistakes. Go to a Chamber of Commerce meeting or ask a colleague, trusted vendor, or customer for a recommendation.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3d718680b0cd151f64d4cb4d777842e0", "text": "\"Oh, I understand now -- we're having an absurd, meaningless conversation about an obscure theoretical point. When you can tell me how you can determine a \"\"minimum cash\"\" level from a public company's filings, we can continue the discussion. Otherwise, make a simplifying assumption and move on. I misunderstood -- I thought we were actually trying to understand the difference between enterprise value and equity value / understand the implication of an enterprise value multiple.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b0f869c36cbaef461e171d52dc5b2204", "text": "What you're referring to is the yield. The issue with these sorts of calculations is that the dividend isn't guaranteed until it's declared. It may have paid the quarterly dividend like clockwork for the last decade, that does not guarantee it will pay this quarter. Regarding question number 2. Yield is generally an after the fact calculation. Dividends are paid out of current or retained earnings. If the company becomes hot and the stock price doubles, but earnings are relatively similar, the dividend will not be doubled to maintain the prior yield; the yield will instead be halved because the dividend per share was made more expensive to attain due to the increased share price. As for the calculation, obviously your yield will likely vary from the yield published on services like Google and Yahoo finance. The variation is strictly based on the price you paid for the share. Dividend per share is a declared amount. Assuming a $10 share paying a quarterly dividend of $0.25 your yield is: Now figure that you paid $8.75 for the share. Now the way dividends are allocated to shareholders depends on dates published when the dividend is declared. The day you purchase the share, the day your transaction clears etc are all vital to being paid a particular dividend. Here's a link to the SEC with related information: https://www.sec.gov/answers/dividen.htm I suppose it goes without saying but, historical dividend payments should not be your sole evaluation criteria. Personally, I would be extremely wary of a company paying a 40% dividend ($1 quarterly dividend on a $10 stock), it's very possible that in your example bar corp is a more sound investment. Additionally, this has really nothing to do with P/E (price/earnings) ratios.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e74ea038c1bca2f3ddaca4d7d7d23a6f", "text": "\"Finding the \"\"optimal\"\" solution (and even defining what optimal is) would probably take a lot of searching of all the possible combinations of stocks you could buy, given that you can't buy fractional shares. But I'd guess that a simple \"\"greedy\"\" algorithm should get you close enough. For any given portfolio state, look at which stock is furthest below the target size - e.g. in your example, S3 is 3.5% away whereas S1 is only 3.1% away and S2 is over-sized. Then decided to buy one stock of S3, recalculate the current proportions, and repeat until you can't buy more stocks because you've invested all the money. If you have to pay a transaction fee for each kind of stock you purchase you might want to calculate this in larger lot sizes or just avoid making really small purchases.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2ed3c177786d18301727f0854afccc2d", "text": "\"In the USA there are two ways this situation can be treated. First, if your short position was held less than 45 days. You have to (when preparing the taxes) add the amount of dividend back to the purchase price of the stock. That's called adjusting the basis. Example: short at $10, covered at $8, but during this time stock paid a $1 dividend. It is beneficial for you to add that $1 back to $8 so your stock purchase basis is $9 and your profit is also $1. Inside software (depending what you use) there are options to click on \"\"adjust the basis\"\" or if not, than do it manually specifically for those shares and add a note for tax reviewer. Second option is to have that \"\"dividednd payment in lieu paid\"\" deducted as investment expence. But that option is only available if you hold the shorts for more than 45 days and itemize your deductions. Hope that helps!\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4d7543b97842dc33ee6b7a64e47adbc1", "text": "A combination of market research and tax law would likely be the combination used to set the salary. An elaboration of each: Taxes - In Canada and the US there can be differences in how payments are treated if they are salary,e.g. payroll taxes such as CPP, Social Security and others may apply in this case as well as personal income tax rates, or dividends, which may have different treatments in some jurisdictions I believe. If salary above $250,000 is taxed at 40% and dividends are taxed at 15%, which rate would you rather pay? (This is hypothetical as no jurisdiction has been noted here yet.) Most provinces and states in North America will tax the first few dollars at rather low rates and so it isn't bad to take a nominal rate of $1 or so in salary as usually the higher rates exist for higher salaries. Executive Compensation has come under scrutiny in recent years though it is usually a mix of salary, bonuses, and stock either restricted or options. Market Research - Some companies may research what other small public companies would pay executives as the salary may have to be approved by a board of directors in some cases. At least this would be how I remember things being decided in small companies I worked for in Washington State and the province of Alberta. In a lot of company cases, excess earnings are stored and if there is enough of a pile then a special dividend may be given out though some corporate structures like REITs force dividends to maintain their tax status. Note the payment in dividend here requires that the President be able to dictate what happens with the cash in the bank of a company which isn't going to be the case for the regular employee. Also, the dividends here would go to all the shareholders and thus if there are people besides the President owning shares they would also get their portion based on what they own.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "de92587f4c34d0733ffc73a07c95127c", "text": "FICA/SE taxes are not 30%. They are at most ~15%, including the employer portion. Employer also pays FUTA tax, and has additional payroll expenses (like fees and worker compensation insurance). The employee's FICA portion is limited up to a certain level of earnings (110100 this year, IIRC). Above it you only pay medicare taxes, not social security. S-Corp earnings are not taxed at 15%, these are not dividends. They're taxed at your ordinary income rate. You don't pay SE taxes on it, that's the only difference. I hope you're talking about tax treatment decision, because there are entirely different factors to keep in mind when you're organizing a business and making a decision between being it a LLC or a corporation. I believe you should pay some money to get a real advice that would apply to you, from a EA/CPA who would be doing the number-crunching (hopefully correctly). I'm a tax practitioner, and this answer was not intended or written to be used, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer, for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a8ee07f460a8a1fe9480e40afe4f4815", "text": "Profit after tax can have multiple interpretations, but a common one is the EPS (Earnings Per Share). This is frequently reported as a TTM number (Trailing Twelve Months), or in the UK as a fiscal year number. Coincidentally, it is relatively easy to find the total amount of dividends paid out in that same time frame. That means calculating div cover is as simple as: EPS divided by total dividend. (EPS / Div). It's relatively easy to build a Google Docs spreadsheet that pulls both values from the cloud using the GOOGLEFINANCE() function. I suspect the same is true of most spreadsheet apps. With a proper setup, you can just fill down along a column of tickers to get the div cover for a number of companies at once.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1688f9cf850d8748e0e64f5e5f7b0f5a", "text": "If you were looking to maximize your ability to save in a qualified plan, why not setup a 401K plan in Company A and keep the SEP in B? Setup the 401K in A such that any employee can contribute 100% of their salary. Then take a salary for around 19K/year (assuming under age 50), so you can contribute and have enough to cover SS taxes. Then continue to move dividends to Company A, and continue the SEP in B. This way if you are below age 50, you can contribute 54K (SEP limit) + 18K (IRA limit) + 5500 (ROTH income dependent) to a qualified plan.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "88ec8414da1e0a42a4da03f9edf304eb", "text": "\"For MCD, the 47¢ is a regular dividend on preferred stock (see SEC filing here). Common stock holders are not eligible for this amount, so you need to exclude this amount. For KMB, there was a spin-off of Halyard Health. From their IR page on the spin-off: Kimberly-Clark will distribute one share of Halyard common stock for every eight shares of Kimberly-Clark common stock you own as of the close of business on the record date. The deal closed on 2014-11-03. At the time HYH was worth $37.97 per share, so with a 1:8 ratio this is worth about $4.75. Assuming you were able to sell your HYH shares at this price, the \"\"dividend\"\" in the data is something you want to keep. With all the different types of corporate actions, this data is extremely hard to keep clean. It looks like the Quandl source is lacking here, so you may need to consider looking at other vendors.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "718a647db098e2f1212a0d763e4bc22c", "text": "\"Here's what you do without, on the negative side, just for balance: A bill: When I last had comprehensive insurance, it cost something like 3-4% of the value of the car per annum. (Obviously ymmv enormously but I think that's somewhere near the middle of the range and I'm not especially risky.) So, compared to the total depreciation and running costs of the car, it's actually fairly substantial. Over the say 10 years I might keep that car, it adds up to a fair slice of what it will take to buy a replacement. Financial crisis costs: I don't know about you, but my insurance went up something like 30% in recent years, despite the value-insured and the risk going down, said by the insurer to be due to market turmoil. So, at least hundreds of dollars is just kind of frictional loss, and I'd rather not pay it. Wrangling with the insurer: if you have insurance and a loss, you have to persuade them to pay out, perhaps document the original conditions or the fault, perhaps argue about whether their payment is fair. I've done this for small (non-automotive) claims, and it added up to more hassle than the incident itself. Obviously all insurers will claim they're friendly to deal with but until you actually have a big claim you never know. Moral hazard: I know I'm solely responsible for not having my car crashed or stolen. Somehow that just feels better. Free riders: I've seen people \"\"fudge\"\" their insurance claims so that things that shouldn't have been covered were claimed to be. You might have too. Buy insurance and you're paying for them. Choice: Insurers are typically going to make the decision for you about whether a claim is repairable or not, and in my experience are reluctant or refuse to just give you the cash amount of the claim. (See also, moral hazard.) Do it yourself and you can choose whether to live with it, make a smaller or larger repair, or replace the whole vehicle with a second hand one or a brand new one, or indeed perhaps do without a vehicle. A distraction: Hopefully by the time you've been working for a while, a vehicle is not a really large fraction of your net worth. If you lose 10% of your net worth it's not really nice but - well, you could easily have lost that off the value of your house or your retirement portfolio in recent years. What you actually need to insure is genuinely serious risks that would seriously change your life if they were lost, such as your ability to work. For about the same cost as insuring a $x car, you can insure against $x income every year for the rest of your life, and I think it's far more important. If I have a write-off accident but walk away I'll be perfectly happy. And, obviously, liability insurance is important, because being hit for $millions of liabilities could also have a serious impact. Coverage for mechanical failures: If your 8yo car needs a new transmission, insurance isn't going to help, yet it may cost more than the typical minor collision. Save the money yourself and you can manage those costs out of the same bucket. Flexibility: If you save up to replace your car, but some other crisis occurs, you can choose to put the money towards that. If you have car insurance but you have a family medical thing it's no help. I think the bottom line is: insure against costs you couldn't cope with by yourself. There are people who need a car but can just barely afford it, but if you're fortunate enough not to be in that case you don't really need comprehensive insurance.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
9f2a2a9c628253b6d0af71084ed5b475
Creating a Limited company while still fully employed
[ { "docid": "cf6fcd8dd2402e5e78393771026d802e", "text": "I was just thinking ahead, can I apply for Limited company now, while fully time employed, and not take any business until I get a contract. Yes. You can open as many companies you want(assuming you are sane). There is no legal provisions regarding who can open a company. What happens if I create a company and it has no turnover at all? Does this complicate things later? After you open a company, you have to submit your yearly statements to Companies House, whether you have a billion pounds turnover or 0. If you claim VAT that has also to be paid after you register for VAT. VAT registration is another registration different from opening a limited company. Is it the same if I decided to take a 1,2 or x month holiday and the company again will not incur any turnover? Turnover is year end, so at the year end you have to submit your yearly results, whether you took a 12 month holiday or a week's holiday. Is it a OK to do this in foresight or should I wait weeks before actually deciding to search for contracts. No need to open a limited company now, if you are so paranoid. Opening a company in UK takes 5 minutes. So you can open a company after landing a contract.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f2f0e077c22de387bba03168f12f9c62", "text": "Can I apply for limited company now, while fully time employed, and not take any business until I get a contract? Some employment contracts may include non-compete clauses or similar which expressly forbid you engaging in other employment or becoming self-employed while simultaneously working for your current employer. You may want to check this out before making any moves to register as a limited company. You may forfeit long-term benefits (such as a pension) you have built up at your present employer if they catch wind of a conflict of interest. As noted in an earlier answer, the setup process for a limited company is extremely simple in the UK, so there is no reason you need to take these steps in advance of leaving your current employment. During my resignation period scout for contracts... Should I wait weeks before actually deciding to search for contracts? Depending on the type of IT work you intend to be contracting for, you may find yourself shut out from major work if you are not VAT registered. It is a requirement to register for VAT when you breach certain earnings limits (see HMRC's website) but you can voluntarily register with HMRC before these limits if you wish. Being VAT registered increases your bookkeeping and oversight requirements, which makes you appear more attractive to larger enterprises / corporations than a non-VAT registered firm. It also suggests some degree of stability and a plan to stick around for the long haul. This might be a catch-22 situation - if you want to get noticed and land the sizable contracts, you will almost certainly require a VAT registration regardless of your overall yearly earnings. It would be advisable to engage the services of a professional advisor before becoming VAT registered, but this and the subsequent professional advice you may require for putting in VAT claims may not be a fee you wish to pay upfront if you are only attracting a small volume of work.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3f18626e4be6df6a17d540cc9d98025c", "text": "You can register a limited company and leave it dormant, that's no problem. You just need to make sure that later on you notify HMRC within 3 months of any trading activity. As pointed out, you can register a company in a few hours now so I wouldn't worry about that. Your confusion about Private Limited Companies is understandable, it's often not made clear but UK formation services standard packages are always Private Limited by Shares companies. Limited by Guarantee is something else, and normally used by charities or non-profits only. See explanations here. Registering for VAT is optional until you reach the £81,000 turnover threshold but it can make your services more attractive to large companies - especially in your field of business. You should really seek professional advice on whether or not this is the best option for you.", "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": "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": "b2c28bf26ba5ea1a2b8b24af91d571f4", "text": "You need to set your status as self-employed the day you started online work. If that date is a little ambiguous (as is usually the case with online business), you can start with the day you first made any money. Yes, you can deduct expenses from your revenue. But you have to be sure that the expenses were purely business related. This is how it goes: You inform HMRC about the day you started work. HMRC will assign you a UTR (Unique Tax Reference) number. Depending on how much you make you might or might not need to pay Class 2 NI contributions. You'll need to tell HMRC how much you expect to earn in the current tax year. Finally, you'll need to complete a Self-Assessment at the end of the tax year. I highly recommend setting up a business banking account. Here is a link that discusses being part-time self-employed in the UK.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "68c4d6b201926c7dc2dbd6098be0d795", "text": "\"It is definitely legal, however none of such expenses will be allowed as a tax deduction for the corporation. Basically, you'll end up paying more to maintain the entity and pay taxes on its income (the rent you're paying to yourself as a corporation) at corporate rates, for no apparent benefit. Being the director/executive in the corporation will make you liable for whatever the corporation is liable, so liability isn't going away. The reason corporation is considered \"\"limited liability\"\" for owners is because shareholders are shielded from the corporate liability. Not directors or executives (which are explicitly not shielded).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b0c8d3728efd4fd11889096f3baabf9f", "text": "\"Your wages are an expense to your employer and are therefore 100% tax deductible in the business income. The company should not be paying tax on that, so your double-tax scenario, as described, isn't really correct. [The phrase \"\"double taxation\"\" with respect to US corporations usually comes into play with dividends. In that case, however, it's the shareholders (owners) that pay double. The answer to \"\"why?\"\" in that case can only be \"\"because it's the law.\"\"]\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "85f1ee03b67a2df86e96dbcec51a9f21", "text": "\"Assuming you are paying into and eligible to collect regular Employment Insurance benefits for the job in question, I don't see how owning a side business would, by itself, affect your ability to participate in the workshare program. Many people own dormant businesses ($0 revenue / $0 income), or businesses with insignificant net income (e.g. a small table at the flea market, or a fledgling web-site with up-front costs and no ad revenue, yet ;-) I think what matters is if your side business generated income substantial enough to put you over a certain threshold. Then you may be required to repay a portion of the EI benefits received through the workshare program. On this issue, I found the following article informative: How to make work-sharing work for you, from the Globe & Mail's Report on Business site. Here's a relevant quote: \"\"[...] If you work elsewhere during the agreement, and earn more than an amount equal to 40% of your weekly benefit rate, that amount shall be deducted from your work sharing benefits payable that week. [...]\"\" The definitive source for information on the workshare program is the Service Canada web site. In particular, see the Work-Sharing Applicant Guide, which discusses eligibility criteria. Section IV confirms the Globe article's statement above: \"\"[...] Earnings received in any week by a Work-Sharing participant, from sources other than Work-Sharing employment, that are in excess of an amount equal to 40% or $75 (whichever is greater) of the participant's weekly benefit rate, shall be deducted from the Work-Sharing benefits payable in that week. [...]\"\" Finally, here's one more interesting article that discusses the workshare program: Canada: Employment Law @ Gowlings - March 30, 2009.\"", "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": "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": "7ac28e80f3aded6c61b2c5c30003cc89", "text": "Sounds like they need to tighten the regulation around that and specify how long one can be off and tie that to further employment. In other words, you can't go off and come back to just quit, but need a specified time off, and a specified time back on the job. Beyond entry level, can't you hire contract workers for the interim? Surely the UK has temp agencies for just this sort of thing.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "83d700ae94fb9917fc1904ecdd1d0877", "text": "\"If you're really interested in the long-term success of your business, and you can get by in your personal finances without taking anything from the business for the time being, then don't. There is no \"\"legal requirement\"\" to pay yourself a prevailing wage if doing so would put the company out of business. it is common for a company's principals not to draw wages from the business until it is viable enough to sustain payroll. I was in that situation when I first began my business, so the notion that somehow I'm violating a law by being fiscally responsible for my own company is nonsense. Be wise with your new business. You didn't state why you feel the need to take some kind of payment out, but this can be a crucial mistake if it imperils your business or if that money could be better spent on marketing or some other areas which improve revenues. You can always create a salary deferral agreement between yourself and your own company which basically states that the company owes you wages but you are, for the time being, willing to defer accepting them until such time that the company has sufficient revenues to pay you. That's one solution, but the simplest answer is, if you don't need the money you're thinking of paying yourself, don't do it. Let that money work for you in the business so that it pays off better in the long run. Good luck!\"", "title": "" }, { "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": "0405c80b946e2a2c2c2ceae2b78ccae7", "text": "In a simple case as the sole UK resident director/shareholder of a company, with that company as your only income, you are usually best paying yourself a salary of the maximum tax free amount allowed under your tax code (~£11k for most people at present). On this you will have to pay some employer and employee National Insurance (NI) contributions (totalling around £1000). Your salary/employer NI counts as an expense, so that is taken off the company profits. You then pay corporation tax on the remainder (20%). The first £5k you take as dividends is tax free, the remainder at a lower tax rate than the equivalent combined income tax/NI (starting at 7.5% instead of 20% tax plus employee plus employer NI), giving a significant saving compared to salaried income even after corporation tax. To declare and pay the tax, you would need to complete a self-assessment tax return. Your company will also need to file a return. The Contractor UK website, although aimed at IT contractors, has some very useful information on operating Ltd companies. That said, finances are rarely that simple so I would concur with the recommendation you engage an accountant, which is a tax-deductible expense.", "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": "0239db99a14304f9c2d2c4e5f0e8cc2e", "text": "\"We use Cater Allen for our business banking (recommended/introduced by our accountants so we've saved the standard \"\"minimum funds per month\"\" limit) which was set up all remotely - our accountants sent us the forms (which you can get from Cater Allen's site), we photocopied the identity documents (driving licence etc) and sent them off. Within a couple of weeks we had the account open. Cater Allen hasn't got any physical branches, so that's \"\"one way\"\" of working around the \"\"come into a branch\"\" solution - pick a bank without branches! Girobank (which became Alliance and Leicester Business Banking and then became part of Santander) used to allow all account creations remotely - but that was back in the 90s and I've got no idea if Santander still do. Since you've setup an Ltd company, you are probably looking for an accountant too (even if it just to do your year end or payroll) - ask them for their recommendations.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "57abae6c2d43dc8a8a1ff90716c636d9", "text": "Wow, that is filled with misinformation. What are you trying to achieve here? L1 has a 5yr limit, and requires a ton of evidence to support the fact that you were previously working in a managerial/executive function with the same parent company. In order to prove that, you need to be making a reasonably large salary too. It has to be applied for by the employing company, through a lawyer. What a load of hogwash, don't write about topics you have no knowledge of.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
4efaff3bfe6b10763e4e59a184ded7df
Best Practices for Managing Paper Receipts
[ { "docid": "f544b73053ef55810b85675372d3150a", "text": "I store all my receipts digitally, and make sure to input them into accounting program sooner than later, just so I don't forget about it. For practical purposes, the two important things are: Any kind of a digital system makes this pretty easy, even just putting the sums in a spreadsheet and the receipts into files with the date in the name. However, because it's easy enough, I also have a box where I stuff the paper receipts. I expect never to need them, but should something very weird happen to my computer and backups, they would be there.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "b941ec8a64dd8a7efd3690dab33cd768", "text": "Try the following apps/services: Receipt Bank (paid service, gathers paper receipts, scans them and processes the data), I've tested it, and it recognizing receipts very well, taking picture is very quick and easy, then you can upload the expenses into your accounting software by a click or automatically (e.g. FreeAgent), however the service it's a bit expensive. They've apps for Android and iPhone. Expentory (app and cloud-based service for capturing expense receipts on the move),", "title": "" }, { "docid": "39efebb7c6e866b8c97268e70ed69f1e", "text": "I'm trying to organize my financial papers as well. I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap and it's tearing through my papers like a hot knife through butter (i.e. awesome). Here's how I'm addressing organizing the paper. I'm organizing mine a little bit organically. Here are the main parts: So anyway, all that to say that it's not necessary to organize the files to the hilt. If you want to, that's fine too, but it's a tradeoff: up-front organization for possibly some time savings later. The search function available is decreasing the advantage of organizing your files carefully. If throwing all of your files in a digital pile makes your skin crawl, then I won't force you otherwise, but I'm not worried about it for the time being. What you're doing with the other tracking sounds fine to me. Others may have different insights there.", "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": "318a10dcf31d185fb02673649998132a", "text": "Depends on the type of documents, if they are just sales flyers you can email/post on website etc. IF they are medial records or some other sensitive information you need to have something with access controls encryption and logging/auditing capabilities... Some places use sharepoint or just have a shared drive where the docs are stored.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1d27970c7bb23fd79499c7f484c5da1b", "text": "First, I try to keep electronic records (with appropriate backups) whenever it seems feasible: utility bills, credit card statements, bank statements, etc. This greatly cuts down on storage space, and are kept forever. For hard copy records, it depends on the transaction. I try to balance filing time and recover time, by how likely it is that I will need to access a record in the future. I'm much less likely to need the receipt for this mornings coffee at Starbucks than I am to need the utility bill for my rental property (100%, come tax time). For instance, by default I file my credit card receipts, that don't get filed elsewhere, by year with all cards kept together, and cull them after 5-7 years. I keep all of the credit card receipts, just because it is less effort for me than making a decision about what to keep and what to discard. I put them in an accordion file by month of charge, and keep two, for the current year and previous years. At the beginning of each year, I get rid of the receipts in the oldest file and reuse it. Anything that needs to be kept longer that a couple of years gets filed separately. Certain records are kept together. For example, car repair/maintenance receipts are filed by vehicle and kept for the life of the vehicle (could be useful when its sold, to provide the repair history). All receipts for the rental property are kept together, organized by account. I'll keep these until the property is sold. All tax related receipts that don't have a specific file are kept together, by year, along with the tax return.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ad9394be1f239ad6444fe6793dd0dcaa", "text": "\"We're in much the same boat as you. We do make use of the transaction download feature of our software, but we don't let it auto-enter the amounts. We use the downloaded transactions to make entering our receipts easier. We each take responsibility for entering our own transactions, and then I go through and download bills, reconcile statements and such. I'm the numbers person in our house, so it's easier for me to take care of this stuff. We have all of our bills on auto-pay so that we don't have to worry about payments not getting made if we don't have time to get to our banking tasks on time. I try to set aside time on Saturday afternoon while my kids have their \"\"screen time\"\", or I'll do it in the evening after the kids are in bed. This year, my wife has been much busier and hasn't had as much time to keep up with her data entry, so we've been doing less well at keeping up with things. Something we're considering (and this might work for you as well) is to use the envelope system for the categories where we're most in danger of over-spending. This way. we would have an easy way to see if we'd overspent a category even if we were behind on our data entry. If you're not familiar with the envelope system, respond here and I'll explain it further.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4217855657af5723dd47f882f3a402fb", "text": "\"There is not one right way. It depends on the level of detail that you need. One way would be: Create the following accounts: When you pay the phone bill: When you are paid with the reimbursement: That is, when you pay the phone bill, you must debit BOTH phone expense to record the expense, and also reimbursements due to record the fact that someone now owes you money. If it's useful you could add another layer of complexity: When you receive the bill you have a liability, and when you pay it you discharge that liability. Whether that's worth keeping track of depends. I never do for month-to-month bills. Afterthought: I see another poster says that your method is incorrect because a reimbursement is not salary. Technically true, though that problem could be fixed by renaming the account to something like \"\"income from employer\"\". The more serious problem I see is that you are reversing the phone expense when you are reimbursed. So at the end of the year you will show total phone expense as $0. This is clearly not correct -- you did have phone expenses, they were just reimbursed. You really are treating the expense account as an asset account -- \"\"phone expenses due to be reimbursed by employer\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "11668b70c0ecdd334a253db99038c8ab", "text": "Attempting to treat every BU as a profit center is doomed for failure. Some of the record keeping for charge back models are good for data collection and any BU that primarily acts as a profit center can easily do charge backs with other BUs that utilize their services (say a publishing company asking the BU in charge of printing to provide some internal material). If the business function is not a core competency and is not a profit driver it is a cost center and should be treated as such. For cost center based BUs record keeping, budgeting and controlling your commitments are key however you have a higher chance of being jerked around in some scenarios, this really comes down to the kinds of leadership around the BU.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5892a6b97d54e8ad76db42787b8e4aa0", "text": "After talking to two CPAs it seems like managing it using an imprest system is the best idea. The base characteristic of an imprest system is that a fixed amount is reserved and later replenished as it runs low. This replenishment will come from another account source, e.g., petty cash will be replenished by cashing a cheque drawn on a bank account. Petty cash imprest system allows only the replenishment of the spend made. So, if you start the month with €100 in your petty cash float and spend €90 of that cash in the month, an amount of €90 will be then placed in your petty cash float to bring the balance of your petty cash float back to €100. The replenishment is credited to the primary cash account, usually a bank account (Dr - Petty Cash a/c, Cr - Bank a/c) and the debits will go to the respective expense accounts, based on the petty cash receipt dockets (Dr- Expense a/c, Cr - Petty Cash a/c). In a non imprest system where a fixed amount is issued every month, e.g., €100 every time cash is required, there is no incentive to ensure all money issued has been documented because when money is all spent a check for a fixed amount is issued. It is much more difficult to reconcile a non imprest system as you never know how much exactly should be in the float. In an imprest system the amount requested is documented, the documentation being the petty cash dockets and their associated receipts or invoices. So at all times you can check how much should be left in the petty cash float by deducting the amount spent from the opening petty cash float.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4a34fbc4103ce3d39567284a17480747", "text": "\"Your debits and credits are perfect. Now, it comes down to a choice of how you want your accounts organized, financially speaking. In terms of taxes, it's recommended you keep a separate set of books just like a corporation and account for them strictly according to law. It's best not to credit phone expenses since it will no longer show on your net reports. A better alternative would be \"\"Phone reimbursement\"\". With that, you can not only see if you've been compensated but also how much you're personally managing these expenses by checking the annual \"\"Phone expense\"\" account. This is all up to personal preference, but so long as you're properly balancing your accounts, you can introduce any level of resolution you wish. I prefer total resolution when it comes to financial accounting. Also, it is not good practice to debit away \"\"Salary\"\". The net of this account will be lower and distorted. An expense reimbursement is not salary anyways, so the proper bookings will follow below. Finally, if GnuCash is calling \"\"Salary\"\" an income account, this is unfortunate. The proper label would be \"\"revenue\"\" since \"\"income\"\" is a net account of expenses from revenue in the income identity. Entries With this, your books will become clearer: your cash assets will remain as clear as you had organized them, but now your income statement will provide higher resolution.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d39558707c99370df964113c766d448b", "text": "Some other ratios: * Cost per customer (expenses divided by attendance) * Attendance variance year over year * Payroll minutes per patron Not sure if those help. They have a bunch of smaller performance tracking stats from % of waste from inventory to employee performance. From talking with my roommate, the theater industry sounds awfully familiar to how the hotel industry tracks it's performance. The hotel industry tracks performance based on occupancy and room revenue. Theaters track performance based on attendance and concession revenue.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0ff87b4504eaa0cf33d2b696582f47ef", "text": "\"I think the \"\"right\"\" way to approach this is for your personal books and your business's books to be completely separate. You would need to really think of them as separate things, such that rather than being disappointed that there's no \"\"cross transactions\"\" between files, you think of it as \"\"In my personal account I invested in a new business like any other investment\"\" with a transfer from your personal account to a Stock or other investment account in your company, and \"\"This business received some additional capital\"\" which one handles with a transfer (probably from Equity) to its checking account or the like. Yes, you don't get the built-in checks that you entered the same dollar amount in each, but (1) you need to reconcile your books against reality anyway occasionally, so errors should get caught, and (2) the transactions really are separate things from each entity's perspective. The main way to \"\"hack it\"\" would be to have separate top-level placeholder accounts for the business's Equity, Income, Expenses, and Assets/Liabilities. That is, your top-level accounts would be \"\"Personal Equity\"\", \"\"Business Equity\"\", \"\"Personal Income\"\", \"\"Business Income\"\", and so on. You can combine Assets and Liabilities within a single top-level account if you want, which may help you with that \"\"outlook of my business value\"\" you're looking for. (In fact, in my personal books, I have in the \"\"Current Assets\"\" account both normal things like my Checking account, but also my credit cards, because once I spend the money on my credit card I want to think of the money as being gone, since it is. Obviously this isn't \"\"standard accounting\"\" in any way, but it works well for what I use it for.) You could also just have within each \"\"normal\"\" top-level placeholder account, a placeholder account for both \"\"Personal\"\" and \"\"My Business\"\", to at least have a consistent structure. Depending on how your business is getting taxed in your jurisdiction, this may even be closer to how your taxing authorities treat things (if, for instance, the business income all goes on your personal tax return, but on a separate form). Regardless of how you set up the accounts, you can then create reports and filter them to include just that set of business accounts. I can see how just looking at the account list and transaction registers can be useful for many things, but the reporting does let you look at everything you need and handles much better when you want to look through a filter to just part of your financial picture. Once you set up the reporting (and you can report on lists of account balances, as well as transaction lists, and lots of other things), you can save them as Custom Reports, and then open them up whenever you want. You can even just leave a report tab (or several) open, and switch to it (refreshing it if needed) just like you might switch to the main Account List tab. I suspect once you got it set up and tried it for a while you'd find it quite satisfactory.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6a1dba7c884abf417ef6c4dc0a2bedd7", "text": "You need receipts only if you claim deductions in the itemized deductions section based on them. You itemize deductions only if your claims exceed the standard deduction (which for a single person was $5,800 last year). Even then, you need receipts for everything only if you claim sales tax as the deduction (you have to buy really a lot to pass $5K with sales tax...). I would expect people to pay more in state income taxes than sales taxes (you can claim either this or that, not both). For food - there are no taxes (at least here in California), so nothing to deduct anyway. In any case, you can always scan your receipts and keep them in the computer, for just in case, but IMHO it's waste of time, pixels and gigabytes. Here's a question which deals with the same issue, read the answers there as well.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d072016a2ccc2726e7b3018546b815db", "text": "I'd imagine you want to keep the utility bills around to dispute any historical billing errors or anomalies for perhaps 6 months to a year. Beyond that, you always have the financial records of making the payments -- namely, your bank statements. So what benefit is there in keeping the paper receipts for utility payments around for longer than that? I say shred them, with extreme prejudice -- while wearing black Chuck Norris style.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "93f3dcda2f0d75ba43f7c7d5741bb049", "text": "\"I think the survey needs to be broken down to \"\"as a consumer...\"\" and \"\"as a merchant...\"\" I'm not sure any service like the one you propose can be really implemented on the consumer side. In particular, I suspect few if any consumers would pay for the privilege You might look into the company \"\"Neat\"\" who sold a specialized scanner and software package designed around organizing reciepts a while back. Retailer buy-in is a huge factor too. You can create a platform and encourage retailers to send reciepts via email or whatever, but at the end of the day, a lot of retailers still see value in a reciept 5x as long as it should be to itemize the 22 ways you \"\"saved money\"\" and the 19 cross-promotions or coupons they want to inform you of. Unless you can provide equal percieved value for them, they won't be interested, even if consumers like the concept. The classic example in this debate is the US chain \"\"CVS Pharmacy\"\"-- whose long reciepts are the butt of many jokes, but persist because they're part of an elaborate reward scheme where they give people coupons in the hopes of them coming back to use them. As for the smaller vendors who may not be as tied to such strategies, they're also likely going to be less technically equipped to cope with a new feature. You almost need to target the POS vendors like NCR and IBM-- if you can make \"\"electronic reciept\"\" a feature in their platform, it becomes something that hundreds of stores are getting built into their systems for \"\"free\"\" and they just have to turn it on. That's a lot easier than selling to every single retailer one at a time, and it would be a big enough launch that you could start to get customer preference\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
c8cfc05bef90726ed9bfbb0a91380e15
Travel expenses for an out-of-state rental
[ { "docid": "ee21749916f89670ecfa90cfb2e9c360", "text": "\"While the question is very localized, I'll answer about the general principle. My main question is with how far away it is (over 1000 miles), how do I quantify the travel expenses? Generally, \"\"necessary and ordinary\"\" expenses are deductible. This is true for business and also true for rentals. But what is necessary and what is ordinary? Is it ordinary that a landlord will manage the property 1000 miles away by himself on a daily basis? Is it ordinary for people to drive 1000 miles every week? I'd say \"\"no\"\" to both. I'd say it would be cheaper for you to hire a local property manager, thus the travel expense would not be necessary. I would say it would be cheaper to fly (although I don't know if its true to the specific situation of the OP, but as I said - its too localized to deal with) rather than drive from Texas to Colorado. If the OP thinks that driving a thousand miles is indeed ordinary and necessary he'll have to justify it to the IRS examiner, as I'm sure it will be examined. 2 trips to the property a year will be a nearly 100% write-off (2000 miles, hotels, etc). From what I understood (and that is what I've been told by my CPA), IRS generally allows 1 (one) trip per year per property. If there's an exceptional situation - be prepared to justify it. Also, keep all the receipts (like gas, hotel, etc.... If you claim mileage but in reality you took a flight - you'll get hit hard by the IRS when audited). Also while I'm up there am I allowed to mix business with pleasure? You cannot deduct personal (\"\"pleasure\"\") expenses, at all. If the trip is mainly business, but you go out at the evening instead of staying at the hotel - that's fine. But if the trip is \"\"business\"\" trip where you spend a couple of hours at your property and then go around having fun for two days - the whole trip may be disallowed. If there's a reasonable portion dedicated to your business/rental, and the rest is pleasure - you'll have to split some of the costs and only deduct the portion attributed to the business activities. You'll have to analyze your specific situation, and see where it falls. Don't stretch the limits too much, it will cost you more on the long run after all the audits and penalties. Can I also write off all travel involved in the purchase of the property? Although, again, the \"\"necessary and ordinary\"\" justification of such a trip is arguable, lets assume it is necessary and ordinary and generally justified. It is reasonable to expect you to go and see the property with your own eyes before the closing (IMHO, of course, I'm not an authority). Such an expense can be either business or investment expense. If its a business expense - its deductible on schedule C. If its an investment expense (if you do buy the property), its added to the cost of the property (capitalized). I'm not a tax adviser or a tax professional, and this is not a tax advice. This answer was not written or intended to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of avoiding any tax related penalties that may be imposed on you or any other person under the Internal Revenue Code. You should seek a professional consultation with a CPA/Attorney(tax) licensed in your State(s) or a Federally licensed Enrolled Agent (EA).\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "33605c894c6520ec288ce3cfc68ac6f0", "text": "Does allowing family to stay at the rental jeopardize my depreciation? No, accumulated depreciation that hasn't been deducted reduces your basis in the event of sale. That doesn't go anywhere. Accumulating more may not be allowed though. If the property is no longer rental (i.e.: personal use, your family member lives there for free), you cannot claim expenses or depreciation on it. If you still rent it out to your family member, but not at the fair market value, then you can only claim expenses up to the rental income. I.e.: you can only depreciate up to the extent the depreciation (after all the expenses) not being over the income generated. You cannot generate losses in such case, even if disallowed. If you rent to your family member at the market rate (make sure it is properly documented), then the family relationship really doesn't matter. You continue accumulating expenses as usual.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9cb55c78006443f2de98a78d5f4c745f", "text": "\"Find approximate housing-cost difference, which is likely to swamp the tax differences. Find a cost-of-living measurement you believe for each state and figure appropriate state's sales tax on the non-housing portion of it (numbers can be found on line). Figure out roughly what your state income tax would be (forms on line). Figure city sales tax for each city you'd live in (again, numbers on line). Determine transportation cost differences. Determine entertainment cost differences (\"\"First prize: one week in Hackensack. Second prize: TWO weeks!\"\") Mix and add seasonings to taste... Then remember that many people commute into the City, including from NJ, so run the numbers that way... and think about how much time you're willing to spend communting every day (and via which forms of transportation); the worse the commute, the less housing costs. Then remember that companies in NYC are aware of all the above, and are likely to adjust their salaries to partly offset it... because otherwise they couldn't recruit anyone who wasn't already a Noo Yawker... so the real question here is whether their adjustment, plus not living in Noo Joisey, is enough to make up the difference for you. To get more accuracy than that, you need to start nailing down specifics. Possible. Not trivial.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "eb16551aaaa62f19ddaf2a03ef09ae10", "text": "It is not a question of where you have your driver's license. It is a question of the states' tax related residency rules. (Though a driver's license can be a part of that question.) Since you likely have a residence in NYC and so can prove residency through a lease, bills, etc., you probably have to file as a NYS/NYC resident. I do have to question your maintaining a California driver's license if you are not a resident. If you are attempting to maintain dual-residency, look into both states' residency rules to see if you are liable for taxes in both states. California seems particularly picky about these types of situations, probably due to concerns that you may be trying to circumvent California taxes. That said, it usually revolves around income in the state. Of course, if you maintain residency in California as well, the argument can be made that you owe some taxes due to the fact that you take advantage of state services. (E.g. you drive on California roads.) I suggest you consult a tax professional knowledgeable in these issues to sort out the details.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f395c55d7f9fd1f519a973966956ddbe", "text": "The relevant IRS publication is pub 463. Note that there are various conditions and exceptions, but it all starts with business necessity. Is it necessary for you to work from the UK? If you're working from the UK because you wanted to take a vacation, but still have to work, and would do the same work without being in the UK - then you cannot deduct travel expenses. It sounds to me like this is the case here.", "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": "8bd2e1f9d7a5d44921dab05154ef824a", "text": "As I posted above: Assumes using an A380 with 154 seats, flying from NY to Washington DC *All dollar amounts assume PER PERSON* $2.50 - in fuel costs. $1.50 - in crew costs. $13.50 - in takeoff/landing fees in JKF and Dulles. $6.00 - Domestic passenger tax. $4.00 - Domestic Flight Segment Tax. $5.50 - 9/11 Security Fee. $11.50 - in Flight Cycle payment. $14.00 - Airplane maintenance. $10.00 - Overall operations overhead (conservative estimate) $0.25 - Insurance. **Our very rough grand total is!!**... $68.75 Lets just round up to $70.. for other small things not covered.. Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oe8T3AvydU", "title": "" }, { "docid": "eb19bc4e2cb5eac7b2d169fad8d2cfc1", "text": "Pro-Tip: You can get free reservations from many major rental companies (no credit card required, no cancellation fee even if you no call/no show), so you can often make redundant bookings to have fallback options. As discussed elsewhere in this thread any or all of those reservations might end up being worthless, but people with a reservation generally get priority over people without one, so it's at least slightly better than nothing.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "137304a6d70a9b27ece9809f15ac64d2", "text": "I think your math is fine, and also consider insurance costs and the convenience factor of each scenario. Moving a car frequently to avoid parking tickets will become tedious. I'd rather spend an hour renting a car 20 times in a year rather than have to spend 15 minutes moving a car every three days. And if there's no other easy parking, that 15 minutes can take a lot longer. Plus it'll get dirty sitting there, could get vandalized. Yuck. For only 20 days/year, I don't see how owning a car is worth the hassle. I recommend using a credit card that comes with free car rental insurance.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d8f0a7821b298099eff5e8c6d8591334", "text": "If your landlord is OK with you subletting your apartment - then that's all that the landlord has to do with that. It doesn't really matter if the landlord is a private person or a publicly trade corporation/fund. No relevance at all. As to your own reporting - you're receiving rent. That is income to you. You can deduct the portion of your expenses (including rent) attributable to the area you rent out. All this goes to your Schedule E. Any positive remainder becomes your taxable income. Any deduction must be substantiated (i.e.: you'll have to keep all the receipts for all the expenses you used for the deduction for as long as the tax year is open, which is at least the next 3 years after filing).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f081fc5998cf8f0a6557d8a5c4132973", "text": "The cost of an extra 30 days is $1459.80", "title": "" }, { "docid": "02b0ae2add091e42b8d2135798eb3bc5", "text": "Prior to having children we did exactly what you describe. We would visit my mother in law about four to six times a year, a 350-mile-each-way trip for a weekend. We'd simply rent a car, drive down, drive back, return it, out $150 or so for the weekend, a total of under $1000 a year; far cheaper than owning. You should factor in whether you will save money, though, on things you might not immediately consider. Will you spend less on groceries, in particular, if you can drive to Costco or Sam's Club (or even just to a regular grocery store)? I doubt you'll save the cost of the car ($2000/year as you say), but it's possible it will factor into the mix. I definitely would discourage purchasing a new car, if you're considering the financial side primarily. I suspect you can get a used car - maybe the $10k car you would've sold - and spend more like $1000 a year on it, or less. I don't know if I'd go to the $5000 level as those in comments suggested, as if you're doing long trips you want something with higher than average reliability; but even a car like a 5 year old mid-level sedan, easily costing you less than $10k, would be fine and likely sell in 5 years for $5k itself while hopefully not having too much maintenance (especially if you choose something with lower mileage; shop around!). But even with those assumptions, 20 days a year of rental which you can probably get less than $50 rates on (particularly if you look at some of the car sharing options, Zipcar and Enterprise both allow you to do longer term rentals for reasonable prices) seems like a fine deal compared to the hassle of owning.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2165327c3c3f3f94f8d28852faad5bfd", "text": "Driver's license isn't relevant. If NYS considers you a part-year resident, they assess income tax on a pro rata basis. NY is broke now, so expect them to be really obnoxious about it if you make a lot of money. California probably has a similar policy. If you really make a lot of money, the demands of the states in these matters are insane. I've read of cases where a state has actually demanded that an individual provide documentation of their in-/out-of-state status for every day of the year!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e5e09b8f3f1df05950ad6b60037318e2", "text": "Utilities and cost of living vary from city to city but maybe not that much. For basic planning purposes you can probably figure to spend as much as you are now, maybe a little more. And adjust as needed when you get there. (And adjust if, for example, you're moving from a very low cost of living area or to a very high cost of living area.) The cost of housing varies quite a bit from city to city, but you can do this research using Zillow, Craigslist, other places. Now, on to moving itself. The cost of moving can vary hugely depending on how much stuff you have and how much work you want to do. On the cheap end, you can rent a U-Haul or one of those portable boxes that they plant outside your old house and move for you. You'll do all the packing/loading/unloading/unpacking yourself but it saves quite a bit of money. My family and I moved from Seattle to California last year using one of those portable box places and it ended up costing us ~$1400 including 30 days of storage at the destination while we looked for a place. We have a <1000 sq foot place with some furniture but not a huge amount and did all the packing/loading ourselves. If we had wanted full service where people come pack, load, unpack, etc, it could have been 2-3x that amount. (And if we had more stuff, it could have been a lot more expensive too. Try not to acquire too much stuff as you just end up having to move it around and take care of it all!) Your employer may cover moving expenses, ask about this when talking about job offers. Un-reimbursed moving expenses are tax-deductible in the US (even if you don't itemize). Since you're just starting out, your best bet is to overestimate how much you think things will cost, then adjust as you arrive and settle in for a few months. Try to save as much as you can, but remember to have fun too. Hope this helps!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "71bd8b7bb71148feb7f19174d08ae7fa", "text": "\"When I have a question about my income taxes, the first place I look is generally the Giant Book of Income Tax Information, Publication 17 (officially called \"\"Your Federal Income Tax\"\"). This looks to be covered in Chapter 26 on \"\"Car Expenses and Other Employee Business Expenses\"\". It's possible that there's something in there that applies to you if you need to temporarily commute to a place that isn't your normal workplace for a legitimate business reason or other business-related travel. But for your normal commute from your home to your normal workplace it has this to say: Commuting expenses. You cannot deduct the costs of taking a bus, trolley, subway, or taxi, or of driving a car between your home and your main or regular place of work. These costs are personal commuting expenses. You cannot deduct commuting expenses no matter how far your home is from your regular place of work. You cannot deduct commuting expenses even if you work during the commuting trip.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "420bdfb40a54706409ebf250ca7da92c", "text": "\"Generally, you pick the State which you're located at, because you'll have to register your LLC there in any case. In your case that would be either Colorado or Oklahoma - register as domestic in one, as foreign in the other. If your concern is anything other than mere convenience/costs - then you need to talk to a lawyer, however most State LLC laws are fairly alike (and modeled after the \"\"Uniform Limited Liability Company Act\"\". Keep in mind that most of the sites talking about \"\"forming LLC out of state\"\" are either sales sites or targeted to foreigners attempting to form a US company. All the cr@p you hear about forming in Delaware/Nevada/Wyoming - is useless and worthless for someone who's a resident of any of the US States. If you're a US resident - you will always have to register in the State you're located at and do the work at, so if you register elsewhere - you just need to register again in your home State. In your case you already span across States, so you'll have to register in two States as it is - why add the costs of registering in a third one?\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
6d082b2f95fbd4b5cdebb1a59fe58e6b
Do Online Currency Exchanges' registration with the government guarantee safety and reliability?
[ { "docid": "bc0682855ab73115a7ab506f3c255162", "text": "\"Government registering of financial institutions usually is to make the government safe (eg FINTRAC is watching for money laundering and financing terrorism) rather than to make it's customers safe. Most governments have many levels of registrations and regulatory bodies. The most stringent requirements are usually obligatory only for banks, and they indeed often include precautions for insuring customer's deposits. Even this insurances have limits, eg in most EU countries the state guarantees deposits up to 100kEUR. If you deposit more and the bank flops - you lose everything over the limit. Companies like forex or currency exchanges usually make their best effort to avoid as many regulations as possible, just because it's costly. If a given company does have guarantee funds and/or customer insurance, it should be advertised and explained on their website. However the whole issue of trust is misguiding. You don't have to \"\"trust\"\" in your grocery store to shop there. There is no government guarantee that the vegetables sold will be tasty. If you buy and the product fells short of your expectations, you call it a loss and start shopping elsewhere. Financial services are no different than any other product. I recommend to your aunt to start small and see how it works. If a service turns out well, she can increase the amount sent through exchange and decrease amount sent through bank. But still, it's always prudent to send eg $1000 every week instead of $4000 once a month. It's more time consuming and cumbersome than having your bank do it - but it's the safety and convenience you're paying premium for.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "ccef86861b5918e8ad02925f6b4ea9c4", "text": "Is there not some central service that tracks current currency rates that banks can use to get currency data? Sure. But this doesn't matter. All the central service can tell you is how much the rate was historically. But the banks/PayPal don't care about the historical value. They want to know the price that they'll pay when they get around to switching, not the last price before the switch. Beyond that, there is a transaction cost to switching. They have to pay the clearinghouse for managing the transaction. The banks can choose to act as a clearinghouse, but that increases their risk. If the bank has a large balance of US dollars but dollars are falling, then they end up eating that cost. They'll only take that risk if they think that they'll make more money that way. And in the end, they may have to go on the currency market anyway. If a European bank runs out of US dollars, they have to buy them on the open market. Or a US bank might run out of Euros. Or Yen. Etc. Another problem is that many of the currency transactions are small, but the overhead is fixed. If the bank has to pay $5 for every currency transaction, they won't even break even charging 3% on a $100 transaction. So they delay the actual transaction so that they can make more than one at a time. But then they have the risk that the currency value might change in the meantime. If they credit you with $97 in your account ($100 minus the 3% fee) but the price actually drops from $100 to $99, they're out the $1. They could do it the other way as well. You ask for a $100 transaction. They perform a $1000 transaction, of which they give you $97. Now they have $898 ($1000 minus the $5 they paid for the transaction plus the $3 they charged you for the transaction). If there's a 1% drop, they're out $10.98 ($8.98 in currency loss plus a net $2 in fees). This is why banks have money market accounts. So they have someone to manage these problems working twenty-four hours a day. But then they have to pay interest on those accounts, further eating into their profits. Along with paying a staff to monitor the currency markets and things that may affect them.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2933c48c4708a2ad6e4a280295b127d2", "text": "Selftrade does list them. Not sure if you'll be able to sign up from the US though, particularly given the FATCA issues.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "10ecf9570eab2bcf9769c9cd4862c2c3", "text": "Banks do of course incur costs on currency transactions. But they're not as high as the fee charged to the customer. Most banks in most places lose a lot of money on operating bank accounts for customers, and make the money back by charging more than their costs for services like currency exchange. If you don't choose to pay those fees, use an online service instead. But bear in mind that if everyone does so then banks will be forced to charge higher fees for current accounts.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6ce35d03492be82ba637153265746f74", "text": "I used Oanda.com for Forex trading a couple years ago. I am in the US but I think it's available in the UK as well. At the time, they had no commissions and their spreads were comparable or better than other brokers. The spreads would just quite considerably when a big event like a Fed meeting or the unemployment figures come out, but I suspect that that is the same everywhere (or they have constant spreads and reject trades). They did not push the high leverages like other brokers were at the time. I considered this to be very reputable, because though the profits to be gotten through 100:1 leverage are great advertising, the reality is that one unexpected spike and a newbie would lose a bunch of money in a margin call.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "eb719ae661b72d91b53f9b95c0b1c77f", "text": "In addition to there being no real guarantee on the guarantee page, note that the domain was registered on May 27, 2013, so there's no substantial track record of reliability. Finally, their Terms of Service explicitly note that they are not liable for loss of funds due to system malfunction, unauthorized access, etc. etc. Perfect Money is going out of their way to ensure they are offering no guarantees and will not be liable for any losses. How safe are your funds? You should not consider your funds to be safe if stored there. There's no guarantee you'll lose your funds, but no significant reason to believe you won't. Additionally, Perfect Money shut down access to all U.S. citizens on July 1st, 2013 with only two weeks of notice. Anyone who did not withdraw their money within this time lost access to it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bee965f0336fd3381165bf33273aa74d", "text": "\"OneTwoTrade is a binary option seller, and they are officially licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority. They are not in any way licensed or regulated as an investment, because they don't do actual investing. Is your money safe? If you mean will they take your money and run off with it, then no they probably won't just take your deposit and refuse to return any money to you for nothing - that would be a terrible way to make money for the long-term. If you mean \"\"will I lose my money?\"\" - oh yeah, you probably will! Binary options - outside of special sophisticate financial applications - are for people who think day trading has too little risk, or who would prefer online poker with a thin veneer of \"\"it's an investment!\"\" In the words of Forbes, Don't Gamble On Binary Options: If people want to gamble, that’s their choice. But let’s not confuse that with investing. Binary options are a crapshoot, pure and simple. These kinds of businesses run like a casino - there's a built-in house advantage, you are playing odds (which are against you), and the fundamental product is trying to bet on short-term volatility in financial markets. This is often ridiculously short-terms, measured in minutes. It's often called \"\"all or nothing options\"\", because if you bet wrong you lose almost everything - they give you a little bit of the money you bet back (so you will bet again, preferably with more of your own money). If you bet correctly you get a pay-out, just like in craps or roulette. If you are looking to gamble online, this is one method to do it. But this isn't investing, you are as mathematically likely to lose your money and/or become addicted as any other form of money-based gambling, and absolutely treat it the same way you would a casino: decide how much money you are willing to spend on the adventure before you start, and expect you'll likely not get much or any of that money back. However, I will moralize on this point - I really hate being lied to. Casinos, sports betting, and poker all generally have the common decency to call it what it is - a game where you are playing/betting. These sorts of \"\"investment\"\" providers are woefully dishonest: they say it's an exciting financial market, a new type of investment, investors are moving to this to secure their futures, etc. It's utterly deceptive and vile, and it's all about as up-front and honest as penny auction websites. If you are going to gamble, I'd urge you to do it with people who have the decency to to call it gambling and not lie to you and ask for a \"\"minimum investment\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0ee003abb9d3d266789513d9d7673856", "text": "\"Edit: I discovered Bitcoin a few months after I posted this answer. I would strongly recommend anyone interested in this question to review it, particularly the myths page that dispels much of the FUD. Original answer: Although it is not online, as a concept the Totnes Pound may be of interest to you. I live quite close to this village (in the UK) and the system it promotes does work well. According to the Transition Town Totnes website this means that it is \"\"a community in a process of imagining and creating a future that addresses the twin challenges of diminishing oil and gas supplies and climate change , and creates the kind of community that we would all want to be part of.\"\" If you are looking for a starting place to introduce a new type of currency, perhaps in response to over-dependence on oil and global trade, then reading about the Transition Towns initiative could provide you with the answers you're looking for.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bac039338b7d35deb88310614fc1cdde", "text": "Swaps form backstop to a shit load of int'l trade. Liquidity of currency is a huge factor in being a govt reserve currency, which USD currently has the VAST majority of holdings. This agreement is a shove against USE dominance in trade settlements, which is negative. Also challenges us general capital markets dominance a bit", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1940348e30b01c2494e3e8aeb301fb11", "text": "\"Generally, yes. Rather than ask, \"\"why are these guys so cheap?\"\", you should be asking why the big names are so expensive. :) Marketing spend plays a big role there. Getting babies to shill for your company during the super bowl requires a heck of a lot of commissions. Due to the difficulties involved in setting up a brokerage, it's unlikely that you'll see a scam. A brokerage might go bankrupt for random reasons, but that's what investor insurance is for. \"\"Safeness\"\" is mostly the likelihood that you'll be able to get access to your funds on deposit with the broker. Investment funds are insured by SIPC for up to $500,000, with a lower limit on cash. The specific limits vary by broker, with some offering greater protection paid for on their own dime. Check with the broker -- it's usually on their web pages under \"\"Security\"\". Funds in \"\"cash\"\" might be swept into an interest-earning investment vehicle for which insurance is different, and that depends on the broker, too. A few Forex brokers went bankrupt last year, although that's a new market with fewer regulatory protections for traders. I heard that one bankruptcy in the space resulted in a 7% loss for traders with accounts there, and that there was a Ponzi-ish scam company as well. Luckily, the more stringent regulation of stock brokerages makes that space much safer for investors. If you want to assess the reliability of an online broker, I suggest the following: It's tempting to look at when the brokerage was founded. Fly-by-night scams, by definition, won't be around very long -- and usually that means under a few months. Any company with a significant online interface will have to have been around long enough to develop that client interface, their backend databases, and the interface with the markets and their clearing house. The two brokerages you mentioned have been around for 7+ years, so that lends strength to the supposition of a strong business model. That said, there could well be a new company that offers services or prices that fit your investment need, and in that case definitely look into their registrations and third-party reviews. Finally, note that the smaller, independent brokerages will probably have stiffer margin rules. If you're playing a complex, novel, and/or high-risk strategy that can't handle the volatility of a market crash, even a short excursion such as the 2010 flash crash, stiff margin rules might have consequences that a novice investor would rather pretend didn't exist.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "890e8e0a93a34ffc61874715ecaac7a2", "text": "\"You say you want a more \"\"stable\"\" system. Recall from your introductory economics courses that money has three roles: a medium of exchange (here is $, give me goods), a unit of account (you owe me $; the business made $ last year), and a store of value (I have saved $ for the future!). I assume that you are mostly concerned with the store-of-value role being eroded due to inflation. But first consider that most people still want regular currency, so as a medium of exchange or accounting unit anything would face an uphill battle. If you discard that role for your currency, and only want to store value with it, you could just buy equities and commodities and baskets of currencies and debt in a brokerage account (possibly using mutual funds) to store your value. Trillions of dollars' worth of business takes place this way every year already. Virtual currency was a bit of a dot-com bubble thing. The systems which didn't go completely bust and are still around have been beset by money-laundering, and otherwise remain largely an ignored niche. An online fiat currency has the same basic problem that another currency has. You need to trust the central bank not to create more money and cause inflation (or even just abscond with the funds... or go bankrupt / get sued). Perhaps the Federal Reserve may be jerking us around on that front right now.... they're still a lot more believable than a small private institution. Some banks might possibly be trustworthy enough to launch a currency, but it's hard to see why they'd bother (it can't be a big profit center, because people aren't willing to pay too much to just use money.) And an online currency that's backed by commodities (e.g. gold) is going to be subject to potentially violent swings in the prices of commodities. Imagine getting a loan out for your house, denominated in terms of e-gold, and then the price of gold triples. Ouch?\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5e05b8470e1f018fc6559664426d3d08", "text": "Are you serious? They're a US government department, of course they will always want USD. If they ever offer the option to pay in bitcoin it won't be at par, but with a significant fee on top of the amount you owe. And that fee will go specifically to what they will have to do which is turn around and convert your bitcoin into real money.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d53e34fe02d98329fad8b4a92043b8fb", "text": "not a chance. imagine how this could be abused. US stock exchanges rarely ever do any reversing of transactions. theres a million different ways the market can take your money. a loss from a typo is nothing special. its a mismanagement just like any other loss or profit for others.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "caad56ea6624dac4ebfb566becb8285e", "text": "When the market isn't allowed to favor one currency (provider) over another, there must be a central authority with the power to regulate, provide, and insure it. People don't learn the dangers of fractional reserve banking and the resulting expansions and contractions of the money supply when the providers of the currency aren't allowed to fall, taking the savings of depositors with them. Insuring people against the dangers of mismanaged money guarantees the mismanagement of money.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f7a562f90e6e5ccb498f28c8ecf5cb6a", "text": "I'm answering this from a slightly different angle, but there are people (individuals) who will do this for you. I know private Forex traders who are 'employed' to manage Forex trading accounts for wealthy individuals. The trader takes a percentage of the wins but is also responsible for a percentage of the loss (if there is a loss in a particular month). However the fact that the trader is able to prove that they have a consistent enough trading history to be trusted with the large accounts generally means that losses are rare (one would hope!). Obviously they have contracts in place (and the terms of the contract are crucial to the responsibility of losses) etc. but I don't know what the legalities are of offering or using this kind of service. I just wanted to mention it, while perhaps not being the best option for you personally, it does exist and matches your requirements. You would just have to be extremely careful to choose someone respectable and responsible, as it would be much easier to get ripped off while looking for a respected individual to trade your account than it would be while looking for a respected firm (I would imagine).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8cb84fc641cf335e2101b55a343905e7", "text": "\"*(\"\"Fee-only\"\" meaning the only money they make is the fee your folks pay directly; no kickbacks from financial products they're selling.) The answer to this is: for God's sake, leave it alone! I commend you on wanting to help your family avoid more losses. You are right, that having most of one's retirement in one stock or sector is just silly. And again yes, if they're retired, they probably need some bonds. But here's the thing, if they follow your advise and it doesn't work out, it will be a SERIOUS strain on your relationship. Of course you'll still be a family and they'll still love you, but emotionally, you are the reason they lost the money, and that will an elephant in between you. This is especially the case since we're talking about a lot of money here (presumably), and retirement money to boot. You must understand the risk you're taking with your relationships. If you/they lose, at best it'll make things awkward, and you'll feel guilty about their impoverished retirement. At worst it can destroy your relationship with your folks. What about if you win? Won't you be feted and appreciated by your folks for saving them from themselves? Yes, for a short while. Then life moves on. Everything returns to normal. But here's the thing. You won't win. You can't. Because even if you're right here, and they win, that means both they and you will be eager for you to do it again. And at some point they'll take a hit based on your advise. Can I be blunt here? You didn't even know that you can't avoid capital gains taxes by reinvesting stock gains. You don't know enough, and worse, you're not experienced enough. I deduce you're either a college student, or a recent grad. Which means you don't have experience investing your own money. You don't know how the market moves, you just know the theory. You know who you are? You're me, 20 years ago. And thank God my grandparents ignored my advise. I was right about their utilities stocks back then, too. But I know from what I learned in the years afterwards, investing on my own account, that at some point I would have hurt them. And I would have had a very hard time living with that. So, tell your folks to go visit a fee-only financial adviser to create a retirement plan. Perhaps I'm reading into your post, but it seems like you're enthusiastic about investing; stocks, bonds, building wealth, etc. I love that. My advise -- go for it! Pull some money together, and open your own stock account. Do some trading! As much as people grouse about it, the market really is glorious. It's like playing Monopoly, but for keeps. I mean that in the best way possible. It's fun, you can build wealth doing it, and it provides a very useful social purpose. In the spirit of that, check out these ideas (just for you, not for your folks!), based on ideas in your post: Good luck.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
8473bc37dcb77f0ef255314480e7e199
declaring payments to a credit card for a shared expense
[ { "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": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "c2e80c349518ee93dd52768ec917fa84", "text": "I would take each of these items and any others and consider how you would count it as an expense in the other direction. If you have an account for parking expenses or general transportation funds, credit that account for a refund on your parking. If you have an account for expenses on technology purchases, you would credit that account if you sell a piece of equipment as you replace it with an upgrade. If you lost money (perhaps in a jacket) how would you account for the cash that is lost? Whatever account would would subtract from put a credit for cash found.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6d0884103408e571b9a1cd40123973b7", "text": "\"There is no \"\"standard\"\" way for personal accounting. However, GNUCash default accounts set includes \"\"Expense: Adjustment\"\". It is usually used by the community for reconciliation of unknown small money lost.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c586d75c50139784c3060279ab46c069", "text": "Myself and my partner do things a little differently to most. We split accommodation and utilities payments by net income proportion to ensure that we both have the same amount of spending money. For example; The really important bit is net income. We take off a whole bunch of payments, e.g; Our contributions go into a joint account and the rest is our money to spend. The upshot is that we both get to enjoy the same minimum quality of life because we both get the same amount to spend at the bar.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "58348661c55700b23bf1552586d40b29", "text": "Assuming that it's not inventory that is sold in the following year or a depreciable asset, you can deduct it when you make the purchase. The courts have ruled that credit cards balances are considered debt. It's treated the same way as if you went to the bank, got a loan, and used cash or a check to purchase the items. On your accounting books, you would debit the expense account and credit the credit card liability account. This is only for credit cards, which are considered loans. If you use a store charge card, then you cannot deduct it until you pay. Those are considered accounts payable. I'm an IRS agent and a CPA.", "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": "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": "5620c024950487dff9344ee03c171ec5", "text": "I came across such a situation and I am still facing it. My friend borrowed my credit card for his expenses as he had misplaced his debit card and for the time being had asked for my credit card to handle the expenses he does. He paid for initial 2 months and then was not able to make payments, mainly due to not being able to arrange money or if it was a contri party, he would collect cash from friends but again spend the same. Months passes by... the bill had come upto 65k and calls from bank and other respective organizations Finally my dad came into picture and slowly the issue is resolving he has paid 50K remaining is still pending. So basically, the reason I shared this part of story was he is my Best friend and in order to not spoil our friendship I did not want to take any such step which would later on affect our friendship. This completely depends on the individuals how they react to the situation. Keeping Ego, superiority, favour sort of feelings and words apart things can be resolved between friends. You do not know what is the situation on the other side. Probably you can connect with him ask him to explain you why is not able to pay the debts and take action accordingly. If he is not able to provide a proper reason then you may take some actions like mentioned in initial answers, run after the assets he own or anything else.Stay Calm and patient. Do not take any such step which you would regret later on...!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "391c6bbe58835252d3fb6a42fa75191b", "text": "\"On mint, you can create your own tags for transactions. So, you could create a tag called \"\"reviewed\"\" and tag each transaction as reviewed once you review it. I've done something similar to this called \"\"reimbursable expense\"\" to tag which purchases I made on behalf of someone else who is going to pay me back.\"", "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": "61dba5aecad8bc42dfa6168de21ab588", "text": "\"For simplicity, let's start by just considering cash back. In general, cash back from credit cards for personal use is not taxable, but for business use it is taxable (sort of, I'll explain later). The reason is most personal purchases are made with after tax dollars; you typically aren't deducting the cost of what you purchased from your personal income, so if you purchase something that costs $100 and you receive $2 back from the CC company, effectively you have paid $98 for that item but that wouldn't affect your tax bill. However, since businesses typically deduct most expenses, that same $100 deduction would have only been a $98 deduction for business tax purposes, so in this case the $2 should be accounted for. Note, you should not consider that $2 as income though; that would artificially inflate your revenue. It should be treated as a negative expense, similar to how you would handle returning an item you purchased and receiving a CC refund. Now for your specific questions: Part 1: As a small business owner, I wish to attend an annual seminar to improve my business. I have enough credit card reward points to cover the airfare, hotel, and rental car. Will those expenses still be deductible at the value displayed on the receipt? Effectively no, these expenses are not deductible. If you deduct them they will be completely counter-acted by the \"\"refund\"\" you receive for the payments. Part 2: Does it matter if those points are accrued on my personal credit card, rather than a business credit card? This is where it gets hairy. Suppose your company policy is that employees make purchases with their own personal credit cards and submit receipts for reimbursement. In this case the employer can simply reimburse and would not know or care if the employee is racking up rewards/points/cashback. The trick is, as the employee, you must always purchase business related items normally so you have receipts to show, and if you receive cashback on the side there seems to be a \"\"don't ask, don't tell\"\" rule that the IRS is OK with. It works the same way with heavy business travelers and airline miles- the free vacations those users get as perks are not treated as taxable income. However, I would not go out of my way to abuse this \"\"loophole\"\". Typically, things like travel (airfare, hotel, car rental, meals) are expected. But I wouldn't go purchase 100 company laptops on your personal card and ask the company to reimburse you. The company should purchase those 100 laptops on a company card and effectively reduce the sale price by the cashback received. (Or more realistically, negotiate a better discount with your account rep and just cut them a check.) Part 3: Would there be any difference between credit card points and brand-loyalty points? If the rental car were paid for with points earned directly on the rental car company's loyalty system (not a CC), would that yield a different result? There is no difference. Perhaps the simplest way to think about this is you can only deduct an expense that you actually incur. In other words, the expense should show up on a bank or CC statement. This is why when you volunteer and work 10 hours for a charity, you can't call that a \"\"donation\"\" of any amount of money because there is no actual payment made that would show up on a bank statement. Instead you could have billed the charity for your 10 hours of work, and then turned around and donated that same amount back to them, but it ends up being a wash.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "39f3a8221f16c84c72aefff9e8144049", "text": "To quote the answer you linked to: Perhaps the simplest way to think about this is you can only deduct an expense that you actually incur. In other words, the expense should show up on a bank or CC statement. So, if your business purchased the $1000 gift card for $800, you should see a $800 charge appearing on a business CC or bank statement. You would therefore be able to deduct the $800, but not the full $1000 of items that you purchase with it. Side Notes:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bc7685ecec082bcae6aa5d12e0fb7397", "text": "Wow, I had never heard of this before but I looked into it a bit and Mikey was spot on. It seems that if you don't pay attention to the fine print when making credit card purchases (as most of us tend to skip) many companies have stipulations that allow continued charges if they are recurring fees (monthly, yearly, etc.) even after you have cancelled the card.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "687883f52451d0e23983d4a65459900d", "text": "If I were you, I would go to the bank right now, pay the $100 and close the account. I would stop the bleeding first then consider the fallout later. Do you own the account jointly with your partner(s) as a partner or does the partnership (a separate formal entity) own the bank account with you a named representative? Those are two very different situations. If you're a joint owner, you're liable for the fees; along with your other partners in accordance with your partnership agreement. You never closed yourself off the account and that's your problem. If the dissolved partnership owns the account, you're not personally liable for the fees. You were never a personal owner of the account, now that the account is negative you don't magically become personally liable. The differences here are very nuanced and the details matter. If this were a large amount of money I'd suggest you go see a lawyer. Since this is about $100 I'd just pay it, make sure the account is closed, and move on.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e47987fedce704887117e8a35ac05629", "text": "\"Credit reports have line items that, if all is well, say \"\"paid as agreed.\"\" A car loan almost certainly gets reported. In your case it probably says the happy \"\"paid as agreed.\"\" It will continue to say that if you pay it off in full. You can get the happy \"\"paid as agreed\"\" from a credit card too. You can get it by paying the balance by the due date every month, or paying the mininum, or anything in between, on time. But you'll blow less money in interest if you pay each bill in full each month. You don't have to carry a balance. In the US you can get a free credit report once a year from each of the three credit bureaus. Here's the way to do that with minimal upsell/cross-sell hassles. https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ In your situation you'd probably be smart to ask for a credit report every four months (from each bureau in turn) so you can see how things are going. They don't give you your FICO score for free, but you don't really care about that until you're going for a big loan, like for a condo. It might be good to take a look at one of those free credit reports real soon, as you prepare to close out your car loan. If you need other loans, consider working with a credit union. They sometimes offer better interest rates, and they often are diligent about making credit bureau reports for their good customers; they help you build credit. You mentioned wanting to cut back on insurance coverage. It's a worthy goal, but it's generally called \"\"self-insuring\"\" in the business. If you cancel your collision coverage and then wreck your car, you absorb the cost of replacing it. So think about your personal ability to handle that kind of risk.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "848ab8b6c4f59f784f99de5bb5c720c8", "text": "Unless you're running a self-employed business with a significant turnover (more than £150k), you are entitled to use cash basis accounting for your tax return, which means you would put the date of transactions as the payment date rather than the billing date or the date a debt is incurred. For payments which have a lag, e.g. a cheque that needs to be paid in or a bank transfer that takes a few days, you might also need to choose between multiple payment dates, e.g. when you initiated the payment or when it took effect. You can pick one as long as you're consistent: You can choose how you record when money is received or paid (eg the date the money enters your account or the date a cheque is written) but you must use the same method each tax year.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
799ecaf9db339be98568796c4881ac8b
Maxing out HSA after maxing out Roth IRA
[ { "docid": "a1aa8718c1ebbbe0f75c12946bfb92ec", "text": "Unless the hypothetical fellow is immune to disease, and indestructible, with no risk of injury, the HSA is an ideal place for this money. It offers a pretax deposit, and if used for medical expenses, a tax free withdrawal. This combination can't be beat for those who have the medical insurance that qualifies them for the HSA.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "31594816af776ae31246dff47b57b5a2", "text": "Your 1&2 are the end of that chapter. You can't convert for that year again, and must wait 30 days to convert in the new tax year. For example, each year for over a decade, I've helped my mother in law with this. In May, we convert a chunk of money/stock to Roth. In April, I'll recharacterize just enough so she tops off her 15% bracket but doesn't hit 25%. 30 days later, the new conversion happens. All the Roth money is money now taxed at 15%, which, in an emergency, a need for a lot of cash, will avoid the potential of 25% or higher, tax. You see, your 3 never really happens.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "53990967faa1ef5dd5726f5e2ff4db20", "text": "HSA's are one of the few accounts where the money is both tax free going in and coming out. For long term savings, the only account that might beat that is a 401(k) with an employer match. Unlike an FSA, the money can stay in the account indefinitely. You can also use the money to pay medical insurance premiums once you separate from the employer. An HSA combines the best features of a FSA, Roth account, and IRA/401(k) account. As such I think there is rarely a reason not to max one out, and in fact I think it is worth it to go out of your way to get access to one. There are some drawbacks, of course. If you don't use the money for medical expenses, it may be taxed and perhaps penalized. Getting access to one can be tricky (you have to be covered by an HDHP, but not by a non-HDHP, nor by an FSA). The low contribution limits make it hard to build up a large balance. Many providers charge a monthly fee of $1 to $4 if you want to invest the balance (small, but it adds up, especially given the low balance per previous sentence).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8062146412f4d4ad57595551d6a4f910", "text": "\"Unfortunately, not directly. For IRAs and HSAs, we have an annual maximum contribution limit. What you can do (which doesn't \"\"initially seed\"\" it) is to put the money aside in a savings account that you want to contribute to your HSA or IRA and then put it in the IRA or HSA when the timing is right for you. The key here though is that the contribution cannot exceed the maximum limit for the year. Another \"\"way around\"\" this (which really isn't because it just means that you'll have a new higher limit) is to become self employed, see this from the IRS about SEPs: Contribute as much as 25% of your net earnings from self-employment (not including contributions for yourself), up to $51,000 for 2013 ($52,000 for 2014). Still, none of these methods are pre-seeding an account, as the maximum contribution limit is never exceeded.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7d0e8d53edf2e9f986a2ccfd2d7a06d9", "text": "\"Do you think that you had previously been over-saving for retirement? If so, then the first time home buyers exemption might be a good opportunity for you to reverse that error. On the other hand, if you think you have been saving the right amount, or too little, for retirement, then why would you undo that savings? \"\"Because I can, under existing tax law\"\" seems like an inadequate answer. Remember that if you are anticipate to be maxing out your tax advantaged accounts in the near future, then such a distribution is a permanent loss of opportunity. You can't get the money back in. Are you thinking more clearly now, or were you thinking more clearly back when you decided to contribute to an IRA rather than build up a down-payment fund in the first place?\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b094f1270094c90abc105c28a7c6899d", "text": "I know in the instance that if my MAGI exceeds a certain point, I can not contribute the maximum to the Roth IRA; a traditional IRA and subsequent backdoor is the way to go. My understanding is that if you ever want to do a backdoor Roth, you don't want deductible funds in a Traditional account, because you can't choose to convert only the taxable funds. From the bogleheads wiki: If you have any other (non-Roth) IRAs, the taxable portion of any conversion you make is prorated over all your IRAs; you cannot convert just the non-deductible amount. In order to benefit from the backdoor, you must either convert your other IRAs as well (which may not be a good idea, as you are usually in a high tax bracket if you need to use the backdoor), or else transfer your deductible IRA contributions to an employer plan such as a 401(k) (which may cost you if the 401(k) has poor investment options).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d2cda0bf4fbd3580c0bac2416a6cea33", "text": "I would not suggest closing out your Roth IRA -- Couple of reasons for that - 1) Since you've been contributing to it for 15 years, your investments have probably grown, seen dividends, etc. If you close it out, you will owe taxes and be slapped with a 10% penalty on the growth (money you didn't contribute). That's quite a waste of hard earned money. 2) While your income may exceed the contribution limit of a Roth, you could do what's called a 'backdoor' Roth - which is really just converting your after tax contributions into an IRA into a Roth IRA. 3) Given the length of your contributions your Roth IRA is seasoned (5 years) This allows you to use up to 10k for your house if you chose. (Usually not an option people use) Other than that, consider paying off the student loans with the highest interest first.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "14ec6cac8c7da14b46e08507111a0ef2", "text": "Assuming you max-out your Roth IRA with $5000 in inflation-adjusted contributions every year from 25-65, your balance at age 65 will depend on the post-inflation return you get in the account. Assuming you withdraw 4% per year after that, here is what your income will be: (All numbers are in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars.) If your post-inflation return is zero - if you buy treasury bonds, money-market accounts, or something like that - you'll have a simple $5000 * 40 = $200,000, which will give you an income of around $8000 per year. If you get a 3% post-inflation return - e.g. fairly safe Muni bonds, corporate bonds, and boring stocks - you'll approximately double your money to around $393,000, giving you an income of over $15,000 per year. If you get a 6% return - e.g. more aggressive stocks and more risk-taking - you'll approximately double your money again to over $825,000. A 4% withdrawal rate will give you an income of around $33,000 per year. Stocks have historically returned around inflation + 8% - that will get you over $1.4 million - and an annual income of over $56,000 per year. So, yes, it is feasible to retire on nothing but a maxed-out Roth IRA.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2d57f3a9eae2a318daa394cf4b8d8175", "text": "IRS Publication 969 gives all the details about HSA accounts and High Deductible plans: According to your question you are covered by a plan that can have an HSA. There a few points of interest for you: Contributions to an HSA Any eligible individual can contribute to an HSA. For an employee's HSA, the employee, the employee's employer, or both may contribute to the employee's HSA in the same year. For an HSA established by a self-employed (or unemployed) individual, the individual can contribute. Family members or any other person may also make contributions on behalf of an eligible individual. Contributions to an HSA must be made in cash. Contributions of stock or property are not allowed. That means that yes you could make a contribution to the HSA. Or if in the future you were the provider of the insurance you could have a HSA. Limit on Contributions For 2015, if you have self-only HDHP coverage, you can contribute up to $3,350. If you have family HDHP coverage you can contribute up to $6,650. It sounds like you have a family plan. Additional contribution. If you are an eligible individual who is age 55 or older at the end of your tax year, your contribution limit is increased by $1,000. Rules for married people. If either spouse has family HDHP coverage, both spouses are treated as having family HDHP coverage. If each spouse has family coverage under a separate plan, the contribution limit for 2014 is $6,550. You must reduce the limit on contributions, before taking into account any additional contributions, by the amount contributed to both spouses' Archer MSAs. After that reduction, the contribution limit is split equally between the spouses unless you agree on a different division. The rules for married people apply only if both spouses are eligible individuals. If both spouses are 55 or older and not enrolled in Medicare, each spouse's contribution limit is increased by the additional contribution. If both spouses meet the age requirement, the total contributions under family coverage cannot be more than $8,550. Each spouse must make the additional contribution to his or her own HSA. Note: most of the document was written with 2014 numbers, but sometimes they mention 2015 numbers. If both are covered under a single plan it should be funded by the person that has the plan. They may get money from their employer. They may be able to have the employer cover the monthly fee that most HSA administrators charge. The non employee can make contributions to the account but care must be taken to make ure the annual limits aren't exceeded. HSA contributions from the employees paycheck may reduce the social security tax paid by the employee. If the non-employee is self employed you will have to see how the contribution impacts the social security situation for the couple. If the non-employee is 55 or older it can make sense to throw in that extra $1000. The employer may not allow it to come from the paycheck contributions because they wouldn't necessarily know the age of the spouse, they may put a maximum limit based on the age of the employee.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e2a2fe0109c08c64a110380f5b02751d", "text": "Much of this is incorrect. Aetna owns Payflex for starters, and it's your EMPLOYER who decides which banks and brokers to offer, not Payflex. An HSA is a checking account with an investment account option after a minimum balance is met. A majority of U.S. employers only OFFER an HSA option but don't contribute a penny, so you're lucky you get anything. The easy solution is just keep the money that is sent to your HSA checking account in your checking account, and once a year roll it over into a different bank's HSA. The vast majority of banks offer HSAs that have no ties to a particular broker (i.e. Citibank, PNC, Chase). I have all my HSA funds in HSA Bank which is online but services lots of employers. Not true that most payroll deductions or employer contributions go to a single HSA custodian (bank). They might offer a single bank that either contracts with an investment provider or lets you invest anywhere. But most employers making contributions are large or mid-market employers offering multiple banks, and that trend is growing fast because of defined contribution, private exchanges and vendor product redesigns. Basically, nobody likes having a second bank account for their HSA when their home bank offers one.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "de92e1a4ea311ce09e08ae3cb8f0d17f", "text": "Is it worth saving HSA funds until retirement? Yes Are there pros and cons from a tax perspective? Mostly pros. This has all of the benefits of an IRA, but if you use it for medical expenses then you get to use the money tax free on the other side. Retirement seems to be the time you are most likely to need money for medical expenses. So why wouldn't you want to start saving tax free to cover those expenses? The cons are similar to other tax advantaged retirement accounts. If you withdraw before retirement time for non-medical purposes, you will pay penalties, but if you withdraw at retirement time, you will pay the same taxes you would pay on an IRA. I should note that I put my money where my mouth is and I max out my contribution to my HSA every year.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5b586c9fde989b7a17dd298472bc9b8a", "text": "If your employer matches a percentage of your contributions, then you should try to max out your plan. Once you have completed maxing out your 401k, you may want to open up an IRA for several reasons: will your 401k be enough to sustain your lifestyle in retirement? Your IRA allows you to save even more for retirement. you can invest in all sorts of stuff through your IRA that might not be available in your plan. you can withdraw the principal from your IRA, usually after five years. This serves as another form of savings. IRAs have some asset protection in the event of bankruptcy. A normal savings or investment account usually does not offer such protection.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "16c1c9bdd4c50b6ad76bf36744c1c030", "text": "\"You can (and definitely should) withdraw any part of the contribution that will put you over the contribution limit. You can (and should if you need to) withdraw to repay any medical payments you made from outside the account. You can (but should avoid at all costs) withdraw (distribute) from the HSA for non-medical reasons. Here's the IRS publication which covers this: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p969 Here's the bit about distributions that covers what you're trying to do: You can receive tax-free distributions from your HSA to pay or be reimbursed for qualified medical expenses you incur after you establish the HSA. If you receive distributions for other reasons, the amount you withdraw will be subject to income tax and may be subject to an additional 20% tax. You don’t have to make distributions from your HSA each year. It is better to pay from your checking and reimburse than to over-fund the HSA. Best route forward is to reduce your contributions for the rest of the year, especially if continuing them will cause excess contributions. Another nasty gotcha: Excess contributions. You will have excess contributions if the contributions to your HSA for the year are greater than the limits discussed earlier. Excess contributions aren’t deductible. Excess contributions made by your employer are included in your gross income. If the excess contribution isn’t included in box 1 of Form W-2, you must report the excess as \"\"Other income\"\" on your tax return. Generally, you must pay a 6% excise tax on excess contributions. See Form 5329, Additional Taxes on Qualified Plans (Including IRAs) and Other Tax-Favored Accounts, to figure the excise tax. The excise tax applies to each tax year the excess contribution remains in the account. You may withdraw some or all of the excess contributions and avoid paying the excise tax on the amount withdrawn if you meet the following conditions. •You withdraw the excess contributions by the due date, including extensions, of your tax return for the year the contributions were made. •You withdraw any income earned on the withdrawn contributions and include the earnings in \"\"Other income\"\" on your tax return for the year you withdraw the contributions and earnings. If you will not be over your maximum contribution, let the contribution ride. Make sure your HSA balance is divided between cash, stock fund, bond fund. Much like your 401k. Because the part that you don't spend on medical expenses this year can be spent in future years' medical expenses, and if you have anything left when you retire you can spend it on whatever you want. And the funds, including growth, are not taxed until you distribute them. Bottom line: if the funds will not cause excess contribution, leave them in. Otherwise, take them out as soon as possible.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7b9a22ad8d02c935197dd1ba6d1370c0", "text": "\"You would want to prioritize Roth and retirement over HSA. As the HSA is only for health and dental expenses, which you will always have, overfunding it will put you in a bit of a pickle for all of the life involved. For example, even if you or a loved one develop a strange & expensive ailment, the HSA will only cover the medical costs, but not any travel to specialists, hotel stays, home alterations, special vehicles, or lifestyle alterations (food, clothing). However, you will eventually stop working even if you are healthy throughout your life. I would suggest that you treat the HSA as a part of your overall emergency fund, giving it a cap the same as you would normal non-retirement savings. Since you stated you have three young children, small and large medical expenses (such as braces, trips to the emergency room) are something that are almost guaranteed, thus having fairly large amount in the HSA would be very beneficial throughout their time with you. Once the children have left however, if you still have an overwhelming balance in your HSA, you may not want to add anymore to the HSA. Setting a cap for the HSA based off a certain number of years of deductible payments for medication would be a good place to start. Roth accounts, whether it be within your company's 401k plan or the IRAs for yourself and your spouse, are single-handedly the best location for your money for long-term savings. Roth money grows tax-free, is immune to Required Minimum Distribution provisions, and will avoid estate escrow when going to one's beneficiaries. Even if you tap into the funds prior to age 59 1/2, you would only pay taxes on any investment growth, in addition to the 10% early withdrawal penalty. If you have established Roth IRA accounts and have an AGI that disallows you to further contribute to them, there is still a provision to get Roth funds contributed via conversion through what is commonly called a \"\"back door\"\" Roth.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "be99b3f4807ab72dd602ae62e4062ebb", "text": "\"Yes. A most emphatic yes. I suggest you look at your 2014 return and project what 2015 will look like. I'd convert enough to \"\"top off\"\" the 15% bracket. Note, if you overshoot it, and in April 2016, see that you are say $5K into the 25% rate, you can just recharacterize the amount you went over and nail the bracket to the dollar. If you have the time and patience, you can convert into 2 different Roth accounts. One account for one asset class, say large cap stocks/funds, the other, cash/bonds. In April, keep the account that outperformed, and only recharacterize the lagger. Roth Roulette is my name for this strategy. It's risk free, and has the potential to boost the value of your conversions. Edit - To be clear, you are permitted to recharacterize (undo) any or all of the converted amount. You actually have until tax time (4/15 or so) plus the 6 month extension. You can recharacterize for any reason - A personal anecdote - I manage my mother in law's money. She is well under the 25% bracket cutoff. Each year I convert, and each April, recharacterize just enough to be at the top of the 15% bracket. Over $100K has been shifted from Traditional IRA to Roth by now. Taxed at 15% so her daughters will 'not' pay 25% when they withdraw. $10K in tax saved from uncle sam, for my effort of filling out paper twice a year for 12 years now. Well worth my effort.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6794500b234dae3d48cb55d57c9eb201", "text": "\"Would I only have to pay regular taxes plus the excess contribution tax on any contributions? Yes, you'll pay regular taxes plus the excess contribution taxes on the contributions until you withdraw. So what would be your gain in doing this? The whole point in HSA is to use pre-tax money for medical expenses, and you're not only going to use post-tax money - you'll pay extra tax for doing that (6% for each year the contribution remains in the account). Are you trying to get the \"\"employer match\"\" in this way? Maybe just ask for a raise instead? Would this cause problems for my employer in any way? Not sure, but it might. Is it possible to simply receive funds in my HSA even though I am not eligible, and then transfer them to his HSA to avoid any penalties? No, HSA is a personal account. You can pay for dependents, but you can't move money between the accounts. You can roll over to your own account. See the IRS publication 969 for more details.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
cd7cb9a122c9f2d76067d3acf0263155
How to report a personal expense for an LLC partnership paid in one year and reimbursed in another?
