There's 25 different ways to fill out your federal return, but the MA state taxes are based almost completely on the Federal tax laws with different percentage rates assigned. If your answers on the IRS forms and the MA DOR forms don't match, you're already setting yourself up for audits... so all the state would do is just port over the numbers you gave to the IRS and do the math.
Yeah, a ballot measure to repeal the state tax law was on the ballot, but such a measure if passed would do nothing more than create a state law that could easily be repealled. Furthermore, the Citizens For Limited Taxation group that put forward this measure offered no suggestions for just where the money to make up for the loss of the income tax would come from, or what exactly they wanted to cut.
So really, voting yes on this question was nothing more than a "We don't like the income tax!" protest vote that really wouldn't have much of an impact on anything. Even if it had passed, it would have been undone quickly. It might have put a shudder down the spines of the big spenders on Beacon Hill, but even the failed effort did that.
Anybody who reports on you directly to the IRS is required to send a duplicate of the form to you. That's what W-2 and 1099 forms are all about.
If you file electronically, the IRS will likely reject your return if it doesn't include mentions of every W-2 and 1099 form they've been given about you.
Besides, if somebody gives you more than $600 and you don't remember that event come tax time, just what's wrong with you?
If you live in a state that has a sales tax, you can't really avoid taxes by shopping online, by phone, or by mail. Yeah, you avoid the sales tax, but by causing to have imported into the state a taxable item you owe a use tax, which is usually equal to exactly the sales tax you would have had to pay on an in-state transaction.
The problem is, for an individual, it's hard to collect a use tax on most things. Your state can't ask an out-of-state vendor for their sales records because they're out-of-state and therefore not under your state's jurisdiction. They can't really force you to give a true answer because you have the ability to plead the Fifth Amendment if you're ever accused of not paying a use tax you should have.
It's a problem the states have wanted to solve ever since online shopping got big, but there hasn't exactly been a breakthrough. The states that don't have a sales tax have no reason to help the states that do. Tax classifications can vary from state to state, or even county to county or city by city, so computing what tax is really owed is a complex task that nobody wants to do either. So, it's still one of those problems in the unsolved bin at this moment.
One thing to note here is that it would be very easy for the state to fill out tax paperwork for the taxpayer in MA. I'm an MA taxpayer, and I did my taxes recently with TurboTax. After completing the federal portion, there were very few questions the state software needed to ask me.
- Did I want to pay the voluntary 5.85% tax rate instead of the standard 5.3% tax rate? (No!) - Did I have any use tax items to declare? (Nope, and if anybody asks further I plead the 5th.) - Would I like some of my tax money to go to the state's Clean Elections Fund? (Sure, why not?)
Beyond those little things, TurboTax could complete my pages of state tax forms simply by porting over the values from the IRS forms that had already been completed. So, since the state can already look at my IRS forms anyway, why not have them compute my taxes for me, and automatically send me the already-completed paperwork attached to the bill or refund?
It represents the fact that the total of the ever increasing numbers at the bottom of their main search pages passed a round number, that's all.
They said 6 billion items, not webpages.
on
Google's Bigger Index
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Notice that they claim that they search 6 billion items, but the home page only claims that they're "Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages".
To find the rest, we need to use Google's other services. The image search is claiming "Searching 880,000,000 images". Google Groups says its "Searching 845,000,000 messages". Add those to the count and you get 6,010,199,744 items total.
Oh, there hasn't been one yet... to propose a merger to a board you haven't yet struggled to take over is a friendly takeover, the fact it was laughed at not withstanding...
Or, to say it another way... Slashdot invoked a business buzzword where it didn't belong in the summary yet again...
No, a hostile takeover is the process of buying up enough shares so that the group attempting the takeover starts to own enough of the company to make the current board meaningless. As the takeover group crosses ownership thresholds, they start to have enough shares to name their own people to the board of directors.
