The trip is valued at $138,000. Whether he can resell it or not is not the IRD's problem. It's not a profit tax, or an assets tax, it's an income tax.
Whether or not he can resell it can play a role in what the fair market value is, though. Take a look, for instance, at the valuation of shares in a Family Limited Partnership.
I fail to see how a free trip to space equates to income. Yes, the trip ordinarily costs $138,000, but this paticular trip was priced at "Win this competition". That doesn't have any monetary value.
Frankly, I don't see how it equates to income either, and I'm a tax specialist. If the trip was transferable then you could argue for it being income, but then the guy would have been an idiot to give it up when he could have just sold it. But a completely intangible prize like a trip to space, where the prize itself benefits the corporation giving the prize (after all, it's publicity for them), I don't know. What if they called it a scholarship? A trip to space is certainly an educational experience? What if they paid him minimum wage and filmed the whole thing to create a commercial? Wouldn't it be a non-taxable fringe benefit? Survivor contestants aren't taxed on the value of their trip to the island, are they?
Disclaimer under IRS Circular 230: Nothing in this message is 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.
You can never lose money by increasing your pay unless the higher bracket is taxed at greater than 100%.
When multiple jurisdictions are taxing you (like federal/state/local in the US), it is possible.
And besides that there are some corner cases. For instance, the retirement savings credit drops from 50% to 30% when you hit an AGI of $30,000. So if your AGI is $29,999 and you contributed $4000 to a Roth IRA you probably pay no taxes, but if your AGI is $30,001 and you contributed $4000 to a Roth IRA you probably do owe taxes, and more than $2 of them at that. Tax brackets generally don't work that way, but credits sometimes do.
Considering what China does to dissidents, I personally feel any company assisting in keeping the oppressed from disseminating their beliefs is not one I choose to do business with.
What about individuals? What have you done to allow the oppressed to disseminate their beliefs?
If Google were actively helping China put dissidents in jail, like Yahoo, that'd be one thing. But simply choosing to spread that content you're allowed to spread without spreading other content you're not allowed to spread. That doesn't seem to me like something you can fault them for.
Under what definition of "censoring people"? I think it's perfectly moral for a website to choose what materials to include and what materials not to include.
Diebold made ATM systems long before that and they remain among the safest publicly accessible machines around. Especially when you consider they're full of money.
They may be safe, but they sure are crappy. My credit union just installed new Diebold ATMs a few months ago. They've got some neat features: a check scanner that prints a copy of your checks onto your receipt, and a money counter which counts your bills a whole stack at a time. The problem is that the ATM machine pretty much never works. The check deposits are down about half the time, and I've gotten the bill counter to work exactly once since the new machine was put in place.
A person is day trading iff he buys and then sells a stock or bond within a month, more than three times in a 12-month period. Since a long-term investor will rarely see a reason to "change course" so quickly three times in a year, this captures all people we'd consider day traders and only has a very small fraction of false positives on long-term investors.
The SEC is a bit more lenient, but go figure, they've already defined a "pattern day trader". "A day trade is the purchase and sale (or short sale and purchase) of the same security on the same day in a single account." "If you day trade 4 or more times in 5 business days within a single account, you are a Pattern Day Trader." "Day Trading Accounts must maintain a minimum equity of $25,000."
And no, I don't believe in banning day trading either. In fact, I once had my account designated as a pattern day trading account. Nowadays I tend to hold stocks a lot longer. I invest in companies pretty much solely for their long-term prospects (with long term meaning essentially forever), though I'm willing to dump them very quickly in a number of situations (if I believe I mis-evaluated them, if I find something better, if I want to take a tax loss, if I need to withdraw funds).
It's not enough to know which businesses are good; you have to know which ones are good relative to the price their stock is selling for, which is a much, much, much more difficult problem.
The way I see it, it's actually easier. You don't have to waste time looking at financial reports and listening to conference calls, you just pick a stock that's unpopular for irrational reasons.
The alternative? Buy an index fund.
Here's another alternative - just randomly pick stuff. Index funds are too easily manipulated. When it is announced that a new stock is going to be added to an index, people go and buy up that stock, causing the index fund to pay a higher price.