[ { "docid": "b80a4da09befcb5e2df91a2c39fd52a4", "text": "\"You report it when the expense was incurred/accrued. Which is, in your case, 2014. There's no such thing as \"\"accounts payable\"\" on tax forms, it is an account on balance sheet, but most likely it is irrelevant for you since your LLC is probably cash-based. The reimbursement is a red-herring, what matters is when you paid the money.\"", "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": "11aa0d830ce41e174690756c06ce534f", "text": "(do I need to get a W9 from our suppliers)? Will PayPal or Shopify send me a 1099k or something? Do not assume that you'll get paperwork from anyone. Do assume that you have to generate your own paperwork. Ideally you should print out some kind of record of each transaction. Note that it can be hard to view older transactions in PayPal, so start now. If you can't document something, write up a piece of paper showing the state of the world to the best of your knowledge. Do assume that you need separate receipts for each expenditure. The PayPal receipt might be enough (but print it in case the IRS wants to see it). A receipt from the vendor would be better (again, print it if it is online now). A CPA is not strictly necessary. A CPA is certified (the C in CPA) to formally audit the books of a corporation. In your case, any accountant would be legally sufficient. You still may want to use a CPA, as the certification, while technically unnecessary, still demonstrates knowledge. You may otherwise not be in a position to evaluate an accountant. A compromise option is to go to a firm that includes a CPA and then let them assign you to someone else to process the actual taxes. You are going to have to fill out some business tax forms. In particular, I would expect a schedule C. That's where you would show revenues and expenses. You may well have to file other forms as well.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a376c9d3887abdf50b1995e3dbdf34e3", "text": "\"There are TWO parts to an LLC or any company structure. This being the entire point of creating an LLC. The context is that a lawyer is after your LLC, and he's arguing that the LLC is not genuine, so he can go after your personal assets - your house, car, IRAs, tap your wife's salary etc. This is called \"\"piercing the corporate veil\"\". What would he use to claim the LLC is not genuine? The determination here is between you and the judge in a lawsuit. Suffice it to say, the way you withdraw money must consider the above issues, or you risk breaking the liability shield and becoming personally liable, which means you've been wasting the $25 every year to keep it registered. The IRS has a word for single member LLCs: \"\"Disregarded entity\"\". The IRS wants to know that the entity exists and it's connected to you. But for reporting tax numbers, they simply want the LLC's numbers folded into your personal numbers, because you are the same entity for tax purposes. The determination here is made by you. *LLCs are incredible versatile structures, and you can actually choose to have it taxed like a corporation where it is a separate \"\"person\"\" which files its own tax return. * The IRS doesn't care how you move money from the LLC to yourself, since it's all the same to them. The upshot is that while your own lawyer prohibits you from thinking of the assets as \"\"all one big pile\"\", IRS requires you to. Yes, it's enough to give you whiplash.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "36bc3419347f5ab9a094d1c7d866fbae", "text": "\"Anything is negotiable. Clearly in the current draft of the contract the company isn't going to calculate or withhold taxes on your behalf - that is your responsibility. But if you want to calculate taxes yourself, and break out the fees you are receiving into several \"\"buckets\"\" on the invoice, the company might agree (they might have to run it past their legal department first). I don't see how that helps anything - it just divides the single fee into two pieces with the same overall total. As @mhoran_psprep points out, it appears that the company expects you to cover your expenses from within your charges. Thus, it's up to you to decide the appropriate fees to charge, and you are assuming the risk that you have estimated your expenses incorrectly. If you want the company to pay you a fee, plus reimburse your expenses, you will need to craft that into the contract. It's not clear what kind of expenses you need to be covered, and sometimes companies will not agree to them. For specific tax rule questions applicable to your locale, you should consult your tax adviser.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8c4eec481cd96016588a5da0051cb9b8", "text": "Profits and losses in a partnership, LLC or S-corp are always reported proportional to the share of ownership. If you have a 30% share in a partnership, you will report 30% of the profit (or loss) of the respective tax year on your personal return. If you look at Part II, section J of your K-1, it should show your percentage of ownership in the entity. All numbers in Part III should reflect the amount of your share (not the entity's total amounts, which will be on Form 1065 for a partnership):", "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": "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": "edb005ea7461d6a53124407aca06bab5", "text": "After reading OP Mark's question and the various answers carefully and also looking over some old pay stubs of mine, I am beginning to wonder if he is mis-reading his pay stub or slip of paper attached to the reimbursement check for the item(s) he purchases. Pay stubs (whether paper documents attached to checks or things received in one's company mailbox or available for downloading from a company web site while the money is deposited electronically into the employee's checking account) vary from company to company, but a reasonably well-designed stub would likely have categories such as Taxable gross income for the pay period: This is the amount from which payroll taxes (Federal and State income tax, Social Security and Medicare tax) are deducted as well as other post-tax deductions such as money going to purchase of US Savings Bonds, contributions to United Way via payroll deduction, contribution to Roth 401k etc. Employer-paid group life insurance premiums are taxable income too for any portion of the policy that exceeds $50K. In some cases, these appear as a lump sum on the last pay stub for the year. Nontaxable gross income for the pay period: This would be sum total of the amounts contributed to nonRoth 401k plans, employee's share of group health-care insurance premiums for employee and/or employee's family, money deposited into FSA accounts, etc. Net pay: This is the amount of the attached check or money sent via ACH to the employee's bank account. Year-to-date amounts: These just tell the employee what has been earned/paid/withheld to date in the various categories. Now, OP Mark said My company does not tax the reimbursement but they do add it to my running gross earnings total for the year. So, the question is whether the amount of the reimbursement is included in the Year-to-date amount of Taxable Income. If YTD Taxable Income does not include the reimbursement amount, then the the OP's question and the answers and comments are moot; unless the company has really-messed-up (Pat. Pending) payroll software that does weird things, the amount on the W2 form will be whatever is shown as YTD Taxable Income on the last pay stub of the year, and, as @DJClayworth noted cogently, it is what will appear on the W2 form that really matters. In summary, it is good that OP Mark is taking the time to investigate the matter of the reimbursements appearing in Total Gross Income, but if the amounts are not appearing in the YTD Taxable Income, his Payroll Office may just reassure him that they have good software and that what the YTD Taxable Income says on the last pay stub is what will be appearing on his W2 form. I am fairly confident that this is what will be the resolution of the matter because if the amount of the reimbursement was included in Taxable Income during that pay period and no tax was withheld, then the employer has a problem with Social Security and Medicare tax underwithholding, and nonpayment of this tax plus the employer's share to the US Treasury in timely fashion. The IRS takes an extremely dim view of such shenanigans and most employers are unlikely to take the risk.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d434bac93e59b6bc54b351997abe1226", "text": "\"(I'm assuming USA tax code as this is untagged) As the comments above suggest there is no \"\"right\"\" answer or easy formula. The main issue is that you likely got into business to make money and if you make money consistently you will pay taxes. Reinvesting generally should be a business decision where the main concern is revenue growth and taxes are an important but secondary concern. Taxes can be complicated, but for a small LLC shouldn't be that bad. I highly recommend that you take some time closely analyze your business and personal taxes for the previous year. Once you understand the problem better, you can optimize around it. If it is a big concern, some companies buy software so they can estimate their taxes periodically through the year and make better decisions.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f2001e382087977d58faadeb8485548a", "text": "I'm not familiar with Gnucash, but I can discuss double-entry bookkeeping in general. I think the typical solution to something like this is to create an Asset account for what this other person owes you. This represents the money that he owes you. It's an Accounts Receivable. Method 1: Do you have/need separate accounts for each company that you are paying for this person? Do you need to record where the money is going? If not, then all you need is: When you pay a bill, you credit (subtract from) Checking and debit (add to) Friend Account. When he pays you, you credit (subtract from) Friend Account and debit (add to) Checking. That is, when you pay a bill for your friend you are turning one asset, cash, into a different kind of asset, receivable. When he pays you, you are doing the reverse. There's no need to create a new account each time you pay a bill. Just keep a rolling balance on this My Friend account. It's like a credit card: you don't get a new card each time you make a purchase, you just add to the balance. When you make a payment, you subtract from the balance. Method 2: If you need to record where the money is going, then you'd have to create accounts for each of the companies that you pay bills to. These would be Expense accounts. Then you'd need to create two accounts for your friend: An Asset account for the money he owes you, and an Income account for the stream of money coming in. So when you pay a bill, you'd credit Checking, debit My Friend Owes Me, credit the company expense account, and debit the Money from My Friend income account. When he repays you, you'd credit My Friend Owes Me and debit Checking. You don't change the income or expense accounts. Method 3: You could enter bills when they're received as a liability and then eliminate the liability when you pay them. This is probably more work than you want to go to.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b2635248cd6f4a5ad54e321d27fcb3d6", "text": "\"Basically, yes. Don't use your business account for personal spending because it may invalidate your limited liability protection. Transfer a chunk of money to your personal account, write it down in your books as \"\"distribution\"\" (or something similar), and use it in whatever way you want from your personal account. The IRS doesn't care per se, but mixing personal and business expenses will cause troubles if you're audited because you'll have problems distinguishing one from another. You should be using some accounting software to make sure you track your expenses and distributions correctly. It will make it easier for you to prepare reports for yourself and your tax preparer, and also track distributions and expenses. I suggest GnuCash, I find it highly effective for a small business with not so many transactions (if you have a lot of transactions, then maybe QuickBooks would be more appropriate).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3f362f2a26d64930517bf1086d30cb0e", "text": "\"You will need to set up accounts in your chart of accounts for each of the partners. These are equity accounts where you can track your contributions, share of the profits and losses, and distributions. You're going to have to go back into the beginning years to get this right. I'm not sure what you mean by a \"\"Built-in function\"\". All the accounting software I'm familiar with requires data entry of some kind. You need to post your contributions and distributions to the correct accounts, and close properly at year end. You were indeed legally considered a partnership as soon as you started a for-profit business venture together. It's a bug in the legal system that a written partnership agreement is not necessarily required - you can form a partnership unknowingly. (BTW, a partnership actually is pretty far off from a sole proprietorship, legally and taxwise - the change from one person to two is major. It's the change from two to three or four or more that's incremental ;) I know you said you didn't want to consult a professional, but I have to say that I think it's worth the money to get your books set up by someone who has experience and can show you how to do it. And get a separate bank account for the partnership, if you haven't done so already. And check with your state to see if there are any requirements regarding partnerships. Hope this helps, Mariette IRS Circular 230 Notice: Please note that any tax advice contained in this communication is not intended to be used, and cannot be used, by anyone to avoid penalties that may be imposed under federal tax law.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ee166c86d628d6354e45e2b491d31a0f", "text": "You should be careful about mingling your personal money and that of the business, even if it is a sole prop right now. It is a good habit to keep separate business and personal bank/credit accounts just so that when you change to an LLC, it is simpler for you to separate what belongs to the company and what is yours personally. What you're doing makes it more difficult (although only marginally so) to itemize business deductions that were paid with an ostensibly personal credit account. The better habit to get into now is keeping that distinct separation between personal and business. That being said, there's nothing illegal in what you're doing, but it would make an accountant cringe, that's for sure. (chuckle) Hope this helps. Good luck!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2f73770a2da33ab40245475e5bc5ee82", "text": "\"You may want, or at least be thinking of, the annualized method described in Pub 505 http://www.irs.gov/publications/p505/ch02.html#en_US_2015_publink1000194669 (also downloadable in PDF) and referred to in Why are estimated taxes due \"\"early\"\" for the 2nd and 3rd quarters only? . This doesn't prorate your payments as such; instead you use your income and deductions etc for each of the 3,2,3,4-month \"\"quarters\"\" to compute a prorated tax for the partial year, and pay the excess over the amount already paid. If your income etc amounts are (nearly) the same each month, then this computation will result in payments that are 3,2,3,4/12ths of 90% of your whole-year tax, but not if your amounts vary over the year. If you do use this method (and benefit from it) you MUST file form 2210 schedule AI with your return next filing season to demonstrate that your quarterly computations, and payments, met the requirements. You need to keep good per-period (or per-month) records of all tax-relevant amounts, and don't even try to do this form by hand, it'll drive you nuts; use software or a professional preparer (who also uses software), but I'd expect someone in your situation probably needs to do one of those anyway. But partnership puts a wrinkle on this. As a partner, your taxable income and expense is not necessarily the cash you receive or pay; it is your allocated share of the partnership's income and expenses, whether or not they are distributed to you. A partnership to operate a business (like lawyers, as opposed to an investment partnership) probably distributes the allocated amounts, at least approximately, rather than holding them in the partnership; I expect this is your year-end draw (technically a draw can be any allowed amount, not necessarily the allocated amount). In other words, your husband does earn this money during the year, he just receives it at the end. If the year-end distribution (or allocation if different) is significant (say more than 5% of your total income) and the partnership is not tracking and reporting these amounts (promptly!) for the IRS quarters -- and I suspect that's what they were telling you \"\"affects other partners\"\" -- you won't have the data to correctly compute your \"\"quarterly\"\" taxes, and may thus subject yourself to penalty for not timely paying enough. If the amount is reasonably predictable you can probably get away with using a conservative (high-side) guess to compute your payments, and then divide the actual full-year amounts on your K-1 over 12 months for 2210-AI; this won't be exactly correct, but unless the partnership business is highly seasonal or volatile it will be close enough the IRS won't waste its time on you. PS- the \"\"quarters\"\" are much closer to 13,9,13,17 weeks. But it's months that matter.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d42df4b19921edac9589e2d0d8ad984a", "text": "\"The FTB, as any government agency, is understaffed and underpaid. Even if someone took a glance and it wasn't just an automated letter - consider the situation: you filed as a LLC and then amended to file as a partnership. Unless someone really pays attention - the obvious assumption would be that you had a limited partnership. Yes, you'll need to call them and work with them on fixing this. They do have all the statements you've attached. However, there's a lot of automation and very little attention to details when it comes to matching errors, so don't get surprised if no-one even looked at these statements. Next time your elected government officials talk about \"\"small government\"\" and \"\"cutting government expenses\"\" - you can remind yourself how it looks in action with this experience.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
5b5bf144eb6da1f7ec36659c73ca4abe
What are the costs to maintain an Inc?
[ { "docid": "f211b2e0d10394f928e8b87f48d3387f", "text": "According to this FAQ published by the state of Delaware, your annual filing fees will be: Anything above and beyond that is based on company income. If you decide to file an LLC in Delaware instead of a Corporation your annual tax is $300. As others have mentioned in comments to your original question it's worth exploring your home state or other states. Delaware is commonly used to incorporate, but if you're very small or just starting out then often times your home state can be more favorable and less costly.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "ae96ebf7c42b5aa8611e7c1b9890c299", "text": "First - get a professional tax consultation with a NY-licensed CPA or EA. At what point do I need to worry about collecting sales taxes for the city and state of New York? Generally, from the beginning. See here for more information on NYS sales tax. At what point do I need to worry about record-keeping to report the income on my own taxes? From the beginning. Even before that, since you need the records to calculate the costs of production and expenses. I suggest starting recording everything, as soon as possible. What sort of business structures should I research if I want to formalize this as less of a hobby and more of a business? You don't have to have a business structure, you can do it as a sole proprietor. If you're doing it for-profit - I suggest treating it as a business, and reporting it on your taxes as a business (Schedule C), so that you could deduct the initial losses. But the tax authorities don't like business that keep losing money, so if you're not expecting any profit in the next 3-4 years - keep it reported as a hobby (Misc income). Talk to a licensed tax professional about the differences in tax treatment and reporting. You will still be taxed on your income, and will still be liable for sales tax, whether you treat it as a hobby or as a business. Official business (for-profit activity) will require additional licenses and fees, hobby (not-for-profit activity) might not. Check with the local authorities (city/county/State).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b3fbc5ebd730a840accaf7428f4858a8", "text": "For this reason, whilst preparing to hire an consultant to preserve and assist your application and additives it's far crucial to realize the one of a kind industry certification and in reality confirm that the computer professional has them. You can approach the essential corporation that is committed to provide tremendous Business Network Support in Oklahoma. Their professionals are properly skilled and certified professionals. If you're inclined to hire certified specialists that could provide effective it maintenance services, then you are on the right place in your answer.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "84722d62eebbcb7adb23220fa92244a1", "text": "Do you need to incorporate? This depends on whether the company prefers you to be incorporated. If you are going through a recruiting company, some of them are willing to deal with non-incorporated people (Sole Proprietor) and withhold taxes from your cheques for you. If you do want to incorporate, you can do it yourself, go through a paralegal, or you can even do it online. I did mine in Ontario for about $300 (no name search - i just have a numbered corporation like 123456 Ontario Inc.) through www.oncorp.com - there are other sites that do it as well. Things to consider - if you're contracting through a corporation you most likely need to: Talk to an accountant about these for clarification - most of them will give you an initial consultation for free. Generally speaking, accountant fees for corporate filing taxes averages about $1000-2000 a year.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a796f978c46d7d3f1d734ad37fd0d6cc", "text": "If you have no net income or loss, you can usually get away without filing a tax return. In Illinois, the standard is: Filing Requirements You must file Form IL-1120 if you are a corporation that has net income or loss as defined under the IITA; or is qualified to do business in the state of Illinois and is required to file a federal income tax return (regardless of net income or loss). http://tax.illinois.gov/Businesses/TaxInformation/Income/corporate.htm Just keep your filing fee and any business licenses up to date, paying those fees personally and not out of business money (that would make for a net loss and trigger needing a tax return). Frankly, with how easy it is to register a new corp, especially an LLC which has many simplicity advantages from an S-corp in certain cases, you might still be better off shutting it down until that time.", "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": "af46f9f222b03afc70c4c684572cf355", "text": "\"For Non-Resident filers, New York taxes New York-sourced income. That includes: real or tangible personal property located in New York State (including certain gains or losses from the sale or exchange of an interest in an entity that owns real property in New York State); services performed in New York State; a business, trade, profession, or occupation carried on in New York State; and a New York S corporation in which you are a shareholder (including installment income from an IRC 453 transaction). There are some exclusions as well. It is all covered in the instructions to form IT-203. However, keep in mind that \"\"filing\"\" as non-resident doesn't make you non-resident. If you spend 184 days or more in New York State, and you have a place to stay there - you are resident. See definitions here. Even if you don't actually live there and consider yourself a CT resident.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4e2f45c23e571baea4581cfc708711d9", "text": "\"For any accounts where you have a wish to keep track of dividends, gains and losses, etc., you will have to set up a an account to hold the separately listed securities. It looks like you already know how to do this. Here the trading accounts will help you, especially if you have Finance:Quote set up (to pull security prices from the internet). For the actively-managed accounts, you can just create each managed account and NOT fill it with the separate securities. You can record the changes in that account in summary each month/year as you prefer. So, you might set up your chart of accounts to include these assets: And this income: The actively-managed accounts will each get set up as Type \"\"Stock.\"\" You will create one fake security for each account, which will get your unrealized gains/losses on active accounts showing up in your trading accounts. The fake securities will NOT be pulling prices from the internet. Go to Tools -> Securities Editor -> Add and type in a name such as \"\"Merrill Lynch Brokerage,\"\" a symbol such as \"\"ML1,\"\" and in the \"\"Type\"\" field input something like \"\"Actively Managed.\"\" In your self-managed accounts, you will record dividends and sales as they occur, and your securities will be set to get quotes online. You can follow the general GnuCash guides for this. In your too-many-transactions actively traded accounts, maybe once a month you will gather up your statements and enter the activity in summary to tie the changes in cost basis. I would suggest making each fake \"\"share\"\" equal $1, so if you have a $505 dividend, you buy 505 \"\"shares\"\" with it. So, you might have these transactions for your brokerage account with Merrill Lynch (for example): When you have finished making your period-end summary entries for all the actively-managed accounts, double-check that the share balances of your actively-managed accounts match the cost basis amounts on your statements. Remember that each fake \"\"share\"\" is worth $1 when you enter it. Once the cost basis is tied, you can go into the price editor (Tools -> Price Editor) and enter a new \"\"price\"\" as of the period-end date for each actively-managed account. The price will be \"\"Value of Active Acct at Period-End/Cost of Active Acct at Period-End.\"\" So, if your account was worth $1908 but had a cost basis of $505 on Jan. 31, you would type \"\"1908/505\"\" in the price field and Jan. 31, 2017 in the date field. When you run your reports, you will want to choose the price source as \"\"Nearest in Time\"\" so that GnuCash grabs the correct quotes. This should make your actively-managed accounts have the correct activity in summary in your GnuCash income accounts and let them work well with the Trading Accounts feature.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e43efd4d3a220dd0bfa96725213ba2ef", "text": "All request and new cases are productively evaluated and screened online at Contact Us. Introductory consultations, LLC formations, and records for routine land and business exchanges are taken care of only online at prudent level expenses. A scope of Delaware llc in-office benefits after the underlying conference is offered yet at expenses higher than those cited for online things. We will keep you refreshed all through the procedure. We give steady correspondence and continuous notices as we process your incorporation.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5bf683f73eaca9db5871c953efed4ff7", "text": "\"This is an answer grounded in reality, not advice. Most states have no means of enforcing their foreign business entity registration statutes. Some states never even codified consequences. (California is a notable exception.). Some states have 'business licenses' that you need in order to defend your entity in court, but will retroactively apply the corporate veil when you get the license. The \"\"do I have to register\"\" question is analogous to asking a barber if you need a haircut. But this doesn't absolve you of looking in the mirror (doing your research). Registration and INCOME taxes are different stories. If a state calls their fee a franchise tax and it is applicable and there are real consequences for not, then you will have to pay that tax. Anyway, this isn't advocating breaking the law, but since it describes ignoring toothless state-chartered agencies, then there are people that will disagree with this post, despite being in line with business climate in the United States. Hope that helps\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "48bd430eebca459451edaf0f43f53508", "text": "Even better, where does the money come from to pay the penalty? Increased prices for LCD screens. Fining a company just increases its cost of doing business, usually slightly. Send a few executives to jail, rescind the incorporation for even one major company, and this kind of stuff would stop. Fine them, and everyone will just keep doing it.", "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": "2a8c87c2a7ce50c3d2c854b042bc5d3a", "text": "Can you estimate the approximate cost of employing one of each? Would they work as contractors, or employees? Glassdoor can be a great resource for estimating the current market for local labor costs. If you have a sense for the amount of annual revenue each individual could theoretically produce, you can essentially treat their wages as a fixed cost up to the limit of that revenue, then model the incremental cost and margin impact of bringing on additional headcount. Is there any additional detail you can provide that might help provide guidance on developing a model?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3e00c1083e5d0f95b58bbdb1a5f44a75", "text": "\"An unmarried person with a total U.S.-sourced earned income under $ 37,000 during the year 2016 is likely to owe: If the original poster is not an \"\"independent contractor\"\", and is not \"\"billing corp-to-corp\"\" then: In summary: References:\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e8c6bd900f8d5b7b20accdc0347b2060", "text": "Is the business an S-Corp, LLC or Sole Prop? I am going to guess based on the question that it is an LLC that you never closed with the state and you live in a state (NY) that charges a fee for having an LLC in the state in which case you owe those fees to the state. I am not aware of any taxes on the mere existence of a business by the IRS. I think you are going to find out that the are no taxes owed to the IRS for this nonexistent activity.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8de0bd6e321f81879376c5cc24885ddb", "text": "So there are a lot of people that get into trouble in your type of self employment situation. This is what I do, and I use google drive so there are no cost for tools. However, having an accounting system is better. Getting in trouble with the IRS really sucks bad.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
477b48164ca6904020ce6a521f9b58c1
“Occupation” field on IRS Form 1040
[ { "docid": "28ca8044728004376da120c7f572a56f", "text": "\"It doesn't generally matter, and I'm not sure if it is in fact in use by the IRS other than for general statistics (like \"\"this year 20% of MFJ returns were with one spouse being a 'homemaker'\"\"). They may be able to try and match the occupation and the general levels and types of income, but for self-employed there's a more precise and reliable field on Schedule C and for employees they don't really need to do this since everything is reported on W2 anyway. So I don't think they even bother or give a lot of value to such a metric. So yes, I'm joining the non-authoritative \"\"doesn't matter\"\" crowd.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "26ce60fef4f08824a11abf3f8009ba3b", "text": "The IRS defines income quite specifically. On the topic What is Taxable and Nontaxable Income, they note: You can receive income in the form of money, property, or services. This section discusses many kinds of income that are taxable or nontaxable. It includes discussions on employee wages and fringe benefits, and income from bartering, partnerships, S corporations, and royalties. Bartering, or giving someone wages (or similar) in something other than currency (or some other specifically defined things, like fringe benefits), is taxed at fair market value: Bartering Bartering is an exchange of property or services. You must include in your income, at the time received, the fair market value of property or services you receive in bartering. For additional information, Refer to Tax Topic 420 - Bartering Income and Barter Exchanges. Bartering is more specifically covered in Topic 420 - Bartering Income: You must include in gross income in the year of receipt the fair market value of goods or services received from bartering. Generally, you report this income on Form 1040, Schedule C (PDF), Profit or Loss from Business (Sole Proprietorship), or Form 1040, Schedule C-EZ (PDF), Net Profit from Business (Sole Proprietorship). If you failed to report this income, correct your return by filing a Form 1040X (PDF), Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. Refer to Topic 308 for information on filing an amended return. More details about income in general beyond the above articles is available in Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income. It goes into great detail about different kinds of income. In your example, you'd have to calculate the fair market value of an avocado, and then determine how much cash-equivalent you were paid in. The IRS wouldn't necessarily tell you what that value was; you'd calculate it based on something you feel you could justify to them afterwards. The way I'd do it would be to write down the price of avocados at each pay period, and apply a dollar-cost-averaging type method to determine the total pay's fair value. While the avocado example is of course largely absurd, the advent of bitcoins has made this much more relevant. Publication 525 has this to say about virtual currency: Virtual Currency. If your employer gives you virtual currency (such as Bitcoin) as payment for your services, you must include the fair market value of the currency in your income. The fair market value of virtual currency (such as Bitcoin) paid as wages is subject to federal income tax withholding, Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) tax, and Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) tax and must be reported on Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement. Gold would be fundamentally similar - although I am not sure it's legal to pay someone in gold; assuming it were, though, its fair market value would be again the definition of income. Similarly, if you're paid in another country's currency, the US dollar equivalent of that is what you'll pay taxes on, at the fair market value of that currency in US dollars.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "046c3a367b30527c5d320c397e8de7c7", "text": "If you are in the US and a regular employee, this will have to show up on your year-end W2 form as income. If it doesn't, there is some funky accounting business going and you should probably consult a professional for advice.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "866f22fd8cd4d23e7773cbf115bafca5", "text": "You should ask a CPA or tax lawyer to what extent living in specific housing provided by the employer as a job requirement is exempt from taxation. You might find a nice surprise. Your tax professional can also help you to report the items properly if mis-reported. Much of this is in the article you cite in the question, but perhaps a look at some of the original sources is warranted and will show why some expert advice might be useful. I would argue that an RA who is required to police and counsel undergrads in a college dorm in exchange for a room or a flat is closer to a worker with quarters on a ship or at an oil well than a full professor who receives a rental home in a neighborhood near the university as a benefit. In the first case living at the provided premises is necessary to do the job, but in the second case it is merely a benefit of the job. The IRS Publication 15-B guidance on employer provided housing is not entirely clear, so you might want to get some additional advice: Lodging on Your Business Premises You can exclude the value of lodging you furnish to an employee from the employee's wages if it meets the following tests. It is furnished on your business premises. It is furnished for your convenience. The employee must accept it as a condition of employment. Different tests may apply to lodging furnished by educational institutions. See section 119(d) of the Internal Revenue Code for details. If you allow your employee to choose to receive additional pay instead of lodging, then the lodging, if chosen, isn’t excluded. The exclusion also doesn't apply to cash allowances for lodging. On your business premises. For this exclusion, your business premises is generally your employee's place of work. For example, if you're a household employer, then lodging furnished in your home to a household employee would be considered lodging furnished on your business premises. For special rules that apply to lodging furnished in a camp located in a foreign country, see section 119(c) of the Internal Revenue Code and its regulations. For your convenience. Whether or not you furnish lodging for your convenience as an employer depends on all the facts and circumstances. You furnish the lodging to your employee for your convenience if you do this for a substantial business reason other than to provide the employee with additional pay. This is true even if a law or an employment contract provides that the lodging is furnished as pay. However, a written statement that the lodging is furnished for your convenience isn't sufficient. Condition of employment. Lodging meets this test if you require your employees to accept the lodging because they need to live on your business premises to be able to properly perform their duties. Examples include employees who must be available at all times and employees who couldn't perform their required duties without being furnished the lodging. It doesn't matter whether you must furnish the lodging as pay under the terms of an employment contract or a law fixing the terms of employment. Example of qualifying lodging. You employ Sam at a construction project at a remote job site in Alaska. Due to the inaccessibility of facilities for the employees who are working at the job site to obtain lodging and the prevailing weather conditions, you furnish lodging to your employees at the construction site in order to carry on the construction project. You require that your employees accept the lodging as a condition of their employment. You may exclude the lodging that you provide from Sam's wages. Additionally, since sufficient eating facilities aren’t available near your place of employment, you may also exclude meals you provide to Sam from his wages, as discussed under Meals on Your Business Premises , later in this section. Example of nonqualifying lodging. A hospital gives Joan, an employee of the hospital, the choice of living at the hospital free of charge or living elsewhere and receiving a cash allowance in addition to her regular salary. If Joan chooses to live at the hospital, the hospital can't exclude the value of the lodging from her wages because she isn't required to live at the hospital to properly perform the duties of her employment. One question would be how the conflict with IRC 119(d) is resolved for someone who must live in the dorm to watch over the dorm and its undergrads. Here's 26USC119(d) from LII: (d) Lodging furnished by certain educational institutions to employees (1) In general In the case of an employee of an educational institution, gross income shall not include the value of qualified campus lodging furnished to such employee during the taxable year. (2) Exception in cases of inadequate rent Paragraph (1) shall not apply to the extent of the excess of— (A) the lesser of— (i) 5 percent of the appraised value of the qualified campus lodging, or (ii) the average of the rentals paid by individuals (other than employees or students of the educational institution) during such calendar year for lodging provided by the educational institution which is comparable to the qualified campus lodging provided to the employee, over (B) the rent paid by the employee for the qualified campus lodging during such calendar year. The appraised value under subparagraph (A)(i) shall be determined as of the close of the calendar year in which the taxable year begins, or, in the case of a rental period not greater than 1 year, at any time during the calendar year in which such period begins. (3) Qualified campus lodging For purposes of this subsection, the term “qualified campus lodging” means lodging to which subsection (a) does not apply and which is— (A) located on, or in the proximity of, a campus of the educational institution, and (B) furnished to the employee, his spouse, and any of his dependents by or on behalf of such institution for use as a residence. (4) Educational institution, etc. For purposes of this subsection— (A) In generalThe term “educational institution” means— (i) an institution described in section 170(b)(1)(A)(ii) (or an entity organized under State law and composed of public institutions so described), or (ii) an academic health center. (B) Academic health centerFor purposes of subparagraph (A), the term “academic health center” means an entity— (i) which is described in section 170(b)(1)(A)(iii), (ii) which receives (during the calendar year in which the taxable year of the taxpayer begins) payments under subsection (d)(5)(B) or (h) of section 1886 of the Social Security Act (relating to graduate medical education), and (iii) which has as one of its principal purposes or functions the providing and teaching of basic and clinical medical science and research with the entity’s own faculty.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8364441010f6737d8fc4c32e0f598d57", "text": "The United States taxes nonresident aliens on two types of income: First, a nonresident alien who is engaged in a trade or business in the United States is taxed on income that is effectively connected with that trade or business. Second, certain types of U.S.-source payments are subject to income tax withholding. The determination of when a nonresident alien is engaged in a U.S. trade or business is highly fact-specific and complex. However, keeping assets in a U.S. bank account should not be treated as a U.S. trade or business. A nonresident alien's interest income is generally subject to U.S. federal income tax withholding at a rate of 30 percent under Section 1441 of the tax code. Interest on bank deposits, however, benefit from an exception under Section 1441(c)(10), so long as that interest is not effectively connected with a U.S. trade or business. Even though no tax needs to be withheld on interest on a bank deposit, the bank should still report that interest each year to the IRS on Form 1042-S. The IRS can then send that information to the tax authority in Brazil. Please keep in mind that state and local tax rules are all different, and whether interest on the bank deposits is subject to state or local tax will depend on which state the bank is in. Also, the United States does tax nonresident aliens on wages paid from a U.S. company, if those wages are treated as U.S.-source income. Generally, wages are U.S.-source income if the employee provides services while physically present in the United States. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but they depend on the amount of wages and other factors that are specific to the employee's situation. This is an area where you should really consult with a U.S. tax advisor before the employment starts. Maybe your company will pay for it?", "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": "b31ab8ae55f25f15b2f8ae758ea49bcd", "text": "Disclaimer: I am not a tax professional. Please don't rely on this answer in lieu of professional advice. If your sole source of Arizona income is your commercial property, use the number on line 17 of your federal form 1040. This number is derived from your federal Schedule E. If you have multiple properties (or other business income from S corporations or LLCs), use only the Schedule E amount pertaining to the AZ property.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8199c1f269790dd8ecce7897a0159c49", "text": "\"Regardless of the source of the software (though certainly good to know), there are practical limits to the IRS 1040EZ form. This simplified tax form is not appropriate for use once you reach a certain level of income because it only allows for the \"\"standard\"\" deduction - no itemization. The first year I passed that level, I was panicked because I thought I suddenly owed thousands. Switching to 1040A (aka the short form) and using even the basic itemized deductions showed that the IRS owed me a refund instead. I don't know where that level is for tax year 2015 but as you approach $62k, the simplified form is less-and-less appropriate. It would make sense, given some of the great information in the other answers, that the free offering is only for 1040EZ. That's certainly been true for other \"\"free\"\" software in the past.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "747434105a81d44117295b394b27c1ba", "text": "Just type in the forms as they are, separately. That would be the easiest way both to enter the data without any mistakes, and ensure that everything matches properly with the IRS reports.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4a4ea401a7db431a02f515cee6f65660", "text": "\"You can report it as illegal income and you don't have to elaborate any further. For instance, spirit the cash off to a state where pot is legal and set up a dispensary. That is not legal at the Federal level, so it is in fact \"\"illegal income\"\" vis-a-vis your Form 1040 and that's all you say. Make sure you look, walk, and quack like a fairly successful pot distributor. That will most likely be the end of their inquiry, since they're not terribly driven to investigate the income you do report. Having to give 33% of it to the IRS is generally strong motivation for folks to not report fake income. You're not claiming the money is from pot, you're allowing them to infer it.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3e00c1083e5d0f95b58bbdb1a5f44a75", "text": "\"An unmarried person with a total U.S.-sourced earned income under $ 37,000 during the year 2016 is likely to owe: If the original poster is not an \"\"independent contractor\"\", and is not \"\"billing corp-to-corp\"\" then: In summary: References:\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8f5439eccba9927dbad2c3edb01e31dd", "text": "Such activity is normally referred to as bartering income. From the IRS site - You must include in gross income in the year of receipt the fair market value of goods or services received from bartering. Generally, you report this income on Form 1040, Schedule C (PDF), Profit or Loss from Business (Sole Proprietorship), or Form 1040, Schedule C-EZ (PDF), Net Profit from Business (Sole Proprietorship). If you failed to report this income, correct your return by filing a Form 1040X (PDF), Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. Refer to Topic 308 and Amended Returns for information on filing an amended return.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "47c9c8dbbbfb64b9537ec5a36e9cc724", "text": "\"What theyre fishing for is whether the money was earned in the U.S. It's essentially an interest shelter, and/or avoiding double taxation. They're saying if you keep income you make outside the US in a bank inside the US, the US thanks you for storing your foreign money here and doesn't tax the interest (but the nation where you earned that income might). There is no question that the AirBNB income is \"\"connected with a US trade or business\"\". So your next question is whether the fraction of interest earned from that income can be broken out, or whether IRS requires you to declare all the interest from that account. Honestly given the amount of tax at stake, it may not be worth your time researching. Now since you seem to be a resident nonresident alien, it seems apparent that whatever economic value you are creating to earn your salary, is being performed in the United States. If this is for an American company and wages paid in USD, no question, that's a US trade or business. But what if it's for a Swedish company running on Swedish servers, serving Swedes and paid in Kroner to a Swedish bank which you then transfer to your US bank? Does it matter if your boots are on sovereign US soil? This is a complex question, and some countries (UK) say \"\"if your boots are in our nation, it is trade/income in our nation\"\"... Others (CA) do not. This is probably a separate question to search or ask. To be clear, the fact that your days as a teacher or trainee do not count toward residency, is a separate question from whether your salary as same counts as US income.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "69b86f3654b9194f188b80eabf2295ae", "text": "For purposes of the EIN the address is largely inconsequential. The IRS cannot (read: won't) recover the EIN if you fail to write it down after the website generates it for you. On your actual tax form the address is more consequential, and this is more so a question of consistency than anything. But an entity can purchase property anywhere and have a different address subsequent years. Paying the actual taxes means more than the semantical inconsistencies. The whole purpose of separate accounts is to make an audit easier, so even if someone imagines that some action (such as address ambiguity) automatically triggers an audit, all your earnings/purchases are not intermingled with personal stuff, which just streamlines the audit process. Consequences (or lack thereof) aside, physical means where physical property is. So if you have an actual mailing address in your state, you should go with that. Obviously, this depends on what arrangement you have with your registered agent, if all addresses are in Wyoming then use the Wyoming address and let the Registered Agent forward all your mail to you. Don't forget your $50 annual report in Wyoming ;) How did you open a business paypal without an EIN? Business bank accounts? Hm... this is for liability purposes...", "title": "" }, { "docid": "16fe0dbb757bc0480bbc021032418c6a", "text": "Publication 15 is the IRS guide for business. https://www.irs.gov/uac/about-publication-15 They will be deposited electronically at https://www.eftps.com/eftps/ Form 941 is the one you will be using: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/depositing-and-reporting-employment-taxes The other ones are for special circumstances. I would recommend that you have a chat with an accountant.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f6ad013cf08e69dbb6805502c23c936c", "text": "Fear tactics posted above, likely by IRS agents. Yes, you qualify based on the residence test. You perform your work outside the US. You gather business data in a foreign country. The income is excluded.", "title": "" } ]
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9da9a29bae1c93f5fa047a1a07c525dd
Can I deduct personal loans or use them as tax “write offs?”
[ { "docid": "37ab19113c26928885755f04ab154a8c", "text": "You will have to write it off as an offset of capital gains or as bad debt against personal income, limited to $3k/ yr. Write off 3k this year, 2k next. Here's the tax code, you'll need to file a form 8949, link below. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc450/tc453 So, this requires that it is a loan, acknowledged by both you and the borrower, with terms of repayment and stated interest, as well as wording for late payments and time for delinquency. The loan document doesn't have to be fancy, but it must show a reasonable intention of repayment to distinguish it from a gift. Then send out a 1099c for cancellation of debt. This is a starting point, it's a good idea to run everything by your tax processional to make sure you're meeting the requirements for bad debt with your contact and payment communication.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "73476d4891f0c410c689123c015f63e0", "text": "\"Assuming you are talking about an LLC in the United States, there are no tax repercussions on the LLC itself, because LLCs use pass-through taxation in the U.S., meaning that the LLC does not pay taxes. Whatever you take out of the LLC in the form of distributions goes onto your personal income tax as ordinary income, and you pay personal income tax on it. See this link on the subject from the Nolo.com web site: Tax treatment of an LLC from the Nolo.com web site Repayment of your loan by the LLC would just be another business expense for the business itself. I guess the question would then turn on what your personal tax repercussion would be for payments received from the LLC on the loan. I would guess (and I emphasize \"\"guess\"\") that you would pay tax on any interest gain from the loan payments, which makes the assumption you made the loan to include interest. If not (in other words, if you made this an interest-free loan) then it would be considered a wash for tax purposes and you would have no tax liability for yourself. To reiterate, the LLC (if it is a U.S.. entity) does not pay taxes. Taxation of LLC income is based on whatever distributions the principals take out of it, which is then claimed as taxable personal income. My apologies to littleadv for not making my prior answer (I deleted it) more clear about my answer assuming you were speaking of a U.S.-chartered LLC. I hope this helps. Good luck!\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2860f12c36966891eb816cce27702fcc", "text": "You need to report the interest expense, assuming the loans were for your business: You need to report interest expense (only interest, principle is not an expense just as the loan proceeds are not income). The interest expense goes to the appropriate line on your Schedule C or E (depending on whether you used the loan for the online business or the rental). People whom you borrowed from must also report the interest as income to them on their Schedule B. You cannot deduct the interest expense if they don't report it as interest income. If you didn't take the loans for your business then the interest is not deductible. You don't need to report anything. People who lent you money still have to report the interest you paid to them as income on Schedule B. If you paid no interest (free loan) or below/above market interest to a related party (family member), then the imputed interest is considered income to them and gift to you. They need to report it on their Schedule B, and depending on amounts - on a gift tax return. For $1K to $10K loans there probably will be no need in gift tax returns, the exemption is for $14K per year per person. If the imputed interest rules may apply to you, better talk to a licensed tax adviser on how to proceed.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5274ce56724302aa26b53670f04d501d", "text": "\"Here is a simple loan payment calculator. If you allow early principal repayment, then you should just be able to plug in the new principal amount to find his new monthly payment (someone please correct me if I'm mistaken). Are you averse to creating a spreadsheet yourself in excel? I suppose it could become quite an undertaking, depending on how detailed you chose to get with the interest. Seems like it would be more direct and serve the dual purpose of recordkeeping. It's important to agree in advance whether pre-payments go to principal or go partly to interest (prepaying for periodic amounts not yet due, which are mixed principal and interest). It's a family loan, so it probably makes sense to allow the prepayments to pay down principal; you don't need to structure your interest income and prevent him from depriving you of interest income (which many bank loans will do). Allowing early principal repayment is pretty easy to calculate in your own excel spreadsheet, since you just need to know the remaining principal, time outstanding, and the interest rate. Note that if you are a US citizen, then the interest paid to you will be taxable income to you (\"\"ordinary income\"\" rate). Your brother will not be able to deduct the interest payments, unless maybe they are used for something like his business or perhaps mortgage. There is no deduction for just a personal loan. Also, if you instead structured it without interest, then the interest not charged would be considered a gift under US gift tax law. As long as the annual interest were under the gift exclusion amount ($14,000) then there would be no gift tax. With no interest and no gift, you would not have tax consequences.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bd46e9d7e5ae77f81add1183228d93a7", "text": "\"Yes, as long as you are not filing \"\"Married, Filing Separately,\"\" you can deduct student loan interest expense as an adjustment to income. Since your MAGI is < $60k, you can deduct the lesser of $2,500 or the actual interest expense. http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc456.html http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch04.html You didn't mention how you might file your return. If you're filing jointly in future years, the MAGI threshold prior to any phaseout is raised to $125k (for CY 2013).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d48b3959a4c1e909e284f158ea38e1f1", "text": "First, you need to see if you actually qualify as a dependent under IRS rules; in short: While there may be exceptions to the cohabitation rule, I am not sure what those could be. The takeaway is that if your parent is wishing to claim you as a dependent, they must be responsible for supporting the majority of your living expenses (e.g. food and shelter). If this is the case, then the next question is to look at how the impact of the exemptions play out. In your situation, I would guess that your mother is correct: your taxable income is likely to be so low that if you do not take an exemption for yourself, you probably would still have zero or minimal tax liability; but if you mother claims you as a dependent, she will be able to take a deduction. In the case of your grants and loans, the loans should not be taxable income since these need to be repaid (presumably, with future earnings). Federal grants may be taxable--basically, the portion of the grant that is used solely for paying educational expenses toward a specific degree (tuition and books) is non-taxable, but the remainder may be subject to tax. As for tax credits, you would need to see how much you would get and how they would apply to you. The bottom line is, there are too many variables to say for certain what the best approach would be, so both your and your mother's returns must be prepared under each scenario (you as her dependent, versus you claiming a personal exemption).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e58d99883593d6d12f8032f38a42982d", "text": "If your business is a Sole Proprietorship and meets the criteria, then you would file form Schedule C. In this case you can deduct all eligible business expenses, regardless of how you pay for them (credit/debit/check/cash). The fact that it was paid for using a business credit card isn't relevant as long as it is a true business expense. The general rules apply: Yes - if you sustain a net loss, that will carry over to your personal tax return. Note: even though it isn't necessary to use a business credit card for business expenses, it's still an extremely good idea to do so, for a variety of reasons.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5f71b9b4dff539d0be3fb2849ca6e7cb", "text": "I recently paid-off $40k in student loan debt. One of the motivations for me to accelerate my payments was that over time, as my income increased, the amount of student loan interest I could write-off on taxes started to phase-out.", "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": "593f4db1a68747f316eb246b4073b067", "text": "\"Do you mean how much income tax the IRS will assess? Loans are not income, therefore they do not incur income tax. So as long as the money isn't being given, but being loaned, you don't have to pay income tax on it. And just in case you think there's a loophole of \"\"Instead of paying my workers, I'll just 'loan' them their paychecks, and then forgive the debt at the end of the year\"\", no, the IRS does consider loan forgiveness to be a form of income. So you need to look at whether the loan is going to you, or whether your business is a separate legal entity that is getting the money. If it's a capital contribution, then you are selling a stake in your company. Or, more precisely, as long as the money is going into the business, the company is selling a stake in itself. In that case, there generally isn't tax owed. Here's a Quara question that touches on this: https://www.quora.com/Is-money-raised-through-investors-taxed\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fab076774b036cd9084c4f5e2bad63c9", "text": "I'm not an expert, but here's my $0.02. Deductions for business expenses are subject to the 2% rule. In other words, you can only deduct that which exceeds 2% of your AGI (Adjusted Gross Income). For example, say you have an AGI of $50,000, and you buy a laptop that costs $800. You won't get a write-off from that, because 2% of $50,000 is $1,000, and you can only deduct business-related expenses in excess of that $1,000. If you have an AGI of $50,000 and buy a $2,000 laptop, you can deduct a maximum of $1,000 ($2,000 minus 2% of $50,000 is $2,000 - $1,000 = $1,000). Additionally, you can write off the laptop only to the extent that you use it for business. So in other words, if you have an AGI of $50,000 and buy that $2,000 laptop, but only use it 50% for business, you can only write off $500. Theoretically, they can ask for verification of the business use of your laptop. A log or a diary would be what I would provide, but I'm not an IRS agent.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6f5817302bdf7050001df688b373b906", "text": "If the mortgage is against your primary residence, then the only part that's (probably) deductible is the mortgage interest. If you pay down your loan principal faster, then all other things being equal you'll get less of a tax deduction, because you'll accrue less interest in the months after you throw a big chunk at the principal (the principal is less, so the interest is less). But don't worry; that's all right! It's a tax deduction, so your actual tax savings will be only a fraction of the interest you paid, so at the end of the day you'll be saving yourself money.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3a8501ffd0029873ce04c5d31e4c59d2", "text": "The principal of the loan itself isn't any sort of taxable event. There are, however, two taxable events here. First, cashing out your 401(k). That income wasn't originally taxed, so it will be now, as regular income. Plus, you're going to pay a 10% penalty, assuming you're under 59.5 years of age. Second, when the business pays you interest, that interest will be taxable. The principal is not taxable; that's not income, after all. You simply are getting back what's yours. The interest is taxable, as that is the actual income here.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "105fbbdc7d6044068263a6a89a7e4217", "text": "Graduating from college is probably one of the most fulfilling triumphs you’ll ever achieve in your entire life. However, that joy also brings bigger responsibilities in life that could affect tax time too. This specific time in your life will have a lot to offer and before the winds of change take you to wherever you dream of, here are some advices from [Southbourne Tax Group](http://www.thesouthbournegroup.com/) to make your taxes easier where you can get a refund during filing time and save money as well. If your modified adjusted gross income is below $80,000 and you’re single, up to $2,500 of the interest portion of your student loan payments can be tax deductible, and below $160,000 for married person filing jointly. Job hunting expenses can be tax deductible too but there are exceptions such as expenses involved in your search for a new job in a new career field and working full-time for the first time. Major tax breaks are expected in case you are moving to a new and different city for your first job. Get a jump start on retirement savings with your company’s 401(k). Each year, you can secure up to $18,000 from your income taxes by contributing on one. If you have a family coverage, you could secure $6,750 from contributing to a health savings account in case you are enrolled in a high-deductible health plan. And if you are single, you can secure up to $3,400. Placing your money into a flexible spending account could keep an added $2,600 out of your taxable income. Getting big deductions for business expenses is possible if you are planning to be a freelancer or to be your own boss as a new college graduate. Southbourne Group also advises saving at least 25% of what you’re earning for the IRS. Research more about lifetime learning credit and understand its importance. You can claim up to $2,000 of a tax credit for post-secondary work at eligible educational institutions. This is possible if your adjusted gross income is below $65,000 as a single filer, or below $131,000 as a married person filing jointly. Saving money has a lot of benefits and one of which is cutting your tax bill. If you’re a married person filing jointly and have an adjusted gross income of less than $62,000, you may qualify for the saver’s credit, while for a single filer, it should be below $31,000. That can reduce your tax bill by up to 50% of the first $2,000 if you’re a single filer, or $4,000 if you’re a married person filing jointly you contribute to an eligible retirement plan. Southbourne Tax Group doesn’t want you to overspend on tax software and getting professional help in this regard. The firm suggests using the free packages from trusted tax software companies if your tax situation is quite simple. Get that professional help at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, which can help you meet with a pro at little or no cost.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2d60d0d0e939ed8bb808d351ef905c8e", "text": "According to the IRS: To deduct a bad debt, you must show that: So if you fulfill the basic requirements, then generally yes, you can deduct them from your taxes. However, as always, please refer to a professional CPA for any final tax determinations.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a17f801749c61e70721be29bae27a51d", "text": "There is the underpayment penalty, and of course the general risk of any balloon-style loan. While you think that you have enough self-discipline, you never know what may happen that may prevent you from having enough cash at hands to pay the accumulated tax at the end of the year. If you try to do more risky investments (trying to maximize the opportunity) you may lose some of the money, or have some other kind of emergency that may preempt the tax payment.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
049c0255dabe88f40a77fadd688989c4
Mortgage or not?
