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How to receive packages pseudonymously?

['"I\'ve done this before for startup companies where I didn\'t want the mailing address to really obviously be my apartment or home address. Just for appearances. What you should be Googling are terms like ""private mailbox center."" If I recall correctly, I used to do this with Mail Boxes Etc before they were bought by UPS. This seems to be the equivalent offering these days: https://www.theupsstore.com/mailboxes I haven\'t looked at a dummy office for receiving mail -- I imagine that is a bit more expensive. Unless people are delivering things in person I think that would be overkill -- the Fedex guy doesn\'t care if his package delivery is to a UPS mailbox center."']

How do “held” amounts appear on statements and affect balances of traditional credit cards?

['"The ""hold"" is just placeholder that prevents you from overspending until the transaction is settled. The merchant isn\'t ""holding"" your money, your bank or card provider is protecting itself from you overdrawing. In general, it takes 1-3 days for a credit transaction to settle. With a credit card, this usually isn\'t an issue, unless you have a very low credit line or other unusual things going on. With pre-paid and debit cards, it is an issue, since your spending power is contingent upon you having an available balance. I\'m a contrarian on this topic, but I don\'t see any compelling reason to use debit or stored value cards, other than preventing yourself from overspending. I\'ve answered a few other questions in detail in this area, if you\'re interested."']

Steps/Procedures to open an online stock trading account in the US

['Since you are not starting with a lot of cash the commissions may eat into your account. So go with somebody that has no inactivity fee and low/free commission. I think there are number of sites and the ING sharebuilder.com comes to mind. Scottrade also one of the cheaper ones that i used.']

Do I need to file a 1099 form for contractors associated with hobby income?

["You are expected to file 1099 for each person you pay $600 a year. I.e.: not a one time payment, but the total over the course of the year. Since we don't know how much and what else you paid - we cannot answer this question. The real question you're asking is that if you're treating the enterprise as a hobby, whether you're supposed to file 1099s at all. The answer to that question is yes. You should talk to your tax adviser (a EA/CPA licensed in your state) about this, and whether it is the right thing for you to do treating this as a hobby at all."]

GnuCash, how do I book loan from credit card, being paid back with salary? [duplicate]

['"When you pay the flight, hotel, conference attendance fees of $100: When you repay the credit card debt of $100: When you receive the gross salary of $5000: Your final balance sheet will show: Your final income statement will show: Under this method, your ""Salary"" account will show the salary net of business expense. The drawback is that the $4900 does not agree with your official documentation. For tax reporting purposes, you report $5000 to the tax agency, and if possible, report the $100 as Unreimbursed Employee Expenses (you weren\'t officially reimbursed). For more details see IRS Publication 529."']

Can a custodian refuse prior-year IRA/HSA deposit postmarked April 15?

['"The ""must be postmarked"" language might be just from the old bank itself, not from the IRS. The language I see in Publication 969 only says ""You can make contributions to your HSA for 2014 until April 15, 2015."" In this case, it is understandable that the credit union you have the new account with does not want to accept the contribution for tax year 2014. You didn\'t have an account with them in 2014. You didn\'t even send out the paperwork to them to open the account until last week, and they didn\'t open your account until this week, after the deadline. It is unfortunate, but I don\'t think you\'ll be able to force them to do anything differently here. It is just too late. I do know how that feels. I had a somewhat similar circumstance with my HSA, the first year I had the account. I contributed money to the HSA using my credit union\'s website, transferring money from my checking account into my HSA, as I was told to do. In January and February of the following year, I made more contributions this way, thinking that I was making them for the previous tax year. However, they never got coded correctly by the credit union, and I later found out that the credit union counted those as contributions for the current year. As a result, I was essentially denied the full contribution limit for that year, and had a bit of a paperwork nightmare. Now, if I have to make a prior year contribution, I only make it in person, and they have a form they have me fill out each time I do."', "The slips from your bank for your HSA account are for an account already established and thus the bank is willing to accept your deposits even if they arrive at the bank after the April 15 deadline, as long as the postmark is April 15 or earlier. The account exists in the bank, they know who you are, and that the payment is received after April 15 is just due to the normal (or even abnormal) delays in postal delivery. For the new account that you tried to establish (with appropriate notarization and timely postmark etc), the credit union could not have received the paperwork as of the close of business on April 15 (except in the very unlikely circumstance that a local letter deposited in the mailbox in the morning gets delivered the same day by USPS: don't extrapolate from stories of how mail was delivered in London in Victorian times). Ergo, you did not have an HSA account in the credit union as of April 15, and they are perfectly correct in refusing to open an account with a April 15 date and put money into it for the previous tax year. To answer the question asked: Are they allowed to ignore the postmark date? Yes, not only are they allowed to ignore the postmark date, the IRS insists that they ignore the postmark date. The credit union prefers to report only the truth: as of April 15, you had not established an HSA account as of April 15; to say otherwise would be making a false statement to the IRS.", "I had a situation like this also. A client deposited an IRA check to his local P.O. prior to collection p/up, thinking this meant it would be postmarked April 15. It may have been picked up, but wasn't postmarked until the next day, and my firm refused to consider it as timely. I do remember discussing it w/my Retirement Services Dept. Maybe they made an exception for me and my client, but maybe not. I don't remember. Good luck."]

Should withheld income tax be included as income?

["Does it make sense to report withheld tax income as an additional income? Is it required by the IRS? Is $T deductible? This is what is called imputed income. The ticket is an income for you, but the company doesn't want you to pay tax on it. But you have to. But they want to be nice to you and give you the ticket on their buck. But that's the law. So what have the accountants invented? Imputed income. The company raises your salary in the amount of taxes paid (+some, but that's negligible), in addition to the actual ticket. So it seems, to you, that you got the ticket for free. The IRS doesn't see the ticket, it just sees that you got a $T+$X bonus and paid $T taxes. The fact that the $X you got in form of a ticket doesn't matter to them. Re your edit - you cannot deduct anything, since you can only deduct unreimbursed expenses, whereas $X is not at all an expense for you (you didn't buy that ticket, the company did), and $T is taxes, which are not deductible (its not an expense). In other words, had C not have been nice, I would be in a better position! No. Your net pay shouldn't be affected, technically, so from your perspective you just got a plane ticket for free. Had C not been nice, you would still not be able to deduct the whole cost of $X, because unreimbursed employee expenses have a 2% AGI threshold.", "This very topic was the subject of a question on workplace SE https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/8996/what-can-relocation-assistance-entail TL/DR; From tax publication 521 - Moving expenses table regarding how to report IF your Form W-2 shows... your entire reimbursement reported as wages in box 1 AND you have... moving expenses THEN... file Form 3903 showing all allowable expenses,* but do not show any reimbursements. There are tax implications Covered in tax publication 521 - Moving expenses and Employers tax guide to Fringe Benefits related to moving expenses. From the Employers View: Moving Expense Reimbursements This exclusion applies to any amount you directly or indirectly give to an employee, (including services furnished in kind) as payment for, or reimbursement of, moving expenses. You must make the reimbursement under rules similar to those described in chapter 11 of Publication 535 for reimbursement of expenses for travel, meals, and entertainment under accountable plans. The exclusion applies only to reimbursement of moving expenses that the employee could deduct if he or she had paid or incurred them without reimbursement. However, it does not apply if the employee actually deducted the expenses in a previous year. Deductible moving expenses. Deductible moving expenses include only the reasonable expenses of: Moving household goods and personal effects from the former home to the new home, and Traveling (including lodging) from the former home to the new home. Deductible moving expenses do not include any expenses for meals and must meet both the distance test and the time test. The distance test is met if the new job location is at least 50 miles farther from the employee's old home than the old job location was. The time test is met if the employee works at least 39 weeks during the first 12 months after arriving in the general area of the new job location. For more information on deductible moving expenses, see Publication 521, Moving Expenses. Employee. For this exclusion, treat the following individuals as employees. A current employee. A leased employee who has provided services to you on a substantially full-time basis for at least a year if the services are performed under your primary direction or control. Exception for S corporation shareholders. Do not treat a 2% shareholder of an S corporation as an employee of the corporation for this purpose. A 2% shareholder is someone who directly or indirectly owns (at any time during the year) more than 2% of the corporation's stock or stock with more than 2% of the voting power. Treat a 2% shareholder as you would a partner in a partnership for fringe benefit purposes, but do not treat the benefit as a reduction in distributions to the 2% shareholder. Exclusion from wages. Generally, you can exclude qualifying moving expense reimbursement you provide to an employee from the employee's wages. If you paid the reimbursement directly to the employee, report the amount in box 12 of Form W-2 with the code “P.” Do not report payments to a third party for the employee's moving expenses or the value of moving services you provided in kind. From the employees view: The not be included as income the expenses must be from an accountable plan: Accountable Plans To be an accountable plan, your employer's reimbursement arrangement must require you to meet all three of the following rules. Your expenses must have a business connection – that is, you must have paid or incurred deductible expenses while performing services as an employee of your employer. Two examples of this are the reasonable expenses of moving your possessions from your former home to your new home, and traveling from your former home to your new home. You must adequately account to your employer for these expenses within a reasonable period of time. You must return any excess reimbursement or allowance within a reasonable period of time. Also what is interesting is the table regarding how to report IF your Form W-2 shows... your entire reimbursement reported as wages in box 1 AND you have... moving expenses THEN... file Form 3903 showing all allowable expenses,* but do not show any reimbursements."]

Being a 1099 for a company I part-own?

['"The contract he wants me to sign states I\'ll receive my monthly stipend (if that is the right word) as a 1099 contractor. The right word is guaranteed payment, which is what ""salary"" is called when a partner is working for a partnership she\'s a partner in. Which is exactly the case in your situation. 1099 is not the right form to report this, the partnership (LLC in your case) should be using the Schedule K-1 for that. I suggest you talk to a lawyer and a tax adviser (EA/CPA) who are licensed in your State, before you sign anything."']

What are the advantages of paying off a mortgage quickly?

["The main reason for paying your mortgage off quickly is to reduce risk should a crisis happen. If you don't have a house payment, you have much higher cash flow every month, and your day-to-day living expenses are much lower, so if an illness or job loss happens, you'll be in a much better position to handle it. You should have a good emergency fund in place before throwing extra money at the mortgage so that you can cover the bigger surprises that come along. There is the argument that paying off your mortgage ties up cash that could be used for other things, but you need to be honest with yourself: would you really invest that money at a high enough rate of return to make up your mortgage interest rate after taxes? Or would you spend it on other things? If you do invest it, how certain are you of that rate of return? Paying off the mortgage saves you your mortgage interest rate guaranteed. Finally, there is the more intangible aspect of what it feels like to be completely debt free with no payments whatsoever. That feeling can be a game-changer for people, and it can free you up to do things that you could never do when you're saddled with a mortgage payment every month.", "Considering that it's common for the monthly mortgage payment to be 25% of one's income, it's an obvious advantage for that monthly burden to be eliminated. The issue, as I see it, is that this is the last thing one should do in the list of priorities: The idea of 'no mortgage' is great. But. You might pay early and have just a few years of payments left on the mortgage and if you are unemployed, those payments are still due. It's why I'd suggest loading up retirement accounts and other savings before paying the mortgage sooner. Your point, that rates are low, and your expected return is higher, is well presented. I feel no compulsion to prepay my 3.5% mortgage. As the OP is in Canada, land of no mortgage interest deduction, I ignore that, till now. The deduction simply reduces the effective rate, based on the country tax code permitting it. It's not the 'reason' to have a loan. But it's ignorant to ignore the math.", "I used to think that paying off ahead of time made sense, but I no longer do, at least in most cases. The upside is that you can get a return on your money equal to the mortgage interest rate (it's less than that in the US, where mortgage interest is deductible, so it's roughly the mortgage interest rate * 1 - your marginal income tax rate). There are a few downsides. The biggest is that cash is the most liquid asset you can have; you can get at it with no restrictions. If you put that cash into your house, you are converting that into an asset with a lot of restrictions; you can't get at it without fees, nor can you get at it if you don't have a job, which is when you would need it most. So, you are putting your money in a hard-to-get-at place for a small interest rate. I don't think it is worthwhile. (edit) One complication is PMI. If you are currently paying PMI, it may make sense to put money towards the mortgage until you get to 20% and can get rid of the PMI.", "It depends on where you are in life, and where you want to be at some point in the future, and the taxes, expenses and income at those points in your life. You don't get a mortgage to save on taxes, or keep a mortgage to save on taxes. But if somebody said they want to have the house paid off before they retire, that sounds to me like a great plan. They do need to balance it with saving for retirement, emergency fund, and college costs for themselves or their children. Without having the whole picture it is impossible to say doing X is always a good idea.", "The financial reasons, beyond simply owning your home outright, are: You're no longer paying interest. Yes, the interest is tax-deductible in the U.S. (though not in Canada), but the tax savings is a percentage of a percentage; if you paid, say, $8000 in interest last year, at the 25% marginal rate you effectively save $2000 off your taxes. But, if you paid off your home and had that $8000 in your pocket, you'd pay the $2000 in taxes but you'd have $6000 left over. Which is the better deal? In Canada, the decision gets even easier; you pay taxes on the interest money either way, so you're either spending the $8000 in interest, lost forever as cost of capital, or on other things. Whatever you're earning is going into your own pocket, not the bank's. Similar to the interest, but also including principal, a home you own outright is a mortgage payment you don't have to make. You can now use that money, principal and interest, for other things. Whether these advantages outweigh those of anything else you could do with a few hundred grand depends primarily on the rate of return. If you got in at the bottom of the mortgage crisis (which is pretty much right now) and got a rate in the 3-4% range, with no MIP or other payment on top, then almost anything you can do with the amount you'd need to pay off a mortgage principal would get you a better rate of return. However, you'll need some market savvy to avoid risks. In most cases when someone has pretty much any debt and a big wad of cash they're considering how to spend, I usually recommend paying off the debt, because that is, in effect, a risk-free way to increase the net rate of return on your total wealth and income. Balancing debt with investments always carries with it the risk that the investment will fail, leaving you stuck with the debt. Paying the debt on the other hand will guarantee that you don't have to pay interest on that outstanding amount anymore, so it's no longer offsetting whatever gains you are making in the market on your savings or future investments.", "From my experience and friends' experiences, I can say that there are advantages and disadvantages for paying off your mortgage quickly. Basically, it depends on these factors: the type of the mortgage, its interest rate, your financial stability, your skills in making investments and other outside factors, such as inflation, liquidity, oppurtunity cost, etc. Paying it off means you save on interest ratings, you decrease investment risks and your investment rates are taxable. Disadvantages are that you cannot use this money for investing, you cannot use this money for tax deductions and that in a state of inflation, not paying it off in advance could save you a lot of money. However, I always recommend to read some more on websites that deal with mortgages, and speak with the mortgage expert in your bank.Just acquire enough information to make a good assessment. An interesting article on this topic - The Advantages and Disadvantages of Paying Off Your Mortgage"]

Ballpark salary equivalent today of “healthcare benefits” in the US?