But you need the diversification? Eight stocks cut your risk by 81%. If you have the money and/or the time to invest in 8 stocks, there's little point in bothering with an index fund. Maybe if you want to invest in foreign issues, as they're expensive for the average person to invest in directly.
Be sure to look into DRIPs and other direct investment programs too. DRIPs enable you to automatically invest dividends so you really can just buy it and forget about it; and direct investment programs can cut your commissions to zero in some cases.
Ram is still rather expensive compared to hard drives for data which isn't accessed very often, even when the operating costs are factored in. Sure, much of Google's data *is* accessed often, but much of it *isn't* as well. Just think of all those emails in people's gmail accounts that sit in the inbox for years upon years.
You know, I don't understand why people get upset about cameras in public places. I am a logical citizen, and I don't think there is a fundamental issue with the concept that there is no such thing as "privacy" in a "public" place - such as a street corner.
I see it this way: If it is possible for someone to stand at the corner and observe you, then what's the difference between that and having a camera there and a person in a room watching you?
There are different levels of privacy. And just because it's possible for someone to stand at the corner and observe me, that doesn't mean I wouldn't get upset if someone tracked and video-taped my every move.
My personal assumption, when I'm in a public place - on the street, in my car, etc - is that I am being observed, so I behave appropriately for that assumption. Whenever I want to behave otherwise, I do so behind closed doors on private property.
I find it kind of hard to believe that you've never for example broken a traffic law. If assumed you were being observed, by the government, you wouldn't do that, would you?
Again, it's a matter of degree. When I'm in public I assume to some extent that I can be seen, but I don't assume that someone is tracking and video-taping my every move. At least not yet, if enough cities adopt this type of thing I guess I'll have to start.
You've got a good point there, especially if you think about hard drive space with Gmail. I'm sure Google will keep hold of their hard drives wherever possible to give them more space/more redundancy.
The way hard drives have been getting cheaper and more compact, that doesn't always make economic sense. At some point the cost of storage, cooling, electricity, maintenance, etc. is too much and you're better off using that new machine that can handle 100 times the data for the same overhead costs.
If electricity, rent, air conditioners, and sysadmins were free...
Probably they're donating the working hardware to schools or communities. Donations are tax deductible in the US, so they're actually saving money while getting free positive publicity.
Actually, donations of depreciated property are not really deductible, because your deduction is limited to your basis. If the equipment is old, it's already depreciated and has no basis. See http://www.msk.com/csl_files/325861.pdf.
And yet, it doesn't surprise me at all. The DJ most likely assumed that someone else had already checked it out. Besides, for him to stop the contest or put it on hold while he researched what the nurse had said would be to put his job on the line.
It's really amazing what people will do when an authority figure tells them it's OK. When I first read about the Milgram experiment I was astonished. People were willing to seemingly shock a stranger to death simply because another stranger who was allegedly an authority figure told them to do so.
As Americans I think we have to constantly remind ourselves that we're individual human beings first and employees second. We have a right and a responsibility to speak up when something wrong is happening.
Why is the radio station obliged to understand the danger, but the contestants are not?
They both are, really, at least when it comes to morality/ethics. From what I've read many employees at the radio station seem to have been aware that there was at least some danger involved. They're negligent for not finding out more precisely what the dangers were.
Actually, most of the imagery used by Google Earth is satellite images from Landsat, topography from SRTM, and aerial images from USGS - all viewable in 3-D using NASA's educational WorldWind program.
Yep, and under a new law, the President has the authority to take them all away. Hope you've got your cache stocked up. Free aerial photos of most of the world are going to be going away real soon.
Once you have the data, you have the data, plain and simple. All it takes is once to seed a torrent.
Put it that way, and you can tell it's not about stopping pirates. It is about stopping free usage of a media you have legally purchased through other methods, which it does perfectly.
It's also about stopping the pirates who don't have all day to spend finding and downloading stuff through bittorrent, which, by the way, is the vast majority of them.