[ { "docid": "1b410374cf170e730ad6a327bc8d22c8", "text": "\"I often say \"\"don't let the tax tail wag the investing dog.\"\" I need to change that phrase a bit to \"\"don't let the tax tail wag the mortgage dog.\"\" Getting a tax deduction on a 4% mortgage basically results (assuming you already itemize) in an effective 3% rate mortgage. The best way to avoid tax is save pretax in a 401(k), IRA, or both. You are 57, and been through a tough time. You're helping your daughter through college, which is an expense, and admirable kindness to her. But all this means you won't start saving $10K/yr until age 59. The last thing I'd do is buy a bigger home and take on a mortgage. Unless you told me the house you want has an in-law apartment that will bring in a high rent, or can be used to rent rooms and be a money maker, I'd not do this. No matter how small the mortgage, your property tax bill will go up, and there would be a mortgage to pay. Even a tiny mortgage payment, $400, is nearly half that $10K potential annual savings plan. Your income is now excellent. Can your wife do anything to get hers to a higher level? In your situation, I'd save every cent I can.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "67e37fb7c1764ea2cbd3afd85b43eab5", "text": "Better in terms of what? less taxes paid? or more money to save for retirement? In terms of retirement, it would be better for you to keep the condo you currently have for at least two reasons: You wouldn't incur the penalties and fees from buying and selling a home. Selling and buying a home comes with a multitude of fees and expenses that aren't included in your estimation. You aren't saddled with a mortgage payment again. You aren't paying a mortgage payment right now. If you set aside the amount you would be paying towards that, it more than covers your taxes, with plenty left over to put towards retirement.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "eb439de9177682191f220b0195ebf9cc", "text": "\"Short answer: No. Longer answer: The only reason to move would be to get out of the condo and into a SFR of equal cost because condos can be quite difficult to sell and you don't really want that potential burden later on. Moving is expensive though and you can't afford to spend more when you are already living on the financial edge. Speaking of living on the edge, that's a recipe for disaster. I make, ratio-wise, a similar sort of income. Even accounting for the generous college tuition, you should be able to save at least $20K per year...at a bare minimum. And if you were careful, I figure you should be able to save $40K/year. You need to figure out where you are dumping all of your money and cut WAY back on spending and focus entirely on saving money. 1) Stop eating out. Make your own meals. I average about $2 per meal per person - no junk food. Eating out is 6 to 30 times as expensive as making meals at home. Do the math: $10 * 2 people * number of times you eat out per week * 52 ($1,040 per year for each time/week!) vs $2 * 2 people * 21 (3 meals per day) * 52 ($4,368 per year for both of you...maximum). Now I know some meals are more expensive to prepare, but the math is not unrealistic - I spend about $140 per month on groceries and make the bulk of my own food. Eating out is sticker shock for me. The food I prepare is nutritionally balanced and complete. Now I'm not a complete health-nut. I love the occasional deep-fried treat or hamburger, but those are \"\"once every couple of months\"\" sort of things, which makes them special. 2) Stop going to Starbucks or wherever you habitually go. It takes fuel to get there. It's also expensive when you get there. Bring your own drink if you are hanging out with friends. 3) Drop golf. Or whatever expensive sport you are sinking money into. Invest in some cheap running clothes and focus on cardio-based workouts. Heart health is more important than anything else. If you can't live without your sport, then find an alternate sport that is \"\"equal\"\"-ish in challenge but a ton cheaper to play. For example, if you like playing golf, play discgolf instead (most cities have courses) - there's no cost beyond a couple of discs and the challenge is still there. 4) Drop entertainment. Movies at the theater are expensive. Drop your cable subscription (you are getting financially raped for $1,500/year). Get a Netflix subscription and find shows via free online streaming services. Buy some dominoes, card games, and a couple of classic board games. Keep entertainment simple and cheap. 5) Drop your cell phone's data plan. Republic Wireless is the only decent cellular provider and even their $12/month plan is living a luxury lifestyle. If you spend more than $10/month/person for phone service, you are spending too much. 6) Stop driving everywhere. Gas is expensive. Cars are expensive. If you have more than two cars, sell the extras. If your car is worth more than $20,000, sell it and get something cheaper. 7) Stop drinking alcohol. Alcohol impairs mental functions, is addictive, smells terrible, and is ridiculously expensive. There's no actual need to consume it either. By the way, don't go and make major financial changes without the wife's sign-off. Finances are the #1 reason for divorce. So get her \"\"OK\"\" on this stuff. Hopefully you already knew that. The above are just some common financial pitfalls where people sink thousands and thousand of dollars and gain nothing. You can still have a full and complete life with just a minimum of the above. There is no excuse for living on the edge financially. Your story is one I'm going to share with those who give me the same excuse because they are \"\"poor\"\". You are \"\"I want to punch you in the face\"\" wealthy and you spend every last penny because you think that's how money works. You are wrong. One final piece of advice: Find a financial adviser. It is clear to me that you've been managing money wrong your whole life. A financial adviser will look at your situation and help you far more than someone on the Internet ever can. If you attend a church, many churches have the excellent Crown Financial Ministries program available which teaches sound financial management principles. The education system doesn't show people how to manage money, but that's not an excuse either. Once you dig yourself out of the financial hole you've dug for yourself, you can pass the knowledge on how to correctly manage money onto other people.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6d09b61ab6d61fdb6887e63da5e32dd0", "text": "In addition to the other answers, I think you would also need to account for the increased utility and maintenance costs on the more expensive house. Typically it is recommended to budget 1% to 4% the cost of the home per year for routine maintenance. While it likely won't cost that much every year, you will have those expensive items come up (e.g. roof, HVAC) that come up periodically. The larger house will also cost more to heat/cool. Depending on where you live could also have increased property taxes.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "92cf2a5b6ac5bd821fb15796a37bf18d", "text": "Here is something that should help your decision: Currently you are 57, suppose that means that you will still work for 10 years, and then be retired for another 20 before you sell the house. Your retirement account is nearly flat, so you will have to support yourself with your own income. If there are no surprises, you and your wife could expect to earn 1.16 million over the next 10 years. There will be interest on your savings, but also inflation, so to simplify I will ignore both. That means you will have an average of 40k (gross?) per year available to live from during the next 30 years. If you get a mortgage where you only pay nett 3% interest (no payback of the loan), that would cost you 6k per year on interest (based on 350k-150k), if you also want to pay back the 200k difference within 30 years, it would totally be close to 13k in annual interest+payback. Now consider whether you would rather live on 40k per year in your current place, or on a lower amount in a bigger place. Personally I would not choose to make a 200k investment at this point, perhaps after trying to live on a budget for a while. (This has the additional benefit that you can even build some cash reserve before buying anything.)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1a55e6ac7a7a6ff0ea4a5e2d951c59ee", "text": "\"A primary residence can be an admirable investment/retirement vehicle for a number of reasons. The tax savings on the mortgage are negligible compared to these. A $200,000 mortgage might result in a $2000 annual savings on your taxes -- but a $350,000 house might easily appreciate $20,000 (tax free!) in a good year. Some reasons to not buy a larger house. Getting into or out of a house is tremendously expensive and inconvenient. It can make some life-changes (including retirement) more difficult. There is no way to \"\"diversify\"\" a primary residence. You have one investment and you are a hostage to its fortunes. The shopping center down the street goes defunct and its ruins becomes a magnet for criminals and derelicts? Your next-door neighbor is a lunatic or a pyromaniac? A big hurricane hits your county? Ha-ha, now you're screwed. As they say in the Army, BOHICA: bend over, here it comes again. Even if nothing bad happens, you are paying to \"\"enjoy\"\" a bigger house whether you enjoy it or not. Eating spaghetti from paper plates, sitting on the floor of your enormous, empty dining room, may be romantic when you're 27. When you're 57, it may be considerably less fun. Speaking for myself, both my salary and my investment income have varied wildly, and often discouragingly, over my life, but my habit of buying and renovating dilapidated homes in chic neighborhoods has brought me six figures a year, year after year after year. tl;dr the mortgage-interest deduction is the smallest of many reasons to invest in residential real-estate, but there are good reasons not to.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "477ffe8483980b16ca4f7dc9fd326010", "text": "\"If you do as you propose you are going to get burned. You need to sell, then start to rent. amongst other things. Since 2008, the economy never \"\"recovered,\"\" but was sort of stabilized temporarily like a fighter on the ropes. The economy is beginning to collapse again, and that collapse will accelerate around the Fall. The dollar too will also begin its delayed downward fall come Autumn. Just one example of what I speak: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART I would be happy to tell you more if you like, but I am already going to get pilloried for what I have already said. I do not sell anything, or push anything, but since you asked, and I follow this day in and day out, I thought that I would give you my very well informed answer. Take it for what it's worth. So let me know if you want more.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "69d19386ba55f04469002b731d939674", "text": "Buy a rental property instead. You get tax benefits as well as passive income. And it pays for itself", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "b74742b32b99f9bd32cd60cc84d3206f", "text": "\"Often the counter-party has obligations with respect to timelines as well -- if your buying a house, the seller probably is too, and may have a time-sensitive obligation to close on the deal. I'm that scenario, carrying the second mortgage may be enough to make that deal fall through or result in some other negative impact. Note that \"\"pre-approval\"\" means very little, banks can and do pass on deals, even if the buyer has a good payment history. That's especially true when the economy is not so hot -- bankers in 2011 are worried about not losing money... In 2006, they were worried about not making enough!\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5c9153328983fa1321a9672e4bc87dee", "text": "Of course you don't need to take a mortgage - if you happen to have enough cash (or other assets) to pay your sister her share, or if she is willing to take it in installments over the next years. Mortgages are not needed to buy houses, but to pay for them - subtle difference. If you can pay - in whichever agreed way - without a mortgage, you won't need one.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "df91c47eafc6397732ede7d8f2fe2602", "text": "\"You are mixing issues here. And it's tough for members to answer without more detail, the current mortgage rate in your country, for one. It's also interesting to parse out your question. \"\"I wish to safely invest money. Should I invest in real estate.\"\" But then the text offers that it's not an investment, it's a home to live in. This is where the trouble is. And it effectively creates 2 questions to address. The real question - Buy vs Rent. I know you mentioned Euros. Fortunately, mortgages aren't going to be too different, lower/higher, and tax consequence, but all can be adjusted. The New York Times offered a beautiful infographing calculator Is It Better to Rent or Buy? For those not interested in viewing it, they run the math, and the simple punchline is this - The home/rent ratio can have an incredibly wide range. I've read real estate blogs that say the rent should be 2% of the home value. That's a 4 to 1 home/rent (per year). A neighbor rented his higher end home, and the ratio was over 25 to 1. i.e. the rent for the year was about 4% the value of the home. It's this range that makes the choice less than obvious. The second part of your question is how to stay safely invested if you fear your own currency will collapse. That quickly morphs into too speculative a question. Some will quickly say \"\"gold\"\" and others would point out that a stockpile of weapons, ammo, and food would be the best choice to survive that.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "04a7c37f84e1eb6031a4ef203650c07a", "text": "If it were me, I'd pour my entire savings into paying down the mortgage. I'd also get a HELOC and a personal LOC to use as my emergency fund if I didn't have one already. I personally don't like paying interest on loans when I have cash in the bank to cover it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "372267139d6ce347aa752922aff648ff", "text": "\"A 30-yr mortgage IS a committment. So, you are willing to commit to a place, but not your long-term girlfriend??? Either you don't do this \"\"cheap\"\" scheme idea, or you set up as a business arrangement, or you get married. This is quite a laissez-faire statement you make... \"\"Maybe we will eventually get married, maybe we will eventually break up, who knows.\"\" Anything or anyone that is a \"\"who knows\"\" is not what you make a 30-yr committment on. I mean, unless you just want to risk throwing your money away. Now, man up, hire the lawyer to do official paperwork or else get a legal certificate of civil union or marriage or whatever you want to call it. If you try to do your cockamamie scheme \"\"on the cheap\"\" now, it will most surely cost you dearly in the future! Mixing money (particulary huge sums of 200,000 $!) when there is no legal obligation like marriage or a business contract, is a fool's errand! Now, grow up and do it the right way if you want to help her - and yourself too.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5c3ee85ebbb20ccd9966af2e638bf2b1", "text": "\"As a legal contract, a mortgage is a form of secured debt. In the case of a mortgage, the debt is secured using the property asset as collateral. So \"\"no\"\", there is no such thing as a mortgage contract without a property to act as collateral. Is it a good idea? In the current low interest rate environment, people with good income and credit can obtain a creditline from their bank at a rate comparable to current mortgage rates. However, if you wish to setup a credit line for an amount comparable to a mortgage, then you will need to secure it with some form of collateral.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "030f333f695729064b103a9fbb7dd4f3", "text": "Aggressively paying of Mortgage is better. If you have more cash available [assuming you have covered all other aspects i.e. emergency funds, retirement etc], the only question you need to ask is where will you invest and what returns would you get. So if your mortgage is say at 5%, if the spare money can get you more than this, its beneficial, if its in Bank CD with say near zero interest, its not worth it. However if you are sure you can make 10% returns on the investments, then go ahead and don't pay the mortgage aggressively.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3188ba3af58c8955a687b494fcb5883d", "text": "\"I strongly doubt your numbers, but lets switch the question around anyway. Would you borrow 10k on your house to buy stocks on leverage? That's putting your house at risk to have the chance of a gain in the stock market (and nothing in the market is sure, especially in the short term), and I would really advise against it. The decision you're considering making resolves down to this one. Note: It is always better to make any additional checks out as \"\"for principal only\"\", unless you will be missing a future payment.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "baf9d55a3c1cb700d5e66ed474161839", "text": "\"Stripping away the minutia, your question boils down to this: Should I take a loan for something that I may not be able to repay? The correct answer, is \"\"No\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a7de2abcd6c7bdaf5142448fec9b06c1", "text": "Considering that it's common for the monthly mortgage payment to be 25% of one's income, it's an obvious advantage for that monthly burden to be eliminated. The issue, as I see it, is that this is the last thing one should do in the list of priorities: The idea of 'no mortgage' is great. But. You might pay early and have just a few years of payments left on the mortgage and if you are unemployed, those payments are still due. It's why I'd suggest loading up retirement accounts and other savings before paying the mortgage sooner. Your point, that rates are low, and your expected return is higher, is well presented. I feel no compulsion to prepay my 3.5% mortgage. As the OP is in Canada, land of no mortgage interest deduction, I ignore that, till now. The deduction simply reduces the effective rate, based on the country tax code permitting it. It's not the 'reason' to have a loan. But it's ignorant to ignore the math.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f86aff035b0ccc3e9a474f3878d5a5d1", "text": "\"If you are investing in a mortgage strictly to avoid taxes, the answer is \"\"pay cash now.\"\" A mortgage buys you flexibility, but at the cost of long term security, and in most cases, an overall decrease in wealth too. At a very basic level, I have to ask anyone why they would pay a bank a dollar in order to avoid paying the government 28 - 36 cents depending on your tax rate. After all, one can only deduct interest- not principal. Interest is like rent, it accrues strictly to the lender, not equity. In theory the recipient should be irrelevant. If you have a need to stiff the government, go ahead. Just realize you making a banker three times as happy. Additionally the peace of mind that comes from having a house that no banker can take away from you is, at least for me, compelling. If I have a $300,000 house with no mortgage, no payments, etc. I feel quite safe. Even if my money is tied up in equity, if a serious situation came along (say a huge doctors bill) I always have the option of a reverse mortgage later on. So, to directly counter other claims, yes, I'd rather have $300k in equity then $50k in equity and $225k in liquid assets. (Did you notice that the total net worth is $25k less? And that's even before one considers the cash flow implication of a continuing mortgage. I have no mortgage, and I'm 41. I have a lot of net worth, but the thing that I really like is that I have a roof over my head that no on e can take away from me, and sufficient savings to weather most crises). That said, a mortgage is not about total cost. It is about cash flow. To the extent that a mortgage makes your cash flow situation better, it provides a benefit- just not one that is quantifiable in dollars and cents. Rather, it is a risk/reward situation. By taking a mortgage even when you have the cash, you pay a premium (the interest rate) in order to have your funds available when you need it. A very simple strategy to calculate and/or minimize this risk would be to invest the funds in another investment. If your rate of return exceeds the interest rate minus any tax preference (e.g. 4% minus say a 25% deduction = 3%), your money is better off there, obviously. And, indeed, when interest rates are only 4%, it may may be possible to find that. That said, in most instances, a CD or an inflation protected bond or so won't give you that rate of return. There, you'd need to look at stocks- slightly more risky. When interest rates are back to normal- say 5 or 6%, it gets even harder. If you could, however, find a better return than the effective interest rate, it makes the most sense to do that investment, hold it as a hedge to pay off the mortgage (see, you get your security back if you decide not to work!), and pocket the difference. If you can't do that, your only real reason to hold the cash should be the cash flow situation.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e6bafc178dad29c3bf694d00227deaf5", "text": "\"If I were you, I would rent. Wait to buy a home. Here is why: When you say that renting is equal in cost to a 30-year mortgage, you are failing to consider several aspects. See this recent answer for a list of things that need to be considered when comparing buying and renting. You have no down payment. Between the two of you, you have $14,000, but this money is needed for both your emergency fund and your fiancée's schooling. In your words: \"\"we can’t reeaallllly afford a home.\"\" A home is a big financial commitment. If you buy a home before you are financially ready, it will be continuous trouble. If you need a cosigner, you aren't ready to buy a home. I would absolutely advise whoever you are thinking about cosigning for you not to do so. It puts them legally on the hook for a house that you can't yet afford. You aren't married yet. You should never buy something as big as a home with someone you aren't married to; there are just too many things that can go wrong. (See comments for more explanation.) Wait until you are married before you buy. Your income is low right now. And that is okay for now; you've been able to avoid the credit card debt that so many people fall into. However, you do have student loans to pay, and taking on a huge new debt right now would be potentially disastrous for you. Your family income will eventually increase when your fiancée gets her degree and gets a job, and at that time, you will be in a much better situation to consider buying a house. You need to move \"\"ASAP.\"\" Buying a house when you are in a hurry is a generally a bad idea. When you look for a home, you need to take some time looking so you aren't rushed into a bad deal that you will regret. Even if you decide you want to buy, you should first find a place to rent; then you can take your time finding the right house. To answer your question about escrow: When you own a house, two of the required expenses that you will have besides the mortgage payment are property taxes and homeowner's insurance. These are large payments that are only due once a year. The bank holding the mortgage wants to make sure that they get paid. So to help you budget for these expenses and to ensure that these expenses are paid, the bank will add these to your monthly mortgage payment, and set them aside in a savings account (called an escrow account). Then when these bills come due once a year, they are paid for out of the escrow account.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e3114d45827cfc2ab35bae84dc5fce87", "text": "\"I'm in the \"\"big mortgage\"\" camp. Or, to put this another way - what would you be happier to have in 15 years? A house that is worth $300,000, or $50,000 of equity in a house and $225,000 in the bank? I would much rather have the latter; it gives me so many more options. (the numbers are rough; you can figure it out yourself based on the current interest rate you can get on investments vs the cost of mortgage interest (which may be less if you can deduct the mortgage interest)).\"", "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": "cb3d2f9d271b82b2e51e476bf192362f", "text": "\"I will echo the others; your home should be worth more to you than its market value. It is YOUR HOME. It's where you come home every day to your wife and kids, where you build a life. Yes it's an investment, but it's not like a stock or bond that you hold for a little while and then cash out for the profit. The one time you should be worried about being \"\"upside-down\"\" on your mortgage is if you're getting out. If you're moving to a new job at a new company in a new city, you have to make good on the remaining loan balance, and that won't all be from the sale of the house. Unless you're at that point however, if you can afford making the payments and have no reason to move or to cash in equity (of which you have none), then just keep making the payments. Hey, it's better than rent; you'll never see rent money again, while even if you're underwater, you're making headway with each payment.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
bc999a11c067cb4c6d1c7af36528fcef
The equivalent of the standing order in the internet age for the UK specifically
[ { "docid": "2873bd1c450f7ea7bacb0cf4f7616263", "text": "A standing order is still the right way to do this. Most bank accounts have online access and will let your customer setup the standing order online, without having to fill in a paper form.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "6e1a49099026facd9c7a976bb9804035", "text": "I searched for FTSE 100 fund on Yahoo Finance and found POW FTSE RAF UK 100 (PSRU.L), among many others. Google Finance is another possible source that immediately comes to mind.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "81a0892a695ba40344a68db23cb8c3a6", "text": "moneydashboard.com claims to be the UK's Mint but I have problem using it with my HSBC account right now. I have contacted their helpdesk.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e8b38af48c5cb20cf0572ca36bb7e8bc", "text": "\"I've just received my first Credit Card statement from HSBC. All I can say is all the information you need is there. It's really easy to pay off your credit card bill just have to read the instructions! Here are the bank account numbers and steps how to set up a standing order (as it was written in my statement): \"\"Standing Order/ bill payment Pay a fixed amount to your HSBC Bank Credit Card using the following information: Type of Card Card ------------------------ Number Begins ----Account Number MasterCard: HSBC Bank and Welsh --- 543460 ----------------29004734 Visa: HSBC and Welsh ---------------------454638 ----------------09003649 Gold Visa ---------------------------------------494120 ----------------69005161 Remember, if payments are made using the wrong card details, sort code or account number, they may be delayed or not applied.\"\" hope it was helpful\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2fc536708cdb5af32df9385f3befdc41", "text": "This answer will be US-centric but hopefully most of the information will be applicable to other jurisdictions: Generally speaking:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "db10ef26744c608b17138ca1b553355c", "text": "&gt; But the more pressing question is: What obligations should be imposed on the Web Trust giants as they embed themselves ever further into our lives? How do we assure ourselves that the “users” they connect us to are human or that the search results they feed us are based on merit — not pay for play (or worse, algorithmic racism). &gt; &gt; &gt; &gt; It’s time to consider whether to break up the Google search and advertising functions, or to deny safe harbors that protect the tech platforms if they turn a blind eye to sex trafficking or commercial piracy. We need a new privacy Bill of Rights to demystify the algorithms that track and tag you and shape your on-line experience. &gt; &gt; &gt; &gt; In these partisan times, it speaks to how dangerous The Web Trust has become that both Republicans and Democrats are calling for action and reform. If Congress and the administration want to preserve a truly open internet, they need to become the trustbusters for a new, digital generation. I guess those parts are not important for you? This article to me was more along the lines of; it's this, or it is that; the authors formatting for this op-ed was a bit wack, creating uncertainty in his assessment. I'm not worried if you didn't see that though!", "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": "e3404e5602b568dd1e5af71e50c6d531", "text": "\"[This is the simple solution.](http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3041628) \"\"Since the Securities and Exchange Act requires that all orders must be intended to execute there's a simple way to prevent this sort of nanosecond game, where any part of the strategy involves \"\"flashing\"\" an order that isn't really intended to execute and thus clear through the exchange: Force all orders to be valid for two full seconds or until executed.\"\"\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "57f41222ce7dc5831f6d274d9d46090a", "text": "I know nice and free stock screener for UK (and 20+ exchanges) - https://unicornbay.com/screener?f=exchange_str|%3D|LSE;&s=MarketCapitalization|desc&p=1|20 from Unicorn Bay. It supports both fundamental and technical analysis.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "99ba5e42ae44defa6d756a61fa2526da", "text": "This probably would not stand up in court, but seeing as businesses do not have the same collection protection rights as consumers, it could be a very costly mess to disentangle yourself from. Operations like this are like whack-a-mole, they're ridiculously easy for someone to set up and very hard to take down.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0ce860f27cf55929c517065a9c8f5c32", "text": "I guess my point of view is that if domain seizing becomes a very prominent thing than proxies become a prominent thing amongst piraters - not that they already aren't, but I'm of the belief that whatever technology legislators embrace for combating piracy, pirates embrace an equally effective converse technology. As usual there will be a lot of unsuspecting American citizens hurt by SOPA but eventually the people who have made torrents successful for the average Internet user will be able to make proxies, hidden downloads, and mirrors extremely user-friendly and easy-to-use for the public. As far as I'm concerned combatting piracy through legislation rather than business practices is opening pandora's box. Right now it's possible to make your ISP see nothing but bandwidth, it's difficult to set-up, and a pain to maintain, but if content providers want to wage war, they should be prepared to lose, and lose hard.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "56e7741116703bc204078da0634ebd33", "text": "Whether or not you'll be allowed to enter the UK is a topic for a different forum (and really more a topic for a lawyer rather than strangers on the internet). That being said, as a non-lawyer giving my opinion of the situation, you should be granted access to the UK as the banks/money lenders/phone companies don't have a relationship with Border Entry. With regards to debts in the UK, there is some precedent to debts being waived after a certain period of time, but the minimum is 6 years for unsecured debt, and the companies you owe money to can still chase you for payment, but can't use legal proceedings to force you to pay. However, the big caveat to this is that this only applies to residents of England and Wales. From the cleardebt.co.uk site: What is out of date debt? Debts like these are covered by the Limitation Act 1980, which is a statute of limitations that provides time scales as to how long a creditor can chase you (the debtor) for an unpaid debt. The Limitation Act 1980 only applies when no acknowledgement of a debt has been made between you and the creditor for six years for unsecured debts or 12 years for mortgage shortfalls and secured loans. This law only applies to residents of England and Wales. When does debt go out of date? If the creditor fails to maintain contact with you for six years or more, you may be able to claim that the outstanding debt is statute barred under the Limitation Act 1980. This means the creditor cannot use the legal system to enforce payment of the outstanding debt. The time limit starts from when you last acknowledged owing the debt or made a payment to the account. When can a creditor pursue an unsecured debt? You may think a creditor has written off your debt if you haven’t heard from them for a long time. The reality is that the debt still exists. The creditor can still contact you and they are entitled to chase the outstanding debt, even if the debt has been statute barred, but they are unable to use legal proceedings to force you to pay. Creditors can pursue an unsecured debt if:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ca2a261bf62d97c5c7f72f6c496bcd37", "text": "I suppose all our (british) newspapers have 'social media teams' which may or may not include spammers, it will become a more common thing. Bear in mind also that the Daily Mail (website at least) seems really popular in the US. They are also taking posts from sites like reddit and putting them into their dead tree paper. I think the issue the admins banned these domains about was that the sites (or agents acting on behalf of) were spamming *and* manipulating the voting system - method unknown.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4d0da1ce4c52be459834daa39d8b3357", "text": "I've used yahoo to perform the exercise you're asking about. It allows you to download price data, month end if you wish, and by manipulating via a spreadsheet to add a column for purchases, you can easily see how your £100/mo would end after so long a time period.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8cf585819f69f8fd9fcd539685c2709b", "text": "\"Are there any known protections against obvious typos in the stock systems themselves? Do you know of stock exchanges which flags or rejects obviously wrong buy or sell orders (e.g., selling something for 0.1% of its highest buy order, or buying something at 1000 times the current sell order)? Does the stock exchange \"\"community\"\" have some sort of \"\"rules of conduct\"\" for this? Yes and No. Most Stock Exchanges for certain set of stocks have circuit breakers that are more to restrict panic selling or artificial drop in prices. The kind of controls you are mentioning can't be put on individual trades; as stock exchanges are meant to guarantee / provide neutral ground for the price to be determined by demand / supply. There are quite a few companies that have quickly lost value and become worthless with a day or two. Hence it becomes difficult to determine if something is error by an individual or not. Once an order is submitted to the exchange, it can't afford the to and fro to verify ... as even few seconds make a different in volatile markets. The kind of errors reported are difficult for an individual to make as he would not own the kind of stocks and the stock broker will stop the trade from being placed.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c1d9e53bd586aec0b2ccf90d331df268", "text": "In your proposed world, each business would have it's own laws when people stepped on their property. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. How would everyone keep track of the millions of different laws? What's to stop a business from taking advantage of this and duping customers who haven't researched their unfair laws? And how would two parties in a dispute agree on which private court system to use?", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
92ee408ee316b4727c476d192f3122b7
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles question
[ { "docid": "b2a9adcdbf100c4a97dae74f98c936b8", "text": "You recognize expense when you sell the hot dog. When you pay for the buns you have inventory, which is an asset. When you sell the hot dog - you have cost of goods sold, which is the expense. Expense principle says that you recognize expense when you use the product. You use the buns when you actually sell the hot dog, not before. The matching principle is also honored because you recognize expense of the buns at the time of recognizing revenue of the hot dog.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "b30bd7a9465bf07e15893e3617051654", "text": "\"I am doing an assignment for a finance class, and I am writing a recommendation for a specific capital structure. One of the concerns brought up by the \"\"board of directors\"\" was interest coverage, so in my addressing that topic in my report, I want to compare to competitors. The interest coverage ratio under this capital structure that I'm choosing is 11.8 and the two competitors we are given information on are Company A (who has an interest coverage ratio of 6.67) and Company B (who has an interest coverage ratio of 11.25). It seems good, but my concern is that I may be missing something, as Company A is similar in size (in terms of sales) to the company I am writing a report for while Company B has ~50 times more sales than the company I am writing a report for. Advice, things to consider as I move forward?\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9f21c3868a05636a714b94a393a6072d", "text": "\"There is no hard and fast rule. If there was, people could cleverly arrange to make money just often enough to stay on the \"\"ok\"\" side. It's a judgement call by the CRA and it probably starts with an audit, and depends on the reasons for the loss. Simple example: your business is selling your time at X an hour and you have expenses that you will cover if you sell Y hours a year, where Y is a lot less than the 2000 hours we have to sell each year. Maybe 300. And you had a big contract but it fell through and though you tried and tried you couldn't get another contract. This will probably be considered a reasonable loss. Another example: your business is selling art or antiques, most of which are kept in your house where you can look at them every day and enjoy them. Your expenses include lots of flights to places where these art or antiques come from, or perhaps are inspired by, along with hotel and restaurant costs, and you would need to sell your entire inventory every year just to cover these expenses, yet you only sell one or two pieces a year (or none) and there's no indication that you're particularly trying to sell more than that. This will probably be considered an unreasonable loss, and if the situation persists for many years in a row, the expenses may end up being disallowed. Side businesses often lose money at first. In fact, once they stop losing money they stop being side businesses. If you have spin up costs like buying hardware, developing software, or acquiring inventory, and you can show how long those extra costs can be expected to last, your expenses are less likely to be disallowed. That's the issue, not how many years in a row the loss occurred. This archived CRA document http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tp/it364/it364-e.html gives examples of startup expenses that were allowed in years that didn't have revenue, never mind profit.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a4fe4886ea6863bd792a7277924d2b8b", "text": "Purchase accounting requires that you mark assets, including PP&amp;E to fair value. So let's say you bought a machine 5 years ago for $1,000 - you might have depreciated it to $250 on your balance sheet but it might actually be worth $900.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6f35493317b0fa9767a0827ede4a4505", "text": "I appreciate it. I didn't operate under selling the asset year five but other than that I followed this example. I appreciate the help. These assignments are just poorly laid out. Financial management also plays on different calculation interactions so it is difficult for me to easily identify the intent at times. Thanks again.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "294f7578f55527d349d6950e9be9755b", "text": "This is a wonderful comprehensive answer as it relates to transferring goods, and evaluating profitability. I would like to add to your post and comment about a few other costs that are transferred. First though, I disagree with your comment about transfer pricing being about opportunity cost. I think transfer pricing is first and primarily about the matching principal. Properly matching expenses incurred to the revenues generated from those expenditures, or in the case of period expenses, to those entities that received a benefit in the proper period. I don't work in tax, so I'm by no means an expert in this subject, but I am a CPA and I feel I have a solid understanding of the subject. Some additional items going through TP might be: interest, shared corporate services, the amortization of intellectual property, technology fees, and depreciation charges. This is not a comprehensive list, and please don't take it as such. None of these need apply to every company, and certain industries and even individual companies will have exceptions. For example, for various reasons, a multi-national conglomerate may choose to maintain separate treasury functions for it's vastly different businesses, so you may not see much interest TP. Interest is pretty straight forward, and is the interest a company is paying on a debt. Not all interest is transferable, but a classic example might be borrowed funds used for an acquisition. The interest cost associated with that should be transferred in part back to the original entity. Short term borrowing costs used for operating capital is another classic example. Shared corporate services are centralized functions like a legal department, accounting department, executive offices, and the like. This can also be an IT department or in the instance of an international website (maybe google), an operations team monitoring the server loads and up-times. IP could just be patents that have definite lives that a number of businesses are benefiting from. IP is a bit of a mess to get into for various reasons and I'm trying to stay focused in this post. Some reasons for complexity include: the valuation, life of the asset, benefit of use, is the entity even really using it?, etc. I would imagine this is where companies get away with A LOT. Technology fees can be software licenses (Windows ain't free). Depreciation can be capitalized proprietary software. I'm running out of gas and wanted to comment about OP's question. I don't think SLA's and Internal billing services are a matter of directly increasing efficiency, more a matter of not creating inefficiencies. Going anecdotal, anywhere I've worked, the best person to do the job has been whoever's closest to the work. It wouldn't make much sense to me to have accounting gather up internal support during the VERY time sensitive month-end close for something like one division's trade magazine that another division placed an ad in. On the other hand, I think the allocation of copy expenses on an activity basis is an absolute waste of time. It all depends on the specific transaction in question. Great post bctich. Don't mean to detract, just looking to help others understand.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6db8ff167a2027d4fa6c4eb9c132fc41", "text": "\"I think the key concept here is future value. The NAV is essentially a book-keeping exercise- you add up all the assets and remove all the liabilities. For a public company this is spelled out in the balance sheet, and is generally listed at the bottom. I pulled a recent one from Cisco Systems (because I used to work there and know the numbers ;-) and you can see it here: roughly $56 billion... https://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=CSCO+Balance+Sheet&annual Another way to think about it: In theory (and we know about this, right?) the NAV is what you would get if you liquidated the company instantaneously. A definition I like to use for market cap is \"\"the current assets, plus the perceived present value of all future earnings for the company\"\"... so let's dissect that a little. The term \"\"present value\"\" is really important, because a million dollars today is worth more than a million dollars next year. A company expected to make a lot of money soon will be worth more (i.e. a higher market cap) than a company expected to make the same amount of money, but later. The \"\"all future earnings\"\" part is exactly what it sounds like. So again, following our cisco example, the current market cap is ~142 billion, which means that \"\"the market\"\" thinks they will earn about $85 billion over the life of the company (in present day dollars).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7aec2e5d1480a09c5e8c8671d32c6e8d", "text": "\"A bit strange but okay. The way I would think about this is again that you need to determine for what purpose you're computing this, in much the same way you would if you were to build out the model. The IPO valuation is not going to be relevant to the accretion/dilution analysis unless you're trying to determine whether the transaction was net accretive at exit. But that's a weird analysis to do. For longer holding periods like that you're more likely to look at IRR, not EPS. EPS is something investors look at over the short to medium term to get a sense of whether the company is making good acquisition decisions. And to do that short-to-medium term analysis, they look at earnings. Damodaran would say this is a shitty way of looking at things and that you should probably be looking at some measure of ROIC instead, and I tend to agree, but I don't get paid to think like an investor, I get paid to sell shit to them (if only in indirect fashion). The short answer to your question is that no, you should not incorporate what you are calling liquidation value when determining accretion/dilution, but only because the market typically computes accretion/dilution on a 3-year basis tops. I've never put together a book or seen a press release in my admittedly short time in finance that says \"\"the transaction is estimated to be X% accretive within 4 years\"\" - that just seems like an absurd timeline. Final point is just that from an accounting perspective, a gain on a sale of an asset is not going to get booked in either EBITDA or OCF, so just mechanically there's no way for the IPO value to flow into your accretion/dilution analysis there, even if you are looking at EBITDA/shares. You could figure the gain on sale into some kind of adjusted EBITDA/shares version of EPS, but this is neither something I've ever seen nor something that really makes sense in the context of using EPS as a standardized metric across the market. Typically we take OUT non-recurring shit in EPS, we don't add it in. Adding something like this in would be much more appropriate to measuring the success of an acquisition/investing vehicle like a private equity fund, not a standalone operating company that reports operational earnings in addition to cash flow from investing. And as I suggest above, that's an analysis for which the IRR metric is more ideally situated. And just a semantic thing - we typically wouldn't call the exit value a \"\"liquidation value\"\". That term is usually reserved for dissolution of a corporate entity and selling off its physical or intangible assets in piecemeal fashion (i.e. not accounting for operational synergies across the business). IPO value is actually just going to be a measure of market value of equity.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "27eac77085ef8132f3750af1c9f86670", "text": "Sorry, I got even more confused. I assumed IC referred to equity only. At least under English accounting practice it's the norm to refer only to equity investment as capital in that context. The debt is listed as both an asset (cash or whatever asset the cash has been put towards) and a liability, cancelling it out. That being the case, the number would be the same, no?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "50f1ca05abaa0bcb89d9ef694f692a8d", "text": "Broadly, there's a bunch of stuff you need to be accounting for that's not reflected in the above, which will impact the A/D profile of an acquisition: * Consideration paid (all cash on substantially the same terms is going to be more accretive than an all-stock transaction...because in the latter, your denominator is much bigger) * Shares outstanding (including repurchases, in-kind dividends and option exercise) * Financing / interest expense * Upside / base / downside case for all of your assumptions - best to have a toggle based on a CHOOSE function that will allow the user to easily toggle between these I'm not sure what EBITDA is getting you. EPS accretion/dilution typically looks at earnings, but you could also look at Cash EPS A/D which measures OCF/shares outstanding. The point is, this really depends on how back of the envelope you want the A/D computation to be. At a minimum, you need an earnings schedule projected over the next 2-3 years, and you need a schedule reflecting outstanding shares over the same time period. Your earnings buildout can have varying degrees of granularity. You can project cost synergies over the forecast period, which most obviously is going to affect your earnings, but you can also drill down further. Financing, transaction fees, etc. Your writeups and writedowns from your B/S combination may result in certain deferred tax items that will affect your bottom line over the forecast period. Your share schedule can also have varying degrees of complexity. One way to do it is to just presume that the company will not issue any more shares, and will not repurchase any shares, and that there will be no options exercised, over the forecast period. This is a bad series of assumptions. It is likely that as options vest, if in the money, they will be exercised, resulting in dilution for existing shareholders. It is also likely that certain preferred shareholders and optionholders are going to experience adjustments to the conversion prices based on antidilution provisions in their securities. These may be but are not always disclosed in the 10K. Last point - models are tools. What are you trying to build an accretion/dilution model for? This will affect and determine the degree of granularity you'll want to go into.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9d77881dc3d8a425eeea4703c169e0b3", "text": "\"First, don't use Yahoo's mangling of the XBRL data to do financial analysis. Get it from the horse's mouth: http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html Search for Facebook, select the latest 10-Q, and look at the income statement on pg. 6 (helpfully linked in the table of contents). This is what humans do. When you do this, you see that Yahoo omitted FB's (admittedly trivial) interest expense. I've seen much worse errors. If you're trying to scrape Yahoo... well do what you must. You'll do better getting the XBRL data straight from EDGAR and mangling it yourself, but there's a learning curve, and if you're trying to compare lots of companies there's a problem of mapping everybody to a common chart of accounts. Second, assuming you're not using FCF as a valuation metric (which has got some problems)... you don't want to exclude interest expense from the calculation of free cash flow. This becomes significant for heavily indebted firms. You might as well just start from net income and adjust from there... which, as it happens, is exactly the approach taken by the normal \"\"indirect\"\" form of the statement of cash flows. That's what this statement is for. Essentially you want to take cash flow from operations and subtract capital expenditures (from the cash flow from investments section). It's not an encouraging sign that Yahoo's lines on the cash flow statement don't sum to the totals. As far as definitions go... working capital is not assets - liabilities, it is current assets - current liabilities. Furthermore, you want to calculate changes in working capital, i.e. the difference in net current assets from the previous quarter. What you're doing here is subtracting the company's accumulated equity capital from a single quarter's operating results, which is why you're getting an insane result that in no way resembles what appears in the statement of cash flows. Also you seem to be using the numbers for the wrong quarter - 2014q4 instead of 2015q3. I can't figure out where you're getting your depreciation number from, but the statement of cash flows shows they booked $486M in depreciation for 2015q3; your number is high. FB doesn't have negative FCF.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d938cfa19603cd76c60ccc1bc2fa74d2", "text": "I was looking for ideas on what the usual figures are in such positions. Something like market value, or other terms such as changing slab percentages in compensation. Not sure what the best practices are in this situation. Not sure what you are referring to.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d0fa19bd56f0718d8f95e7384ad26fc3", "text": "Expensing a transfer of funds is incorrect. That will affect the Profit/Loss (Income) statement when you transfer it out and back in, which you do not want, at least for the principle. The interest should be recorded as a interest income. The general way to account for transferring money is to credit the originating account, and debit the destination account. This will only affect the balance sheet accounts. For example: Transferring (buying) 10,000 worth of fix term bank deposits Interest is paid: The bank deposit reaches maturity, so the principle is returned, with the final interest payment. The accounts Checking account and Fixed term bank deposit are asset accounts, which show up on the balance sheet. The Interest income is an income account, which will show up in the income statement. This is how a fixed term/CD is usually recorded. In certain cases, where the business must follow an accounting standard, this may very well be insufficient, but this situation will be unlikely if it's a small private sports club. Having said that, double check to make sure what you've stated is indeed correct, and look back into the past entries to see how it was dealt with before, especially since you said this bookkeeping job is temporary. I would strongly advise against changing non-recent entries, even if they are incorrect. For the insurance payments, that would depend on how the damaged assets were accounted for. It's a little hard to say without more detail-- the extent of the damage, how the diminished value was accounted for in the books, the cost of repair materials, etc.", "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": "f469aad776f005ed531a025b282f05ad", "text": "This is great! I'm not a CPA, but work in finance. As such, my course/professional work is focused more on the economic and profitability aspects of transfer pricing. As you might imagine, it tended to analyze corporate strategy decisions under various cost allocation models, which you thoroughly discuss. I would agree with the statement that it is based on the matching principle but would like to add that transfer pricing is interesting as it falls under several fields: accounting, finance, and economics. Fundamentally it is based on the matching principal, but it's real world applications are based on all three (it's often used to determine divisional and even individual sales peoples profitability; as is the case with bank related funds transfer pricing on stuff like time deposits). In this case, the correct accounting principal allows you to, when done properly, better understand the economics, strategy, and operations of an organization. In effect, when done correctly, it provides transparency for strategic decision making to executives. As I said, since my coursework tended to focus more on that aspect, I definitely have a natural tendency towards it. This is an amazing explanation (esp. about interest on M&amp;A bridge loans, I get that) of the more detailed stuff! Truthfully, I'm not as familiar with it and was just trying to show more of the conceptual than nitty-gritty. Thanks for the reply!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c0744b5252ccc248969654a5077ebc8c", "text": "&gt; If the buyside was showing demand, what's wrong with HFT for reacting with supply? In my example, HFT isn't actually adding supply/liquidity. They're just grabbing it and flipping it. &gt; The example you gave is akin to me going from car dealership to car dealership yelling loudly about what car I want and the price I'd like it at - would you be upset if someone heard you and decided to sell their car to you later down the line? Not the same. The equivalent would be me yelling about wanting to buy a Porsche 911, and you buying them all before I can finish my own purchase, then offering to resell them to me at a higher price. &gt;In this case, the buy side trader is being stupid. Maybe - certainly if all this could be eliminated by avoiding market orders. This is a major critique many people have with Brad K. Instead of serially going from exchange to exchange, he could have sent orders to all exchanges at the same time (parallel!) and likely received much better prices. He did do this at his time at RBC - sent orders to all exchanges at once. The result would be apparently liquidity (asks at the market) disappearing and his orders getting filled at higher prices. &gt;In my opinion, the HFT player here is simply facilitating price discovery by reacting to demand - as a market maker that's his job. I think that's a misinterpretation of what these particular HFTs are doing. &gt;Here's a good article. Let me know what you think. Interesting. It certainly goes against a lot of what Lewis wrote. And I suppose that's the problem... very few of us are actually qualified to say what is actually true. I know little about market structure and, as I said, have no involvement in high liquidity stocks. The fund managers next door to me also trade pretty illiquid stuff that I strongly doubt any HFT ever touches, and they're value investors anyway, not arb HFs or something.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
cc4f65bd0064db1c2d1502df5d6fbaa5
Automate Savings by Percentage on varying paychecks?
[ { "docid": "62db6b54c84733417455bcfa66eb05b8", "text": "When I have been faced with this sort of situation I have done the split at the bank. They had the ability to recognize the deposit as a payroll transfer and split it the way I wanted. I put a specific amount of money into checking, another amount of money into the mortgage, and a specific amount of money into another fund. The balance, whether it was $1 or any other amount, went in to savings. That meant that I transferred the amounts I needed to pay my budgeted living expenses and what ever I made above that went to savings. In months I made extra, more was available to be saved.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "62cc5cba2a3323bb4a679cf37648ad24", "text": "You just need to average out the weekly hours and income over the year. So if his yearly income is $100,000 p.a. then this would average out to $2000 per week of which 15% would be $300 per week. It does not have to be exactly 15% per week as long as over the long run your saving your target 15%. If he gets a pay rise you can include this in the saving plan. Say he gets a 5% increase in pay you would increase the $300 per week by 5% to $315 per week.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "929cc868870e45ef33de54abb9d7320c", "text": "\"I've tried Mint, and I've tried Quicken. Now, I think Quicken is an annoying, crashy little piece of software, but it is also quite capable; overall I think it has the features you want. You can enter your bills, broken down by category, in advance. You can enter your paychecks, broken down by category (gross income, federal income tax, state income tax, social security, SDI, transfers to tax-protected 401(k) account, etc) in advance. You can enter in your stock trades and it can tell you how much you'll need to end up paying in capital gains taxes. You can even enter in your stock option vesting schedule in advance (it's a royal pain because you can't go back and change anything without deleting everything, but you can do it). It'll forecast your bank account balance in all of your bank accounts in advance with a shiny chart. It'll even model your loans, if you set it up right. I didn't do too much with the \"\"budgeting\"\" tools per se, but the account-balances-daily features sound like the closest thing to what you're looking for that's likely to exist. The only thing that's a trifle tricky is that transfers from one account to another may take multiple days (hello, ACH) and you'll have to decide whether to record them at departure or arrival.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "806551235283f9d9a95065c5b04a2cbc", "text": "neobudget.com is a website that does exactly what you are describing. It is set up for electronically using the envelope system of budgeting. Disclosure: neobudget was founded by a former coworker of mine.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4c497d8c127129e08ae781080c27482e", "text": "\"The short answer is \"\"yes\"\", paying more towards the loan as soon as a you can will reduce the interest. There are calculators or you could work up a spreadsheet using the specialized family of functions: PMT, PPMT, IPMT. My personal view: The amount of interest you offset in this manner is going to be fairly small (I'm going to guess less than $5 or $10 a month, but I haven't done the math). I would say what is more important is to automate your payments at a comfortable level, while making sure your other obligations are taken care of. Then add an extra payment when you save up a chunk of money to pay towards it. Make sure you never miss a payment. That means making sure you set up emergency fund to cover the payments if you lose your job or need to visit a sick family member for a while or the car breaks down or ....\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "91b4ce3ca1f37ce1a0f7919d6eee4489", "text": "\"I currently use Mint for this, which I see that you have already disqualified but not why you have disqualified it. Set \"\"budgets\"\" for how much you want to spend on what type of expense, and then be sure to assign expenses to a budget as they come in. Mint actually learns what expenses go to each budget and eventually does it automatically.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "97ec84ecff7b22fecfb6849e1dc8fa5a", "text": "\"There is a saying in business: what gets measured gets done. Track every expense you make. Later, look over what you have learned. If 5% of your total budget is going to something frivolous, maybe you could halve it? If 1% or 0.1% is going to that frivolous expense, there's not much to be gained even by eliminating it. If you spend $200/mo on coffees, dropping those will help. If you spend $10/mo on coffees, you need to look elsewhere for your big savings. Have a target: I want to put $X into savings each month. Therefore I can only spend $Y. What do you have to change about last month's spending patterns to get down to $Y? Where are the easy targets for you? They will be different than the easy targets for me. What absolutely cannot change for you? Once you know the costs of what you're doing, you will know where it's possible to save, and where it's \"\"worth it\"\" to economize.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "73a90f68d3fc6389adadf3534022af43", "text": "\"While I know some people prefer handling things more \"\"manually\"\", I really like automating everything possible. To the greatest extent possible, my deposits automatically go into my Checking account and my bills automatically withdraw from it. That way, I never have to worry about accidentally paying a bill late, and my financial life just runs mostly on its own. There are a couple things to be wary of when automating one's financial life:\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "01c34c67ef1e385edd7fdbd7e386c68b", "text": "To me, this question is really about setting and meeting goals. The process is the same, whether it's about exercising regularly, or saving, or whatever. You need to have clear, personally-relevant reasons for doing something. Write down: Exactly why you want to save. It may seem trivial, but if you can't visualize the prize it's hard to stay motivated. How much can you afford to save? Use something like Mint.com to find out your real monthly expenses, as opposed to what you think you're spending. Also, don't get overzealous... leave yourself some money for small luxuries and unexpected expenses so you don't feel like a miser. Saving should be a joy, not torture. Automate the saving process. Set up an automatic transfer to move the amount you figured out in step 2 to your savings account on the same date you get paid. This is very important. By saving early you ensure there will be enough money to save. If you wait until the end of the month, there will usually not be anything left. Don't you dare touch your savings! (Except in a real emergency) If you must dip into your savings, immediately create a plan to put it back as soon as possible. Also, get into the habit of reading personal finance books, blogs, sites, etc. I recommend authors like Robert Kiyosaki, and Suze Orman. Good luck!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9b0f0a2fe0ad927927dcebe9e62ba618", "text": "To avoid having it become overly complicated, I suggest it be run as would a mutual fund. Mutual funds transact each evening to set a price. Transactions for purchases or sales are done at that price each evening. Initially, you have a dollar amount invested for each person. You can calculate the percent of the 'fund' each has, and, assuming the total is under $10K, 7 digits after the decimal accuracy is enough to track each share to the 1/10 cent. When new money is added, that night, you calculate the exact value of investments, and add the new funds, so each person now has a smaller share of the larger fund. If you wish, you can normalize this to 'share value' so my initial investment of $1000 is 100 shares regardless of the total amount invested. Then when new money comes in, the 'shares' increase as well. This may feel better as a declining percent may just seem awkward, even though that's the case.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2c75e169db687e35ae98fead9607db43", "text": "Not sure. I know Tim Ferriss wrote a lot about automating business processes in his book Four-Hour work week. Which I've applied the ideology myself and always looking to automate or delegate a routine task that doesn't necessarily have to be done myself. What about you? Are you trying to automate?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fc56353f6036f61ed99a145d1a6acdec", "text": "\"The principle to follow is called \"\"pay yourself first\"\". Have your savings deducted from your paycheck before it hits your checking account. You spending will change to accommodate the reduction. If you have a 401(k) available from your employer, start saving some money via that. If not, figure out a way to have something moved out of your checking account to a separate savings account when your paycheck hits. Then as you get raises, up the amount of automatic savings by half of the raise. You will find this hurts less than you think and it will let you build an emergency fund, which is the first thing you need. When the emergency fund is 6 months of normal spending, then you can start to invest.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b8c4ae8966c19697d96576190b6a9ba8", "text": "Do you have direct deposit of your paycheck? If so, almost every employer will allow you to split the paycheck into two accounts. You could open one account for savings, and one for spending. Put $x from each paycheck into the savings account, and the rest into the spending account. Keep the savings account totally separate, with its own ATM card. There should be no way to get money out of this account except by using the SEPARATE ATM card. Now, get a dish of water. Put the ATM card in the dish of water. Put the dish of water in the freezer. If you are ever tempted to spend your savings, you'll have to wait for the block of ice to defrost. Hopefully, while the ice is defrosting, the urge to waste money will pass :)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a7ac74f7905d5fbd9326fa140ce341c1", "text": "A couple ideas: Use excel - it has an IRR (internal rate of return) that can handle a table of inputs as you describe, along with dates deposited to give you a precise number. Go simple - track total deposits over the year, assume half of that was present in January. So, for example, your account started the year with $10k, ended with $15k, but you deposited $4k over the year. It should be clear the return (gain) is $1k, right? But it's not 10%, as you added during the year. I'd divide $1k/$12k for an 8.3% return. Not knowing how your deposits were structured, the true number lies between the 10% and 6.7% as extremes. You'll find as you get older and have a higher balance, this fast method gaining accuracy, as your deposits are a tinier fraction of your account and likely spread out pretty smoothly over the year anyway.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8b7f9c7c77f111780c108fef0c2696a8", "text": "Interesting. When you say DIY you mean pencil and paper. For most of us the choice came down to using a professional vs using the software. Your second bullet really hits the point. The tax return is a giant spreadsheet with multiple cells depending on each other. Short of building my own spreadsheet to perform the task, I found the software, at $30-$50, to be the happy medium between the full DIY and the Pro at $400+. With a single W2, and no other items, the form is likely just a 1040-EZ, and there shouldn't be any recalculating so long as you have the data you need. Pencil/paper is fine. There's no exact time to say go with the software, except, perhaps, when you realize there are enough fields to fill out where the recalculating might be cumbersome, or the need to see the exact tax bracket has value for you. You are clearly in the category that can fill out the one form. At some point, you might have investment income (Schedule D) enough mortgage interest to itemize deductions (Schedule A) etc. You'll know when it's time to go the software route. Keep in mind, there are free online choices from each of the tax software providers. Good for simple returns up to a certain level. Thanks to Phil for noting this in comments. I'll offer an anecdote exemplifying the distinction between using the software as a tool vs having a high knowledge of taxes. I wrote an article The Phantom Tax Zone, in which I explained how the process of taxing Social Security benefits at a certain level created what I called a Phantom Tax Rate. I knew that $1000 more in income could cause $850 of the benefit to be taxed as well, but with a number of factors to consider, I wanted to create a chart to show the tax at each incremental $1000 of income added. Using the software, I simply added $1000, noted the tax due, and repeated. Doing this by hand would have taken a day, not 30 minutes. For you, the anecdote may have no value, Social Security is too far off. For others, who in March are doing their return, the process may hold value. Many people are deciding whether to make their IRA deposit be pre-tax or the Post tax Roth IRA. The software can help them quickly see the effect of +/- $1000 in income and choose the mix that's ideal for them.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0f14f80b7b309f04558d5bd967798206", "text": "Take a certain percentage of your income (say, 10%, but more is better if you can) and put it aside with every paycheck. Some employers will even allow you to direct deposit your paycheck into two different accounts and you can specify a certain amount or percentage for the second account. Your savings will go directly into a separate account as if you never had it in the first place. Consider your savings untouchable as spending money. Watch it grow. There's no other secret, you just have to do it!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fd60b550030f7f8980fa50a6a6cb4e1e", "text": "\"For a personal finance forum, this is too complicated for sustained use and you should find a simpler solution. For a mathematical exercise, you are missing information required to do the split fairly. You have to know who overlaps and when to know how to do the splits. For an extreme example, take your dates given: Considering 100 days of calculation period, If Roommate D was the only person present for the last 10 days, they should pay 100% of the grocery bill as they are the only one eating. From your initial data set, you can't know who should be splitting the tab for any given day. To do this mathematically, you'd need: But don't forget \"\"In Theory, Theory works. In Practice, Practice works.\"\" Good theory would say make a large, complicated spreadsheet as described above. Good practice would be to split up the costs in a much, much simpler way.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
cdd5c79b706c579071231a0a17192770
How can I judge loan availability?
[ { "docid": "cf28d2e6e0df4f9a3b7ce870dd89e9d4", "text": "It sounds like your current loan is in your name. As such, you are responsible for paying it. Not your family, you. It also sounds like the loan payments are regularly late. That'll likely drastically affect your credit rating. Given what you've said, it doesn't surprise me that you were declined for a credit card. With the information on your credit report, you are a poor risk. Assuming your family is unable to pay loan on time (and assuming you aren't willing to do so), you desperately need to get your name off the loan. This may mean selling the property and closing out the loan. This won't be enough to fix your credit, though. All that will do is stop making your credit worse. It'll take a few years (five years in Canada, not sure how many years in India) until this loan stops showing up on your credit report. That's why it is important to do this immediately. Now, can a bank give you a loan or a credit card despite bad credit? Yes, absolutely. It all depends on how bad your credit is. If the bank is willing to do so, they'll most likely charge a higher interest rate. But the bank may well decide not to give you a loan. After all, your credit report shows you don't make your loan payments on time. You may also want to request your own copy of your credit report. You may have to pay for this, especially if you want to see your score. This could be valuable information if you are looking to fix your finances, and may be worth the cost. If you are sure it's just this one loan, it may not be necessary. Good luck! Edit: In India CIBIL is the authority that maintains records. Getting to know you exact score will help. CIBIL offers it via TransUnion. The non-payment will keep appearing on your record for 3 years. As you don't have any loans, get a credit card from a Bank where you have Fixed Deposits / PPF Account as it would be easier to get one. It can then help you build the credit.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9682391181e29e0ff28ebdd867c816e5", "text": "Your credit rating will rise once the loan is repaid or paid regularly (in time). It will not get back to normal instantly. If the property is dead weight you may want to sell it so your credit score will increase in the medium term.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "c77680824f5285dad88ec81c6946359a", "text": "I asked my realtor, but she recommends to go with just one banker (her friend), and not to do any rate shopping. You need a new realtor. Anyone who would offer such advice is explicitly stating they are not advocating on your behalf. I'd do the rate shopping first. When you make an offer, once it's accepted, time becomes critical. The seller expects you to go to closing in so many days after signing the P&S. The realtor is specifically prohibited from pushing a particular lender on you. She should know better. In response to comment - Rate Shopping can be as simple as making a phone call, and having a detailed conversation. Jasper's list can be conveyed verbally. Prequalification is the next step, where a bank actually writes a letter indicating they have a high confidence you will qualify for the loan.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "40866fb8a8243cc76e2a790a33cab482", "text": "Some aspects of your general financial lifestyle make a big difference in your score. Always pay late; declare bankruptcy; have bills go to collection, these will hurt your overall score. Some aspects of your life start with a low score and rise over time: the number of years you have had credit. Some only have short term and transient impacts: what is your utilization rate today; when was your last hard pull. Any agonizing you do over the transient aspects during a period of time when your score doesn't matter, is a waste of energy. If you are looking for a new mortgage, or a another type of loan, then act in a way that will improve your score. But If you see no immediate need then don't sweat the details. If your credit limit is too low for your lifestyle, then ask for it to be increased. Just don't ask for the increase a few days before you put in the auto loan application.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c3b1a34e8b3a6be5efaa2a079ac97e7e", "text": "It looks like the rate on that first loan is 6-2/3%? When I look at $72000 principal and a $500 payment, I'm seeing a long term, 24 years. Not 60, but not good either. Yes, as you pay a bit of principal, the next payment has less interest and even more principal. I hope your degree is in a field that's lucrative. Or that you're able to get a job that qualifies you for loan forgiveness over time. I'm sorry that advice might seem weak, but aside from that, the best I can offer is to live well beneath your means, i.e. continue to live like a student, and make additional payments. As far as bi-weekly goes, the lender may not accept partial payments. Set aside the money every two weeks and when you have extra money just make an extra payment amount toward principal. To pay this off as fast as possible, I'd make as high an extra payment as I could each month to the loan with the higher rate. If the rates are the same, pay it off to the one with the lower balance. With respect to the debt snowballers, followers of The David, say the rates are simply close, say .25% apart, with the lower balance having the lower rate. If you were to pay this one first, it would occur sooner, of course, and free up that monthly payment, helping your cash flow. But, it comes at a cost. Note - if, as Noah suggests, the rates are the same, I'd advise to make all extra payments toward the lower balance. That will get you to the point where you've freed up that cash flow for other purposes, whether it's to focus on the higher loan, or anything else you need this for.", "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": "d6853aa831d7e77c035022106df4bb13", "text": "Banks calculate the total they can present to you chiefly on your net review earnings. They get into explanation their preceding experience and your present track record which would point to whether you have taken any other loan or you have had a awful credit history and effects like your investments history and your existing investments before making a choice as to how much they will lend to you.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "79d2ca0681ec20663320a4dee527ced1", "text": "It could be a couple of things besides extra principal: I seem to remember hearing that some (shady?) lenders would just pocket extra payments if you didn't specify where they were headed, but I've also been told that this just isn't true.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8143e59701da827051bb11538170aa2e", "text": "Hi guys, have a question from my uni finance course but I’m unsure how to treat the initial loan (as a bond, or a bill or other, and what the face value of the loan is). I’ll post the question below, any help is appreciated. “Hi guys, I have a difficult university finance question that’s really been stressing me out.... “The amount borrowed is $300 million and the term of the debt credit facility is six years from today The facility requires minimum loan repayments of $9 million in each financial year except for the first year. The nominal rate for this form of debt is 5%. This intestest rate is compounded monthly and is fixed from the date the facility was initiated. Assume that a debt repayment of $10 million is payed on 31 August 2018 and $9million on April 30 2019. Following on monthly repayments of $9 million at the end of each month from May 31 2019 to June 30 2021. Given this information determine the outstanding value of the debt credit facility on the maturity date.” Can anyone help me out with the answer? I’ve been wracking my brain trying to decide if I treat it as a bond or a bill.” Thanks in advance,", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0f260d60e042c1bb1e0774d8db9cbbf1", "text": "I'm not saying it's great, but I have a 705... I think we'll get a second opinion to lower that rate. Also, logically, with a higher down payment, we should be able to reduce the amount we need to borrow. Is that how that would work? For example, if we scrounged up a $7,000 for a down payment and came down on the price say $3,000", "title": "" }, { "docid": "84da15fcc9d360379289e1a748504713", "text": "The loan is very likely to be syndicated, yes. I only state 7-10 because all of our loans to this point have been 7 year terms. And in many ways, this loan is just one of those loans, multiplied out in a modular sense.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3b3c2b1d131d56194f84623d88452dd4", "text": "I'm a third-year PhD student in Finance at a state university in the Southeast. Accordingly, I do not have time write a detailed answer for you, because I am studying for a test. You can PM me sometime after Thursday, and I can give you my perspective.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a99ef0c8cc1d1302d5e75e47d44c9610", "text": "In some cases, especially but not only for subprime loans, they are actually testing whether you will lie to them. (Discovered this when working on a loan origination applicatíon for car dealers -- they explicitly did not want us to autocomplete some values because that might remind applicants that answers would be checked.)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f14c3907637f2847cbce41ab113c7f96", "text": "You'd probably need to prove you can run the business if you want a loan. The best proof you can have is to run the business. Unfortunately that also means that the price of the alley could go up. OP needs to start thinking about a negotiation strategy soon.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f85e13b9c2caab8271e436ba28db873d", "text": "Is there anything here I should be deathly concerned about? A concern I see is the variable rate loans. Do you understand the maximum rate they can get to? At this time those rates are low, but if you are going to put funds against the highest rate loan, make sure the order doesn't change without you noticing it. What is a good mode of attack here? The best mode of attack is to pay off the one with the highest rate first by paying more than the minimum. When that is done roll over the money you were paying for that loan to the next highest. Note if a loan balance get to be very low, you can put extra funds against this low balance loan to be done with it. Investigate loan forgiveness programs. The federal government has loan forgiveness programs for certain job positions, if you work for them for a number of years. Some employers also have these programs. What are the payoff dates for the other loans? My inexact calculations put a bunch in about 2020 but some as late as 2030. You may need to talk to your lender. They might have a calculator on their website. Why do my Citi loans have a higher balance than the original payoff amounts? Some loans are subsidized by the federal government. This covers the interest while the student is still in school. Non-subsidized federal loans and private loans don't have this feature, so their balance can grow while the student is in school.", "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": "96e522fb519872fcc3fe3b02aeb5bc18", "text": "\"I am a bit confused here as to how a 4K loan will negatively effect your credit score if payments are made on time. FICO scores are based upon how well you borrow. If you borrow, pay back on time, your score will not go down. Perhaps a bit in the short run when you first secure the loan, but that should come back quickly. In the long run it will help improve your score which seems like it would be more important to you. Having the provider finance your loan will probably not show up on your credit unless you fail to pay and they send to collections. If the score is so important to you, which I think is somewhat unwise, then use a credit card. With a 750 you should be able to get a pretty good rate, but assume it is 18%. In less then 9 months you will have it paid off, paying about $293 in interest. You could consider that a part of the cost of doing business for maintaining a high credit score. Again not what I would advise, but it might meet your needs. One alternative is go with lending club. With that kind of score, you are looking at 7% or so. At $500 a month, you are still looking at just over 8 months and paying about $100 in interest. Much less money for improving your credit score. Edit based upon the comment: \"\"My understanding is that using a significant portion of your available credit balance is bad for your credit, even if you pay your bills on time.\"\" Define bad. As I said it might go down slightly in the short term. In three months you will have almost 33% of the loan paid off, which is significantly lower then the original balance. If you go the credit card route, you may be approved for quite a bit more then the 4000, which may not move the needle at all. Are you planning on buying a home in the next 90 days? If not, why does a small short term dip matter? Will your life really be effected if your score goes down to 720 for three months? Keep in mind this is exactly the kind of behavior that the banks want you to engage in. If you worship your FICO score, which gives no indication of wealth then you should do exactly what I am suggesting.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
1cdb82ed8a289ce9b3842af2b18be080
How can I find out how much a currency is traded?
[ { "docid": "5d145ce5ddae533cabaaef765995e0b0", "text": "\"This is actually a fairly hard question to answer well as much of the currency trading that is done in financial markets is actually done directly with banks and other financial institutions instead of on a centralized market and the banks are understandably not always excited to part with information on how exactly they do their business. Other methods of currency exchange have much, much less volume though so it is important to understand the trading through markets as best as possible. Some banks do give information on how much is traded so surveys can give a reasonable indication of relative volume by currency. Note the U.S. Dollar is by far the largest volume of currency traded partially because people often covert one currency to another in the markets by trading \"\"through\"\" the Dollar. Wikipedia has a good explanation and a nicely formatted table of information as well.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "2011683a7282591b7487b02e7d336fa2", "text": "I think it depends where you live in the world, but I guess the most common would be: Major Equity Indices I would say major currency exchange rate: And have a look at the Libors for USD and EUR. I guess the intent of the question is more to see how implicated you are in the daily market analysis, not really to see if you managed to learn everything by heart in the morning.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9440f6a0c8c21dafac732d0fc850d408", "text": "It depends on the currency pair since it is much harder to move a liquid market like Fiber (EURUSD) or Cable (GBPUSD) than it is to move illiquid markets such as USDTRY, however, it will mostly be big banks and big hedge funds adjusting their positions or speculating (not just on the currency or market making but also speculating in foreign instruments). I once was involved in a one-off USD 56 million FX trade without which the hedge fund could not trade as its subscriptions were in a different currency to the fund currency. Although it was big by their standards it was small compared with the volumes we expected from other clients. Governments and big companies who need to pay costs in a foreign currency or receive income in one will also do this but less frequently and will almost always do this through a nominated bank (in the case of large firms). Because they need the foreign currency immediately; if you've ever tried to pay a bill in the US denominated in Dollars using Euros you'll know that they aren't widely accepted. So if I need to pay a large bill to a supplier in Dollars and all I have is Euros I may move the market. Similarly if I am trying to buy a large number of shares in a US company and all I have is Euros I'll lose the opportunity.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d28ff1b1e9a532740365b921dbc14909", "text": "That's a very interesting article, and something that I hadn't considered, but I have a hard time believing that the value of the dollar is really 1/4 of what it was just 15 years ago. Ounces of gold don't appreciate in ounces of gold, and you can't buy anything with them. Like it or now, gold isn't used as a currency, so its price at this time is primarily dictated by how much more that people expect its value to rise in USD.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "73f0f5884654654b0658b3caef2f0620", "text": "You will most likely not be able to avoid some form of format conversion, regardless of which data you use since there is, afaik, no standard for this data and everyone exports it differently. One viable option would be, like you said yourself, using the free data provided by Dukascopy. Please take into consideration that those are spot currency rates and will most likely not represent the rate at which physical and business-related exchange would have happened at this time.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a9cc63c7170331548e0b4509671070cd", "text": "Venezuela is a command economy, and one that isn't doing terribly well right now, with rampant inflation in the several hundred percent range. As such, they've tried to limit or eliminate exchanges between their currency and foreign currencies. Currently, they allow a limited amount of exchange at fixed rates (according to a Bloomberg article, those vary between 6.3, 13.5, and 200) for certain purchases, and then otherwise disallow exchange between the currencies. However, there is a black market (illegal in Venezuela, but legal in the US) which allows the price to float, and is much higher - 800 or so according to that article from last year. A recent Valuewalk article lists the black market rate at closer to 900, and slightly different official rates. It's worth a read as it explains the different official rates in detail: Currently there are four exchange rates: First is the official one, called CENCOEX, and which charges 6.30 bolivars to the dollar. It is only intended for the importation of food and medicine. The next two exchange rates are SICAD I (12 bolivars per dollar) and SICAD 2 (50 bolivars per dollar); they assign dollars to enterprises that import all other types of goods. Because of the fact that US dollars are limited, coupons are auctioned only sporadically; usually weekly in the case of SICAD 1 and daily for SICAD 2. However, due to the economic crisis, no dollars have been allocated for these foreign exchange transactions and there hasn’t been an auction since August 18, 2015. As of November 2015, the Venezuelan government held only $16 billion in foreign exchange reserves, the lowest level in over ten years, and an amount that will dry up completely in four years time at the current rate of depletion. The last and newest exchange rate is the SIMADI, currently at 200 bolivars per dollar. This rate is reserved for the purchase and sale of foreign currency to individuals and businesses.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ce59afabd0cf651c573516b3ae52fde4", "text": "\"Finding statistics is exceedingly hard, because the majority of traders lose money. That is, not only they don't \"\"beat the markets\"\", not only they don't \"\"beat the benchmark\"\" (S&P 500 being used a lot as reference): they just lose money. Finding exact numbers, quality statistics and so on is very difficult. Finding recent ones, is almost impossible. With enormous effort I have found two references that might help make an idea. One is very recent, Forex \"\"centered\"\" and has been prepared by a large finance group for the the Europen Central Bank (ECB). It's available on their website, at an obscure download location. The document is stated to be confidential, but its download location has been disclosed to the public by CNBC. I can't post CNBC's link because I have just joined this Stack Exchange portal so I don't have enough reputation. You can find it by looking for their article about FXCM Forex broker debacle due to the Swiss Central Bank removing the EUR/CHF peg at 1.20. The second is a 2009-ish paper about Taiwanese retail traders profitability statistics published by Oxford University Press and talks about stocks. Both documents focus on retail traders. I strongly suggest you to immediately save those documents because they tend to disappear after a while. We had a fantastic and complete statistics report made by a group of German Banks in 2011... they pulled it off in 2012.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "52e41eaf6ab2a990bfe7c69d2d688a11", "text": "There are lots of good answers on here already. There are actually lots of answers for this question. Lots. I have years of experience on the exchange feed side and there are hundreds and thousands of variables. All of these variables are funneled into systems owned by large financial institutions (I used to manage these - and only a few companies in the world do this so not hard to guess who I work for). Their computers then make trades based on all of these variables and equations. There are variables as whacky as how many times was a company mentioned in an aggregate news feed down to your basic company financials. But if there is a way to measure a company (or to just guess) there is an equation for it plugged into a super computer at a big bank. Now there are two important factors on why you see this mad dash in the morning: Now most of the rest of the day is also automated trades but by the time you are an hour into market open the computers for the most part have fulfilled their calendar buys. Everyone else's answer is right too. There is futures contracts that change, global exchange info changes, options expiring, basic news, whatever but all of these are amplified by the calendar day changing.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d2f7b297afb74669d216bbe219f2ae73", "text": "There are various exchanges around the world that handle spot precious metal trading; for the most part these are also the primary spot foreign exchange markets, like EBS, Thomson Reuters, Currenex (website seems to be down), etc. You can trade on these markets through brokers just like you can trade on stock markets. However, the vast majority of traders on these exchanges do not intend to hold any bullion ownership at the end of the day; they want to buy as much as they sell each day. A minority of traders do intend to hold metal positions for longer periods, but I doubt any of them intend to actually go collect bullion from the exchange. I don't think it's even possible. Really the only way to get bullion is to pay a service fee to a dealer like you mentioned. But on an exchange like the ones above you have to pay three different fees: So in the end you can't even get the spot price on the exchanges where the spot prices are determined. You might even come out ahead by going to a dealer. You should try to find a reputable dealer, and go in knowing the latest trade prices. An honest dealer will have a website showing you the current trade prices, so you know that they expect you to know the prices when you come in. For example, here's a well-known dealer in Chicago that happily shows you the spot prices from KITCO so you can decide whether their service fee is worth it or not.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b093899a640d476dc32d6a2ae1785f4a", "text": "\"In practice, most (maybe all) stock indices are constructed by taking a weighted average of stock prices denominated in a single currency, and so the index implicitly does have that currency - as you suggest, US dollars for the S&P 500. In principle you can buy one \"\"unit\"\" of the S&P 500 for $2,132.98 or whatever by buying an appropriate quantity of each of its constituent stocks. Also, in a more realistic scenario where you buy an index via a tracker fund, you would typically need to buy using the underlying currency of the index and your returns will be relative to that currency - if the index goes up by 10%, your original investment in dollars is up by 10%.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "681a68e3b9bb0ed1f7c21754b288d44c", "text": "On 2012/05/18 at 15:34:00 UTC (11:34:00 EDT) FB was in chaos mode. The most recent public US trade at that moment was at $40.94, but in the next one second (i.e. before the clock hit 15:34:01) there were several dozen trades as low as $40.76 and as high as $41.00. On 2012/05/30 at 17:21:00 UTC (13:21:00 EDT) the most recent public US trade for FB was at $28.28.", "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": "5596b89a7503739bfe1ed3ba97b4b993", "text": "Robert Shiller has an on-line page with links to download some historical data that may be what you want here. Center for the Research in Security Prices would be my suggestion for another resource here.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8bd9e0b185fddf1f7f858aa463ab5619", "text": "The exchange rate between two currencies is simply the price that the most recent market participants were able to agree on, when trading. ie: if the USDCAD is 1.36, it's because the last trade that happened where someone bought 1 USD cost 1.36 CAD. There is no one person/organization which 'decides' the rate between two currencies. The rate moves you see is just the reality of money changing hands as people in various situations trade currencies for various reasons. Just like with stocks or any other market product, foreign exchange rates can fluctuate wildly based on many things. It is very difficult to forecast where rates will go, because the biggest changes in rates can often be unpredictable news events. For example, when Brexit happened, the value of the GBP plummeted relative to other currencies, because the market traders had less faith in the UK economy, and therefore weren't willing to pay as much to buy GBP. See more here: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/76482/44232. There is a very high level of risk in the foreign exchange market; for your sake, don't get involved in any trading that you do not well understand, first.", "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": "1fec42beb84e2821dd90cd035446ea8d", "text": "Something like cost = a × avg_spreadb + c × volatilityd × (order_size/avg_volume)e. Different brokers have different formulas, and different trading patterns will have different coefficients.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
873d0cda976a62a1bec378b0f14f4d6f
Can a company charge you for services never requested or received?
[ { "docid": "0a0f16b824e6dab326bf5f18bbd456c0", "text": "In general, you can only be charged for services if there is some kind of contract. The contract doesn't have to be written, but you have to have agreed to it somehow. However, it is possible that you entered into a contract due to some clause in the home purchase contract or the contract with the home owners' association. There are also sometimes services you are legally required to get, such as regular inspection of heating furnaces (though I don't think this translates to automatic contracts). But in any case you would not be liable for services rendered before you entered into the contract, which sounds like it's the case here.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "914cf45781f65096709ea6f6a48237cf", "text": "No. A company cannot bill you for services you did not request nor receive. If they could, imagine how many people would just randomly get bills in their mail. Ignore them. They don't have a contract or agreement with you and can't do anything other than make noise. If they get aggressive or don't stop requesting money, hire an attorney and it will be taken care of.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c04232d35c3027bae24245c0369769ec", "text": "I have had a couple of businesses do this to me. I simply ask them to come over to talk about the bill. Sometimes this ends it. If they come over then I call the cops to file a report on fraud. A lot of times the police will do nothing unless they have had a load of complaints but it certainly gets the company off your back. And if they are truly unscrupulous it doesn't hurt to get a picture of them talking with the police and their van, and then post the whole situation online - you will see others come forward really quick after doing something like this.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2663ac52e0b08439c2b736ddc3fd573d", "text": "\"Here's another example of such a practice and the problem it caused. My brother, who lived alone, was missing from work for several days so a co-worker went to his home to search for him and called the local Sheriff's Office for assistance. The local fire department which runs the EMS ambulance was also dispatched in the event there was a medical emergency. They discovered my brother had passed away inside his home and had obviously been dead for days. As our family worked on probate matters to settle his estate following this death, it was learned that the local fire department had levied a bill against my brother's estate for $800 for responding with their ambulance to his home that day. I tried to talk to their commander about this, insisting my brother had not called them, nor had they transported him or even checked his pulse. The commander insisted theirs was common practice - that someone was always billed for their medical response. He would not withdraw his bill for \"\"services\"\". I hate to say, but the family paid the bill in order to prevent delay of his probate issues and from receiving monies that paid for his final expenses.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "2edf29c8d6d138c80ffaab5b810e5260", "text": "If there was some contract in place (even a verbal agreement) that he would complete the work you asked for in return for payment, then you don't have to pay him anything. He hasn't completed the work and what he did do was stolen from another person. He hasn't held up his end of the agreement, so you don't owe squat.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d5e4ca3bd60328381f8ea5cbd1c4a30f", "text": "If you have not already hired another caterer, potentially your best solution might be to try and work out something with these folks. Presuming of course that they still have access to their equipment, dishware, etc, and to the extent that what you have paid might cover their labor, equipment use etc there might be some way for them to provide the services you have paid for, if you pay for materials such as the food itself directly . This presumes of course that it's only the IRS that they stiffed, and have not had most of their (material) capital assets repossessed or seized. and you still trusted them enough to work out something. Otherwise as Duff points out you will likely need to file a small claims lawsuit and get in line with any other creditors.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "52b93ea21402f1d2f3d73a6d680c120c", "text": "I have already talked to them over the phone and they insist they haven't charged me yet, and I will not be charged. When I informed them I had in fact been charged they agreed it would be reversed. So I have tried to resolve the issue and I don't have any confidence they will reverse the charge as it has not been done yet. They are difficult to communicate which makes the whole process more difficult. Your best next step is to call the credit card company and share this story. I believe the likely result is that the credit card company will initiate a charge back. My question is, is this a valid reason to file a chargeback on my credit card? Yes. If you attempted to work it out with the vendor and it is not working out, this is an appropriate time to initiate a charge back.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c435f5c350f31fd9c7567c22ec82571e", "text": "Obviously, the credit card's administators know who this charge was submitted by. Contact them, tell them that you don't recognize the charge, and ask them to tell you who it was from. If they can't or won't, tell them you suspect fraud and want it charged back, then wait to see who contacts you to complain that the payment was cancelled. Note that you should charge back any charge you firmly believe is an error, if attempts to resolve it with the company aren't working. Also note that if you really ghink this is fraud, you should contact your bank and ask them to issue a new card number. Standard procedures exist. Use them when appropriate.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "202cf175509a021a1050b9735f8505b3", "text": "\"You have a subscription that costs $25 They have the capabilities to get that $25 from the card on file if you had stopped paying for it, you re-upping the cost of the subscription was more of a courtesy. They would have considered pulling the $25 themselves or it may have gone to collections (or they could courteously ask if you wanted to resubscribe, what a concept) The credit card processing agreements (with the credit card companies) and the FTC would handle such business practices, but \"\"illegal\"\" wouldn't be the word I would use. The FTC or Congress may have mandated that an easy \"\"opt-out\"\" number be associated with that kind of business practice, and left it at that.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "36bc3419347f5ab9a094d1c7d866fbae", "text": "\"Anything is negotiable. Clearly in the current draft of the contract the company isn't going to calculate or withhold taxes on your behalf - that is your responsibility. But if you want to calculate taxes yourself, and break out the fees you are receiving into several \"\"buckets\"\" on the invoice, the company might agree (they might have to run it past their legal department first). I don't see how that helps anything - it just divides the single fee into two pieces with the same overall total. As @mhoran_psprep points out, it appears that the company expects you to cover your expenses from within your charges. Thus, it's up to you to decide the appropriate fees to charge, and you are assuming the risk that you have estimated your expenses incorrectly. If you want the company to pay you a fee, plus reimburse your expenses, you will need to craft that into the contract. It's not clear what kind of expenses you need to be covered, and sometimes companies will not agree to them. For specific tax rule questions applicable to your locale, you should consult your tax adviser.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "639cc7a31d1d784762a35b44780f1a2c", "text": "You definitely have an argument for getting them to reverse the late fee, especially if it hasn't happened very often. (If you are late every month they may be less likely to forgive.) As for why this happens, it's not actually about business days, but instead it's based on when they know that you paid. In general, there are 2 ways for a company to mark a bill as paid: Late Fees: Some systems automatically assign late fees at the start of the day after the due date if money has not been received. In your case, if your bill was due on the 24th, the late fee was probably assessed at midnight of the 25th, and the payment arrived after that during the day of the 25th. You may have been able to initiate the payment on the company's website at 11:59pm on the 24th and not have received a late fee (or whatever their cutoff time is). Suggestion: as a rule of thumb, for utility bills whose due date and amount can vary slightly from month to month, you're usually better off setting up your payments on the company website to pull from your bank account, instead of setting up your bank account to push the payment to the company. This will ensure that you always get the bill paid on time and for the correct amount. If you still would rather push the payment from your bank account, then consider setting up the payment to arrive about 5 days early, to account for holidays and weekends.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2fb4a9419331064c1938409da6c4e3f8", "text": "Phone conversations are useless if the company is uncooperative, you must take it into the written word so it can be documented. Sent them certified letters and keep copies of everything you send and any written responses from the company. This is how you will get actual action.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "34a9082d8d05827f9fda9ec540a53c71", "text": "W9 is required for any payments. However, in your case - these are not payments, but refunds, i.e.: you're not receiving any income from the company that is subject to tax or withholding rules, you're receiving money that is yours already. I do not think they have a right to demand W9 as a condition of refund, and as Joe suggested - would dispute the charge as fraudulent.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f75c66b588570fe3601c49ee0a1ecd46", "text": "So, since you have no record of picking it up, are you going to do the right thing and claim you never got it? On another note, I was known at the local home depot for being the guy who ordered things online, they actually used my orders to train new people. That was back when buying online got 5% back from Discover.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1cc4f7ba9a0c307acb4c55a928045ef2", "text": "Inform the company that you didn't receive the payment. Only they can trace the payment via their bank.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cf2b2bc6c3b544fa27f5fbbea273dbca", "text": "Well, it really depends on for how long the quote has been made. But yes, when you're honoring it, you should let them know that this is a once of thing and that you're out of pocket doing it. Most people will understand and when you make the appropriate quote next time around, especially when elaborate where the additional cost that you did not account for initially, come from. It's important to maintain customer trust by being transparent. You can justify higher prices with time needed, material needed or whatever comes to mind. It's just important to convince that customer that without it, they wouldn't get this superb service that they're getting now.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7b0436dec2a966beeef456ac1afa55a3", "text": "not if it's only Bob and a couple others that are having the problem. The company is spending more money on the wages of the guy helping him out than what Bob brought to the company with his purchase. There's no sense in paying for a customer.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6c76b97fce53688c272eebaeee2f0c8d", "text": "What you are describing here is the opposite of a problem: You're trying to contact a debt-collector to pay them money, but THEY'RE ignoring YOU and won't return your calls! LOL! All joking aside, having 'incidental' charges show up as negative marks on your credit history is an annoyance- thankfully you're not the first to deal with such problems, and there are processes in place to remedy the situation. Contact the credit bureau(s) on which the debt is listed, and file a petition to have it removed from your history. If everything that you say here is true, then it should be relatively easy. Edit: See here for Equifax's dispute resolution process- it sounds like you've already completed the first two steps.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "316710461de83750af605d1897addf25", "text": "Chris, since you own your own company, nobody can stop you from charging your personal expenses to your business account. IRS is not a huge fan of mixing business and personal expenses and this practice might indicate to them that you are not treating your business seriously, and it should classify your business as a hobby. IRS defines deductible business expense as being both: ordinary AND necessary. Meditation is not an ordinary expense (other S-corps do not incur such expense.) It is not a necessary expense either. Therefore, you cannot deduct this expense. http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Deducting-Business-Expenses", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
a67a1094601739e58e98d7eb8d3468ab
Should I have more than one brokerage account?