['"As a contractor, I have done this exact calculation many times so I can compare full time employment offers when they come. The answer varies greatly depending on your situation, but here\'s how to calculate it: So, subtracting the two and you get I\'ve run many different scenarios with multiple plans and employers, and in my situation with a spouse and 1 child, the employer plans usually ended up saving me approximately $5k per year. So then, to answer your question: ...salary is ""100k"", ""with healthcare"", or then ""X"" ""with no healthcare"" - what do we reckon? I reckon I would want to be paid $5K more, or $105K. This is purely hypothetical though and assumes there are no other differences except for with or without health insurance. In reality, contractor vs employee will have quite a few other differences. But in general, the calculation varies by company and the more generous the employer\'s health benefits, the more you need to be compensated to make up for not having it. Note: the above numbers are very rough, and there are many other factors that come into play, some of which are: As a side note, many years ago, during salary talks with a company, I was able to negotiate $2K in additional yearly salary by agreeing not to take the health insurance since I had better insurance through my spouse. Health insurance in the US was much cheaper back then so I think closer to $5K today would be about right and is consistent with my above ballpark calculation. I always wondered what would have happened if I turned around and enrolled the following year. I suspect had I done that they could not have legally lowered my salary due to my breaking my promise, but I wouldn\'t be surprised if I didn\'t get a raise that year either."', "As others have said, it depends entirely on what benefits are provided, and how much of the cost of those benefits is paid by the employer and how much is paid by the employee, and compare that to what it would cost to obtain the necessary/equivalent coverage without employer assistance. In my case, my employer pays more than $10,000 per year toward the cost of medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance for myself and my family. That's almost 20% of the average total household income in my state, so it is not an insignificant amount at all.", '"While the other answers try to quantify the value of health care the question you ask is about employee vs contractor. The delta between those regarding benefits goes way beyond health care. In fact because almost every full time employee must have health care offered by their employer the option of ""you can have X with healthcare, or Y with no healthcare"" is no longer an option. I have seen situations in the last few years where employees who had no need for healthcare coverage (retired military) were offered additional vacation days to compensate for their lower cost to the employer. For employee vs contractor what is different isn\'t just healthcare. It also includes holidays, vacation days, sick days, employer portion of social security, education benefits, and 401k. Insurance benefits include not just healthcare but also dental, vision, short term and long term disability, and life insurance. The rule of thumb to cover all these benefits that are lost when you are a contractor is an amount equal to your income. Of course some of these benefits depend on single vs married and kids or not. But unless the rate they are paying the contractors is approaching twice the rate they are paying employees the contractor will be hard pressed to cover the missing benefits."', '"Equation: (M x 12) + MOOP = Worst case scenario cost Where M equals the monthly cost and MOOP is the maximum out of pocket amount. So, if a plan costs $500 a month and the maximum out of pocket amount is $12,000 - which in a worst case scenario you would pay (it\'s almost always over the deductible) ... ($500 x 12) + 12,000 = $18,000 Most people look at the deductible, but be aware this is incorrect in a worst case. The last one (maximum out of pocket) really hurts most people because they overlook it: Deductible vs. out-of-pocket maximum The difference between your deductible and an out-of-pocket maximum is subtle but important. The out-of-pocket maximum is typically higher than your deductible to account for things like co-pays and co-insurance. For example, if you hit your deductible of $2,500 but continue to go for office visits with a $25 co-pay, you’ll still have to pay that co-pay until you’ve spent your out-of-pocket maximum, at which time your insurance would take over and cover everything. New in 2016: embedded out-of-pocket maximums One change in 2016 is that, even with an aggregate deductible, one person cannot pay more than the individual out-of-pocket maximum within a family plan, even if the aggregate deductible is more than the individual out-of-pocket maximum, which is $6,850 for 2016. For instance, even if the overall aggregate deductible was $10,000, a single person in that family plan could not incur more than $6,850 in out-of-pocket expenses. (In 2017, the out-of-pocket maximum will increase to $7,150.) After they hit that number, insurance covers everything for that person, even as the rest of the family is still subject to the deductible. From your question: Thanks - not sure I totally follow you. My question is, essentially: ""Say a typical large employer X gives you \'healthcare\' as a benefit on top of your salary. In fact, how much does that cost corporation X each year?"" ie, meaning, in the US, about how much does that typically cost a corporation X each year? That\'s a good question because they may qualify for tax advantages by offering to a number of employees and there may be other benefits if they encourage certain tests (like blood work and they waive the monthly fee). More than likely, using the above equation may be the maximum that they\'ll pay each year per employee and it might be less depending on the tax qualifications. You can read this answer of the question and it appears they are paying within the range of these premiums listed above this."', '"For the person being hired this is a tricky situation. Specially with the new laws. There is no real magic number that can be applied as a lot will depend on what benefits you want, and what is actually available. This will really shift the spectrum quite a bit. Under the affordibal care act, everyone has to have insurance or pay a ?fine? (were really not sure what to call this yet) but there are two provisions that really mess with the numbers you look at as an employee. First, the cost of heath care has skyrocketed. So the same benefits that you had 5 years ago now cost maybe 10-15 times as much as they used to. This gets swept under the rug a bit because the ""main costs"" of insurance has only increased a tiny amount. What this actually comes down to is does your new ACA approved heath plan cover exactly the benefits you need, or does it cut corners. Sorry this is complicated, and I don\'t mean it to come off as a speech against the ACA so I will give an example. My wife has RA, she really has it under control with the help of her RA doctor. This is not something she ever wants to change. Because she has had RA from the age of 15, and because it\'s degenerative, she doesn\'t want to spend 5 years working with a new doctor to get to the same place she is with her current doctor. In addition, the main drugs she takes for RA are not covered under any ACA plan, nor are the ""substitutions"" that her doctor makes (we are trying to have kids so she has to be off the main meds, and a couple of the things this doctor has tried has been meds that reduce inflammation, are pregnancy safe, but are not for the treatment of RA) You now have to take into effect rather the cost of health insurance + the cost of the things now not covered by the heath insurance + the out of pocket expenses is worth the insurance. Second the ACA has set up provisions to straight up trick those people that have lower income and are not paying close attention. When shopping for insurance, they get quotes like ""$50 a month"" or ""$100 a month"". The truth is that the remainder of the actual cost is deducted from their tax returns. This takes consideration, because if you thing your paying $50 a month for insurance but your really paying $650 then you need to make sure your doing your math right. Finally, you need to understand how messed up things are right now in the US with heath care. Largely this goes unreported. I\'m not really sure why. But in order to do this I will have to give examples. For my wife to see a specialist (her RA doctor) the co-pay is $75. So she goes to the doctor, he charges her $75 and bills the insurance $200. The insurance pays the doctor $50. With out insurance, the visit costs $50. At first you want to blame the doctor for cheating the system, but the doctor has to pay for hours of labor to get the $50 back from the insurance company. From the doctors perspective it\'s cheaper to take the $50 then it is to charge the insurance company. And by charging the insurance company he has no control over the cost of the co pay. He essentially has to charge more to make the same money and the patient gets the shaft in the process. Another example, I got strep throat last year. I went to the walk in clinic, paid $75, saw the doctor got my Z-Pack for $15, went home crawled in bed and got better. My wife (who still had separate insurance from before the marriage) got strep throat (imagen that) went to the same clinic, they charged her $200 for the visit ($50 co-pay) and $250 for the z-pack ($3 co-pay). The insurance paid the clinic $90 for the visit and $3 for the drugs. Again the patient is left out in this scenario. In this case it worked better for my wife, unless you account for the fact that to get that coverage she had to pay $650/month. My point is that when comparing costs of heathcare with insurance, and without out insurance, its often times much cheaper for the practices to have you self pay then it is for them to go through the loops of trying to insurance to make them whole. This creates two rates. Self pay rates and Insured rates. When your trying to figure out the cost of not having insurance then you need to use the self pay rates. These can be vastly different. So as an employee you need to figure out your cost of heath care with insurance, and your cost of heath care without insurance. Then user those numbers when your trying to negotiate a salary. The problem is that there is no magic number to use for this because the cost will very a lot. For us, it was cheaper to not have insurance. Even with a pre-existing condition that takes constant attention, it\'s just better if we set aside $500 a month then it is to try to pay $750 a month. That might not hold true for everyone. For some people or conditions it may be better to pay the $750 then to try to handle it themselves. So for my negotiations I would go with x+$6,000 without insurance or x+$4,500 with insurance. Now as an employer it\'s a lot simpler. Usually you have a ""group plan"" that offers you a pretty straight $x per year per person or $y per year per family. So you can offer exactly that. Salary - $x or Salary - $y. AS a starting point. However this is where negotiations start. If your offering me $50,500 and insurance, I would rather just have $57,000 and no insurance. Of course your real cost is only $55,000 cause you don\'t care about my heath care costs only about insurance costs. So you try to negotiate down towards $55,000 and no insurance. But that\'s not good enough for me. So I either go else where and you loose talent, or I accept $50,500 and insurance (or somewhere in between)."', "You could probably see prices at one of the Obamacare websites. I'm on Obamacare in Massachusetts, and the premiums for me ranged from about $300-600 per month. For a couple, you just multiply by two (couples don't get any discounts over single people). So for a couple, the cost is about $600-$1200 per month. I never looked at family prices because I don't have kids, but I think the family plans are not that much more than the plans for a couple.", '"Many answers here have given what look to be useful perspectives on your question. I want to point out an interesting technical issue. If an employer contracts with an insurer, it agrees to cover all employees (or all that fill some pre-specified definition and no one else), and to offer only a limited range of options. If you buy insurance directly, you obviously have a huge range of choices, including the (technically illegal) one of no insurance at all. Your first thought is probably, ""Hey, that\'s great! More options, more chances to pick the plan that\'s right for me."" Sorry, no. Yes, you have more options, but so does everyone else. If you are working for some large company, you get insurance, period. If you suspect you have an expensive health condition, you cannot buy more insurance; if you believe yourself to be healthy as a horse, you cannot get skimpier insurance and pocket the difference. Healthy people and sick people are all in the same predictable pool. If you buy insurance freely, the insurer knows that the sicker you are, the more likely you are buy insurance, a phenomenon called adverse selection. As a result, the premiums (fees) a person buying his own insurance pays are much higher, because most of his fellow policy-holders are sickly -- even if he himself is just risk-averse. On the other hand, if you are risk-neutral, if you can survive a $10,000 bill if it happens to arise, you can save big by finding the skimpiest imaginable insurance, where all your fellow policy-holders will be hale and healthy people like yourself."', "There is some magic involved in that calculation, because what health insurance is worth to you is not necessarily the same it is worth for the employer. Two examples that illustrate the extreme ends of the spectrum: let's say you or a family member have a chronic or a serious illness, especially if it is a preexisting condition - for instance, cancer. In that case, health insurance can be worth literally millions of dollars to you. Even if you are a diabetic, the value of health insurance can be substantial. Sometimes, it could even make financial sense in that case to accept a very low-paying job. On the other extreme of the scale, if you are very young and healthy, many people decide to forego insurance. In that case, the value of health insurance can be as little as the penalty (usually, 2% of your taxable income, I believe).", "Healthcare for the employee is more valuable to the employer than is providing healthcare for the rest of the family members. Depending on the family situation, you're going to see significant differences in price between out of pocket costs for insurance of just the employee, vs cost for insuring the entire family. This is because in the first instance the insurance is more subsidized by the company (as a percentage of the total cost). The costs to the company for insuring just the individual (mid-career) are in the neighborhood of $5000 per year. If this is all that's being negotiated (single person coverage) then I would use that amount as a baseline."]

How to get a grip on finance?

['"I think this question is perfectly on topic, and probably has been asked and answered many times. However, I cannot help myself. Here are some basics however: Personal Finance is not only about math. As a guy who ""took vector calculus just for fun"", I have learned that superior math skills do not translate into superior net worth. Personal finance is about 50% behavior. Take a look at the housing crisis, car loans, or payday lenders and you will understand that the desire to be accepted by others often trumps the math surrounding a transaction. Outline your goals What is it that you want in life? A pile of money or to retire early? What does your business look like? How much cash will you need? Do you want to own a ton of rental properties? How does all this happen (set intermediate goals). Then get on a budget A budget is a plan to spend your money in advance. Stick to it. From there you can see how much money you have to implement various goals. Are your goals to aggressive? This is really important as people have a tendency to spend more money then they have. Often times when people receive a bonus at work, they spend that one bonus on two or three times over. A budget will prevent this from happening. Get an Emergency Fund Without an emergency fund, you be subject to the financial whims of people involved in your own life and that of the broader marketplace. Once you have one, you are free to invest with impunity and have less stress in a world that deals out plenty. Bad things will happen to you financially, protect against them. The best first investments are simple: Invest in yourself. Find a way to make a very healthy income with upward mobility. Also get out and stay out of debt. These things are not sexy, but they pay off in the long run. The next best investment is also simple: Index funds. These become the bench mark for all other investments. If you do not stand a good chance of beating the S&P 500 index fund, why bother? Just dump the money in the fund and sleep well at night."']

Hired with W-9, will I owe estimated tax quarterly?

['You must pay your taxes at the quarterly intervals. For most people the withholding done by their employer satisfies this requirement. However, if your income does not have any withholding (or sufficient), then you must file quarterly estimated tax payments. Note that if you have a second job that does withhold, then you can adjust your W4 to request further withholding there and possibly reduce the need for estimated payments. Estimated tax payments also come into play with large investment earnings. The amount that you need to prepay the IRS is impacted by the safe harbor rule, which I am sure others will provide the exact details on.']

How should one refuse to father in law (Chinese) when he wants to borrow money?

['"In these situations, one solution is to use the ""I was just about to ask you the same thing..."" response. This is kind of a famous way to deal with people asking you for money, whether it\'s someone asking to borrow ""$10 at lunch time"" or ""$3000 for a car"" or the like. So: Person X asks you for money, say $2000. Your reply: Ah, that\'s bad luck, I was just about to ask you the same thing... Follow this immediately - just keep talking - by launching in to a really incredibly detailed discussion of why you need to borrow money (pick a slightly larger amount, slet\'s ay $3500). Just ""keep talking"" and don\'t let the other person get a word in. Go in to great detail about just what you need the $3500 for and why. It\'s a good trick."']

Why are residential investment properties owned by non-professional investors and not large corporations?