If they don't *know* that this laptop would be a huge benefit to poor people in ALL countries, then they're either being threatened by the likes of Dell (hard to sell $500 POS desktops when you can get a durable $100 laptop) or are completely blind to the people who are right under their noses.
I think they would sell the laptops to people in first world countries. But you'd have to buy a million of them, and give them all away to children.
The laptop program though has a product I cant find...a crankable laptop fast enough for basic email and surfing with mesh capability at a price cheaper than an average pda. (even at the double price mentioned for "buyers".)
I agree. But I wonder how hard it would be to buy a hand crank and a wireless card with a Marvell 88W8388 (or equivalent) chip, and hook it up to a cheap used laptop you find on ebay.
But there's something about it that nags at me, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Something a little condescending, a little too much hubris about it all.
For me it's the control aspect. "We'll give you this laptop for $150. But you have to buy a million of them. And you have to give them away to children. And those children aren't allowed to resell them."
And this part probably isn't intentional, but what's going to wind up happening is these poor countries are going to be used as Guinea Pigs. If the laptops are successful, then the rich countries will get them. If the whole program fails miserably, then they won't.
It's my understanding that the rules guide the TSA staff, not the airlines. Remember, the airport checkpoints are no longer run by private companies, they're run by the TSA.
That wasn't true at the time Gilmore filed his suit (which is the time the courts are primarily interested in)
I have to admit I wasn't aware of that. I guess if there really was a law that the airlines had to follow and if Gilmore had standing to challenge that law and if he brought up the issue before the court and if the case was not declared moot by the fact that the TSA was now running things, then I guess I'd have to agree with you. I'm very much unsure on all four of those points, though, and
- but anyway, it makes no difference. The TSA pursues legal action against its own staff who break its rules.
Really? Do you have any examples of such a thing? Even so, you'd still have the problem of standing, but if the policies of the TSA are binding as law on the TSA staff, then you've got a good argument that this is a law. But right now I don't see the rules as different than any other employment rules for government employees.
Also note that this doesn't throw out all of Gilmore's arguments. I think his best argument is for unreasonable seizure, but the court seems to believe that there is no seizure taking place because Gilmore is free to leave. My argument would be that yes, he is free to leave, but he isn't free to proceed. I'm not sure if the courts have ever set precedent for calling that a seizure, though. (And then there's the question of whether or not it's reasonable - if it wasn't for the ability to submit to a search, it would definitely be unreasonable, but if all Gilmore had to do was submit to a search which was already considered by the courts to be reasonable, well then I guess any seizure would be reasonable as well).
What grounds would Gilmore have to get a court to order the airline to hand over their trade secrets?
The grounds of that information being relevant to his case.
But if the rules were airline rules, and not government rules, then he wouldn't have a case in the first place.
That is a fundamental principle of the court system - the other party must hand over all relevant information. Trade secrets do not obstruct this at all - the judge will merely seal the relevant court papers, so that nobody other than the parties can see them (and the party receiving the information is obliged not to use it for anything outside the case).
So, for instance, if someone has a case pending about the validity of a voting machine, and they want to see the source code for that voting machine, then they get to see it, despite any trade secrets involved?
There are no valid legal grounds on which anything can be withheld from the other party in a court case, if the party can show that the information is relevant to the case (you don't have to prove that, but you do have to demonstrate some kind of evidence that the information is relevant). The only exception is when the party who wants to keep something secret is the government.
I definitely wasn't aware of that, and I can't prove you wrong so I'll take it for granted that you're correct (although some sort of citation for this would be nice). But if the airlines were running the checkpoints, then there'd be no case in the first place, and so the information wouldn't be relevant to anything at all.
The secret law says what the airlines have to do. The airlines can and will be fined for disobeying it. You can't be arrested or fined under this law because it just doesn't apply to you directly - it's a set of rules about how the airline has to treat you. (I agree with your implication that a law is most reasonably defined as any rule made up by the government for which somebody can be fined or arrested - I just think this rule meets those requirements)
It's my understanding that the rules guide the TSA staff, not the airlines. Remember, the airport checkpoints are no longer run by private companies, they're run by the TSA.