[ { "docid": "e98ac9982dbaa4a37fb7a191aa02b90a", "text": "\"I believe the answer here is no: SIPC protection of customers with multiple accounts is determined by \"\"separate capacity.\"\" Each separate capacity is protected up to $500,000 for securities and cash (including a $250,000 limit for cash only). Accounts held in the same capacity are combined for purposes of the SIPC protection limits. So even having 2 individual accounts - you would only be covered for $500,000/$250,000. You can see more about the type of accounts that would give your more coverage here. Also note: If you own a stock - the record probably exist. Therefore you would not lose your ownership or shares. The SIPC is there to protect the times this does not happen.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "77e655ae1c86c992ba418ffc070b4510", "text": "I use two different brokerages, both well-known. I got a bit spooked during the financial crisis and didn't want to have all my eggs in one basket. The SIPC limits weren't so much a factor. At the time, I was more worried about the hassle of dealing with a Lehman-style meltdown. If one were to fail, the misery of waiting and filing and dealing with SIPC claims would be mitigated by having half of my money in another brokerage. In hindsight, I was perhaps a bit too paranoid. Dealing with two separate brokerages is not much of an inconvenience, though, and it's interesting to see how their web interfaces are slightly different and some things are easier to do with one vs the other. Overall, they're really similar and I can't say there's much advantage (other than my tin-foil hat tendencies) to splitting it up like that.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "77d149c0576756ae84bb1c642dfd213d", "text": "Hey I used to do this for a job. having two separate policies is a bad idea. If you decide you need more life insurance just increase the one you currently have. There are usually discounts for having higher levels of cover. Not only that but if you have multiple policies all you're getting is the task of doing multiple claims and maybe some additional policy fees depending on which companies you're looking at. What did you consider when deciding how much life insurance to take?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3ae55bf06b5b29598b4932492d995608", "text": "\"You should only invest in individual stocks if you truly understand the company's business model and follow its financial reports closely. Even then, individual stocks should represent only the tiniest, most \"\"adventurous\"\" part of your portfolio, as they are a huge risk. A basic investing principle is diversification. If you invest in a variety of financial instruments, then: (a) when some components of your portfolio are doing poorly, others will be doing well. Even in the case of significant economic downturns, when it seems like everything is doing poorly, there will be some investment sectors that are doing relatively better (such as bonds, physical real estate, precious metals). (b) over time, some components of your portfolio will gain more money than others, so every 6 or 12 months you can \"\"rebalance\"\" such that all components once again have the same % of money invested in them as when you began. You can do this either by selling off some of your well-performing assets to purchase more of your poorly-performing assets or (if you don't want to incur a taxable event) by introducing additional money from outside your portfolio. This essentially forces you to \"\"buy (relatively) low, sell (relatively) high\"\". Now, if you accept the above argument for diversification, then you should recognize that owning a handful (or even several handfuls) of individual stocks will not help you achieve diversification. Even if you buy one stock in the energy sector, one in consumer discretionary, one in financials, etc., then you're still massively exposed to the day-to-day fates of those individual companies. And if you invest solely in the US stock market, then when the US has a decline, your whole portfolio will decline. And if you don't buy any bonds, then again when the world has a downturn, your portfolio will decline. And so on ... That's why index mutual funds are so helpful. Someone else has already gone to the trouble of grouping together all the stocks or bonds of a certain \"\"type\"\" (small-cap/large-cap, domestic/foreign, value/growth) so all you have to do is pick the types you want until you feel you have the diversity you need. No more worrying about whether you've picked the \"\"right\"\" company to represent a particular sector. The fewer knobs there are to turn in your portfolio, the less chance there is for mistakes!\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f0042193f945e999cc51ee7b75a7469d", "text": "They might not have to open accounts at 12 bank because the coverage does allow multiple accounts at one institution if the accounts are joint accounts. It also treats retirement accounts a separate account. The bigger issue is that most millionaires don't have all their money siting in the bank. They invest in stocks, bonds, government bonds, international funds, and their own companies. Most of these carry risk, but they are diversified. They also can afford advisers to help them manage and protect their assets.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7ef2977f65d04dc67aaf2fec39004624", "text": "I looked a bit at the first 3, .24% expense. There's a direction to not discuss individual investments here, so the rest of my answer will need to lean generic. I see you have 5 funds. I'm surmising it's an attempt at 'diversifying'. I'll ask you - what do these five, when combined, offer that a straight S&P 500 index (or some flavor of extended market) doesn't? I've gone through the exercise of looking at portfolios with a dozen funds and found overlap so great that 2 or 3 funds would have been sufficient. There are S&P funds that are as low as .05%. this difference may not seem like much, but it adds over time. To your last point, I'd consider a Solo 401(k) as you're self employed. One that offers the Roth option if you are in the marginal 15% bracket.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2227a351ed40c57f447a08a9c43166a7", "text": "Yes, it's a good idea to have a separate business account for your business because it makes accounting and bookkeeping that much easier. You can open a business checking account and there will be various options for types of accounts and fees. You may or may not want an overdraft account, for example, or a separate business credit card just so you can more easily separate those expenses from your personal cards. When I started my business, I opened a business checking account and met with my banker every year just to show them how the business was doing and to keep the relationship going. Eventually, when I wanted to establish a business line of credit, it was easier to set up because I they were already familiar with my business, its revenue, and needs for a line of credit. You can set up a solo 401k with your bank, too, and they'll be very happy to do so, but I recommend shopping around for options. I've found that the dedicated investment firms (Schwab, Fidelity, etc.) tend to have better options, fees, and features for investment accounts. Just because a specific bank handles your checking account doesn't mean you need to use that bank for everything. Lastly, I use completely different banks for my personal life and for my business. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I just don't want all my finances in the same place for both privacy reasons and to avoid having all my eggs in the same basket. Just something to consider -- I don't really have a completely sane reason for using completely different banks, but it helps me sleep.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3f906ef9d1c3573b26a480e085683a66", "text": "It varies. Depending on your brokerage, they may charge you per transaction, so the more transactions, the higher the cost. Though this (from what I've seen), is uncommon with many index funds. In terms of how aggressive you want to be with your investment varies on your comfort with risk, timeline of investment and many other factors beyond the scope of this question. The biggest issue you may need to be aware of is if you are looking at mutual funds, they may have minimum investments. Depending on what that minimum investment is set to, you may not be able to split your $5500 into more than one fund. A lot of this comes down to the specific funds in which your are anticipating investing, as well as the service you use to do so (Fidelity, Vanguard, etc). Ultimately, diversification can be a lot safer, but there are logistics to consider. Personally, I began with a target fund (a mutual fund with adjusted risk based on the estimated year of retirement) and add additional mutual funds, stocks and ETFs as time goes on.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "828ffbb47abfeeaadc410c2ed880e123", "text": "Re #2, consider an account at a credit union rather than a bank or brokerage firm. Whether you choose a savings account or a money market account, you're likely to get an account with lower fees (so it doesn't cost you money), and rates that are typically similar.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e2a054405fb83d902a7776b9cb3ec8a2", "text": "\"Diversification is the only real free lunch in finance (reduction in risk without any reduction in expected returns), so clearly every good answer to your question will be \"\"yes.\"\" Diversification is good.\"\" Let's talk about many details your question solicits. Many funds are already pretty diversified. If you buy a mutual fund, you are generally already getting a large portion of the gains from diversification. There is a very large difference between the unnecessary risk in your portfolio if you only hold a couple of stocks and if you hold a mutual fund. Should you be diversified across mutual funds as well? It depends on what your funds are. Many funds, such as target-date funds, are intended to be your sole investment. If you have funds covering every major asset class, then there may not be any additional benefit to buying other funds. You probably could not have picked your \"\"favorite fund\"\" early on. As humans, we have cognitive biases that make us think we knew things early on that we did not. I'm sure at some point at the very beginning you had a positive feeling toward that fund. Today you regret not acting on it and putting all your money there. But the number of such feelings is very large and if you acted on all those, you would do a lot of crazy and harmful things. You didn't know early on which fund would do well. You could just as well have had a good feeling about a fund that subsequently did much worse than your diversified portfolio did. The advice you have had about your portfolio probably isn't based on sound finance theory. You say you have always kept your investments in line with your age. This implies that you believe the guidelines given you by your broker or financial advisor are based in finance theory. Generally speaking, they are not. They are rules of thumb that seemed good to someone but are not rigorously proven either in theory or empirics. For example the notion that you should slowly shift your investments from speculative to conservative as you age is not based on sound finance theory. It just seems good to the people who give advice on such things. Nothing particularly wrong with it, I guess, but it's not remotely on par with the general concept of being well-diversified. The latter is extremely well established and verified, both in theory and in practice. Don't confuse the concept of diversification with the specific advice you have received from your advisor. A fund averaging very good returns is not an anomaly--at least going forward it will not be. There are many thousand funds and a large distribution in their historical performance. Just by random chance, some funds will have a truly outstanding track record. Perhaps the manager really was skilled. However, very careful empirical testing has shown the following: (1) You, me, and people whose profession it is to select outperforming mutual funds are unable to reliably detect which ones will outperform, except in hindsight (2) A fund that has outperformed, even over a long horizon, is not more likely to outperform in the future. No one is stopping you from putting all your money in that fund. Depending on its investment objective, you may even have decent diversification if you do so. However, please be aware that if you move your money based on historical outperformance, you will be acting on the same cognitive bias that makes gamblers believe they are on a \"\"hot streak\"\" and \"\"can't lose.\"\" They can, and so can you. ======== Edit to answer a more specific line of questions =========== One of your questions is whether it makes sense to buy a number of mutual funds as part of your diversification strategy. This is a slightly more subtle question and I will indicate where there is uncertainty in my answer. Diversifying across asset classes. Most of the gains from diversification are available in a single fund. There is a lot of idiosyncratic risk in one or two stocks and much less in a collection of hundreds of stocks, which is what any mutual fund will hold. Still,you will probably want at least a couple of funds in your portfolio. I will list them from most important to least and I will assume the bulk of your portfolio is in a total US equity fund (or S&P500-style fund) so that you are almost completely diversified already. Risky Bonds. These are corporate, municipal, sovereign debt, and long-term treasury debt funds. There is almost certainly a good deal to be gained by having a portion of your portfolio in bonds, and normally a total market fund will not include bond exposure. Bonds fund returns are closely related to interest rate and inflation changes. They are also exposed to some market risk but it's more efficient to get that from equity. The bond market is very large, so if you did market weights you would have more in bonds than in equity. Normally people do not do this, though. Instead you can get the exposure to interest rates by holding a lesser amount in longer-term bonds, rather than more in shorter-term bonds. I don't believe in shifting your weights toward nor away from this type of bond (as opposed to equity) as you age so if you are getting that advice, know that it is not well-founded in theory. Whatever your relative weight in risky bonds when you are young is should also be your weight when you are older. International. There are probably some gains from having some exposure to international markets, although these have decreased over time as economies have become more integrated. If we followed market weights, you would actually put half your equity weight in an international fund. Because international funds are taxed differently (gains are always taxed at the short-term capital gains rate) and because they have higher management fees, most people make only a small investment to international funds, if any at all. Emerging markets International funds often ignore emerging markets in order to maintain liquidity and low fees. You can get some exposure to these markets through emerging markets funds. However, the value of public equity in emerging markets is small when compared with that of developed markets, so according to finance theory, your investment in them should be small as well. That's a theoretical, not an empirical result. Emerging market funds charge high fees as well, so this one is kind of up to your taste. I can't say whether it will work out in the future. Real estate. You may want to get exposure to real estate by buying a real-estate fund (REIT). Though, if you own a house you are already exposed to the real estate market, perhaps more than you want to be. REITs often invest in commercial real estate, which is a little different from the residential market. Small Cap. Although total market funds invest in all capitalization levels, the market is so skewed toward large firms that many total market funds don't have any significant small cap exposure. It's common for individuals to hold a small cap fund to compensate for this, but it's not actually required by investment theory. In principle, the most diversified portfolio should be market-cap weighted, so small cap should have negligible weight in your portfolio. Many people hold small cap because historically it has outperformed large cap firms of equal risk, but this trend is uncertain. Many researchers feel that the small cap \"\"premium\"\" may have been a short-term artifact in the data. Given these facts and the fact that small-cap funds charge higher fees, it may make sense to pass on this asset class. Depends on your opinion and beliefs. Value (or Growth) Funds. Half the market can be classed as \"\"value\"\", while the other half is \"\"growth.\"\" Your total market fund should have equal representation in both so there is no diversification reason to buy a special value or growth fund. Historically, value funds have outperformed over long horizons and many researchers think this will continue, but it's not exactly mandated by the theory. If you choose to skew your portfolio by buying one of these, it should be a value fund. Sector funds. There is, in general, no diversification reason to buy funds that invest in a particular sector. If you are trying to hedge your income (like trying to avoid investing in the tech sector because you work in that sector) or your costs (buying energy because you buy use a disproportionate amount of energy) I could imagine you buying one of these funds. Risk-free bonds. Funds specializing in short-term treasuries or short-term high-quality bonds of other types are basically a substitute for a savings account, CD, money market fund, or other cash equivalent. Use as appropriate but there is little diversification here per se. In short, there is some value in diversifying across asset classes, and it is open to opinion how much you should do. Less well-justified is diversifying across managers within the same asset class. There's very little if any advantage to doing that.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d917fd88122a0370b8a89e8598d25e42", "text": "Let's simplify things by assuming you only own 2 stocks. By owning VOO and VTI, you're overweight on large- and mid-cap stocks relative to the market composition. Likewise, by owning VTI and VT, you're overweight on U.S. stocks; conversely, by owning VXUS and VT, you're overweight on non-U.S. stocks. These are all perfectly fine positions to take if that's what you intend and have justification for. For example, if you're in the U.S., it may be a good idea to hold more U.S. stocks than VT because of currency risk. But 4 equity index ETFs is probably overcomplicating things. It is perfectly fine to hold only VTI and VXUS because these funds comprise thousands of stocks and thus give you sufficient diversification. I would recommend holding those 2 ETFs based on a domestic/international allocation that makes sense to you (Vanguard recommends 40% of your stock allocation to be international), and if for some reason you want to be overweight in large- and mid-cap companies, throw in VOO. You can use Morningstar X-Ray to look at your proposed portfolio and find your optimal mix of geographic and stock style allocation.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4478136b0fb1680b61b170be6e8bfb0f", "text": "Restricting the discussion only to Internet hacking: In Option 2 or Option 3, you have to realize that the funds are credited to a specific Registered Bank Account. So the max damage an hacker can do is liquidate your holding. In Option 2, the Banking Internet Login and the Broker Internet Login will be different, For example HDFC Bank and HDFC Securities. In Option 3, if you choose your Bank, then it will be the same Login. If you choose a Non-Bank as provider then there is a different login. The risk is no different to investing in shares. In the end its up to an individual, there is nothing that stops you from opening multiple accounts in option 2 and option 3 and buying the stocks worth particular value. From an overall risk point of view; Option 2 seems best suited as the units are held in a Demat from by a Depository.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e0dc1f3824441ccaae695e29dcc7935f", "text": "I'd roll them all into one account, just for your own convenience. It's a pain to keep track of lots of different accounts, esp. since you need logins/passwords, etc for all of them, and we all have plenty of those. :) Pick a place like Vanguard or Fidelity (for example), where you can find investment options with lower fees, and do the standard rollover. Once all the accounts are rolled into one, you can think about how to invest the stuff. (Some good investments require larger minimums, so if you have several old 401ks, putting them together will give you more options.) Rolling them over is not hard, if you have paperwork from each of the 401ks. You might be able to DIY online, but I found it helpful to call and talk to a person when I did this. You just need account numbers, etc. If you are moving brokerage accounts, you may need to provide paper documents/applications, which might require getting them notarized (I found a notary at my bank, even though the accounts I was moving from and to weren't at my bank), which means you'll need to provide IDs, etc. and get a special crimped seal after the notary witnesses your signature.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e71443710085606292dc745c99c90d19", "text": "Many brokers allow you to transfer shares to another broker without selling them. It depends on what kind of account and who the broker is for what forms you might have to fill out and what other hoops you might have to jump through.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2041307b762fa5e48cadb6e57334b1bc", "text": "You can use interactive brokers. It allows you to have a single account to trade stocks and currencies from several countries.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9f944791fdfd34127ecb910522152663", "text": "You wouldn't want to trade with too small amount of capital - it becomes harder and more expensive to diversify with a small account. Also, the bigger the account the more discounts and special may be offered by your broker (especially if you are a frequent trader). You are also able to trade more often, and have a buffer against a few losses in a row not wiping out your entire account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "893682084a5cd9dc30d884eb4ca6a379", "text": "\"Usually the new broker will take care of this for you. It can take a couple of weeks. If you are planning to go with Vanguard, you probably want to actually get an account at Vanguard, as Vanguard funds usually aren't \"\"No Transaction Fee\"\" funds with many brokers. If you are planning to invest in ETFs, you'll get more flexibility with a broker.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
b33501721e09bbaff0b369f230701646
Credit card expenses showing as Liabilities in QuickBooks
[ { "docid": "08c639825810cbc9f961658068dc39d2", "text": "Is it normal in QuickBooks to have credit card expenses being shows as liabilities? Is there a way I can correct this? If they are expenses they shouldn't be negative liabilities unless you overpaid your credit card by that amount. It sounds like perhaps when you linked the account the credit/debit mapping may have been mixed up. I've not used QB Online, but it looks like you might have to un-link the account, move all the existing transactions to 'excluded' and then link the account again and flip-flop the debit/credit mapping from what it is now. Hopefully there's an easier way. This QB community thread seems to address the same issue.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "b4510cf6016c180b947eab26ae6b837c", "text": "\"Here's a very basic MySQL query I put together that does what I want for income/expense report. Basically it reports the same info as the canned income/expense report, but limits it those income/expenses associated with a particular account (rental property, in my case). My main complaint is the output \"\"report\"\" is pretty ugly. And modifying for a different rental property requires changing the code (I could pass parameters etc). Again, the main \"\"issue\"\" in my mind with GnuCash income/expense report is that there is no filter for which account (rental property) you want income/expenses for, unless you set up account tree so that each rental property has its own defined incomes and expenses (i.e. PropertyA:Expense:Utility:electric). Hopefully someone will point me to a more elegant solution that uses the report generator built into GnuCash. THanks! SELECT a2.account_type , a4.name, a3.name, a2.name, SUM(ROUND(IF(a2.account_type='EXPENSE',- s2.value_num,ABS(s2.value_num))/s2.value_denom,2)) AS amt FROM ( SELECT s1.tx_guid FROM gnucash.accounts AS a1 INNER JOIN gnucash.splits AS s1 ON s1.account_guid = a1.guid WHERE a1.name='Property A' ) AS X INNER JOIN gnucash.splits s2 ON x.tx_guid = s2.tx_guid INNER JOIN gnucash.accounts a2 ON a2.guid=s2.account_guid INNER JOIN gnucash.transactions t ON t.guid=s2.tx_guid LEFT JOIN gnucash.accounts a3 ON a3.guid = a2.parent_guid LEFT JOIN gnucash.accounts a4 ON a4.guid = a3.parent_guid WHERE a2.name <> 'Property A' # get all the accounts associated with tx in Property A account (but not the actual Property A Bank duplicate entries. AND t.post_date BETWEEN CAST('2016-01-01' AS DATE) AND CAST('2016-12-31' AS DATE) GROUP BY a2.account_type ,a4.name, a3.name, a2.name WITH ROLLUP ; And here's the output. Hopefully someone has a better suggested approach!\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4455296b4da807afafea1bbac8d675dd", "text": "Lots of business do work and buy products for their customers then invoice them later think of landscapers or IT professionals. They keep track of the work and products on post-its they stick on their desks. Need further help, contact QuickBooks Support team by visit our site - https://www.wizxpert.com/quickbooks-support-help-phone-number/", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4bb4c6f31eaea21b14c16f88eaab362c", "text": "\"One easy way to monitor costs in QuickBooks is to establish sub-bank accounts. For example, you may have an asset account called \"\"State Bank\"\" numbered 11100 (asset, cash and cash equivalents, bank). Convert this to a parent account for a middle school by making subaccounts such as At budget formation, transfer $800 from Operations 11110 to Family Fun Committee 11130. Then write all checks for Family Fun from the Family Fun 11130 subaccount. For fundraising, transfer $0 at budget formation to the X Grade accounts. Do deposit all grade-level receipts into the appropriate grade-level subaccounts and write all checks for the grades from the grade-level subaccounts. The downside to the above is that reconciling the check book each month is slightly more complicated because you will be reconciling one monthly paper bank statement to multiple virtual subaccounts. Also, you must remember to never write a check from the parent \"\"State Bank\"\" 11100, and instead write the checks from the appropriate subaccounts.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4f7d9c6d9bd9a85810ebab48a59bacba", "text": "Because a paying down a liability and thus gaining asset equity is not technically an expense, GnuCash will not include it in any expense reports. However, you can abuse the system a bit to do what you want. The mortgage payment should be divided into principle, interest, and escrow / tax / insurance accounts. For example: A mortgage payment will then be a split transaction that puts money into these accounts from your bank account: For completeness, the escrow account will periodically be used to pay actual expenses, which just moves the expense from escrow into insurance or tax. This is nice so that expenses for a month aren't inflated due to a tax payment being made: Now, this is all fairly typical and results in all but the principle part of the mortgage payment being included in expense reports. The trick then is to duplicate the principle portion in a way that it makes its way into your expenses. One way to do this is to create a principle expense account and also a fictional equity account that provides the funds to pay it: Every time you record a mortgage payment, add a transfer from this equity account into the Principle Payments expense account. This will mess things up at some level, since you're inventing an expense that does not truly exist, but if you're using GnuCash more to monitor monthly cash flow, it causes the Income/Expense report to finally make sense. Example transaction split:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "29badd6f535491305467294f595b3bd6", "text": "\"You need one \"\"company file\"\" for each company that you want to track through QuickBooks. Looks like, in your case, that is at least the PM and the PH (as you labeled them in your question). The companies that just hold property and pay utilities might be simple enough that you don't need the full power of QB, in which case you might just track their finances on a spread sheet. Subsidiary companies will probably appear as \"\"assets\"\" of some sort on the books of the parent company. This set-up probably does limit liability at some level, but it's going to create a lot of overhead for your that incurs some expense either in your time or in actual fees paid. You should really consider whether the limitations on liability balance against those costs. (Think ahead to what you're going to do when you have to file taxes on this network of companies, whether you need separate insurance policies for each instead of getting one policy covering multiple properties, etc.)\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8f39fca14ea7afb4292fba4707c494ce", "text": "Your account entries are generally correct, but do note that the last transaction is a mixture of the balance sheet and income statement. If Quickbooks doesn't do this automatically then the expense must be manually removed from the balance sheet. The expense should be recognized on the balance sheet and income statement when it accrues, and it accrues when the prepaid rent is extinguished when consumed by the landlord, so that is when the second entry in your question should be booked. The cash flow statement will reflect all of these cash transactions immediately.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c776ae1e50f4a97d9e34f3bf6c8e8395", "text": "You could classify the mortgage as a different assets class and then create automated additions and deductions to the account as deems fit. other than that quickbooks online is a bit fishy so it seems.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b80a4da09befcb5e2df91a2c39fd52a4", "text": "\"You report it when the expense was incurred/accrued. Which is, in your case, 2014. There's no such thing as \"\"accounts payable\"\" on tax forms, it is an account on balance sheet, but most likely it is irrelevant for you since your LLC is probably cash-based. The reimbursement is a red-herring, what matters is when you paid the money.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6da3ec1ab9296aa05074dbbc608a1c5c", "text": "\"Exactly what accounts are affected by any given transaction is not a fixed thing. Just for example, in a simple accounting system you might have one account for \"\"stock on hand\"\". In a more complex system you might have this broken out into many accounts for different types of stock, stock in different locations, etc. So I can only suggest example specific accounts. But account type -- asset, liability, capital (or \"\"equity\"\"), income, expense -- should be universal. Debit and credit rules should be universal. 1: Sold product on account: You say it cost you $500 to produce. You don't say the selling price, but let's say it's, oh, $700. Credit (decrease) Asset \"\"Stock on hand\"\" by $500. Debit (increase) Asset \"\"Accounts receivable\"\" by $700. Credit (increase) Income \"\"Sales\"\" by $700. Debit (increase) Expense \"\"Cost of goods sold\"\" by $500. 2: $1000 spent on wedding party by friend I'm not sure how your friend's expenses affect your accounts. Are you asking how he would record this expense? Did you pay it for him? Are you expecting him to pay you back? Did he pay with cash, check, a credit card, bought on credit? I just don't know what's happening here. But just for example, if you're asking how your friend would record this in his own records, and if he paid by check: Credit (decrease) Asset \"\"checking account\"\" by $1000. Debit (increase) Expense \"\"wedding expenses\"\" by $1000. If he paid with a credit card: Credit (increase) Liability \"\"credit card\"\" by $1000. Debit (increase) Expense \"\"wedding expenses\"\" by $1000. When he pays off the credit card: Debit (decrease) Liability \"\"credit card\"\" by $1000. Credit (decrease) Asset \"\"cash\"\" by $1000. (Or more realistically, there are other expenses on the credit card and the amount would be higher.) 3: Issue $3000 in stock to partner company I'm a little shakier on this, I haven't worked with the stock side of accounting. But here's my best stab: Well, did you get anything in return? Like did they pay you for the stock? I wouldn't think you would just give someone stock as a present. If they paid you cash for the stock: Debit (increase) Asset \"\"cash\"\". Credit (decrease) Capital \"\"shareholder equity\"\". Anyone else want to chime in on that one, I'm a little shaky there. Here, let me give you the general rules. My boss years ago described it to me this way: You only need to know three things to understand double-entry accounting: 1: There are five types of accounts: Assets: anything you have that has value, like cash, buildings, equipment, and merchandise. Includes things you may not actually have in your hands but that are rightly yours, like money people owe you but haven't yet paid. Liabilities: Anything you owe to someone else. Debts, merchandise paid for but not yet delivered, and taxes due. Capital (some call it \"\"capital\"\", others call it \"\"equity\"\"): The difference between Assets and Liabilities. The owners investment in the company, retained earnings, etc. Income: Money coming in, the biggest being sales. Expenses: Money going out, like salaries to employees, cost of purchasing merchandise for resale, rent, electric bill, taxes, etc. Okay, that's a big \"\"one thing\"\". 2: Every transaction must update two or more accounts. Each update is either a \"\"debit\"\" or a \"\"credit\"\". The total of the debits must equal the total of the credits. 3: A dollar bill in your pocket is a debit. With a little thought (okay, sometimes a lot of thought) you can figure out everything else from there.\"", "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": "b84f329d0bf8bf7e2e8b5754eac8fe44", "text": "\"When you pay expenses on behalf of someone, you do not Debit your expense accounts. You credit your Bank and debit the Liability. The method that you mentioned (debit expense then credit it back to liability) is an acceptable practice, but the method is only used when you accidentially debited your expense accounts without knowing that it is for someone else (or in the case of split transactions). You need to specify \"\"being expense paid on behalf of someone\"\" when you credit the expense account.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "df87670ac7382775987c809f727ed906", "text": "\"A.1 and B.1 are properly balanced, but \"\"Business Expense\"\" is an expense, not an asset. The T entries should be timestamped. The time should be equal to the time on the credit card receipts. This will make audit and balancing easier. A or B can be used, but if the the business is to be reimbursed for personal expenses, the accounts should be renamed to reflect that fact. More explicit account names could be \"\"Business expense - stationary\"\" and \"\"Personal expense - lunch\"\" or even better \"\"Personal expense - cammil - lunch\"\". With a consistent format, the account names can be computer parsed for higher resolution and organization, but when tallying these high resolution accounts, debits & credits should always be used. When it comes time to collect from employees, only accounts with \"\"Personal expense\"\" need be referenced. When it comes time to collect from \"\"cammil\"\", only net accounts of \"\"Personal expense - cammil\"\" need be referenced. An example of higher resolution, to determine what \"\"cammil\"\" owes, would be to copy the main books, reverse any account beginning with \"\"Personal expense - cammil\"\", and then take the balance. Using the entries in the question as an example, here's the account to determine \"\"cammil\"\"'s balance: Now, after all such balancing entries are performed, the net credit \"\"Personal expense - cammil\"\" is what \"\"cammil\"\" owes to the business. The scheme for account names should be from left to right, general to specific.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6b9c8be20e94c5eaf3c1e14bc9a5ab8d", "text": "Judgement, settlement, insurance proceeds, etc etc. These would probably be recorded as a negative expense in the same category where the original expense was recorded.", "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": "3afb0883ae38ba9c71dcea12eef9398c", "text": "I have been following some of these threads. Some of them are really old. I have read used recording to equity accounts to resolve the imbalance USD issue. The thing I noticed is that all my imbalances occur when paying bills. I took all the bills and set them up as vendor accounts, entered the bills in the new bills, and used the process payment when paying bills. The imbalance issue stopped. It makes sense. The system is a double entry. That's it will credit and debit. Assets accounts are increased with a debit and decreased with a credit. Equity accounts are increased with a credit and decreased with a debit. ie; Say you have an monthly insurance bill for $100. You enter it into the new vendor bill. This credits Accounts Payable. When paying the bill it credits checking, debits account payable, credits vendor account, debits the expense insurance. In short for each credit there has to be a debit for the books to balance. When there is no account for it to record to it will record in Imbalance USD to balance the books.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
31e4e57b85878aac8738962555d7f15e
Why would a restaurant offer a very large cash discount?
[ { "docid": "aaa3ec379f9df134bba3510cf8516729", "text": "Why would such a large discount make business sense to the restaurant? The legit reasons could be; Or can I assume that the restaurant is trying to avoid leaving a paper trail so that they could avoid paying tax? The illegal reasons could be;", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9bcc06b3d298b104873847d4dfc178f5", "text": "Another possible reason for this is to benefit the servers. When patrons pay with a credit card, they usually tip on the credit card too. If patrons are more likely to pay with cash, then the servers will get more cash tips. Even if the restaurant is completely honest with their books, the servers may not be. Having a restaurant where tips are mostly cash might attract better servers, or perhaps enable the owner to pay servers slightly less than otherwise.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "95498a9e747aacfe7b9e6063e70c2d35", "text": "This could be a case of the new chip card technology and dealing with slow reimbursement turnaround time. I recently visited a restaurant who was not using the chip technology, and it refused my card after several attempts. I found out from my bank it was because the restaurant was not set up for chip and I had not eaten there before....I know at the other end it takes far longer for the funds to get to the merchant; banks don't want to part with other people's money.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "201f87f4854f907f755107b5e157a8f2", "text": "The big one is to keep you from refinancing it with someone else to get a better rate. There may also be some funny-money reasons having to do with being able to count this as a new sale.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4cf731e00f31def72d93bc1bbdc3cf11", "text": "I am a carsalesman. Lets get one thing straight, we are not allowed to give people a better deal just because they pay cash, regardless of what some people say. That can be seen a discrimination as not all people are fortunate enough to have cash available. if anything, finance is better for the dealership, as we get finance commission and the finance company DOES pay us the total amount immidiatly", "title": "" }, { "docid": "baece4374ca0f31cc08034f80efa4e20", "text": "No they aren't boom times. Not sure how that justifies overpaying cashiers; the fact that the economy is slumping could be an argument to pay them less. Less money given to cashiers = lower prices = better for everyone in the economic downturn. Sorry to play devil's advocate but there is no free lunch and this isn't skilled work.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "890b0d4599ec10abf87cae7906c16e78", "text": "Cash back from credit cards is handled separately than the rest of the purchase, i.e. interest begins accumulating on that day, and likely at a higher rate, and usually comes out of a lower limit than the credit allotted to that card. Given all these differences, and the obvious revenue-generation situation for the lender, it makes sense for them to give the store an incentive, rather than penalize them further, for the use of such a feature. Note: I am not privy to the inner-workings or agreements between large stores and credit lenders, so I cannot guarantee any of this.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f49afe59c2066b628a48a29923719045", "text": "\"This isn't so much a legal issue, the prohibition on giving discounts was written into the merchant agreements that most of the major credit card companies enforced on businesses that accepted their credit cards. That is, until the recent Financial Reform Bill (2010) passed Congress. It changes everything. (The logic on this is a little convoluted, so read carefully) Credit card companies can no longer prohibit merchants from requiring a minimum purchase amount to use a credit card. Meaning: That if merchants want to, they can now stop taking credit cards for a $4 latte. Credit card companies can no longer prohibit merchants from giving discounts for cash. Here is an article with a lot more detail: Financial Reform Bill Good News for Credit Card Holders Here is a link to the actual bill details and content: HR 4173 - Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Here is the relevant part: This subsection is supposed to take affect \"\"at the end of the 12-month period beginning on the date of the enactment of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010.\"\" In other words, July 21st, 2011.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5c38852be4fca98d8a7ff9b5fc084889", "text": "My wife's uncle is a high quality Italian chef and constantly gets shat on for not having large enough portions. His restaurant serves lamb and veal and generally good entrees. People keep coming in expecting olive garden portions. That's not the kind of place he tries to be. He smokes his own duck for his pasta dish. It's funny how people value a $2 bag of pasta for $17.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5256b1bb6194a832b35643a7584f8ae5", "text": "Uhuh. And if I go to the Sushi bar 10 minutes before they close, they'll give me their stale rolls 50% off. Will CNBC right on article on that tip from me? Its just a stupid article.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "34c0ca2bb90dd623af001de51d16eae9", "text": "Possible (unlikely) reasons: But usually, yeah, if you can pay cash, you should.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b3c481f41dd9df5185ff43c0a624694f", "text": "It's not that simple. Where I live, McDonald's charges $6.19 for a Big Mac combo. The local In-N-Out charges $6.59 for a Double-Double combo. They're pretty damned close in price and I don't think anyone would price discriminate over 40¢. The difference between the two is enormous. In-N-Out makes a great product, the burger and fries are delicious and fresh. Further, In-N-Out is known for treating - and paying - their employees well. They promote from within and becoming a manager is a good job. Thanks to the decent pay, In-N-Out employees tend to be very good and care about the customers. McDonald's is very different. The food is terrible. Flavorless and bland and *very* expensive for what you get. In-N-Out aside, I can go to a local mom'n'pop and get a good meal for under $6. There is no reason for me to go to McDonald's, none. McDonald's isn't such a great employer, either. The employees don't care. I've never been treated badly, but there's no enthusiasm. They are there for the paycheck only. I blame accountants and the business structure. For the record, I am an accountant, so I know what they're up to. McDonald's is a large, public company bent on returning maximum profits to shareholders. So they bring in the cost accountants who are very good at shaving costs down to the absolute minimum. The Big Mac has suffered death by a thousand cuts. No one cut makes it a lousy product, but give the cost accountants enough time and they will make anything mediocre to bad in lots of different ways. In-N-Out is a privately held company. Obviously, they are more interested in making money through selling a quality product and expanding sales. They don't have to worry about shareholders who don't give a fuck and just want short-term profits. They could make more money by turning the cost accountants loose, but they also know that would hurt their business. The difference shows. McDonald's is rarely busy here. At In-N-Out, lines are usually out the door and you can't find an open table. I only go there late at night on weekdays, since that's the only time it isn't slammed. So you have two companies selling a similar product at almost the same price. One is wildly successful and slowly expanding. The other sells a shitty product and thinks that marketing is the problem.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b49d3101a11fd449c7a858461975f033", "text": "People will always eat out. Waited tables during the last recession, had no problems making money. I agree with the people in the article, it will discourage tipping and potentially lower their pay. It has nothing to do with taxes as everyone claims either.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "91d1802b16c0cb4b7467d2137e0e4800", "text": "Probably because large chains can absorb the loss from fraud better than small stores do. Thus, small stores want to ensure that the person holding the card is the same as the name on the card.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a485d7ee72ef0fae0ccd52cda6c1a37d", "text": "There is a funny story about that. If you were visiting Apple and Jobs was taking you to lunch in the cafe - he would insist on paying. Employees, get to checkout and have their badge scanned and the cost of the food is deducted from their paycheck. So why did Steve always insist on treating for lunch? He was enjoying all he (and guests) could eat for $1 a year.", "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": "c84da531e47092517f137d525c08ccef", "text": "Indeed, perhaps even businesses that cater to different markets within the same industry could be affected differently. Restaurants in particular, where a smaller cafe or cheap sandwich shop might see more business as a result of more money in people's pockets, but a higher end sit down restaurant might only experience the wage increase without any additional incoming revenue.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "af663004e9020b11230f58c727f636bf", "text": "True on the second point. It is information based. My bad. With regard to the first point, I don't think he's Jesus returned. He makes plenty of mistakes but he does provide the return record of a very disparate group of investors following the same method. That method may not work anymore (hard to say) but I think it does. I'm obviously a true believer. With respect to third point, I don't think you were being a dick. Enjoyed the debate. Thanks for the perspective", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
ba799406a237f89be1c282d77ac84ae0
What are useful indexes for rapid evaluation of country investment risk?
[ { "docid": "9c35407c8dfdd0bc2be3f53cac7a1ea2", "text": "Rather than using the Human Development Index or Ease of Doing Business, if you primary purpose is for investments, you need to consider the Country rating provided by various agencies like These would tell as to how good the country is for investment in general. Just to highlight a difference, China may not fare very high in Human Development Index, however right now from investment point of view its a pretty good market. once you have decided the countries, you can either invest in funds specalizing in these countries or if legally permitted invest directly into the leading stock index in such countries. If your intention is to start a business in these countries, then you need to look at some other indexes. http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/articles/en/us/?assetID=1245219962821 http://www.fitchratings.com/jsp/sector/Sector.faces?selectedTab=Overview&Ne=4293330737%2b11&N=0 http://v3.moodys.com/Pages/default.aspx", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "97ba7c78d9da95d26c6773d89ff25ec3", "text": "\"It's interesting that you use so many different risk measures. Here's what I'd like to know more in detail: 1) About the use of VaR. I've heard (from a friend, may be unreliable) that some investment managers like Neuberger Berman doesn't use VaR for assessing risk and maintaining capital adequacy requirements. Rather, some firms only rely on tracking error, beta, standard deviation, etc. Why do you think is this so? Isn't VaR supposed to be a widely accepted risk measure. 2) The whole \"\"Expected Shortfall vs. VaR\"\" debate. I've read some papers comparing Expected Shortfall and VaR. Mainly, they criticize VaR for not being able to consider the 1% probability left where losses can (probably) skyrocket to infinity. If I need to choose between the two, which do you think is better and why?\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "96c20301e3d9cce0e80714e7dbe7ede1", "text": "You could look up the P/E of an equivalent ETF, or break the ETF into components and look those up. Each index has its own methodology, usually weighted by market cap. See here: http://www.amex.com/etf/prodInf/EtAllhold.jsp?Product_Symbol=DIA", "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": "61e08f0d238c2474a7eb648aac96c339", "text": "\"TL;DR - go with something like Barry Ritholtz's All Century Portfolio: 20 percent total U.S stock market 5 percent U.S. REITs 5 percent U.S. small cap value 15 percent Pacific equities 15 percent European equities 10 percent U.S. TIPs 10 percent U.S. high yield corp bonds 20 percent U.S. total bond UK property market are absurdly high and will be crashing a lot very soon The price to rent ratio is certainly very high in the UK. According to this article, it takes 48 years of rent to pay for the same apartment in London. That sounds like a terrible deal to me. I have no idea about where prices will go in the future, but I wouldn't voluntarily buy in that market. I'm hesitant to invest in stocks for the fear of losing everything A stock index fund is a collection of stocks. For example the S&P 500 index fund is a collection of the largest 500 US public companies (Apple, Google, Shell, Ford, etc.). If you buy the S&P 500 index, the 500 largest US companies would have to go bankrupt for you to \"\"lose everything\"\" - there would have to be a zombie apocalypse. He's trying to get me to invest in Gold and Silver (but mostly silver), but I neither know anything about gold or silver, nor know anyone who takes this approach. This is what Jeremy Siegel said about gold in late 2013: \"\"I’m not enthusiastic about gold because I think gold is priced for either hyperinflation or the end of the world.\"\" Barry Ritholtz also speaks much wisdom about gold. In short, don't buy it and stop listening to your friend. Is buying a property now with the intention of selling it in a couple of years for profit (and repeat until I have substantial amount to invest in something big) a bad idea? If the home price does not appreciate, will this approach save you or lose you money? In other words, would it be profitable to substitute your rent payment for a mortgage payment? If not, you will be speculating, not investing. Here's an articles that discusses the difference between speculating and investing. I don't recommend speculating.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7176ccf3641af634c793417c35c17887", "text": "A target date fund is NOT a world market index. There is no requirement that it be weighted based on the weights of the various world stock markets. If anything, historically (since the invention of target date funds), a 2:1 ratio is actually pretty low. 6:1 is, or was, probably more common. Just a token amount to non-US investments.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ae119a1854147b5b6ee88b6f3dd09dc4", "text": "\"He is wrong. Using Total Return (Reinvesting Dividend), from the peak in December 1999, it only took 6 years to recover. You can check the data for free here. Make sure you choose \"\"Gross Index Level\"\". ACWI Index is Developed Markets + Emerging Markets. World Index is Developed Markets only.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "55b1341a3a982569d7c490daba32c0b2", "text": "\"I don't think blanket answers are very helpful. You are asking the right question when you are young! You have a large number of investment options and Australia has the Superannuation system that you can extract significant tax value from. I've not attempted to grade these with regard to \"\"risk\"\", as different people will rate various things with different levels, depending on their experience and knowledge. Consider the following factors for you:-\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ca41d7db1b793e37d2a3a3973139132e", "text": "\"Wow, this analysis really surprised me. Very complete and useful, but i think my teacher request was easier. He just said: \"\"Try to build a diversified portfolio. Then try to add a commodity (like silver or gold) and understand how the risk vary introducing an asset like this.\"\" So, i'm basically making a stocks portfolio and i'm calculating its expected return and risk. (for example 40%FB, 10%JNJ, 20%GS, 10%F and 20%MCD) then i'm adding GLD (so now i have something like 20%FB, 10%JNJ, 10%GS, 10%F and 20%MCD 30%GLD) and i'm actually making an excel spreadsheet where i calculate all the: -Expected returns -St Deviation -Covariance At the end i compare the returns and the risks on the 2 different portfolios.\"", "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": "879df5cccfdb6e93aa59f97d4b067107", "text": "Russia current account. https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/current-account US current account https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/current-account Russia balance of trade https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/balance-of-trade US balance of trade https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade Forex reserve by country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-exchange_reserves List of country by oil import size. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_imports . If I have to make a wild guess, country with huge deficit everything and no saving usually sinks faster in time of crisis.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e72a9e53a04c6d504a9d521f8f8eb891", "text": "Haven't there been examples of governments defaulting, delaying payment and imposing haircuts on investors? Greece and Argentina come to mind. Quite a few Govt have defaulted in the past or were very of default or crisis. Most 3rd world countries or developing countries have under gone stress at some point. Greece was amongst the first example of Developed country going bankrupt. am I not better off if the fund invests solely in AAA corporate bonds, avoiding government bonds? Well that depends. Corporate bonds are not safer than Government Bonds. There have been instances of Corporate bonds not giving the required returns.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8f4704351a133fc68df4838e78f5ece3", "text": "\"Taking examples from this loosely Googled page: http://www.fundlibrary.com/features/columns/page.asp?id=14406 If you find, or calculate, the standard deviation (volatility) of the returns from your various investment classes you will find they range from low-risk (low volatility), such as Cash, to high-risk (high volatility), such as Strategic Growth. The risk rating (volatility) is a good indicator of how reactive to market conditions your investment is likely to be. As you can see below, from mid-2010 to mid-2011 the High Risk index performed really well, but it was also most reactive when the market subsequently turned down. The medium risk indices performed the best over the chart period, 2010 to 2013, but it could have turned out different. Generally, you choose your investment according to your \"\"risk appetite\"\" - how much you're willing to risk. You might play safe with, say, 30% cash, 60% medium risk, 10% high risk. (Then again, are you paying someone to manage cash, which you might be able to do for free in a bank?) Assuming, for a moment, European (3.) and Intnl Equity Tracker (9.) had the same medium risk profile, then holding 50% & 50% would also add some currency diversification, which is usually advisable. However, the main choice is down to risk appetite. To address your specific question: \"\"my main interest for now is between Stockmarket Growth and Strategic Growth\"\", first thing to do is check their volatilities. For a further level of sophistication you can check how they are correlated against each other. If they are inversely correlated, i.e. one goes up when the other goes down, then holding some of each could be a good diversification. FYI: An Introduction to Investment Theory The historical returns are important too, but the investment classes your pension fund is offering will probably be reasonably aligned on a risk-return basis. You should check though. I.e. do they line up on a plot of 3 year Return vs Volatility? e.g. the line through SA Cash - SA Bonds - Vol Target 20 - SA Equity. Source\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b4b354080dc85234776d08425d237976", "text": "Your definition of 'outside your country' might need some redefinition, as there are three different things going on here . . . Your financial adviser appears to be highlighting the currency risk associated with point three. However, consider these risk scenarios . . . A) Your country enters a period of severe financial difficulty, and money markets shut down. Your brokerage becomes insolvent, and your investments are lost. In this scenario the fact of whether your investments were in an overseas index such as the S&P, or were purchased from an account denominated in a different currency, would be irrelevant. The only thing that would have mitigated this scenario is an account with an overseas broker. B) Your country's stock market enters a sustained and deep bear market, decimating the value of shares in its companies. In this scenario the fact of whether your investments were made in from a brokerage overseas, or were purchased from an account denominated in a different currency, would be irrelevant. The only thing that would have mitigate this scenario is investment in shares and indices outside your home country. Your adviser has a good point; as long as you intend to enjoy your retirement in your home country then it might be advisable to remove currency risk by holding an account in Rupees. However, you might like to consider reducing the other forms of risk by holding non-Indian securities to create a globally diversified portfolio, and also placing some of your capital in an account with a broker outside your home country (this may be very difficult to do in practice).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "605eb7aa548de18d74c5f4e178dd3731", "text": "First, currencies are not an investment; they are a medium of exchange; that is, you use currency to buy goods and services and/or investments. The goods and services you intend to buy in your retirement are presumably going to be bought in your country; to buy these you will need your country's currency. The investments you intend to buy now require the currency of whatever country they are located in. If you want to buy shares in Microsoft you need USD; if you want shares in BHP-Billiton you need AUD or GBP (It is traded on two exchanges), if you want property in Kuwait you need KWD and if you want bonds in your country you need IDR. When you sell these later to buy the goods and services you were saving for you need to convert from whatever currency you get for selling them into whatever currency you need to buy. When you invest you are taking on risk for which you expect to be compensated for - the higher the risk you take the better the returns had better be because there is always the chance that they will be negative, right down to losing it all if you are unlucky. There is no 100% safe investment; if you want to make sure you get full value for your money spend it all right now! If you invest overseas then, in addition to all the other investment risks, you are adding currency risk as well. That is, the risk that when you redeem your investments the overseas currency will have fallen relative you your currency. One of the best ways of mitigating risk is diversification; which allows the same return at a lower risk (or a higher return at the same risk). A pure equity portfolio is not diversified across asset classes (hopefully it is diversified across the equities). Equities are a high risk-high yield class; particularly in a developing economy like Indonesia. If you are very young with a decades long investment horizon this may be OK but even then, a diversified portfolio will probably offer better rewards at the same risk. Diversifying into local cash, bonds and property with a little foreign equities, bonds and property will serve you better than worrying about the strength of the IDR. Oh, and pay a professional for some real advice rather than listening to strangers on the internet.", "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": "" } ]
fiqa
9edffcfbedfde04fa5eebdb4b3566526
How to account for personal baby sitter?
[ { "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": "" }, { "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": "d1b95eb02294f99e98592a30e16079a3", "text": "You said your mother-in-law lives with you. Does she pay rent, or are you splitting the cost of housing? That would also have to figured into the equation. If you had a business you would now have to declare the expense on your business taxes. This would also then be income for her, which she would have to account for on her taxes. Remember there are both state and federal taxes involved. Regarding expenses like diapers. If the MIL had the business she could deduct them as a business expense. If you have the business it would greatly complicate the taxes. Your business would be essentially covering your personal expenses. If your MIL was not a business the cost of diapers would be paid by you regardless of the working situation of you and your spouse. To claim the tax credit: You must report the name, address, and taxpayer identification number (either the social security number, or the employer identification number) of the care provider on your return. If the care provider is a tax-exempt organization, you need only report the name and address on your return. You can use Form W-10 (PDF), Dependent Care Provider's Identification and Certification, to request this information from the care provider. If you do not provide information regarding the care provider, you may still be eligible for the credit if you can show that you exercised due diligence in attempting to provide the required information. The IRS will be looking for an income tax form from your MIL that claims the income. Getting too cute with the babysitting situation, by starting a business just for the purpose of saving money on taxes could invite an audit. Also it is not as if you just claim 3000 and you are good to go. You can only claim a percentage of the expenses based on the household AGI, the more the make the more you have to have in expenses to get the full 3000 credit, which mil cause more taxes for your MIL. Plus the whole issue with having to pay social security and other taxes on a household employee. It might be best to skip the risk of the audit. Claiming your MIL as a dependent might just be easier.", "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": "3a0e8cf5fb8a3a88d9ed51ee42d2bc0e", "text": "In short, I suggest you take a look at your W-4 form and adjust it properly. And yes you can claim your self as a dependent, unless someone else is claiming you. But here is a more detailed explanation of how it works. How Income Tax Works. While most people tend to only think about the tax system and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as the month of April approaches, it's actually a never-ending process. For our purposes, a good way to explain how the system works is to give an example of one American income earner, we will call him Joe. The tax process begins when Joe starts his new job. He and his employer agree on his compensation, which will be figured into his gross income at the end of the year. One of the first things he has to do when he's hired is fill out all of his tax forms, including a W-4 form. The W-4 form lists all of Joe's withholding allowance information, such as his number of dependents and child care expenses. The information on this form tells your employer just how much money it needs to withhold from your paycheck for federal income tax. The IRS says that you should check this form each year, as your tax situation may change from year to year. Once Joe is hired and given a salary, he can estimate how much he will pay in taxes for the year. Here's the formula: At the end of each pay period, Joe's company takes the withheld money, along with all of withheld tax money from all of its employees, and deposits the money in a Federal Reserve Bank. This is how the government maintains a steady stream of income while also drawing interest on your tax dollars. Toward the end of the tax year, Joe's company has to send him a W-2 form in the mail. This happens by January 31. This form details how much money Joe made during the last year and how much federal tax was withheld from his income. This information can also be found on Joe's last paycheck of the year, but he'll need to send the W-2 to the IRS for processing purposes. At some point between the time Joe receives his W-2 and April 15, Joe will have to fill out and return his taxes to one of the IRS service and processing centers. Once the IRS receives Joe's tax returns, an IRS employee keys in every piece of information on Joe's tax forms. This information is then stored in large magnetic tape machines. If Joe is due a tax refund, he is sent a check in the mail in the next few weeks. If Joe uses e-File or TeleFile, his refund can be direct-deposited into his bank account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b7413b64dd84b48bcc6de3cb284dff30", "text": "We asked the same question earlier this year as my wife is a SAHM with 2 young boys (5 and under). If something happened to her I'd have to quit work or change careers to stay home to raise them or something. We ended up getting a decent 20 year level TERM policy that will cover the care of both boys for many of their younger years. The cost is negligible but the piece of mind is priceless.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "93ce6e1081c44b4ddd241b88899a13da", "text": "Dude. This is so true. My husband works out of town so I'm basically a single mom. I wake up, get myself ready, our three kids ready, drop them off at daycare and school, rush to work, rush from work, pick them up from after school care (2 different places). By the time I get home it's already 6pm. Then I have to feed/bath/do homework with my munchkins Oh did I mention I'm also a Junior college student taking 18 hours?! So the second I get them handled I have to work on my class work, sometimes until 3am. Then on Saturdays I photograph weddings! Sunday morning we visit my grandmother in law. So on Sunday evenings and on Saturdays I don't have to work a wedding, I am doing housework, grocery shopping, etc. Any convenience I can afford I will use! Anything that helps me get a moment to breathe or play with my kids I'm grateful for. I'm not going to use this Amazon feature bc it freaks me out but I am not that far from being that desperate lol.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7348a5a39e5d09a5d84942986787e34e", "text": "\"Disclaimer: This should go without saying, but this answer is definitely an opinion. (I'm pretty sure my current accountant would agree with this answer, and I'm also pretty sure that one of my past accountants would disagree.) When I started my own small business over 10 years ago I asked this very same question for pretty much every purchase I made that would be used by both the business and me personally. I was young(er) and naive then and I just assumed everything was deductible until my accountant could prove otherwise. At some point you need to come up with some rules of thumb to help make sense of it, or else you'll drive yourself and your accountant bonkers. Here is one of the rules I like to use in this scenario: If you never would have made the purchase for personal use, and if you must purchase it for business use, and if using it for personal use does not increase the expense to the business, it can be fully deducted by the business even if you sometimes use it personally too. Here are some example implementations of this rule: Note about partial expenses: I didn't mention partial deductions above because I don't feel it applies when the criteria of my \"\"rule of thumb\"\" is met. Note that the IRS states: Personal versus Business Expenses Generally, you cannot deduct personal, living, or family expenses. However, if you have an expense for something that is used partly for business and partly for personal purposes, divide the total cost between the business and personal parts. You can deduct the business part. At first read that makes it sound like some of my examples above would need to be split into partial calulations, however, I think the key distinction is that you would never have made the purchase for personal use, and that the cost to the business does not increase because of allowing personal use. Partial deductions come into play when you have a shared car, or office, or something where the business cost is increased due to shared use. In general, I try to avoid anything that would be a partial expense, though I do allow my business to reimburse me for mileage when I lend it my personal car for business use.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0e62b9944102afc036fd4a96772aab1c", "text": "I don't think there's a conclusive answer to your question, but I have a real world example for you. I was in a similar situation for almost 6 years (I was the friend, but also the one with the highest pay). I rented a house, my name on everything. I made a separate contract with both my friend and his GF and they both rented a room from me. I looked up the total m2 of the house and divided the rent by that number. Multiplied by room sizes I knew what everyone had to pay for their personal space, I simply divided the rest by 3 to find the remainder of everyone's rent. I don't know the numbers anymore, but here's an example: house = 150 m2 room 1 = 10 m2 room 2 = 15 m2 room 3 = 25 m2 shared space = 100 m2 rent = 800,- This gives 5.33 per m2 The shared space is worth 533.33 Divided by 3 is 177.77, So the total rent for each room is: room 1 = 10*5.33 + 177.77 ≈ 231 room 2 = 15*5.33 + 177.77 ≈ 258 room 3 = 25*5.33 + 177.77 ≈ 311 We divided the rest of the costs (gas, power, water, etc...) evenly. This was fair in our case, because the rent was directly tied to the size of the rooms. The only thing we had left to do was give the poorest person the smallest room.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f683ec01ed9d929d347df04ac6c2b11c", "text": "\"Here are the top hitters in my (recent) experience, in highest-first order: Child Care By far the biggest potential cost is childcare, whether this be a full-time nursery/kindergarten, child minder, live-in Nanny/Au-pair or just paying a baby sitter when parents need a night off. This needs careful thought. In London, full-time nursery school (6 months to 4 years old) varies from 500 UKP to 2000 UKP per month, and the amount you pay does not guarantee the quality of the care/education. If you have relatives nearby, these costs can likely be reduced, but you'd really need to pay the relatives somehow - meals, bling, holidays, a new bathroom, etc. Loss of Earnings Whether the mother goes on maternity leave, or the father gives up his job to be a 'house husband', the family income is going to be affected for a period of time. You can plan for this by researching what government or company benefits the mother or father will get and for how long. I suggest dividing this amount evenly across the whole period that the stay-at-home parent will be off, rather than trying to calculate \"\"2 months' full pay, 2 months' half pay, 2 month's no pay\"\", because if you get into a pattern of high spending in the first two months, what will happen for the next 4 months. You also need to consider short-notice time off work when anybody is poorly. I suggest reserving some of your vacation time for unexpectedly-have-to-look-after-the-family time. When children start daycare/nursery, the germs cross-pollinate, so you get some really nasty strains of coughs, colds, diarrhoea and 'flu in the house, which could cause the primary carer to be unable to do their caring without (your) help. Bigger Car If you can't get a baby seat into your car because it doesn't have the proper fittings or doesn't have rear seats, you'll likely need to change your car. There are plenty of cars that are bigger in terms of people space without being more expensive, but it'll cost to change. Insurances If you have health insurance (e.g. US), you're going to have a proportional increase. Call your provider for details. Bear in mind that children have more illnesses and accidents than middle-age parents, so it could be a shock. Some parents take out life insurance to provide for their childrens' financial future in case of the worst happening. This can be around 50 UKP/65 USD per month, but it all depends on the lump sum you're insuring for. Equipment As a new parent, you think you need an incredible amount of equipment such as Changing Station, Cot/Crib, 'Moses Basket', Carry-Chair, Car Seat, Travel Cot/Crib, Feeding Chair, Changing Mat, Baby Bath, etc. When you bring a new baby home, you really only need a wipe-clean changing mat and somewhere safe for baby to sleep. You can buy anything else as you need it. In fact, it gives you more perspective to go shopping once you've had the baby. Whatever you buy, keep the receipt and don't open it until you need it. Much easier to take back the, e.g. portable baby bottle warmer, if you didn't open it because baby is breast-fed. When they become bigger (2 months plus), you'll need a Cot/Crib. Invest in an adjustable cot-bed - it's a bit larger than a regular Cot/Crib and the floor lowers as they get bigger, so you only need one for the first 2.5 to 3 years. Food If baby will have formula, there are baby-milk formula calculators on the web - in summary one box of quality formula is ~9 UKP/12 USD and this lasts around 4 days if fully formula-fed. Once they're onto food, you need to factor in baby food options. You can either make your own by side-lining some of the adult meal and blending it, then putting it into individual plastic containers. This takes effort, so not everyone has the energy. Alternatively, you're going to have to buy baby food in jars, packets or boxes for 3 meals a day and there'll be little snacks in-between. Baby snacks are strangely expensive, so recommend fruit. Budget for 5 UKP/7 USD per day until they're eating a small portion of the family meal. Clothes A new baby really only needs vests, all-in-one suits, blankets for warmth. You can go mad buying cute outfits, but they get limited use as a new baby grows really quickly. If you've a lot of family/friends and you have a tradition of some kind of \"\"good luck\"\" party ('baby shower'), then you can find that you end up being given lots of things. If you don't know the sex of the baby, ask people to get you a gift receipt if possible such that you don't get blue clothes for a girl. It may not bother you, but its' a pain when people say \"\"Katie is a strange name for a boy?\"\" just because your little girl has blue booties. Child-proofing Your Home This really does not have to cost a lot. Some people go mad putting soft corners on all the hard edges, covering the electrical sockets and generally sanitizing the whole home. It's up to you, but if there's a room full of sharp/poisonous things like a kitchen or utility room, you might want to put a 15 UKP/20 USD baby gate on that room. Putting the breakable or sharp things up high, or stored away in the attic is a sensible move too.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fd60b550030f7f8980fa50a6a6cb4e1e", "text": "\"For a personal finance forum, this is too complicated for sustained use and you should find a simpler solution. For a mathematical exercise, you are missing information required to do the split fairly. You have to know who overlaps and when to know how to do the splits. For an extreme example, take your dates given: Considering 100 days of calculation period, If Roommate D was the only person present for the last 10 days, they should pay 100% of the grocery bill as they are the only one eating. From your initial data set, you can't know who should be splitting the tab for any given day. To do this mathematically, you'd need: But don't forget \"\"In Theory, Theory works. In Practice, Practice works.\"\" Good theory would say make a large, complicated spreadsheet as described above. Good practice would be to split up the costs in a much, much simpler way.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ece1010f6a16b8f0d8df6ae8138d3a7d", "text": "The way to think about this is: what would happen to the family if stay-at-home Mom were to die. You obviously can't do anything about the loss, grief and trauma, but think about the financial implications. Assuming that Dad continues to work, and that the child is young, you are going to have to find someone to take care of him/her. If you have relatives willing to step in, that may be fine. but if not you will have to pay for daycare - an expense you don't now have. That's going to get less as the child goes to school, but not go away until he/she is old enough to look after themselves. Bringing up a child, as well as working a full time job, is pretty demanding. You may find that you don't have as much time for cleaning the house, cooking or other chores. Having a sum of money which can be used to hire help or pay for a few meals out can be very useful in these cases. Here is an article which places a value on the work done by a stay-at-home Mom. You might not need to pay for all of those services, but it gives you an idea of what the extra expenses might be. Think about what extra money you might need to spend, and arrange for life insurance to cover it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3f787372f8004256b7f7385e0f510adb", "text": "Thank you for the quick reply. My main firm pretty much sets us up as individual practices with limited support as far as customer service. The clients are ours to take care of. There is not a formal small account policy I am aware of, though I will confirm this next week. I am considering delegating a current assistant, who is training to be a rep, to take care of these clients under my close supervision. It might be good experience for him and a way I can still profit. I wouldn't want to lose these clients because a) they might mature or bring referrals, and b) there are individuals in need of at least some insurance to protect their families.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4a3829db16c7d062c1b2c885c9d3c0f4", "text": "If I understand you right, what you need is the minimum amount in the account until your next deposit. So for example, if today is the 10th and you get paid on the 15th, how much do I need to have in the account, so I know how much I can spend? That amount should be all of the bills that will be paid between today and the 15th. An alternative would just to keep a running balance and see what the minimum value is. My personal finance software does that for me, but it's possible, although a little more complicated, in Excel. You'd have to find the date of the next deposit, and do a SUMIF looking for dates between today and that date. That's about as far as I can get without getting off-topic.", "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": "4217855657af5723dd47f882f3a402fb", "text": "\"There is not one right way. It depends on the level of detail that you need. One way would be: Create the following accounts: When you pay the phone bill: When you are paid with the reimbursement: That is, when you pay the phone bill, you must debit BOTH phone expense to record the expense, and also reimbursements due to record the fact that someone now owes you money. If it's useful you could add another layer of complexity: When you receive the bill you have a liability, and when you pay it you discharge that liability. Whether that's worth keeping track of depends. I never do for month-to-month bills. Afterthought: I see another poster says that your method is incorrect because a reimbursement is not salary. Technically true, though that problem could be fixed by renaming the account to something like \"\"income from employer\"\". The more serious problem I see is that you are reversing the phone expense when you are reimbursed. So at the end of the year you will show total phone expense as $0. This is clearly not correct -- you did have phone expenses, they were just reimbursed. You really are treating the expense account as an asset account -- \"\"phone expenses due to be reimbursed by employer\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b70694bff1fabf04277c65f9e26cf866", "text": "\"So your whole approach, and the attempt to scale this is flawed. You will alienate roomates, provoke arguments, and make everyone's life more difficult. There are too many variables and unforeseen possibilities. For instance: \"\"Why should I have to pay for Joe to go buy the expensive organic milk when I'm fine with the cheap stuff?\"\" \"\"I planned on being here for 20 days, but was gone that long weekend, recalculate everything please.\"\" \"\"I already paid for this month, but now you're asking for more because James wanted to recalculate for a long weekend?\"\" The right way to do this is to set up loose, reasonable agreement among the participants and treat that as a contract, but with some flexibility/mercy on small dollar amount items. For instance: There are 5 of us, so everyone provides food (and shops/cooks) one night a week. We're solo on Friday and Saturday (people eat out more then anyway), and everyone puts in $10/week (or whatever) for breakfast cereal, snacks, etc. If you can't be here on your night, work out to trade with someone. If you miss out on a meal... oh well. As long as people feel like they have a say in the discussion generating this and it's not dictated to them, then most of the time this is far superior. If people need this level of detail, then perhaps those people should live alone or move in with Sheldon Cooper from \"\"The Big Bang Theory\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d80b85fb6340eec3bc24c5e8a104fab0", "text": "You can't be doing it yourself. Only your employer can do it. If the employer doesn't provide the option - switch employers. The only way for you to do it yourself is if you're the employer, i.e.: self-employed.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
8e0d96d2b0936b153fb9b56f2ab09ec2
As a Canadian, what should I invest in if I'm betting that the Canadian real estate will crash?
