The investment..speculation, out right gambling thread

[BCEagle91]

I just plug and chug into TurboTax and either pay or get a refund. A lot of the stuff I don't understand either.

I just saw an interesting article in CBS MarketWatch on average transaction amount for new cars. The amount is about $30,000. The article talks about what carmakers are doing to attract younger buyers.

They are putting in all kinds of technological gadgets into cars. This is working as it is attracting buyers but it has resulted in much more expensive cars and sticker shocks. So they are also marketing compact cars and smaller cars to buyers that spend more because they want luxury features even while they are gas mileage conscious.

[dstark]

We don't have basements out here. There are no windows? Cement floor?

I have a cpa. I tried to go line by line on my tax return after it was finished and see if I could understand my return. I took many accounting courses. I took a tax class. These tax returns are incredibly difficult to figure out. The AMT makes things a little more complicated. I am shocked by how much AMT I am paying this year. I think capital gains take away the income exclusion of the AMT. I couldn't do my own return right now. And next year, I have so many K1s with losses. Three k1s so far. My return is going to be unreal.

A friend is getting audited by a state. The State doesn't understand the return. They aren't asking for money yet. Just help in figuring out the return.


Himom, how can you vote if you don't understand the tax proposals? And if you don't understand the tax proposals, then millions of other people don't either.

[BCEagle91]

> We don't have basements out here.

I guess that keeps costs down but I personally like basements.

> There are no windows?

There's a big glass slider. It's a walkout.

> Cement floor?

I actually don't know what's under the heavy carpeting but I assume that it's cement over concrete. I have had Plantars Fasciitis and don't do well standing on cement for any length of time. There's paneling on the walls and a false, dropdown ceiling, similar to what you would see in an office building.

> A friend is getting audited by a state. The State doesn't understand the return.
> They aren't asking for money yet. Just help in figuring out the return.

If I got audited by the state, I'd be tempted to give them the phone number of the TurboTax people. Taxes are just crazy-complex these days.

[dstark]

Your basement isn't below ground level? I ask because you have a glsss slider.

I don't know why we don't have basements. Lower costs maybe. Weather? We have family rooms, and great rooms. (I don't.) I guess homes with basements have family or great rooms. I don't know.

[RacinReaver]

dstark, I forget where you're located, but if it's CA I was told it's because building without basements was cheaper, so when the thousands of houses popped up in the 1940s and later nobody built a basement (houses with even a California Basement seem to go for a premium).

I don't know if you could make crowns by building up material. Crowns undergo incredible stresses. The removal approach seems to be better.

The trick is to have a method that makes fully dense parts. There are a couple that do, including LENS and a few others that involve making a fully molten pool at the point of deposition. These are the techniques the military/aerospace industries are interested in as even a small pore can be catastrophic.

If you're taking a chunk of material and removing it you're generally doing what's called CNC machining. This technique has been around for a good while, and it can make some fantastic parts. The big difference is you can get much higher resolution at much higher speeds from these rapid prototyping machines. You also don't have nearly as much waste/forces as compared to using a large block. You can imagine cutting a customized gold necklace out of a block would be considerably more expensive than printing it from the ground up.

[dstark]

Yes. I am in Ca.
I have one friend in Ca that built his home with a basement. He did that because the size of his house was limited by the town, and building an unfinished basement was ok for some reason. When he goes to sell the house though, he can't count the sq footage of the basement in the overall sq footage of the house.

So, for example if his house excluding the basement is 6300 sq ft, and the basement is 900 sq ft, he can only advertise his house as 6300 sq ft. So at 1,000 a sq ft....he can sell his house for approximately $6.3 million, not $7.2 million with the basement. (I know these prices are at the high end. It is a high end house with views of downtown SF and the Golden Gate Bridge. These sale prices might be a little low.)

He did finish the basement without town approval. I guess there is a process that my friend can go through where he gets the basement
permitted. Costs tens of thousands of dollars.

You don't get $1,000 a sq ft for a basement if you sell. Part of the basement is underground. But he would get more for the house if the basement was permitted.

He had false ceilings taken out of the basement. I can't remember if the floors are hardwood, carpet or cement.

I don't know if what I wrote is understandable.

