Calm down professor. The US is one of the only countries in the world to tax worldwide income, even if they are a nonresident of the US. That is NOT how it works in every country.

Here’s a pretty good article about it from the WSJ if you want to educate yourself on the subject: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WB-34630

It’s somewhat accurate to say “every penny they make is taxABLE to Uncle Sam” which is different from saying 100% tax rate. Americans living outside the US still need to file a tax return and report all their income, and pay tax on it to the US, even if it is from a foreign source. That said they could claim the foreign tax credit if they paid tax to a foreign regime on that income already, or the foreign income exclusion under some circumstances which would reduce their taxable income to the US.

Well thank god we don’t have any Death Panels from Obamacare though!

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

There was a lot of speculation about that but I'm not sure if there's any consensus. Individual tax returns only show income, and business returns only show book values (not fair market value which would help determine wealth). He had pretty big net operating loss carryovers from previous years which essentially zeroed out his income for a few years, so it's hard to say. I feel like I remember looking for foreign account disclosures but didn't see them in the returns, which would be at least one set of FMV numbers to go with. It's been a while since I looked though. Overall I walked away being disappointed so I'll stick with my original assessment, maybe I take another look later today though.

What makes you think I don't already wear a crime fighting suit to work? There was a documentary about it and everything, The Accountant. I specialize in espionage, intrusion/counter intrusion, taking some CPE next week for long range assault weaponry, the usual.

The funny thing is, his tax returns were fairly unremarkable. I'm a cpa and my background is largely with high and ultra high net worth individuals and their businesses, so people like trump are my bread and butter. I reviewed his returns when they first leaked and honestly nothing jumped out at me as particularly noteworthy or interesting at all. All I can speculate is that he's just a stubborn asshole and simply didn't want to release them.

He should've posted them all online. As a cpa with a bit of rare downtime on my hands I'd love to volunteer to review returns for the irs. I know all the errors and omissions, tricks and and gimmicks, goofs, fuckups, whoopsies, you name it. 20% commission for the recovered taxes seems fair compensation.

I read once that maybe Sweden or Norway has publicly available tax returns. BUT, the person whose return you look at gets notified when you view it, so you can't just go around subtly snooping on your friends and neighbors without being noticed. Idk if that's true though.

Fuck her, fuck RBG, fuck McConnell, fuck Biden, fuck Trump, fuck every single one of these dinosaurs who will be dead long before they see the result of their actions.

I think the same about all these geriatric politicians. McConnell, pelosi, Biden, Trump, whoever. These are already successful (ish?) people who could be retired living the good life. But instead they stay in the shitshow holding on to power as long as possible. I don't get it.

I remember my friends and myself looking up "things to do instead of drugs" on some anti drug website once back in high school. Pretty much all of the suggestions had to do with playing in snow. We lived in the tropics with zero snow. So we bought an eight ball and went skiing instead.

man I don't want to fight about this, everyone is so fucking aggressive here and I'm sick of it.

I don't disagree but I'm confused where you think I said good software excuses lobbying against pre-prepared returns. I'm fairly certain I said the opposite.

What do you propose then, corporate execution and then toss their products in the garbage?

Intuit actually makes some really good products. I'd like to see pre-prepared returns from the irs also, with the option to update/amend at the taxpayer's discretion if necessary. That way Intuit could focus on their higher level products for bigger more sophisticated taxpayers that truly do need excellent software.

That's all pie in the sky fantasy at this point. As long as we live in a $20+trillion/year economy with fifty states, hundreds of millions of people, interstate commerce, international business, complex transactions, and so on, tax will always be complicated as fuck. Best we could do is pre-prepare tax returns from the information returns provided to the irs (W-2, 1099 etc) and allow the taxpayer to update/amend at their discretion. Which I totally support. But tax and accounting is never not going to be complicated as fuck, it just doesn't work that way.

Well the market disagrees with you. And as long as people are forking over $1 million for a starter home and all other equities and commodities are at all time highs, prices won't budge.

That's what I was paying in a small college town about twenty years ago. I doubt if we'll ever see that again. I just checked and that building isn't even there anymore. Looks like they tore it down and put in some luxury student housing (!) for around $1600/month. Wtf.

Yeah aka market correction to reach equilibrium. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.