[ { "docid": "e2eb5c74ba2e69423dffe0658b4f048f", "text": "If you believe you can time the crash, then We all know what comes after a crash… just as we know what comes after the doom, we just don’t know when….", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "0e5ca9e4f001385b1c89662258f20c91", "text": "If the market has not crashed but you know it will, sell short or buy puts. If the market has crashed, buy equities while they are cheap. If you don't know if or when it will crash hold a diversified portfolio including stocks, bonds, real estate, and alternatives (gold, etc).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d0dc5fa4905cb40edf4151ebb4465f9b", "text": "\"I've never invested in penny stocks. My #1 investing rule, buy what you know and use. People get burned because they hear about the next big thing, go invest! to just end up losing everything because they have no clue in what they're investing in. From what I've found, until you have minimum of $5k to invest, put everything in a single investment. The reason for this, as others have mentioned, is that commissions eat up just about all your profits. My opinion, don't put it in a bond, returns are garbage right now - however they are \"\"safe\"\". Because this is $1000 we're talking about and not your life savings, put it in a equity like a stock to try and maximize your return. I aim for 15% returns on stocks and can generally achieve 10-15% consistently. The problem is when you get greedy and keep thinking it will go above once you're at 10-15%. Sell it. Sell it right away :) If it drops down -15% you have to be willing to accept that risk. The nice thing is that you can wait it out. I try to put a 3 month time frame on things I buy to make money. Once you start getting a more sizable chunk of money to play around with you should start to diversify. In Canada at least, once you have a trading account with a decent size investment the commissions get reduced to like $10 a trade. With your consistent 10% returns and additional savings you'll start to build up your portfolio. Keep at it and best of luck!\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ab5d1d5274c44cce8eee1cc4ef8c802d", "text": "The idea being that if / when the CAD recovers I could see a gain of ~30%. That is the big if, maybe the USD and CAD will return to their previous exchange rates, maybe the CAD will fall further, you just don't know. You should try to keep a diversified pool of investments, that may include some cash in various currencies but unless you think you will need the money in the next few years it should probablly be mostly in other things. If you do think you will need the money in the next few years it should probablly be in a currency that is stable relative to the things you are likely to need it for.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "73dda99e4d3a92db55fb384c2af2a06c", "text": "Are you considering using it? Is that the point of the post? If that's the case, I would say it's always a good idea to fully leverage your assets for investment. I recommend leveraging everything you can to maximize your profits. If you own a house, car, or anything else of value, you should use it as collateral. Then, typically any stock trading for $0.01 is a good investment - they almost never go to $0 and all it takes is a movement of $0.01 to double your money. Roulette also has similar payouts, but remember to always bet on red, never black. Good luck - send pictures of your mansion soon!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0eb21d9f6455f52ae8801d8e14bb77ec", "text": "Not a day goes by that someone isn't forecasting a collapse or meteoric rise. Have you read Ravi Batra's The Great Depression of 1990? The '90s went on to return an amazing 18.3%/yr compound growth rate for the decade. (The book sells for just over $3 with free Amazon shipping.) In 1987, Elaine Garzarelli predicted the crash. But went years after to produce unremarkable results. Me? I saw that 1987 was up 5% or so year on year (in hindsight , of course), and by just staying invested, I added deposits throughout the year, and saw that 5% return. What crash? Looking back now, it was a tiny blip. You need to be diversified in a way that one segment of the market falling won't ruin you. If you think the world is ending, you should make peace with your loved ones and your God, no investment advice will be of any value. (Nor will gold for that matter.)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "674ad41569cab3cb71035f7bafdfd946", "text": "Apart from some of the excellent things others say, you could borrow money in AUD and invest that in another currency (that's risky but interesting) if the AUD interest rate is low and the other countries interest rate is higher, you'll eventually win. Also, look at what John Paulson did in 2007, 2008... I wish I'd thought of that when I was in your position (predicting a housing crisis)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7c0129ccf189b8444f3ea2693d965ba8", "text": "\"First off, I would label this as speculation, not investing. There are many variables that you don't seem to be considering, and putting down such a small amount opens you to a wide variety of risks. Not having an \"\"emergency fund\"\" for the rental increases that risk greatly. (I assume that you would not have an emergency fund based upon \"\"The basic idea is to save up a 20% down payment on a property and take out a mortgage\"\".) This type of speculation lent a hand in the housing bubble. Is your home paid off? If not you can reduce your personal risk (by owning your home), and have a pretty safe investment in real estate. Mission accomplished. My hope for you would be that you are also putting money in the market. Historically it has performed quite well while always having its share of \"\"chicken littles\"\".\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "661faa4d48f96d63ec1a4467fefc9842", "text": "The catch is that you're doing a form of leveraged investing. In other words, you're gambling on the stock market using money that you've borrowed. While it's not as dangerous as say, getting money from a loan shark to play blackjack in Vegas, there is always the chance that markets can collapse and your investment's value will drop rapidly. The amount of risk really depends on what specific investments you choose and how diversified they are - if you buy only Canadian stocks then you're at risk of losing a lot if something happened to our economy. But if your Canadian equities only amount to 3.6% of your total (which is Canada's share of the world market), and you're holding stocks in many different countries then the diversification will reduce your overall risk. The reason I mention that is because many people using the Smith Maneuver are only buying Canadian high-yield dividend stocks, so that they can use the dividends to accelerate the Smith Maneuver process (use the dividends to pay down the mortgage, then borrow more and invest it). They prefer Canadian equities because of preferential tax treatment of the dividend income (in non-registered accounts). But if something happened to those Canadian companies, they stand to lose much of the investment value and suddenly they have the extra debt (the amount borrowed from a HELOC, or from a re-advanceable mortgage) without enough value in the investments to offset it. This could mean that they will not be able to pay off the mortgage by the time they retire!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d8b7786c9df393ebf88eb4238d98e569", "text": "\"For US punters, the Centre for Economic and Policy Research has a Housing Cost Calculator you can play with. The BBC provides this one for the UK. For everyone else, there are a few rules of thumb (use with discretion and only as a ball-park guide): Your example of a Gross Rental Yield of 5% would have to be weighed up against local investment returns. Read Wikipedia's comprehensive \"\"Real-estate bubble\"\" article. Update: spotted that Fennec included this link at the NY Times which contains a Buy or Rent Calculator.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bb1edfca2ef6e43d3b7e8ff2e4131440", "text": "Risk is the problem, as others have pointed out. Your fixed mortgage interest rate is for a set period of time only. Let's say your 3% might be good for five years, because that's typical of fixed-rate mortages in Canada. So, what happens in five years if your investment has dropped 50% due to a prolonged bear market, and interest rates have since moved up from 3% to 8%? Your investment would be underwater, and you wouldn't have enough to pay off the loan and exit the failed strategy. Rather, you might just be stuck with renewing the mortage at a rate that makes the strategy far less attractive, being more likely to lose money in the long run than to earn any. Leverage, or borrowing to invest, amplifies your risk considerably. If you invest your own money in the market, you might lose what you started with, but if you borrow to invest, you might lose much more than you started with. There's also one very specific issue with the example investment you've proposed: You would be borrowing Canadian dollars but investing in an index fund of U.S.-based companies that trade in U.S. dollars. Even if the index has positive returns in U.S. dollar terms, you might end up losing money if the Canadian dollar strengthens vs. the U.S. dollar. It has happened before, multiple times. So, while this strategy has worked wonderfully in the past, it has also failed disastrously in the past. Unless you have a crystal ball, you need to be aware of the various risks and weigh them vs. the potential rewards. There is no free lunch.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "481467d7deea46bb5ea3a473c02ce5ef", "text": "\"Pay off the credit cards. From now on, pay off the credit cards monthly. Under no circumstances should you borrow money. You have net worth but no external income. Borrowing is useless to you. $200,000 in two bank accounts, because if one bank collapses, you want to have a spare while you wait for the government to pay off the guarantee. Keep $50,000 in checking and another $50k in savings. The remainder put into CDs. Don't expect interest income beyond inflation. Real interest rates (after inflation) are often slightly negative. People ask why you might keep money in the bank rather than stocks/bonds. The problem is that stocks/bonds don't always maintain their value, much less go up. The bank money won't gain, but it won't suddenly lose half its value either. It can easily take five years after a stock market crash for the market to recover. You don't want to be withdrawing from losses. Some people have suggested more bonds and fewer stocks. But putting some of the money in the bank is better than bonds. Bonds sometimes lose money, like stocks. Instead, park some of the money in the bank and pick a more aggressive stock/bond mixture. That way you're never desperate for money, and you can survive market dips. And the stock/bond part of the investment will return more at 70/30 than 60/40. $700,000 in stock mutual funds. $300,000 in bond mutual funds. Look for broad indexes rather than high returns. You need this to grow by the inflation rate just to keep even. That's $20,000 to $30,000 a year. Keep the balance between 70/30 and 75/25. You can move half the excess beyond inflation to your bank accounts. That's the money you have to spend each year. Don't withdraw money if you aren't keeping up with inflation. Don't try to time the market. Much better informed people with better resources will be trying to do that and failing. Play the odds instead. Keep to a consistent strategy and let the market come back to you. If you chase it, you are likely to lose money. If you don't spend money this year, you can save it for next year. Anything beyond $200,000 in the bank accounts is available for spending. In an emergency you may have to draw down the $200,000. Be careful. It's not as big a cushion as it seems, because you don't have an external income to replace it. I live in southern California but would like to move overseas after establishing stable investments. I am not the type of person that would invest in McDonald's, but would consider other less evil franchises (maybe?). These are contradictory goals, as stated. A franchise (meaning a local business of a national brand) is not a \"\"stable investment\"\". A franchise is something that you actively manage. At minimum, you have to hire someone to run the franchise. And as a general rule, they aren't as turnkey as they promise. How do you pick a good manager? How will you tell if they know how the business works? Particularly if you don't know. How will you tell that they are honest and won't just embezzle your money? Or more honestly, give you too much of the business revenues such that the business is not sustainable? Or spend so much on the business that you can't recover it as revenue? Some have suggested that you meant brand or stock rather than franchise. If so, you can ignore the last few paragraphs. I would be careful about making moral judgments about companies. McDonald's pays its workers too little. Google invades privacy. Exxon is bad for the environment. Chase collects fees from people desperate for money. Tesla relies on government subsidies. Every successful company has some way in which it can be considered \"\"evil\"\". And unsuccessful companies are evil in that they go out of business, leaving workers, customers, and investors (i.e. you!) in the lurch. Regardless, you should invest in broad index funds rather than individual stocks. If college is out of the question, then so should be stock investing. It's at least as much work and needs to be maintained. In terms of living overseas, dip your toe in first. Rent a small place for a few months. Find out how much it costs to live there. Remember to leave money for bigger expenses. You should be able to live on $20,000 or $25,000 a year now. Then you can plan on spending $35,000 a year to do it for real (including odd expenses that don't happen every month). Make sure that you have health insurance arranged. Eventually you may buy a place. If you can find one that you can afford for something like $100,000. Note that $100,000 would be low in California but sufficient even in many places in the US. Think rural, like the South or Midwest. And of course that would be more money in many countries in South America, Africa, or southern Asia. Even southern and eastern Europe might be possible. You might even pay a bit more and rent part of the property. In the US, this would be a duplex or a bed and breakfast. They may use different terms elsewhere. Given your health, do you need a maid/cook? That would lean towards something like a bed and breakfast, where the same person can clean for both you and the guests. Same with cooking, although that might be a second person (or more). Hire a bookkeeper/accountant first, as you'll want help evaluating potential purchases. Keep the business small enough that you can actively monitor it. Part of the problem here is that a million dollars sounds like a lot of money but isn't. You aren't rich. This is about bare minimum for surviving with a middle class lifestyle in the United States and other first world countries. You can't live like a tourist. It's true that many places overseas are cheaper. But many aren't (including much of Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc.). And the ones that aren't may surprise you. And you also may find that some of the things that you personally want or need to buy are expensive elsewhere. Dabble first and commit slowly; be sure first. Include rarer things like travel in your expenses. Long term, there will be currency rate worries overseas. If you move permanently, you should certainly move your bank accounts there relatively soon (perhaps keep part of one in the US for emergencies that may bring you back). And move your investments as well. Your return may actually improve, although some of that is likely to be eaten up by inflation. A 10% return in a country with 12% inflation is a negative real return. Try to balance your investments by where your money gets spent. If you are eating imported food, put some of the investment in the place from which you are importing. That way, if exchange rates push your food costs up, they will likely increase your investments at the same time. If you are buying stuff online from US vendors and having it shipped to you, keep some of your investments in the US for the same reason. Make currency fluctuations work with you rather than against you. I don't know what your circumstances are in terms of health. If you can work, you probably should. Given twenty years, your million could grow to enough to live off securely. As is, you would be in trouble with another stock market crash. You'd have to live off the bank account money while you waited for your stocks and bonds to recover.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "04bc38af33a77e553afb790380e0d30b", "text": "You seem to underestimate the risk of this deal for the inverstors. A person purchasing a residence is happy to pay $70K instead of $150K now, and the only risk they take is that the construction company fails to build the condo. Whatever happens on the estate market in two years, they still saved the price difference between the price of complete apartments and to-be-build apartments (which by the way may be less than $150K-$70K, since that $150K is the price on a hot market in two years). However, an investor aiming to earn money counts on that the property will actually cost $150K in two years, so he's additionally taking the risk that the estate market may drop. Should that happen, their return on investment will be considerably lower, and it's entirely possible they will make a loss instead of a profit. At this point, this becomes yet another high risk investment option, like financing a startup.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4ec9c5228759edbab19be997d455092a", "text": "Real estate is not an investment but pure speculation. Rental income may make it look like an investment but if you ask some experienced investor you would be told to stay away from real estate unless it is for your own use. If you believe otherwise then please read on : Another strong reason not to buy real estate right now is the low interest rates. You should be selling real estate when the interest rates are so low not buying it. You buy real estate when the interest rate cycle peaks like you would see in Russia in months to come with 17% central bank rate right now and if it goes up a little more that is when it is time to start looking for a property in Russia. This thread sums it up nicely.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b3c60e0220312ea89289250d4063e229", "text": "In the 2008 housing crash, cash was king. Cash can make your mortgage payment, buy groceries, utilities, etc. Great deals on bank owned properties were available for those with cash. Getting a mortgage in 2008-2011 was tough. If you are worried about stock market crashing, then diversification is key. Don't have all your investments in one mutual fund or sector. Gold and precious metals have a place in one's portfolio, say 5-10 percent as an insurance policy. The days of using a Gold Double Eagle to pay the property taxes are largely gone, although Utah does allow it. The biggest lesson I took from the crash is you cant have too much cash saved. Build up the rainy day fund.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "621c06db76d9442ff03a55f023763739", "text": "It sounds like you want to lock-up your money in something relatively safe, and relatively hard to touch. You may want to consider a GIC (TD has one I found in a quick search) - from what I see it's the closest thing to a US CD. You won't get much back, but if you pick a 5-year term, you can't spend it* easily. Other options might be to buy an ETF, or get into REITs - but that will depend on your risk comfort. Also - to add from the comment Rick left - be sure to pay off any high-interest debts: especially if they're on a credit card, it will help you later on. * easily .. you can withdraw, but there're generally penalties", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
3da562149340a56d693bce90b5c9160a
ISA trading account options for US citizens living in the UK
[ { "docid": "c09e0ca4cba8ddc88883306ee7d79eac", "text": "\"This sounds like a FATCA issue. I will attempt to explain, but please confirm with your own research, as I am not a FATCA expert. If a foreign institution has made a policy decision not to accept US customers because of the Foreign Financial Institution (FFI) obligations under FATCA, then that will of course exclude you even if you are resident outside the US. The US government asserts the principle of universal tax jurisdiction over its citizens. The institution may have a publicly available FATCA policy statement or otherwise be covered in a new story, so you can confirm this is what has happened. Failing that, I would follow up and ask for clarification. You may be able to find an institution that accepts US citizens as investors. This requires some research, maybe some legwork. Renunciation of your citizenship is the most certain way to circumvent this issue, if you are prepared to take such a drastic step. Such a step would require thought and planning. Note that there would be an expatriation tax (\"\"exit tax\"\") that deems a disposition of all your assets (mark to market for all your assets) under IRC § 877. A less direct but far less extreme measure would be to use an intermediary, either one that has access or a foreign entity (i.e. non-US entity) that can gain access. A Non-Financial Foreign Entity (NFFE) is itself subject to withholding rules of FATCA, so it must withhold payments to you and any other US persons. But the investing institutions will not become FFIs by paying an NFFE; the obligation rests on the FFI. PWC Australia has a nice little writeup that explains some of the key terms and concepts of FATCA. Of course, the simplest solution is probably to use US institutions, where possible. Non-foreign entities do not have foreign obligations under FATCA.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f699e35592c8a96832b4c19cc1039512", "text": "NL7 is most likely right. With the rise of regulatory burden some financial institutions are refusing to do business for which they are at risk of not being compliant (because of complexity) or where being compliant is to onerous. Would suggest you have a look at Good luck", "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": "b61508d8f8e827dbf949055ad91010b6", "text": "\"Ultimately you are as stuck as all other investors with low returns which get taxed. However there are a few possible mitigations. You can put up to 15k p.a. into a \"\"normal\"\" ISA (either cash or stocks & shares, or a combination) if your target is to generate the depost over 5 years you should maximise the amount you put in an ISA. Then when you come to buy, you cash in that part needed to top up your other savings for a deposit - i.e. keep the rest in for long term savings. The help to buy ISA might be helpful, but yes there is a limit on the purchase price which in London will restrict you. Several banks are offering good interest on limited sums in current accounts - Santander is probably the best you can get 3% (taxed) on up to 20K - this is a good \"\"safe\"\" return. Just open a 123 Account, arrange to pay out a couple of DDs and pay in £500 a month (you can take the £500 straight out again). I think Lloyds and TSB also offer similar but on much smaller ammounts. Be warned this strategy taken to the limit will involve some complexity checking your various accounts each month. After that you will end up trading better returns for greater risk by using more volatile stock market investments rather than cash deposits.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ab34b60120cf23ddbbbff6347b3fc837", "text": "I believe your last requirement is the main problem. AIUI the law requires that ISA providers allow withdrawals. They can require a notice period and they can penalise you (e.g. via lost interest) for withdrawing but they cannot prevent you accessing your money for an extended period.", "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": "5390ccf80d5ca97b63c0c6cb1002ce4d", "text": "Yes many people operate accounts in usa from outside usa. You need a brokerage account opened in the name of your sister and then her username and password. Remember that brokerages may check the location of login and may ask security questions before login. So when your sister opens her account , please get the security questions. Also note that usa markets open ( 7.00 pm or 8.00 pm IST depending on daylight savings in usa). So this means when they close at 4:00 pm ET, it will be 1:30 or 2:30 am in India. This means it will affect your sleeping hours if you intend to day trade. Also understand that there are some day trading restrictions and balances associate. Normally brokerages need 25,000 $ for you to be a day trader. Finally CFA is not a qualification to be a trader and desire to become a trader doesn't make one a trader. TO give an analogy , just because you want to be a cricketer doesn't make you one. It needs a lot of practice and discipline.Also since in bangladesh , you will always convert the usa amount to bangladeshi currency and think of profits and losses in those terms. This might actually be bad.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0b9411e59916dbb52943a980d9e190c0", "text": "\"Probably not. For your savings to enter an RRSP account, the recipient account must itself be an RRSP (duh! I hear you say). This appears to rule out any UK-based banks as they would not offer this type of account, which appears to be confirmed with a quick Google search returning no useful result for \"\"rrsp uk\"\". According to Income Tax Folio S3-F10-C1, Qualified Investments – RRSPs, RESPs, RRIFs, RDSPs and TFSAs, an RRSP may include listed securities traded on designated stock exchanges, including the London Stock Exchange. While this enables some possibilities, it is not clear that Canadian banks would offer much in the form of UK RRSPs. Your best bet may be to contact your bank and ask if they offer RRSP services for expats. Here is a list of Canadian banks in the UK. Obviously, this does not mean that they offer the type of service you are looking for (or even that they offer retail services, this may be just a trading office). Finally, if you need to move money from an RRSP to anything other than an RRSP this will trigger the inclusion of the sale proceeds as taxable income in that year.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "84411a050a4a0f71b511778dfd57d32c", "text": "\"First, bear in mind that you're talking about having an average of ~£2000 saved up at any given time (if you spend all your stipend every quarter at a steady rate you'll start out with all of it and have none left at the end of the quarter), along with any long-term savings you manage to build up over time. In today's low-interest rate environment of ~1% interest rates, we're talking about approximately £20/year interest. So it's not worth a huge amount of effort to optimise this. You mentioned a \"\"bonus\"\", but looking at the Charter Savings website I don't actually see one listed for either the Cash ISA or the savings accounts you mention. In general, banks in the UK actually use bonus rates as a short-term measure to suck in new customers, and the bonuses typically expire after a while leaving you with a worse rate. Also, I don't think either of the rates you mention is guaranteed - they are both listed as \"\"variable\"\". In reality, I doubt they will go down too much more, given that the likely next move in UK interest rates is upwards. The typical main advantage of an ISA is its tax free nature. But from your question I assume you don't have any other income, so you won't need to pay tax on any interest you earn outside an ISA either. Also, given that your budget is quite tight and you expect to spend most or all of your stipend, there's no advantage to using an account where you can build up long-term tax-free savings. Even if you do have a few thousand pounds left over by the end of your PhD, you'll easily be able to put those into an ISA at that point given the annual limit of £20K. You're right not to want to take any risks with the money, and there aren't really any risk-free investments other than savings accounts available, at least on the timescales you're talking about. So overall I'd just go for the 1.26% return. Edit: as @marktristan's answer points out, you will probably be able to find a \"\"loss leader\"\" current account that actually offers more interest than a savings account. You'll need to either use a single current account and manage your budgeting carefully, or use a second current account as your \"\"savings\"\" account and make sure to set things up to satisfy the requirements of the account you choose, such as incoming payments or outgoing direct debits.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3a5e26a54c14df9789647c1dea47ee96", "text": "There are some brokers in the US who would be happy to open an account for non-US residents, allowing you to trade stocks at NYSE and other US Exchanges. Some of them, along with some facts: DriveWealth Has support in Portuguese Website TD Ameritrade Has support in Portuguese Website Interactive Brokers Account opening is not that straightforward Website", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a6f3673e71cdfeb5998f0abfae96975d", "text": "In general, to someone in a similar circumstance I might suggest that the lowest-risk option is to immediately convert your excess currency into the currency you will be spending. Note that 'risk' here refers only to the variance in possible outcomes. By converting to EUR now (assuming you are moving to an EU country using the EUR), you eliminate the chance that the GBP will weaken. But you also eliminate the chance that the GBP will strengthen. Thus, you have reduced the variance in possible outcomes so that you have a 'known' amount of EUR. To put money in a different currency than what you will be using is a form of investing, and it is one that can be considered high risk. Invest in a UK company while you plan on staying in the UK, and you take on the risk of stock ownership only. But invest in a German company while you plan on staying in the UK, you take on the risk of stock ownership + the risk of currency volatility. If you are prepared for this type of risk and understand it, you may want to take on this type of risk - but you really must understand what you're getting into before you do this. For most people, I think it's fair to say that fx investing is more accurately called gambling [See more comments on the risk of fx trading here: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/76482/44232]. However, this risk reduction only truly applies if you are certain that you will be moving to an EUR country. If you invest in EUR but then move to the US, you have not 'solved' your currency volatility problem, you have simply replaced your GBP risk with EUR risk. If you had your plane ticket in hand and nothing could stop you, then you know what your currency needs will be in 2 years. But if you have any doubt, then exchanging currency now may not be reducing your risk at all. What if you exchange for EUR today, and in a year you decide (for all the various reasons that circumstances in life may change) that you will stay in the UK after all. And during that time, what if the GBP strengthened again? You will have taken on risk unnecessarily. So, if you lack full confidence in your move, you may want to avoid fully trading your GBP today. Perhaps you could put away some amount every month into EUR (if you plan on moving to an EUR country), and leave some/most in GBP. This would not fully eliminate your currency risk if you move, but it would also not fully expose yourself to risk if you end up not moving. Just remember that doing this is not a guarantee that the EUR will strengthen and the GBP will weaken.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3640c3d8eb5ae32901be9fe97c340101", "text": "There's no law that prohibits a US citizen or US LPR from holding an account abroad, at least in a country that's not subject to some sort of embargo, so I don't see how it could affect your wife's chances of getting US citizenship when she's eligible. As mentioned by other posters, you'll have to file FBAR if the money you have in all your accounts abroad exceeds $10k at any point of the year and if the account pays any interest, you'll have to tell the IRS about the interest paid and (if applicable) taxes you paid on the interest income abroad.", "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": "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": "b4165d70707fe2fa712a25c37ca6ab5f", "text": "\"Where are you from? The Netherlands has tax treaties with different countries that may offer you some additional options. The Netherlands calculates a maximum tax free contribution to your pension each year based on your income. If you contributed less than you were allowed to (pensioengat), you can invest the difference between your actual and allowed contributions in special retirement investments that usually offer tax advantages. A gap like this can be due to getting a bonus or a raise. After looking around, the investments available are either a special savings account (banksparen) or an annuity (lijfrente). Your allowed contributions to both will be tax deductible and the investment itself is excluded from wealth tax (box 3 taxes). I also see Aegon offering an \"\"investment annuity\"\" that lets you invest in any of 7 of their mutual funds until a certain date at which time you liquidate and use the proceeds to fund an annuity. With the Dutch retirement options, wou will not in general get the same freedom of choice or low costs associated with IRAs in the US. I'm not sure about ISAs in the UK. It's also important to check any tax agreements between countries to ensure your chosen investment vehicle gets the tax advantaged treatment in your home country as it does in the Netherlands. For US citizens, this is important even when living abroad. For others, it is important if you return to your home country and still have this investment. If you are a US citizen, you have an additional option. The US / Dutch tax treaty allows you to make these contributions to preexisting (i.e. you had these before moving to NL) retirement accounts in the US like an IRA. Note that in practice it may be difficult to contribute to an existing Roth IRA because you would need to have earned income after the foreign income tax deduction but less than the maximum income for a Roth contribution.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "52a51f7367d454bf22824007f02cd520", "text": "The main difference is that the ISA account like a Cash ISA shelters you from TAX - you don't have to worry about Capital Gains TAX. The other account is normal taxable account. With only £500 to invest you will be paying a high % in charges so... To start out I would look at some of the Investment Trust savings schemes where you can save a small amount monthly very cost-effectively - save £50 a month for a year to see how you get on. Some Trusts to look at include Wittan, City Of London and Lowland", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dbece9ee39b809d96739060cbb62da72", "text": "\"To other users save yourselves time, do not test any of the alternatives mentioned in this post. I have, to no avail. At the moment (nov/2013) Saxobank unfortunately seems to be the only broker who offers OTC (over-the counter) FX options trading to Retail Investors. In other words, it is the only alternative for those who are interested in trading non-exchange options (ie, only alternative to those interested in trading FX options with any date or strike, rather than only one date per month and strikes every 50 pips only). I say \"\"unfortunately\"\" because competition is good, Saxo options spreads are a rip off, and their platform extremely clunky. But it is what it is.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "836c45df6cea7cf6e1395f3d353619b6", "text": "It would essentially make goods from other countries more cheaper than goods from US. And it would make imports from these countries to China more expensive. The below illustration is just with 2 major currencies and is more illustrative to show the effect. It does not actually mean the goods from these countries would be cheaper. 1 GBP = 1.60 USD 1 EUR = 1.40 USD 1 CNY = 0.15 USD Lets say the above are the rates for GBP, EUR, CNY. The cost of a particular goods (assume Pencils) in international market is 2 USD. This means for the cost of manufacturing this should be less than GBP 1.25 in UK, less than 1.43 in Euro Countires, less than 13.33 CNY in China. Only then export would make sense. If the real cost of manufacturing is say 1.4 GBP in UK, 1.5 EUR in Euro countires, clearly they cannot compete and would loose. Now lets say the USD has appreciated by 20% against other currencies. The CNY is at same rate. 1 GBP = 1.28 USD 1 EUR = 1.12 USD 1 CNY = 0.15 USD Now at this rate the cost of manufacturing should be less than GBP 1.56 GBP, less than 1.78 EUR in Euro Countires. In effect this is more than the cost of manufacturing. So in effect the goods from other countires have become cheaper/compatative and goods from China have become expensive. Similarly the imports from these countires to China would be more expensive.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
d987c2c97c6137f618bb1251aa219838
Is there a resource for knowing when Annual and Quarterly Reports are coming out?
[ { "docid": "b06c0b97de0ebf63398fcb54dfedfbf0", "text": "https://www.google.com/search?q=quarterly+and+annual+financial+report+calendar&oq=quarterly+and+annual+financial+report+calendar&aqs=chrome..69i57.9351j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 The third result on Google is: https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/earnings-calendar/us The fourth result on Google is: https://finance.yahoo.com/calendar/earnings", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "3e1635a637bbb1a5c4363476bdfa51e1", "text": "\"For US equities, Edgar Online is where companies post their government filings to the SEC. On Google Finance, you would look at the \"\"SEC filings\"\" link on the page, and then find their 10K and 10Q documents, where that information is listed and already calculated. Many companies also have these same documents posted on their Investor Relations web pages.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2639dfbfda29a4b457a716086b92953d", "text": "The most important filings are: Form 10-K, which is the annual report required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Form 10-Q, for the interim quarters.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "57fb897c059fe117bf76781c5306adb8", "text": "\"Thanks for the response. I am using WRDS database and we are currently filtering through various variables like operating income, free cash flow etc. Main issue right now is that the database seems to only go up to 2015...is there a similar database that has 2016 info? filtering out the \"\"recent equity issuance or M&amp;A activity exceeding 10% of total assets\"\" is another story, namely, how can I identify M&amp;A activity? I suppose we can filter it with algorithm stating if company's equity suddenly jumps 10% or more, it get's flagged\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c03a09f06650bf57d78ea96446ea5f09", "text": "Usually you want two consecutive quarters before declaring a recession. This blog doesn't reference any seasonal adjustment; a one or two month decline may be to any number of reasons. E.g. labor numbers dropped this month largely attributed to weather. I only see screen shots of excel sheets, I'm not willing to invest any time into parsing that out :(", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ff49b9a4ec21562562c1d00890c4883e", "text": "Just look at the filing date of the 10Q and then Yahoo the closing price or Google it. I assume you are looking for market reactions to SEC filings? If you want to look at the closing stock price for the end of the period which the filing covers, it's like on the first page of the filing when the period (either quarterly or yearly) ends. This data is generally less useful, however, because it really is just another day in the market for the company. The actual release of the data to the public is more important.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "24f1e3c24307c4fa598090106e73df87", "text": "Not sure why this is being downvoted, SSRS, CR, or really any of the major reporting scenarios are designed for these types of calculations. Not only that but using them would enable one to just update the data/change the parameters to match the right date range and not have to spend hours doing repetitive calculations. Edit: yeah Access is basically GUI-SQL but depending on who will see this data (i.e OP's boss) you'll want it all prettied up.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0e762d578a09726a9f767ed87d82bde3", "text": "I know of no free source for 10 years historical data on a large set of companies. Now, if it's just a single company or small number that interest you, contact Investor Relations at the company(ies) in question; they may be willing to send you the data for free.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e8b3c1cca904587c28af58db32522868", "text": "The short float ratio and percent change are all calculated based on the short interest (the total number of shares shorted). The short interest data for Nasdaq and NYSE stocks is published every two weeks. NasdaqTrader.com shows the exact dates for when short interest is published for Nasdaq stocks, and also says the following: 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 NYSE also shows the exact dates for when short interest is published for NYSE stocks, and those dates are exactly the same as for Nasdaq stocks. Since the short interest is only updated once every 2 weeks, there is no way to see real-time updating of the short float and percent change. That information only gets updated once every 2 weeks - after each publication of the short interest.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ae140b6307f4e621e74d4a2184730378", "text": "Companies release their earnings reports over news agencies like Reuters, Dow Jones and Bloomberg before putting them on their website (which usually occurs a few minutes after the official dissemination of the report). This is because they have to make sure that all investors get the news at the same time (which is kind of guaranteed when official news channels are used). The conference call is usually a few hours after the earnings report release to discuss the results with analysts and investors.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2b91ea9ba00641d019c71d2986da2f19", "text": "the financial information is generally filed via SEDAR (Canada) or SEC (US) before the conference call with the investment community. This can take before either before the market opens or after the market closes. The information is generally distribute to the various newswire service and company website at the same time the filing is made with SEDAR/SEC.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "47d2401e8c9dcd835a24ea517a73bda6", "text": "I've seen this tool. I'm just having a hard time finding where I can just get a list of all the companies. For example, you can get up to 100 results at a time, if I just search latest filings for 10-K. This isn't really an efficient way to go about what I want.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3e16c1962a04806e7faffbe436927639", "text": "As a business analyst, a tool I've picked up recently is Tableau. It's a powerful reporting tool that can build powerful dashboards which are great for presentations. If you have an academic email, you can get a free licence otherwise I believe it's around $3000. The bank I work at pays contractors $100,000+ for a single dashboard which can be built by a single person in a few weeks with some basic knowledge in the tool. It's a very versatile tool, I have a friend that tracks his fitness data with a Fitbit and then creates visualizations to date with his friends. I use it to import massive data extracts from multiple sources and then link common share points to build visuals that are put into a dashboard and reported to executives monthly. It's very interactive and that's why the higher-ups love it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d581f5da4cbbd3a23e4b057cf1e03f0d", "text": "\"I think I found the answer, at least in my specific case. From the heading \"\"Questar/Dominion Resources Merger\"\" in this linked website: Q: When will I receive tax forms showing the stock and dividend payments? A: You can expect a Form 1099-B in early February 2017 showing the amount associated with payment of your shares. You also will receive a Form 1099-DIV by Jan. 31, 2017, with your 2016 dividends earned.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3f591963899eb4a32562e19cb18bcc65", "text": "\"Why do stock markets allow these differences in reporting? The IRS allows businesses to use fiscal calendars that differ from the calendar year. There are a number of reasons a company would choose do this, from preferring to avoid an accounting rush at end of year during holiday season, to aligning with seasonality for their profits (some like to have Q4 as the strongest quarter). Smaller businesses may prefer to keep the extra stress of year end closeout to a traditionally slower time for the business, and some just start their fiscal calendar when the company starts up. You'll notice the report dates are a couple weeks after fiscal quarter end, you would read it as \"\"three months ended...,\"\" so for Agilent, three months ended October 31, 2017, so August, September, October are their Q4 months.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3cf0e38a9490502c906628977ecba626", "text": "Under construction, but here's what I have so far: Schwab Data from 1970-2012: About.com data from 1980-2012:", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
bd9b4e6dd74c8a51c188b0e250199a23
Where can I find out details about the actual network on which SWIFT banking works?
[ { "docid": "820bd1feca1135c230fb1dd8621965e6", "text": "The SWIFT network is federated. The connection routing is via country server to regional servers. All these are maintained by SWIFT. The Banks have corresponded relationship with other banks. They play a role in actual settlement and take some risk. L/C is very risky business. It is expensive.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "93651496bbc8ad51ee18fb100f61dfbc", "text": "I used to use Quicken, but support for that has been suspended in the UK. I had started using Mvelopes, but support for that was suspended as well! What I use now is an IPhone app called IXpenseit to track my spending.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ff27d7964113ba7ffcc44971ef8a88d9", "text": "The bank number is part of the IBAN number, so the SWIFT code is actually redundant. It is still required for international payments because every country has its own payment infrastructure. The SWIFT code helps to route it to the correct region without having to know every single bank in that region. It is usually not needed for national payments, but banks ask for it anyway so that both national and international payments follow the same process. When you enter a wrong SWIFT, then this is what will happen: When the SWIFT code does exist, then: In the internet age, it should be possible for all of this to happen within seconds, but it will still take a few days because... reasons. IBAN numbers are globally unique, so when you entered the correct IBAN there is no chance that the money will arrive on a different account than you intended to (Also, the first two digits after the country code are a checksum, so when you accidently make a typo while entering an IBAN, there is a 99% chance that this will be detected automatically).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6abcf621e523ee65aa7dd404b9f5ea6b", "text": "\"I would say a lot of the answers here aren't quite right. The main issue here is that banking is a highly oligopolous industry - there are few key players (the UK, for example, has only 5 major banks operating under a variety of brands: it's all the same companies underneath) and the market is very, very hard to enter owing to the immense regulatory burden. Because the landscape is so narrow and it's possible to keep close tabs on all your competitors, there's no incentive to spend money on shiny new things to keep up with the competition - the industry is purely reactive. If nobody else has an awesome, feature-filled online portal, there's no need for any one bank to make one. If everybody is reactive, and nobody proactive, then it's a short logical deduction that improvements happen at a glacial pace. Also take into account that when you've got this toxic \"\"bare-minimum\"\" form of competition, the question for these people soon turns to \"\"what can we get away with?\"\" which results in things like subpar online portals with as much information as you like delivered on paper for a hefty charge, and extortionate, price fixed administrative fees. Furthermore your transaction history is super valuable information. There are one or two highly profitable companies who collate international transaction data and whose sole job in life is to restrict access to that information to the highest bidders. Your transaction history is an asset in a multibillion dollar per year industry, and as such it is not surprising that banks don't want to give it out for free.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e6f319e0659b1791e965d38d59ef35fe", "text": "You would probably be better off wiring the money from your US account to your French account. That IMHO is the cheapest and safest way. It doesn't matter much which bank to use, as it will go through the same route of SWIFT transfer, just choose the banks with the lowest fees on both sides, shop around a little.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "384e8f4f9cfd57bcd1d185a8fbc1a6dc", "text": "Wire transfers normally run through either the Fedwire system or the Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS). The process generally works like this: You approach a bank or other financial institution and ask to transfer money. You give the bank a certain code, either an international bank account number or one of several other standards, which informs the bank where to send the money. The bank sends a message through a system like Fedwire to the receiving bank, along with settlement instructions. This is where the process can get a bit tricky. For the wire transfer to work, the banks must have reciprocal accounts with each other, or the sending bank must send the money to a bank that does have such an account with the receiver. If the sending bank sends the money to a third-party bank, the transaction is settled between them, and the money is then sent to the receiving bank from the third-party bank. This last transaction may be a wire transfer, ACH transfer, etc. The Federal Reserve fits into this because many banks hold accounts for this purpose with the Federal Reserve. This allows them to use the Fed as the third-party bank referred to above. Interestingly enough, this is one of the significant ways in which the Fed makes a profit, because it, along with every other bank and routing agent in the process, collects a miniscule fee on this process. You'll often find sources that state that Fedwire is only for transferring large transactions; while this is technically correct, it's important to understand that financial institutions don't settle every wire transfer or payment immediately. Although the orders are put in immediately, the financial institutions settle their transactions in bulk at the end of the business day, and even then they normally only settle the difference. So, if Chase owes Bank of America $1M, and Bank of America owes Chase $750K, they don't send these as two transactions; Chase simply credits BAC $250K. You didn't specifically ask about ACH transfers, which as littleadv pointed out, are different from wire transfers, but since ACH transfers can often form a part of the whole process, I'll explain that process too. ACH is a payment processing system that works through the Federal Reserve system, among others. The Federal Reserve (through the Fedline and FedACH systems) is by far the largest payment processor. The physical cash itself isn't transferred; in simple terms, the money is transferred through the ACH system between the accounts each bank maintains at the Federal Reserve. Here is a simple example of how the process works (I'm summarizing the example from Wikipedia). Let's say that Bob has an account with Chase and wants to get his paycheck from his employer, Stack Exchange, directly deposited into this account. Assume that Stack Exchange uses Bank of America as their bank. Bob, the receiver, fills out a direct deposit authorization form and gives it to his employer, called the originator. Once the originator has the authorization, they create an entry with an Originating Depository Financial Institution, which acts as a middleman between a payment processor (like the Federal Reserve) and the originator. The ODFI ensures that the transaction complies with the relevant regulations. In this example, Bank of America is the ODFI. Bank of America (the ODFI) converts the transaction request into an ACH entry and submits it, through an ACH operator, to the Receiving Depository Financial Institution (RDFI), which in this case is Chase bank. Chase credits (deposits) the paycheck in Bob's account. The Federal Reserve fits into all of this in several ways. Through systems like Fedline and FedACH, the Fed acts as an ACH operator, and the banks themselves also maintain accounts at the Federal Reserve, so it's the institution that actually performs the settling of accounts between banks.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a4df996a77a3e2e5ad7bca15d3666bde", "text": "A SWIFT code helps but it is not always necessary. In the early 2000s I worked in Hong Kong. All a Hong Kong bank needed to wire money to the USA was the ABA number, which was the check routing number from the bottom of a US check, the bank account number, and the name on the destination account.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e3d095b81876e72579b27c1be36d08a0", "text": "\"This page, under the \"\"OFX\"\" section, has pointers to an OFX 2.0 spec (pdf). You're looking for the info starting at page 18, section 1.2.1: Clients use the HTTP POST command to send a request to the previously acquired Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for the desired financial institution. The URL presumably identifies a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) or other process on an FI server that can accept Open Financial Exchange requests and produce a response. and then shows some examples. The first page linked above also has some python scripts for downloading OFX data from your bank.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b3ac2f80e67f261caa489a092d340948", "text": "IBAN -> is International Bank Account Number. The number is constructed in such a way that it uniquely identifies your account in the world. I.e. it has a country in it, Bank (and branch) and the actual account number. This is an international standard adopted by the EU, Australia and NZ. Going forward it would be sufficient to just quote the IBAN for payment without any other details. BIC, SWIFT Code, SWIFT BIC, SWIFT ID [all mean the same] is a Bank Identifier Code [More correctly Business Identifier Code] that is again an International standard and used on all International payments. The SWIFT BIC is constructed as Hence SWIFT BIC can be 8 Chars or 11 Chars. The additional 3 Chars help bank identify the Branch where the account is held and where the payment needs to be made. So LOYDGB2L is the main head office If your branch is, say, in Canary Wharf, the SWIFT BIC would be LOYDGB21 [21-> Canary Wharf] with a 3 digit branch added.", "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&amp;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. 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Dismiss cookie message Accessibility helpSkip to navigationSkip to contentSkip to footer Financial Times MYFT HOME WORLD UK COMPANIES MARKETS OPINION WORK &amp; CAREERS LIFE &amp; ARTS Portfolio My Account HOME WORLD UK COMPANIES MARKETS OPINION WORK &amp; CAREERS LIFE &amp; 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&amp;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 &amp; 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 &amp; Privacy Terms &amp; Conditions Privacy Cookies Copyright Slavery Statement Services FT Live Share News Tips Securely Individual Subscriptions Group Subscriptions Republishing Contracts &amp; 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. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice. CloseFinancial Times UK Edition Switch to International Edition Top sections Home World Show more World links UK Show more UK links Companies Show more Companies links Markets Show more Markets links Opinion Show more Opinion links Work &amp; Careers Show more Work &amp; Careers links Life &amp; Arts Show more Life &amp; Arts links Personal Finance Show more Personal Finance links Science Special Reports FT recommends Lex Alphaville EM Squared Lunch with the FT Video Podcasts Blogs News feed Newsletters myFT Portfolio Today's Newspaper (ePaper) Crossword Help Centre My Account Sign Out", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4e3516519bc1be02dd6e3238df4960f9", "text": "Ally Bank is a good online only account. They reimburse any ATM Fees you may occur. I have both checking and savings, with both Ally and ING Direct. I don't know about having 25 total accounts - seems like overkill to me. I do something similar though - I get direct deposit into one account, then transfer the average bill amount each pay to a different account that I never touch other than for the allotted bills. It works well, especially for Utilities that are inflated seasonally. What do you use to mange the 25 accounts? I use Quicken, but I don't have 25 accounts...yet.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a63cad28784905e421646aa0f9ceddf3", "text": "Look, I'm not an expert in what assets DB has in transportation companies, or to what industries DB's banks lend money. DB is a multinational corporation that probably has its fingers in hundreds of markets and industries. All I am trying to say is that DB is largely disinterested. Just because DB invests marginally in transportation and logistics does not mean that it should be trusted as a significantly invested (and informed) party, any more than I should be trusted as an interested informed party in regards to technology sector because I own shares of a mutual fund that owns shares of Apple and Alphabet. Regardless of the hearsay component, which is inherently untrustworthy, DB is not a market player such that its word should be taken as anything other than with a grain of salt.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "08921e6ff179ad1d23307d2cf828f157", "text": "\"This is not a problem. SWIFT does not need the Beneficiary Account Currency. The settlement account [or the Instruction amount] is of interest to the Banks. As I understand your agreement with client is they pay you \"\"X\"\" EUR. That is what would be specified on the SWIFT along with your details as beneficiary [Account Number etc]. Once the funds are received by your bank in Turkey, they will get EUR. When they apply these funds to your account in USD, they will convert using the standard rates. Unless you are a large customer and have special instructions [like do not credit if funds are received in NON-USD or give me a special rate or Call me and ask me what I want to do etc]. It typically takes 3-5 days for an international wire depending on the countries and currencies involved. Wait for few more days and then if not received, you have to ask your Client to mention to his Bank that Beneficiary is claiming non-receipt of funds. The Bank that initiated the transfer can track the wire not the your bank which is supposed to receive the funds.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1e68081d995d6fa8dd10e008a6eb53ce", "text": "Some backstory before my questions. I am a First year student in the UK (course: Finance and Investment). In the future I would like to get into IB or PE. I already have CISI and CFA exams on my radar. My questions are: 1) With the recent boom in cryptocurrencies should I start researching how they work and what are the future prospects of investing in them? Do you think it will become mandatory by 2020? Are GS employees currently working their butts off to learn as much as possible about it and how to profit? 2) What is the best way to network? Should I focus only on insight days,applying for shadowing/internships etc. Is cold-calling worth it? 3) Do actual people work in Clearing Houses? If so, what are the career prospects there? 4) Can someone give me a real life example (in the form of eli5) about how financial institutions use swaps and futures? 5) I recently picked up “Lords of Finance” as a book for my spare time. I am genuinely intrigued but I was told that I am wasting my time and in the future it wont do me any good because no one will know I read it? I am well aware most of these questions are basic but It will be very helpful if I even get one question answered. If some of these questions have already been answered please give me a link. Thank you in advance", "title": "" }, { "docid": "87f018359d0739570b8f8a82964cfbbd", "text": "\"Many people do not know that bank online bill paying services are not provided directly by the bank. Banks often \"\"farm out\"\" this task to third party providers of bill paying services. These services in turn may farm out the customer service function to agents in foreign countries. These customer service agents have access to your account number, social security number, and your balance. This means that people have your personal information in countries where you have no rights and where security is not good and where enemies of your nation can easily access that information.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cc1d45b2af46db3b272084bb00c15c5c", "text": "Asking a bank for which ATM/branch network it belongs to and where those networks are would be your best bet.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
23e0c9305deb7f6506ed812d857a24d8
Can an F1 student working on OPT with a STEM extension earn unrelated self employed income from a foreign employer?
[ { "docid": "ccb7e105475667a71ec73c4f44d5de4d", "text": "From tax perspective, any income you earn for services performed while you're in the US is US-sourced. The location of the person paying you is of no consequence. From immigration law perspective, you cannot work for anyone other than your employer as listed on your I-20. So freelancing would be in violation of your visa, again - location of the customer is of no consequence.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "e20a9c8c36738492aa0363c1113b6ca9", "text": "\"I'm working on similar problem space. There seems to be some working ambiguity in this space - most focus seems to be on more complex cases of income like Dividends and Capital Gains. The US seems to take a position of \"\"where the work was performed\"\" not \"\"where the work was paid\"\" for purposes of the FEIE. See this link. The Foreign Tax Credit(FTC) is applied (regardless of FEIE) based on taxes paid in the other Country. In the event you take the FEIE, you need to exclude that from the income possible to claim on the FTC. i.e. (TOTAL WAGES(X) - Excluded Income) There is a weird caveat on TOTAL WAGES(X) that says you can only apply the FTC to foreign-sourced income which means that potentially we are liable for the on-US-soil income at crazy rates. See this link.. Upon which... there is probably not a good answer short of writing your congressperson.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ad545957f5af34e852059d84dd928377", "text": "\"Finally, I got response from finance center: \"\"It doesn't matter where do you study, what does matter is where you live. So, once you live in Germany, you pay taxes in Germany. And it doesn't matter who you work for.\"\" So, there are two options to pay taxes: it's paid by an employer or an employee: If I would work for Swiss company, I need to show how much money I make every month (or year) to Finance Center.\"", "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": "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": "2d359b016cb994f284817a4a7993af99", "text": "I think you're eligible for the tuition fee loan but not the maintenance loan. I think that SFE were suggesting that you'd be eligible under point 4 here 4: People with the right of permanent residence in the UK If you satisfy all the conditions under this category, you will be eligible for full Student Support. To be eligible: (a) you have the right of permanent residence in the UK; and (b) you are ordinarily resident in England on the first day of the first academic year of your course; and (c) you were ordinarily resident in the UK and Islands for three years before the first day of the first academic year of the course; and (d) if your three-year residence in the UK and Islands was at any time mainly for the purpose of receiving full-time education, you must have been ordinarily resident in the UK or elsewhere in the EEA and/or Switzerland immediately prior to the three-year period of ordinary residence in the UK and Islands. It does not matter if you were in the EEA and/or Switzerland mainly in order to receive full-time education during this earlier period. Point (b) would be the reason for asking you to prove you were in England on 1 September, but since you were under three years old when you left the UK, you wouldn't satisfy point (c). You should be eligible for the tuition fee loan under point 2 2: EU nationals, and family If you satisfy all the conditions under this category only, you are eligible only for a loan to pay your tuition fees. To be eligible: (a) on the first day of the first academic year of the course, you must be: a UK national; or a non-UK EU national who is in the UK as a self-sufficient person or as a student; the relevant family member of such a person above; and (b) you must have been ordinarily resident in the EEA and/or Switzerland for three years before the first day of the first academic year of the course; and (c) the main purpose for your residence in the EEA and/or Switzerland must not have been to receive full-time education during any part of the three year period.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bd46e9d7e5ae77f81add1183228d93a7", "text": "\"Yes, as long as you are not filing \"\"Married, Filing Separately,\"\" you can deduct student loan interest expense as an adjustment to income. Since your MAGI is < $60k, you can deduct the lesser of $2,500 or the actual interest expense. http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc456.html http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch04.html You didn't mention how you might file your return. If you're filing jointly in future years, the MAGI threshold prior to any phaseout is raised to $125k (for CY 2013).\"", "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": "02bc3370105404e706e80c2703d57fb1", "text": "Are these PFIC rules new? No, PFIC rules are not new, they've been around for a very long time. what would that mean if a person owned a non-US company stock, like a company in Europe that makes chocolate? Is that considered assets that produces passive income? No. But if a person owned a non-US company stock like a company that holds a company that makes chocolate - that would be passive income. this is non-US mutual funds that hold foreign shares, like a mutual fund in India, not a US fund which owns Indian stocks? Non-US fund. For those of you who are tax advisors, is the time length (30 hours) true for filing form 8621? I would suggest not to fill this form on your own. Find a tax adviser specializing on providing services to expats, and have her do this. 30 hours for a person who has never dealt with taxes on this level before is probably not enough to learn all about PFIC, the real number is closer to 300 hours. While ZeroHedge article may be a sales pitch, PFIC rules should frighten you if they apply to your investments. Do not take them lightly, as penalties are steep and if you don't plan ahead you may end up paying way too much taxes than you could have.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e6a05a201fa315f59ff8f24e7e0a57ce", "text": "One of many things to consider is that in the United States student loan interest is tax deductible. That fact could change the math enough to make it worth putting A's money elsewhere depending on his interest rate and income bracket.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "79c22338193a3f1a2c9fa3b0730fc78e", "text": "As an F1 student, I have been investing (and occasionally buying and selling within few weeks) for several years, and I have never had problems (of course I report to IRS gains/losses every year at tax time). On the other hand, the officer in charge of foreign students at my school advised me to not run ads on a website and make a profit. So, it seems to me that investing is perfectly legit for a F1 student, as it's not considered a business activity. That's obviously my personal understanding, you may want to speak with an immigration attorney to be on the safe side.", "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": "3829f2bd93fbc08fcf8d58ebe3c01c34", "text": "\"ITR1 or ITR2 needs to be filed. Declare the income through freelancing in the section \"\"income from other sources\"\"\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e863c8d274a0822740d59a90181625e4", "text": "Per IRS regulations, if your stipend is not paying you for qualified expenses (primarily, tuition and books; explicitly not room and board or travel), it is taxable. It doesn't require self-employment taxes (which are Medicare and FICA, normally paid in part by an employer), but it is taxable income from an income tax perspective. You can generally deduct your books and such if you have your receipts - expenses 'required' by the institution for the coursework. Do verify that the amount on the 1099-MISC reflects what you actually received in cash above and beyond the tuition waiver - don't assume the college did this the way you expect, or even properly. Your bank statements should match the amount on the form. You should definitely include it in your gross income and pay taxes on it. If you received alternate instruction, you should clarify that with the people doing the filing, and follow up with a supervisor perhaps (it's possible the volunteers helping at an event like this aren't familiar with this part of tax preparation). (Source, in addition to IRS regulations - I was my wife's tax preparer many of the years she was in her Ph.D. program.)", "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": "72444a1e64993e7ab98a68200e75d954", "text": "Your total salary deferral cannot exceed $18K (as of 2016). You can split it between your different jobs as you want, to maximize the matching. You can contribute non-elective contribution on top of that, which means that your self-proprietorship will commit to paying you that portion regardless of your deferral. That would be on top of the $18K. You cannot contribute more than 20% of your earnings, though. So if you earn $2K, you can add $400 on top of the $18K limit (ignoring the SE tax for a second here). Keep in mind that if you ever have employees, the non-elective contribution will apply to them as well. Also, the total contribution limit from all sources (deferral, matching, non-elective) cannot exceed $53K (for 2016).", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
b3b7e059211fb95a9da27ef57c0fd9cf
Is there any sort of tax write off for unfulfilled pay checks?
[ { "docid": "dd17ea184df500d33e41bc9dd5e08bd4", "text": "Unfortunately, no. Think about the numbers. If you work for me, and I pay you $1000, you owe tax on $1000. If you still work, but I don't pay you, you have no tax due, but there's no benefit for you to collect for my stealing your time.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b222a22985cab94784ba4a8f390e6a69", "text": "If you don't receive a W2, there are 2 scenarios you should consider: If you have reason to believe that scenario 1 is accurate, then you could file your taxes based on the last valid paycheck you received. If you have reason to believe that scenario 2 is accurate, then you need to do some extra math, but fortunately it is straight forward. Simply treat your final paychecks as if the gross amount of your check was equal to the sum of your taxes paid, and the net amount of the check is $0. This way your income will increase by the proper amount, and you will still receive credit for the taxes paid. This should work out cleanly for federal and state taxes, but will likely result in an overpayment of FICA taxes. You can use form 843 to receive a refund of excess FICA taxes. As a side note, I'd recommend spot checking the YTD numbers on your last paychecks against previous paystubs to make sure there wasn't any fuzzy math going on when they realized they were going out of business.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "9be715061f856d7dd862ae1541224250", "text": "\"If you don't want to get income tax taken out of your check, then get a 1099 job and stop blubbering like a baby. You are not doing your case any help. If fact, I am more positive that \"\"anti-taxers\"\" are out of their gourd.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4cc980dd84c99df9e3ac48558af4987c", "text": "Either make your best guess, or set it low and then file quarterly Estimated Tax payments to fill in what's missing, or set it high and plan on getting a refund, or adjust it repeatedly through the year, or...", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0ce3c0de5cd8ce04c8a1764c39e3c46d", "text": "No, there is no special leniency given to first time tax payers. In general, this shouldn't be an issue. The IRS collects your taxes out of every one of your paychecks throughout the entire year in what is called a Withholding Tax. The amount that the IRS withholds is calculated on your W-4 Form that you file with your employer whenever you take a new job. The form helps you calculate the right number of allowances to claim (usually this is the number of personal exemptions, but depending upon if you work a second job, are married and your spouse works, or if you itemize, the number of allowances can be increased. WITHHOLDING TAX Withholding tax (also known as “payroll withholding”) is essentially income tax that is withheld from your wages and sent directly to the IRS by your employer. In other words, it’s like a credit against the income taxes that you must pay for the year. By subtracting this money from each paycheck that you receive, the IRS is basically withholding your anticipated tax payment as you earn it. In general, most people overestimate their tax liability. This is bad for them, because they have essentially given the IRS an interest free loan (and weren't able to use the money to earn interest themselves.) I haven't heard of any program targeted at first time tax payers to tell them to file a return, but considering that most tax payers overpay they should or they are giving the government a free grant.", "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": "5dc1692967e15601951b68dfe4ad8c44", "text": "\"So after a great deal of clarification, it appears that your question is how to adjust your withholding such that you'll have neither a refund, or a balance due, when you do your 2016 taxes next year. First, a little terminology. The more you have withheld, the more money will be taken out of your check to cover your estimated tax liability. Confusingly, the more allowances you select on your W-4, the less money you will have withheld (more allowances means more dependents/deductions/other reasons why you will owe less tax). When you go to file your 2015 tax return next year, you'll figure out exactly how much you owe. If you had too little tax withheld, you'll have to pay the difference. If you had too much tax withheld, you'll get a refund back. Given your situation, simply following the instructions on the W-4 should work pretty well. If you want to be more precise, you can use the IRS Withholding Calculator to figure the number of allowances and submit a new W-4 to your employer. It's a little hard to tell whether \"\"paying this much/year in taxes seem steep?\"\" because you've lumped all the taxes together in one big bucket. Does the $543.61 in taxes per paycheck include Social Security (OASDI) and Medicare taxes? Whatever you do, it's not going to be an exact science. Come tax time, you'll figure out exactly what you owe and either pay the balance or get a refund back. As long as you're relatively close, that's fine. You can always adjust your withholding again next year after you've done your taxes.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b76688b2a41aa08caa2425ee232c376b", "text": "I actually think your boss is creating a problem for you. Of course it's taxable. The things IRS will look at (and they very well might, as it does stand out) what kind of payment is that. Why did it not go through payroll? The company may be at risk here for avoiding FICA/FUTA/workers' compensation insurance/State payroll taxes. Some are mandatory, and cannot be left to the employee to pay. On your side it raises your taxable income without the appropriate withholding, you may end up paying underpayment penalties for that (that is why you've been suggested to keep proofs of when you were paid). Also, it's employment income. If it is not wages - you're liable for self-employment taxes (basically the portion of FICA that the employer didn't pay, and your own FICA withholding). When you deposit the check is of no matter to the IRS, its when you got it that determines when you should declare the income. You don't have a choice there. I suggest asking the company payroll why it didn't go through them, as it may be a problem for you later on.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "db8344437995d7d7ef05aa29fe18db47", "text": "Sorry, it appears not, according to http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2008/508/perspectives/p12.htm: ...and the election to make Roth 401(k) contributions (these are after-tax contributions) is irrevocable. Fairmark says the same thing. PS, don't complain too loudly, given the reason for the problem. :)", "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": "43f87fe215d44ba35eaef3fddfb5d50a", "text": "Yes. W4 determines how much your employer will withhold from your wages. Leaving everything at default would mean that your salary is your only taxable income, and you only take default deductions. Your employee will calculate your tax withholding based on that. But, if your salary is >200k, I assume that you have other income (investment/capital gains, interest on your bank account), which you will have to pay taxes on. You're probably going to have some deductible expenses (business/partnership expenses, mortgage interest, donations, college funds etc) as well. So it is very likely, unless you're really not smart about money, that you have more to do with your taxes than just the employers' withholding.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1ab01f6b877e2fecbd87017f51f0d487", "text": "She filed for 0 withholdings in her W4, so my (unprofessional) guess was that she'd be owed money, and therefore the IRS wouldn't care much if she didn't file her taxes.† Maybe, but doesn't she want that money back? Is she at as much risk as any other individual of being audited and penalized to the same degree if she skips filing her taxes? Audited and penalized are not the same. She's at the same risk of being audited, and even slightly higher since the IRS got reports of her wages, but didn't get the matching report from her. They may want to ask why. But it doesn't mean she's going to be penalized for anything. Being audited doesn't mean you did something wrong. Or does the IRS tend to overlook such individuals. The IRS might want to overlook because they're the ones owning money. She cannot get a refund without filing a tax return. She'd file her taxes today if she could, but the worry is that time's running out Filing an extension is free and it postpones the deadline to file till OCTOBER!", "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": "bd2b03ed3cd4d1e068eb182200ec4848", "text": "\"What they are doing is wrong. The IRS and the state might not be happy with what they are doing. One thing you can ask for them to do is to give you a credit card for business and travel expenses. You will still have to submit receipts for expenses, but it will also make it clear to the IRS that these checks are not income. Keep the pay stubs for the year, or the pdf files if they don't give you a physical stub. Pay attention to the YTD numbers on each stub to make sure they aren't sneaking in the expenses as income. If they continue to do this, ask about ownership of the items purchased, since you will be paying the tax shouldn't you own it? You can in the future tell them \"\"I was going to buy X like the customer wanted, but I just bought a new washer at home and their wasn't enough room on the credit card. Maybe next month\"\"\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9ae88354d918c5f09d1b21baec41180e", "text": "\"Take a look at IRS Publication 15. This is your employer's \"\"bible\"\" for withholding the correct amount of taxes from your paycheck. Most payroll systems use what this publication defines as the \"\"Percentage Method\"\", because it requires less data to be entered into the system in order to correctly compute the amount of withholding. The computation method is as follows: Taxes are computed \"\"piecewise\"\"; dollar amounts up to A are taxed at X%, and then dollar amounts between A and B are taxed at Y%, so total tax for B dollars is A*X + (B-A)*Y. Here is the table of rates for income earned in 2012 on a daily basis by a person filing as Single: To use this table, multiply all the dollar amounts by the number of business days in the pay period (so don't count more than 5 days per week even if you work 6 or 7). Find the range in which your pay subject to withholding falls, subtract the \"\"more than\"\" amount from the range, multiply the remainder by the \"\"W/H Pct\"\" for that line, and add that amount to the \"\"W/H Base\"\" amount (which is the cumulative amount of all lower tax brackets). This is the amount that will be withheld from your paycheck if you file Single or Married Filing Separately in the 2012 TY. If you file Married Filing Jointly, the amounts defining the tax brackets are slightly different (there's a pretty substantial \"\"marriage advantage\"\" right now; withholding for a married person in average wage-earning range is half or less than a person filing Single.). In your particular example of $2500 biweekly (10 business days/pp), with no allowances and no pre-tax deductions: So, with zero allowances, your employer should be taking $451.70 out of your paycheck for federal withholding. Now, that doesn't include PA state taxes of 3.07% (on $2500 that's $76.75), plus other state and federal taxes like SS (4.2% on your gross income up to 106k), Medicare/Medicaid (1.45% on your entire gross income), and SUTA (.8% on the first $8000). But, you also don't get a refund on those when you fill out the 1040 (except if you claim deductions against state income tax, and in an exceptional case which requires you to have two jobs in one year, thus doubling up on SS and SUTA taxes beyond their wage bases). If you claim 3 allowances on your federal taxes, all other things being equal, your taxable wages are reduced by $438.45, leaving you with taxable income of $2061.55. Still in the 25% bracket, but the wages subject to that level are only $619.55, for taxes in the 25% bracket of $154.89, plus the withholding base of $187.20 equals total federal w/h of $342.09 per paycheck, a savings of about $110pp. Those allowances do not count towards other federal taxes, and I do not know if PA state taxes figure these in. It seems odd that you would owe that much in taxes with your withholding effectively maxed out, unless you have some other form of income that you're reporting such as investment gains, child support/alimony, etc. With nobody claiming you as a dependent and no dependents of your own, filing Single, and zero allowances on your W-4 resulting in the tax withholding above, a quick run of the 1040EZ form shows that the feds should owe YOU $1738.20. The absolute worst-case scenario of you being claimed as a dependent by someone else should still get you a refund of $800 if you had your employer withhold the max. The numbers should only have gotten better if you're married or have kids or other dependents, or have significant itemized deductions such as a home mortgage (on which the interest and any property taxes are deductible). If you itemize, remember that state income tax, if any, is also deductible. I would consult a tax professional and have him double-check all your numbers. Unless there's something significant you haven't told us, you should not have owed the gov't at the end of the year.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "aaf455a6b98de73436a830d72bc7489a", "text": "For most Americans the date on the check determines the tax year. A check with the date of Jan X 2016 will be reflected on the tax forms you will file in early 2017. That also means that the 401K money is also 2016 money, and so is the money for the flexible spending account, or health savings account. The change of year impacts everybody differently. That last/first check can make a big difference for some people. If you are trying to make sure you deposit the maximum amount of money into one of those accounts, knowing how many pay checks there is in the year is important. It also works the other way, getting an extra check can cause you to over deposit into those accounts. The taxes for that Jan 2016 paycheck are collected by your employer and periodically sent to the appropriate government office. You are paying those taxes on payday, even though you won't file that paperwork until 2017.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e8e1232f37a0340add92e8754fbc0bef", "text": "To address the travelers checks question: waste of time and money. I did this years ago, the fees were outrageous, it was a hassle to find some place to cash them, and in the end you're carrying cash anyway. Otherwise do what orokusaki said.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
7e8f729fa2261d27f35f630a35f7b388
Help stuck in a bad first time loan!