['"Because the returns are not good. One of the big drivers in Australia is ""negative gearing"": if your investment loses money you can offset losses against your tax on other income. Institutional investors and corporations are in the business of making money: not losing it. Housing market investors are betting that these year to year revenue losses will ultimately be made up in a big capital gain: for which individuals get a huge tax break that is also not available to corporations. Capital gains are not guaranteed. Australia has benefited from 25+ years of economic, employment and wages growth: a result of good government planning, strong corporate governance and a fair slice of luck. If this were to end housing prices would plateau at best and crash at worst. A person who has negative cash flow investments has to sell them urgently if they lose their job. A glut of mortgagee sales and property prices could easily come off 20-30%. Rental yields on residential property in Sydney are about 4% with a capital gain of currently 10% but this has been flat or negative within the last 5 years and no doubt will be again within the next 5. Rental yields for residential property are constrained by mortgage rates: if it significantly cheaper to buy then to rent, why would anyone rent? In contrast, industrial and commercial property gets a yield of about 7% and gets exactly the same capital gain. This is because land is land and if the price of industrial land doesn\'t grow at the same rate as the residential land next door eventually one will be converted into the other. Retail rentals are even higher. In addition commercial tenants are responsible for more outgoings and have fewer legal rights than residential tenants. Further, individual residential properties are horribly illiquid and have large transaction costs. While it is possible to bundle them up into property trusts so that units can be sold on the stock exchange it is far more common to do this with office and retail buildings. This is what companies like Westfield and AMP Capital do. Notwithstanding, heavily geared property trusts can get into deep water because of the illiquid nature of property as the failure of Centro illustrates. That said, there are plenty of companies that develop residential houses and units for sale to owner occupiers or investors because that\'s where the money is."', "Your experience is anecdotal (outside Australia things are different). There are many companies and real estate investment trusts (REITs) that own residential properties (as well as commercial in many cases to have a balanced portfolio). They are probably more common in higher-density housing like condos, apartment buildings, flats, or whatever you like to call them, but they are certainly part of the market for single family units in the suburbs as well. What follows is all my own opinion. I have managed and rented a couple of properties that I had lived in but wasn't ready to sell yet when I moved out. In most cases, I wish I would have sold sooner, rather than renting them out. I think that there are easier/less risky ways to get a good return on your money. Sometimes the market isn't robust enough to quickly sell when it's time to move, and some people like the flexibility of having a property that a child could occupy instead of moving back in at home. I understand those points of view even if I disagree with them.", '"Economy of scale on one side versus ""person monetizing an illliquid asset"" on the other. Most multifamily rental buildings are owned by professional real estate investors (as well as individuals growing an empire to become a professional real estate investor whom I will count in this group). The rental difference between a 2000 Sq foot two bedroom apartment and 2000 Sq foot two bedroom standalone house is not large. The construction cost per square foot for a standalone house is higher than for a multifamily building (of similar height and materials). Maintenance calls, landscaping, and new roofs, dealing with permits and inspections, etc are much more efficient with multifamily properties. On the supply side, most single family rentals tend to be the nonprofessional single property owner because they happen to already own the place, and for one reason or another a. Don\'t want to sell and b. Want to gain cash flow on the asset."', 'As other answers have pointed out, professional real estate investors do own residential investment properties. However, small residential units typically are not owned by professional real estate investors as your experience confirms. This has a fairly natural cause. The size of the investment opportunity is insufficient to warrant the proper research/due diligence to which a large investment firm would have to commit if it wanted to properly assess the potential of a property. For a small real estate fund managing, say, $50 MM, it would take 100 properties at a $500K valuation in order to fully invest the funds. This number grows quickly as we decrease the average valuation to reflect even smaller individual units. Analogously, it is unlikely that you will find large institutional investors buying stocks with market caps of $20 MM. They simply cannot invest a large enough portion of total AUM to make the diligence make economic sense. As such, institutional real estate money tends to find its way into large multi-family units that provide a more convenient purchase size for a fund.', 'None of the previous answers calls out an important factor to residential property ownership bias towards individual investors. The amount of time spent managing (leasing, maintenance and rent collection) on single properties is much higher, per property, than larger investments. But what is mentioned in passing is the bias towards smaller investments. Fewer individuals have the capital to purchase and engage in the leasing of multi-tenant properties, but they are more likely to have the funds for smaller investments. So the smaller investor can both afford the entry costs, and the time investment, while the larger corporate entities benefit from the opposite proposition.']

Offered a job: Should I go as consultant / independent contractor, or employee?

['"Your comment to James is telling and can help us lead you in the right direction: My work and lifestyle will be the same either way, as I said. This is all about how it goes ""on the books."" \xa0\xa0 [emphasis mine] As an independent consultant myself, when I hear something like ""the work will be the same either way"", I think: ""Here thar be dragons!"". Let me explain: If you go the independent contractor route, then you better act like one. The IRS (and the CRA, for Canadians) doesn\'t take lightly to people claiming to be independent contractors when they operate in fact like employees. Since you\'re not going to be behaving any different whether you are an employee or a contractor, (and assuming you\'ll be acting more like an employee, i.e. exclusive, etc.), then the IRS may later make a determination that you are in fact an employee, even if you choose to go ""on the books"" as an independent contractor. If that happens, then you may find yourself retroactively denied many tax benefits you\'d have claimed; and owe penalties and interest too. Furthermore, your employer may be liable for additional withholding taxes, benefits, etc. after such a finding. So for those reasons, you should consider being an employee. You will avoid the potential headache I outlined above, as well as the additional paperwork etc. of being a contractor. If on the other hand you had said you wanted to maintain some flexibility to moonlight with other clients, build your own product on the side, choose what projects you work on (or don\'t), maybe hire subcontractors, etc. then I\'d have supported the independent contractor idea. But, just on the basis of the tax characteristics only I\'d say forget about it. On the financial side, I can tell you that I wouldn\'t have become a consultant if not for the ability to make more money in gross terms (i.e. before tax and expenses.) That is: your top line revenues ought to be higher in order to be able to offset many of the additional expenses you\'d incur as an independent. IMHO, the tax benefits alone wouldn\'t make up for the difference. One final thing to look at is Form SS-8 mentioned at the IRS link below. If you\'re not sure what status to choose, the IRS can actually help you. But be prepared to wait... and wait... :-/ Additional Resources:"', "To be honest I don't know how any of this work in the US so my answer will be of very limited value to yourself, I suspect, but when it comes to the UK if you're going to get the same pay gross either way than being independent makes very little sense. Running your own business is hassle, is generally more risky (although possibly not in your case) and costs money. Some of the most obvious costs are the added NI, probably the need for an accountant, at around £1200 p/a for basic accountancy service, you are obliged by law to have liability insurance and you probably want professional indemnity insurance, this will be around £600 p/a minmum, and so on and so forth. On top of that, oficially anyway, as a contractor, you really shouldn't be getting any benefits from the client, and so health insurance, company car, even parking are all meant to be arranged by, and paid by, your company, and can't (or rather - shouldn't) be charged to the client. So - I would say - if you're seriously thinking about setting up a consultancy company, and this client is first of many - set up a company, but take into account the sums you need to earn. If you're really thinking about employment - be an employee.", '"Linkedlinked, You might want to seriously take another look at the links that Chris provided you. Specifically the ones on the IRS website: http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=99921,00.html From the IRS website: Businesses must weigh all these factors when determining whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor. Some factors may indicate that the worker is an employee, while other factors indicate that the worker is an independent contractor. There is no “magic” or set number of factors that “makes” the worker an employee or an independent contractor, and no one factor stands alone in making this determination. Also, factors which are relevant in one situation may not be relevant in another. The keys are to look at the entire relationship, consider the degree or extent of the right to direct and control, and finally, to document each of the factors used in coming up with the determination. Perhaps more importantly... pay attention to what happens if you\'re WRONG: Consequences of Treating an Employee as an Independent Contractor If you classify an employee as an independent contractor and you have no reasonable basis for doing so, you may be held liable for employment taxes for that worker (the relief provisions, discussed below, will not apply). See Internal Revenue Code section 3509 for more information. I would STRONGLY recommend that you and your partners give your accountant a call and discuss the matter. They will be able to help you make the right decision. One of biggest mistakes businesses make in this are is to classify their employees as independent contractors. The IRS (who happens to be hungry for money right now) comes in and says, ""Nooooooooo... those are employees."" ...and the COMPANY gets to pay the employment taxes. I actually have person experience with this as I worked for a company this happened to. Every contractor was re-classified as an employee except for two (myself and one other). The key reason in that case was that none of the other contractors had any other clients. While I understand that you have other clients, I would still recommend talking to your accountant for an hour or so... just to be 100% sure. Sincerely, Andrew Smith TaxQueries.com"', '"I think it really depends on what work/lifestyle you are looking for. I\'m sure your more than capable of going down either route, but you should weigh up the pros and cons of each A consultant would be great, you\'d be your own boss and you have overall say on how your business/career plans out, but be prepared to put in a hell of a lot of work to get it off the ground. Long hours, little time for social/family etc. But in the long run it\'ll pay off Employee, no worries about running your company, just turn up and perform your duties. You\'ll get the whole benefit package: healthcare/pension etc. You can probably go on expense paid training courses etc It depends, do you want to just be an employee working ""for the man"" or do you want to be ""the man""? I wish you luck in whatever you do! :D"']

What happens when a non-U.S. citizen who's been making money from the U.S. moves to the U.S.?

['"Its not for US citizens - its for US residents. If the US considers you as a tax resident - you\'ll be treated the same as a US citizen, regardless of your immigration status. The question is very unclear, since it is not mentioned whether your US sourced income ""from the Internet"" is sales in the US, sales on-line, services you provide, investments, or what else. All these are treated differently. For some kinds of US-sourced income you should have paid taxes in the US already, regardless of where you physically reside. For others - not. In any case, if you become US tax resident, you\'ll be taxed on your worldwide income, not only the $10K deposited in the US bank account. ALL of your income, everywhere in the world, must be declared to the US government and will be taxed. You should seek professional advice, before you move to the US, in order to understand your responsibilities, liabilities and rights. I suggest looking for a EA/CPA licensed in California and experienced with taxation of foreigners (look for someone in the SF or LA metropolitan areas). Keep in mind that there may be a tax treaty between the US and your home country that may affect your Federal (but not California) taxes."']

How do you declare an interest free loan?

["In principle, the US taxes both income and gifts. Simply thinking good thoughts is not necessarily sufficient to avoid filing or payment obligations. Giving somebody money with no repayment date, no interest, and no enforceable note looks an awful lot like either income or a gift. A loan normally has interest, money sitting in a savings account is insured, and other investments generally have an expected return. Why would somebody give a loan with no interest, with only flexible or informal payment expectations, in a way where it has neither deposit insurance nor any expectation of net returns? That looks a lot like a gift - at the very least, a gift of the time value and the default risk. The IRS definitely polices loan rates. The latest release is Revenue Ruling 2014-13. The AFR is useful for tax concepts such as Original Issue Discount (when issuers sell low-interest or no-interest bonds or loans at less than face value, attempting to recharacterize interest income as return of principal), various grantor trusts (e.g. GRATs), and so forth. It's a simple way for the IRS to link to market rates of interest. Documentation and sufficient interest, as well as clear payment schedule (and maybe call or demand rights) make it a bona fide loan. There is no real way for the IRS to distinguish between an informal arrangement and a post-hoc lie to conceal a gift. Moreover, an undocumented loan is generally difficult to enforce, so it looks less like a true loan. The lender declares the interest payments as income on his Form 1040, line 8a and if necessary Schedule B.", '"I am neither a lawyer nor a tax accountant, and if you\'re dealing with serious money I suggest you consult a professional. But my understanding is: If you make a loan at zero interest or at below-market rates, the IRS will consider the difference between the interest that you do charge and the market rate to be a gift. That is, if someone could get a loan from a bank and he\'d pay $1000 in interest for the year, but instead you loan him the money as a friend interest free, than as far as the IRS is concerned you have given him a $1000 gift, and you could potentially have to pay gift tax. Or they might ""impute"" the interest to you and tax you on $1000 of additional income. If you have no agreement on repayment terms, if it\'s all, ""Hey Joe, just pay me back when you can"", then the IRS is likely to consider the entire ""loan"" to be a gift. There\'s an annual exclusion on gifts -- I think it\'s now $13,000 -- so if you loan your buddy fifty bucks to tide him over until next pay day, the IRS isn\'t going to get involved in that. They\'re worried about more serious money. And yes, the IRS does ""police loan rates"". The IRS examines exact numbers for all sorts of things. If, say, you go on a 100-mile overnight business trip, and the company gives you $10,000 for travel expenses, the IRS is likely to say that this is not a tax-deductible travel expense at all but a sham to hide part of your salary from taxes. Or if you donate a pair of old socks to charity and declare a $500 charitable contribution deduction, the IRS will say that that is not a realistic value for a pair of old socks and disallow the deduction. Etc. A small discrepancy from market rates can be justified for any number of reasons. If the book value of a used car is $5000 and you sell it to your neighbor for $4900, the IRS is unlikely to question it, there are any number of legitimate business reasons why you had to give a discount to make the sale. But if you sell it to him for $50, they may declare that this is not a sale but a gift. Etc."']

Avoiding sin stock: does it make a difference?

["Yes, it does matter. You are right that lower demand for a stock will drive its price down. Lower stock prices can hurt the company. Take a look at Fixee's answer to this question: a declining share price will make it hard to secure credit, attract further investors, build partnerships, etc. Also, employees are often holding options or in a stock purchase plan, so a declining share price can severely dampen morale. In an extreme case, if share prices plummet too far, the company can be pressured to reverse-split the shares, and (eventually) take the company private. This recently happened to Playboy. If you do not want to support a company, for whatever reason, then it is wise to avoid their stock.", '"This question drives at what value a shareholder actually provides to a corporation, and by extent, to the economy. If you subscribe for new shares (like in an Initial Public Offering), it is very straightforward to say ""I have provided capital to the corporation, which it is using to advance its business."" If you buy shares that already exist (like in a typical share purchase on a public exchange), your money doesn\'t go to the company. Instead, it goes to someone who paid someone who paid someone who paid someone (etc.) who originally contributed money to the corporation. In theory, the value of a share price does not directly impact the operation of the company itself, apart from what @DanielCarson aptly noted (employee stock options are affected by share price, impacting morale, etc.). This is because in theory, the true value of a company (and thus, the value of a share) is the present value of all future cashflows (dividends + final liquidation). This means that in a technical sense, a company\'s share price should result from the company\'s value. The company\'s true value does not result from the share price. But what you are doing as a shareholder is impacting the liquidity available to other potential investors (also as mentioned by @DanielCarson, in reference to the desirability for future financing). The more people who invest their money in the stock market, the more liquid those stocks become. This is the true value you add to the economy by investing in stocks - you add liquidity to the market, decreasing the risk of capital investment generally. The fewer people there are who are willing to invest in a particular company, the harder it is for an investor to buy or sell shares at will. If it is difficult to sell shares in a company, the risk of holding shares in that company is higher, because you can\'t ""cash out"" as easily. This increased risk then does change the value of the shares - because even though the corporation\'s internal value is the same, the projected cashflows of the shares themselves now has a question mark around the ability to sell when desired. Whether this actually has an impact on anything depends on how many people join you in your declaration of ethical investing. Like many other forms of social activism, success relies on joint effort. This goes beyond the direct and indirect impacts mentioned above; if \'ethical investing\' becomes more pronounced, it may begin to stigmatize the target companies (fewer people wanting to work for \'blacklist\' corporations, fewer people buying their products, etc.)."']

Save money in company for next year

["As was once famously said, Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. —\u2009Benjamin Franklin, 1789 It's very likely that either the company or you personally is going to have to pay taxes on that money. Really the only way to avoid it would be if the company spent that money on next year's expenses, and paid the bill before the end of this year. Of course you can only do that if the recipient is willing to receive their money so far in advance, which isn't necessarily the case since they would pay more taxes this year as a result. As for whether it's better to have the company pay the tax or for you to do as your accountant suggests, there are a lot of factors that go into that equation, and my gut feeling is that your accountant already ran it both ways and is suggesting the better choice."]

Canadian in California - filing taxes as a non-resident

['"What do you mean by ""Canadian income""? Was it income paid to you as wages for the job you did in the US? Or rental/interest income in Canada? If the former - then it doesn\'t go to NEC, it goes to the main part of the return. If the latter - it doesn\'t appear on your NR return at all. Yes, it is to validate your residency status. It has no other effect on your taxes."']

