jeremy_arnold

16 ms·

1.
by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
There's a fundamental asymmetry here: many commenters vs. one of me. It's one big reason why most writers don't engage in comments at all. The time and energy burden is enormous . As happens though, I think standing behind o
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
Flack is a pejorative, and really speaks to spokespeople, which I'm not. I write all the time about what my day job is, and I regularly disclose it whenever there is even an vague intersection with a story I'm writing. It's n
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
As I've said elsewhere, if the US wants to set some max window for realizing gains, that could be fine. ProPublica and others are welcome to write opeds arguing for it. People can debate that on its own merits. The difference between t
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
It's the same as property taxes. Do they factor capital gains in some obvious sense? Sure! They're based on assessed value, which should be closer to market value than original sale price. But no one looks at them as the same as f
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
lol at "paid flack". Brb gonna update my LinkedIn. Anyway, I awarded a correction bounty here. I'd said in the same piece "if your only criteria for publishing are some measure of verification and some measure of newswor
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
OP here. Slept on it. I said in that same segment "if your only criteria for publishing are some measure of verification and some measure of newsworthiness". In re-reading their piece, that's all they checked for. So what I s
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
> How do you envision changing incentives and accountability? I'm writing a piece about that on Thursday actually. TLDR is a mix of paying for corrections (really just "more correct information flow") and maintaining a sup
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
Ok, useful context. Thanks. (I've never submitted my own link, but it seems my readers do from time to time. I'll try to be mindful of this if it's something I'd like to see posted here.)
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
The offense was you intimating that I had bad motives when I simply wanted to centralize discussion and then link from one to the other (as I did). You clearly have no idea what it's like to manage replies at scale. People with bad fai
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
If you'd been respectful, there'd be no ban!
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
There are taxes A B. B includes A. ProPublica says "we'd love to see more of A, which is separate from B, as B doesn't seem especially workable". A and B are not the same, even if one encompasses the other in some meta s
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
lol I've directly engaged with 100+ comments today. I stand behind my work in ways that virtually no writers do. All I ask in return is a basic bit of respect in the form of default rules of engagement. Forcing me to address the same c
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
It's certainly true that political winds are driving the reversions. But what's driving the politics? Wealth taxes face three classic problems: (1) they're very hard to set in any fair sense given complexities of markets and
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
ProPublica said that these billionaires were avoiding taxes because their unrealized gains weren't being taxed, and implied that they should be in a direct sense for fairness. (Note that ProPublica mentions wealth taxes at the end, a
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
OP here. Three things: 1. Most countries that have tried wealth taxes have either abandoned them or have had to constantly readjust them due to logistical difficulties and capital flight. They're elegant in theory, but very difficult p
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
We'll start with the meta here. Some of these vehicles have arcane applications that I wouldn't know about. I'm not a CPA, and I pay people for corrections for a reason (which I'm pretty sure I'm about the only pers
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
I just mean that so far as the invention/calibration of the taxes, the idea was that a high estate tax would offset the reset of capital gains. I don't have a strong position on whether the laws do this well or make full sense etc
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
The only way this is possible is if the assets are still accruing value in sufficient excess of loans made against the assets. So long as this happens, it's fine for the realization to be 1,000 years off. The IOU doesn't expire, a
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
Just to start with one thing here, you're arguing that Robinhood's retail customers are not in fact actual customers despite the fact they very obviously meet the definition you use? lol ok
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
Most of those instruments retain the initial cost basis. They're a way of getting around gift taxes, not capital gains.
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
OP here. I sort of agree with you, but it's a bit complicated and it wasn't obvious what the right way to word that was. To get granular: Wealth taxes are a bit distinct from taxing unrealized gains directly (even though they ofte
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
If you actually have substantive criticisms (that don't devolve to "I can clairvoyantly intuit your intent and thus know you to be an unreliable narrator even though I'm not going to be concrete/specific anywhere"),
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
I mean saying that my headline was incendiary is fair. That's just not synonymous with trolling imo?
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
The offset, such as it is, is that estates below a certain threshold pay a lower rate of 18%. So the tax was designed to make the wealthy pay more, irrespective of whether it does a good enough job there. But to be clear, if someone wants t
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
I know they happen for offshore wealth getting repatriated. Possible that they've existed for onshore too? Interesting thing to look into. But even if so, that just seems a vanilla case of "Congress should be held accountable to n
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
I mean there are elaborate schemes to avoid this, but it's not obvious to me that many of them really work short of active (i.e., illegal) tax evasion. You can, for example, shield stuff in trusts, which is tax-efficient. But when an h
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
OP here. Can give some partial answers. 1. Lots of possible deductions. Charitable giving is a big one here. I guess we'll see from future instalments in the ProPublica series which ones were specifically used. 2. You can roll-over loa
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
OP here. The point is that taxation can't really be avoided. If you take out loans against your shares to fund a lavish lifestyle, those loans need to be paid back (and you'll also get taxed on much of your consumption via sales t
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
Thanks!
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by jeremy_arnold 5y ago
OP here. Pondering this.

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