[ { "docid": "33990c5f6c1113de1a9550be690686a5", "text": "\"I think the part of your question about not wanting to \"\"mess up more\"\" is the most important element. You say you know someone with good credit who is willing to co-sign for you, but let's be honest -- your credit isn't bad for no reason. Your credit's bad because you have a history of not paying on your obligations. Putting someone else's credit at risk, even though they may be willing to try and help, could be doing exactly what you said you're trying to avoid -- messing up more. This person's heart is in the right place, but you really have to ask yourself if you should put them in jeopardy by agreeing to guarantee your debts. So the vehicle you bought is older and has a lot of miles -- you knew that when you bought it. So you're paying a high interest rate because of your bad credit history -- you knew that when you bought it. Why you think the vehicle's only going to last another year is what confuses me. There are many vehicles out there with much higher mileage that are still on the road, and with proper preventative maintenance there's no reason your truck can't do the same. The fact is, you just don't like what you're paying or what you're driving (even though you were good with both when someone was willing to extend you credit), so now you see this other person's willingness to co-sign for you as your ticket out of a situation you no longer want to be in. My suggestion is that you stay with the loan you have, take care of the vehicle to make it last, and prove that you can pay your obligations. Hopping from loan to loan isn't going to do your credit any favors. One of the big factors for your credit score is the average age of accounts. Going and signing a new loan now will only drag that number down and hurt your score, not help it. And there's no guarantee the next car you buy with your friend's help is going to last the length of that loan either. I would be careful about this \"\"grass is greener on the other side\"\" attitude and just bear through your situation, if only to prove to yourself that you can do it. There's nothing saying your friend won't still be willing to co-sign for you later on down the line of something does happen to the truck, but you can show them that you're trying to be responsible in the meantime by following through on what you already agreed to.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "a6e78d648403a607c83fb538ac0fd1d7", "text": "I have recently been the lender to a couple people. It was substantially less money (~$3k), but I was trusting their good faith to pay me back. As a lender, I will never do it again. Reasons, Overall, not worth it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e603269a11966858958015d59829137d", "text": "\"Don't use a \"\"credit repair\"\" agency. They are scams. One of the myriad of ways in which they work is by setting you up with a bogus loan, which they will dutifully report you as paying on time. They'll pretend to be a used car dealer or some other credit-based merchant. For a time, this will actually work. This is called \"\"false reporting.\"\" The problem is, the data clearinghouses are not stupid and eventually realize some hole-in-the-wall \"\"car dealer\"\" with no cars on the lot (yes, they do physical inspections as part of the credentialing process, just sometimes they're a little slow about it) is reporting trade lines worth millions of dollars per year. It's a major problem in the industry. But eventually that business loses its fraudulent reporting ability, those trade lines get revoked, and your account gets flagged for a fraud investigation. The repair agency has your money, and you still don't have good credit. Bad news if this all goes down while you're trying to close on a house. You're better off trying to settle your debts (usually for 50%) or declaring bankruptcy altogether. The latter isn't so bad if you're in a stable home, because you won't be able to get an apartment for a while, credit cards or a good deal on auto financing. ED: I just saw what one agency was charging, and can tell you declaring bankruptcy costs only a few hundred dollars more than the repair agency and is 100% guaranteed to get you predictable results as long as you name all your debts up front and aren't getting reamed by student loans. And considering you can't stomach creditors-- well guess what, now you'll have a lawyer to deal with them for you. Anything you accomplish through an agency will eventually be reversed because it's fraudulent. But through bankruptcy, your credit will start improving within two years, the tradeoff being that you won't be able to get a mortgage (at all) or apartment (easily) during that time-- so find a place to hunker down for a few years before you declare.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8785bed1c0db891da8bbb9ac28373e9d", "text": "The problem is that the reason you find out may be that you are at the car dealer, picked out a car, and getting ready to sign the loan papers with your supposedly good credit, and you are denied for late payment on loans you didn't know you have. Or debt collectors start hounding you. Or you credit card interest rates go up. Or you are charged more for your insurance because you are seen as a bad credit risk. Or you can't rent an apartment. The list is almost endless. It can takes many months and hours spent on the phone to fix these things.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0609f66030464ce8977f64934cb2684a", "text": "I am 17 and currently have a loan out for a car. My parents also have terrible credit, and because I knew this I was able to get around it. Your co-signer on your loan does not have to be your parent, at least in Wisconsin, I used my grandmother, who has excellent credit, as my cosigner. With my loan, we had made it so it doesn't hurt her credit if I don't get my payments in on time, maybe this is something for you to look into.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "db55fcd2f97c74a6efdd5ddbac173c5b", "text": "It sounds like there are no provisions in the loan document for how to proceed in this case. I would view this as creating a brand new loan. The amount owed is going to be (Principal remaining + interest from 2 years + penalties). If you created a new loan for 13 years, that would not be how I would expect a lender to behave. I would expect most repayment plans to be something like make double payments until you are caught up or pay an extra $1000 per month until caught up and then resume normal payments.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "edd337c752d17dd13f30fed364e2a553", "text": "@littleadv has said most of what I'd say if they had not gotten here first. I'd add this much, it's important to understand what debt collectors can and cannot do, because a lot of them will use intimidation and any other technique you can think of to get away with as much as you will let them. I'd start with this PDF file from the FTC and then start googling for info on your state's regulations. Also it would be a very very good idea to review the documents you signed (or get a copy) when you took out the loan to see what sort of additional penalties etc you may have already agreed to in the event you default. The fee's the collector is adding in could be of their own creation (making them highly negotiable), or it might be something you already agreed to in advance(leaving you little recourse but to pay them). Do keep in mind that in many cases debt collectors are ausually llowed at the very least to charge you simple interest of around 10%. On a debt of your size, paid off over several years, that might amount to more than the $4K they are adding. OTOH you can pretty much expect them to try both, tacking on 'fees' and then trying to add interest if the fees are not paid. Another source of assistance may be the Department of Education Ombudsman: If you need help with a defaulted student loan, contact the Department of Education's Ombudsman at 877-557-2575 or visit its website at www.fsahelp.ed.gov. But first you must take steps to resolve your loan problem on your own (there is a checklist of required steps on the website), or the Ombudsman will not assist you.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f701d2150bdb4cf1031c23205676031e", "text": "Note that this kind of entry on your credit record may also affect your ability to get a job. Basically, you're going on record as not honoring your commitments... and unless you have a darned good reason for having gotten into that situation and being completely unable to get back out, it's going to reflect on your general trustworthiness.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "170f30bfa452e1d4d4dc1b3e35bba2df", "text": "\"I'm sorry you are going through this, but what you are dealing with is exactly is how cosigning works. It is among other reasons why you should never cosign a loan for someone unless you are 100% prepared to pay the loan on their behalf. Unfortunately, the main \"\"benefit\"\" to cosigning a loan is to the bank - they don't care who makes payments, only that someone does. It is not in their interest to educate purchasers who can easily get themselves into the situation you are in. What your options are depends a fair bit on the type of loan it is. The biggest problem is that normally as cosigner you cannot force your friend to do anything. If it is for a car, your best bet is to convince them to sell the car and hopefully recoup more than the cost of the loan. Many workplaces have some sort of free service to provide counseling/guidance on this sort of thing. Look into your employee benefits as you may have some free services there. You can sue your friend in small claims court, but keep in mind: It also depends on how big the loan is relative to your income. While it might feel good to sue your friend in small claims court, if it's for $500 it probably isn't worthwhile - but if your friend just stopped paying off their $30k vehicle assuming you will pay for it, even though they can pay for it themselves?\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2ca37ccaeb56e7276aa66a6183d66820", "text": "\"I really don't feel co-signing this loan is in the best interests of either of us. Lets talk about the amount of money you need and perhaps I can assist you in another way. I would be honest and tell them it isn't a good deal for anybody, especially not me. I would then offer an alternative \"\"loan\"\" of some amount of money to help them get financing on their own. The key here is the \"\"loan\"\" I offer is really a gift and should it ever be returned I would be floored and overjoyed. I wouldn't give more than I can afford to not have. Part of why I'd be honest to spread the good word about responsible money handling. Co-signed loans (and many loans themselves) probably aren't good financial policy if not a life & death or emergency situation. If they get mad at me it won't matter too much because they are family and that won't change.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ff0eb373e33424d8d23565b07f33a629", "text": "Does the full time PHD student extend to 70-80 hours/week or more? If not, can you pick up an extra job to aid with living expenses? Also, whose name is the debt in? Is your wife paying to avoid the black mark on her credit record or her mother's? Basically what it looks like to me is that you guys currently have a car you cannot afford and that her mother doesn't seem to be able to afford either, at a ridiculous interest rate on top. Refinancing might be an option but at a payoff amount of 12k you're upside down even when it comes to the KBB retail value. I'm somewhat allergic to financing a deprecating asset (especially at a quick back of the envelope calculation suggests that she's already paid them around $18k if you are indeed three years into the loan). What I would be tempted to do in your situation is to attempt to negotiate a lower payoff to see if they're willing to settle for less and give you clean title to the car - worst thing they can say is no, but you might be able to get the car for a little less than the $12k, then preferably use your emergency money to pay off the car and put it up for sale. Use some of the money to buy her a cheaper car for, say, $4k-$5k (or less if you're mechanically inclined) and put the rest back into your emergency fund. The problem I see with refinancing it would be that it looks like you're underwater from a balance vs retail value perspective so you might have a problem finding someone to refinance it with you throwing some of your emergency money at it in the first place.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6bbb2e1ed3d687323ffb0f539fe19430", "text": "\"The first thing I'd do is to find out your credit (FICO) score. If you have a good one, try to get another card with a lower rate. Then call up the lender, point to your good score, and your alternatives. If you have a bad score, do nothing. \"\"Let sleeping dogs lie.\"\"\"", "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": "982b04c5e536ff4051aaacf79f34c438", "text": "Some lenders will work with you if you contact them early and openly discuss your situation. They are not required to do so. The larger and more corporate the lender, the less likely you'll find one that will work with you. My experience is that your success in working out repayment plan for missed payments depends on the duration of your reduced income. If this is a period of unemployment and you will be able to pay again in a number of months, you may be able to work out a plan on some debts. If you're permanently unable to pay in full, or the duration is too long, you may have to file bankruptcy to save your domicile and transportation. The ethics of this go beyond this forum, as do the specifics of when it is advisable to file bankruptcy. Research your area, find debt counselling. They can really help with specifics. Speak with your lenders, they may be able to refer you to local non-profit services. Be sure that you find one of those, not one of the predatory lenders posing as credit counselling services. There's even some that take the money you can afford to pay, divide it up over your creditors, allowing you to keep accruing late/partial payment fees, and charge you a fee on top of it. To me this is fraudulent and should be cause for criminal charges. The key is open communication with your lenders with disclosure to the level that they need to know. If you're disabled, long term, they need to know that. They do not need to know the specific symptoms or causes or discomforts. They need to know whether the Social Security Administration has declared you disabled and are paying you a disability check. (If this is the case, you probably have a case worker who can find you resources to help negotiate with your creditors).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "982b0e6b01ce7b090e517328f0d42af6", "text": "\"With the scenario that you laid out (ie. 5% and 10% loans), it makes no sense at all. The problem is, when you're in trouble the rates are never 5% or 10%. Getting behind on credit cards sucks and is really hard to recover from. The problem with multiple accounts is that as the banks tack on fees and raise your interest rate to the default rate (usually 30%) when you give them any excuse (late payment, over the limit, etc). The banks will also cut your credit lines as you make payments, making it more likely that you will bump over the limit and be back in \"\"default\"\" status. One payment, even at a slightly higher rate is preferable when you're deep in the hole because you can actually pay enough to hit principal. If you have assets like a house, you'll get a much better rate as well. In a scenario where you're paying 22-25% interest, your minimum payment will be $150-200 a month, and that is mostly interest and penalty. \"\"One big loan\"\" will usually result in a smaller payment, and you don't end up in a situation where the banks are jockeying for position so they get paid first. The danger of consolidation is that you'll stop triggering defaults and keep making your payments, so your credit score will improve. Then the vultures will start circling and offering you more credit cards. EDIT: Mea Culpa. I wrote this based on experiences of close friends whom I've helped out over the years, not realizing how the law changed in 2009. Back around 2004, a single late payment would trigger universal default on most cards, jacking all rates up to 30% and slashing credit lines, resulting in over the limit and other fees. Credit card banks generally apply payments (in order, to interest on penalties, penalties, interest on principal, principal) in a way that makes it very difficult to pay down principal for people deep in debt. They would also offer \"\"payment plans\"\" to entice you to pay Bank B vs. Bank A, which would trigger overlimit fees from Bank A. Another change is that minimum payments were generally 2% of statement balance, which often didn't cover the monthly finance charge. The new law changed that, resulting in a payment of 1% of balance + accrued interest. Under the old regime, consolidation made it less likely that various circumstances would trigger default, and gave the struggling debtor one throat to choke. With the new rules, there are definitely a smaller number of scenarios where consolidation actually makes sense.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ca1e0012af250bc79f95ce5ee61324ad", "text": "When you do finance problems the first thing you need to think about is how the interest is accrued. Is it monthly semi annually or yearly? Once you understand the period of time on the interest and payments it’ll help you understand these problems more. Also a good thing to memorize is converting from EAR to APR. and APR to EAR. You’ll use that a lot. Good luck!", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
0326a1dc0b23325a7680f4fe165bd6cc
Cosigning - cosigner won't pay and won't give any information or transfer asset
[ { "docid": "3eec08f53ddb437a4e142b74fbd3492f", "text": "Is your name on the title at all? You may have (slightly) more leverage in that case, but co-signing any loans is not a good idea, even for a friend or relative. As this article notes: Generally, co-signing refers to financing, not ownership. If the primary accountholder fails to make payments on the loan or the retail installment sales contract (a type of auto financing dealers sell), the co-signer is responsible for those payments, or their credit will suffer. Even if the co-signer makes the payments, they’re still not the owner if their name isn’t on the title. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) notes: If you co-sign a loan, you are legally obligated to repay the loan in full. Co-signing a loan does not mean serving as a character reference for someone else. When you co-sign, you promise to pay the loan yourself. It means that you risk having to repay any missed payments immediately. If the borrower defaults on the loan, the creditor can use the same collection methods against you that can be used against the borrower such as demanding that you repay the entire loan yourself, suing you, and garnishing your wages or bank accounts after a judgment. Your credit score(s) may be impacted by any late payments or defaults. Co-signing an auto loan does not mean you have any right to the vehicle, it just means that you have agreed to become obligated to repay the amount of the loan. So make sure you can afford to pay this debt if the borrower cannot. Per this article and this loan.com article, options to remove your name from co-signing include: If you're name isn't on the title, you'll have to convince your ex-boyfriend and the bank to have you removed as the co-signer, but from your brief description above, it doesn't seem that your ex is going to be cooperative. Unfortunately, as the co-signer and guarantor of the loan, you're legally responsible for making the payments if he doesn't. Not making the payments could ruin your credit as well. One final option to consider is bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is a drastic option, and you'll have to weigh whether the disruption to your credit and financial life will be worth it versus repaying the balance of that auto loan. Per this post: Another not so pretty option is bankruptcy. This is an extreme route, and in some instances may not even guarantee a name-removal from the loan. Your best bet is to contact a lawyer or other source of legal help to review your options on how to proceed with this issue.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "325b3734841f36f5f68aa1ba1902f580", "text": "I know this question has a lot of answers already, but I feel the answers are phrased either strongly against, or mildly for, co-signing. What it amounts down to is that this is a personal choice. You cannot receive reliable information as to whether or not co-signing this loan is a good move due to lack of information. The person involved is going to know the person they would be co-signing for, and the people on this site will only have their own personal preferences of experiences to draw from. You know if they are reliable, if they will be able to pay off the loan without need for the banks to come after you. This site can offer general theories, but I think it should be kept in mind that this is wholly a personal decision for the person involved, and them alone to make based on the facts that they know and we do not.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "28b410ed0d92fb6024497c5728194ff0", "text": "In a nutshell, not really. That's the risk you take when you co-sign for someone. The lender only made the loan because of the strength of your brother's credit, not your mother's, so his reputation (in the form of his credit rating) is going to take the hit because of his mother's behaviors. The one thing he can do is this: The credit bureaus allow you to add a comment or explanation to your credit file which may be helpful, provided potential creditors read it, which is never a guarantee. It's worth trying though, so suggest to him to look into it. Here's a link for him/you/anyone to look at that can help explain how this works and what effects it can have: Adding a comment to your credit file for negative items I hope this helps. Good luck!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "79d2ca0681ec20663320a4dee527ced1", "text": "It could be a couple of things besides extra principal: I seem to remember hearing that some (shady?) lenders would just pocket extra payments if you didn't specify where they were headed, but I've also been told that this just isn't true.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "44ca1105854eaaa4c37d66b0d1ce7774", "text": "Ok but if there's no money and nobody willing to lend, how are those payments made? It's fine and dandy to have the theoretical obligation and willingness, but I'm wondering what happens when there's simply no more capability to borrow more. Edit: Funny you say that, I'm moving in!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "79febff37005fe840f1be5912c0f914c", "text": "\"You say Also I have been the only one with an income in our household for last 15 years, so for most of our marriage any debts have been in my name. She has a credit card (opened in 1999) that she has not used for years and she is also a secondary card holder on an American Express card and a MasterCard that are both in my name (she has not used the cards as we try to keep them only for emergencies). This would seem to indicate that the dealer is correct. Your wife has no credit history. You say that you paid off her student loans some years back. If \"\"some years\"\" was more than seven, then they have dropped off her credit report. If that's the most recent credit activity, then she effectively has none. Even if you get past that, note that she also doesn't have any income, which makes her a lousy co-signer. There's no real circumstance where you couldn't pay for the car but she could based on the historical data. She would have to get a job first. Since they had no information on her whatsoever, they probably didn't even get to that.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a6e78d648403a607c83fb538ac0fd1d7", "text": "I have recently been the lender to a couple people. It was substantially less money (~$3k), but I was trusting their good faith to pay me back. As a lender, I will never do it again. Reasons, Overall, not worth it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9a063c0e3d308e707580d58ac1b53af9", "text": "\"Short answer: don't do it. Unless you know something that the bank doesn't, it's safe to assume that banks are a lot better at assessing risk than you are. If they think he can't afford it, odds are he can't afford it regardless of what he might say to the contrary. In this case, the best answer may be \"\"sorry for your luck;\"\" you could recommend that he comes up with a larger down payment to reduce his monthly payment (or that he find a way to get some extra income) rather than getting you to cosign. Please also see this article by Dave Ramsey on why you should never cosign loans.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9b1776b58d3761de3875f4ac67e01798", "text": "I don't think there's anything to worry about. TFS doesn't really care who's paying, as long as the loan is being paid as agreed. Of course you're helping your dad's credit history and not your own, but I doubt TFS would give back money just because it came from your bank account. A business may claim a payment wasn't made against the loan, but you'd have the records that you did in fact pay (keep those bank statements). In theory they could sue you, in practice you'd send them the proof and they'd investigate and find the misplaced money. THAT does happen sometimes; the wrong account is credited. If it did end up in court, again you'd win because you have proof you sent payments. Even if you put the wrong loan account number to pay to, you'd have proof you in fact sent the money. If you're talking about something like a loan shark... they can do whatever they like. They won't sue you though, because again you'd have proof. That's why they'd use violence. But probably a loan shark wouldn't falsely claim you didn't pay if you did, as word would get out and the loan shark would lose business. And again, as long as they get what's agreed to, they don't care how they get it or who they get it from.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cf4ebb2f45e209ce6aed1eb9814a36ff", "text": "\"Obligatory \"\"Don't do it\"\" remarks: If the guy isn't trusted enough to even show up to work, and can't get a personal loan directly from a bank (Home Equity Line of Credit would suffice), this is really setting things up for failure. What if he quits? What if you need to fire him (you know, for not showing up for weeks)? </rant> In order to be able to place a lien on his home should he default on the loan, you'll need to draft up a loan agreement or promissory note stating specifically that you have the right to do so. Get a lawyer involved. Here's an article that talks about setting up a Private Home Loan, which is geared more at helping someone buy a home, but may prove useful in this case as well: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/borrowing-from-family-friends-buy-29649.html It's pretty lengthy, so I won't quote it out here, but the gist of it is: Get everything in writing in a legally binding contract.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a53ede8e34ef2dfe0235c51a616f4410", "text": "Co-signing is not the same as owning. If your elderly lady didn't make any payments on the loan, and isn't on the ownership of the car, and there was no agreement that you would pay her anything, then you do not owe either her or her daughter any money. Also the loan is not affecting the daughter's credit, and the mother's credit is irrelevant (since she is dead). However you should be aware that the finance company will want to know about the demise of the mother, since they can no longer make a claim against her if you default. I would start by approaching the loan company, telling them about the mother's death, and asking to refinance in your name only. If you've really been keeping up the payments well this could be OK with them. If not I would find someone else who is prepared to co-sign a new loan with you, and still refinance. Then just tell the daughter that the loan her mother co-signed for has been discharged, and there is nothing for her to worry about.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a3b002ea82cb6beda3efb0966543bceb", "text": "Maybe there's more to this story, because as written, your sister seems, well, a little irrational. Is it possible that the bank will try to cheat you and demand that you pay a loan again that you've already paid off? Or maybe not deliberately cheat you, but make a mistake and lose track of the fact that you paid? Sure, it's POSSIBLE. But if you're going to agonize about that, what about all the other possible ways that someone could cheat you? What if you go to a store, hand over your cash for the purchase, and then the clerk insists that you never gave him any cash? What if you buy a car and it turns out to be stolen? What if you buy insurance and when you have a claim the insurance company refuses to pay? What if someone you've never met or even heard of before suddenly claims that you are the father of her baby and demands child support? Etc etc. Realistically, banks are fanatical about record-keeping. Their business is pretty much all about record-keeping. Mistakes like this are very rare. And a big business like a bank is unlikely to blatantly cheat you. They can and do make millions of dollars legally. Why should they break the law and risk paying huge fines and going to prison for a few hundred dollars? They may give you a lousy deal, like charge you outrageous overdraft fees and pay piddling interest on your deposit, but they're not going to lie about how much you owe. They just don't. I suggest that you not live your life in fear of all the might-be's. Take reasonable steps to protect yourself and get on with it. Read contracts before you sign, even if the other person gets impatient while you sit there reading. ESPECIALLY if the other person insists that you sign without reading. When you pay off a loan, you should get a piece of paper from the bank saying the loan has been paid. Stuff this piece of paper in a filing cabinet and keep it for years and years. Get a copy of your credit report periodically and make sure that there are no errors on it, like incorrect loan balances. I check mine once every year or two. Some people advise checking it every couple of months. It all depends how nervous you are and how much time you want to spend on it. Then get on with your life. Has your sister had some bad experience with loans in the past? Or has she never borrowed money and she's just confused about how it works? That's why I wonder if there's more to the story, if there's some basis for her fears.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "beb3f083af599d46d40746bcc6f23dda", "text": "\"I think everything in your case is just simply missing one important rule of how credit works. Essentially, your MIL cannot get a loan. You can. You are making her a large loan that she cannot get for herself. That is all. That is the essence of what this deal is. It is not without interest - she makes a financial contribution toward your son, you get the deal in 2 years assuming she doesn't default (she will), etc. Imagine it this way: you are sitting in the dealership with the dealer and your MIL. She wants a loan to pay for the car. The dealership says, \"\"you are way not credit worthy.\"\" So your MIL says, \"\"why doesn't my son-in-law take out the loan instead?\"\" Now the dealership says, sure, that's fine. From the dealer's standpoint, every other part of your arrangement is irrelevant - boring, even. The only magic trick is in who takes the loan out, no other difference. You're letting your MIL pull a car out of her sleeve like a magician, and in taking the deal you're believing her. This sentence: I am pretty sure that the ex-MIL will not let me down (I've loaned her large sums of money before and she always promptly repaid). is everything. You're making a rather large bet that the things that can go wrong in two years - including any situation involving your wife's welfare - are rather miniscule. And furthermore, that the few times she's paid you back - that did NOT convince banks and dealer she is more creditworthy - justifies her good creditworthiness. Is the interest worth it? Do you really believe that your MIL needs to wring a car out of you before she would consider contributing to her grandson's well-being (which is, essentially, the interest)? But wait, it's NOT everything. Her daughter (my ex-wife) would drive it for 2 years and then turn the car over to our son. Even if your MIL is creditworthy, the woman you described as follows: Her daughter, though, is a loose cannon. Will be holding and returning the collateral in this deal. Things she can do include: So I'm arguing two points: Obviously my opinion on this is clear. I hope I did a decent job of explaining where the components of this deal (credit, interest, collateral) play out in the eyes of a dealer or bank, and get lost in the mechanics of the rules you worked out with your family.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "aef57fa4cc3eff2eaebc63a3feb09561", "text": "\"I don't think you've mentioned which State you're in. Here in Ontario, a person who is financially incapable can have their financial responsibility and authority removed, and assigned to a trustee. The trustee might be a responsible next of kin (as her ex, you would appear unsuitable: that being a potential conflict of interest); otherwise, it can be the Public Guardian and Trustee. It that happens, then the trustee handles the money; and handles/makes any contracts on behalf of (in the name of) the incapable person. The incapable person might have income (e.g. spousal support payments) and money (e.g. bank accounts), which the trustee can document in order to demonstrate credit-worthiness (or at least solvency). For the time being, the kids see it as an adventure, but I suspect, it will get old very fast. I hope you have a counsellor to talk with about your personal relationships (I've had or tried several and at least one has been extraordinarily helpful). You're not actually expressing a worry about the children being abused or neglected. :/ Is your motive (for asking) that you want her to have a place, so that the children will like it (being there) better? As long as your kids see it as an adventure, perhaps you can be happy for them. Perhaps (I don't know: depending on the people) too it's a good (or at least a better) thing that they are visiting with friends and relatives; and, a better conversational topic with those people might be how they show your children a good time (instead of your ex's money). One possible way I thought of co-signing is if a portion of child/spousal support goes directly to the landlord. I asked the Child Support Services (who deduct money from my paycheck monthly to pay support to my ex) and they told me that they are not authorized to do this. Perhaps (I don't know) there is some way to do that, if you have your ex's cooperation and a lawyer (and perhaps a judge). You haven't said what portions of your payments are for Child support, versus Spousal support (nor, who has custody, etc). If a large part of the support is for the children, then perhaps the children can rent the place. (/wild idea) Note that, in Ontario, there are two trusteeship decisions to make: 1) financial; and 2) personal care, which includes housing and medical. Someone can retain their own 'self-care' authority even if they're judged financially incapable (or vice versa if there's a personal-care or medical decision which they cannot understand). The technical language is, \"\"Mentally Incapable of Managing Property\"\" This term applies to a person who is unable to understand information that is relevant to making a decision or is unable to appreciate the reasonably foreseeable consequences of a decision or lack of decision about his or her property. Processes for certifying an individual as being mentally incapable of managing property are prescribed in the SDA (Substitute Decisions Act), and in the Mental Health Act.\"\" The Mental Heath Act is for medical emergencies (only); but Ontario has a Substitute Decisions Act as well. An intent of the law is to protect vulnerable people. People may also acquire and/or name their own trustee and/or guardian voluntarily: via a power of attorney, a living will, etc. I don't know: how about offering the landlord a year's rent in advance, or in trust? I guess that 1) a court order can determine/override/guarantee the way in which the child support payments are directed 2) it's easier to get that order/agreement if you and your ex cooperate 3) there are housing specialists in your neighborhood: They can buy housing instead of renting it. Or be given (gifted) housing to live in.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2ca37ccaeb56e7276aa66a6183d66820", "text": "\"I really don't feel co-signing this loan is in the best interests of either of us. Lets talk about the amount of money you need and perhaps I can assist you in another way. I would be honest and tell them it isn't a good deal for anybody, especially not me. I would then offer an alternative \"\"loan\"\" of some amount of money to help them get financing on their own. The key here is the \"\"loan\"\" I offer is really a gift and should it ever be returned I would be floored and overjoyed. I wouldn't give more than I can afford to not have. Part of why I'd be honest to spread the good word about responsible money handling. Co-signed loans (and many loans themselves) probably aren't good financial policy if not a life & death or emergency situation. If they get mad at me it won't matter too much because they are family and that won't change.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0609f66030464ce8977f64934cb2684a", "text": "I am 17 and currently have a loan out for a car. My parents also have terrible credit, and because I knew this I was able to get around it. Your co-signer on your loan does not have to be your parent, at least in Wisconsin, I used my grandmother, who has excellent credit, as my cosigner. With my loan, we had made it so it doesn't hurt her credit if I don't get my payments in on time, maybe this is something for you to look into.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
2fa5e4714d9044241b9cf81a285d0e9b
Calculating Pre-Money Valuation for Startup
[ { "docid": "6df12d93516abeff8fd5bd05200b87b4", "text": "\"Since you have no sales, I'd likely question how well could you determine the value of the company's assets in a reasonable fashion. You may be better to estimate sales and discount that back to a current valuation. For example, insurance companies could determine that if you wanted to be paid $x/month for the rest of your life, the present day value of that is $y. There are similar mechanisms for businesses but this does get tricky as the estimates have to be somewhat conservative and you have to be prepared for some other scenarios. For example, if you got the $200,000 then would you really never have to ask for more external equity financing in the future or is it quite likely that you'd want another infusion down the road? While you can mark it at $1,000,000 there will be questions about why that value that you'd have to answer and saying, \"\"Cause I like big round numbers,\"\" may not go over well. My suggestion is to consider what kind of sales will the company have over the next 5 years that you could work back to determine a current price. If you believe the company can have $5,000,000 in sales over the 5 years then it may make sense to place the current valuation of $1,000,000 on it. I wouldn't look too much into the money and time you've invested as that isn't likely to go over well with investors that just because you've put in what is worth $x, the business may or may not be worth that. The challenge is that without sales, it is quite difficult to get an idea of what is the company worth. If it makes billions, then it is worth a lot more than a company that never turns a profit. Another way to consider this is the question of what kind of economic output do you think you could do working here for the next 5 years? Could you do thousands of dollars of work, millions of dollars or just a few bucks? Consider how you want this to be seen where if you want some help look up episodes of TV shows like \"\"Dragon's Den\"\" or \"\"Shark Tank\"\" as these give valuations often as part of the pitch which is what you are doing.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e07f51ad632a2e6d294466c9ba25e6af", "text": "The value of a business without proven profits is really just a guess. But to determine what % ownership the VC takes some measure must be used. He is asking the OP to start the negotiations. So you start high - higher than you will settle for. The value of the business should always be WAY more the $$ you have put into it ... because you have also invested your time (which has an opportunity cost) and assumed huge risk that you will never get those $$ back. When you need the cash and only one person will give it to you, you are over a barrel. You either take the terms they offer, or you let the business collapse. So keep a show of strength and invent other funders. Or create a business plan showing that you can continue without their $$ (just at a smaller volume).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9d0de6281da77f43b6d511b19cad05f9", "text": "\"Putting a dollar amount on the valuation of a start up business is an art form that often has very little at all to do with any real numbers and more to do with your \"\"salesman\"\" abilities when talking with the VC. That said, there are a few starting points: First is past sales, the cost of those sales and a (hopefully) realistic growth curve. However, you don't have that so this gets harder. Do you have any actual assets? Machinery, computers, desks, patents, etc. Things that you actually own. If so, then add those in. If this is a software start-up, \"\"code\"\" is an asset, but without sales it's incredibly hard to put a value on it. The best I've come up with is \"\"How much would it cost for someone else to build it .. after they've seen yours\"\". Yes, you may have spent 5,000 hours building something but could someone else duplicate it, or at least the major parts, in 200 hours after seeing a demo? Use the lower number. If I was you, I'd look hard at my business plan. Hopefully you were as honest as you can be when writing it (and that it is as researched as possible). What is it going to take to get that first sale? What do you actually need to get there? (hint: your logo on the side of a building is NOT a necessary expense. Nor is really nice office space.) Once you have that first sale, what is the second going to take? Can you extrapolate out to 3 years? How many key members are there? How much is their contribution worth? At what point will you be profitable? Next is to look at risks. You haven't done this before, that's huge - I'm assuming simply because you asked this question. Another is competitors - hopefully they already exist because opening a new market is incredibly hard and expensive; on the flip side, hopefully there aren't that many because entering a crowded market is equally hard and expensive. Note: each are possible, but take radically different approaches and sums of money - and $200k isn't going to cut it no matter what it is you are selling. That said, competition should be able to at least point you in the direction of a price point and estimate for how long sales take. If any are publicly traded then you have additional info to help you set a valuation. Are there any potential regulatory or legal issues? What happens if a key member leaves, dies or is otherwise no longer available? Insurance only helps so much if the one guy that knows everything literally gets run over. God help you if this person likes to go skydiving. I bring risks up because you will have to surmount them during this negotiation. For example, asking for $200k with zero hard assets, while trying to sell software to government agencies assuming a 3 week sales cycle will have you laughed at for naivety. Whereas asking for $10m in the same situation, with a team that has governmental sales experience would likely work. Another big question is exit strategy: do you intend to IPO or sell to a competitor or a business in a related category? If selling, do you have evidence that the target company actually buys others, and if so, how did those deals work out? What did they look for in order to buy? Exit strategy is HUGE to a VC and they will want to make several multiples of their money back in a relatively short amount of time. Can you realistically support that for how much you are asking for? If not then going through an Angel group would be better. They have similar questions, but very different expectations. The main thing is that no one knows what your business is worth because it is 100% unproven after 2 years and is therefore a huge financial risk. If the money you are asking for is to complete product development then that risk factor just went up radically as you aren't even talking about sales. If the money is purely for the sales channel, then it's likely not enough. However if you know what it's going to take to get that first sale and have at least an educated idea on how much it's going to cost to repeat that then you should have an idea for how much money you want. From there you need to decide how much of the business it is worth to you to give up in order to get that money and, voila, you have a \"\"pre money valuation\"\". The real trick will be to convince the VC that you are right (which takes research and a rock solid presentation) and negotiating from there. No matter what offer a small percentage of the business for the money you want and realize you'll likely give up much more than that. A few things you should know: usually by year 3 it's apparent if a start-up is going to work out or not. You're in year 2 with no sales. That doesn't look good unless you are building a physical product, have a competent team with hard experience doing this, have patents (at least filed), a proven test product, and (hopefully) have a few pre-orders and just need cash to deliver. Although in that situation, I'd probably tell you to ask your friends and family before talking to a VC. Even kickstarter.com would be better. $200k just isn't a lot of money and should be very easy to raise from Friends or Angels. If you can't then that speaks volumes to an institutional VC. A plus is having two or three people financially invested in the company; more than that is sometimes a problem while having only 1 is a red flag. If it's a web thing and you've been doing this for 2 years with zero sales and still need another $200k to complete it then I'd say you need to take a hard look at what you've built and take it to market right now. If you can't do that, then I'd say it might be time to abandon this idea and move on as you'll likely have to give up 80%+ to get that $200k and most VCs I've run into wouldn't bother at that level. Which begs the question: how did the conversation with the VC start? Did you approach them or did they approach you? If the latter, how did they even find out about you? Do they actually know anything about you or is this a fishing expedition? If the latter, then this is probably a complete waste of your time. The above is only a rough guide because at the end of the day something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay. $200k in cash is a tiny sum for most VCs, so without more information I have no clue why one would be interested in you. I put a number of hard questions and statements in here. I don't actually want you to answer me, those are for you to think about. Also, none of this shouldn't be taken as a discouragement, rather it should shock you into a realistic viewpoint and, hopefully, help you understand how others are going to see your baby. If the VC has done a bit of research and is actually interested in investing then they will bring up all the same things (and likely more) in order to convince you to give up a very large part of it. The question you have to ask yourself is: is it worth it? Sometimes it is, often it's not.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "558928c78899ad68b8aeab5a78e0a0e7", "text": "\"When the VC is asking what your Pre-Money Valuation is, he's asking what percentage of shares his $200,000 will buy. If you say your company is worth $800K, then after he puts the money in, it will be worth $1M, and he will own 20% of all shares – you'll still own the remainder. So when the VC is asking for a valuation, what he really wants to know is how much of your company he's going to own after he funds you. Determining your pre-money valuation, then, is a question of negotiation: how much money will you need, how likely are you to require more money later (and thus dilute the VC's shares, or give up more of your own shares), how likely is your business to survive, and how much money will it make if it does survive? It isn't about the actual value of your business right now, as much as it is \"\"how much work has gone into this, and how successful can it be?\"\" The value is going to be a bit higher than you expect, because the work is already done and you can get to market faster than someone else who hasn't started yet. VCs are often looking for long shots – they'll invest in 10 companies, and expect 7 to fail, 2 to be barely-profitable, and the last one to make hilarious amounts of money. A VC doesn't necessarily want 51% of your company (you'll probably lose motivation if you're not in charge), but they'll want as much as they can get otherwise.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "dc61bab52d0f73aaebd7179bee102155", "text": "You will probably never see it. The startup at some point may start issuing dividends to the shareholders (which would be the owners, including you if you are in fact getting equity), but that day may never come. If they hire others with this method, you'll likely lose even that 5% as more shares are created. Think of inflation that happens when government just prints more money. All notes effectively lose value. I wouldn't invest either, most startups fail. Don't work for free on the vague promise of some future compensation; you want a salary and benefits. Equity doesn't put food on your table.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "639bc6d80c441eae03aacc9b5ee99b53", "text": "Relative valuation is always my go to. Reason being i can make any company a buy or sell by changing assumptions such as growth rate, discount rate ect with a DCF. Still a great exercise to complete on all investments. Also an RV will help you pick the best out of the group (hopefully) rather than take a stance on whether you can actually predict the future inputs ( no one can)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "62077bd6249e2f08079161e4588f0f94", "text": "\"Will the investment bank evaluate the worth of my company more than or less than 50 crs. Assuming the salvage value of the assets of 50 crs (meaning that's what you could sell them for to someone else), that would be the minimum value of your company (less any outstanding debts). There are many ways to calculate the \"\"value\"\" of a company, but the most common one is to look at the future potential for generating cash. The underwriters will look at what your current cash flow projections are, and what they will be when you invest the proceeds from the public offering back into the company. That will then be used to determine the total value of the company, and in turn the value of the portion that you are taking public. And what will be the owner’s share in the resulting public company? That's completely up to you. You're essentially selling a part of the company in order to bring cash in, presumably to invest in assets that will generate more cash in the future. If you want to keep complete control of the company, then you'll want to sell less than 50% of the company, otherwise you can sell as much or as little as you want.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d14fb27da79fc6cbf91391e62d5f4610", "text": "Ok so I used Excel solver for this but it's on the right track. Latest price = $77.19 Latest div = $1.50 3-yr div growth = 28% g = ??? rs = 14% So we'll grow out the dividend 3 years @ 28%, and then capitalize them into perpetuity using a cap rate of [rs - g], and take the NPV using the rs of 14%. We can set it up and then solve g assuming an NPV of the current share price of $77.19. So it should be: NPV = $77.19 = [$1.50 / (1+0.14)^0 ] + [$1.50 x (1+0.28)^1 / (1+0.14)^1 ] + ... + [$1.50 x (1+0.28)^3 / (1+0.14)^3 ] + [$1.50 x (1+0.28)^3 x (1+g) / (0.14-g) / (1+0.14)^4 ] Which gives an implied g of a little under 9%. Let me know if this makes sense, and definitely check the work...", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f70d373b1e48e9949d418ae128a1d8d9", "text": "You are wildly over-estimating your taxes. First, remember that your business expenses reduce your gross income. Second, remember that taxes are progressive, so your flat 35% only applies if you're already making a high salary that pushed you into the higher brackets of US and CA. I think the deeper problems are: 1) you are expecting a super early start-up (with no finished product) to pay you the same as a steady job, including health insurance, and 2) you are expecting Kickstarter to independently fund the venture. The best source of funding is yourself. If you believe in this venture and in your game design abilities, then pay for most of the costs out of your own savings. Cut your expenses to the extent you can. You may want to wander over to startups.SE to get more perspective and ideas on your business plan.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "92ee9cadaa14d9d89f6ca7d5aaa4a99e", "text": "\"There are some assumptions which can be made in terms of the flexibility you have - I will start with the least flexible assumption and then move to more flexible assumptions. If you must put down a number 1, your go-to for this(\"\"Change the start period to 1\"\"), is pretty good, and it's used frequently for other divide-by-zero calculations like kda in a video game. The problem I have with '1' is that it doesn't allow you to handle various scales. Some problems are dealt with in thousands, some in fractions, and some in hundreds of millions. Therefore, you should change the start period to the smallest significantly measurable number you could reasonably have. Here, that would take your example 0 and 896 and give you an increase of 89,500%. It's not a great result, but it's the best you can hope for if you have to put down a number, and it allows you to keep some of the \"\"meaning in the change.\"\" If you absolutely must put something This is the assumption that most answers have taken - you can put down a symbol, a number with a notation, empty space, etc, but there is going to be a label somewhere called 'Growth' that will exist. I generally agree with what I've seen, particularly the answers from Benjamin Cuninghma and Nath. For the sake of preservation - those answers can be summarized as putting 'N/A' or '-', possibly with a footnote and asterisk. If you can avoid the measurement entirely The root of your question is \"\"What do my manager and investors expect to see?\"\" I think it's valuable to dig even further to \"\"What do my manager and investors really want to know?\"\". They want to know the state of their investment. Growth is often a good measurement of that state, but in cases where you are starting from zero or negative, it just doesn't tell you the right information. In these situations, you should avoid % growth, and instead talk in absolute terms which mention the time frame or starting state. For example:\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9a78f3c9169feacf67c5604a515ba24d", "text": "I am an instructor who teaches Financial Modeling courses to investment bankers in NYC. Looking at the model, I do not see anything wrong with it. There are just too many assumptions. I would rather use the Multiple Value for the Terminal Value calculation, but, it will not make any significant differences. Some more thoughts : a) The author has used text book method for valuation, but, everyone improvises the text book method, hence, subjective evaluations. b) Oil and Gas valuation is quite a deep subject and every time we create models, industry experts come and big time change the inputs. We have no indication that the model is tested by industry experts (O&amp;G Operations experts) c) For matured companies like ARAMCO, I would prefer the DCF model as used and then parb (adjust) using comparables. I do not see that it has been done in the model. d) In some cases, investment experts would rather use 3 stage DCF model (5 years, next 10 years, next 20 years or so). It makes the model pretty complex, but, provides more accuracy. e) The revenue taken in the calculation is flat, instead, he should have taken the data from past 10 years and modeled the fluctuations. f) One of the biggest challenges we have faced in this sector is the accounting method full cost of successful effort. High CAPEX only occurs in one of the methods and depending on the company's maturity level, people may use different methods. More on this method in this link -http://www.investopedia.com/articles/fundamental-analysis/08/oil-gas.asp I am at wits to understand how the value will be more than 1 Trillion dollars in any case.", "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": "4c1a37f69c6b8f12b0d2791e85a1aaf9", "text": "\"Working for a lot of startups, I have seen this cycle. Really it has little to do with making the IPO look good because of number of employees, and is more about making the IPO look good because of planning for the future. Many times an IPO is released, it will be valued at $1.00 (made up) and the market will soar and spike. Now stock shares are valued at $3.00. Great. Till after the dust settles a bit, and stocks are valued at $0.85. This is \"\"normal\"\" and good. It would be better if the stocks ended a little higher than their initial value, but... such is life. Now the initial value of the stock is made up of basically the value of the company's assets, and employees are part of those assets and its earning power. They are also a liability, but that has less impact on initial value than assets. Sales right after IPO are based on how well a company will do. Part of that is growth. So it looks nicer to say: \"\"We have 500 employees and have been growing by 20% per month.\"\" than to say \"\"We have 100 employees\"\". In other words, before IPO, employees may be hired to make the company look like it is growing. They may be hired because the budget is projected based on expected growth and expected valuation. After IPO, you get a concrete number. You have your budget. It may be more than you thought, or it may be less. In our example, the real budget (from capital), is only 28% of the entire projected budget, and 85% of the initial value. It's time to make some budget cuts. Also, normally, there is a period of adjustment, company wide, as a company goes from VC funding, \"\"here, have as much money as you want\"\", to \"\"real world\"\" funding, with stricter limits and less wiggle room.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5bd09952da9656e90f8489cbf956102a", "text": "There is no right and wrong answer to this question. What you and your business partner perceive as Fair is the best way to split the ownership of the new venture. First, regarding the two issues you have raised: Capital Contributions: The fact that you are contributing 90% of initial capital does not necessarily translate to 90% of equity. In my opinion, what is fair is that you transform your contributions into a loan for the company. The securitization of your contribution into a loan will make it easier to calculate your fair contribution and also compensate you for your risk by choosing whatever combination of interest income and equity you see suitable. For example, you might decide to split the company in half and consider your contributions a loan with 20%, 50% or 200% annual interest. Salary: It is common that co-founders of start-ups forgo their wages at the start of the company. I do not recommend that this forgone salary be compensated through equity because it is impossible to determine the suitable amount of equity to be paid. I suggest the translation of forgone wages into loans or preferred stocks in similar fashion to capital contribution Also, consider the following in deciding the best way to allocate equity between both of you and your partner Whose idea was it? Talk with you business partner how both of you value the inventor of the concept. In general, execution is more important but talking about how you both feel about it is good. Full-time vs. part-time: A person who works full time at the new venture should have more equity than the partner who is only a part-time helper. Control: It is important to talk about control and decision making of the company. You can separate the control and decision making of important decisions from ownership. You can also check the following article about this topic at http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2012/04/05/what-every-founder-needs-to-know-about-equity/#726842f3668a", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cf8488ef41130233fcc63a7b933a6fdf", "text": "So, the price-earnings ratio is price over earnings, easy enough. But obviously earnings are not static. In the case of a growing company, the earnings will be higher in the future. There will be extra earnings, above and beyond what the stock has right now. You should consider the future earnings in your estimate of what the company is worth now. One snag: Those extra earnings are future money. Future-money is an interesting thing, it's actually worth less than present-money- because of things like inflation, but also opportunity cost. So if you bought $100 in money that you'll have 20 years from now, you'd expect to pay less than $100. (The US government can sell you that money. It's called a Series EE Savings Bond and it would cost you $50. I think. Don't quote me on that, though, ask the Treasury.) So you can't compare future money with present-money directly, and you can't just add those dollars to the earnings . You need to compute a discount. That's what discounted cash-flow analysis is about: figuring out the future cash flow, and then discounting the future figuring out what it's worth now. The actual way you use the discount rate in your formula is a little scarier than simple division, though, because it involves discounting each year's earnings (in this case, someone has asserted a discount of 11% a year, and five years of earnings growth of 10%). Wikipedia gives us the formula for the value of the future cash flow: essentially adding all the future cash flows together, and then discounting them by a (compounded) rate. Please forgive me for not filling this formula out; I'm here for theory, not math. :)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d49d3b30cf6d71a768d8297d38ddcaf3", "text": "Hi all Started my MBA studies recently. We have a simulation project and I've taken the VP Finance Role as I didn't have much experience in this and wanted to learn more. Unfortunately I don't have accounting until next semester, so I'm trying to make up the cap with my career experience so far as an engineer + youtube tutorials. I built a discounted cashflow model. I'm trying to now determine the amount of loan to take in my first year of business. Basically the equity financing doesn't cover our first year capital expenditure, let alone any other costs. My question is how do I determine what an appropriate loan amount is to take. My first thoughts are enough to cover my capital expenses + 1st half of the year operating expenses before I start seeing a revenue. Right now my balance sheet would lead me to believe I have a 0.52 Debt Ratio and 1.23 Debt-to-Equity ratio. Is that ok?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1423a5b34e0ba05d007a623a2b02f8ec", "text": "To calculate you take the Price and divide it by the Earnings, or by the Sales, or by the Free Cash Flow. Most of these calculations are done for you on a lot of finance sites if the data is available. Such sites as Yahoo Finance and Google Finance as well as my personal favorite: Morningstar", "title": "" }, { "docid": "70591461ef9fce7e7b32b7b259bf14f6", "text": "The quant aspect '''''. This is the kind of math I was wondering if it existed, but now it sounds like it is much more complex in reality then optimizing by evaluating different cost of capital. Thank you for sharing", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0e09e504da831f2a596ce992d0226259", "text": "\"For every buyer there is a seller. That rule refers to actual (historical) trades. It doesn't apply to \"\"wannabees.\"\" Suppose there are buyers for 2,000 shares and sellers for only 1,000 at a given price, P. Some of those buyers will raise their \"\"bid\"\" (the indication of the price they are willing to pay) above P so that the sellers of the 1000 shares will fill their orders first (\"\"sold to the highest bidder\"\"). The ones that don't do this will (probably) not get their orders filled. Suppose there are more sellers than buyers. Then some sellers will lower their \"\"offer\"\" price to attract buyers (and some sellers probably won't). At a low enough price, there will likely be a \"\"match\"\" between the total number of shares on sale, and shares on purchase orders.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
68fa98a23b82a9674d311124a3b6296e
How do I keep an S-Corporation open when it has no revenues
[ { "docid": "a796f978c46d7d3f1d734ad37fd0d6cc", "text": "If you have no net income or loss, you can usually get away without filing a tax return. In Illinois, the standard is: Filing Requirements You must file Form IL-1120 if you are a corporation that has net income or loss as defined under the IITA; or is qualified to do business in the state of Illinois and is required to file a federal income tax return (regardless of net income or loss). http://tax.illinois.gov/Businesses/TaxInformation/Income/corporate.htm Just keep your filing fee and any business licenses up to date, paying those fees personally and not out of business money (that would make for a net loss and trigger needing a tax return). Frankly, with how easy it is to register a new corp, especially an LLC which has many simplicity advantages from an S-corp in certain cases, you might still be better off shutting it down until that time.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "f666630aaa5280a13557a8aeb4135237", "text": "Since you are looking at preserving the principal, I would recommend laddered CDs and short term treasuries (TIPs/iBonds)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "55cab6c8c047f51ea5f0380b2fb3c27b", "text": "\"Watch out for PO financing. A lot of those contracts have nasty terms like \"\"I agree that SCAM CAPITAL will be my sole source of credit for the next 2 years.\"\" that can get in the way of using bank debt or credit cards. They may even tell you otherwise to get you to sign, but they are the payday lenders of the business world. It can be great when it works, but there are a lot of shark men. While you can grow your company on po financing, understand that those companies exist to suck all the profit out of small, non-innovative companies, who needed a hand and their terms reflect that. If your business is that good maybe you can get someone to buy in instead? The second benefit to this is that if things go tits-up, then you don't have any personal guarantee. You will likely have to guarantee PO financing in most parts of the country.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e07f51ad632a2e6d294466c9ba25e6af", "text": "The value of a business without proven profits is really just a guess. But to determine what % ownership the VC takes some measure must be used. He is asking the OP to start the negotiations. So you start high - higher than you will settle for. The value of the business should always be WAY more the $$ you have put into it ... because you have also invested your time (which has an opportunity cost) and assumed huge risk that you will never get those $$ back. When you need the cash and only one person will give it to you, you are over a barrel. You either take the terms they offer, or you let the business collapse. So keep a show of strength and invent other funders. Or create a business plan showing that you can continue without their $$ (just at a smaller volume).", "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": "44773b791dd461b802c3133874e8f7e3", "text": "Sales are useless. Profit determines value. Others made good suggestions, but make sure you don't personally guarantee anthing. Understand your requirements to continue having the investor involved. Understand who has approval authority and decision making authority, ie are you a hired gun or the managing owner? Finally, probability of success is low, so do your homework, bust your ass, and understand when you will wall away (ie if you aren't profitable in 3 years, or below $500k in rev, etc)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e48543d05d46d98fd78d2a185a230f59", "text": "The only possibility that I've seen in the past is if some of the income is for deferred services which are to be delivered in the following tax year, a portion of the income can be deferred. Also, agree that you should be an S-corp and talk to another CPA if yours hasn't told you that yet.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "706f67d0d5dc56796e24af80837f47ae", "text": "Here is the solution: any money made inside the United States will be taxed under US tax law. You want to do business here, open up a US headquarters that handles all the sales tracking and reporting. No tax dollars, no operations inside the US. The united states carries such bulk buying power that companies will be forced to abide by its rules.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e8d463820abad922fb0d4a106f4359f9", "text": "how can I keep my website running for posterity after I die? If this is the real problem, incorporate a non-profit corporation or have a lawyer set up a foundation. Those will survive after your death and their bank accounts with them. You might even find someone willing to do this for you. It sounds like a neat business. Collect the ad revenue, charge a fee, pay the web hosting. Heck, this is a decent deal for a web host. Provide the web hosting; collect the ad revenue.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "69e8cf25bf58024f78f81217793e48ad", "text": "\"Disclaimer: I'm not a tax professional, or an expert on S-Corps. However, I do have my own S-Corp, and my decision process for taking a distribution has nothing (directly) to do with K-1 past or present, or profit and loss. If I have \"\"extra\"\" cash in my S-Corp, I take a distribution. Assuming I do my taxes correctly, the money will be taxed whether I take a distribution or leave it in the business. So it really comes down to how much cash the business requires to continue operating and meeting its expenses.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d4b7a84d38a6e0206518d8453f5ea09a", "text": "For one, the startup doesn't exist yet, so until March I will get nothing on hand, though I have enough reserves to bridge that time. I would not take this deal unless the start-up exists in some form. If it's just not yet profitable, then there's a risk/reward to consider. If it doesn't exist at all, then it cannot make a legal obligation to you and it's not worth taking the deal yet. If everything else is an acceptable risk to you, then you should be asking the other party to create the company and formalize the agreement with you. As regards reserves, if you're really getting paid in shares instead of cash, then you may need them later. Shares in a start-up likely are not easy to sell (if you're allowed to sell them at all), so it may be a while before a paycheck given what you've described. For a second, who pays the tax? This is my first non-university job so I don't exactly know, but usually the employer has to/does pay my taxes and some other stuff from my brutto-income (that's what I understood). If brutto=netto, where is the tax? This I cannot answer for Germany. In the U.S. it would depend in part on how the company is organized. It's likely that some or all of the tax will be deferred until you monetize your shares, but you should get some professional advice on that before you move forward. As an example, it's likely that you'd get taxed (in part or in whole) on what we'd call capital gains (maybe Abgeltungsteuer in German?) that would only be assessed when you sell the shares. For third, shares are a risk. If I or any other in the startup screw really, my pay might be a lot less than expected. Of course, if it works out I'm rich(er). This is the inherent risk of a start-up, so there's no getting around the fact that there's a chance that the business may fail and your shares become worthless. Up to you if you think the risk is acceptable. Where you can mitigate risk is in ensuring that there's a well-written and enforceable set of documents that define what rights go with the shares, who controls the company, how profits will be distributed, etc. Don't do this by spoken agreement only. Get it all written down, and then get it checked by a lawyer representing your interests.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fd1d479b3ef0591db81ed22afc57b378", "text": "\"I'm not personally familiar with this, but I had a look at the Companies House guidance. Unfortunately, it seems you've done things in the wrong order. You should have first got the funds out, distributed them to yourself as a dividend or salary, and then closed the account, and then wound up the company. Legally speaking, the remaining funds now belong to the government (\"\"bona vacantia\"\"). It's possible you could apply to have the company restored, but I think that might be difficult; I don't think the administrative restoration procedure applies in your situation. Given the amount involved, I'd suggest just forgetting about it.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f3153f161517c291ba3f59b50c82f271", "text": "If you're creating an S-Corp for consulting services that you personally are going to provide, what would it give her to have 50% of the corporation when you're dead? Not to mention that you can just add it to your will that the corporation stock will go to her, and it will be much better (IMHO, talk to a professional) since she'll be getting stepped-up basis. Why aren't you talking to a professional before making decisions? It doesn't sound like a good way to conduct business.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7ae0731841518daebea0070b51055470", "text": "One other issue you may face is when the company announces poor financial results and begins to tank, you will not be able to sell until the US market open and could incur a lot of pain.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ec2567a386bbe5ab4518b9e07ed63f0d", "text": "\"I'm assuming that when you say \"\"convert to S-Corp tax treatment\"\" you're not talking about actually changing your LLC to a Corporation. There are two distinct pieces of the puzzle here. First, there's your organizational form. Your state, which is where the business is legally formed and recognized, creates the LLC or Corporation. \"\"S-Corp\"\" doesn't come into play here: your company is either an LLC or a Corporation. (There are a handful of other organizational types your state might have, e.g. PLLC, Limited Partnership, etc.; none of these are immediately relevant to this discussion). Second, there's the tax treatment you receive by the IRS. If your company was created by the state as an LLC, note that the IRS doesn't recognize LLCs as a distinct organizational type: you elect to be taxed as an individual (for single member LLCs), a partnership (for multiple member LLCs), or as a corporation. The former two elections are \"\"pass through\"\" -- there's no additional level of taxation on corporate profits, everything just passes through to the owners. The latter election introduces a tax on corporate profits. When you elect pass-through treatment, a single-member LLC files on Schedule C; a multiple-member LLC will prepare a form K-1 which you will include on your 1040. If your company was created by the state as a Corporation (not an LLC), you could still elect pass-through taxation if your company qualifies under the rules in Subchapter S (i.e. \"\"an S-Corp\"\"). States do not recognize \"\"S-Corp\"\" as part of the organizational process -- that's just a tax distinction used by the IRS (and possibly your state's tax authorities). In your case, if you are a single-member LLC (and assuming there are no other reasons to organize as a corporation), talking about \"\"S-Corp tax treatment\"\" doesn't make any sense. You'll just file your schedule C; in my experience it's fairly simple. (Note that this is based on my experience of single- and multiple-member LLCs in just two states. Your state may have different rules that affect state-level taxation; and the rules may change from year to year. I've found that hiring a good CPA to prepare the forms saves a good bit of stress and time that can be better applied to the business.)\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "92d91f47834ddb0c627d502fbdbf44c9", "text": "Company was founded as a co-op. If the company has a loss, you get negative patronage. Basically, it is a paper loss until the company can erase it with profits. However, you would have to pay it off you left the company before it was positive. That's my understanding. The company has only been profitable since I have been here. If the company were to go bankrupt and didn't have enough assets to pay everyone, first it would pay taxes, then (if there was money) it would pay secured lenders, then unsecured lenders, then preferred shareholders, and finally, in the unlikely event that there was any money left, the workers would get paid back the value of their common stock.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
46c31298a9583bc9ce82ea5b47a551fd
UK Resident exploring freelance work for a Swiss Company
[ { "docid": "8faf102c4cceb0254f9731411e2413c0", "text": "If the firm treats you as an employee then they are treated as having a place of business in the UK and therefore are obliged to operate PAYE on your behalf - this rule has applied to EU States since 2010 and the non-EU EEA members, including Switzerland, since 2012. If you are not an employee then your main options are: An umbrella company would basically bill the client on your behalf and pay you net of taxes and NI. You potentially take home a bit less than you would being 100% independent but it's a lot less hassle and potentially makes sense for a small contract.", "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": "6af2d7c818f1572b426e4c57f8e217fe", "text": "\"11 / 111 / 11111 looks like the (old) tax number: it is used by the tax office to know who you are, it isn't good at all for the spanish company. It would even change when you move inside Germany. VAT IDs are not exclusive to GmbHs (but a GmbH always has one). As freelancers you can get at VAT ID but you don't always have to. The tax office offers a \"\"small business\"\" treatment (§ 19 UStG) for freelancers, kind of an opt-out for the VAT ID. As you do not have a VAT ID, this is probably your case. It means So what to do? If I were you, I'd write them that according to §19 UStG and the European Council Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006 on the common system of value added tax, TITLE XII CHAPTER 1 \"\"Special scheme for small enterprises\"\" you were not assigned a VAT ID, and VAT is not applicable to your bill. The fact that VAT is not applicable in this case does not mean that they are allowed to refuse payment. I heard a rumour (but don't really know) that a number similar to the VAT ID is planned also for freelancers (Wirtschafts-IDNr.). You could go to your tax office and ask them about. Maybe that yields a number that satisfies spanish burocracy. AFAIK, you can go to your tax office and ask them to give you a real VAT number. But careful: that has the serious drawback that you have to do do an advance VAT estimate and pay that to the tax office at least quarterly (for bigger business monthly). And (AFAIK) you are not allowed to change back to the small business treatment for several years.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4fb23bd799c61ed8b37fa617d8ef07d1", "text": "\"Can the companies from USA give job to me (I am from New Zealand)? Job as being employee - may be tricky. This depends on the labor laws in New Zealand, but most likely will trigger \"\"nexus\"\" clause and will force the employer to register in the country, which most won't want to do. Instead you can be hired as a contractor (i.e.: being self-employed, from NZ legal perspective). If so, what are the legal documents i have to provide to the USA for any taxes? If you're employed as a contractor, you'll need to provide form W8-BEN to your US employer on which you'll have to certify your tax status. Unless you're a US citizen/green card holder, you're probably a non-US person for tax purposes, and as such will not be paying any tax in the US as long as you work in New Zealand. If you travel to the US for work, things may become tricky, and tax treaties may be needed. Will I have to pay tax to New Zealand Government? Most likely, as a self-employed. Check how this works locally. As for recommendations, since these are highly subjective opinions that may change over time, they're considered off-topic here. Check on Yelp, Google, or any local NZ professional review site.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6c31cc642447b46b462ffbae99e40bcf", "text": "\"As you are earning an income by working in India, you are required to pay tax in India. If you contract is of freelance, then the income earned by you has to be self declared and taxes paid accordingly. There are some expenses one can claim, a CA should be able to guide you. Not sure why the Swiss comapny is paying taxes?. Are they depositing this with Income Tax, India, do they have a TAN Number. If yes, then you don't need to pay tax. But you need to get a statement from your company showing the tax paid on behalf of you. You can also verify the tax paid on your behalf via \"\"http://incometaxindia.gov.in/26ASTaxCreditStatement.asp\"\" you cna register. Alternatively if you have a Bank Account in India with a PAN card on their records, most Banks provide a link to directly see\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6f2d89c8eae4640911385df7d8e221b8", "text": "This is pretty normal. I am in the UK and currently doing the exact same thing. As some answers state there is additional tax law called IR35. But thats all it is, an additional tax law that may be applicable to your situation (it very well may not). It is all perfectly legal and common (all my university friends now do it). You will be the director of a company, and invoice the recruiters company. This has benefits and disadvantages. Personally I love it, but each to their own. Don't do it if you don't want to.", "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": "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": "e1e6b1600e96e995567b7c7f0f6b8056", "text": "Unfortunately I didn't go to any top uni haha so that's out of the window. I don't really have any relevant work experience, and it's a little too late for summer internships now, hence why I'm kinda relying on qualifications haha. However I am doing a course which I hope will help me out this summer.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "358ca6cdfe9780ec08e4a2d93d91605b", "text": "My understanding (I am not a lawyer or tax expert) is that you are not allowed to work for free, but you can pay yourself minimum wage for the hours worked. There are probably National Insurance implications as well but I don't know. The main thing is, though, that if HMRC think that you've set up this system as a tax avoidance scheme then they're allowed to tax you as though all the income had been yours in the first place. If you are considering such a setup I would strongly advise you to hire a qualified small business accountant who will be familiar with the rules and will be able to advise you on what is and is not possible / sensible. Falling outside the rules (even inadvertently) leaves you liable to a lot of hassle and potentially fines etc.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1fac638c5b95259e16c3b718a30531be", "text": "You're building an online job site? I've been gathering Reddit responses as to what users would like to see done different if you can put this to use. They say the best way to create a profitable company is create what your users want as all to often people create what they think others want and fail. Sorry no help yet on the regulatory part.", "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": "" }, { "docid": "d96a217cfd999cfcfdccb979a8068a15", "text": "\"Q) Will I have to submit the accounts for the Swiss Business even though Im not on the payroll - and the business makes hardly any profit each year. I can of course get our accounts each year - BUT - they will be in Swiss German! You will have to submit on your income from the business. The term \"\"partnership\"\" refers to a specific business entity type in the U.S. I'm not sure if you're using it the same way. In a partnership in the U.S. you pay income tax on your share of the partnership's income whether or not you actually receive income in your personal account. There's not enough information here to know if that applies in your case. (In the U.S., the partnership itself does not pay income tax - It is a \"\"disregarded entity\"\" for tax purposes, with the tax liability passed through to the partners as individuals.) Q) Will I need to have this translated!? Is there any format/procedure to this!? Will it have to be translated by my Swiss accountants? - and if so - which parts of the documentation need to be translated!? As regards language, you will file a tax return on a U.S. form presumably in English. You will not have to submit your account information on any other form, so the fact that your documentation is in German does not matter. The only exception that comes to mind is that you could potentially get audited (just like anyone else filing taxes in the U.S.) in which case you might need to produce your documentation. That situation is rare enough that I wouldn't worry about it though. I'm not sure if they'd take it in German or force you to get a translation. I was told that if I sell the business (and property) after I aquire a greencard - that I will be liable to 15% tax of the profit I'd made. I also understand that any tax paid (on selling) in Switzerland will be deducted from the 15%!? Q) Is this correct!? The long-term capital gains rate is 15% for most people. (At very high incomes it is 20%.) It sounds like you would qualify for long-term (held for greater than 1 year) capital gains in this case, although the details might matter. There is a foreign tax credit, but I'm not completely sure if it would apply in this case. (If forced to guess, I would say that it does.) If you search for \"\"foreign tax credit\"\" and \"\"IRS\"\" you should get to the information that you need pretty quickly. I will effectively have ALL the paperwork for this - as we'll need to do the same in Switzerland. But again, it will be in Swiss German. Q) Would this be a problem if its presented in Swiss German!? Even in this case you will not need to submit any of your paperwork to the IRS, unless you get audited. See earlier comments.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c481d80bad34629d9f8441ecea5d327d", "text": "Grass is always greener at the other side of the hill. Tax is only a small proportion of your costs. you could easily set up a small company in a so called tax haven. But are you willing to emigrate? If not, will the gain in less taxes cover the frequent travel costs? Even if you would like to emigrate less tax might be deceiving. I recently had a discussion with a US based friend. In the US petrol is way cheaper then in Europe. THere were many examples in differences, but when you actually sum up everything, cost of living was kind of the same. So you might gain on tax, but loose on petrol, or child care to just name some examples For big companies who think globally it makes sense to seek the cheapest tax formula. For them it does not matter where they are located. For us mortals it does.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6848e7ec4c1f2dd2f1436826fa588d0b", "text": "I'll start with the bottom line. Below the line I'll address the specific issues. Becoming a US tax resident is a very serious decision, that has significant consequences for any non-American with >$0 in assets. When it involves cross-border business interests, it becomes even more significant. Especially if Switzerland is involved. The US has driven at least one iconic Swiss financial institution out of business for sheltering US tax residents from the IRS/FinCEN. So in a nutshell, you need to learn and be afraid of the following abbreviations: and many more. The best thing for you would be to find a good US tax adviser (there are several large US tax firms in the UK handling the US expats there, go to one of those) and get a proper assessment of all your risks and get a proper advice. You can get burnt really hard if you don't prepare and plan properly. Now here's that bottom line. Q) Will I have to submit the accounts for the Swiss Business even though Im not on the payroll - and the business makes hardly any profit each year. I can of course get our accounts each year - BUT - they will be in Swiss German! That's actually not a trivial question. Depending on the ownership structure and your legal status within the company, all the company's bank accounts may be reportable on FBAR (see link above). You may also be required to file form 5471. Q) Will I need to have this translated!? Is there any format/procedure to this!? Will it have to be translated by my Swiss accountants? - and if so - which parts of the documentation need to be translated!? All US forms are in English. If you're required to provide supporting documentation (during audit, or if the form instructions require it with filing) - you'll need to translate it, and have the translation certified. Depending on what you need, your accountant will guide you. I was told that if I sell the business (and property) after I aquire a greencard - that I will be liable to 15% tax of the profit I'd made. Q) Is this correct!? No. You will be liable to pay income tax. The rate of the tax depends on the kind of property and the period you held it for. It may be 15%, it may be 39%. Depends on a lot of factors. It may also be 0%, in some cases. I also understand that any tax paid (on selling) in Switzerland will be deducted from the 15%!? May be. May be not. What you're talking about is called Foreign Tax Credit. The rules for calculating the credit are not exactly trivial, and from my personal experience - you can most definitely end up being paying tax in both the US and Switzerland without the ability to utilize the credit in full. Again, talk to your tax adviser ahead of time to plan things in the most optimal way for you. I will effectively have ALL the paperwork for this - as we'll need to do the same in Switzerland. But again, it will be in Swiss German. Q) Would this be a problem if its presented in Swiss German!? Of course. If you need to present it (again, most likely only in case of audit), you'll have to have a translation. Translating stuff is not a problem, usually costs $5-$20 per page, depending on complexity. Unless a lot of money involved, I doubt you'll need to translate more than balance sheet/bank statement. I know this is a very unique set of questions, so if you can shed any light on the matter, it would be greatly appreciated. Not unique at all. You're not the first and not the last to emigrate to the US. However, you need to understand that the issue is very complex. Taxes are complex everywhere, but especially so in the US. I suggest you not do anything before talking to a US-licensed CPA/EA whose practice is to work with the EU/UK expats to the US or US expats to the UK/EU.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ced3b06ebe6042f51f1285b7d85b0293", "text": "\"Ahh, two things: * You're an SME, therefore you are much more a small team than a big business - once things get over about 20-30 people it goes through a phase transition. * \"\"I run a business that employs\"\" - and you are on the other side of the fence from the workers and have a different, more rosy tinted perspective on the whole employment thing. They almost certainly think its more 'us and them' than you do. In the end, 'employment' rather than 'partnership' is always more about the money first than it is about the camaraderie.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a3ead6164c50ccbd9cdb1398b9d611c2", "text": "I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for but Seedrs sorta fits what you're looking for. Private companies can raise money through funding rounds on Seedrs website. It wouldn't necessarily be local companies though. I've only recently found it myself so not sure if it has a uk or European slant to it. Personally I think it's a very interesting concept, private equity through crowd funding.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
73a6181715cf699a3ab0eb49e41e504b
Overseas Foreign Earned Income; Can I take the Home Office Deduction for a home office based outside the United States?
[ { "docid": "27c4fa7aee412129f871b382dddcff65", "text": "\"You are pushing your luck, but not because you're not in the US, because it is likely that you're not qualified. From what you said, I doubt you can take it (I'm not a professional though, get a professional opinion). You say \"\"dedicated space\"\". It has to be an exclusive room. You cannot deduct 10 sq. ft. from your living room because your computer that is used wholly for your business is there. It has to be a room that is used exclusively for your business, and for your business only. I.e.: nothing not related to the business is there, and when you're there the only thing you do is working on your business. Your office doesn't have to be in the US necessarily, to the best of my knowledge. Your office must be in your home. If you take primary residence exclusion as part of your FEI, then I doubt you can deduct as well.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "5a615eaaf29fdac7979f7a831c284c25", "text": "\"If you are talking about a home office, you don't \"\"charge\"\" the business anything. If the area is used exclusively as an office you pro-rate by square footage just the actual expenses. TurboTax recent published an article \"\"Can I Take the Home Office Deduction?\"\" which is a must read if you don't understand the process. (Note: I authored said article.)\"", "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": "6681aab67e513952ed9e5130e3f33fcc", "text": "\"If you're a US citizen, money earned while in the US is sourced to the US. So you can't apply FTC/FEIE to the amounts attributable to the periods of your work while in the US even if it is a short business trip. Tax treaties may affect this. Most tax treaties have explicit provisions to exclude short trips from the sourcing rules, however due to the \"\"saving clause\"\" these would probably not apply to you if you're a US citizen - you'll need to read the relevant treaty. Your home country should allow credit for the US taxes paid on the US-sourced income, and the double-taxation avoidance provision should apply in this case. The technicalities depend on your specific country. You would probably not just remove it from the taxable income, there probably is a form similar to the US form 1116 to calculate the available credit.\"", "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": "ba759133d90688f4ee7fd1d2563192e1", "text": "how much taxes would I pay on my income from the rent they would pay me? The same as on any other income. California doesn't have any special taxes for rental/passive income. Bothe CA and the Federal tax laws do have special treatment, but it is for losses from rental. Income is considered unearned regular income and is taxed at regular brackets. Would I be able to deduct the cost of the mortgage from the rental income? The cost of mortgage, yes. I.e.: the interest you pay. Similarly you can deduct any other expense needed to maintain the property. This is assuming you're renting it out at FMV. If not, would I pay the ordinary income tax on that income? In particular, would I pay CA income tax on it, even though the property would be in WA? Yes. Don't know how WA taxes rental income, but since you are a California tax resident - you will definitely be taxed by California on this, as part of your worldwide income.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "17e126114c46110deff1db290cfa3225", "text": "If you have income in the US, you will owe US income tax on it, unless there is a treaty with your country that says otherwise.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dfc4e7cf8eff047240f97d396ad67be3", "text": "&gt; Posted tax rates vs actual effective rates differ, but you know that. Yeah, but correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't the allowable deductions which can drag the actual rate down only applicable for stuff that happens inside the US? Therefore, wouldn't any foreign sourced income always be taxed at the marginal rate? Also, the US still has high actual rates too. [It's not exactly like other countries don't have the concept of deductions as well.](http://taxfoundation.org/sites/default/files/docs/sr195.pdf)", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cfba3a2275740efec2439917b82fbad6", "text": "This page and this page on the ATO website provide some information on tax rates. They're rather lengthy and there's a few exceptions, but essentially, your entire foreign income, even if held overseas, is taxable. Australians are taxed worldwide.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "22b5a58c9b402f5d89f7f3c5801e101a", "text": "Hi u/Sagiv1, Short answer: Yes, you do have to pay taxes in Israel for all your worldincome. Long answer: All countries within the OCDE consider you as a fiscal resident in the country where you spend over half a year in (183 days and up). If you do not spend that much time in any country, there are other tying measures to avoid people not being fiscal residents in any country. Since you are living in Israel, you will have to pay all your worlwide generated income in Israel, following the tax regulation that is in place there. I am no Isarely Tax Lawyer so I cannot help you there. Having a lot of business internationally brings other headaches with it. Taking for example the U.S. there is a possibility that they withold taxes in their payments. It is unlikely, though, as they have a Tax Treaty to prevent double taxation. You can ask for this witholded money to be returned from the U.S. or other countries through each country's internal process. Another thing to take into account is that you can be taxed in other countries for any revenue you generate in said country. This is especially relevant for revenue that comes from Real Estate. The country where the real estate is will tax you in the country and you will have to deduct these taxes paid in your country, Israel in this case. If there is no tax treaty you might possibly be paying twice. I know you said you do promotion, but I have to warn you about this, because I ignore what other countries tax or do not tax. So been giving more info won't hurt. If the US is the main and/or only country you will be doing business with, I strongly recommend you real the Tax treaty with lots of love and patience. You can find it here: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/israel.pdf or here: Treaty:http://mfa.gov.il/Style%20Library/AmanotPdf/005118.pdf Amendment: http://mfa.gov.il/Style%20Library/AmanotPdf/005120.pdf If you are from Israel and prefer it in Hebrew, here are the treaties in your language: Treaty: http://mfa.gov.il/Style%20Library/AmanotPdf/005119.pdf Amendment: http://mfa.gov.il/Style%20Library/AmanotPdf/005121.pdf Normally most IRS Departments have sections with very uselful help on these sort of matters. I'd recomment you to take a look at yours. Last, what I've explained is the normal process that applies almost all over the world. But each country has their own distinctions and you need to look carefully. Take what I said as a starting point and do your own research or ideally try to find a tax consultant/lawyer who helps you. Best of luck.", "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": "e20a9c8c36738492aa0363c1113b6ca9", "text": "\"I'm working on similar problem space. There seems to be some working ambiguity in this space - most focus seems to be on more complex cases of income like Dividends and Capital Gains. The US seems to take a position of \"\"where the work was performed\"\" not \"\"where the work was paid\"\" for purposes of the FEIE. See this link. The Foreign Tax Credit(FTC) is applied (regardless of FEIE) based on taxes paid in the other Country. In the event you take the FEIE, you need to exclude that from the income possible to claim on the FTC. i.e. (TOTAL WAGES(X) - Excluded Income) There is a weird caveat on TOTAL WAGES(X) that says you can only apply the FTC to foreign-sourced income which means that potentially we are liable for the on-US-soil income at crazy rates. See this link.. Upon which... there is probably not a good answer short of writing your congressperson.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "24dc4877cb805249a4eae606cff85213", "text": "\"Yes. You do have to pay taxes in the UK as well but it depends on how much you have already been taxed in the US. http://taxaid.org.uk/situations/migrant-workernew-to-the-uk/income-from-abroad-arising-basis-vs-remittance-basis Say, you have to pay 20% tax in the UK for your earnings here. You ARE required to pay the same percentage on your foreign income as well. Now, if your \"\"home\"\" country already taxed you at 10% (for the sake of example), then you only need to pay the \"\"remaining\"\" 10% in the UK. However, the tax law in the UK does allow you to choose between \"\"arising\"\" basis and \"\"remittance\"\" basis on your income from the country you are domiciled in. What I have explained above is based on when income \"\"arises.\"\" But the laws are complicated, and you are almost always better off by paying it on \"\"arising\"\" basis.\"", "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": "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": "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": "" } ]
fiqa
954dd600b10659446a047b02b1a86cb8
100% Ownership and 30% profit to sale director
[ { "docid": "cda11e35b80b973c71db4cee3b0ca0eb", "text": "Perhaps an example will help make it more clear. Any given year: Revenue: 200K, profit 60K You get 40K in profit, plus any salary, he gets 20K Next year you attract the attention of a competitor and they offer and you accept to sell. You would get 100% of the proceeds. This is kind of a bad deal for him as you could easily play accounting tricks to diminish the company's profits and reduce his pay. For the given example, you could pay yourself a 60K bonus and reduce the profit to zero and eliminate his compensation. There should probably be a revenue metric included in his compensation. Edit: It is really nice to hear you have a desire to treat this person fairly. Honesty in business is necessary for long term success. I would simply make his salary dependent upon the revenue he generates. For example, lets say you can make a widget for 4 and you expect to sell them for 10. Your profit would be 6, and with the suggested split he would receive $2, you $4. Instead I would have him receive like 15% of the revenue generated This allows for some discounts for bulk items and covers the cost of processing sales. It also allows him to share revenue with his staff. Alternatively you could also do a split. Perhaps 7.5% of revenue and 10% of profit.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "6cf789155692e1686257b5c57e274203", "text": "It depends. If the investor bought newly-issued shares or treasury shares, the company gets the money. If the investor bought shares already held by the owner, the owner gets the money. A 100% owner can decide how to structure the sale. Yet, the investor may only be willing to buy shares if the funds increase the company's working capital.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8e99f14ffed8f409ea84518036cfbd1d", "text": "You have only sold 200 shares for $4.75 from those bought for $3.15. So your profit on those 200 shares is $1.60 per share or $320 or 51%. From that you have 110 shares left that cost you $3.15 and 277 shares that cost you $3.54. So the total cost of your remaining shares is $1,327.08 (110 x $3.15 + 277 x $3.54). So your remaining shares have a average cost of $3.429 per share ($1,327.08/387). We don't know what the current share price is as you haven't provided it, nor do we know what the company is, so lets say that the current price is $5 (or that you sell the remaining 387 shares for $5 per share). Then the profit on these 387 shares would be $1.571 per share or $607.92 or 46%. Your total profit would then be $320 + $ 607.92 = $927.92 or 47% (note that this profit neglects any brokerage or other fees, as you have not provided any). Edit due to new info. provided in question With the current share price at $6.06 then the profit on these 387 shares would be $2.631 per share or $1018.20 or 77%. Your total profit would then be $320 + $1018.20 = $1338.20 or 75% (note that this profit neglects any brokerage or other fees, as you have not provided any).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "18ce58c8902a64eca070d530a060fd2a", "text": "From my understanding, only A and B are shareholders, and M is a managing entity that takes commission on the profit. Assuming that's true. At the start of the project, A contributes $500,000. At this point, A is the sole shareholder, owning 100% of the project that's valued at $500,000. The real question is, did the value of the project change when B contributed 3 month later. If the value didn't change, then A owns 33.33%, and B owns 66.66%. Assuming both A and B wants to pay themselves with the $800,000 profit, then A gets a third of that, and B gets the rest. However, if at the time of B's contribution, both parties agreed that the pre-money of the project has changed to $1 million, then B owns half the project valued at 2 million post-money. Then the profit would be split half way.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "19f18ebdd0d55ba406566aa94f714891", "text": "You can either borrow money... credit card, line of credit, re-finance your home, home equity line of credit, loan, mortgage, etc. Or you have other invest in your company as equity. They will contribute $X to get Y% of your company and get Z% of the profits. Note amount of profits does not necessarily have to equate to percentage owned. This makes sense if they are a passive investor, where they just come up with the money and you do all the work. Also voting rights in a company does not have to equate to percentage owned either. You can also have a combination of equity and debt. If you have investors, you would need to figure out whether the investor will personally guarantee the debt of your company - recourse vs non-recourse. If they have more risk, they will want more of a return. One last way to do it is crowdfunding, similar to what people do on Kickstarter. Supporters/customers come up with the money, then you deliver the product. Consulting practices do something similar with the concept of retainers. Best of luck.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c802c5a8765525396bb86c842ec26502", "text": "I know the general principles of acting as a director in a company, and am familiar with the rights of shareholders. In the last ten years or so, I believe Australia has introduced legislation that strongly punishes those directors who do not act in a professional or prudent manner. While I will of course attempt to fulfill the duties required - I am new to conducting business at this level, and am concerned about mistakenly breaching some unknown rule/law and being subject to repercussions that I just don't know about. As you have already stated, the key to being director in a company is the additional responsibility. Legally you can be held in breach. At the same time you will be able to influence your decision much better if you a director and thus safeguard your interest. If you are only a shareholder, you cannot be held responsible for decision by company, individual malpractice may still be applicable, but this is less of a risk. However over a period of time, the board can take certain decision that may marginalize your holding in the company.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6acae10d472a8031ad28e8865b0fd7b6", "text": "Everyone that owns a share of stock in a company is part owner. Some just own more than others. According to Apple's latest proxy statement he owns 5.5 million shares of the 914 million shares outstanding. So he owns approximately 0.6% of the company. If he owned more than 50% of the company's outstanding stock he would effectively control the board of directors by being able to pick whoever he wanted. Then he would control the company. Very few publicly traded companies are that way. Most have sold off parts of the company to the public in order to raise cash for the company and make their investment more liquid.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "00d21b3746e0c66b39ff8538ccd42fcd", "text": "\"Owning more than 50% of a company's stock normally gives you the right to elect a majority, or even all of a company's (board of) directors. Once you have your directors in place, you can tell them who to hire and fire among managers. There are some things that may stand in the way of your doing this. First, there may be a company bylaw that says that the directors can be replaced only one \"\"class\"\" at a time, with three or four \"\"classes.\"\" Then it could take you two or three years to get control of the company. Second, there may be different classes of shares with different voting rights, so if e.g. \"\"A\"\" shares controlled by the founding family gives them ten votes, and \"\"B\"\" shares owned by the other shareholders, you may have a majority of total shares and be outvoted by the \"\"A\"\" shares.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4f5e2b5519a30ae098566977ca938227", "text": "Is my understanding correct? It's actually higher than that - he exercised options for 94,564 shares at $204.16 and sold them for $252.17 for a gain of about $4.5 Million. There's another transaction that's not in your screenshot where he sold the other 7,954 shares for another $2 Million. What do executive directors usually do with such profit? It's part of his compensation - it's anyone's guess what he decided to do with it. Is it understood that such trade profits should be re-invested back to the company? No - that is purely compensation for his position (I'm assuming the stock options were compensation rather then him buying options in the open market). There generally is no expectation that trading profits need to go back into the company. If the company wanted the profits reinvested they wouldn't have distributed the compensation in the first place.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8fc999cb123d1fab5d8a6d8bcfd798b5", "text": "I believe you can easily make tresholds for what constitute a partial owner. If I work for GE and buy a share, I'm not exactly a partial owner. Anything under 10% for companies making, I don't know, less than 50 Mil in revenue, you're an employee. Larger companies, 5%. That's just an idea, could be refined but, yeah...", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3657167e43d1c4e588fe82cd759ef78f", "text": "If a company is public, and they record a 2016 profit of 100mil. Say there is shareholder A and shareholder B who are both wealthy and own 25% each of the company. Say the remaining 50% of shares are owned by a number of funds/small time investors. So 2016 profits are 100mil, lets say there is a dividend. Can the company still award a larger share of profits to the two big shareholders? I.e. say 50 mil of the profits go into dividend payments and another 20 mil as retained earnings to be reinvested into future projects, can the remaining 30 mil of profits be split and given to shareholders A and B?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "928598067c978d7ba6b404631e154c70", "text": "The person holding the majority of shares can influence the decisions of the company. Even though the shareholder holds majority of the shares,the Board of Directors appointed by the shareholders in the Annual General Meeting will run the company. As said in the characteristics of the company,the owners and the administrators of the company are different. The shareholder holding majority of the shares can influence the business decisions like appointing the auditor,director etc. and any other business decisions(not taken in the ordinary business) that are taken in the Annual General Meeting.", "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": "9847099de65fe2eb86b26c98f0d179cb", "text": "I don't know about the liquidation. The capital doesn't evaporate, its source just becomes the corporation itself. The corporation becomes the sole shareholder and acts at the behest of the board. The board then decides both board matters and shareholder matters. Once I talked that through, I realized no one would do this. If the board is in complete control, why clump the ownership together. The directors would be better served by clearly delineating their ownership interests by purchasing shares directly.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a3721fd666e6ea8920304e2b973bef1c", "text": "\"The part that I find confusing is the loan/stock hybridization. Why would the investor be entitled to a 30% share if he's also expecting to be getting paid back in full? This is the part that's making me scratch my head. I can understand giving equity and buying out later. I can understand giving equity with no expectation of loan repayment. I can understand loan repayment without equity. I can even understand collateralizing the loan with equity. I can not understand how \"\"zeroing out\"\" the loan still leaves him with a claim on 30% of the equity. Would this be more of a good will gesture as a way to thank the investor for taking a chance? Please forgive any naivety in my questions.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c526e569e2ae563e14b933f146c30364", "text": "\"Companies normally do not give you X% of shares, but in effect give you a fixed \"\"N\"\" number of shares. The \"\"N\"\" may translate initially to X%, but this can go down. If say we began with 100 shares, A holding 50 shares and B holding 50 shares. As the startup grows, there is need for more money. Create 50 more shares and sell it at an arranged price to investor C. Now the percentage of each investor is 33.33%. The money that comes in will go to the company and not to A & B. From here on, A & C together can decide to slowly cut out B by, for example: After any of the above the % of shares held by B would definitely go down.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
543876051980365dc2903ef80ebb63b9
Be a partner, CTO or just a freelancer?
