- Shipping costs from Dell don't matter - it's usually free to ship from them regardless.
- Longevity - CRT's already last as long or longer than PC's in their primary line of duty.
Having said that, any machine's I'm rotating out at work are getting LCD's. The price premium on 19" LCD's is about where a 17" CRT was 7 or 8 years ago.
Re:this is just a patch to a kludge
on
Cubicle Privacy
·
· Score: 1
Think about locating in an area where the rent is cheaper - rural Iowa perhaps?
Re:People who peer over my shoulder bug me
on
Cubicle Privacy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
3M also makes some very nice privacy screens for monitors and LCD's.
Hey, the good news is that if you've got enough money to do the pipeline, you could probably just buy those African governments instead and have enough left over to build local infrastructures:)
I don't think it does too much good now (AMT eliminates lots of the charitable giving deductions), but with the inheritance tax, that money would be essentially lost to the government anyway. A charitable foundation gives you a chance to sort of decide where it goes.
The loan was called a "provisional credit" and is called for if the bank (or credit union in your case) can't determine the validity of the claim in a short period of time.
Check out your bank's Reg E disclosure - if you catch fraudulent activity in a timely manner, your liability is also limited to $50 for the debit card.
Reg E limits the liabilty that you have when using your debit card - as long as you keep an eye on your statements and report fraudulent transactions to your bank right away!
The price could potentially increase by 21% if someone includes the GST they've paid when creating their margin.
There's no reason why it shouldn't be at least taken into consideration. At some point, the business has shelled out that money up front and their goal should be to get it back + a bit more because of the time value of money.
In the example, the profit margin of $40 was a 36% profit. In my example, the same percentage profit was $36. The business made $4 more by including the GST in making their margin calculations - that's not too big of a difference.
However, when the taxes are thrown in on the consumer, the overal price is $165 versus $149.60 - that $4 increase in profits for the business cost the consumer $15.40 over and above the $13.60 that they would have paid had the tax only been paid by the consumer. The argument about who can better spend that $15.40 (the government versus the consumer) is for another time.
I guess that what I was getting at is that the value added tax (which this GST appears to be) is much more insidious than the plain old sales tax that we have in the US. When you add the tax at each level of production, each producer will take their margin (assuming that they have the pricing power to do so) off of what they paid for the materials to produce their product. The tax may well be credited back to each seller, but because margins are based on it the total price increases at each level of production - and is ultimately passed on to the consumer.
As one last off-topic note, I was thinking about this last night and was wondering if the GST applied to commodities. If I had 100 bushels of corn and sold them to my local elevator for $2/bushel - would they have to pay GST on that? And if so, does the farmer pay income tax on their profits?
In your example, you're assuming a 36% profit. If you set your profits based upon the cost of your inputs, the sales price that your looking at without the tax on the inputs is around $136 + 10% = $149.60. Your $165 total would represent a 21% tax rate instead of a simple 10% rate.
I know that this leaves a lot of holes - the whole supply and demand thing as far as pricing power goes - but the result is the same - the consumer is ending up paying more for the same item with the same profit margin going to the business.
Farmland purchased for the grand sum of $500/acre in the 50's is worth around $3k/acre today - which is a heck of a big gain if you've got more than 1 acre.
There are no capital gains exemptions for farmland so the entire gain is taxable.
Also, be careful with your juggling. As poor as the IRS's computers are, they do match 1099's and 1040's. And there are tax forms that do get filed with the sale of a home.
What part of the country are you living in? Where I live you'd be lucky to buy a doghouse for that much.
I'd be alright with that - you could by a nice acreage for less than that around here:)
But if he's talking about farmland, I'm curious if he would be talking about total price for each transaction, or by "unit" of land (each acre?). If it is the former, I would suspect that you'd see properties taking several transactions to change hands.
The costs and hassles of compliance with those taxes are passed on to businesses instead of consumers (although it is the consumer who ultimately pays).
For example, in Iowa, certain bank service charges are taxable (but not all of them!). A service charge on a savings account is not taxable, but a service charge on a checking account is. That's not too bad to start with, but it gets better...