Schedule C: where to deduct service fees on income?

['"Putting them on line 10 is best suited for your situation. According to Quickbooks: Commissions and Fees (Line 10) Commissions/fees paid to nonemployees to generate revenue (e.g. agent fees). It seems like this website you are using falls under the term ""nonemployees""."']

Recourse with Credit Card company after victimized by fraud?

['"Concealing parts of a document in order to obtain a signature is illegal. The company committed signature forgery because they effectively modified the document after you signed it (i.e. unfolded the parts that were previously folded). I suggest that you go to your local police department to file a report, citing ""signature forgery"". Once you have the police report, call your bank\'s fraud department (not the general billing dispute line) and cite the police report right away, specifically calling out ""signature forgery"". I would be surprised if you don\'t get a favorable outcome."', "If the business is being investigated by your state's Attorney General's office, then your first call should be to that office. They will be able to help you in a few ways, even if they can't explicitly resolve the situation, and they also would undoubtedly appreciate your information to add to their case as well. First, they may be able to tell you how other victims have had their cases resolved, particularly if any went to court on their own. While they won't be able to provide you with personal information of the other victims unless it is public knowledge (via a court case), the information about how the other victims resolved the cases may be helpful - both to show what to do, and what not to do. Second, they may be able to put you in contact with an attorney who is handling other cases like yours. That may reduce the cost of the attorney (as they'll have already done some of the work), and may mean that the attorney is willing to work with no up front fee on the assumption of winning the case. Third, if there are options for getting your money back without a court case, the AG's office may be able to help provide those as well. If the Attorney General's office is unable to help you, then your best bet is to contact an attorney on your own - look for one who specializes in consumer protection and fraud. This is the purpose attorneys exist for: pursuing your interests against another's. Let them do their job. Do make an effort to find a good, honest attorney; you may find some help on how to do this on law.se if you need it (not actual recommendations, mind you, just help with how you would go about finding one). It sounds like your claim would be above and beyond the level of a small claims court lawsuit, but verify this in your jurisdiction; if small claims court goes up to $10,000, you may be able to pursue it there on your own - but I would still get some help from an attorney, at least finding out what you would need to win.", '"I agree that you shouldn\'t give up trying to get your money back, but I strongly feel that this is not sufficient. If they are trying to victimize you, they are trying to victimize others. Taking care of getting your own money back should be your top concern, but contacting any Attorneys General and District Attorneys that have jurisdiction should also be a priority to help others--past, present, and future--that might be caught in this scam. Contact them, contact the police, contact the BBB, contact the local media. Shine a light and make the cockroaches pack up and get out of town. ""We got you... you have no recourse"" should always be met with the response, ""I will shut you down."""']

Options on the E-mini S&P 500 Futures at the CME: what's the expiry date of the underlying future?

['"I don\'t see EWQ6 in any of your links, so I can\'t say for certain, but when you buy an option contract on a future, the option will be for a specific future (and strike). So the page you\'re looking at may be for options on E-mini S&P 500 futures in general, and when you actually purchase one through your broker, you pick a specific expiry (which will be based on the ""prompt"" future, meaning the next future that expires after the option) and strike. UPDATE: Based on this page mirror, the option EWQ7 is an option on the ESU7 (SEP 2017) future. The next 3 monthly options use ESZ7 as the underlier, which confirms that they use the next prompt future as the underlier."']

If the former owner of my home is still using the address, can it harm me?

["Give it to your mailman to return to sender. For this kind of material, return service is always requested, and it will let the bank know that they have incorrect address information. If the owner needs the cards, he'll contact the bank, or the bank will contact him to verify the address. Either way, as long as its not in your name, I don't think you should be worried.", "Don't worry about it. One of the big banks who like to whine a lot about defaulting borrowers is sending credit cards to a former resident of my home. The guy died in the late 90s."]

Primary residence converted to a rental property & tax implications

['You will need to look at the 27.5 year depreciation table from the IRS. It tells you how you will be able to write off the first year. It depends on which month you had the unit ready to rent. Note that that it might be a different month from when you moved, or when the first tenant moved in. Your list is pretty good. You can also claim some travel expenses or mileage related to the unit. Also keep track of any other expenses such as switching the water bill to the new renter, or postage. If you use Turbo tax, not the least expensive version, it can be a big help to get started and to remember how much to depreciate each year.', "Schedule E is the form you'll use. It lists nearly all deductions you can take for a rental. TurboTax Deluxe will handle it and it includes State Filing."]

Administrator vs Broker vs Custodian for a Solo 401(k)?

["Their paperwork should help you along. Schwab is the broker and custodian, you are the administrator. There's virtually no paperwork after the account is opened, until you hit $250K in value, and then there's one extra IRS form you need to fill out each year. See One-Participant 401(k) Plans for a good IRS description of form 5500. Disclosure - I use the Schwab Solo 401(k) myself, and the only downsides, in my opinion, the don't offer a Roth flavor, and no loans are permitted. Both of these features would offer flexibility."]

Faster degree with debt or slower degree with no debt?

["Basically do some math on the 2 schools. Let's say you know it will take 4 years if you go the cheaper route, at $8k/yr, plus the $300/month, total cost: $46,400. If you (for these purposes) do not have to pay back new loans until school is completed, (and depending on the rate of those loans), you would need approx $6k/yr in loans, plus the same costs ($300/month + $8k/yr to cover the other part of tuition). Let's say the expensive school takes 3 years to complete, which means you're out of pocket $34,800 and in debt an additional $18,000, totaling $52,800. This means that to make the 2nd school worth it (assuming your rates don't kill you, etc) you should have an increased earning potential of at least $6,400/yr after you get your degree. If you can finish in 2 years, your costs are: $23,200 + $12k, and you don't even have to change your earning potential to come out ahead. Other factors to consider are: If you aren't following any of the math, or want to post more information, just comment back to me, and I'll try to explain further. Best of luck!"]

I want to invest in a U.S.-based company with unquoted stocks, but I am a foreigner. How to do this?

['"The recommendation is not to make the investment. In general, a company does not have to sell their shares to you or allow you to become an investor, because, as you have stated, it is a private company not quoted on the stock market. If everyone were trustworthy, you could buy the tools for $11000 -- so that you own the tools -- and sign a lease of the tools to the company whereby they pay you $X/month. The lease should be reviewed by a lawyer before it is signed, and perhaps give the buyer the right to demand back the tools at any time. However, even this arrangement is very risky, because the ""company"" could simply steal or damage the tools and disappear. It is not an investment that I would make, because it sounds too good to be true. $2800/mo steady cash flow for $11,000 invested. No, I don\'t think so. The following information may also be useful, either to you, or future readers: If you still want to make this investment, then you should know that: The offering for sale of shares by companies located in the USA is subject to a wild array of complex laws. This is true in many other countries as well. These laws, called securities laws or regulations, can require certain disclosures, require that investors have a high net worth so that they can afford to lose the money or conduct their own investigations and legal actions, or require that the investors know the company founders personally, and can prohibit or limit resale by the buyer/investor. Promoters who say you can still invest and are ignoring or disobeying the securities laws are being at least negligent, but more likely are dishonest and probably criminal. Even if you trust in the investment, can you trust negligent managers to do a good job executing that investment? What about dishonest managers? What about criminals and thieves?"', '"Life would be nicer had we not needed lawyers. But for some things - you better get a proper legal advice. This is one of these things. Generally, the United States is a union of 50 different sovereign entities, so you\'re asking more about Texas, less about the US. So you\'d better talk to a Texas lawyer. Usually, stock ownership is only registered by the company itself (and sometimes not even that, look up ""street name""), and not reported to the government. You may get a paper stock certificate, but many companies no longer issue those. Don\'t forget to talk to a lawyer and a tax adviser in your home country, as well. You\'ll be dealing with tax authorities there as well. The difference between ""unoted"" (never heard of this term before) and ""regular"" stocks is that the ""unoted"" are not publicly traded. As such, many things that your broker does (like tax statements, at source withholding, etc) you and your company will have to do on your own. If your company plans on paying dividends, you\'ll have to have a US tax ID (ITIN or SSN), and the company will have to withhold the US portion of the taxes. Don\'t forget to talk to a tax adviser about what happens when you sell the stock. Also, since the company is not publicly traded, consider how will you be able to sell it, if at all."']

Appropriate model for deferred costs as a line-of-credit

["There's no standard formula. You can compare the going rates on the market for unsecured LOCs and take that as the starting anchor. Unsecured lines of credit run in the US at about 8-18%. Your risk should be reflected in the rate, and I see no reason why the rate would change throughout the loan. As to the amount of principal changing? Just chose one of the standard compounding options - daily (most precise, but most tedious to calculate), monthly average balance, etc."]

Can I deduct the cost of software and/or computer that I need to do my job?

['"Yes, this is a miscellaneous itemized deduction. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p529/ar02.html For this to impact your taxes, you have to be itemizing deductions (have total deductions greater than standard deduction), and the total of all miscellaneous deductions needs to exceed the ""2% floor"" described in the IRS link above."']

Is it normal for brokers to ask whether I am a beginner?

['"Brokers need to assess your level of competency to ensure that they don\'t allow you to ""bite off more than you can chew"" and find yourself in a bad situation. Some brokers ask you to rate your skills, others ask you how long you\'ve been trading, it always varies based on broker. I use IB and they gave me a questionairre about a wide range of instruments, my skill level, time spent trading, trades per year, etc. Many brokers will use your self-reported experience to choose what types of instruments you can trade. Some will only allow you to start with stocks and restrict access to forex, options, futures, etc. until you ask for readiness and, for some brokers, even pass a test of knowledge. Options are very commonly restricted so that you can only go long on an option when you own the underlying stock when you are a ""newbie"" and scale out from there. Many brokers adopt a four-tiered approach for options where only the most skilled traders can write naked options, as seen here. It\'s important to note that all of this information is self-reported and you are not legally bound to answer honestly in any way. If, for example, you are well aware of the risks of writing naked options and want to try it despite never trading one before, there is nothing stopping you from saying you\'ve traded options for 10 years and be given the privilege by your broker. Of course, they\'re just looking out for your best interest, but you are by no means forced into the scheme if you do not wish to be."', '"In Canada, for example, they are expected or required to find out. They call it, The “Know Your Client” rule, part of which is knowing your ""Investment knowledge and experience"". They say it is, ""to ensure their advice is suitable for you"". I have always been given that kind of form to fill in, when opening an account."', '"Yes, this is common and in some cases may be required. They may use it for marketing at some level, but they also use it for risk management in deciding, for example, how much margin to offer and whether to approve access to ""riskier"" products like stock options."', "In many places there are legal requirements to do so, essentially made to prevent brokers from selling high-risk products as if they were deposits with guaranteed safety of your funds. There also may be prohibitions on offering high-risk/high-return products to beginner customers, e.g. requiring accredited investor status claiming that yes, you really know how this works and are informed of the involved risks or you're not allowed to invest in that product. Making untrue claims of being not a beginner may limit your options if your broker does cheat you in some manner, as it gives them a solid argument that you confirmed that you understand how their pump-and-dump scheme works and are yourself responsible for losing your money to them."]

What is the correct answer for percent change when the start amount is zero dollars $0?

['"There is no numerical convention in finance that I have ever seen. If you look at statements or reports that measure growth when the starting value is negative or zero, you typically see ""n/a"" or ""-"" or ""*"" as the result. Any numerical result would be meaningless. Suppose you used 100% and another company had a legitimate 150% gain - where would the 100% change rank? What do my manager and investors expect to see? As a financial analyst - I would not want to see 100%. I would instead rather see something that indicates that the % change is meaningless. As an example, here\'s the WSJ documentation on change in Net Income: Net Income percent change is the change from the same period from a year ago. Percent change is not provided if either the latest period or the year-ago period contains a net loss. Thinking about it in another context: Yesterday you and your friend had no apples. Today you have 1 and your friend has 20. What percentage increase did you both have? Did you both have a 100% increase? How can you indicate that your friend had a larger ""increase""? In that case (and in finance), the context needs to turn from a percentage increase to an absolute increase. A percentage increase is that scenario is meaningless."', 'A value of zero or a negative value makes the percent change meaningless. Saying 100% when going from 0 to some other value is simply wrong. I have seen a similar situation several times when looking at a public company with a loss last quarter. On Google Finance or some other service, the PE ratio will be blank, N/A, or something like that. If the company does not currently have earnings, then the PE ratio is meaningless. Likewise, if the company previously did not have earnings, then the percent change of the earnings is meaningless. Also consider the example where the previous value was negative. If the previous value was negative 1 and the current value is positive 99, then this happens: A negative change? But the value went up! Obviously that value does not make sense and should not be shown.', '"I\'d personally display ""n/a"" The only other answer that makes sense to me other is ""infinity"" (phone keyboard doesn\'t allow me to input the symbol). This would at least allow you to show direction by using positive and negative infinity and mathematical as the the initial value approaches zero the percentage change approaches infinity which is the closet you can get to a meaningful value"', '"In general, when dealing with quantities like net income that are not restricted to being positive, ""percentage change"" is a problematic measure. Even with small positive values it can be difficult to interpret. For example, compare these two companies: Company A: Company B: At a glance, I think most people would come away with the impression that both companies did badly in Y2, but A made a much stronger recovery. The difference between 99.7 and 99.9 looks unimportant compared to the difference between 100,000 and 40,000. But if we translate those to dollars: Company A: Y1 $100m, Y2 $0.1m, Y3 $100.1m Company B: Y1 $100m, Y2 $0.3m, Y3 $120.3m Company B has grown by a net of 20% over two years; Company A by only 1%. If you\'re lucky enough to know that income will always be positive after Y1 and won\'t drop too close to zero, then this doesn\'t matter very much and you can just look at year-on-year growth, leaving Y1 as undefined. If you don\'t have that guarantee, then you may do better to look for a different and more stable metric, the other answers are correct: Y1 growth should be left blank. If you don\'t have that guarantee, then it might be time to look for a more robust measure, e.g. change in net income as a percentage of turnover or of company value."', 'As has been said before, going from nothing to something is an infinite percent increase! It is not 100%. Maybe you had a dollar and now have $101 that is a 10000% increase! Quite remarkable. I often work with symmetrized percent changes like: spc = 100 * (y2-y1)/(0.5 * (y1+y2)) Where I compute the percent with respect to the average. First this is more stable as often measurements can have noise, the average is more reliable. Second advantage is also that this is symmetric. So going from 95 to 105 is a 10 % increase while going from 105 to 95 a 10% decrease. Of course you need to explain what you show.', '"Anyone who has any business looking at growth numbers will know thay are meaningless in the first year, So all they need to know is that it\'s the first year. It\'s no different than the Billboard music charts\' treatment of the ""last week\'s chart ranking"" and ""movement up/down"" columns. It will help with visual layout if the figure used is about the same size as a percentage number. ""New"" fits nicely."', "In computing, you'd generally return naa%, for 'not a number'. Could you not put '-%' to show there is no value at this point? Surely the people seeing this aren't idiots and understand the charge on 0 is 0?", "What is the probability of a real occasion (meaning not just an example) being exactly zero? Even if you have 0.1 you can still do the math. Also, it is kind of depending on the occasion. For example, you want to calculate the ROI of an investment for which you had zero capital and you made that investment with leverage, meaning you got a loan. In order to get that loan you should have provided a collateral, so in this case as a starting sum you use the collateral. In another example, say EAT it's difficult to have exactly zero. So, in most cases you won't have to deal with zero values, only positives and negatives.", '"There are some assumptions which can be made in terms of the flexibility you have - I will start with the least flexible assumption and then move to more flexible assumptions. If you must put down a number 1, your go-to for this(""Change the start period to 1""), is pretty good, and it\'s used frequently for other divide-by-zero calculations like kda in a video game. The problem I have with \'1\' is that it doesn\'t allow you to handle various scales. Some problems are dealt with in thousands, some in fractions, and some in hundreds of millions. Therefore, you should change the start period to the smallest significantly measurable number you could reasonably have. Here, that would take your example 0 and 896 and give you an increase of 89,500%. It\'s not a great result, but it\'s the best you can hope for if you have to put down a number, and it allows you to keep some of the ""meaning in the change."" If you absolutely must put something This is the assumption that most answers have taken - you can put down a symbol, a number with a notation, empty space, etc, but there is going to be a label somewhere called \'Growth\' that will exist. I generally agree with what I\'ve seen, particularly the answers from Benjamin Cuninghma and Nath. For the sake of preservation - those answers can be summarized as putting \'N/A\' or \'-\', possibly with a footnote and asterisk. If you can avoid the measurement entirely The root of your question is ""What do my manager and investors expect to see?"" I think it\'s valuable to dig even further to ""What do my manager and investors really want to know?"". They want to know the state of their investment. Growth is often a good measurement of that state, but in cases where you are starting from zero or negative, it just doesn\'t tell you the right information. In these situations, you should avoid % growth, and instead talk in absolute terms which mention the time frame or starting state. For example:"']

What is the tax levied against stock portion cashed out of 401k?