[ { "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": "2ff2c8d04f80b637da2b51de86a1c16e", "text": "First, determine the workload he will expect. Will you have to quit your other work, either for time or for competition? How much of your current business will be subsumed into his business, if any? Make sure to understand what he wants from you. If you make an agreement, set it in writing and set some clear expectations about what will happen to your business (e.g. it continues and is not part of your association with the client). Because he was a client for your current business, it can blur the lines. Second, if you join him, make sure there is a business entity. By working together for profit, you will have already formed a partnership for tax purposes. Best to get an entity, both for the legal protection and also for the clarity of law and accounting. LLCs are simplest for small ventures; C corps are useful if you have lots of early losses and owners that can't use them personally, or if you want to be properly formed for easy consumption by a strategic. Most VCs and super-angels prefer everybody be a straight C. Again, remember to define, as necessary, what you are contributing to be an owner and what you are retaining (your original business, which for simplicity may already be in an entity). As part of this process, make sure he defines the cap table and any outstanding loans. Auntie June and Cousin Steve might think their gifts to him were loans or equity purchases; best to clear this issue up early before there's any more money in it. Third, with regard to price, that is an intensely variable question. It matters what the cap table looks like, how early you are, how much work he's already done, how much work remains to be done, and how much it will pay off. Also, if you do it, expect to be diluted by other employees, angels, VCs, other investors, strategics, and so on. Luckily, more investors usually indicates a growing pie, so the dilution may not be at all painful. But it should still be on your horizon. You also need to consider your faith in your prospective partner's ability to run the business and to be a trustworthy partner (so you don't get Zuckerberg'd), and to market the business and the product to customers and investors. If you don't like the prospects, then opt for cash. If you like the business but want to hedge, ask for compensation plus equity. There are other tricks you could use to get out early, like forced redemption, but they probably wouldn't help either because it'd sour your relationship or the first VC or knowledgeable angel to come along will want you to relinquish that sort of right. It probably comes down to a basic question of your need for cash, his willingness to let you pursue outside work (hopefully high) and your appraisal of the business' prospects.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "daeaf3811eb82190b130466943791faa", "text": "Being a CTO is different than freelancing, obviously. You have to ask yourself what you would more prefer to do! My initial recommendation would be to receive your normal freelance compensation for the freelance work you do AND separately deal with the issue of being a CTO. At some point you will cease to be this project's freelancer should you become its CTO. Then again, by becoming the CTO immediately you should be able to negotiate a larger share of the company. Granted, my opinions should not be considered legal or financial advice and you should consult a professional before making any decisions. Ja ja ja ;)", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "a27d47d6874f98fefe7e802e6ffcff4d", "text": "Very good point. However, I would say stability. Say I could just continue doing this one the side of my regular job, couldn't I do both? Edit: I don't know why I keep getting down voted... I'm literally just asking valid questions.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "fa9290fe5300a24c04c6f8ab01f18f66", "text": "Sounds you need to read up on S corp structures. I think this would benefit you if you generate income even after you physically stopped working which is incomes from membership fees, royalties % of customer revenue, middle man etc... Under the Scorp, you as the sole member must earn a wage that fair and at current market value. You pay social security and Medicare on this wage. The interesting thing here is that an Scorp can pay out earning dividends without having to pay payroll taxes but the catch is that you, as the sole employee must earn a fair wage. As for paying the other member you may want to look into 1099 contract work plus a finders fee. The 1099 hourly wage does not require you to pay Medicare and SS. The common fee I'm used to is 5% of gross invoice. Then you would pay her an hourly wage. The company then bills these hours multiplied by 2 or 3 (or whatever you think is fair) to the client. Deduct expenses from this and that's your profit. Example. Contractor brings Client A which is estimated as a 100 hour project with $100 cost in supplies and requires 2 hours of your time @ $40/hr. You quote 100 hours @ $50 to client, client agrees and gives you down payment. You then present the contract work to your contractor, they complete the work in 100 hours and bill you at $25. You pay your contractor 2500 plus the 5% ($250) and your company earns $2070 (5000 - 2500 - 100-80) And you'll earn $80 minus the payroll tax. Then at the end of the quarter or year or however you want to do earning payouts your LLC- Scorp will write you a check for $2070 or whatever earning % you want to take. This is then taxed at your income tax bracket. One thing to keep in mind is what is preventing this other person from becoming your competition? A partnership would be great motivation to try and bring in as much work under the LLC. But if you start shafting people then they'll just keep the work and cut you out.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6491f0618e362b2216da7c27c43dc412", "text": "\"Hello! First of all, I think it's great you're asking the community for help. Asking for help when you need it is a sign of strength and self-awareness of your own limitations (which we all have, even the smartest business people ask questions, in fact they ask the most questions). I'm wrapping up year 2 of doing what you're trying to do and am finally seeing real traction. I am a bit older than you and started out on my own 7 years after grad school, but I have learned a lot and don't mind sharing. Here's some things you might find useful. * Never work for free (working for \"\"equity\"\" or working for \"\"exposure\"\" is working for free). People who offer you this because you're just starting out are parasites looking to sell your talents but not pay for them. The only thing you can take away from attempts to do this is that your talents are in demand, which is good! * Never sell yourself short: would you rather do 10 websites for a $1000 each or do 1 website for $10000? You'll be doing a lot of projects in the middle, but one very important thing to bear in mind is that one $10000 website is a lot less work and may make you the same amount of money (or more) overall. * In the beginning, maybe you think you need to build a portfolio. But you'd be surprised how many prospects don't care what's in your portfolio and in fact never look at the portfolio, which leads me to the most important bit of advice: * Learn to sell yourself. YOU are your company's first and main product. Learn to sell yourself (as the smart kid, future Fortune 500 CEO who stays up all night getting things done, etc) * Always aim high in your proposals. You'd be surprised how many people don't negotiate at all. That being said, always put something in your proposal that is a good idea but it beyond what their asking for. If they ask you to come down in price, remove this feature and come down a little bit. * Develop an ability to read how interested a prospect is in your services before you spring the price on them. At your age, I was waiting tables. This helped me to be able to read a customer to determine which waiter they wanted me to be: the attentive one, the high class one, the friend, or the quiet servile. Consider taking on a side job to help you develop this skill. * As I said above, some prospects will sign on the line without negotiating. You might even take two proposals with you into a meeting with a prospect, one priced high and one low, and present the version that matches their interests. Go high if they need something \"\"right now\"\". * Remember you are your company's first product. This means also that your time is the company's first commodity. Be open to other things. I have a background in mathematics and am most capable as a software developer and a web developer. But I also help other companies sell and support physical products not at all related to technology. Because it's highly profitable, I do it. * When you're a one person business selling your time at the highest price is the name of the game. But growing your business will require the help of others. I found it helpful to first network with other like minded people and split project money according to skill level and time commitment on a per project basis. This will allow you to take on bigger projects. * But growing the company will eventually require you to hire (or contract) someone at a far lower pay rate than what you're bringing in. The laws of supply and demand require you to do this as a business person if you're to grow the business (so that the business has money beyond what you're being paid). This is where the extra money comes from: selling the time of others at a higher price than you're paying them. Be conscious of this. Everyone you work with is not going to be your friend. * Make your website awesome. It doesn't have to be a work of art, but let it reflect the seriousness with which you approach your customers' projects. Make sure there are no grammatical errors. Find a website of someone highly successful who's doing what you're doing and emulate it. You don't have to have a portfolio starting out. Your website is your first portfolio item, and if it's awesome, prospects will think you'll do the same for them. Good luck! I'm sure I'm not the only one here who thinks your early developed entrepreneurship is going to take you far.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "94146b4330555818feda573df22bae17", "text": "\"It's a tough thing to do. You should look for a salaried position. Your freelance skills will be much better received, if you've worked for a couple of companies doing programming full time. Nothing beats working at it all day long for a few years. If you're set on being freelance, write some utility that will be popular, and submit it to Freshmeat.net. Now that's asking a lot. Those on the Web looking for programmers will most likely want you to work for 'sweat equity'. That is, a share in the company for you labour. In other words \"\"FREE\"\". I've done my share of those, and if you're just getting into this, you should steer away from them. You may hit the jackpot, but you won't sleep for the next few years ;-)\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1ce866c17821f50b358ce7a34ae8918e", "text": "\"This is such a common question here and elsewhere that I will attempt to write the world's most canonical answer to this question. Hopefully in the future when someone on answers.onstartups asks how to split up the ownership of their new company, you can simply point to this answer. The most important principle: Fairness, and the perception of fairness, is much more valuable than owning a large stake. Almost everything that can go wrong in a startup will go wrong, and one of the biggest things that can go wrong is huge, angry, shouting matches between the founders as to who worked harder, who owns more, whose idea was it anyway, etc. That is why I would always rather split a new company 50-50 with a friend than insist on owning 60% because \"\"it was my idea,\"\" or because \"\"I was more experienced\"\" or anything else. Why? Because if I split the company 60-40, the company is going to fail when we argue ourselves to death. And if you just say, \"\"to heck with it, we can NEVER figure out what the correct split is, so let's just be pals and go 50-50,\"\" you'll stay friends and the company will survive. Thus, I present you with Joel's Totally Fair Method to Divide Up The Ownership of Any Startup. For simplicity sake, I'm going to start by assuming that you are not going to raise venture capital and you are not going to have outside investors. Later, I'll explain how to deal with venture capital, but for now assume no investors. Also for simplicity sake, let's temporarily assume that the founders all quit their jobs and start working on the new company full time at the same time. Later, I'll explain how to deal with founders who do not start at the same time. Here's the principle. As your company grows, you tend to add people in \"\"layers\"\". The top layer is the first founder or founders. There may be 1, 2, 3, or more of you, but you all start working about the same time, and you all take the same risk... quitting your jobs to go work for a new and unproven company. The second layer is the first real employees. By the time you hire this layer, you've got cash coming in from somewhere (investors or customers--doesn't matter). These people didn't take as much risk because they got a salary from day one, and honestly, they didn't start the company, they joined it as a job. The third layer are later employees. By the time they joined the company, it was going pretty well. For many companies, each \"\"layer\"\" will be approximately one year long. By the time your company is big enough to sell to Google or go public or whatever, you probably have about 6 layers: the founders and roughly five layers of employees. Each successive layer is larger. There might be two founders, five early employees in layer 2, 25 employees in layer 3, and 200 employees in layer 4. The later layers took less risk. OK, now here's how you use that information: The founders should end up with about 50% of the company, total. Each of the next five layers should end up with about 10% of the company, split equally among everyone in the layer. Example: Two founders start the company. They each take 2500 shares. There are 5000 shares outstanding, so each founder owns half. They hire four employees in year one. These four employees each take 250 shares. There are 6000 shares outstanding. They hire another 20 employees in year two. Each one takes 50 shares. They get fewer shares because they took less risk, and they get 50 shares because we're giving each layer 1000 shares to divide up. By the time the company has six layers, you have given out 10,000 shares. Each founder ends up owning 25%. Each employee layer owns 10% collectively. The earliest employees who took the most risk own the most shares. Make sense? You don't have to follow this exact formula but the basic idea is that you set up \"\"stripes\"\" of seniority, where the top stripe took the most risk and the bottom stripe took the least, and each \"\"stripe\"\" shares an equal number of shares, which magically gives employees more shares for joining early. A slightly different way to use the stripes is for seniority. Your top stripe is the founders, below that you reserve a whole stripe for the fancy CEO that you recruited who insisted on owning 10%, the stripe below that is for the early employees and also the top managers, etc. However you organize the stripes, it should be simple and clear and easy to understand and not prone to arguments. Now that we have a fair system set out, there is one important principle. You must have vesting. Preferably 4 or 5 years. Nobody earns their shares until they've stayed with the company for a year. A good vesting schedule is 25% in the first year, 2% each additional month. Otherwise your co-founder is going to quit after three weeks and show up, 7 years later, claiming he owns 25% of the company. It never makes sense to give anyone equity without vesting. This is an extremely common mistake and it's terrible when it happens. You have these companies where 3 cofounders have been working day and night for five years, and then you discover there's some jerk that quit after two weeks and he still thinks he owns 25% of the company for his two weeks of work. Now, let me clear up some little things that often complicate the picture. What happens if you raise an investment? The investment can come from anywhere... an angel, a VC, or someone's dad. Basically, the answer is simple: the investment just dilutes everyone. Using the example from above... we're two founders, we gave ourselves 2500 shares each, so we each own 50%, and now we go to a VC and he offers to give us a million dollars in exchange for 1/3rd of the company. 1/3rd of the company is 2500 shares. So you make another 2500 shares and give them to the VC. He owns 1/3rd and you each own 1/3rd. That's all there is to it. What happens if not all the early employees need to take a salary? A lot of times you have one founder who has a little bit of money saved up, so she decides to go without a salary for a while, while the other founder, who needs the money, takes a salary. It is tempting just to give the founder who went without pay more shares to make up for it. The trouble is that you can never figure out the right amount of shares to give. This is just going to cause conflicts. Don't resolve these problems with shares. Instead, just keep a ledger of how much you paid each of the founders, and if someone goes without salary, give them an IOU. Later, when you have money, you'll pay them back in cash. In a few years when the money comes rolling in, or even after the first VC investment, you can pay back each founder so that each founder has taken exactly the same amount of salary from the company. Shouldn't I get more equity because it was my idea? No. Ideas are pretty much worthless. It is not worth the arguments it would cause to pay someone in equity for an idea. If one of you had the idea but you both quit your jobs and started working at the same time, you should both get the same amount of equity. Working on the company is what causes value, not thinking up some crazy invention in the shower. What if one of the founders doesn't work full time on the company? Then they're not a founder. In my book nobody who is not working full time counts as a founder. Anyone who holds on to their day job gets a salary or IOUs, but not equity. If they hang onto that day job until the VC puts in funding and then comes to work for the company full time, they didn't take nearly as much risk and they deserve to receive equity along with the first layer of employees. What if someone contributes equipment or other valuable goods (patents, domain names, etc) to the company? Great. Pay for that in cash or IOUs, not shares. Figure out the right price for that computer they brought with them, or their clever word-processing patent, and give them an IOU to be paid off when you're doing well. Trying to buy things with equity at this early stage just creates inequality, arguments, and unfairness. How much should the investors own vs. the founders and employees? That depends on market conditions. Realistically, if the investors end up owning more than 50%, the founders are going to feel like sharecroppers and lose motivation, so good investors don't get greedy that way. If the company can bootstrap without investors, the founders and employees might end up owning 100% of the company. Interestingly enough, the pressure is pretty strong to keep things balanced between investors and founders/employees; an old rule of thumb was that at IPO time (when you had hired all the employees and raised as much money as you were going to raise) the investors would have 50% and the founders/employees would have 50%, but with hot Internet companies in 2011, investors may end up owning a lot less than 50%. Conclusion There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem, but anything you can do to make it simple, transparent, straightforward, and, above-all, fair, will make your company much more likely to be successful. The above awesome answer came from the Stack Exchange beta site for startups, which has now closed. I expect that this equity distribution question (which is strongly tied to personal finance) will come up more times in the future so I have copied the content originally posted. All credit for this excellent answer is due to Joel Spolsky, a moderator for the Startups SE beta site, and co-founder of Stack Exchange.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3f088acfd5fcc4198a9c0950ba1711b3", "text": "\"If you business is incorporated, it's up to the two of you how to do it. Typically, you will have the company write cheques (or make transfers, whatever) to each of the humans: If you want to say that each of you gets a salary of 80% of the revenue you bring in, and then tweak things with bonuses, you can. If one of you is contributing more to marketing and awareness and less to revenue, then you may prefer to pay you each the same even though the revenue you bring are different. It's up to you - it's quite literally your business. When you're not incorporated, then for tax purposes you split the income and the expenses according to your ownership share. If that doesn't seem fair to you, then a partnership is probably not as useful to you as being incorporated. In general, it's better to be incorporated once you're past any initial phase in which the business is losing money for tax purposes (acquiring depreciable assets) and the partners have taxable income from elsewhere (day jobs, or at least income from the earlier part of the year before starting the business.) I would recommend that the \"\"partnership\"\" phase of the business be very short. Get incorporated and get a shareholder agreement.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4286585f14be963a8f314ca32f310036", "text": "\"This is actually quite a complicated issue. I suggest you talk to a properly licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State). Legal advice (from an attorney licensed in your State) is also highly recommended. There are many issues at hand here. Income - both types of entities are pass-through, so \"\"earnings\"\" are taxed the same. However, for S-Corp there's a \"\"reasonable compensation\"\" requirement, so while B and C don't do any \"\"work\"\" they may be required to draw salary as executives/directors (if they act as such). Equity - for S-Corp you cannot have different classes of shares, all are the same. So you cannot have 2 partners contribute money and third to contribute nothing (work is compensated, you'll be getting salary) and all three have the same stake in the company. You can have that with an LLC. Expansion - S-Corp is limited to X shareholders, all of which have to be Americans. Once you get a foreign partner, or more than 100 partners - you automatically become C-Corp whether you want it or not. Investors - it would be very hard for you to find external investors if you're a LLC. There are many more things to consider. Do not make this decision lightly. Fixing things is usually much more expensive than doing them right at the first place.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e0011d1c9d452a858e46b0056fe52fcd", "text": "I mean some VCs focus on technology companies, that's a sector focus, but a very broad one. Are you saying you don't want to be limited to one sector? Also keep in mind that series B investments are much more expensive then A rounds, just because there is more proof and less risk. I know of some angel investors that invest by size rather than industry, maybe you could partner up with them. All depends on how much capital you have/ how much involvement you want to have with the company.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "851d7afd9275dd990fccef28368d64ff", "text": "\"The issues are larger than taxes. If one of you receives the check, then breaks off 25% of it for themselves and sends three checks out to each of you that will be indicated on that person's taxes. You three will then all recognize your portion of the income on your taxes and it's all settled. It's no big deal, it's a bit rag-tag but it'll get the job done. I've done little ad-hoc partnership work with people this way and it's not a problem. This is why you should really be more formal. What if this entity contracting you guys sues you? Who has the liability, if only one of you was paid? What if the money is sent to one of you and that person dies before paying you? What if you all get another client? What if this contracting entity has another project? The partnership needs to have the liability. The partnership needs to receive the money. The partnership needs to be named on whatever contract you all sign. The partnership can be a straight partnership, or maybe the four of you take a 25% stake in an LLC or Inc arrangement. Minimally, you should sit down with your partners so everyone knows everyone else's responsibilities, and you should write it all down. It probably sounds like overkill, and I'm sure your partners are you buddies and \"\"we're tight and nothing bad could come between us.\"\" I've done some partnership work with more than one friend, we've always been fine. Some ventures are successful, some aren't; I'm still very good friends with all of them. Writing things down manages expectations and when money starts moving around, everyone is happier when everyone has a solid expectation of who gets what.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d441c483fe7ce59e0a61f1fbcb071287", "text": "Does your wife perform solo or in association with other actor/actresses and other volunteers? The latter arrangement sounds more like an unincorporated association or a partnership, which might be a bit freer to match the revenue and expenses. By grinding through the proper procedures, it might be possible to get official non-profit status for it, as well. Ask a professional.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dfbd71984ce3632baec4675987b94844", "text": "what do you mean by abnormal amount of risk on day to day operations? and upfront ill more than likely need quite a bit of capital. as far as partnership I'd be the sole owner for now. unless I find a better option along the way. also thank you for all your help.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5a97a5835511e682032ec0ed8c64e6eb", "text": "These new block chain coins with their smart contracts seem to be heading in that direction but I'd like someone to walk me through how two or more people with varying amounts of contributions to the organization can keep it all organized. One partner contributes money while the other contributes time and assets. How do you determine a value of each persons contribution? Do you convert each persons contributions to shares or coins?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c2fe5a2fd10180b48792906009b272fc", "text": "I am a freelancer based in Europe and I want to tell you: - if you are a freelancer, then you INVOICE your Swizzerland based client The word salary is improper. - So your client will DEDUCE the invoice from its taxes, and NOT pay income tax on top of that invoice. Because invoice = expense. So, ONLY YOU pay income tax in India. Your client pays no tax at all, not in India, not in Swizzerland. As you are a freelancer and not employee, the company has no obligation to pay employer taxes for you. A company has financial benefits from working with a freelancer.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "62cb72936394f010e237eaa95e4e05e5", "text": "Awesome ending. You are forgiven for partying. And the web start-up lifestyle comes with its own baggage. Nothing like working long hours to implement some feature 1 customer hinted because any money is important money to crush that creative spirit.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cb44aa9c88eed2b53e5cbd2e480982bf", "text": "If you are in a position to have information that will impact the shares of a stock or index fund and you use that information for either personal gain or to mitigate the losses that you would have felt then it is insider trading. Even if in the end your quiet period passes with little or no movement of the stocks in question. It is the attempt to benefit from or the appearance of the attempt to benefit from inside information that creates the crime. This is the reason for the quiet periods to attempt to shield the majority of the companies employees from the appearance of impropriety, as well as any actual improprieties. With an index you are running a double edged sword because anything that is likely to cause APPLE to drop 10% is likely to give a bump to Motorola, Google, and its competitors. So you could end up in jail for Insider trading and lose your shirt on a poor decision to short a Tech ETF on knowledge that will cause Apple to take a hit. It is certainly going to be harder to find the trade but the SEC is good at looking around for activity that is inconsistent with normal trading patterns of individuals in a position to have knowledge with the type of market impact you are talking about.", "title": "" } ]
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ac813e8564591e0a689c1f129e67fee2
How effective are hotel condos for investment properties?
[ { "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": "a0a18cc899a00d5fae3a6011f519d2c1", "text": "\"A REIT is a real estate investment trust. It is a company that derives most of its gross income from and holds most of its assets in real estate investments, which, in this case, include either real property, mortgages, or both. They provide a way for investors to get broad exposure in a real estate market without going to buy a bunch of properties themselves. It also provides diversification within the real estate segment since REITs will often (but not necessarily) have either way more properties than an individual could get or have very large properties (like a few resorts) that would be too expensive for any one investor. By law, they must pay at least 90% of their taxable income as dividends to investors, so they typically have a good dividend rate (possibly but not necessarily) at the expense of growth of the stock price. Some of those dividends may be tax advantaged and some will not. An MLP is a master limited partnership. These trade on the exchange like corporations, but they are not corporations. (Although often used in common language as synonyms, corporation and company are not the same thing. Corporation is one way to organize a company under the law.) They are partnerships, and when you buy a share you become a partner in the company. This is an alternative form of ownership to being a shareholding. In this case you are a limited partner, which means that you have limited liability as with stock. The shares may appreciate or not, just like a stock, and you can generally sell them back to the market for a capital gain or loss under the same rules as a stock. The main difference here from a practical point of view is taxes: Partnerships (of any type) do no pay tax - Instead their income and costs are passed to the individual partners, who must then include it on their personal returns (Form 1040, Schedule E). The partnership will send each shareholder a Schedule K-1 form at tax time. This means you may have \"\"phantom income\"\" that is taxable even though cash never flowed through your hands since you'll have to account for the income of the partnership. Many partnerships mitigate this by making cash distributions during the year so that the partners do actually see the cash, but this is not required. On the other hand, if it does happen, it's often characterized as a return of capital, which is not taxable in the year that you receive it. A return of capital reduces your cost basis in the partnership and will eventually result in a larger capital gain when you sell your shares. As with any investment, there are pros and cons to each investment type. Of the two, the MLP is probably less like a \"\"regular\"\" stock since getting the Schedule K-1 may require some extra work at tax time, especially if you've never seen one before. On the other hand, that may be worth it to you if you can find one that's appreciating in value and still returning capital at a good rate since this could be a \"\"best of everything\"\" situation where you defer tax and - when you eventually do pay, you pay at favorable capital gains rates - but still manage to get your cash back in hand before you sell. (In case not clear, my comments about tax are specific to the US. No idea how this is treated elsewhere.) By real world example, I guess you meant a few tickers in each category? You can find whole lists online. I just did a quick search (\"\"list of MLP\"\" and \"\"list of REIT\"\"), found a list, and have provided the top few off of the first list that I found. The lists were alphabetical by company name, so there's no explicit or implicit endorsement of these particular investments. Examples of REIT: Examples of MLP:\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8154fd100f804520d75c6fcbf83c9936", "text": "I'm surprised to even hear this question with the current state of devaluation of real estate. One thing I'll add to the other answers is to make sure you are doing a true apples/apples comparison to other investments when considering real estate. You can't just take subtract the purchase price from the sales price to get your ROI. Real estate has very heavy carry costs that you need to factor into any ROI calculation including: One more point: A house that you live in shouldn't be considered an investment, but rather an expense. You have to be able to liquidate an investment and collect your return. Unless you plan to move back in with your parents, you are always going to need a place to live so you can never really cash out on that investment, except perhaps by downgrading your lifestyle or a reverse mortgage.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "61e08f0d238c2474a7eb648aac96c339", "text": "\"TL;DR - go with something like Barry Ritholtz's All Century Portfolio: 20 percent total U.S stock market 5 percent U.S. REITs 5 percent U.S. small cap value 15 percent Pacific equities 15 percent European equities 10 percent U.S. TIPs 10 percent U.S. high yield corp bonds 20 percent U.S. total bond UK property market are absurdly high and will be crashing a lot very soon The price to rent ratio is certainly very high in the UK. According to this article, it takes 48 years of rent to pay for the same apartment in London. That sounds like a terrible deal to me. I have no idea about where prices will go in the future, but I wouldn't voluntarily buy in that market. I'm hesitant to invest in stocks for the fear of losing everything A stock index fund is a collection of stocks. For example the S&P 500 index fund is a collection of the largest 500 US public companies (Apple, Google, Shell, Ford, etc.). If you buy the S&P 500 index, the 500 largest US companies would have to go bankrupt for you to \"\"lose everything\"\" - there would have to be a zombie apocalypse. He's trying to get me to invest in Gold and Silver (but mostly silver), but I neither know anything about gold or silver, nor know anyone who takes this approach. This is what Jeremy Siegel said about gold in late 2013: \"\"I’m not enthusiastic about gold because I think gold is priced for either hyperinflation or the end of the world.\"\" Barry Ritholtz also speaks much wisdom about gold. In short, don't buy it and stop listening to your friend. Is buying a property now with the intention of selling it in a couple of years for profit (and repeat until I have substantial amount to invest in something big) a bad idea? If the home price does not appreciate, will this approach save you or lose you money? In other words, would it be profitable to substitute your rent payment for a mortgage payment? If not, you will be speculating, not investing. Here's an articles that discusses the difference between speculating and investing. I don't recommend speculating.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "efce77f31deaafbffcf362e30aea9e0d", "text": "\"VNQ only holds ~16% residential REITs. The rest are industrial, office, retail (e.g. shopping malls), specialized (hotels perhaps?) etc. Thus, VNQ isn't as correlated towards housing as you might have assumed just based on it being about \"\"real estate.\"\" Second of all, if by \"\"housing\"\" you mean that actual houses have gone up appreciably, then you ought to realize that residential REITs seldom hold actual houses. The residential units held tend primarily to be rental apartments. There is a relationship in prices, but not direct.\"", "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": "fb23853645f6035f0341f842728bc718", "text": "Hmm well the methods used differ depending on the asset class. I've worked with a REIT and PE on a few different types of commercial projects. For a general overview though I would say look up courses at a local community college and purchase the text books on the syllabus. Some asset classes also have free industry updates which can give you an broad overview. Feel free to PM me if you want to talk specifics.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "534291474b685dc36e50919879690f79", "text": "Disclaimer: I’m not an expert. This is my basic understanding, which I’m sure someone will be glad to tell is horribly wrong... You need an LLC. Many people in my area create an LLC management company, then create individual LLCs for each investment property. Laws vary by state. YMMV Then you start researching properties. Commercial loans typically require a higher equity position than home ownership. Assume minimum 30%. For ease of this conversation let’s say you’re making the horribly poor decision to put that towards a single property. You’d be looking for a property in the 175-200k value range, because you’ll need to account for settlement expenses (attorney, broker, consultants) and a cash reserve. You’d be also be looking for what the average cap rate is for your market. In simplistic terms cap rate is the expected rate of return after expenses. So if the average market cap rate in that region for comparable properties is 5%, you can expect around 5% return on your investment, after you pay fees, maintenance, taxes, insurance, interest, etc. Buy a property and hold that property for a few years, making money every year, and claiming deductions on your earnings for something called depreciation. Fast forward 5 years and you’re ready to sell, the value of your property went up because you made improvements along the way, brought in some better tenants who are paying higher rents, and now you can offer a better cap rate than your competitors. You sell in the blink of an eye, and double your investment. Say you have $500k now sitting in the bank in you LLC’s name, in cash. You can either choose to cash out 100% and pay capital gains tax on your earnings above your basis (at 15% I think?)... OR you can quickly find a new property with that $500k, purchase it, and file a 1031, which says you don’t have to pay ANY capital gains on those earnings. You just increased income significantly without ever paying taxes on the underlying increase in value of your assets. Rinse and repeat for 25 years, develop a portfolio of properties, create a management company so you can stop paying others a percentage of your earnings, and you too can have the problem of too much money. I welcome anyone with actual knowledge of the topic to please expound on, or correct me.", "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": "53eba26870fc7db41c037231c4ffb043", "text": "Properties do in fact devaluate every year for several reasons. One of the reasons is that an old property is not the state of the art and cannot therefore compete with the newest properties, e.g. energy efficiency may be outdated. Second reason is that the property becomes older and thus it is more likely that it requires expensive repairs. I have read somewhere that the real value depreciation of properties if left practically unmaintained (i.e. only the repairs that have to absolutely be performed are made) is about 2% per year, but do not remember the source right now. However, Properties (or more accurately, the tenants) do pay you rent, and it is possible in some cases that rent more than pays for the possible depreciation in value. For example, you could ask whether car leasing is a poor business because cars depreciate in value. Obviously it is not, as the leasing payments more than make for the value depreciation. However, I would not recommend properties as an investment if you have only small sums of money. The reasons are manyfold: So, as a summary: for large investors property investments may be a good idea because large investors have the ability to diversify. However, large investors often use debt leverage so it is a very good question why they don't simply invest in stocks with no debt leverage. For small investors, property investments do not often make sense. If you nevertheless do property investments, remember the diversification, also in time. So, purchase different kinds of properties and purchase them in different times. Putting a million USD to properties at one point of time is very risky, because property prices can rise or fall as time goes on.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "88d77a3dd754aefdfb72b4a009b8c5e4", "text": "\"Started to post this as a comment, but I think it's actually a legitimate answer: Running a rental property is neither speculation nor investment, but a business, just as if you were renting cars or tools or anything else. That puts it in an entirely different category. The property may gain or lose value, but you don't know which or how much until you're ready to terminate the business... so, like your own house, it really isn't a liquid asset; it's closer to being inventory. Meanwhile, like inventory, you need to \"\"restock\"\" it on a fairly regular basis by maintaining it, finding tenants, and so on. And how much it returns depends strongly on how much effort you put into it in terms of selecting the right location and product in the first place, and in how you market yourself against all the other businesses offering near-equivalent product, and how you differentiate the product, and so on. I think approaching it from that angle -- deciding whether you really want to be a business owner or keep all your money in more abstract investments, then deciding what businesses are interesting to you and running the numbers to see what they're likely to return as income, THEN making up your mind whether real estate is the winner from that group -- is likely to produce better decisions. Among other things, it helps you remember to focus on ALL the costs of the business. When doing the math, don't forget that income from the business is taxed at income rates, not investment rates. And don't forget that you're making a bet on the future of that neighborhood as well as the future of that house; changes in demographics or housing stock or business climate could all affect what rents you can charge as well as the value of the property, and not necessarily in the same direction. It may absolutely be the right place to put some of your money. It may not. Explore all the possible outcomes before making the bet, and decide whether you're willing to do the work needed to influence which ones are more likely.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c6e72211a67fc00a86f662a936cb55a2", "text": "For an investment to appreciate in value, one of two things needs to happen: 1) Demand for that particular item needs to increase. 2) The supply of that item needs to decrease. Houses are good because everyone needs a place to live, but there is a finite amount of land. No matter how much you invest in Manhatten real estate, Manhatten ain't growin'. The trick there is to find an area that people are going to want to live in when you're ready to sell. Specific vintages of wines and spirits are another good example, because it's literally impossible to create more of that vintage. Cars, and most consumer goods, usually don't appreciate because they don't last long enough. Most cars are resold within three to five years after the initial purchase. This is also why jewelry is a good investment; properly cared for, it can last centuries without wearing out. So, look for something durable that has a limited supply.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3938b7d311ad08454d159d4d800a271f", "text": "15 years ago I bought a beach condo in Miami for $400,000 and two extra parking spaces for $3000 each. Today the condo is worth 600,000 but the rent barely covers mortgage repairs and property taxes. Most of The old people in the building have since died and are now replaced with families with at least two cars and spots are in short supply. I turned down offers of 25,000 for each parking space. I have the spaces rented out for $200 per month no maintenance for an 80% annual return on my purchase price and the value went has gone up over $700%. And no realtors commissions if i decide to sell the spaces.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f7c7d5c317bd7ca3d56dfc906b82d5a8", "text": "If your planning on shorting the stocks be careful, while the value of the retail sector may be declining there will be a lot of back and forth over the next ten years, and as REITs discounts to nav increases, there is huge opportunities for buyouts from developers who have other use ideas for the real estate. The real estate will always have value, even if it's not as a shopping center.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "2688bf41e524174d20776ec4584ce62e", "text": "I strongly urge you against this despite the fact that you may enjoy lucrative interest rates in the short run. Considering the reckless usage of deposits and other public monies to build buildings just to claim that gdp is high (they count the cost of real estate as investment not their final sales as the rest of the world does), all depositors in Chinese banks stand to lose or at least have their funds frozen (since all credit funding the real estate building comes from the banks and taxes & land seizures to a lesser degree). China's reckless building: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm7rOKT151Y East Asian Crisis (Chapters 11 & 12): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/story/ch_menu_03.html This can be prolonged if they open their financial system to outside funding, but that will also amplify the effect.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8ed9ef428b4cc9bb84ceb6bd5124b274", "text": "\"I personally found the \"\"For Dummies\"\" books, on property investment, very helpful and a great primer. I found them unbiased and very informative, laying out the basic principles. Depending on your knowledge it can provide you with enough of a foundation to have an informed conversation with banks/real estates etc. Watch the markets for a while (at least 6 months) to know what prices vendors will be expecting and rents tenants will be expecting, most property magazines will also contain a suburb summary in the back. When you get closer to purchase make sure to ask your bank for the RP Data reports on the properties you are looking at, the banks will typically provide these for free. I also set out some points for myself which I made clear for myself at the beginning: This might provide a good starting point and really narrow down your research options as generic research on property investment can be overwhelming. I ended up with a 3 Bedder in western Sydney that has so far happily paid for itself. Building a good relationship with real estate agents and attending lots of open homes/auctions and talking to other investors can only help. I was once told if you attend free property investment seminars you will always learn at least one new thing (be it statistics, methodologies, finance options etc ), with that in mind always keep a level head, leave your wallet at home and don't sign up to anything. At the end of the day keep a cool head, don't stop reading and rush nothing.\"", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
5ac89e6d58c5702e8ccfd7b140308c6c
How do I pay my estimated income tax?
[ { "docid": "7d040358f6a20041bc83832cbfa7f5f6", "text": "Congratulations on starting your own business. Invest in a tax software package right away; I can't recommend a specific one but there is enough information out there to point you in the right direction: share with us which one you ended up using and why (maybe a separate question?) You do need to make your FICA taxes but you can write off the SE part of it. Keep all your filings as a PDF, a printout and a softcopy in the native format of the tax software package: it really helps the next tax season. When you begin your business, most of the expenses are going to be straightforward (it was for me) and while I had the option of doing it by hand, I used software to do it myself. At the beginning, it might actually seem harder to use the tax software package, but it will pay off in the end. Build relationships with a few tax advisors and attorneys: you will need to buy liability insurance soon if you are in any kind of serious (non hobby) business and accounting for these are no trivial tasks. If you have not filed yet, I recommend you do this: File an extension, overpay your estimated taxes (you can always collect a refund later) and file your return once you have had a CPA look over it. Do not skimp on a CPA: it's just the cost of running your business and you don't want to waste your time reading the IRS manuals when you could be growing your own business. Best of luck and come back to tell us what you did!", "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": "11d9870d5f19e2e39ff3218c3432a08f", "text": "Yes you need to pay taxes in India. Show this as other income and pay tax according to your tax bracket. Note you need to pay the taxes quarterly if the net tax payable is more than 10,000.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5923619c7a3b18fc6934a3f2d6b95dc8", "text": "You will not necessarily incur a penalty. You can potentially use the Annualized Income Installment method, which allows you to compute the tax due for each quarter based on income actually earned up to that point in the year. See Publication 505, in particular Worksheet 2-9. Form 2210 is also relevant as that is the form you will use when actually calculating whether you owe a penalty after the year is over. On my reading of Form 2210, if you had literally zero income during the first quarter, you won't be expected to make an estimated tax payment for that quarter (as long as you properly follow the Annualized Income Installment method for future quarters). However, you should go through the calculations yourself to see what the situation is with your actual numbers.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "785d81e7e261c8f73ca537ce8b2c9d75", "text": "\"There are a couple of things that are missing from your estimate. In addition to your standard deduction, you also have a personal exemption of $4050. So \"\"D\"\" in your calculation should be $6300 + $4050 = $10,350. As a self-employed individual, you need to pay both the employee and employer side of the Social Security and Medicare taxes. Instead of 6.2% + 1.45%, you need to pay (6.2% + 1.45%) * 2 = 15.3% self-employment tax. In addition, there are some problems with your calculation. Q1i (Quarter 1 estimated income) should be your adjusted annual income divided by 4, not 3 (A/4). Likewise, you should estimate your quarterly tax by estimating your income for the whole year, then dividing by 4. So Aft (Annual estimated federal tax) should be: Quarterly estimated federal tax would be: Qft = Aft / 4 Annual estimated self-employment tax is: Ase = 15.3% * A with the quarterly self-employment tax being one-fourth of that: Qse = Ase / 4 Self employment tax gets added on to your federal income tax. So when you send in your quarterly payment using Form 1040-ES, you should send in Qft + Qse. The Form 1040-ES instructions (PDF) comes with the \"\"2016 Estimated Tax Worksheet\"\" that walks you through these calculations.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "38372658a2b0cb9eaee21ed8679d07cc", "text": "\"You don't actually have to make four equal payments on US federal taxes; you can pay different amounts each quarter. To avoid penalties, you must have paid \"\"enough\"\" at the end of each quarter. If you pay too much in an early quarter, the surplus counts towards the amount due in later quarters. If you have paid too little as of the end of a quarter, that deficit counts against you for interest and penalties until it is made up in later quarters (or at year-end settlement). How much is \"\"enough\"\"? There are a number of ways of figuring it. You can see the list of exceptions to the penalty in the IRS documentation. Using unequal payments may require more complicated calculation methods to avoid or reduce penalties at year-end. If you have the stomach for it, you may want to study the Annualized Income Installment Method to see how uneven income might affect the penalty.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7a8e97d90b03bc52e190b95e1e4ffe53", "text": "You're interpreting this correctly. Furthermore, if your total tax liability is less than $1000, you can not pay estimates at all, just pay at the tax day. See this safe harbor rule in the IRS publication 17: 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: 90% of the tax to be shown on your 2016 tax return, or 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.", "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": "aeaa11d893d521e8b1d6f18c1a28b6c2", "text": "What you need to do is to reduce the withholding from your wages, or pay a smaller amount in your quarterly payments of estimated tax (if you are self-employed). To reduce withholding from wages, fill out a new W4 form (available from your employer's HR department). There is a worksheet in the form that will help you figure out what to write on the various lines. As a single person, you are entitled to claim an exemption for yourself, and if you have not been claiming that exemption, doing so will reduce your withholding, and presumably your tax refund.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3e534876010df78449bbca157d503e14", "text": "\"Chris, Joe's table helps. but think this way: there are two ways you can pay the taxes for your side-gig: either you can send a check quarterly to the Feds, OR, you can overwithhold at your real job to cover taxes at your sidegig. I'd do this in \"\"arrears\"\" -- after you get your first paycheck from sidegig, then adjust your real job's withholding. Except (and Joe neglected this), you're still responsible for Social Security / Medicare Tax from your sidegig. I suspect your income at real-job is high enough that you stop paying Social Security Tax, so at least at this time of year you won't be subject to 15.4% Social Security Tax. However, that's NOT true for the 2.9% Medicare Tax. Remember that because you're an independent contractor being payed without withholding, YOU are responsible not only for the Medicare (and Social Security) taxes you'd be responsible for if a regular employee, but you're also responsible for what your employer's share as well.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "904dbe1fdaa1a1fc7f4f79339bfd05a6", "text": "My understanding (I've never filed one myself) is that the 1040ES is intended to allow you to file quarterly and report unpredictable income, and to pay estimated taxes on that income. I was in the same sort of boat for 2016 -- I had a big unexpected income source in 2015, and this took away my Safe Harbor for 2016. I adjusted my w-2 to zero exemptions (eventually) and will be getting a refund of about 1% of our income. So lets say you make 10000 in STG in March, and another 15000 in STG in April. File a quarterly 1040-ES between March 31 and April 15. Report the income, and pay some tax. You should be able to calculate the STCG Tax for 10k pretty easily. Just assume that it comes off the top and doesn't add at all to your deductions. Then for April, do the same by June 15. Just like your W-2 is used to estimate how much your employer should withhold, the 1040ES is designed to estimate how much extra you need to pay to the IRS to avoid penalties. It'll all get resolved after you file your final 1040 for the 2017 calendar year.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "11bf58b5be2052e7b15c114f910ca349", "text": "For estimating your take home salary, I suggest using one of the many free salary calculators available over the Internet. I personally use PaycheckCity.com, but there are plenty of others available. To calculate your allowances for the US Federal tax, you can use the worksheet attached to the form W-4. Similar form (with a similar worksheet) is available for state taxes, on the Illinois Department of Revenue web site.", "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": "67ea53fdb59599c1da7dc8de5c972c19", "text": "Do you have a regular job, where you work for somebody else and they pay you a salary? If so, they should be deducting estimated taxes from your paychecks and sending them in to the government. How much they deduct depends on your salary and what you put down on your W-4. Assuming you filled that out accurately, they will withhold an amount that should closely match the taxes you would owe if you took the standard deduction, have no income besides this job, and no unusual deductions. If that's the case, come next April 15 you will probably get a small refund. If you own a small business or are an independent contractor, then you have to estimate the taxes you will owe and make quarterly payments. If you're worried that the amount they're withholding doesn't sound right, then as GradeEhBacon says, get a copy of last year's tax forms (or this year's if they're out by now) -- paper or electronic -- fill them out by estimating what your total income will be for the year, etc, and see what the tax comes out to be.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1a4a030d22b00725bc7d80f94e016cc4", "text": "If you have a relatively stable income and deductions you can get a fairly good estimate using last year's tax bill. Suppose you paid $12000 of actual taxes last year and you are paid once a month. If you plan to make a similar amount of money with similar deductions, you need each monthly paycheck to have $1000 of federal income taxes withheld. I go to a paycheck calculator and find the withholding required to make sure I have that amount withheld every paycheck.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5a551643527dfc193e515fb6ecd6a9be", "text": "If you've already used TurboTax on your 2015 taxes, you can use the numbers TurboTax gave you as your reasonable estimate. Line 4 is your estimate of total tax liability for 2015. This would be line 63 of form 1040. This is Federal income tax only, not Social Security tax. Line 5 is the total of tax payments you made last year. You should be able to read this off your W-2 forms, Box 2. It corresponds to line 74 on the 1040. Line 6 is the difference between lines 4 and 5. You can't claim a refund on the extension, so if line 5 is more than line 4, enter 0. Otherwise, subtract line 5 from line 4, and enter it in line 6. This is the amount you should send in with the form to minimize any penalty due with your taxes later. The TurboTax software can generate this extension form automatically, I believe. Also, don't forget to give a copy of this extension form to your tax preparer. He will need to know the amount you sent in.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
254b83fd3be107b82b4926a3a2116cbd
Using a FOREX platform to actually change money
[ { "docid": "bc53a3856d0f7baf0a4ed7744243a7f5", "text": "\"FX trading platforms are not used for exchanging money, they are used for trading currencies. \"\"I know there are cheaper services like transferwise, charging about 0.5 %, but there is little/no control over the exchange rate, you just get the rate at the time of execution.\"\" With FX trading you don't have control of the exchange rate either, just like the share market, FX markets are determined by supply and demand of one currency over an other. So an individual does not have control over the exchange rate but will just get the rate at the time of the trade being executed.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "68e8dd4cb04f33ac12a48e82504d96dc", "text": "If you wanted to spend money in another country, a specialist credit card would be the most cost-effective way. Near-spot exchange rate, zero-loading, no/low ATM fees. Likewise a pre-paid debit card would also allow for money transfer across borders. If this is the right situation, FOREX trading platforms are overkill to achieve a valid solution.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "1cfa763eb7329a1cea601b1c91dda9c7", "text": "\"In short, yes. By \"\"forward selling\"\", you enter into a futures contract by which you agree to trade Euros for dollars (US or Singapore) at a set rate agreed to by both parties, at some future time. You are basically making a bet; you think that the dollar will gain on the Euro and thus you'd pay a higher rate on the spot than you've locked in with the future. The other party to the contract is betting against you; he thinks the dollar will weaken, and so the dollars he'll sell you will be worth less than the Euros he gets for them at the agreed rate. Now, in a traditional futures contract, you are obligated to execute it, whether it ends up good or bad for you. You can, to avoid this, buy an \"\"option\"\". By buying the option, you pay the other party to the deal for the right to say \"\"no, thanks\"\". That way, if the dollar weakens and you'd rather pay spot price at time of delivery, you simply let the contract expire un-executed. The tradeoff is that options cost money up-front which is now sunk; whether you exercise the option or not, the other party gets the option price. That basically creates a \"\"point spread\"\"; you \"\"win\"\" if the dollar appreciates against the Euro enough that you still save money even after buying the option, or if the dollar depreciates against the Euro enough that again you still save money after subtracting the option price, while you \"\"lose\"\" if the exchange rates are close enough to what was agreed on that it cost you more to buy the option than you gained by being able to choose to use it.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "68307d5be9ffcdcde08545453139e73a", "text": "\"Buying physical gold: bad idea; you take on liquidity risk. Putting all your money in a German bank account: bad idea; you still do not escape Euro risk. Putting all your money in USD: bad idea; we have terrible, terrible fiscal problems here at home and they're invisible right now because we're in an election year. The only artificially \"\"cheap\"\" thing that is well-managed in your part of the world is the Swiss Franc (CHF). They push it down artificially, but no government has the power to fight a market forever. They'll eventually run out of options and have to let the CHF rise in value.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "71e219616902d8413d4e308625b6c570", "text": "The only advantage of changing all your money now to the new currency is that you might get a better conversion rate now than later, so you get more of the new currency and you may pay a lower percentage fee for changing a larger sum of money. However, regarding the better conversion rate - you will not know this except with hindsight. The disadvantage of changing all at once is that if you have changed too much and need to change back to your own currency or a third currency, you will be charged fees and lose on the conversion rate twice. If you know how long you are going to be in the new country, say 12 months, maybe start by converting an amount you think you will be spending in a month. If you spend more then you can change a bit more the next month, or if you spend less change less the next month. If you find you are spending similar amounts for the next month or so, then you can budget on the amount you may be spending for the remainder of your stay and then convert this amount over. If you have a little left over at the end of your stay maybe reward yourself with something or buy a present for someone special back at home. If you need a little more, just convert this amount in the last month or so.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9baaf39656cae04a080059718b623e3a", "text": "Actually, yes. Two parties can write a contract and specify how money will change hands, it's called a swap. It's not unusual to write a contract that mimics an existing financial instrument. However, there are disadvantages to both sides to trading a swap rather than a more standard, liquid instrument, so usually it won't happen unless there's an excellent reason.", "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": "e5488cb152533b6023509b909b183eec", "text": "If you're interested in slower scale changes, one option is to use indexes that value a common commodity in different currencies such as the Big Mac Index. If a Big Mac costs more in AUD but stays the same in USD, then AUD have gone up.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "170473bd8e884ff4f8835a20e2c6cc1b", "text": "Disregarding leverage and things alike, I would like to know what's the difference between opening a position in Forex on a pair through a broker, for example, and effectively buy some currency in a traditional bank-to-bank transition The forex account may pay or charge you interest whereas converting your currency directly will not. Disregarding leverage, the difference would be interest.", "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": "c8331b83bbbd50d34c1de1b1590da0a5", "text": "The currency market, more often referred as Forex or FX, is the decentralized market through which the currencies are exchanged. To trade currencies, you have to go through a broker or an ECN. There are a lot's of them, you can find a (small) list of brokers here on Forex Factory. They will allow you to take very simple position on currencies. For example, you can buy EUR/USD. By doing so, you will make money if the EUR/USD rate goes up (ie: Euro getting stronger against the US dollar) and lose money if the EUR/USD rate goes down (ie: US dollar getting stronger against the Euro). In reality, when you are doing such transaction the broker: borrows USD, sell it to buy EUR, and place it into an Euro account. They will charge you the interest rate on the borrowed currency (USD) and gives you the interest and the bought currency (EUR). So, if you bought a currency with high interest rate against one with low interest rate, you will gain the interest rate differential. But if you sold, you will lose the differential. The fees from the brokers are likely to be included in the prices at which you buy and sell currencies and in the interest rates that they will charge/give you. They are also likely to gives you big leverage to invest far more than the money that you deposited in their accounts. Now, about how to make money out of this market... that's speculation, there are no sure gains about it. And telling you what you should do is purely subjective. But, the Forex market, as any market, is directed by the law of supply and demand. Amongst what impacts supply and demands there are: Also, and I don't want to judge your friends, but from experience, peoples are likely to tell you about their winning transaction and not about their loosing ones.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "4bebec0aa0906edd17ddf97af3fa375b", "text": "What is the point of this? Can't I achieve the exact same effect and outcome by exchanging currency now and put that amount of USD in a bank account to gain some interest, then make the payment from one year from now? This is for companies, not individuals. Companies usually take loans, because they think they can make more money (e.g. 10%*) than the interest on the loan (e.g. 5%*). Putting money on a bank account to earn interest there would give them even less (e.g. 1%*). So with your option, instead of earning 10%* interest, they'd earn 1%* interest. If the cost of the currency forward is less than these 9%* difference, the forward saves them money. If they have excess cash and they don't know how to invest that money, your option may be preferable *Simple numbers chosen for simplicity, not accuracy.", "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": "d8d1a7ed650bccb30e84e1f254b57628", "text": "\"Currencies that are pegged or fixed require that foreign currencies are held by the central issuer at a proportional amount. This is analogous to having a portfolio of currencies that the central bank issues shares from - in the form of its own currency. We will continue with this analogy, if the central bank says these \"\"shares\"\" are worth $1, but the underlying components of the portfolio are worth $0.80 and decreasing, then it is expensive for the central bank to maintain its peg, and eventually they will have to disregard the peg as people start questioning the central bank's solvency. (People will know the $1 they hold is not really worth what the central bank says it is, because of the price changes people experience in buying goods and services, especially when it comes to imports. Shadow economies will also trade using a currency more reflective of labor, which happens no matter what the government's punishments are for doing so). Swiss National Bank (central bank) did this in early 2015, as it experienced volatility in the Euro which it had previously been trying to keep it's currency pegged to. It became too expensive for it to keep this peg on its own. The central bank can devalue its currency by adjusting the proportions of the reserve, such as selling a lot of foreign currency X, buying more of currency Y. They can and do take losses doing this. (Swiss National Bank is maintaining a large loss) They can also flood their economy with more of their currency, diluting the value of each individual 1 dollar equivalent. This is done by issuing bonds or monetizing goods and services from the private sector in exchange for bonds. People colloquially call this \"\"printing money\"\" but it is a misnomer in this day and age where printers are not relevant tools. The good and service goes onto the central bank's balance book, and the company/entity that provided the service now has a bond on its book which can be immediately sold to someone else for cash (another reading is that the bond is as good as cash). The bond didn't previously exist until the central bank said it did, and central banks can infinitely exchange goods and services for bonds. Bond monetization (also called Quantitative Easing) is practiced by the Federal Reserve in the United States, Bank of Japan, European Central Bank and now the Central Bank of the Republic of China\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "505ca7e221596c6b8fd0ab08c320d875", "text": "Your assumption that funds sold in GBP trade in GBP is incorrect. In general funds purchase their constituent stocks in the fund currency which may be different to the subscription currency. Where the subscription currency is different from the fund currency subscriptions are converted into the fund currency before the extra money is used to increase holdings. An ETF, on the other hand, does not take subscriptions directly but by creation (and redemption) of shares. The principle is the same however; monies received from creation of ETF shares are converted into the fund currency and then used to buy stock. This ensures that only one currency transaction is done. In your specific example the fund currency will be USD so your purchase of the shares (assuming there are no sellers and creation occurs) will be converted from GBP to USD and held in that currency in the fund. The fund then trades entirely in USD to avoid currency risk. When you want to sell your exposure (supposing redemption occurs) enough holdings required to redeem your money are sold to get cash in USD and then converted to GBP before paying you. This means that trading activity where there is no need to convert to GBP (or any other currency) does not incur currency conversion costs. In practice funds will always have some cash (or cash equivalents) on hand to pay out redemptions and will have an idea of the number and size of redemptions each calendar period so will use futures and swaps to mitigate FX risk. Where the same firm has two funds traded in different currencies with the same objectives it is likely that one is a wrapper for the other such that one simply converts the currency and buys the other currency denominated ETF. As these are exchange traded funds with a price in GBP the amount you pay for the ETF or gain on selling it is the price given and you will not have to consider currency exchange as that should be done internally as explained above. However, there can be a (temporary) arbitrage opportunity if the price in GBP does not reflect the price in USD and the exchange rate put together.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ccef86861b5918e8ad02925f6b4ea9c4", "text": "Is there not some central service that tracks current currency rates that banks can use to get currency data? Sure. But this doesn't matter. All the central service can tell you is how much the rate was historically. But the banks/PayPal don't care about the historical value. They want to know the price that they'll pay when they get around to switching, not the last price before the switch. Beyond that, there is a transaction cost to switching. They have to pay the clearinghouse for managing the transaction. The banks can choose to act as a clearinghouse, but that increases their risk. If the bank has a large balance of US dollars but dollars are falling, then they end up eating that cost. They'll only take that risk if they think that they'll make more money that way. And in the end, they may have to go on the currency market anyway. If a European bank runs out of US dollars, they have to buy them on the open market. Or a US bank might run out of Euros. Or Yen. Etc. Another problem is that many of the currency transactions are small, but the overhead is fixed. If the bank has to pay $5 for every currency transaction, they won't even break even charging 3% on a $100 transaction. So they delay the actual transaction so that they can make more than one at a time. But then they have the risk that the currency value might change in the meantime. If they credit you with $97 in your account ($100 minus the 3% fee) but the price actually drops from $100 to $99, they're out the $1. They could do it the other way as well. You ask for a $100 transaction. They perform a $1000 transaction, of which they give you $97. Now they have $898 ($1000 minus the $5 they paid for the transaction plus the $3 they charged you for the transaction). If there's a 1% drop, they're out $10.98 ($8.98 in currency loss plus a net $2 in fees). This is why banks have money market accounts. So they have someone to manage these problems working twenty-four hours a day. But then they have to pay interest on those accounts, further eating into their profits. Along with paying a staff to monitor the currency markets and things that may affect them.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9440f6a0c8c21dafac732d0fc850d408", "text": "It depends on the currency pair since it is much harder to move a liquid market like Fiber (EURUSD) or Cable (GBPUSD) than it is to move illiquid markets such as USDTRY, however, it will mostly be big banks and big hedge funds adjusting their positions or speculating (not just on the currency or market making but also speculating in foreign instruments). I once was involved in a one-off USD 56 million FX trade without which the hedge fund could not trade as its subscriptions were in a different currency to the fund currency. Although it was big by their standards it was small compared with the volumes we expected from other clients. Governments and big companies who need to pay costs in a foreign currency or receive income in one will also do this but less frequently and will almost always do this through a nominated bank (in the case of large firms). Because they need the foreign currency immediately; if you've ever tried to pay a bill in the US denominated in Dollars using Euros you'll know that they aren't widely accepted. So if I need to pay a large bill to a supplier in Dollars and all I have is Euros I may move the market. Similarly if I am trying to buy a large number of shares in a US company and all I have is Euros I'll lose the opportunity.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
481a406fcf33751d0ec1f9c7401035ea
Pay off debt with RRSPs, or refinance and roll into Mortgage?
[ { "docid": "fefb086a115dbe34d379a43b0cf32c8a", "text": "I would personally look at consolidating your debt at a lower interest rate by refinancing your mortgage. I would leave any retirement funds alone unless it was absolutely necessary to touch it with no other avenues available. However, once you have consolidated your debt into the mortgage I would pay more than the minimum amount so that you don't take too long to pay it off. I would put about 50% of the freed-up cash flow back into the repayments, that way you will be paying more debt off quicker and you will have additional cash flow to help your monthly budget. Another good point would be to go through your monthly budget to see if there is any expenses you could reduce or eliminate.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "64bf683b2cb764773bfa0664236dc782", "text": "Others have suggested paying off the student loan, mostly for the satisfaction of one less payment, but I suggest you do the math on how much interest you would save by paying early on each of the loans: When you do the calculations I think you'll see why paying toward the debt with the highest interest rate is almost always the best advice. Whether you can refinance the mortgage to a lower rate is a separate question, but the above calculation would still apply, just with different amortization schedules.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5fef389da72a3933fc59fbc4e3eb5879", "text": "I concur that you should probably go with option 1. And that is coming from a guy that refinanced all three of his properties with down to 20% equity 3 years ago to lock in either 4% 30 year fixed or 2.75% 15 year mortgage. And I will not pay them off early because I do think I can do better than that in the market even if inflation is 0% for the next 30 years. Just imagine when the fed stops manipulating tax rates. I could be making more than 4% just in a checking account.", "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": "40b175d270c74eeb9e2496161fcc45ec", "text": "\"In my opinion, you should pay off the student loans as soon as possible, before you start saving for the house downpayment. $26k is a big number, but you have a great salary. (Nice!) Up until now, you have been a poor college student, accustomed to a relatively low standard of living. Your $800 per month plan would have you pay off the loan in 3 years, but I would challenge you to pay off this entire student loan in 1 year or less. A monthly loan payment of $2226 will pay off your loan in 12 months. After that is done, if you take the same amount you had been paying toward your student loans and save it for your condo, in less than two years you'll have a 10% down payment saved ($50k). The whole thing will take less than three years. There are three reasons why I recommend paying off the loan first before saving for the condo: one is practical and two are philosophical. Practical: You will save money on interest. Paying off the loan in 1 year vs. 3 years will save you $1343. You won't find a short-term safe investment that will beat 5% in interest. Philosophical: The loan is something current and concrete that you can focus on. Your condo is a dream at this point, and there is lots of time to change your mind. If the $2k+ per month amount is at all a sacrifice for you, then in a few months, you might be tempted to say to yourself, \"\"This month I really want a vacation, so I'll just skip this month of saving.\"\" For the loan, however, if you establish a concrete goal of 12 months to pay off the loan, it will hopefully help motivate you to allocate this money and stick to your plan. Philosophical: Getting used to borrowing money, making payments to a bank, and paying interest is not a great way to live. It is better, in my opinion, to eliminate your debt as fast as possible and start getting accustomed to saving cash for what you want. Clean up your debt, and resolve not to borrow any more money except for a reasonably-sized mortgage on your home.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "20a7959caf83fac45282eec3f792ae84", "text": "I can probably rent the house out for about $1,600. If sell now I can get 180k at the most. My mortgage will be $1,800 with tax and insurance. If I use the 180k to pay off the house, I can refinance the loan for a lower interest rate too. I think I know what I want to do but just need a second opinion. Thanks btw", "title": "" }, { "docid": "77e8a58ea457d1de62cdf902574ded7f", "text": "\"First to actually answer the question \"\"how long at these rates/payments?\"\"- These is nothing magic or nefarious about what the bank is doing. They add accrued interest and take your payment off the new total. I'd make higher payments to the 8.75% debt until it's gone, $100/mo extra and be done. The first debt, if you bump it to $50 will be paid in 147 months, at $75/mo, 92 months. Everything you pay above the minimum goes right to the principal balance and gets you closer to paying it off. The debt snowball is not the ideal way to pay off your debt. Say I have one 24% credit card the bank was nice enough to give me a $20,000 line of credit on. I also have 20 cards each with $1000 in credit, all at 6%. The snowball dictates that the smallest debt be paid first, so while I pay the minimum on the 24% card, the 6% cards get paid off one by one, but I'm supposed to feel good about the process, as I reduce the number of cards every few months. The correct way to line up debt is to pay off the (tax adjusted) highest rate first, as an extra $100 to the 24% card saves you $2/mo vs 50 cents/mo for the 6% cards. I wrote an article discussing the Debt Snowball which links to a calculator where you can see the difference in methods. I note that if the difference from lowest to highest rate is small, the Snowball method will only cost you a small amount more. If, by coincidence, the balances are close, the difference will also be small. The above aside, it's the rest of your situation that will tell you the right path for you. For example, a matched 401(k) deposit should take priority over most debt repayment. The $11,000 might be better conserved for a house downpayment as that $66/mo is student loan and won't count as the housing debt, rather \"\"other debt\"\" and part of the higher ratio when qualifying for the mortgage. If you already have taken this into account, by all means, pay off the 8.75% debt asap, then start paying off the 3% faster. Keep in mind, this is likely the lowest rate debt one can have and once paid off, you can't withdraw it again. So it's important to consider the big picture first. (Are you depositing to a retirement account? Is it a 401(k) and are you getting any matching from the company?)\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6e6c8a8bc66736ec4edd9e77be8941d3", "text": "You have a loan. You can probably assume you're going to have to repay that loan, every dollar. And every dollar that's outstanding on that loan costs you interest. So assuming you're not hit by any pre-payment penalty, any dollar that you pay down on your house right now saves you a compounded R% a year, where R is your mortgage rate. It doesn't really matter whether you're planning to sell it in a few years or not. If you pay $N, you'll save the interest + $N taken from the sale price and sent to the bank when you sell the house and move (though you might get a tax deduction on the interest). If you have a better place to park your money and earn a decent rate of return, it would be worth it to do that instead of paying down the mortgage. If you had another loan with higher interest rates, that's probably a better loan to pay off. If you can spend some of all of it on something that's actually genuinely worth R% of its purchase price a year (plus whatever the wear and tear takes away from its value, if anything) then spend it on that instead; that'd be a better investment. (For instance, investments in the stock market may offer better returns. However, that's risky! Observe that you can't lose money paying down your mortgage, and that Safety is usually relatively expensive these days, so it's not a bad deal. But if you're talking about using it for long-term retirement savings that are tax-advantaged to boot, that's another matter.) If you already have ample emergency funds and were just planning on putting the money into a savings account to rot at ~1.35% taxable interest, it's definitely worth it to pay down your balance now, unless you're about to sell (so the savings are slight) and it's a real inconvenience.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9b0539898150b5e673be097df180a33b", "text": "As far as the RRSP goes, see my answer in self directed RRSP for a non resident Don't forget to file your FBAR and form 8938, if applicable. -Jon", "title": "" }, { "docid": "415cfe9c6e1ba63151cdb3c932fb13c4", "text": "The bit I don't quite understand is why you are thinking about staying in debt in the first place - you're basically thinking about shuffling around assets and liabilities in order to stay in debt? I think what I would do in your situation is to liquidate enough of the investments you have and pay off the mortgage. This doesn't change your net worth position less the fees etc that you might incur, but it'll save you the interest for the mortgage over the remaining term of your mortgage.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5de97a1bc0bbdec7f2e311fbfba9d0bd", "text": "\"Be careful that pride is not getting in the way of making a good decision. As it stands now what difference does it make to have 200K worth of debt and a 200K house or 225K of debt and a 250K house? Sure you would have a 25K higher net worth, but is that really important? Some may even argue that such an increase is not real as equity in primary residence might not be a good indication of wealth. While there is nothing wrong with sitting down with a banker, most are likely to see your scheme as dubious. Home improvements rarely have a 100% ROI and almost never have a 200% ROI, I'd say you'd be pretty lucky to get a 65% ROI. That is not to say they will deny you. The banks are in the business of lending money, and have the goal of taking as much of your hard earned paycheck as possible. They are always looking to \"\"sheer the sheep\"\". Why not take a more systematic approach to improving your home? Save up and pay cash as these don't seem to cause significant discomfort. With that size budget and some elbow grease you can probably get these all done in three years. So in three years you'll have about 192K in debt and a home worth 250K or more.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "bf79dde3dc875f2fbf63f83f73b19f09", "text": "See my recent answer to a similar question on prepaying a mortgage versus investing in IRA. The issue here is similar: you want to compare the relative rates of funding your retirement account versus paying down your debt. If you can invest at a better rate than you are paying on your debt, with similar risk, then you should invest. Otherwise, pay down your debt. The big difference with your situation is that you have a variable rate loan, so there's a significant risk that the rate on it will go up. If I was in your shoes, I would do the following: But that's me. If you're more debt-averse, you may decide to prepay that fixed rate loan too.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f07974bd886b6e8108387019411c35ff", "text": "It really depends on your taxable income. If you are in a higher tax bracket and expect to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement, the RRSP is probably your best bet. If, however, you are in a low tax bracket now, then it might be best to start with your TFSA. Hope this helps!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7c853961074fd36f608ef0fb10f40b4a", "text": "Paying off debts will reduce your monthly obligation to creditors (less risk) and also remove the possibility of foreclosure / repossession / lawsuit if you ever lost access to income (less risk). Risk is an important part of the equation that can get overlooked. It sounds like pulling that money out of the market will reduce your yearly tax bill as well.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0933048f289c21eb3a5c4a85958f3908", "text": "\"Understand your own risk tolerance and discipline. From Moneychimp we can see different market results - This is a 15 year span, containing what was arguably one of the most awful decades going. A full 10 year period with a negative return. Yet, the 15 year return was a 6.65% CAGR. You'd net 5.65% after long term cap gains. Your mortgage is likely costing ~4% or 3% after tax (This is not applicable to my Canadian friends, I understand you don't deduct interest). In my not so humble opinion, I'd pay off the highest rate debts first (unlike The David followers who are happy to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in 0% interest debt before the large 18% debt) and invest at the highest rate I'd get long term. The problem is knowing when to flip from one to the other. Here's food for thought - The David insists on his use of the 12% long term market return. The last 100 years have had an average 11.96% return, but you can't spend average, the CAGR, the real compound rate was 10.06%. Why would he recommend paying off a sub 3% loan while using 12% for his long term planning (All my David remarks are not applicable to Canadian members, you all probably know better than to listen to US entertainers)? I am retired, and put my money where my mouth is. The $200K I still owe on my mortgage is offset by over $400K in my 401(k). The money went in at 25%/28% pretax, has grown over these past 20 years, and comes out at 15% to pay my mortgage each month. No regrets. Anyone starting out now, and taking a 30 year mortgage, but putting the delta to a 15 year mortgage payment into their 401(k) is nearly certain to have far more in the retirement account 15 years hence than their remaining balance on the loan, even after taxes are considered. Even more if this money helps them to get the full matching, which too many miss. All that said, keep in mind, the market is likely to see a correction or two in the next 15 years, one of which may be painful. If that would keep you up at night, don't listen to me. If a fixed return of 4% seems more appealing than a 10% return with a 15% standard deviation, pay the mortgage first. Last - if you have a paid off house but no job, the town still wants its property tax, and the utilities still need to be paid. If you lose your job with $400K in your 401(k)/IRA but have a $200K mortgage, you have a lot of time to find a new job or sell the house with little pressure from the debt collectors. (To answer the question in advance - \"\"Joe, at what mortgage rate do you pay it off first?\"\" Good question. I'd deposit to my 401(k) to grab matching deposits first, and then if the mortgage was anywhere north of 6%, prioritize that. This would keep my chances at near 100% of coming out ahead.)\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "363fd94950f22e0134aa2f2d5c7b54b6", "text": "So if I understand your plan right, this will be your situation after the house is bought: Total Debt: 645,000 Here's what I would do: Wait until your house sells before buying a new one. That way you can take the equity from that sale and apply it towards the down payment rather than taking a loan on your retirement account. If something happens and your house doesn't sell for as mush as you think it will, you'll lose out on the gains from the amount you borrow, which will more than offset the interest you are paying yourself. AT WORST, pay off the 401(k) loan the instant your sale closes. Take as much of the remaining equity as you can and start paying down student loans. There are several reasons why they are a higher priority than a mortgage - some are mathematical, some are not. Should I look to pay off student loans sooner (even if I refi at a lower rate of 3.5% or so), or the mortgage earlier ... My thoughts are that the student loans follow me for life, but I can always sell and buy another home So you want this baggage for the rest of your life? How liberating will it be when you get that off your back? How much investing are you missing out on because of student loan payments? What happens if you get lose your license? What if you become disabled? Student loans are not bankruptable, but you can always sell the asset behind a mortgage or car loan. They are worse than credit card debt in that sense. You have no tangible asset behind it and no option for forgiveness (unless you decide to practice in a high-need area, but I don't get the sense that that's your path). The difference in interest is generally only a few payment' worth over 15 years. Is the interest amortized the same as a 15 year if I pay a 30 year mortgage in 15 years? Yes, however the temptation to just pay it off over 30 years is still there. How often will you decide that a bigger car payment, or a vacation, or something else is more important? With a 15-year note you lock in a plan and stick to it. Some other options:", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
3bce6e2c511d49609f57014e69899d14
How to send money across borders physically and inexpensively, but not via cash?