If the airlines made the rules, then it wouldn't be a secret, and the court would just have ordered the airline to hand over their policies to Gilmore, so that he can see for himself if they're legal and argue his case in court. When the TSA makes the rules, this doesn't happen. That's the difference.
If the airlines made the rules, then there would be no basis for the case in the first place, would there? IOW, the rules still could be kept secret, in fact they could be kept as a trade secret. What grounds would Gilmore have to get a court to order the airline to hand over their trade secrets?
If it's an airline rule: you can vote with your wallet, airlines are in competition and those that are too Draconian will lose customers. Those that are insecure will, too. Potentially a compromise is reached.
If it's the TSA (government) imposing the rules: you have no choice. Any airline, any airport you'll see the same rules. If the rules infringe your freedoms, you can't avoid them. Your only hope to have them changed is to petition the government.
If it's a government rule, you can vote with...your vote. Of course, either way, your single vote isn't going to make a difference.
As for insecure airlines going out of business, I doubt it. Are American Airlines or United Airlines out of business? Did all those people who died in the twin towers get to vote with their wallet?
As a general rule, governments should not infringe our freedomes unless there is a clear case to be made for protecting people at large.
Absolutely. But there is a clear case here for protecting the public at large. The only question is how far to go in protecting them. Searching people for weapons before they board a commercial airliner seems reasonable to me. Letting people get a somewhat less time consuming search if they identify themselves and pass a quick background check (which takes place after they buy their ticket and before they arrive at the airport), also seems reasonable.
I'm not saying that there should be no rules to follow when it comes to air safety... but since the TSA is a government branch, they should be very careful as to the rules they enforce. Frankly the 'rules' they use should be transparent laws, since they cannot be avoided.
The basic rules should be transparent, but I'm not sure the benefit in releasing every single detail to the public. And releasing every little detail could give those who want to circumvent the rules some help in doing so. IOW, we know the TSA is going to search people, but we don't know exactly who they're going to search or when. Think of it like a spam filter. You can tell people that you're filtering spam, but if you give out the exact details of the filter, then it's much easier to circumvent.
The airlines and the TSA claim that it is a law written by the TSA. They also claim that the law is a secret and you are not allowed to see it.
Thanks. I've read that now. The TSA has indeed admitted that there is a policy in place. They even showed the policy to the judge. They obviously don't call it a law, because, well, it isn't a law (you can't be arrested or fined for disobeying it).
Hence the lawsuit. Yes, secret laws make a difference.
It's unclear to me what the difference is between the airlines making the rules and the TSA doing it. Either way, you have to follow it if you want to fly.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether or not he can resell it can play a role in what the fair market value is, though. Take a look, for instance, at the valuation of shares in a Family Limited Partnership.
Frankly, I don't see how it equates to income either, and I'm a tax specialist. If the trip was transferable then you could argue for it being income, but then the guy would have been an idiot to give it up when he could have just sold it. But a completely intangible prize like a trip to space, where the prize itself benefits the corporation giving the prize (after all, it's publicity for them), I don't know. What if they called it a scholarship? A trip to space is certainly an educational experience? What if they paid him minimum wage and filmed the whole thing to create a commercial? Wouldn't it be a non-taxable fringe benefit? Survivor contestants aren't taxed on the value of their trip to the island, are they?
Disclaimer under IRS Circular 230: Nothing in this message is 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.
Back when I worked as a software engineer, actually :).
When multiple jurisdictions are taxing you (like federal/state/local in the US), it is possible.
And besides that there are some corner cases. For instance, the retirement savings credit drops from 50% to 30% when you hit an AGI of $30,000. So if your AGI is $29,999 and you contributed $4000 to a Roth IRA you probably pay no taxes, but if your AGI is $30,001 and you contributed $4000 to a Roth IRA you probably do owe taxes, and more than $2 of them at that. Tax brackets generally don't work that way, but credits sometimes do.
What about individuals? What have you done to allow the oppressed to disseminate their beliefs?
If Google were actively helping China put dissidents in jail, like Yahoo, that'd be one thing. But simply choosing to spread that content you're allowed to spread without spreading other content you're not allowed to spread. That doesn't seem to me like something you can fault them for.