If the takeover works, then the takeover interests will own a majority of the voting shares, and therefore will be able to appoint a majority of the board. At that point, the new members of board of directors will overrule and old members left standing, and the new board approves the takeover.
Wait a second. The Walt Disney brand has a ton of goodwill associated with it, but I'm not quite sure that the company that trades under the DIS ticker symbol can say the same. Afterall, it's responsible for Miramax and Touchstone pictures. The Disney brand can't put out an R-rated movie, but the Disney company certainly has ways to do so. The Disney culture certainly doesn't run through the ABC TV division of the company. ABC is all over the map when it comes to what kind of content it will distribute, like a good broadcast TV network should be.
So, when it comes down to it, what people think of when they hear the word "Disney" is only a part of the overall company at this point. Disney may have aquired so much under Eisner that it's having a hard time controling itself. I'm not sure Comcast can do much of a better job, but I'm sure they want to try...
Comcast was likely hoping that Disney investors on Wall Street would have signed off on the deal by selling their Disney stock and buying Comcast stock, which would have caused the ratios to slide in Comcast's favor. Instead, the reverse happened, Comcast went down and Disney went up, making Comcast's stock swap offer worth less and less as Friday went on.
What is "Walt Disney Presents: Miracle" anyway? That seems to be the wave of the future from the Mouse House right now, live action pictures... they still have plenty of resources to produce those.
Actually, the Disney congressmen would have been laid off as a result of this merger since the Comcast congressmen can do the work that they were doing too.
Somebody seems to have missed the "Your market cap must be this high to aquire this company!" sign over there... Comcast will have to come back when it's older.
A) They like the amount Comcast offered, but don't think Comcast has the realistic ability to scrape together that kind of bread
Comcast offered a stock-swap... and as soon as they announced that their stock price dropped. Worse yet, Disney's price rose. Oops. As a result, the cash value of the deal fell, and Comcast's offer seemed even less attractive than it was when the day started. Needless to say, Wall Street disapproved of this deal and didn't want it to happen.
It was already clear that the board of directors wasn't going to like this deal. That's why Comcast went public with their offer, to try to sway the individual shareholders to elect Comcast-takeover-friendly executives and try to take over the board.
Neither the camp that supports Eisner nor the camp that wants to depose Eisner and take over the company themselves is going to vote in favor of Comcast taking over. Finally, an issue the two groups can unite on!
Yep. This isn't the end-all to counterfeit money, but it's the stopper that'll make a small-time counterfeiter give up. A dollar bill not faked is a dollar bill saved... or something like that.
The word "hackers" is pretty clearly being modified by the phrase "who try to print money at home". Are you trying to say those who print money at home with computers aren't "hackers"?
I'm guessing that this is just like most other bank note security systems, some of the clearer details are made public, but others are kept secret since we don't particularly want "Free as in Linux" money out there.
Therefore, I wonder how the central banks of the world are going to implement this in OSS image editors. Afterall, something commented as "//This is where we put the part that stops people trying to open images of money." is gonna be rather easy bypass, and would also require them to define all of the tricks they're using to identify bills in other software too or let some of those checks slide.
Honestly, I don't see why people would be too up in arms about this. Digital copying of money can produce some pretty good fakes. And remember, the standard a counterfeit bill has to pass is not an expert's exam, but the exam of the kid at the grocery store. If the bad guy can successfully pass the bill there, it's too late.
Afterall, those who want to photograph money for inclusion in a poster or such in compliance with the too big, too small or other clearly-wrong copy rules spelled out in the law can still do so optically. Making images of money shouldn't be as easy as technology has made making images of everything else.
If we ruled out all the candidates who didn't use spam or phone messages, most of us would be forced to vote for only write-in candidates who aren't actively running...
Slashdot Mirror
There's 25 different ways to fill out your federal return, but the MA state taxes are based almost completely on the Federal tax laws with different percentage rates assigned. If your answers on the IRS forms and the MA DOR forms don't match, you're already setting yourself up for audits... so all the state would do is just port over the numbers you gave to the IRS and do the math.