If you were to wire some money from one bank to another, it will cost you a bit to do so. If you pay that fee from your checking account, it's taxable. If you pay it from your savings account, it's not.
Also, we have multiple rates in Iowa. The state rate is 5% (except for electricity or heating oil/gas where it's 2% or 3%). Except for those communities with the local option sales tax where the rate is and additional 1%. Except for those communities with the school option sales tax where the rate is an additional 1%.
Whenever fewer people pay a tax, it gets more complicated to comply and more expensive to enforce.
(It's worse for land. You're charged income tax on the money you use to buy the land, stamp duty when you buy, land tax every year by the state government, and land rates by the local council every quarter. Then when you sell the property there's a vendor tax. If you've made any money by renting it out that's more income tax you've got to pay.).
No different from here in the states, although selling land is a bit better deal as it is a capital gain (those rates are capped below the regular income tax rates).
The good news (?) is that even though you're being taxed on the land and any income it produces (if your a business), you can't depreciate it!
GLB isn't really squishy, but the regulators would rather look at mounds of paper talking about privacy instead of actually seeing that you're being careful about it.
I'm not sure where you're at, but in the midwest the ATM servicer Shazam has a program where a subset of their ATM's can be surcharge free to participating banks. It's kind of nice to have a small number of ATMs, but be able to offer surcharge free access across several states:)
The fees from your credit union are their decision. They don't need to charge them, but an out of network transaction will cost them more than an in-network one, so they're passing that one to you.
They are by law supposed to be barred from commercial accounts (I believe) - Credit Unions are supposed to be financial institutions for people of modest means bound by a common bond and because of that are tax exempt and much less stringently regulated than banks.
So some services are supposedly barred from being offered by credit unions, but for consumers they should be fine.
It has two purposes - the first purpose is to have financial institutions adopt measures to protect consumer data. The second purpose is to add a great deal of paperwork and extra compliance steps that bank staff must accomplish without adding any extra safety to the information.
I believe that in health care, HIPPA or HIPAA (which ever one it was!) accomplished much the same thing.
why so many people use the largest of the nation's banks. They aren't inherently more secure than smaller banks and are larger targets because of the number of customers that they have.
There are several thousand smaller banks in the United States and many smaller banks have lower fees than those giants and a customer actually means something to those banks.
Take California for example. We're so regulated to death here, most businesses prefer to move out or become incorporated in another state, or just not come here at all. This is a microcosm of what's happening between 1st and 2/3rd world countries. Less regulation and lower cost in other countries.
And the answer isn't staring you right in the face? If regulations are strangling your state - get rid of some of them!
Slashdot Mirror
- Shipping costs from Dell don't matter - it's usually free to ship from them regardless.
- Longevity - CRT's already last as long or longer than PC's in their primary line of duty.
Having said that, any machine's I'm rotating out at work are getting LCD's. The price premium on 19" LCD's is about where a 17" CRT was 7 or 8 years ago.
Think about locating in an area where the rent is cheaper - rural Iowa perhaps?
(http://www.3m.com/us/office/myworkspace/mon_filte rs_privacy.jhtml
They're kind of pricey, but unless someone is standing directly behind you, they can't make out what is on the screen.
I figured that the only school in NCAA history to receive the death penalty for football wouldn't be offering ethics classes...
Hey, the good news is that if you've got enough money to do the pipeline, you could probably just buy those African governments instead and have enough left over to build local infrastructures :)
I don't think it does too much good now (AMT eliminates lots of the charitable giving deductions), but with the inheritance tax, that money would be essentially lost to the government anyway. A charitable foundation gives you a chance to sort of decide where it goes.
I think you've got it backwards - if you're a $4bn+ healthcare operation, you've gotta have someone to sue - you!
This is also called for in Reg E.
If it walks like a bank, talks like a bank, and acts like a bank - it should be regulated like a bank.
Check out your bank's Reg E disclosure - if you catch fraudulent activity in a timely manner, your liability is also limited to $50 for the debit card.
Reg E limits the liabilty that you have when using your debit card - as long as you keep an eye on your statements and report fraudulent transactions to your bank right away!