Under what definition of "censoring people"? I think it's perfectly moral for a website to choose what materials to include and what materials not to include.
They may be safe, but they sure are crappy. My credit union just installed new Diebold ATMs a few months ago. They've got some neat features: a check scanner that prints a copy of your checks onto your receipt, and a money counter which counts your bills a whole stack at a time. The problem is that the ATM machine pretty much never works. The check deposits are down about half the time, and I've gotten the bill counter to work exactly once since the new machine was put in place.
The SEC is a bit more lenient, but go figure, they've already defined a "pattern day trader". "A day trade is the purchase and sale (or short sale and purchase) of the same security on the same day in a single account." "If you day trade 4 or more times in 5 business days within a single account, you are a Pattern Day Trader." "Day Trading Accounts must maintain a minimum equity of $25,000."
And no, I don't believe in banning day trading either. In fact, I once had my account designated as a pattern day trading account. Nowadays I tend to hold stocks a lot longer. I invest in companies pretty much solely for their long-term prospects (with long term meaning essentially forever), though I'm willing to dump them very quickly in a number of situations (if I believe I mis-evaluated them, if I find something better, if I want to take a tax loss, if I need to withdraw funds).
The way I see it, it's actually easier. You don't have to waste time looking at financial reports and listening to conference calls, you just pick a stock that's unpopular for irrational reasons.
Here's another alternative - just randomly pick stuff. Index funds are too easily manipulated. When it is announced that a new stock is going to be added to an index, people go and buy up that stock, causing the index fund to pay a higher price.
But you need the diversification? Eight stocks cut your risk by 81%. If you have the money and/or the time to invest in 8 stocks, there's little point in bothering with an index fund. Maybe if you want to invest in foreign issues, as they're expensive for the average person to invest in directly.
Be sure to look into DRIPs and other direct investment programs too. DRIPs enable you to automatically invest dividends so you really can just buy it and forget about it; and direct investment programs can cut your commissions to zero in some cases.
Interesting concept, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform seems to contradict that.
Ram is still rather expensive compared to hard drives for data which isn't accessed very often, even when the operating costs are factored in. Sure, much of Google's data *is* accessed often, but much of it *isn't* as well. Just think of all those emails in people's gmail accounts that sit in the inbox for years upon years.
There are different levels of privacy. And just because it's possible for someone to stand at the corner and observe me, that doesn't mean I wouldn't get upset if someone tracked and video-taped my every move.
I find it kind of hard to believe that you've never for example broken a traffic law. If assumed you were being observed, by the government, you wouldn't do that, would you?
Again, it's a matter of degree. When I'm in public I assume to some extent that I can be seen, but I don't assume that someone is tracking and video-taping my every move. At least not yet, if enough cities adopt this type of thing I guess I'll have to start.
The way hard drives have been getting cheaper and more compact, that doesn't always make economic sense. At some point the cost of storage, cooling, electricity, maintenance, etc. is too much and you're better off using that new machine that can handle 100 times the data for the same overhead costs.
If electricity, rent, air conditioners, and sysadmins were free...
Actually, donations of depreciated property are not really deductible, because your deduction is limited to your basis. If the equipment is old, it's already depreciated and has no basis. See http://www.msk.com/csl_files/325861.pdf.
Nice.
And yet, it doesn't surprise me at all. The DJ most likely assumed that someone else had already checked it out. Besides, for him to stop the contest or put it on hold while he researched what the nurse had said would be to put his job on the line.
It's really amazing what people will do when an authority figure tells them it's OK. When I first read about the Milgram experiment I was astonished. People were willing to seemingly shock a stranger to death simply because another stranger who was allegedly an authority figure told them to do so.
As Americans I think we have to constantly remind ourselves that we're individual human beings first and employees second. We have a right and a responsibility to speak up when something wrong is happening.
They both are, really, at least when it comes to morality/ethics. From what I've read many employees at the radio station seem to have been aware that there was at least some danger involved. They're negligent for not finding out more precisely what the dangers were.