You are such a troll and you're not even funny.
Yeah, a ballot measure to repeal the state tax law was on the ballot, but such a measure if passed would do nothing more than create a state law that could easily be repealled. Furthermore, the Citizens For Limited Taxation group that put forward this measure offered no suggestions for just where the money to make up for the loss of the income tax would come from, or what exactly they wanted to cut.
So really, voting yes on this question was nothing more than a "We don't like the income tax!" protest vote that really wouldn't have much of an impact on anything. Even if it had passed, it would have been undone quickly. It might have put a shudder down the spines of the big spenders on Beacon Hill, but even the failed effort did that.
Anybody who reports on you directly to the IRS is required to send a duplicate of the form to you. That's what W-2 and 1099 forms are all about.
If you file electronically, the IRS will likely reject your return if it doesn't include mentions of every W-2 and 1099 form they've been given about you.
Besides, if somebody gives you more than $600 and you don't remember that event come tax time, just what's wrong with you?
If you live in a state that has a sales tax, you can't really avoid taxes by shopping online, by phone, or by mail. Yeah, you avoid the sales tax, but by causing to have imported into the state a taxable item you owe a use tax, which is usually equal to exactly the sales tax you would have had to pay on an in-state transaction.
The problem is, for an individual, it's hard to collect a use tax on most things. Your state can't ask an out-of-state vendor for their sales records because they're out-of-state and therefore not under your state's jurisdiction. They can't really force you to give a true answer because you have the ability to plead the Fifth Amendment if you're ever accused of not paying a use tax you should have.
It's a problem the states have wanted to solve ever since online shopping got big, but there hasn't exactly been a breakthrough. The states that don't have a sales tax have no reason to help the states that do. Tax classifications can vary from state to state, or even county to county or city by city, so computing what tax is really owed is a complex task that nobody wants to do either. So, it's still one of those problems in the unsolved bin at this moment.
One thing to note here is that it would be very easy for the state to fill out tax paperwork for the taxpayer in MA. I'm an MA taxpayer, and I did my taxes recently with TurboTax. After completing the federal portion, there were very few questions the state software needed to ask me.
- Did I want to pay the voluntary 5.85% tax rate instead of the standard 5.3% tax rate? (No!)
- Did I have any use tax items to declare? (Nope, and if anybody asks further I plead the 5th.)
- Would I like some of my tax money to go to the state's Clean Elections Fund? (Sure, why not?)
Beyond those little things, TurboTax could complete my pages of state tax forms simply by porting over the values from the IRS forms that had already been completed. So, since the state can already look at my IRS forms anyway, why not have them compute my taxes for me, and automatically send me the already-completed paperwork attached to the bill or refund?
Chuck E. Cheese's is apparently still making money.
Yeah, it's going to be a good long time before the home console can recreate the ball pit...
It represents the fact that the total of the ever increasing numbers at the bottom of their main search pages passed a round number, that's all.
Notice that they claim that they search 6 billion items, but the home page only claims that they're "Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages".
To find the rest, we need to use Google's other services. The image search is claiming "Searching 880,000,000 images". Google Groups says its "Searching 845,000,000 messages". Add those to the count and you get 6,010,199,744 items total.
What's going on here? This isn't like Google to put out a press release just because the index size just past a round number.
Is Google setting up for its IPO and therefore becoming less like the Google we know and love?
Oh, there hasn't been one yet... to propose a merger to a board you haven't yet struggled to take over is a friendly takeover, the fact it was laughed at not withstanding... Or, to say it another way... Slashdot invoked a business buzzword where it didn't belong in the summary yet again...
No, a hostile takeover is the process of buying up enough shares so that the group attempting the takeover starts to own enough of the company to make the current board meaningless. As the takeover group crosses ownership thresholds, they start to have enough shares to name their own people to the board of directors.