['"You pay tax on the entire amount, not just the capital gains. When cashing out such a plan you would pay the top marginal tax rate on the full amount plus another 10% in penalties. It is very likely that the additional income, of the balance withdrawal, will increase your top marginal rate. It is impossible to come up with a precise answer as we don\'t know the following: However, you can take a concept away from this that is important: You will be taxed and penalized on the entire 401K balance, not just the capital gain. In the ""best case"" scenario, that is you had little or no income in a given year. Under current tax law you would owe about 31% of your 401K balance in taxes. As this is such an inefficient use of money most authors recommend against it except in the case of extreme circumstances."', "Withdrawals from a traditional 401(k) plan are always treated as cash income and the taxable portion is taxed at ordinary income tax rates, even if the money was held in stocks within the 401(k) plan and the amount withdrawn is equal to whatever capital gains you made by selling the stock within the 401(k) plan. If your plan permits you to take the distribution as stock shares (transferred to your taxable brokerage account), then, for tax purposes, it is treated as if you took a distribution of cash equal to the market price of the shares as of the day of the distribution and promptly bought the same number of shares in your brokerage account. And yes, if the 401(k) plan assets in your ex-employer's plan consists solely of pretax contributions and the earnings thereon, then the entire distribution is ordinary taxable income regardless of whether you sold the stock within the 401(k) plan or took a distribution of stock from the plan and promptly (or after a few days) sold it. The capital gains or losses (if any) from such a sale are, of course, outside the 401(k) plan and taxable accordingly. Finally, the 10% penalty for premature withdrawal from a traditional 401(k) will also apply if you are not 59.5 years of age or older (or maybe 55 since you are separated from service), and it will be computed on the entire distribution."]

Should I have to pay income tax on contribution to home office rent from company?

["This is essentially a reimbursement of your expense. Since you can deduct the expense, the fact that the reimbursement is taxable doesn't affect you much. You deduct your home office expenses on your annual tax return using form 8829. See the IRS site for more details. If you're asking about the UK tax, there may be some other considerations, but from the US tax perspective it is (nearly) a wash."]

IRS “convenience of the employer” test when employee lives far from the office

['"The decision whether this test is or is not met seems to be highly dependent on the specific situation of the employer and the employee. I think that you won\'t find a lot of general references meeting your needs. There is such a thing as a ""private ruling letter,"" where individuals provide specific information about their situation and request the IRS to rule in advance on how the situation falls with respect to the tax law. I don\'t know a lot about that process or what you need to do to qualify to get a private ruling. I do know that anonymized versions of at least some of the rulings are published. You might look for such rulings that are close to your situation. I did a quick search and found two that are somewhat related: As regards your situation, my (non-expert) understanding is that you will not pass in this case unless either (a) the employer specifies that you must live on the West Coast or you\'ll be fired, (b) the employer would refuse to provide space for you if you moved to Boston (or another company location), or (c) you can show that you could not possibly do your job out of Boston. For (c), that might mean, for example, you need to make visits to client locations in SF on short-notice to meet business requirements. If you are only physically needed in SF occasionally and with ""reasonable"" notice, I don\'t think you could make it under (c), although if the employer doesn\'t want to pay travel costs, then you might still make it under (a) in this case."', '"I\'m not a tax professional, but as I understand it, you are not expected to commute from San Francisco to Boston. :) If your employer has not provided you with an external office, then yes, you have very likely met the ""convenience of the employer"" test. However, to take the home office deduction, there are many requirements that have to be met. You can read more at the Nolo article Can You Deduct Your Home Office When You\'re an Employee? (Thanks, keshlam) The home office deduction has many nuances and is enough of an IRS red flag that you would be well-advised to talk to an accountant about it. You need to be able to show that it is exclusively and necessarily used for your job. Another thing to remember: as an employee, the home office deduction, if you take it, will be deducted on Schedule A, line 21 (unreimbursed employee expenses), among other Miscellaneous Deductions. Deductions in this section need to exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income before you can start to deduct. So it will not be worth it to pursue the deduction if your income is too high, or your housing expenses are too low, or your office is too small compared to the rest of your house, or you don\'t itemize deductions."', 'If your employer does not provide you with a place to work but nevertheless expects you to get work done, then having a place to work is a condition of employment.']

How much total salary to allocate to defer $17,500 to 401(k)?

["You're on the right track, and yes, that small difference is subject to income taxes. Do you use a payroll service? I do the same thing and use my payroll software to tweak the salary until the paycheck is just a few dollars every month (we run payroll once a month), with the rest going to the 401(k) and payroll taxes. So we're rounding up just a bit just so there's an actual paycheck with a positive number, and a bit does get withheld for fed/state income tax. Also keep in mind you can make a company match. If your plan is a solo 401(k) with just you and your wife as the sole employees, consider the 25% match for both of you. The match is not subject to payroll taxes because it is a company expense. IRS web page: http://www.irs.gov/Retirement-Plans/One-Participant-401(k)-Plans"]

Is this reply promising a money order and cashier check a scam?

['"It\'s a scam. The cashier\'s check will be forged. Craigslist has a warning about it here (item #3). What kind of payment do you think is not fakable? Or at least not likely to be used in scams? When on craigslist - deal only locally and in person. You can ask to see the person\'s ID if you\'re being paid by check When being paid by check, how can seeing his/her ID help? In case the check isn\'t cashable, I can find that person by keeping record of his/her ID? If you\'re paid by check, the payers details should be printed on the check. By checking the ID you can verify that the details match (name/address), so you can find the payer later. Of course the ID can be faked too, but there\'s so much you can do to protect yourself. You\'ll get better protection (including verified escrow service) by selling on eBay. Is being paid by cash the safest way currently, although cash can be faked too, but it is the least common thing that is faked currently? Do you recommend to first deposit the cash into a bank (so that let the bank verify if the cash is faked), before delivering the good? For Craigslist, use cash and meet locally. That rules out most scams as a seller. What payment methods do you think are relatively safe currently? Then getting checks must be the least favorite way of being paid. Do you think cash is better than money order or cashier order? You should only accept cash. If it is a large transaction, you can meet them at your bank, have them get cash, and you receive the cash from the bank. Back to the quoted scam, how will they later manipulate me? Are they interested in my stuffs on moving sale, or in my money? They will probably ""accidentally"" overpay you and ask for a refund of some portion of the overpayment. In that case you will be out the entire amount that you send back to them and possibly some fees from your bank for cashing a bad check."', "I was a involved in this same scam from my Craigslist item. The buyer texted me & said his assistant put the wrong check in my envelope & please let him know when I got it,cash the cashiers check, keep my part for money of my item & send him back the difference. Well, the check came to me for $1,350.00 for a $100 item. I immediately suspected something here. It was for way to big to be a mistake. I called the credit union in California to ask about this cashier's check & sure enough, they said it was a fake check. This scammer's phone he texted from was from a San Antonio,TX area code, the check was mailed from Madison, WI, & the check was on a California CU. They sure cover their tracks pretty good. So C/L'ers.....BEWARE! don't take checks for more than the amount & be asked to send back the difference. You will be HAD!"]

Can I just file a 1040-ES?

["Yes, you can send in a 2012 1040-ES form with a check to cover your tax liability. However, you will likely have to pay penalties for not paying tax in timely fashion as well as interest on the late payment. You can have the IRS figure the penalty and bill you for it, or you can complete Form 2210 (on which these matters are figured out) yourself and file it with your Form 1040. The long version of Form 2210 often results in the smallest extra amount due but is considerably more time-consuming to complete correctly. Alternatively, if you or your wife have one or more paychecks coming before the end of 2012, it might be possible to file a new W-4 form with the HR Department with a request to withhold additional amounts as Federal income tax. I say might because if the last paycheck of the year will be issued in just a few days' time, it might already have been sent for processing, and HR might tell you it is too late. But, depending on the take-home pay, it might be possible to have the entire $2000 withheld as additional income tax instead of sending in a 1040-ES. The advantage of doing it through withholding is that you are allowed to treat the entire withholding for 2012 as satisfying the timely filing requirements. So, no penalty for late payment even though you had a much bigger chunk withheld in December, and no interest due either. If you do use this approach, remember that Form W-4 applies until it is replaced with another, and so HR will continue to withhold the extra amount on your January paychecks as well. So, file a new W-4 in January to get back to normal withholding. (Fix the extra exemption too so the problem does not recur in 2013)."]

What standards should I expect of my CPA when an error was made?

['"What is the right way to handle this? Did you check the forms? Did the form state $0 tax due on the FTB LLC/Corp form (I\'m guessing you operate as LLC/Corp, since you\'re dealing with the Franchise Tax)? The responsibility is ultimately yours. You should cross check all the numbers and verify that they\'re correct. That said, if the CPA filled the forms incorrectly based on your correct data - then she made a mistake and can be held liable. CPA filing forms from a jurisdiction on the other end of the country without proper research and knowledge may be held negligent if she made a grave mistake. You can file a law suit against the CPA (which will probably trigger her E&O insurance carrier who\'ll try to settle if there\'s a good chance for your lawsuit to not be thrown away outright), or complain to the State regulatory agency overseeing CPAs in the State of her license. Or both. Am I wrong for expecting the CPA should have properly filled out and filed my taxes? No, but it doesn\'t shift the responsibility from you. How can I find out if the CPA has missed anything else? Same as with doctors and lawyers - get a second opinion. Preferably from a CPA licensed in California. You and only you are responsible for your taxes. You may try to pin the penalties and interest on the CPA if she really made a mistake. California is notorious for very high LLC/Corp franchise tax (cost of registering to do business in the State). It\'s $800 a year. You should have read the forms and the instructions carefully, it is very prominent. It is also very well discussed all over the Internet, any search engine would pop it up for you with a simple ""California Franchise Tax for LLC/Corp"" search. CA FTB is also very aggressive in assessing and collecting the fee, and the rules of establishing nexus in CA are very broad. From your description it sounds like you were liable for the Franchise tax in CA, since you had a storage facility in CA. You may also be liable for sales taxes for that period."']

Self-employed individual 401k self, match, and profit sharing contribution limits?

['"It seems I can make contributions as employee-elective, employer match, or profit sharing; yet they all end up in the same 401k from my money since I\'m both the employer and employee in this situation. Correct. What does this mean for my allowed limits for each of the 3 types of contributions? Are all 3 types deductible? ""Deductible""? Nothing is deductible. First you need to calculate your ""compensation"". According to the IRS, it is this: compensation is your “earned income,” which is defined as net earnings from self-employment after deducting both: So assuming (numbers for example, not real numbers) your business netted $30, and $500 is the SE tax (half). You contributed $17.5 (max) for yourself. Your compensation is thus 30-17.5-0.5=12. Your business can contribute up to 25% of that on your behalf, i.e.: $4K. Total that you can contribute in such a scenario is $21.5K. Whatever is contributed to a regular 401k is deferred, i.e.: excluded from income for the current year and taxed when you withdraw it from 401k (not ""deducted"" - deferred)."', "I can only address this part of it: For instance with a 10k net income, 9293 is the limit for 401k from employee. How is this calculated? I believe this limit is total for all sources too, which I'm confused about. How it's calculated is that when you are self-employed you also pay the employer portion of the FICA taxes. This comes off above the line and is not considered income. The 401k contribution limit takes this into account."]

From ACH direct debit to Prepaid card?

["This would be exactly the sort of product that a thief would want, if they had got ahold of some account numbers and wanted to steal the money from those accounts, in a way that would let them spend it as conveniently as possible. That should explain why I think it's unlikely that any such product exists."]

How to avoid maintenance fee when balance drops below minimum?

['Looks like you have three options: Outside of this you might need to look for a different type of account. Hope that helps.']

How do I account for 100 percent vendor discounts in GnuCash 2.6.5

['I am no expert on the situation nor do I pretend to act like one, but, as a business owner, allow me to give you my personal opinion. Option 3 is closest to what you want. Why? Well: This way, you have both the record of everything that was done, and also IRS can see exactly what happened. Another suggestion would be to ask the GnuCash maintainers and community directly. You can have a chat with them on their IRC channel #gnucash, send them an email, maybe find the answer in the documentation or wiki. Popular software apps usually have both support people and a helpful community, so if the above method is in any way inconvenient for you, you can give this one a try. Hope this helps! Robert', '"The answer was provided to me at the Gnucash chat by ""warlord"". The procedure is as follows: After doing this you will have:"']

eBay Account and SIM cards sent to my address

['"In your mother\'s position, I would do two things: Get a copy of her credit report. Money Advice Service has a useful page on how to do this - it is cheap (£2) or free to do and will immediately tell you if someone else is using her address for anything untoward. Check with the Post Office whether anyone has set up a redirect on mail to your Mum\'s address. You can redirect by individual names, so if Joe Bloggs buys a bunch of stuff and has it sent to him at your Mum\'s address, he could set up a redirect at the Post Office so any post for Joe Bloggs at that address gets redirected to Joe Blogg\'s real address. There is a page about this on the Post Office website, I don\'t know exactly how to check if someone else has set this up but I\'m sure the Post Office would help you find out. Additionally, I would consider visiting the address (the same house number in the ""Road"" where hers is in the ""Avenue"") and see whether the occupants have anything useful to say about this. I would just say you\'d had some mis-delivered post, and want to check what their names are so that you can pass on anything that is intended for them that comes to your address (and ask them to do likewise for you). Depending on how that goes you could also ask about the ebay store and see whether it really is them that set it up."']