[ { "docid": "c9d6be6f0e86bffd710cc7970c6d52dc", "text": "Traveller's cheques. That's exactly what they were intended for. Their usage has dropped a lot since everyone can use ATMs in foreign countries, but they still exist.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "0c2dfe34ea55af11139b3dade5f2cb38", "text": "I assume the same criteria apply for this as your previous question. You want to physically transfer in excess of 50,000 USD multiple times a week and you want the transportation mechanism to be instant or very quick. I don't believe there is any option that won't raise serious red flags with the government entities you cross the boundaries of. Even a cheque, which a person in the comments of OP's question suggests, wouldn't be sufficient due to government regulation requiring banks to put holds on such large amounts.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8b4be8aad61a6ef44553bfbc86c5f17a", "text": "There are checks, international wire transfers (SWIFT), depending on country pair remittance services.", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "7b0abf889b5f4d92b0380f441a712a5d", "text": "A USD bank draft from any of the major Canadian banks is a good solution. They clear quickly in the U.S. I use them frequently and have never had a problem depositing them in a U.S. bank account. If you carry more than $10k across the border, even as a cheque, be sure to declare it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d75920d84097b33a1bc7c02b04354336", "text": "\"At this point, a great deal of the world's wealth exists only in electronic form, and just as you can write a check or pay by debit card and trust the banks will handle it, banks can conduct wire transfers\"\" through higher-level banking networks. In the US, when there is a need to convert physical money to electronic or vice versa, it is typically handled by armored car and armed guard transfer between a bank and the local Federal Reserve Bank office. Physical money is moved around only when necessary, and for as short a distance as possible, to the most secure facilities possible, to minimize risk. I can't vouch for how it's managed elsewhere in the world, where the networks and repository banks may not be as available. I would presume (I would hope!) that the same general concepts and approaches are followed.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1fdd4f09855ddcd6cdc153c4d6a7f45f", "text": "Beside standard Swift (which may be registered and checked for money laundering) there are the money transfer companies (Western Union) and the electronic currencies like bitcoin. Besides that is buying something very expensive (gold / diamonds) and sell them again a possibility to transport vast amount of value.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b07f497cffd2218956e7aa65b10ae538", "text": "The simplest thing to do is still one of the oldest: Write a check. If you don't have a checking account, you can still probably enter the payment in your bank's online bill pay - In this case they will send him a paper check. There's an irrational desire these days to avoid checks at all costs, which I don't understand. There's a time and place for electronic transfers and there's no doubt they're often very useful. This is probably not one of those cases, however, since neither you nor your friend are set up for it.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3191d2f454326a7859fc9d698b99996f", "text": "I would imagine that a wire transfer would be the best way to transfer large amounts of money without the risk of carrying cash or dealing with plastic.", "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": "259c8a36df993034b5efd5360444ceb7", "text": "Maintain your U.S. bank accounts. Use xe.com to transfer money back and forth.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e4be9577a4007b8e6fa6001cd6834502", "text": "This question was asked three years ago, but now that it's 2017 there is actually a relatively easy, cheap and fast solution to at least the first half of your question. To cash the check: I've done this a half dozen times while abroad (from the US) without any problems.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b775389adcd94bfb236015feb4f12193", "text": "I've spoken with a number of expatriates in Canada and Canadian bankers over the past few days. Here's what I've been able to piece together. This was surprising to me. As I understand it, the only sure-fire way to wire transfer funds from an arbitrary bank to another arbitrary bank on a different continent on the first try is by using the IBAN number of the destination account. IBAN seems to be the only account number format that is anywhere close to a worldwide standard. If the destination account does not have an IBAN number (like those in Canada and USA), then you rely on a degree of wisdom on the part of the sending bank(er) to format your numbers (account/institution/transit/etc) in such a way that the transfer successfully reaches the destination account. If any given sending bank has not sent funds to another given non-IBAN bank recently, then there is an element of uncertainty as to how the destination account's numbers have to be entered into the sending bank's system. The de facto practice seems to be to develop the wisdom of what works and what doesn't by attempting to transfer small sums until they succeed. Then the sending bank uses the exact same method to transfer the large sum as they used for the small sum that succeeded. It seems like there are some things you can do pro-actively increase your odds that a wire transfer to a non-IBAN account will succeed. Ultimately you want to provide four different pieces of information that are especially important for non-IBAN wire transfers: All of your numbers in all applicable compositions - Wire transfer number formats are often actually multiple fundamental numbers that are concatenated, prefixed, and suffixed. I suspect that some wire transfer senders actually need to enter the fundamental numbers separately or in different compositions. Suppose the sending bank needs, for example, the institution identifer. The ABA routing number does contain, among other things, the institution identifier. However, you should provide the institution number separately in your wire transfer instructions because the sending bank might need the institution number and will probably have no idea how to extract it from the ABA routing number. For Canada, I think the number you should provide are as follows:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "3231246773240a1db631abc67e9a1df0", "text": "The best, cheapest and safe way is to wire transfer that money from their Bank Account to yours. Ask your bank about information regarding inbound international wire transfer and provide those details to your dad. About how much amounts can he do so : if the amount is more than $10K, you need to provide enough information about where the money is coming from, sources and other legal details. Whatever way you chose, never do transfers in small chunks (which is called structuring), to avoid the legal hassle - as that might result in more issues and every bank has checks in place to find out this way of structuring. I would suggest wire transfer all the money, through proper channel, through the banks. It's better to pay some fees, follow the law and live peacefully than to go through some improper channels to avoid paltry fees and get into serious issues.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b0eea496577f21e08aba1c08f0120db3", "text": "\"I've been doing a bunch of Googling and reading since I first posed this question on travel.SE and I've found an article on a site called \"\"thefinancebuff.com\"\" with a very good comparison of costs as of September 2013: Get the Best Exchange Rate: Bank Wire, Xoom, XE Trade, Western Union, USForex, CurrencyFair by Harry Sit It compares the following methods: Their examples are for sending US$10,000 from the US to Canada and converting to Canadian dollars. CurrencyFair worked out the cheapest.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f6d60f4dba811af0fb506943dfa626a1", "text": "You could use: SWIFT transfer : ask your counterparty for his bank SWIFT code and beneficiary account numbers; you can do a SWIFT transfer to most countries from your Indian bank). You will need to fill a form where they ask you what you're transferring the money for, etc. Most Indian banks provide this facility. Western Union: I'm not sure if WU is in China, but they are very simple to use. Paypal: They charge heavy fees, but may be the fastest way to get your money across.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cefda8906aadf05eb9ff42cf1142e13b", "text": "Give a cheque. You can. Your friend would have to deposit this in a Bank that does this service. Not all Banks offer this service in US. It generally would take 1-3 months for the funds to reach. Give a dollar-denominated cheque You can NOT write check on a Rupee account and put USD. You can definitely buy a USD Draft generally payable in the US. There would be some charge for you here and send it by courier, post. It would get paid into your friends account in about a week. Do a SWIFT transfer Yes you can. You may need to walk into a Branch and fill up forms. If the amount is more than specified limit a CA certificate is required. Am I correct in understanding Yes Use my ATM card in the US Yes you can. Specialised money transfer services like Western Union Transfer money out of India is not allowed by Money Transfer services", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6de94ac78115627cd2b1b2bc786d5e8d", "text": "You can go to any Canada Post office and ask for their money-transfer services (they use a company called Money-gram). You can see more details here: http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/productsservices/shop/moneygrams.jsf At least to send money to Brazil and other south-american countries, it's the cheapest service I've found, and it's very reliable.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "eb6c6796782b010ab2df31917602aebc", "text": "I am looking at size by revenue. Looking at market capitalization gives a much different list. I don't think market cap is a good metric for this discussion. According to market cap Telsa is the largest automotive company in the US, but that is because it is expected to do well in the future by the investment community. According to market cap what is reddit worth?", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
31f54979612bf9b543ea29270ba20138
How does a tax exemption for an action = penalty for inaction?
[ { "docid": "4c59cd1269592dcf22c7348de2a45cf4", "text": "\"What it means is that you can always come up with alternative framings where the difference between two options is stated as a gain or a loss, but the effect is the same in either case. For instance, if I offer to sell a T-shirt for $10 and offer a cash discount of $1, you pay $10 if buying with a credit card or $9 if buying with cash. If I instead offer the shirt for $9 with a $1 surcharge for credit card use, you still pay $10 if buying with a credit card or $9 if buying with cash. The financial result is the same in either case, but psychologically people may perceive them differently and make different buying decisions. In a tax situation it may be more complicated since exemptions wouldn't directly reduce your tax, but only your taxable income. However, you can still see that, in general, having to pay $X more in tax for not doing some action (e.g., not purchasing health insurance) is the same as being able to pay $X less in tax as a reward for doing the action. Either way, doing the action results in you paying $X less than you would if you didn't do it; the only difference is in which behavior (doing it or not doing it) is framed as the \"\"default\"\" option. Again, these framings may differentially influence people's behavior even when the net result is the same.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a1ddf8035d81c62f2c9887354608bca0", "text": "\"There's a significant difference between \"\"discount\"\" and \"\"surcharge\"\". For starters - legal difference. If you have a list price of $X - that's the price you're committed to sell regardless of the payment method. So it doesn't matter if I pay with cash or credit - I'll pay $X. However, it costs you more when I pay with credit - so you want to pass that cost on me. You charge me surcharge - an addition to the price. In some States in the US and in some other countries - that is against the law. You cannot add on top of the listed price any amount regardless of the payment method. However, you can say that the list price is $X, which includes the assumed credit card surcharge of $Y. And then you give discount of $Y to anyone not paying with credit card. The list price is still $X, regardless of the payment method. You don't have to give the discount, the discount is your cost of doing business. But that would be legal in some places (not all!) that forbid credit card surcharge. So the main difference from legal perspective is that you're not allowed to add to the list price, but you're allowed to discount from it. Regarding taxes - exemption/deduction is not a penalty for negative. Exemption/deduction is an implementation of a social policy. For example, it is for the public benefit for everyone to own a house. So the Congress comes up with a deduction of mortgage interest. However, you're not penalized if you don't own a house by paying higher taxes. Your tax rate doesn't change. You just don't get to deduct something that you might be able to deduct had you owned a house with a mortgage. This is, again - a discount of a list price, not a surcharge. You're not penalized if you don't have a house or don't have a mortgage, but if you do - you get a break. The author you're quoting claims that bottom line would be the same as if you considered the absence of a deduction as a penalty. But that's not true, because even if you do have a mortgage you may not be able to deduct it because your income is too high, the mortgage is for too much, or your mortgage is not on the primary residence. So mere existence of the mortgage doesn't directly correlate to the existence of the deduction. Similarly with credit card surcharges - you may get a cash discount, but you may get the similar amount of money back even if you use a credit card. Not as a cash discount but rather as rewards, cash-backs or points. However, if there's no cash discount, you won't be getting these if you're paying cash. So again - you're not penalized for having a credit card by not getting a discount, because you may still get it in a different way - and if you don't, you still may end up not getting it. So the quote is a rather simplistic and negative view and more of an opinion than stating a fact.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "5d59a80cbc6303934bc2c968a57e0e8c", "text": "IANAL but I'd think common sense would say that if you take advantage of one of the special cases that allow you to withdraw from a retirement plan without penalty, and then for whatever reason you don't use the money for a legal purpose, you would have to either return the money or pay the tax penalty. And I'll go out on a limb here without any documentation and guess that if you lie to the IRS and say that you withdrew the money for an exempt purpose and instead use it to go on vacation and you get caught, that you will not only have to pay the tax penalty but will also be liable for criminal charges of tax fraud. If the law and/or IRS regulations say that the only legal exceptions are A, B, and C, that pretty clearly means that if you do D, you are breaking the law. And in the eyes of the government, failing to pay the taxes you owe is way worse than robbery, murder, or rape.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e68884c126ee2aa73487ae014e62066e", "text": "No, inaction is not always the rational choice in your scenario. To give an extreme example as proof: Let's say that you have $1,000. The expected value of inaction is $0 - you will end up with the same amount (minus inflation, but we can ignore that for this exercise). If your only other option is an investment which has a 75% chance of losing all of your money, and a 25% chance of doubling your money, then your expected value is ((75% * -$1,000)+ (25% * $1,000)) = -$500. In that case your best option is obviously inaction. However, let's say that you have a 75% chance of losing all of your money, but a 25% chance of making $1,000,000 on your investment. In that case, the expected value of investing is ((75% * -$1,000)+ (25% * $1,000,000)) = $249,250. This means that the rational thing is to make the investment. Basically, the 25% chance of making $1M is worth the 75% chance of losing everything.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "f09b04925f139645f4288f93ae03c7bb", "text": "Taxes and exemptions &amp; credits from tax exist is to encourage behavior that the government wants to promote. National and international corporate taxation is this case encourages putting capital under a mattress. By setting up a system encouraging hoarding of capital, the national and international taxing regimes fail us.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "943bdfb9bd4b87b033901c6b9f9b209a", "text": "You can do that, you aren't missing anything. It is supposed to be punishment, but as you are moving to a European country your non-penalized income would likely be taxed higher as is. I don't have info on whether you will be taxed a second time by the European country.", "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": "7a31634080d21cd160fd160fc41d54b5", "text": "\"That's an example of the Act applying to an adviser to a fund, not a fund being exempt from the Act. An adviser to a 3(c)7 fund in this case is taking advantage of a safe harbor pertaining to performance-based compensation set forth in the Act. The reasoning is that a 3(c)7 fund will by definition most likely be comprised of \"\"qualified clients.\"\" The prohibition does apply to other private funds - such as 3(c)1 funds. To the extent that their investors are not \"\"qualified clients,\"\" they are unable to charge a performance-based fee.\"", "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": "071f7252ad58078526431800146394df", "text": "\"When you say \"\"set aside,\"\" you mean you saved to pay the tax due in April? That's underpaying. It's a rare exception the IRS makes for this penalty, hopefully it wasn't too large, and you now know how much to withhold through payroll deductions. Problem is, this wasn't unusual, it was an oversight. You have no legitimate grounds to dispute. Sorry.\"", "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": "b6afab9c5eaf1944db3dd74931e91634", "text": "\"Maybe, in that the government gets interest on the money it takes in, and has to pay interest on the money it spends or has agreed to spend (pensions, etc.). So depending on which interest rate is higher, the disadvantage shifts a little. It's also not a question of \"\"deeming\"\" things, but a tax credit would be more like taking a cut in pay rather than spending more money. Thinking of it as \"\"spending tax money\"\" should only be a way of helping to show that it makes this disadvantage.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6808f0558b0a8de58b63cdcecf039730", "text": "Yeah I agree. What Cat did was likely illegal, but a lot of that was due to incompetence. If done properly, they could have ended up in the gray range where they could potentially justify their tax position to the IRS. To the larger point though, it just seems wasteful to play these games. I understand everyone does it and that it's part of the system, it just all seems a bit ridiculous and I wonder if there's a simpler solution that could benefit all stakeholders. Governments get similar revenues without dealing with ridiculous complexities of tax avoidance schemes, companies are more efficient, and then efficiency or revenue gains can be passed onto workers. My main worry however, is that these gains would be passed onto executive bonuses instead.", "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": "26b9ef47787676d25e91b11143e4b3ec", "text": "The 2012 return was due 4/15/2013 (I'm assuming it didn't fall on a weekend). No late filing penalty if there was no tax due, but he has until 4/15/2016 to file for a refund or to document anything that should have carried forward.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6f0cc2e96060ea740329a49fafde29e6", "text": "didn't pay the extra underpayment penalty on the grounds that it was an honest mistake. You seem to think a penalty applies only when the IRS thinks you were trying to cheat the system. That's not the case. A mistake (honest or otherwise) still can imply a penalty. While you can appeal just about anything, on any grounds you like, it's unlikely you will prevail.", "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": "" } ]
fiqa
076435c8ede2e5d7f61a6b96ef6959c5
How to Store Funds Generated through FX Trading
[ { "docid": "0cf658c6d4727ceda9b94342ac66bd0e", "text": "\"Earned income is what your software is doing, so it is taxable. So you can't really make it tax exempt. You can form a business and claim the revenues from that business as income and deduct expenses it costs you to earn that revenue. If you buy a server to run your software, then that is an acceptable expense to deduct from your revenues. Others can be more questionable and the best thing to do is to consult a CPA. If you are still in the testing stage and the revenues will be small then it should not matter. Worry about the important things, not if you paid the IRS a few hundred to much. Are you in a state/country that allows online gambling? In most states here in the US you are operating on shaky legal ground. Before \"\"Black Friday\"\" I used to earn a nice part-time income playing online poker.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "2fc3014e53ce66c2041906e87955ae2e", "text": "The ruble was, is and will be very unstable because of unstable political situation in Russia and the economy strongly dependent of the export of raw resources. What you can do? I assume, you want to minimize risk. The best way to achieve that is to make your savings in some stable currency. Euro and Swiss Franc are currently very stable currencies, so storing your surpluses in them is a very good option if you want to keep your money safe. To prevent political risk, you should keep your money in countries with stable political regime, which are unlikely to 'nationalize' the savings of the citizens in predictable future. As for your existing savings in rubles, it's a hard deal. I assume, as the web developer, you have a plenty of money, which have lost a lot of value. If you convert them to euro or francs, you will preserver the current value (after the loss). You'll safe them agaist ruble falling down, but in case the ruble will return to previous value, you'll loose. Keeping savings in instable currencies is, however, speculation, like investing in gold etc. So if you can mentally accept the loss and want to sleep good, convert them. You have also option to invest in properties, for example buy an extra appartment. It's a good way to deal with financial surplus in Europe in US, however you should be aware, in Russland it's connected with the political risk. The real estates can be confiscated in any moment by the state and you can't run away with it (the savings can also be confiscated, but there's a fair chance you'll manage to rescue them if you act quickly).", "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": "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": "eefc2de9693868d1aea53b7a9f8281ef", "text": "You can calculate your exposure intuitively, by calculating your 'fx sensitivity'. Take your total USD assets, let's assume $50k. Convert to EUR at the current rate, let's assume 1 EUR : 1.1 USD, resulting in 45.5k EUR . If the USD strengthens by 1%, this moves to a rate of ~1.09, resulting in 46k EUR value for the same 50k of USD investments. From this you can see that for every 1% the USD strengthens, you gain 500 EUR. For every 1% the USD weakens, you lose 500 EUR. The simplest way to reduce your exchange rate risk exposure, is to simply eliminate your foreign currency investments. ie: if you do not want to be exposed to fluctuations in the USD, invest in EUR only. This will align your assets with the currency of your future expenses [assuming you intend to continue living in Europe].This is not possible of course, if you would like to maintain investments in US assets. One relatively simple method available to invest in the US, without gaining an exposure to the USD, is to invest in USD assets only with money borrowed in USD. ie: if you borrow $50k USD, and invest $50k in the US stock market, then your new investments will be in the same currency as your debt. Therefore if the USD strengthens, your assets increase in relative EUR value, and your debt becomes more expensive. These two impacts wash out, leaving you with no net exposure to the value of the USD. There is a risk to this option - you are investing with a higher 'financial leverage' ratio. Using borrowed money to invest increases your risk; if your investments fall in value, you still need to make the periodic interest payments. Many people view this increased risk as a reason to never invest with borrowed money. You are compensated for that risk, by increased returns [because you have the ability to earn investment income without contributing any additional money of your own]. Whether the risk is worth it to you will depend on many factors - you should search this site and others on the topic to learn more about what those risks mean.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8257d17b4fce98bacecffd5f57a491f1", "text": "\"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. Why move funds back? If you want to lock in current exchange rates, figure out how much money you are likely to spend in Australia for the next six months. Move just enough funds to cover that to an Australian bank. Leave the remainder in the United States (US), as your future expenses will be in US dollars. So long as you don't find some major, unanticipated purchase, this covers you. You have enough money for the next six months with no exchange rate worries. At the end of the six months, if you fall slightly short, cover with your credit card as you are doing now. You'll take a loss, but on a small amount of money. If you have a slight excess and you were right about the exchange rate, you'll make a little profit at the end. If you were wrong, you'll take a small loss. The key here is that you should be able to budget for your six months. You can lock in current exchange rates just for that amount of money. Moving all your funds to Australia is a gamble. You can certainly do that if you want, but rather than gambling, it may be better to take the sure thing. You know you need six months expenses, so just move that. You will definitely be spending six months money in Australia, so you are immune to exchange rate fluctuations for that period. The remainder of your money can stay in the US, as that's where you plan to spend it. However, recent political events back in the States have me (and, I'm sure, every currency speculator and foreign investor) worried that this advantage will not last for much longer. If currency speculators expect exchange rates to fall, then they'd have already bid down the rates. I.e. they'd keep speculating until the rates did fall. So the speculators expect the current rates are correct, otherwise they'd move them. Donald Trump's state goal is to increase exports relative to imports. If he's successful, this could cause the US dollar to fall to make exports cheaper and imports more expensive. However, if his policies fail, then the opposite is likely to happen. Most of his announced trade policies are more likely to increase the value of the dollar than to decrease it. In particular, that is the likely result of increased tariffs. If you are worried about Trump failing, then you should worry about a strong dollar. That's more in line with actual speculation since the election. I don't know that I'd make a strong bet in either direction. Hedging makes more sense to me, as it simply locks in the current situation, which you apparently find favorable. Not hedging at all might produce some profit if the dollar goes up. Gambling all your funds might produce some profit if the dollar goes down. The middle path of hedging just what you're spending is the safest if least likely to produce profit. My recommendation is to hedge the six months expenses and enjoy your time abroad. Why worry about political events that you can't control? Enjoy your working (studying) vacation.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b0faa9b09d609afbd8ea2deaf040ae91", "text": "If the account is not dollar-denominated, I would say it does not make sense at all to have dollar-denominated statements. Such a statement would not even be accurate for any reasonable amount of time (since FX rates constantly fluctuate). This would be a nightmare for accounting purposes. If you really need to know the statements in USD, I think the best practice would be to perform the conversion yourself using Excel or some similar software.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e92a5e3cfe7db5a782b9931710ff389d", "text": "\"You might find some of the answers here helpful; the question is different, but has some similar concerns, such as a changing economic environment. What approach should I take to best protect my wealth against currency devaluation & poor growth prospects. I want to avoid selling off any more of my local index funds in a panic as I want to hold long term. Does my portfolio balance make sense? Good question; I can't even get US banks to answer questions like this, such as \"\"What happens if they try to nationalize all bank accounts like in the Soviet Union?\"\" Response: it'll never happen. The question was what if! I think that your portfolio carries a lot of risk, but also offsets what you're worried about. Outside of government confiscation of foreign accounts (if your foreign investments are held through a local brokerage), you should be good. What to do about government confiscation? Even the US government (in 1933) confiscated physical gold (and they made it illegal to own) - so even physical resources can be confiscated during hard times. Quite a large portion of my foreign investments have been bought at an expensive time when our currency is already around historic lows, which does concern me in the event that it strengthens in future. What strategy should I take in the future if/when my local currency starts the strengthen...do I hold my foreign investments through it and just trust in cost averaging long term, or try sell them off to avoid the devaluation? Are these foreign investments a hedge? If so, then you shouldn't worry if your currency does strengthen; they serve the purpose of hedging the local environment. If these investments are not a hedge, then timing will matter and you'll want to sell and buy your currency before it does strengthen. The risk on this latter point is that your timing will be wrong.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1f73dc803fba81d5dfb602b8038cccdb", "text": "It can be zero or negative given the current market conditions. Any money parked with treasury bonds is 100% risk free. So if I have a large amount of USD, and need a safe place to keep, then in today's environment even the banks (large as well) are at risk. So if I park my money with some large bank and that bank goes bankrupt, my money is gone for good. After a long drawn bankruptcy procedure, I may get back all of it or some of it. Even if the bank does not go bankrupt, it may face liquidity crises and I may not be able to withdraw when I want. Hence it's safer to keep it in Treasury bonds even though I may not gain any interest, or even lose a small amount of money. At least it will be very safe. Today there are very few options for large investors (typically governments and institutional investors.) The Euro is facing uncertainty. The Yuan is still regulated. There is not enough gold to buy (or to store it.) Hence this leads towards the USD. The very fact that USD is safe in today's environment is reflected in the Treasury rates.", "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": "3f556ec1a4b3445c80dd443fbfc037af", "text": "I prefer to use a Foreign Exchange transfer service. You will get a good exchange rate (better than from Paypal or from your bank) and it is possible to set it up with no transfer fees on both ends. You can use an ACH transfer from your US bank account to the FX's bank account and then a SEPA transfer in Europe to get the funds into your bank account. Transfers can also go in the opposite direction (Europe to USA). I've used XE's service (www.xe.com) and US Forex's service (www.usforex.com). Transferwise (www.transferwise.com) is another popular service. US Forex's service calls you to confirm each transfer. They also charge a $5 fee on transfers under $1000. XE's service is more convenient: they do not charge fees for small transfers and do not call you to confirm the tramsfer. However, they will not let you set up a free ACH transfer from US bank accounts if you set up your XE account outside the US. In both cases, the transfer takes a few business days to complete. EDIT: In my recent (Summer 2015) experience, US Forex has offered slightly better rates than XE. I've also checked out Transferwise, and for transfers from the US it seems to be a bit of a gimmick with a fee added late in the process. For reference, I just got quotes from the three sites for converting 5000 USD to EUR:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e13140ddbbd5bb612d992c09669ccc10", "text": "\"In essence the problem that the OP identified is not that the FX market itself has poor liquidity but that retail FX brokerage sometimes have poor counterparty risk management. The problem is the actual business model that many FX brokerages have. Most FX brokerages are themselves customers of much larger money center banks that are very well capitalized and provide ample liquidity. By liquidity I mean the ability to put on a position of relatively decent size (long EURUSD say) at any particular time with a small price impact relative to where it is trading. For spot FX, intraday bid/ask spreads are extremely small, on the order of fractions of pips for majors (EUR/USD/GBP/JPY/CHF). Even in extremely volatile situations it rarely becomes much larger than a few pips for positions of 1 to 10 Million USD equivalent notional value in the institutional market. Given that retail traders rarely trade that large a position, the FX spot market is essentially very liquid in that respect. The problem is that there are retail brokerages whose business model is to encourage excessive trading in the hopes of capturing that spread, but not guaranteeing that it has enough capital to always meet all client obligations. What does get retail traders in trouble is that most are unaware that they are not actually trading on an exchange like with stocks. Every bid and ask they see on the screen the moment they execute a trade is done against that FX brokerage, and not some other trader in a transparent central limit order book. This has some deep implications. One is the nifty attribute that you rarely pay \"\"commission\"\" to do FX trades unlike in stock trading. Why? Because they build that cost into the quotes they give you. In sleepy markets, buyers and sellers cancel out, they just \"\"capture\"\" that spread which is the desired outcome when that business model functions well. There are two situations where the brokerage's might lose money and capital becomes very important. In extremely volatile markets, every one of their clients may want to sell for some reason, this forces the FX brokers to accumulate a large position in the opposite side that they have to offload. They will trade in the institutional market with other brokerages to net out their positions so that they are as close to flat as possible. In the process, since bid/ask spreads in the institutional market is tighter than within their own brokerage by design, they should still make money while not taking much risk. However, if they are not fast enough, or if they do not have enough capital, the brokerage's position might move against them too quickly which may cause them lose all their capital and go belly up. The brokerage is net flat, but there are huge offsetting positions amongst its clients. In the example of the Swiss Franc revaluation in early 2015, a sudden pop of 10-20% would have effectively meant that money in client accounts that were on the wrong side of the trade could not cover those on the other side. When this happens, it is theoretically the brokerage's job to close out these positions before it wipes out the value of the client accounts, however it would have been impossible to do so since there were no prices in between the instantaneous pop in which the brokerage could have terminated their client's losing positions, and offload the risk in the institutional market. Since it's extremely hard to ask for more money than exist in the client accounts, those with strong capital positions simply ate the loss (such as Oanda), those that fared worse went belly up. The irony here is that the more leverage the brokerage gave to their clients, the less money would have been available to cover losses in such an event. Using an example to illustrate: say client A is long 1 contract at $100 and client B is short 1 contract at $100. The brokerage is thus net flat. If the brokerage had given 10:1 leverage, then there would be $10 in each client's account. Now instantaneously market moves down $10. Client A loses $10 and client B is up $10. Brokerage simply closes client A's position, gives $10 to client B. The brokerage is still long against client B however, so now it has to go into the institutional market to be short 1 contract at $90. The brokerage again is net flat, and no money actually goes in or out of the firm. Had the brokerage given 50:1 leverage however, client A only has $2 in the account. This would cause the brokerage close client A's position. The brokerage is still long against client B, but has only $2 and would have to \"\"eat the loss\"\" for $8 to honor client B's position, and if it could not do that, then it technically became insolvent since it owes more money to its clients than it has in assets. This is exactly the reason there have been regulations in the US to limit the amount of leverage FX brokerages are allowed to offer to clients, to assure the brokerage has enough capital to pay what is owed to clients.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "61d4dc5d0d5d24072fd42eeb5e6639bc", "text": "I've thought of the following ways to hedge against a collapsing dollar:", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8e5cfe6aa28b8ba5a6e5a16b739cd3c3", "text": "Forex trading contracts are generally fairly short dated as you mention. Months to weeks. Professional forex traders often extend the length of their bet by rolling monthly or quarterly contracts. Closing a contract out a few days before it would expire and reopening a new contract for the next quarter/month. This process can be rather expensive and time consuming for a retail investor however. A more practical (but also not great) method would be to look into currency ETFs. The ETFs generally do the above process for you and are significantly more convenient. However, depending on the broker these may not be available and when available can be illiquid and/or expensive even in major currency pairs. It's worth a bunch of research before you buy. Note, in both cases you are in a practical sense doubling your NOK exposure as your home currency is NOK as well. This may be riskier than many people would care to be with their retirement money. An adverse move would, at the same time you would lose money, make it much to buy foreign goods, which frankly is most goods in a small open country like Norway. The most simple solution would be to overweight local NOK stocks or if you believe stocks are overvalued as you mention NOK denominated bonds. With this you keep your NOK exposure (a currency you believe will appreciate) without doubling it as well as add expected returns above inflation from the stock growth/dividends or bond real interest rates.", "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": "b9584a6f6554b2d2367ec417532961f0", "text": "e.g. a European company has to pay 1 million USD exactly one year from now While that is theoretically possible, that is not a very common case. Mostly likely if they had to make a 1 million USD payment a year from now and they had the cash on hand they would be able to just make the payment today. A more common scenario for currency forwards is for investment hedging. Say that European company wants to buy into a mutual fund of some sort, say FUSEX. That is a USD based mutual fund. You can't buy into it directly with Euros. So if the company wants to buy into the fund they would need to convert their Euros to to USD. But now they have an extra risk parameter. They are not just exposed to the fluctuations of the fund, they are also exposed to the fluctuations of the currency market. Perhaps that fund will make a killing, but the exchange rate will tank and they will lose all their gains. By creating a forward to hedge their currency exposure risk they do not face this risk (flip side: if the exchange rate rises in a favorable rate they also don't get that benefit, unless they use an FX Option, but that is generally more expensive and complicated).", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
1f211c2d31298c578118a3c1685fca2f
How do I report this cash bonus/tip on income tax return?
[ { "docid": "8fd6c981891c253aa31da32c35cefe2d", "text": "How do I report this on our income tax return? You should include it on Line 7 of your Form 1040. Additionally, you should report the extra payment to your employer if it was greater that $20. You can use From 4070 to do this if your employer does not provide you with a form. And finally, you are right, you should Form 4137 to report any tips that you include on your Form 1040 in order to pay the required social security and medicare taxes. Credit is due to glibdud and Nathan L for constructive feedback! Thanks!", "title": "" }, { "docid": "7580d0f09609a37a313d9980cfe14a7c", "text": "\"Daniel covered the correct way to file on the returns, I'm chiming in specifically to discuss the question of whether it could be a gift. The IRS will classify it as a tip even if the person giving it says it's a gift if a service was rendered before the gift was given. The only way that you could make a case to the IRS that it was a gift is if you have a personal relationship outside of the working environment, and the person giving the gift provides an explanation for the motivation behind the gift. Such explanations as \"\"Happy Birthday\"\" or \"\"Congratulations on graduating\"\" or other special occasions could be gifts. But \"\"you did a good job, and I just want to reward you for your effort\"\" is not a reason someone gives a gift, and the IRS will penalize you if you do not have evidence that it was a gift rather than a tip.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "5f7b8495436aed156c88cc36ab4940de", "text": "\"Employers are not supposed to give cash gifts to their employees, even if you try to call it a \"\"gift\"\" for tax purposes. Presumably, the reason your wife's employer gave her cash was to be nice and save her taxes on that amount. Her employer already paid tax on that money so that your wife doesn't have to. If she plans to declare it anyway, then she should instead give it back and ask for it to be added to the W2 as an end of year bonus. This way her employer could then deduct the payment and pay her a larger amount of money. (The additional amount would be approximately their tax rate minus about 7.45% for FICA.) In fact, if your wife's tax rate is more than 15% lower than her employer's, then this is actually mathematically best for both parties.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "b86d06b83930b46c910d7c04b1b8f98e", "text": "It should be reported as Miscellaneous Income. Congratulations for wanting to report this income.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "a3b95031eb506b30bf9d5cc055cbaba9", "text": "You should consult a US CPA to ensure your situation is handled correctly. It appears, the money is Israel source income and not US source income regardless if you receive it while living in the U.S. If you file the correct form, I suspect the form is 1040NR and your state form to disclose your income, if any, in 2015 and 2016, it should not be a problem. Having said that, if you do earn any type of income while in the U.S. , you are required to disclose it to both the IRS and state.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "cf189271641d75f19f0cf7b1cee7524b", "text": "\"The number one rule of thumb that will generally answer the \"\"is it taxable\"\" question for any money you may have or receive: \"\"Did you pay taxes on it already?\"\". Pretty much any money you actually get in your paycheck/DD has already been taxed (or at least the projected amount of tax has been withheld) is your money, to dispense with as you will (or according to your pre-arranged obligations, for most of it). Deposits paid are one such example; if you wrote a check or obtained a money order that they then cashed, that's still your money until it isn't; the contract states that it is being held effectively in escrow (though the landlord has free use of it so long as he can pony up according to the contract). Anything not used to pay for damages is yours, and you get it back. The ATM fee refund is trickier, but basically this is a benefit offered to you as a service by your bank. You front for the ATM fees incurred when withdrawing, and then those fees are refunded to you by your bank (effectively increasing the number of ATMs you can withdraw from \"\"for free\"\"). As long as there is no net income, it's treated like a mail-in rebate; you didn't gain any money, so there's nothing new to tax. There are a couple of specific exceptions to this otherwise overarching rule of thumb. One is Roth IRAs. Typically, on investments, you either pay income tax on the money going in and capital gains tax on the money coming out, or you pay nothing going in and income tax coming out. With a Roth, however, you pay income tax going in and nothing coming out, even though you're (eventually) getting back more than you put in. Another is gifts. Whoever gave you the gift paid the taxes on it (or the money to buy it). However, if they give you a gift valued more than a certain limit (changes every year, and there's a lifetime limit), they have to pay an additional gift tax of 35% on any amount over the limit. That's taxing taxed income (usually). There are other examples, but for the overwhelming majority of situations, if it's money you already had after any and all applicable taxes, it's not taxable even if you haven't seen that money for a while.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "923c83903e086d58d9dbb0ef7d9916a7", "text": "Rent deposit returned to you is not an income. Its your money to begin with. The homeowner is taxed on taking it and can expense the refund, but for you - there's no taxable event. ATM rebate is what it is - rebate. A cash discount over the money paid. Basically - the bank refunded you a fee you paid (ATM rebate is a refund of the ATM fee you paid to a third-party ATM operator). Again - your money. The ATM operator and the bank both have taxable income/deduction, but its not your problem. You - just got your money back. No income, no taxable event. Neither should appear on your tax forms, and similarly nor should credit card points, cash rebates, frequent flyer miles, etc. All are in fact either a refund of your money paid or a merchant discount to you, not an income.", "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": "22ce9d27bceb925253dd69b181e4470f", "text": "Q: If I call a tail a leg, then how many legs does a dog have? A: 4. You can call it whatever you want, it's still a tail. The scenario is nonsense. There is a quid pro quo, the waitress served the customer and he tipped her. A $7 tip on a $24.47 check. He was generous, but misguided if he thought that this note would let the tip go untaxed. And even though the article you link is fresh, the author has the gift threshold incorrect. This year it's $14,000, and has been so since 2013. A cute story, and unlikely to be an issue for $7, but the IRS would take notice if this idea gained any traction. Two references - If Gifts Are Not Income, Why Tax Gratuities? From the Tax Court Files: Is That Money a Gift or Income?", "title": "" }, { "docid": "ce4551055eb15b258cc98bf205b9691d", "text": "\"Every year, you save your receipts, track your expenses and - when April comes around - pay your taxes. But what if you know of someone who isn't as honest as you are? Someone who skims on their income or misreports information in order to be placed in a lower bracket. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates that Americans underpay their [taxes](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/taxes/09/reporting-tax-cheats.asp) by about $345 billion every year, according to Barron's, the popular financial news website and magazine. In fiscal 2009, the IRS collected $48.9 billion in enforcement revenue. This process required the employment of thousands of revenue officers, agents and special agents. Unfortunately, this type of enforcement happens every year and often spans to multiple previous years. In the end, there is still a large amount of tax money that goes unpaid. There's definitely a gap between the tax evader and the IRS. Evaders are usually exposed due to a slip-up on their part or a tip from a bystander. If you'd like to help close that gap, you can. But why should you, and how is it done? **Why Help the IRS?** Nobody likes paying more than their fair share of taxes in order to compensate for others who intentionally evade theirs. Why shouldn't tax evaders give up a portion of their incomes to provide things that benefit the general good, like roads and sewers, when you do? Reporting a tax cheat is like reporting a shoplifter - you're just asking them to pay for something they're trying to unfairly get for free. **Gather the Evidence** The IRS is not likely to pursue someone without good reason. If the time and resources are going to be spent, the odds need to be good that the efforts will result in a payoff. Besides determining who, what, where, when and why the person evaded his or her taxes, the IRS will need specific information (type of violation, availability of books or records). Having a hunch without supporting details just isn't good enough. Also ensure that the evasion is financially significant enough. For example, stating that your neighbor failed to report a $50 babysitting earning is not going to interest the IRS. On the other hand, if you work for a large business that you suspect is underreporting its income, the IRS will likely be very interested. **Blowing the Whistle on a Tax Cheat** The IRS may pay awards in exchange for valuable information that leads to the collection of \"\"taxes, penalties, interest or other amounts from the noncompliant taxpayer,\"\" according to the agency's website. There are various types of awards granted, depending on the evader's income level and classification (business or individual). The IRS likely chooses to focus its efforts on these larger cases because they have a higher payoff. It has also been suggested that higher income individuals have been found to cheat more frequently and for higher sums of money, mostly because they tend to earn more self-reported income. **Cover Your Assets** Fabricating a complaint in order to spite an undesirable neighbor who does, in fact, pay taxes is not a good way to get revenge. When you sign off on the IRS form providing your report, you are stating, \"\"I declare under penalty of perjury that I have examined this application, my accompanying statement and supporting documentation, and aver that such application is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge.\"\" You don't want to be found guilty of perjury. **Keep It Legal** Breaking into the CFO's office at work to get evidence to support your claim is not a good idea. The IRS doesn't want you to break the law to help find a tax cheat. However, if you are the bookkeeper for a company that is cheating on its taxes and part of your job involves working with documents that prove the company is cheating, that paperwork would be acceptable to submit to the IRS. While the IRS wants to maintain your privacy, if the case against the person you report ends up going to trial, you could be asked to be a witness. If you're comfortable with that possibility, go ahead and put your name on the report. **Reasons Not to Report a Cheat** If your \"\"information\"\" is really just speculation, it's probably best to keep it to yourself. As explained earlier in this article, the IRS does not have the resources to pursue your hunch. If you, yourself, are a tax cheat, it might be best to stay in the clear. There's nothing that says that people who submit claims of cheating by others will have their own tax returns examined more carefully. Still, it stands to reason that you wouldn't want to do anything to call IRS attention to yourself if you're not in compliance with its rules. If you helped plan or initiate the cheating of the person you are reporting, it might be smart to think twice. If you decide to report a crime in which you took part, be prepared for the consequences, and definitely don't expect to receive a reward. As with many government processes, there's a lot of red tape to cut through. Therefore, if you're looking for fast cash, you might want to look elsewhere. It can take several years to complete an investigation of tax evasion – and if there is no conviction, there is no award. Not only does the IRS have to determine guilt, it has to actually collect the amount owed before paying you. What's more, if the IRS determines that your tip did not \"\"substantially contributed to the Service's detection and recovery of tax,\"\" you will not receive an award. It's also important to note that, under some circumstances, like attorney-client confidentiality, you may not be able to report tax cheating. **Other Considerations** If you earn a whistle blower award, it will need to be reported when you file your taxes. If you're blowing the whistle on your employer and you're not planning to change jobs, an IRS audit could make your work situation extremely unpleasant. This isn't to say that you shouldn't report someone who is cheating, but it is something to consider. **What's Next** If you decide to report the person or business you suspect of cheating, use IRS form3949-A. This form asks for basic information on the tax evader you are reporting, the types of violations you believe to be committed, the details of the violation and how you learned about it. If you do not want to fill out this form, you can also simply write the IRS a letter. If you are providing your name and want the possibility of receiving an award, also submit IRS Form 211 which is an application for the award. **The Bottom Line** Underpayment of federal income taxes (and, subsequently, state income taxes) is a serious problem. The IRS encourages people to submit tips by allowing anonymous submissions and offering generous rewards for informants who are willing to identify themselves. If you can substantiate your claims and are willing to accept the potential consequences of squealing, reporting a tax cheat can be lucrative not only for the government, but also for you. **Take Control of Your Money** Whether you’re buying a home, consolidating debt or Planning a Yearly Budget, Investopedia has the guide to overhauling your personal spending, saving and investing. [Click here](http://www.investopedia.com/accounts/signupnewsletter/?list=pf) to start managing your money like the pros.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b63cbf63e98bab6b3612a3471c9b4340", "text": "You can't change the W2, the employer issues it and sends it to the IRS. You cannot affect it in any way. The employer reported correctly. You did contribute $4137 in 2015. You then withdrew the excess in 2016, and did it timely, so it is not taxable in 2016. However, the excess contribution should be added back to your wages on your tax return. The way to do it is to add it to the taxable wages amount (reported on W2 box 1), and attach a statement explaining that the amount added is the excess contribution. You then put the corrected amount in the right place on your tax return (line 7 on the form 1040). Adding the difference to misc income (line 21) is OK too, it's the same effect. You will then need to check with your payroll that they're aware that the excess was deposited back on the account of the next year and adjust their reports accordingly. Otherwise you'll end up with excess contribution again.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dbb37eee9e3fb8c574d99323f3cd9dc9", "text": "\"You're right about your suspicions. I'm not a professional (I suggest you talk to a real one, a one with CPA, EA or Attorney credentials and license in your State), but I would be very cautious in this case. The IRS will look at all the facts and circumstances to make a claim, but my guess would be that the initial claim would be for this to be taxable income for your husband. He'd have to prove it to be otherwise. It does seem to be related to his performance, and I doubt that had they not known him through his employment, they'd give him such a gift. I may be wrong. So may be an IRS Revenue Officer. But I'd bet he'd think the same. Did they give \"\"gifts\"\" like that to anyone else? If they did - was it to other employees or they gave similar gifts to all their friends and family? Did those who gave your husband a gift file a gift tax return? Had they paid the gift tax? Were they principles in the partnership or they were limited partners (i.e.: not the ones with authority to make any decision)? Was your husband instrumental in making their extraordinary profit, or his job was not related to the profits these people made? These questions are inquiring about the facts and circumstances of the transaction. Based on what he can find out, and other potential information, your husband will have to decide whether he can reasonably claim that it was a gift. Beware: unreasonable claims lead to equally unreasonable penalties and charges. IRS and your State will definitely want to know more about this transaction, its not an amount to slide under the radar. This is not a matter where you can rely on a free opinions written by amateurs who don't know the whole story. You (or, rather, your husband) are highly encouraged to hire a paid professional - a CPA, EA (enrolled agent) or tax attorney with enough experience in fighting gift vs income characterization issues against the IRS (and the State, don't forget your State). An experienced professional may be able to identify something in the facts and the circumstances of the situation that would lead to reducing the tax bill or shifting it to the partners, but it is not something you do on your own.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8670fe180d96963e64f7335cd3d86721", "text": "\"First, let's look at the tax brackets for single taxpayers in 2016: The cutoff between the 25% and 28% tax bracket is $91,150. You said that your gross is $87,780. This will be reduced by deductions and exemptions (at least $10,350). Your rental income will increase your income, but it is offset in part by your rental business expenses. For this year, you will almost certainly be in the 25% bracket, whether or not you receive your backpay this year. Next year, if you receive your backpay then and your salary is $11k higher, I'm guessing you'll be close to the edge. It is important to remember that the tax brackets are marginal. This means that when you move up to the next tax bracket, it is only the amount of income that puts you over the top that is taxed at the higher rate. (You can see this in the chart above.) So if, for example, your taxable income ends up being $91,160, you'll be in the 28% tax bracket, but only $10 of your income will be taxed at 28%. The rest will be taxed at 25% or lower. As a result, this probably isn't worth worrying about too much. A bit more explanation, requested by the OP: Here is how to understand the numbers in the tax bracket chart. Let's take a look at the second line, $9,276-$37,650. The tax rate is explained as \"\"$927.50 plus 15% of the amount over $9,275.\"\" The first $9,275 of your taxable income is taxed at a 10% rate. So if your total taxable income falls between $9,276 and $37,650, the first $9,275 is taxed at 10% (a tax of $927.50) and the amount over $9,275 is taxed at 15%. On each line of the chart, the amount of tax from all the previous brackets is carried down, so you don't have to calculate it. When I said that you have at least $10,350 in deductions and exemptions, I got that number from the standard deduction and the personal exemption amount. For 2016, the standard deduction for single taxpayers is $6,300. (If you itemize your deductions, you might be able to deduct more.) Personal exemptions for 2016 are at $4,050 per person. That means you get to reduce your taxable income by $4,050 for each person in your household. Since you are single with no dependents, your standard deduction plus the personal exemption for yourself will result in a reduction of at least $10,350 on your taxable income.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "d737b1ec367bd04433444f7c48e9571f", "text": "It is totally legal but it just has to be reported like income. Granted the IRS will probably not catch it. I work for a large company I get little gift cards all the time and they add the dollar value as income for taxes on my paycheck. It is a little annoying because I think it is kind of shit that a dollar value of a gift card is treated as the same value as real money, but they are amazon gift cards so better than cash to me.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "47c9c8dbbbfb64b9537ec5a36e9cc724", "text": "\"What theyre fishing for is whether the money was earned in the U.S. It's essentially an interest shelter, and/or avoiding double taxation. They're saying if you keep income you make outside the US in a bank inside the US, the US thanks you for storing your foreign money here and doesn't tax the interest (but the nation where you earned that income might). There is no question that the AirBNB income is \"\"connected with a US trade or business\"\". So your next question is whether the fraction of interest earned from that income can be broken out, or whether IRS requires you to declare all the interest from that account. Honestly given the amount of tax at stake, it may not be worth your time researching. Now since you seem to be a resident nonresident alien, it seems apparent that whatever economic value you are creating to earn your salary, is being performed in the United States. If this is for an American company and wages paid in USD, no question, that's a US trade or business. But what if it's for a Swedish company running on Swedish servers, serving Swedes and paid in Kroner to a Swedish bank which you then transfer to your US bank? Does it matter if your boots are on sovereign US soil? This is a complex question, and some countries (UK) say \"\"if your boots are in our nation, it is trade/income in our nation\"\"... Others (CA) do not. This is probably a separate question to search or ask. To be clear, the fact that your days as a teacher or trainee do not count toward residency, is a separate question from whether your salary as same counts as US income.\"", "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": "b7a8e8f10967a66de5c695b9dd44f91c", "text": "You should probably talk to a professional tax adviser. This doesn't seem to be a common situation. From the top of my head, without being a lawyer or a tax professional, I think of it like this: The income is for year 200..., and should have been taxed then. You constructively received it then, and not claimed it. You probably had withholding from this salary that should have been reported to you then on W2 (you can get a copy from the IRS). I'd say you're to amend the return for year 200... with the new income, if it wasn't reported then. Although if more than 3 years passed (6, if its 25% or more of your gross income for that year), its beyond statute. However, as I said, I'm not a lawyer and not a professional tax adviser, so you cannot in any way rely on my opinion for anything that would result in not paying any taxes or penalties you should have. You should talk to a licensed tax professional (EA/CPA/Lawyer licensed in your State).", "title": "" }, { "docid": "87f228504590728786ebe46e608e919a", "text": "Check cashing is not tax reportable. The way people pay income tax is by either withholding via an employer, self made payments, or when they file. Rather or not they cash their checks or where they do so has nothing to do with any of that.", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
49c1e0f11ad427f8e527db5beb04e859
How do I resolve Free Fillable Tax Form error F1040-524-01?
[ { "docid": "d1513d548321287b8b1ab7d6ac433981", "text": "\"Buried on the IRS web site is the \"\"Fillable Forms Error Search Tool\"\". Rather than including an explanation of errors in the rejection email itself, you're expected to copy and paste the error email into this form, which gives more details about what's wrong. (Don't blame me; I didn't design it.) If I copy your error message in, here's the response I get: There is an error with the “primary taxpayer’s Date of Birth” in Step 2 Section 4. The date of birth that was entered does not match IRS records. Make sure you enter the correct birth date, in the correct format, in the correct space. Scroll down, and enter the current date (“Today’s date”). Today’s date is the day you intend to e-file the return again. Also, if you are making an electronic payment you must re-date that section. E-File your return. You say that you've already checked your birthday, so I don't know as this is particularly helpful. If you're confident that it's correct and in the right place, I think your next step needs to be contacting the IRS directly. They have a link at the bottom of the error lookup response on how to contact them specifically about their solution not working, or you could try contacting your local IRS office or giving them a call.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "37fae8f27e78d0cf8f028bbb889a9884", "text": "The employer most likely has already sent that money that was withheld to the IRS. Therefore they cannot refund you any money. Instead you need to get the money back from the IRS. You do this by filing a tax return. Your W2C will show that taxes were withheld (I.e., that you paid taxes). The rest of the return will show that no taxes were due and therefore you are entitled to have your money refunded. If you have already filed for that tax you, you just need to file an amended return with the new data. That amendment will show that you are to be refunded the extra money. Then just wait several weeks for the payment from the IRS. As pointed out user102008, if it is Medicare and social security taxes that have been withheld in error, then you need to file a different set of forms with IRS. It would be nice if refunding FICA also occurred via the tax return.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "09cb7679a6622307a4a0930d9926cce1", "text": "I just want to point out something that seems to be generally true: If you are supposed to report something to the IRS, and you don't, the IRS will probably send you a letter assuming the maximum possible tax liability, and it's up to you to prove that scenario is incorrect. In your case you obviously owe no tax, but since you didn't report it, the IRS simply assumed that you do owe tax until you prove otherwise. You're one form away from fixing the issue. I have first hand experience that this is also true if you forget to report an HSA distribution. I received a letter considering my entire distribution as if it was for non eligible medical expenses. This made the amount taxable and had an additional 20% penalty to boot. Of course I have medical receipts for all of the distributions which makes them not taxable, and had I simply put the correct number on my return to begin with I wouldn't have had to fill out the additional form to correct my mistake.", "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": "8eb7d6d80f8ec378980ab8a4fa22e149", "text": "\"You are not the only one with this problem. When Intuit changed their pricing and services structure in 2015 a lot of people got angry, facing larger fees and having to go through an annoying upgrade just to get the same functionality (such as Schedule D, capital gains). You have several options: (1) Forget Turbo Tax and just use paper forms. That is what I do. Paper is reliable. (2) Use forms mode in Turbo Tax. Of course, that may be even more complicated than simply filing out paper forms. (3) Use a different service. If your income is below $64,000 the IRS has a free electronic filing service. Other online vendors have full taxes services for less than Turbo Tax. (4) Add the amount to ordinary income. Technically, as long as you report the income, you cannot be penalized, so if you add the capital gain to your ordinary income, then you have paid taxes on the income. Even if they send you a letter, you can send an answer that you added it to ordinary income and that will satisfy them. Of course you pay a higher rate on your $26 if you do that. (5) If you are in the 15% or below income bracket you are exempt from capital gains, and you can omit it. Don't believe the nervous Nellies who say the IRS will burn your house down if you don't report $26 in capital gains. Penalties are assessed on the percentage of TAXES you did not pay (0.5% penalty per month). Since 0.5% of $0 is $0 your penalty is $0. The IRS knows this. The IRS does not send out assessment letters for $0. (6) Even if you are above the 15% bracket, there is likelihood it is still a no-tax situation (see 5 above). (7) Worst case scenario: you are making a million dollars per year and you omit your $26 capital gains from your return. The IRS will send you an assessment letter for about $10. You can then send them a separate check or money order to pay it. In all honesty I have omitted documented tax items, like taxable interest, that the IRS knows about many times and never gotten an assessment letter. Once I made a serious math error on my return and they sent me an assessment letter, which I just paid, end of story. And that was for a lot more than $26. The technical verbiage for something like this in IRS lingo is CP-2000, underreported income. As you can see from this official IRS web page, basically what they do is guess how much they think you owe and send you a bill. Then you pay it. If you do so in time, you don't even get a 0.5% interest penalty on your $6.75 owed or whatever it is. (8) Go hog wild. As long as you are risking an assessment on your $26, why not go hog wild and just let the IRS compute all your taxes for you? Make a copy of your income statements, then mail them to the IRS with a letter that says, \"\"Hi, I am Mr. Odinson, my SSN is XXX-XX-XXXX. My address is XYZ. I am unable to compute my taxes due to a confused state of mind. I am hereby requesting a tax assessment for the 2016 tax year.\"\" Make sure you sign and date the letter. In all probability they will compute the full assessment and send you a bill (or refund).\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "c86d946924f477d132f16b006688480f", "text": "I agree. I pulled my free reports (by going to ftc.gov first to get link to the truly free reports). The Equifax data was out of date. Didn't​ bother trying to correct it. As I don't need any new credit lines, I just put a security freeze on my records at all four bureaus. Makes my data virtually worthless to any potential identity their, and (best of all) nearly worthless to the bureaus.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "b15d163a90235fed85ed81ab71d178ac", "text": "\"Do I understand correctly, that we still can file as \"\"Married filing jointly\"\", just add Schedule C and Schedule SE for her? Yes. Business registration information letter she got once registered mentions that her due date for filing tax return is January 31, 2016. Does this prevent us from filing jointly (as far as I understand, I can't file my income before that date)? IRS sends no such letters. IRS also doesn't require any registration. Be careful, you might be a victim to a phishing attack here. In any case, sole proprietor files a regular individual tax return with the regular April 15th deadline. Do I understand correctly that we do not qualify as \"\"Family partnership\"\" (I do not participate in her business in any way other than giving her money for initial tools/materials purchase)? Yes. Do I understand correctly that she did not have to do regular estimated tax payments as business was not expected to generate income this year? You're asking or saying? How would we know what she expected? In any case, you can use your withholding (adjust the W4) to compensate.\"", "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": "f119ea14e5200fa141501b68b27d4325", "text": "Search the website. There is generally a way to reverse the charge. I have seen these options exist on both Flexible spending accounts and Health Savings accounts. If the expense was for last year, and you had other expenses that you did not submit because you reached the limit, you will probably be OK. Send them both information on the wrong submission on the new submission. If you left money on the table last year, they will want a check from you. If the expense was for this year, you will not have a problem reversing the charge, because much of the year is left. Of course due to the new rules regarding roll-over of lat years money into this year it could be more complex. You want to resolve it as soon a possible to minimize the complexity as deadlines for submission approach. If you don't report the mistake the extra income from the incorrect submission is considered taxable.", "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": "5742fcf38a98a3108adc681f409b0cb1", "text": "\"You probably entered it wrong in TurboTax. Distribution code \"\"2\"\" should have triggered some more questions in the TurboTax, but I don't know exactly how it works there. Bottom line is that you need to add form 8606 to your return. Here's something on Intuit forums that tells you how to get to it.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "9ca487f414c2c6031f240a6f39f57761", "text": "\"Well, as you say, the instructions for form W-2 (for your employer to fill out) say You must report all employer contributions (including an employee's contributions through a cafeteria plan) to an HSA in box 12 of Form W-2 with code W. Employer contributions to an HSA that are not excludable from the income of the employee also must be reported in boxes 1, 3, and 5. However, while it's your employer's job to fill out W-2 correctly, it's only your job to file your taxes correctly. Especially as you say your box 1/3/5 income is correct, this isn't too hard to do. You should file Form 8889 with your return and report the contributions on Line 9 as Employer Contributions. (And as you say, both what the employer contributed outright and what you had deducted from your pay are both Employer Contributions.) Be sure to keep your final pay stub for the year (or other documentation) showing that your employer did contribute that amount, just in case the IRS does end up questioning it for some reason. If you really want to, you could try calling the IRS and letting them know that you have contributions that weren't reported on your W-2 to see if they want to follow up with your employer about correcting their documentation, if your efforts have been fruitless. There's even a FAQ page on the IRS site about how to contact them when your employer isn't giving you a correct W-2 and how to fill out a Form 4852 instead of using the W-2, which I'd recommend if the amount of income listed was wrong or if there were some other more \"\"major\"\" problem with the form. Most likely, though, since it's not going to affect the amount of tax anybody will pay, it's not going to be at the top of their list. I would worry more filling out the forms you need to fill out correctly rather than worrying about the forms your employer isn't filling out correctly.\"", "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": "b9dca32b8177f2bddd8208506c0d1b84", "text": "You proceed with a proper legal advice. You should not ignore IRS letters. You should have taken your chances in trying to reach a compromise with them, but that ship has likely sailed already. You might want to consider bankruptcy. Ask your parents for a couple of hundreds of dollars to pay for a legal consultation with a lawyer and a CPA and proceed from there.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "8199c1f269790dd8ecce7897a0159c49", "text": "\"Regardless of the source of the software (though certainly good to know), there are practical limits to the IRS 1040EZ form. This simplified tax form is not appropriate for use once you reach a certain level of income because it only allows for the \"\"standard\"\" deduction - no itemization. The first year I passed that level, I was panicked because I thought I suddenly owed thousands. Switching to 1040A (aka the short form) and using even the basic itemized deductions showed that the IRS owed me a refund instead. I don't know where that level is for tax year 2015 but as you approach $62k, the simplified form is less-and-less appropriate. It would make sense, given some of the great information in the other answers, that the free offering is only for 1040EZ. That's certainly been true for other \"\"free\"\" software in the past.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "799ead6f92c43b8a068767dadafa5d28", "text": "Tried that, got asked how I filed taxes by the _hiring guy_! What the fuck! How is that any of his business? He wanted to see a business license! What if I'm advertising availability and _nobody is hiring me_, how did spending money on a license help?", "title": "" } ]
fiqa
3553a9b4af87328eeabd82e8adba1549
Why doesn't Graham consider gold as an investment?
[ { "docid": "b9cf1a9d3d8234f8adeeb92f3ab10905", "text": "\"During Graham's career, gold and currency were the same thing because of the gold standard. Graham did not advise investing in currencies, only in bonds and stocks, the latter only for intelligent speculation. Graham died a couple of years after Nixon closed the gold window, ending the gold standard. Gold may be thought of as a currency even today, as endowments and other investors use it as a store of value or for diversification of risks. However, currency or commodities investing does not seem Graham-like. How could you reliably estimate intrinsic value of a currency or commodity, so that you can have a Graham-like margin of safety after subtracting the intrinsic value from the market value? Saying that gold is \"\"clearly underpriced in today's market\"\" is just hand-waving. A Graham analysis such as \"\"net net\"\" (valuing stocks by their current tangible assets net of all liabilities) is a quantitative analysis of accounting numbers audited by CPAs and offers a true margin of safety.\"", "title": "" } ]
[ { "docid": "0ff176eb7c422c1fc2cc9399e488d3c1", "text": "I think what the person meant to say is that Gold is not a one stop solution. There's nothing wrong with having Gold in an otherwise diversified portfolio but you need to be aware about the potential downsides: The problem with gold is that its value nowadays depends mainly on investor confidence, or the lack of it (actual demand for gold cannot explain the rise in value gold had after the crisis). If people are afraid the world and currencies with it will go to hell, the gold price will go up. Why? Because if currencies seize to exist, Gold will still be accepted. It can replace currencies. What many people tend to forget: let's consider the extreme example and currencies really cease to exist and all hell breaks lose. What good are gold bars at the bank, or even at home, for that matter? You'll be better off with gold coins to use in barter and to pay off marauders. But that's not about investing anymore, that's survivalism.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "07ab45d648477b203edf198498035159", "text": "\"&gt;Because selling gold and buying dollars has an effect on the market: it reduces the value of gold, and increases the value of dollars. Ah, but with all the business you'd do in gold, you'd constantly be increasing the value of gold. Think of it! I'm pretty sure that most people want to be paid in dollars not simply because of the fact that their taxes have to be paid in it, but because of it's universality. Not everyone has a use for a sack of barley, or a fish, or some gold dust. But you can buy whatever you want with an amount of dollars. &gt;As the value of gold increases over time, the government taxes the increased value as \"\"capital gains tax\"\". It's only taxed at a 15.5% rate, IIRC. You'd probably come out ahead.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "da970b33c88bfcf180ba2e428bd05130", "text": "\"There are gold index funds. I'm not sure what you mean by \"\"real gold\"\". If you mean you want to buy physical gold, you don't need to. The gold index funds will track the price of gold and will keep you from filling your basement up with gold bars. Gold index funds will buy gold and then issue shares for the gold they hold. You can then buy and sell these just like you would buy and sell any share. GLD and IAU are the ticker symbols of some of these funds. I think it is also worth pointing out that historically gold has a been a poor investment.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e982406e455a21ee8d4ffd1cd6d92687", "text": "The article fails to mention that if Paul has invested like this since the 1970s, in keeping with his long-held economic views, then he'd have lost in a big way. The gold bugs of the 70s got killed over the following two decades.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "e99561df31a588a4c5bc1887c090010d", "text": "\"Invest in gold. Maybe will not \"\"make\"\" money but at least preserve the value.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "6772c658a9ce2de9ba987109f7782764", "text": "\"Gold may have some \"\"intrinsic value\"\" but it cannot be accurately determined by investors by any known valuation techniques. In fact, if you were to apply the dividend discount model of John Burr Williams - a variation of which is the basis of Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis and the basis of most valuation techniques - gold would have zero intrinsic value because it produces no cash flow. Legendary focus investor Warren Buffett argues that investing in gold is pure speculation because of the reason mentioned above. As others have mentioned, gold prices are affected by supply and demand, but the bigger influence on the price of gold is how the economy is. Gold is seen as a store of value because, according to some, it does not \"\"lose value\"\" unlike paper currency during inflation. In inflationary times, demand increases so gold prices do go up, which is why gold behaves similar to a commodity but has far less uses. It is difficult to argue whether or not gold gains or loses value because we can't determine the intrinsic value of gold, and anyone who attempts to justify any given price is pulling blinders over your eyes. It is indisputable that, over history, gold represents wealth and that in the past century and the last decade, gold prices rise in inflationary conditions as people dump dollars for gold, and it has fallen when the purchasing power of currency increases. Many investors have talked about a \"\"gold bubble\"\" by arguing that gold prices are inflated because of inflation and the Fed's money policy and that once interest rates rise, the money supply will contract and gold will fall, but again, nobody can say with any reasonable accuracy what the fair value of gold at any given point is. This article on seeking alpha: http://seekingalpha.com/article/112794-the-intrinsic-value-of-gold gives a quick overview, but it is also vague because gold can't be accurately priced. I wouldn't say that gold has zero intrinsic value because gold is not a business so traditional models are inappropriate, but I would say that gold *certainly * doesn't have a value of $1,500 and it's propped so high only because of investor expectation. In conclusion, I do not believe you can accurately state whether gold is undervalued or overvalued - you must make judgments based on what you think about the future of the market and of monetary policy, but there are too many variables to be accurate consistently.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "53797b151ae0daf43edf5e83c4fc64bd", "text": "The problem I have with gold is that it's only worth what someone will pay you for it. To a degree that's true with any equity, but with a company there are other capital resources etc that provide a base value for the company, and generally a business model that generates income. Gold just sits there. it doesn't make products, it doesn't perform services, you can't eat it, and the main people making money off of it are the folks charging a not insubstantial commission to sell it to you, or buy it back. Sure it's used in small quantities for things like plating electrical contacts, dental work, shielding etc. But Industrial uses account for only 10% of consumption. Mostly it's just hoarded, either in the form of Jewelry (50%) or 'investment' (bullion/coins) 40%. Its value derives largely from rarity and other than the last few years, there's no track record of steady growth over time like the stock market or real-estate. Just look at what gold prices did between 10 to 30 years ago, I'm not sure it came anywhere near close to keeping pace with inflation during that time. If you look at the chart, you see a steady price until the US went off the gold standard in 1971, and rules regarding ownership and trading of gold were relaxed. There was a brief run up for a few years after that as the market 'found its level' as it were, and you really need to look from about 74 forward (which it experienced its first 'test' and demonstration of a 'supporting' price around 400/oz inflation adjusted. Then the price fluctuated largely between 800 to 400 per ounce (adjusted for inflation) for the next 30 years. (Other than a brief sympathetic 'Silver Tuesday' spike due to the Hunt Brothers manipulation of silver prices in 1980.) Not sure if there is any causality, but it is interesting to note that the recent 'runup' in price starts in 2000 at almost the same time the last country (the Swiss) went off the 'gold standard' and gold was no longer tied to any currency (or vise versa) If you bought in '75 as a hedge against inflation, you were DOWN, as much as 50% during much of the next 33 years. If you managed to buy at a 'low' the couple of times that gold was going down and found support around 400/oz (adjusted) then you were on average up slightly as much as a little over 50% (throwing out silver Tuesday) but then from about '98 through '05 had barely broken even. I personally view 'investments' in gold at this time as a speculation. Look at the history below, and ask yourself if buying today would more likely end up as buying in 1972 or 1975? (or gods forbid, 1980) Would you be taking advantage of a buying opportunity, or piling onto a bubble and end up buying at the high? Note from Joe - The article Demand and Supply adds to the discussion, and supports Chuck's answer.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "dd8e5ca4888ff871a3b76ce481bb3bd5", "text": "\"First of all, bear in mind that there's no such thing as a risk-free investment. If you keep your money in the bank, you'll struggle to get a return that keeps up with inflation. The same is true for other \"\"safe\"\" investments like government bonds. Gold and silver are essentially completely speculative investments; over the years their price tends to vary quite wildly, so unless you really understand how those markets work you should steer well clear. They're certainly not low risk. Repeatedly buying a property to sell in a couple of years time is almost certainly a bad idea; you'll end up paying substantial transaction fees each time that would wipe out a lot of the possible profit, and of course there's always the risk that prices would go down not up. Buying a property to keep - and preferably live in - might be a decent option once you have a good deposit saved up. It's very hard to say where prices will go in future, on the one hand London prices are very high by historical standards, but on the other hand supply is likely to remain severely constrained for years to come. I tend to think of a house as something that I need one of for the rest of my life, and so in one sense not owning a house to live in is a gamble that house prices and rents won't go up substantially. If you own a house, you're insulated from changes in rent etc and even if prices crash at least you still have somewhere to live. However that argument only works really well if you expect to keep living in the same area under most circumstances - house prices might crash in your area but not elsewhere.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1780c956b6e79156a96d46a6b5e1ce97", "text": "\"Remind him that, over the long-term, investing in safe-only assets may actually be more risky than investing in stocks. Over the long-term, stocks have always outperformed almost every other asset class, and they are a rather inflation-proof investment. Dollars are not \"\"safe\"\"; due to inflation, currency exchange, etc., they have some volatility just like everything else.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "23b6f3349410a9cd46532acb781c86ea", "text": "The point of what you heard is likely that gold is thought by some to hold its value well, when the money market would provide negative interest rates. These negative interest rates are a sign of deflation, where cash money is worth more in the future than it is today. Normally, under inflation, cash money is worth less in the future than it is today. Under 'normal' circumstances where inflation exists, interest paid by the bank on money held there generally keeps up with inflation + a little bit extra. Now, we are seeing many banks offering interest rates in the negatives, which is an acknowledgement of the fact that money will be worth more in the future than it is today. So in that sense, holding physical gold 'fights' deflation [or, negative interest rates], in the same way that holding physical cash does [because if you hold onto a $10k bundle of bills, in 10 years you can walk into a bank and it will be worth $10k in future dollars - which in a deflationary market would be more than it is worth today]. Some view gold as being better at doing this than just holding cash, but that discussion gets into an analysis of the value of paper money as a currency, which is outside the scope of this answer. Suffice to say, I do not personally like the idea of buying gold as an investment, but some do, and partly for this reason.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "952ac70b676849106cfb5454fc5c0eba", "text": "He's made a profit on gold the same way you make money on any commodity, because demand (largely as an inflation hedge) has outpaced supply. It has nothing to do with using gold as a currency (which no one is doing.) I'm not saying gold can't have value as money, but that's not where we're at right now. Dollars are accepted to settle transactions all over the world, and inflation is negligible. A lot of speculators buying gold that sits in vaults is not the same thing as a return to specie based currency.", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1f82eef360c642b80cbd1041bd8dcd02", "text": "\"Gold is not an investment. Gold is a form of money. It and silver have been used as money much longer than paper. Paper money is a relatively recent invention (less than 350 years old) with a horrible track record of preserving wealth. When I exchange my paper US dollars for gold I'm exchanging one form of money for another. US dollars, or US Federal Reserve Notes to be more precise, can be printed ad nauseam by one bank that is totally private and is never audited. Keeping all of your savings in US dollars is ignoring history, it is believing the US Federal Reserve has your best interest in mind, it is hoping that somehow things will be different this time, it is believing that the US dollar will somehow magically be the first fiat currency to last a person's lifetime. TIPS may seem like a good hedge against inflation. However, the government offering TIPS is also the same government that is calculating the inflation rate used to adjust TIPS. What a great deal. If you do some research you discover that the method for calculating the consumer price index is always \"\"modified\"\" since it is always found to over estimate inflation. It is never found to under estimate inflation. Imagine that. Here is a chart showing the inflation rate as if it were calculated the same way as it was calculated in 1980. Buying any government debt is also a way to guarantee you or your children will be taxed in the future since the government will have to obtain the money from someone to pay back bonds. It's like voting for future taxes.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "1f175d50b874cfd98fd91db1fb224437", "text": "\"I am reminded of a dozen year old dialog. I asked my 6 year old, \"\"If we call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?\"\" She replied, \"\"Four, you can call it anything you want, but the dog still has four legs.\"\" Early on in my marriage, my wife was heading out to the mall, and remarked that she was \"\"going to invest in a new pair of shoes.\"\" I explained to her that while I was happy she would have new shoes to wear, words have meaning, and unless she was going to buy the ruby red slippers Dorothy wore in the Wizard of Oz, or Elvis' Blue Suede Shoes, her's were not expected to rise in value and weren't an investment. Some discussion followed, and we agreed even the treadmill, which is now 20 years old, was not an 'investment' despite the fact that it saved us more than its cost in a combined 40 years of gym memberships we did not buy. In the end, no one who is financially savvy calls a lottery ticket an investment, and few who buy them acknowledge that it's simply throwing money away.\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "edf4fba292caeb83937280fef7ca1934", "text": "\"The general argument put forward by gold lovers isn't that you get the same gold per dollar (or dollars per ounce of gold), but that you get the same consumable product per ounce of gold. In other words the claim is that the inflation-adjusted price of gold is more-or-less constant. See zerohedge.com link for a chart of gold in 2010 GBP all the way from 1265. (\"\"In 2010 GBP\"\" means its an inflation adjusted chart.) As you can see there is plenty of fluctuation in there, but it just so happens that gold is worth about the same now as it was in 1265. See caseyresearch.com link for a series of anecdotes of the buying power of gold and silver going back some 3000 years. What this means to you: If you think the stock market is volatile and want to de-risk your holdings for the next 2 years, gold is just as risky If you want to invest some wealth such that it will be worth more (in real terms) when you take it out in 40 years time than today, the stock market has historically given better returns than gold If you want to put money aside, and it to not lose value, for a few hundred years, then gold might be a sensible place to store your wealth (as per comment from @Michael Kjörling) It might be possible to use gold as a partial hedge against the stock market, as the two supposedly have very low correlation\"", "title": "" }, { "docid": "feb21810230b9f43fca6b46a596cab28", "text": "\"I am lucky enough to have chosen a flexible mortgage that allows me to change payment amounts at certain, very lenient intervals (to a minimum amount). So when I was laid off, the first thing I did was call my bank to lower my payments to a level that allowed me some breathing room, at my new, lower income. If and when my family's income increases, I'll re-adjust my payments to a higher amount. But if you're concerned about the \"\"what if\"\"s in this economy, I'd definitely choose a mortgage that allows for flexibility so that you don't lose your house if you don't have to, particularly if your situation is temporary.\"", "title": "" } ]
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