Yep, and under a new law, the President has the authority to take them all away. Hope you've got your cache stocked up. Free aerial photos of most of the world are going to be going away real soon.
It's also about stopping the pirates who don't have all day to spend finding and downloading stuff through bittorrent, which, by the way, is the vast majority of them.
I think they would sell the laptops to people in first world countries. But you'd have to buy a million of them, and give them all away to children.
I agree. But I wonder how hard it would be to buy a hand crank and a wireless card with a Marvell 88W8388 (or equivalent) chip, and hook it up to a cheap used laptop you find on ebay.
For me it's the control aspect. "We'll give you this laptop for $150. But you have to buy a million of them. And you have to give them away to children. And those children aren't allowed to resell them."
And this part probably isn't intentional, but what's going to wind up happening is these poor countries are going to be used as Guinea Pigs. If the laptops are successful, then the rich countries will get them. If the whole program fails miserably, then they won't.
I have to admit I wasn't aware of that. I guess if there really was a law that the airlines had to follow and if Gilmore had standing to challenge that law and if he brought up the issue before the court and if the case was not declared moot by the fact that the TSA was now running things, then I guess I'd have to agree with you. I'm very much unsure on all four of those points, though, and
Really? Do you have any examples of such a thing? Even so, you'd still have the problem of standing, but if the policies of the TSA are binding as law on the TSA staff, then you've got a good argument that this is a law. But right now I don't see the rules as different than any other employment rules for government employees.
Also note that this doesn't throw out all of Gilmore's arguments. I think his best argument is for unreasonable seizure, but the court seems to believe that there is no seizure taking place because Gilmore is free to leave. My argument would be that yes, he is free to leave, but he isn't free to proceed. I'm not sure if the courts have ever set precedent for calling that a seizure, though. (And then there's the question of whether or not it's reasonable - if it wasn't for the ability to submit to a search, it would definitely be unreasonable, but if all Gilmore had to do was submit to a search which was already considered by the courts to be reasonable, well then I guess any seizure would be reasonable as well).
But if the rules were airline rules, and not government rules, then he wouldn't have a case in the first place.
So, for instance, if someone has a case pending about the validity of a voting machine, and they want to see the source code for that voting machine, then they get to see it, despite any trade secrets involved?
I definitely wasn't aware of that, and I can't prove you wrong so I'll take it for granted that you're correct (although some sort of citation for this would be nice). But if the airlines were running the checkpoints, then there'd be no case in the first place, and so the information wouldn't be relevant to anything at all.
It's my understanding that the rules guide the TSA staff, not the airlines. Remember, the airport checkpoints are no longer run by private companies, they're run by the TSA.
If the airlines made the rules, then there would be no basis for the case in the first place, would there? IOW, the rules still could be kept secret, in fact they could be kept as a trade secret. What grounds would Gilmore have to get a court to order the airline to hand over their trade secrets?
If it's a government rule, you can vote with...your vote. Of course, either way, your single vote isn't going to make a difference.
As for insecure airlines going out of business, I doubt it. Are American Airlines or United Airlines out of business? Did all those people who died in the twin towers get to vote with their wallet?
Absolutely. But there is a clear case here for protecting the public at large. The only question is how far to go in protecting them. Searching people for weapons before they board a commercial airliner seems reasonable to me. Letting people get a somewhat less time consuming search if they identify themselves and pass a quick background check (which takes place after they buy their ticket and before they arrive at the airport), also seems reasonable.
The basic rules should be transparent, but I'm not sure the benefit in releasing every single detail to the public. And releasing every little detail could give those who want to circumvent the rules some help in doing so. IOW, we know the TSA is going to search people, but we don't know exactly who they're going to search or when. Think of it like a spam filter. You can tell people that you're filtering spam, but if you give out the exact details of the filter, then it's much easier to circumvent.
Thanks. I've read that now. The TSA has indeed admitted that there is a policy in place. They even showed the policy to the judge. They obviously don't call it a law, because, well, it isn't a law (you can't be arrested or fined for disobeying it).
It's unclear to me what the difference is between the airlines making the rules and the TSA doing it. Either way, you have to follow it if you want to fly.