Can self-employed individuals deduct their mileage spent commuting to events?

['I looked at Publication 463 (2014), Travel, Entertainment, Gift, and Car Expenses for examples. I thought this was the mot relevant. No regular place of work. If you have no regular place of work but ordinarily work in the metropolitan area where you live, you can deduct daily transportation costs between home and a temporary work site outside that metropolitan area. Generally, a metropolitan area includes the area within the city limits and the suburbs that are considered part of that metropolitan area. You cannot deduct daily transportation costs between your home and temporary work sites within your metropolitan area. These are nondeductible commuting expenses. This only deals with transportation to and from the temporary work site. Transportation expenses do not include expenses you have while traveling away from home overnight. Those expenses are travel expenses discussed in chapter 1 . However, if you use your car while traveling away from home overnight, use the rules in this chapter to figure your car expense deduction. See Car Expenses , later. You will also have to consider the cost of tolls of the use of a trailer if those apply.']

What should I look at before investing in a start-up?

["Here are the basic questions I usually ask any new business startup: Do these numbers/answers seem reasonable to you and is some benchmark available that allows you to see how likely this is? Remember, particularly in Internet-based advertising ventures, the client may be indirect. The person who clicks on a Google context-based link is not directly Google's client. The person who decided to host AdWords code on their site is the direct client. You're also going to want to see a Gant chart or some process chart indicating exactly what needs to be done, at what cost and by whom. Answers to these questions give a sense of not only how seriously they are taking the business, but also how organised. My final question: who is your first client? They need either someone who is going to contract the service, or have a clear indication of where income is going to come from, on their first day of trading. Their task is to sell their idea to you by proving that it will return on your investment and be profitable. From the strength of these answers you can gauge the value of your investment to them, how critical it is, how risky the opportunity and - ultimately - the stake and returns you should expect.", "In addition to evaluating the business (great answer), consider the potential payoff. If bonds pay off in the 5-10% range, the S&P500 has averged 10.5%. You should be expecting a payoff of 15-20% to invest in something riskier than the stock market. That means that if you invest $10k, then in 5 years you'll need to get out $25K (20% returns over 5 years). If you get less than this much in 5 years, the risk-to-reward ratio probably rules this out as a good investment.", "Turukawa's answer is quite good, and for your own specific situation, you might begin by being sceptical about what you are getting for investing a few thousand dollars. With the exception of Paul Graham's Y-Combinator, there are very few opportunities to invest at that type of level, and Y-Combinator provides a lot of other assistance besides their modest initial investment. I can tell from your post that you think like an investor. It is highly unlikely that the entrepreneurial programmers that you will be backing will be wired that way. From the modest amount that you are investing, you are unlikely to be the lead investor in this opportunity. If you are interested in proceeding, simply stick along for the ride, examining the terms and documents that more significant investors will be demanding. Remain positive and supportive, but simply wait to sign on the dotted line until others have done the heavy lifting. For more insights into startups themselves, see Paul Graham's essays at www.paulgraham.com. He's the real deal, and his recent essays will provide you with current insights about software startups. Good luck.", '"Previous answers have done a great job with the ""Should I invest?"" question. One thing you may be overlooking is the question ""Am I allowed to invest?"" For most offerings of stock in a startup, investors are required to be accredited by the SEC\'s definition. See this helpful quora post for more information on requirements to invest in startups. To be honest, if a startup is looking for investors to put in ""a few thousand dollars"" each, this would raise my alarm bells. The cost and hassle of the paperwork to (legitimately) issue shares in that small of number would lead me just to use a credit card to keep me going until I was able to raise a larger amount of capital."', '"You seem to have all your financial bases covered, and others have given you good financial advice, so I will try to give you some non-financial ideas. The first and most important thing is that you are investing with a long time friend, so the dynamics are a lot different that if you had recently met a stranger with an ""interesting"" new idea. The first thing you need to ask yourself is if your friendship will survive if this thing doesn\'t go well? You\'ve already said you can afford to lose the money so that\'s not a worry, but will there be any ""recriminations?"" The flip side is also true; if the venture succeeds, you should be able to go further with it because he\'s your friend. You know your friend better (back to grade school) than almost anyone else, so here are some things to ask yourself: What does your friend have that will give him a chance to succeed; tech savvy, a winning personality, a huge rolodex, general business savvy, something else? If your guardian angel had told you that one of your friends was planning to embark on an internet/advertising venture, is this the one you would have guessed? Conversely, knowing that your friend was planning to do a start up, is this the kind of venture you would have guessed? How does ""internet"" and ""advertising"" fit in with what you are doing? If this venture succeeds, could it be used to help your professional development and career, maybe as a supplier or customer? Can you see yourself leaving your current job and joining your friend\'s (now established) company as a vice president or acting as a member of its board of directors, the latter perhaps while pursuing your current career path? Are your other mutual friends investing? Are some of them more tech savvy than you and better able to judge the company\'s prospects of success? To a certain extent, there is ""safety in numbers"" and even if there isn\'t, ""misery loves company."" On the upside, would you feel left out if everyone in your crowd caught ""the next Microsoft"" except you?"']

Auto loan: must make X payments before payoff

['"Paperwork prevails. What you have is a dealer who get a kickback for sending financing to that institution. And the dealer pretty much said ""We only get paid our kickback at two levels of loan life, 6 and 12 months."" You just didn\'t quite read between the lines. This is very similar to the Variable Annuity salespeople who tell their clients, ""The best feature about this product is that the huge commissions I get from the sale fund my kid\'s college tuition and my own retirement. You, on the other hand, don\'t really do so well."" Car salesmen and VA sellers."']

Contributing to a Roth IRA while income tax filing status is “Married Filing Separately”?

["You must file as married for 2013 if you were married as of December 31, 2013. It is true that the Roth IRA contribution phaseout for Married Filing Separately is 0 - $10K. But you can still do backdoor Roth IRA contribution (contribute to a Traditional IRA, then convert it to a Roth IRA; assuming you do not have any pre-tax IRAs, this is identical to a Roth IRA contribution). But you already made a Roth IRA contribution for 2013, and did not do the backdoor. Let's assume that you want to turn it into a backdoor Roth IRA contribution, and that you don't have any pre-tax IRAs. There are two ways to do this: Withdraw the Roth IRA you contributed (including earnings). Then, do a normal backdoor Roth IRA contribution (contribute to a Traditional IRA, then immediately convert it to Roth IRA). The earnings you had in the Roth IRA that you withdrew will be treated as normal income and taxed. The conversion will not be taxable because all of the Traditional IRA was non-deductible when you converted. Re-characterize your original Roth IRA contribution as a Traditional IRA contribution, then convert it to Roth IRA. It will be treated as if you made a Traditional IRA contribution originally, and then waited until now to convert. The earnings in the IRA up till now will be taxed on conversion. So in both cases, you will need to pay income tax on the earnings in the account up to now. The difference between the two is in the amount of money in the IRA now. With the first way, you can only contribute $5500 now. With the second way, you will keep the same amount of money you have in the IRA now."]

How to pay myself as a single person corporation in Ontario? Should I get an accountant?

['"Get an accountant. Now. There are many subtle things that you do not know especially if you are just starting with your own corporation. There is also an issue of corporate tax return that you will have to face pretty soon. You should be looking for accountant that does accounting for corporations, there are companies specializing in small business. I do not think you can ""just"" transfer money to your personal account. They have to be treated as dividends and treated as such for income tax purposes. Or, as you described, you may pay yourself a salary, but then you have to pay CPP and EI on top of that. When you pay yourself dividends your corporation will need to issue T5 slip for you (accountant will do that) that you will need to use when preparing personal tax return. If you pay yourself salary, corporation will need to give you T4 In terms of tax treatment, if we do not take RRSP contributions dividend tax treatment will leave little bit more money in your hands. I\'d say if you have RRSP room and/or TFSA room, pay yourself dividends and then do contributions as you see fit, if you need RRSP room, pay yourself salary. TFSA room does not depend on the type of income, so if you have room there, consider filling it first."']

Dec 31 accounting for S Corp - what to do with loss?

["Conceptually, the entries are: Yes. And since you're the sole owner, your basis will equal to the equity balance on the balance sheet. Keep in mind the book and tax basis will probably be different, so you may want to keep a separate calculation to track the tax basis. There is no journal additional journal entry for this. If you're using bookkeeping software, be sure to research its book-closing/closing entries feature, as it is handled differently depending on the software. For example Quickbooks doesn't explicitly close its books, but re-computes the balance sheet dynamically depending on the selected date range."]

Does borrowing from my 401(k) make sense in my specific circumstance?

["Your comment regarding your existing finances is very relevant and helpful. You need to understand that generally in personal finance circles, when a strong earning 22 year-old is looking for a loan it's usually a gross spending problem. Their car costs $1,000 /month and their bar tabs are adding up so the only logical thing to do is get a loan. Most 22-year-olds don't have a mortgage soaking up their income, or a newborn. With all of this in mind I essentially agree with DStanley and, personally, and many people here would probably disagree, I'd stop the 401(K) contribution and use that money to pay the debt. You're still very young from a retirement standpoint, let the current balance ride and forego the match until the debt is paid. I think this is more about being debt free at 22 quickly than it's about how much marginal money could be saved via 401(k) or personal loan or this strategy or that strategy. I think at your age, you'll benefit greatly from simply being debt free. There are other very good answers on this site and other places regarding the pitfalls of a 401(k) loan. The most serious of which is that you have an extremely limited time to pay the entire loan upon leaving the company. Failure to repay in that situation incurs tax liability and penalties. From my quick math, assuming your contribution is 8% of $70,000 /year, you're contributing something in the neighborhood of $460/month to your 401(k). If you stopped contributing you'd probably take home a high $300 number net of taxes. It'll take around 20 months to pay the loan off using this contribution money without considering your existing payments, in total you're probably looking at closer to 15 months. You'll give up something in the neighborhood of $3,500 in match funds over the repayment time. But again, you're 22, you'll resume your contributions at 24; still WAY ahead of most people from a retirement savings standpoint. I don't think my first retirement dollar was contributed until I was about 29. Sure, retirement savings is important, but if you've already started at age 22 you're probably going to end up way ahead of most either way. When you're 60 you're probably not going to bemoan giving up a few grand of employer match in your 20s. That's what I would do. Edit: I actually like stannius's suggestion in the comments below. IF there's enough vested in your plan that is also available for withdrawal that you could just scoop $6,500 out of your 401(k) net of the 10% penalty and federal and state taxes (which would be on the full amount) to pay the debt, I'd consider that instead of stopping the prospective contributions. That way you could continue your contributions and receive the match contributions on a prospective basis. I doubt this is a legitimate option because it's very common for employers to restrict or forbid withdrawal of employee and/or employer contributions made during your employment, but it would be worth looking in to.", 'The set of circumstances that 401k loans make sense, are very small. As you would expect yours is not one of them. You make 70K per year and need 6500. Interest rate is not your problem, budgeting is the problem. Pay this off in three months not the 48 you are proposing. Why is borrowing from your 401K a bad idea, especially in this case? Look, been there done that, been the over spender. The sooner that you learn how to handle your money the better. I was in my 40s when I learned, if you can do this now you can be really wealthy by the time you get to be my age. Dream a bit. How much margin would you have in your life if you were able to pay this off in 3 months? How much better would your life be? Go forth and do great things. I believe in you.', "I completely agree with Pete that a 401(k) loan is not the answer, but I have an alternate proposal: Reduce your 401(k) contribution down to the 4% that you get a match on. If you are cash poor now and have debts to be cleaned up, those need to be addressed before retirement savings. You'll have plenty of time to make up the lost savings after you get the debts paid off. If your company matches 50% (meaning you have to contribute 8% to get the 4% match), then consider temporarily stopping your 401(k) altogether. A 100% match is very hard to give up, but a 50% match is less difficult. You have plenty of years left ahead of you to make up the lost match. Plus, the pain of knowing you're leaving money on the table will incentivize you to get the loans paid as quickly as possible. It seems to me that I would be reducing middle to high interest debt while also saving myself $150 per month. No, you'd be deferring $150 per month for an additional two years, and not reducing debt at all, just moving it to a different lender. Interest rate is not your problem. Right now you're paying less than $30 per month in interest on these 3 loans and about $270 in principal, and at the current rate should have them paid off in about 2 years. You're wanting to extend these loans to 4 years by borrowing from your retirement savings. I would buckle down, reduce expenses wherever possible (cable? cell phone? coffee? movies? restaurants?) until you get these debts paid off. You make $70,000 per year, or almost $6,000 per month. I bet if you try hard enough you can come up with $1,100 fairly quickly. Then the next $1,200 should come twice as fast. Then attack the next $4,000. (You can argue whether the $1,200 should come first because of the interest rate, but in the end it doesn't matter - either one should be paid off very quickly, so the interest saved is negligible) Maybe you can get one of them paid off, get yourself some breathing room, then loosen up a little bit, but extending the pain for an additional two years is not wise. Some more drastic measures:", "I see you've marked an answer as accepted but I MUST tell you that STOPPING your 401k contribution all together is a bad idea. Your company match is 100% rate of return(or 50% depending on structure). I don't care what market you look at, or how bad a loan you take out, you will not receive 100% rate of return, or be charged 100% interest. Further, taking out a loan against your 401k effectively does two things: It is a loan that must be repaid according to the terms of your 401k AND in every 401k I've ever encountered, you cannot make contributions to the 401k until the loan is repaid. This in effect stops your contributions, and will almost certainly save you very little on your interest rates on your current loans. I have 4 potential solutions that may help achieve your goal without sacrificing your 401k match and transferring the debt from one lender to another, but they are conditional. Is your company match 100% up to 4% of your salary, or 50% of your contribution (up to a limit you have not yet reached)? This is important. If it is 100% up to 4%, stop committing the additional 4% and use that to pay down your debt...and after ward set up that 4% as auto pay into an IRA, not into the 401k. An IRA will make you more money because YOU have control over its management, not your employer. If it is 50% match, contribute until the match is met because you cannot get 50% rate of return anywhere, then take your additional monies and get an IRA. As far as your debt, in this scenario simply suck it up and pay it as is. You will lose far more than you gain by stopping your contributions. If you simply must reduce your expenses by 150$ month try refinancing the mortgage and rolling the 6500$ into it. If you get a big enough drop in the interest rate you could still end up paying less. OR If you cannot make the gain there, try snowballing the three payments. You do this by calling your student loan vendor and telling them you need to make much smaller payments, like even zero depending on the type of loan. Then take ALL of the money you are currently spending on the 3 loans and put into the car payment. When it's gone, roll the whole thing into the higher interest student loan, then finally roll it all into the last student loan. You'll pay it off faster, and student loans have lots of laws and regulations regarding working with payers to keep them paying something without breaking them. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT STOP YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS. 50% OR 100%, THAT MONEY IS GUARANTEED AT A HIGHER RATE OF RETURN THAN YOU CAN GET ANYWHERE, ESPECIALLY GUARANTEED.", '"You\'re getting great wisdom and options. Establishing your actionable path will require the details that only you know, such as how much is actually in each paycheck (and how much tax is withheld), how much do you spend each month (and yearly expenses too), how much spending can you actually cut or replace, how comfortable are you with considering (or not considering) unexpected/emergency spending. You mentioned you were cash-poor, but only you know what your current account balances are, which will affect your actions and priorities. Btw, interestingly, your ""increase 401k contributions by 2% each year"" will need to end before hitting the $18K contribution limit. I took some time and added the details you posted into a cash-flow program to see your scenario over the next few years. There isn\'t a ""401k loan"" activity in this program yet, so I build the scenario from other simple activities. You seem financially minded enough to continue modeling on your own. I\'m posting the more difficult one for you (borrow from 401k), but you\'ll have to input your actual balances, paycheck and spending. My spending assumptions must be low, and I entered $70K as ""take-home,"" so the model looks like you\'ve got lots of cash. If you choose to play with it, then consider modeling some other scenarios from the advice in the other posts. Here\'s the ""Borrow $6500 from 401k"" scenario model at Whatll.Be: https://whatll.be/d1x1ndp26i/2 To me, it\'s all about trying the scenarios and see which one seems to work with all of the details. The trick is knowing what scenarios to try, and how to model them. Full disclosure: I needed to do similar planning, so I wrote Whatll.Be and I now share it with other people. It\'s in beta, so I\'m testing it with scenarios like yours. (Notice most of the extra activity occurs on 2018-Jan-01)"', '"Since most of the answers are flawed in their logic, I decided to respond here. 1) ""What if you lose your job, you can\'t pay back the loan"" The point of the question was to reduce the amount paid per month. So obviously it would be easier to pay off the 401k loan rather than the 3 separate loans that are in place now. Also it\'s stated in the question that there\'s a mortgage, a child with medical costs, a car loan, student loans, other debt. On the list of priorities the 401k loan does not make the top 10 concerns if they lost their job. 2) ""Consider stopping the 401k contribution"" This is such a terrible idea. If you make the full contribution to the 401k and then just withdraw from the 401k rather than getting a loan you only pay a 10% penalty tax. You still get 90% of the company match. 3) ""You lose compound interest"" While currently the interest you get on a 401k (depending on how that money is invested) is higher than the interest you pay on your loans (which means it would be advantageous to keep the loans and keep contributing to the 401k), it\'s very unreliable and might even go down. I think you actually have a good case for getting a loan against the 401k if a) You have your spending and budget under control b) Your income is consistent c) You are certain that the loan will be paid back. My suggestion would be to take a loan against the 401k, but keep the current spending on the loans consistent. If you don\'t need the extra $150 per month, you really should try to pay off the loans as fast as you can. If you do need the $150 extra, you are lowering the mental threshold for getting more loans in the future."']