If the takeover works, then the takeover interests will own a majority of the voting shares, and therefore will be able to appoint a majority of the board. At that point, the new members of board of directors will overrule and old members left standing, and the new board approves the takeover.
Wait a second. The Walt Disney brand has a ton of goodwill associated with it, but I'm not quite sure that the company that trades under the DIS ticker symbol can say the same. Afterall, it's responsible for Miramax and Touchstone pictures. The Disney brand can't put out an R-rated movie, but the Disney company certainly has ways to do so. The Disney culture certainly doesn't run through the ABC TV division of the company. ABC is all over the map when it comes to what kind of content it will distribute, like a good broadcast TV network should be.
So, when it comes down to it, what people think of when they hear the word "Disney" is only a part of the overall company at this point. Disney may have aquired so much under Eisner that it's having a hard time controling itself. I'm not sure Comcast can do much of a better job, but I'm sure they want to try...
Comcast was likely hoping that Disney investors on Wall Street would have signed off on the deal by selling their Disney stock and buying Comcast stock, which would have caused the ratios to slide in Comcast's favor. Instead, the reverse happened, Comcast went down and Disney went up, making Comcast's stock swap offer worth less and less as Friday went on.
What is "Walt Disney Presents: Miracle" anyway? That seems to be the wave of the future from the Mouse House right now, live action pictures... they still have plenty of resources to produce those.
Actually, the Disney congressmen would have been laid off as a result of this merger since the Comcast congressmen can do the work that they were doing too.
Somebody seems to have missed the "Your market cap must be this high to aquire this company!" sign over there... Comcast will have to come back when it's older.
A) They like the amount Comcast offered, but don't think Comcast has the realistic ability to scrape together that kind of bread
Comcast offered a stock-swap... and as soon as they announced that their stock price dropped. Worse yet, Disney's price rose. Oops. As a result, the cash value of the deal fell, and Comcast's offer seemed even less attractive than it was when the day started. Needless to say, Wall Street disapproved of this deal and didn't want it to happen.
Microsoft invested $1 billion in Comcast back in 1997 and owns quite a bit of Comcast.
It was already clear that the board of directors wasn't going to like this deal. That's why Comcast went public with their offer, to try to sway the individual shareholders to elect Comcast-takeover-friendly executives and try to take over the board.
Good luck, Comcast. I think you'll need it...
Neither the camp that supports Eisner nor the camp that wants to depose Eisner and take over the company themselves is going to vote in favor of Comcast taking over. Finally, an issue the two groups can unite on!
Yep. This isn't the end-all to counterfeit money, but it's the stopper that'll make a small-time counterfeiter give up. A dollar bill not faked is a dollar bill saved... or something like that.
The word "hackers" is pretty clearly being modified by the phrase "who try to print money at home". Are you trying to say those who print money at home with computers aren't "hackers"?
I'm guessing that this is just like most other bank note security systems, some of the clearer details are made public, but others are kept secret since we don't particularly want "Free as in Linux" money out there.
Therefore, I wonder how the central banks of the world are going to implement this in OSS image editors. Afterall, something commented as "//This is where we put the part that stops people trying to open images of money." is gonna be rather easy bypass, and would also require them to define all of the tricks they're using to identify bills in other software too or let some of those checks slide.
Honestly, I don't see why people would be too up in arms about this. Digital copying of money can produce some pretty good fakes. And remember, the standard a counterfeit bill has to pass is not an expert's exam, but the exam of the kid at the grocery store. If the bad guy can successfully pass the bill there, it's too late.
Afterall, those who want to photograph money for inclusion in a poster or such in compliance with the too big, too small or other clearly-wrong copy rules spelled out in the law can still do so optically. Making images of money shouldn't be as easy as technology has made making images of everything else.
If we ruled out all the candidates who didn't use spam or phone messages, most of us would be forced to vote for only write-in candidates who aren't actively running...