[notrichenough]

I live in a high tax state, and my severance package and options I had to exercise (including some ISOs) pushed my income way above normal. And it looks like my rentals will actually make money this year. So the AMT hit is pretty bad.

Now I'm trying to figure out if I should sell the ISOs before the end of the year and convert it all to regular income, or wait until next year for LTCG. There is some strange AMT credit situation which I don't fully understand yet around ISOs when you pay AMT on them.

If Congress doesn't patch the AMT credit amount again this year I will really be screwed.

When I print out my tax return it usually runs around 50 pages long, although a lot of it is depreciation forms. I use TaxACT.

[dstark]

Notrichenough, is there a way you can figure out your taxes now with selling the isos this year or next?

I understand that next year's taxes are not set yet, so it would just give you ball park numbers.

This is dated. The exemptions are higher now. But this is the way AMT works.
Capital gains raises your AMT.

High income people, but not super high income people, do not get the tax cuts they think they get.

Tax Rates on Capital Gains and Dividends Under the
AMT

[BCEagle91]

> Your basement isn't below ground level? I ask because you have a glsss slider.

A common approach is to build a place into the side of a hill (to use hilly land) where one side of the basement is underground while the other side is.

I knew a guy that's a wealthy builder. We went to visit his house and it didn't look like much from the outside. I found out later that it was a converted chicken coop. Basically most of the house was underground. It was really, really nice except for the lack of windows.

I'm at McDonalds using their free WiFi and there was a discussion between two employees on iPhones. One of the employees has an iPhone 5 and the other has an iPhone 3 and he was thinking of upgrading to an iPhone 4 rather than an iPhone 5 because it costs less. He also mentioned that he was excited about his paycheck this week: $206. No real point here - but I'm constantly floored in how people spend their money.

[dstark]

Does everything have to have a point? I like the stories.

The lack of windows is a turnoff for me.

I went to a wrestling match. WWE Raw. I am actually very thrifty these days. He@@. I am not even working. I took my daughter for her birthday. My wife said I have to sit next to the ring. So I did. $250 a ticket. I don't like to spend $11 to go to the movies.

I am at the event. I can't believe people spend so much of their hard earned money on this. What are they thinking? I have no idea. The seats weren't even that good. These wrestlers are great athletes. I will say that. But people, save your money.

[BCEagle91]

You should see what people spend on guns and bullets at a shooting range.

A co-worker was telling me about shooting off automatic weapons here. I was just going through what those bullets would cost in my mind. The weapons themselves can cost $1K to $5K and there are lots of people with collections.

Maybe I should talk with my tennis racquet collection. I did sell off a bunch of them this year.

[dstark]

I have zero interest in guns and bullets. I understand people love their guns. I don't love their guns.

I guess shooting guns is some kind of release for people.

The wrestlng matches are releases too. People get to yell and scream. Half the audience roots for one guy, the other half for another. I don't think the audience knows why it roots for one guy over another. If people didn't have places where they can yell and scream and shoot their guns without hurting anybody, I guess they would hurt somebody.

I remember when my brother bought a VCR. This is when they were over $1,000. I was thinking,"How can you afford this?" I didn't say anything. I have to admit. VCRs were pretty nice.

I love the iphone conversation you wrote about.

[notrichenough]

ISOs are apparently a special case for AMT because you pay AMT on the imputed gain when you exercise them, and it adjusts the basis for AMT when you do sell it, but then there is also supposed to be some sort of credit on your regular tax that carries forward until you aren't paying AMT any more.

Or something.

I got the 2012 preview for my tax program, but the future credit doesn't show on form 8801 (Credit for Prior Year Minimum Tax), so I don't know if I am misunderstanding something or if my tax program can even properly handle ISOs.

Bleh.

[DocT]

"I am at the event. I can't believe people spend so much of their hard earned money on this. What are they thinking? I have no idea. The seats weren't even that good. These wrestlers are great athletes. I will say that. But people, save your money."

Last summer I went to a muay thai tournament in Bangkok. People were going berserk there. It was $200 a seat - I don't know how people there can afford it but it was packed.

[dstark]

Echhhhh...notsorichenough.

The iso tax rules are way too complicated.