Would it make sense to buy a rental property as an LLC and not in my own name?

["As far as the spam mail goes, I own a rental (in Connecticut) and live in Massachusetts, I get very little mail related to this property. I view this as a non-compelling reason. Your other reasons pick up quick in value. The protection from the rest of your assets is helpful, and the one con for most is the inability to get a loan with such a structure, but in your case, a cash purchase is mentioned. I don't know what the fees are to start an LLC, but overall, I believe the pros outweigh the cons. Yes, your Pro 4 looks good, an ongoing business with a track record will help the next purchase.", "I'd have a good look at how much anonymity an LLC offers in your state - as far as I'm aware this varies from state to state. Out here in NV an LLC owner's privacy is supposedly fairly well protected, but in other states, not quite as much. Also keep in mind that while the LLC offers some protection (and I'm a big advocate of this sort of structure if you're taking larger risks that might have a big impact on your overall personal finances), this might not apply to financing. A lot of banks tend to require an LLC's owner to guarantee loans to an LLC once they go over a certain amount or even in general. Do some research in this area because the LLC would be worth less as a protective shield to you if you're on the hook for the full amount of the loans anyway.", '"Consider that there are some low-probability, high-impact risk factors involved with property management. For example, an old house has lead paint and may have illegal modifications, unknown to you, that pose some hazard. All of your ""pros"" are logical, and the cons are relatively minor. Just consult an attorney to look for potential landmines."', "Don't worry about the spam mail. If you get a loan, it will be based on your personal credit. I don't know if you can get a real estate loan for your LLC, even if it owns many properties. Typically you get the loan in your own name, then transfer title to the LLC. The LLC does offer good liability protection. The downside is that it can be expensive (at least in California) and requires some work. You may have to pay an annual tax, and file (multiple) tax returns. It may not be worth it for one property. But it definitely a good idea if it is not too expensive.", '"IANAL, but if you\'re planning to sell shares in your LLC you may be disappointed in the protection granted. I looked into this corporate structure for the same purpose myself, and my attorney said something like, ""If an owner of one of the shares of your company is driving to look at one of the properties, and gets into a wreck for which they were found negligent, the injured party can sue the corporation."""', "You need to first visit the website of whatever state you're looking to rent the property in and you're going to want to form the LLC in that particular state. Find the Department of Licensing link and inquire about forming a standard LLC to register as the owner of the property and you should easily see how much it costs. If the LLC has no income history, it would be difficult for the bank to allow this without requiring you to personally guarantee the loan. The obvious benefit of protecting yourself with the LLC is that you protect any other personal assets you have in your name. Your liability would stop at the loan. The LLC would file its own taxes and be able to record the income against the losses (i.e. interest payments and other operating expenses.). This is can be beneficial depening on your current tax situation. I would definitely recommend the use of a tax accountant at that point. You need to be sure you can really afford this property in the worst case scenario and think about market leasing assumption, property taxes, maintenance and management (especially if you've moved to another state.)"]

How to open a Mega Money Market account without an ssn?

["According to the IRS: Aliens who are not eligible to apply for a U.S. social security number, or who do not meet the Social Security Administration's evidence requirements for an SSN, may apply for an Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) from the Internal Revenue Service if they have a valid tax reason for needing an ITIN, as explained in the Form W-7 instructions. Seeing as you don't have a valid tax reason for an ITIN, your request will probably be denied by the IRS."]

Strategy to minimize taxes due to unpaid wages?

['"Can I write off the $56,000 based on demand letters? Or do I need to finish suing him to write-off the loss? No and no. You didn\'t pay taxes on the money (since you didn\'t file tax returns...), so what are you writing off? If you didn\'t get the income - you didn\'t get the income. Nothing to write off. Individuals in the US are usually cash-based, so you don\'t write off income ""accrued but never received"" since you don\'t pay taxes on accrued income, only income you\'ve actually received. Should I file the 2012 taxes now? Or wait until the lawsuit finishes? You should have filed by April 2013, more than a year ago. You might have asked for an extension till October 2013, more than half a year ago. Now - you\'re very very late, and should file your tax return ASAP. If you have some tax due - you\'re going to get hit with high penalties for underpaying and late filing. If the lawsuit finishes in 2014, does it apply to the 2012 taxes? Probably not, but talk to your lawyer. In any case - it is irrelevant to the question whether to file the tax return or not. If because of the lawsuit results something changes - you file an amended return."']

What can I do with “stale” checks? Can I deposit/cash them?

['"Check is an obligation to pay, and is unconditional. In the US, checks don\'t expire (there are countries where they do). Endorsements such as ""void after X days"" are meaningless and don\'t affect the obligation to pay. The bank is under no obligation to honor a check that is more than 6 months old (based on the date on the check, of course). This is from the Unified Commercial Code 4-404. However, this refers to the bank, not to the person who gave you the check. The bank may pay, if the check is deposited in good faith and there\'s nothing wrong with it or with the account. So the first thing you can do is deposit the check. If asked - you can say that the person just wrote the wrong date, which is true. Worst case the check bounces. If the check bounces - you can start with demand letters and small claim courts. The obligation to pay doesn\'t go away unless satisfied, i.e.: paid."', "You should write a demand letter immediately, send the letter by certified mail, and then wait 30 days. Here is a sample demand letter for the state of california that you can send: http://www.courts.ca.gov/11151.htm It seems like most of the demand letters assumed that you tried to cash the check and incurred a service fee. Personally, I wouldn't risk incurring even most cost. Instead, after 30 days, I would take him to small claims court and show all the evidence you have (checks, receipts, and letters of correspondence).", "Find smaller payments he can make. Maybe a % of each client he takes payment from. Consult with a lawyer or google buisness contract elements and find fill them out and see what he can do. If the checks are no good bouncing them isn't going to help anything. Nor is getting a judgment from a small claims court. He can still not pay(though stays on his credit for 25 years), file for bankruptcy, etc."]

How can I save LLC fees when investing in Arizona real estate from California

["You won't be able to avoid the $800 fee. CA FTB has a very specific example, which is identical to your situation (except that they use NV instead of AZ), to show that the LLC has liability in California. State of formation is of no matter, you'll just be liable for fees in that state in addition to the CA fees. This is in fact a very common situation (that's why they have this as an example to begin with). See CA FTB 568 booklet. The example is on page 14. I suggest forming the LLC in AZ/CA and registering it as a foreign entity in the other state (AZ if formed in CA, the better option IMHO, or CA if formed in AZ). You'll have tax liability in both the states, AZ taxes can be credited towards the CA taxes. Instead of forming LLC, you can cover your potential liability with sufficient insurance coverage."]

Taxes and withholding on unpaid salary

["As others have said, make sure you can and do file your taxes on a cash basis (not accrual). It sounds like it's very unlikely the company is going to issue you a 1099 for invoices they never paid you. So you just file last year's taxes based on your income, which is the money you actually received. If they do pay you later, in the new year, you'll include that income on next year's tax return, and you would expect a 1099 at that time. Side note: not getting paid is unfortunately common for consultants and contractors. Take the first unpaid invoice and sue them in small claims court. After you win (and collect!), tell them you'll sue them for each unpaid invoice in turn until they pay you in full. (You might need to break up the lawsuits like that to remain under the small claims limit.)"]

If I had no income due to a net operating loss, will I be refunded the Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld?

['"If you have a CPA working for you already - this is a question you should be asking that CPA. Generally, NOL only affects the tax stemming from the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26 Subtitle A of the US Code). Social Security and Medicare, while based on income, are not ""income tax"", these are different taxes stemming from different laws. Social Security and Medicare withheld from your salary are FICA taxes (Title 26 Subtitle C of the US Code). They\'re deducted at source and not on your tax return, so whatever changes you have in your taxable income on the tax return - FICA taxes are not affected by it. Self Employment tax (Schedule SE) on your Schedule C earnings in the carry-back years will also not be affected, despite being defined in the IRC, because the basis of the tax is the self-employment income while the carryback reduces the AGI."']

Received mysterious K-1 form, seeking answers

['"You should contact the company and the broker about the ownership. Do you remember ever selling your position? When you look back at your tax returns/1099-B forms - can you identify the sale? It should have been reported to you, and you should have reported it to the IRS. If not - then you\'re probably still the owner. As to K-1 - the income reported doesn\'t have to be distributed to you. Partnership is a pass-through entity, and cannot ""accumulate"" earnings for tax purposes, everything is deemed distributed. If, however, it is not actually distributed - you\'re still taxed on the income, but it is added to your basis in the partnership and you get the tax ""back"" when you sell your position. However, you pay income tax on the income based on the kind of the income, and on the sale - at capital gains rates. So the amounts added to your position will reduce your capital gains tax, but may be taxed at ordinary rates. Get a professional advice on the issue and what to do next, talk to a EA/CPA licensed in New York."', "SXL is a Master Limited Partnership so all of the income is pass-through. Your equity purchase entitles you to a fraction of the 66% of the company that is not owned by Energy Transfer Partners. You should have been receiving the K-1s from SXL from the time that you bought the shares. Without knowing your specific situation, you will likely have to amend your returns for at most 6 years (if the omitted amount of gross income exceeds 25% of your gross income originally stated as littleadv has graciously pointed out in the comments) and include Schedule E to report the additional income (you'll also be able to deduct any depreciation, losses etc. that are passed through the entity on that form, so that will offset some of the gains). As littleadv has recommended, speak with a tax professional (CPA/EA or attorney) before you take any further steps, as everyone's situation is a bit different. This Forbes article has a nice overview of the MLP. There's a click-through to get to it, but it's not paywalled."]

Magazine subscription leads to unauthorized recurring payment

['"In 2010, the Restore Online Shoppers\' Confidence Act was passed, which prohibited certain activities, most of which had to do with online sites sharing your CC info with third parties. However, the final part of the act deals with ""negative option"" marketing, which is basically what you\'re describing - ""We will charge you unless you say no"". It requires three components to allow a negative option: If you did not explicitly enroll in automatic payment, and made the initial purchase online (or made your most recent purchase online, I suspect) then it sounds like this was a violation of this act. On the other hand, the act isn\'t terribly careful about defining terms, and is really quite vague in a lot of places, so it\'s possible they would argue they are not using a \'negative option\' scheme but instead simply charging your bill similar to how your phone company might use autopay. If it was not online, then this probably doesn\'t apply. Instead, the FTC\'s rule on Negative Option with regard to sale of goods applies. Title 16 Part 425 covers this; this law is much less limiting as to what the marketer can do."', '"You have a subscription that costs $25 They have the capabilities to get that $25 from the card on file if you had stopped paying for it, you re-upping the cost of the subscription was more of a courtesy. They would have considered pulling the $25 themselves or it may have gone to collections (or they could courteously ask if you wanted to resubscribe, what a concept) The credit card processing agreements (with the credit card companies) and the FTC would handle such business practices, but ""illegal"" wouldn\'t be the word I would use. The FTC or Congress may have mandated that an easy ""opt-out"" number be associated with that kind of business practice, and left it at that."']

Should rented software be included on my LLC's balance sheet?

["I was only able to find Maryland form 1 to fit your question, so I'll assume you're referring to this form. Note the requirement: Generally all tangible personal property owned, leased, consigned or used by the business and located within the State of Maryland on January 1, 201 must be reported. Software license (whether time limited or not, i.e.: what you consider as rental vs purchase) is not tangible property, same goes to the license for the course materials. Note, with digital media - you don't own the content, you merely paid for the license to use it. Design books may be reportable as personal tangible property, and from your list that's the only thing I think should be reported. However, having never stepped a foot in Maryland and having never seen (or even heard of) this ridiculous form before, I'd suggest you verify my humble opinion with a tax adviser (EA/CPA) licensed in the State of Maryland to confirm my understanding of this form."]

How to allocate profit and loss in partnership where one partner's activities are profitable and the other's aren't?

["You should have a partnership agreement of some sort. The reason partnership agreements exist is so nobody can change the game because of the outcome. I'd say the most typical partnership agreement is that everyone gets an equal cut, meaning that everyone also makes an equal contribution. If you have start up expenses of $10,000, you'd each contribute $5,000. Separately, you can determine ownership share by contribution amounts, maybe one of you contributed $2,000 and the other $8,000; this would be an 80/20 split. The performance of the operation doesn't have anything to do with determining how to divide the pie, your partnership agreement determines that. How much have you each contributed and what agreement did you make before you decided to be partners? If you have a poor performing business segment, then the partnership should get together and consider adjusting or stopping that line of business. But you don't change how the pie is divided because of it; unless your partnership agreement says you do."]

Pattern Day Trade Rule

["I would suggest following your quote and having a read of the web page supplied, that buys then sells or sells short then buys (the same security on the same day) four or more times in five business days, ... So it is a two way transaction that counts as 'one'."]