That they do!
There's no reason why it shouldn't be at least taken into consideration. At some point, the business has shelled out that money up front and their goal should be to get it back + a bit more because of the time value of money.
In the example, the profit margin of $40 was a 36% profit. In my example, the same percentage profit was $36. The business made $4 more by including the GST in making their margin calculations - that's not too big of a difference.
However, when the taxes are thrown in on the consumer, the overal price is $165 versus $149.60 - that $4 increase in profits for the business cost the consumer $15.40 over and above the $13.60 that they would have paid had the tax only been paid by the consumer. The argument about who can better spend that $15.40 (the government versus the consumer) is for another time.
I guess that what I was getting at is that the value added tax (which this GST appears to be) is much more insidious than the plain old sales tax that we have in the US. When you add the tax at each level of production, each producer will take their margin (assuming that they have the pricing power to do so) off of what they paid for the materials to produce their product. The tax may well be credited back to each seller, but because margins are based on it the total price increases at each level of production - and is ultimately passed on to the consumer.
As one last off-topic note, I was thinking about this last night and was wondering if the GST applied to commodities. If I had 100 bushels of corn and sold them to my local elevator for $2/bushel - would they have to pay GST on that? And if so, does the farmer pay income tax on their profits?
I know that this leaves a lot of holes - the whole supply and demand thing as far as pricing power goes - but the result is the same - the consumer is ending up paying more for the same item with the same profit margin going to the business.
Farmland purchased for the grand sum of $500/acre in the 50's is worth around $3k/acre today - which is a heck of a big gain if you've got more than 1 acre.
There are no capital gains exemptions for farmland so the entire gain is taxable.
Also, be careful with your juggling. As poor as the IRS's computers are, they do match 1099's and 1040's. And there are tax forms that do get filed with the sale of a home.
I'd be alright with that - you could by a nice acreage for less than that around here :)
But if he's talking about farmland, I'm curious if he would be talking about total price for each transaction, or by "unit" of land (each acre?). If it is the former, I would suspect that you'd see properties taking several transactions to change hands.
The costs and hassles of compliance with those taxes are passed on to businesses instead of consumers (although it is the consumer who ultimately pays).
For example, in Iowa, certain bank service charges are taxable (but not all of them!). A service charge on a savings account is not taxable, but a service charge on a checking account is. That's not too bad to start with, but it gets better...
If you were to wire some money from one bank to another, it will cost you a bit to do so. If you pay that fee from your checking account, it's taxable. If you pay it from your savings account, it's not.
Also, we have multiple rates in Iowa. The state rate is 5% (except for electricity or heating oil/gas where it's 2% or 3%). Except for those communities with the local option sales tax where the rate is and additional 1%. Except for those communities with the school option sales tax where the rate is an additional 1%.
Whenever fewer people pay a tax, it gets more complicated to comply and more expensive to enforce.
No different from here in the states, although selling land is a bit better deal as it is a capital gain (those rates are capped below the regular income tax rates).
The good news (?) is that even though you're being taxed on the land and any income it produces (if your a business), you can't depreciate it!
GLB isn't really squishy, but the regulators would rather look at mounds of paper talking about privacy instead of actually seeing that you're being careful about it.
We don't surcharge at the ATM and won't as long as I have anything to say about it.
As far as tellers go, it may be a regional thing...
The fees from your credit union are their decision. They don't need to charge them, but an out of network transaction will cost them more than an in-network one, so they're passing that one to you.
So some services are supposedly barred from being offered by credit unions, but for consumers they should be fine.
It has two purposes - the first purpose is to have financial institutions adopt measures to protect consumer data. The second purpose is to add a great deal of paperwork and extra compliance steps that bank staff must accomplish without adding any extra safety to the information.
I believe that in health care, HIPPA or HIPAA (which ever one it was!) accomplished much the same thing.
There are several thousand smaller banks in the United States and many smaller banks have lower fees than those giants and a customer actually means something to those banks.
And the answer isn't staring you right in the face? If regulations are strangling your state - get rid of some of them!