Deducting Hobby Expenses on my Federal Income Taxes?

["I suggest to start charging slightly more than needed to cover expenses. All you need is to show profit. It doesn't have to be significant - a couple of hundred of dollars of consistent yearly profit should suffice to show a profitable business. Then you can deduct on Schedule C all the related expenses. The caveat is that the profit (after the deduction of the expenses will be a bit smaller) will be subject to not only income tax but also the self-employment tax. But at least you'll pay tax on profit that is not entirely phantom. I remember suggesting you getting a professional consultation on this matter a while ago. You should really do that - talk to a EA/CPA licensed in your state, it may be well worth the $100-200 fee they'll charge for the consultation (if at all...).", 'Does your wife perform solo or in association with other actor/actresses and other volunteers? The latter arrangement sounds more like an unincorporated association or a partnership, which might be a bit freer to match the revenue and expenses. By grinding through the proper procedures, it might be possible to get official non-profit status for it, as well. Ask a professional.']

How to invest a small guaranteed monthly income?

['"In my opinion, you can\'t save too much for retirement. An extra $3120/yr invested at 8% for 30 years would give you $353K more at retirement. If your ""good amount in my 401k"" is a hint that you don\'t want us to go in that direction, then how about saving for the child\'s college education? 15 years\' savings, again at 8% will return $85K, which feels like a low number even in today\'s dollars, 15 years of college inflation and it won\'t be much at all. Not sure why there\'s guilt around spending it. If one has no debt, good retirement savings level, and no pressing need to save for something else, enjoying one\'s money is an earned reward. Even so, if you want a riskless \'investment\' just prepay the mortgage. You\'ll see an effective return of the mortgage rate, 4%(?) or so, vs the .001% banks are paying. Of course, this creates a monthly windfall once the mortgage is paid off, but it buys you time to make this ultimate decision. In the end, I\'d respond that similar to Who can truly afford luxury cars?, one should produce a budget. I don\'t mean a set of constraints to limit spending in certain categories, but rather, a look back at where the money went last year and even the year before that. What will emerge are the things that are normal, the utility bills, tax bill, mortgage, etc, as well as the discretionary spending. If all your current saving is on track, the investment may be in experiences, not financial products."']

Dealing with Form 1099

["Am I required to send form 1099 to non-US citizens who are not even residing in the US? Since they're not required to file US taxes, do I still have to send the form to them? That's tricky. You need to get W8/W9 from them, and act accordingly. You may need to withhold 30% (or different percentage, depending on tax treaty they claim on W8). If you withhold taxes, you also need to file form 1042. I suggest you talk to a tax professional. Is it fine to expose my ITIN (taxpayer identification number) to individuals or companies who I send the form to them. Since the form requires me to write my TIN/EIN, what would be the risks of this and what precautions should be taken to avoid inappropriate/illegal use? No, it is not OK. But if you pay these people directly - you don't have much choice, so deal with it. Get a good insurance for identity theft, and don't transact with people you don't trust. One alternative would be to pay through a payment processor (Paypal or credit cards) - see your next question. I send payments via PayPal and wire transfer. Should I send form 1099-MISC or 1099-K? Paypal is a corporation, so you don't need to send 1099 to Paypal. Whatever Paypal sends to others - it will issue the appropriate forms. Similarly if you use a credit card for payment. When you send money through Paypal - you don't send money directly to your business counterparts. You send money to Paypal."]

Scammer wants details and credentials for my empty & unused bank account. What could go wrong?

['"It\'s a scam. Here are the many signs: The bank will never ask for your password. They can access your account without it. The bank will never use a customer\'s account for their own business. They have their own accounts. ""Some guy"" is not a bank employee. Bank employees are people that you meet at the bank. Banks do not hand out thousands of dollars for free to customers, especially customers with nothing in their accounts. Even if you have no money in the account, this crook that you would give access to your account can do lots of illegal things in your name, such as writing bad checks, laundering money, running scams on other people through your account, etc. If you have already given your account info to this person, you need to go to the bank immediately and inform them. Since you have no money in the account, you should close it."', "First off, do not ever tell someone your password. Nobody who actually works for the bank would need your password to access the account. Also, it may or may not be a scam (it almost assuredly is), but it is not a good idea to let someone use your bank account in your name. What if they use your account to launder money for illegal or terrorist activities? Then you would potentially face criminal charges. There is no way this story makes sense. A company would never put their payroll in some random stranger's account; they would create an account in the company's name for handling payroll and use that."]

Why is mortgage interest deductible in the USA for a house you live in?

['"Taxes are a tool for achieving social policy goals. While Americans consider ""Socialism"" to be a curse, the US is in fact quite socialistic. Mostly towards corporations, but sometimes even the normal people, not only the ""Corporation are people, my friend"" (M. Romney) get some discounts. The tax deduction on mortgage interest comes as a tool to encourage Americans to own their homes. It is important, socially, for people to own their home to be independent, and in general contributes to the stability of the society. As anything, when taken to the extreme, it in fact achieves exactly the opposite, as we\'ve seen in 2008, but when balanced - works well. Capital gain is taxed in the US, because it is income. Generally, any income is taxed. However, gain sourced from the sale of primary residence is excluded, up to a certain (quite large) amount from this tax (if lived in the residence long enough - 3 of the last 5 years prior to sale). This, again, to encourage Americans to upgrade their houses and make it easier for Americans to relocate when needed (sell one house and buy another without losing cash on taxes). As to ""asset producing income"" - that is true in the US as well. You cannot deduct your personal expenses, in general. Mortgage interest on primary residence is a notable exception, because it serves a social cause. Similarly, medical expenses are allowed as a deduction, if they\'re above certain limit, and many other things (for example - if a US person totals his car, and insurance doesn\'t cover the loss - it is tax deductible, above certain limit, the higher the income - the higher the limit). These are purely social policy breaks. Socialism, something Americans like to have, and love to hate. Many ""anti-socialists"" in the US are in fact taking advantage of these specific tax breaks the most, because for rich folks these are limited or non-existent (mortgage interest limited up to 1 million, medical expenses are allowed only above certain percentage of income, etc)."', 'Well quite a few countires have tax breaks on the first house you own ... this is typically to promote people to have atleast one house of their own ... having a house of your own provides lot more stability in the long run ... and without tax breaks it makes it difficult for quite a few to own a house ... the tax breaks form a motiviation as well ... There are at times other effects of this breaks, people buying houses beyond their need [bigger house than required] or capacity [buying in a central / expensive location] by maximizing the breaks ...', "It's a scam pushed through to benefit the banking system. Tax payments become income for the banks. Any alleged benefits for property holders are ultimately reduced by increased property prices, capital gains tax and estate taxes"]

Chase bank not breaking large bills for non-account holders

["Yes it is (legal). There is of course no law requiring any business you walk in to break your money. What made you think there would be? Being a bank in the US (and in other countries) has some legal consequences, but none of them relates to 'having to do business with anyone that walks in', neither 'having to break bills for people' (not even for established customers). Yes, it was historically commonplace for most banks to do all money-breaking for free, but that does not establish any obligation to do it. Maybe the FED is required to do that, but that won't help you if you don't live near either.", "First, they don't have an obligation to provide a service for a non-customer. In theory, the could even refuse this service to account holders if that was their business model, although in practice that would almost surely be too large of a turn-off to be commercially feasible. Non-account holders aren't paying fees or providing capital to the bank, so the bank really has no incentive or obligation to tie up tellers serving them. Maybe as importantly, they have a legitimate business reason in this case as stated. The fact that the bill passed whatever test the teller did does not, of course, ensure that the bill is real. They may (or may not) subject it to additional tests later that might be more conclusive. Making you have an account helps ensure that, in the event they do test it and it fails, that (a) they know who you are in case the Secret Service wants to find you, and (b) they can recover their losses by debiting your account by the $100. This isn't foolproof since any number of bad things could still happen (identity theft, closing account before they do additional tests, bill passing later tests, etc.), but it does give them some measure of protection."]

Investment strategy for a 20 year old with about 30k in bank account

["Thank you for your service. My first suggestion since your car is a planned for the near future is keep that amount in savings and just pay cash. There are plenty of attractive offers to entice you to finance your vehicle but there really is no compelling reason to do it considering the savings you have. Second I would keep an additional portion of savings as a rainy day emergency fund. How much is based mostly on what you feel comfortable with. The number of possible emergencies that can come up is limited and your expenses are limited which is normal given your age. This fund might be for something such as emergency travel for a sick family member, cover a deductible for an auto accident, whatever unforseen event might occur (hence the name emergency fund). What investments you are comfortable with will be determined by risk tolerance. While in the military individual stocks that are aggressive risky investments may not be a good idea because of the extra attention they require and you can't really babysit a portfolio while deployed but there are many good low or no cost mutual funds or ETFs that you could get into. I would look into setting up a recurring purchase with a set dollar amount monthly so you will continue to accumulate whatever option you are investing in regularly even if you are deployed. Which fund or ETF you pick will depend on your goals and risk tolerance but you could very easily pick several for diversity. Good luck and thank you again for your service.", '"If you have already maxed your TSP contributions, the ""401k"" for military folks, you could consider a Traditional IRA contribution. They are tax-deductible, based on some limits, so it may reduce your tax liability. Many online services (Vanguard, Fidelity, etc.) offer quick and free setup of Traditional IRA accounts. If you have already maxed the Traditional IRA as well, you could look at making taxable investments through an online service. Like homer150mw, I would recommend low-cost funds. For reasons why, see this article by John Bogle."', '"You don\'t state a long term goal for your finances in your message, but I\'m going to assume you want to retire early, and retire well. :-) any other ideas I\'m missing out on? A fairly common way to reach financial independence is to build one or more passive income streams. The money returned by stock investing (capital gains and dividends) is just one such type of stream. Some others include owning rental properties, being a passive owner of a business, and producing goods that earn long-term royalties instead of just an immediate exchange of time & effort for cash. Of these, rental property is probably one of the most well-known and easiest to learn about, so I\'d suggest you start with that as a second type of investment if you feel you need to diversify from stock ownership. Especially given your association with the military, it is likely there is a nearby supply of private housing that isn\'t too expensive (so easier to get started with) and has a high rental demand (so less risk in many ways.) Also, with our continued current low rate environment, now is the time to lock-in long term mortgage rates. Doing so will reap huge benefits as rates and rents will presumably rise from here (though that isn\'t guaranteed.) Regarding the idea of being a passive business owner, keep in mind that this doesn\'t necessarily mean starting a business yourself. Instead, you might look to become a partner by investing money with an existing or startup business, or even buying an existing business or franchise. Sometimes, perfectly good business can be transferred for surprisingly little down with the right deal structure. If you\'re creative in any way, producing goods to earn long-term royalties might be a useful path to go down. Writing books, articles, etc. is just one example of this. There are other opportunities depending on your interests and skill, but remember, the focus ought to be on passive royalties rather than trading time and effort for immediate money. You only have so many hours in a year. Would you rather spend 100 hours to earn $100 every year for 20 years, or have to spend 100 hours per year for 20 years to earn that same $100 every year? .... All that being said, while you\'re way ahead of the game for the average person of your age ($30k cash, $20k stocks, unknown TSP balance, low expenses,) I\'m not sure I\'d recommend trying to diversify quite yet. For one thing, I think you need to keep some amount of your $30k as cash to cover emergency situations. Typically people would say 6 months living expenses for covering employment gaps, but as you are in the military I don\'t think it\'s as likely you\'ll lose your job! So instead, I\'d approach it as ""How much of this cash do I need over the next 5 years?"" That is, sum up $X for the car, $Y for fun & travel, $Z for emergencies, etc. Keep that amount as cash for now. Beyond that, I\'d put the balance in your brokerage and get it working hard for you now. (I don\'t think an average of a 3% div yield is too hard to achieve even when picking a safe, conservative portfolio. Though you do run the risk of capital losses if invested.) Once your total portfolio (TSP + brokerage) is $100k* or more, then consider pulling the trigger on a second passive income stream by splitting off some of your brokerage balance. Until then, keep learning what you can about stock investing and also start the learning process on additional streams. Always keep an eye out for any opportunistic ways to kick additional streams off early if you can find a low cost entry. (*) The $100k number is admittedly a rough guess pulled from the air. I just think splitting your efforts and money prior to this will limit your opportunities to get a good start on any additional streams. Yes, you could do it earlier, but probably only with increased risk (lower capital means less opportunities to pick from, lower knowledge levels -- both stock investing and property rental) also increase risk of making bad choices."', "Thanks for your service. I would avoid personal investment opportunities at this point. Reason being that you can't personally oversee them if you are deployed overseas. This would rule out rentals and small businesses. Revisit those possibilities if you get married or leave the service. If you have a definite time when you would like to purchase a car, you could buy a six or twelve month CD with the funds that you need for that. That will slightly bump up your returns without taking much risk. If you don't really need to buy the car, you could invest that money in stocks. Then if the stock market tanks, you wait until it recovers (note that that can be five to ten years) or until you build up your savings again. That increases your reward at a significant increase in your risk. The risk being that you might not be able to buy a car for several more years. Build an emergency fund. I would recommend six months of income. Reason being that your current circumstances are likely to change in an emergency. If you leave the service, your expenses increase a lot. If nothing else, the army stops providing room for you. That takes your expenses from trivial to a third of your income. So basing your emergency fund on expenses is likely to leave you short of what you need if your emergency leaves you out of the service. Army pay seems like a lot because room (and board when deployed) are provided. Without that, it's actually not that much. It's your low expenses that make you feel flush, not your income. If you made the same pay in civilian life, you'd likely feel rather poor. $30,000 sounds like a lot of money, but it really isn't. The median household income is a little over $50,000, so the median emergency fund should be something like $25,000 on the income standard. On the expenses standard, the emergency fund should be at least $15,000. The $15,000 remainder would buy a cheap new car or a good used car. The $5000 remainder from the income standard would give you a decent used car. I wouldn't recommend taking out a loan because you don't want to get stuck paying a loan on a car you can't drive because you deployed. Note that if you are out of contact, in the hospital, or captured, you may not be able to respond if there is a problem with the car or the loan. If you pay cash, you can leave the car with family and let them take care of things in case of a deployment. If you invested in a Roth IRA in January of 2016, you could have invested in either 2015 or 2016. If 2015, you can invest again for 2016. If not, you can invest for 2017 in three months. You may already know all that, but it seemed worth making explicit. The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) allows you to invest up to $18,000 a year. If you're investing less than that, you could simply boost it to the limit. You apparently have an extra $10,000 that you could contribute. A 60% or 70% contribution is quite possible while in the army. If you max out your retirement savings now, it will give you more options when you leave the service. Or even if you just move out of base housing. If your TSP is maxed out, I would suggest automatically investing a portion of your income in a regular taxable mutual fund account. Most other investment opportunities require help to make work automatically. You essentially have to turn the money over to some individual you trust. Securities can be automated so that your investment grows automatically even when you are out of touch."]

If you buy something and sell it later on the same day, how do you calculate 'investment'?

['Your initial investment in this case is $9 on the first morning. Every other morning you are using part of your profits to buy the new piece of jewelry, so you are actually not investing any new funds. So each day you are effectively keeping $1 of your profits and re_re-investing $9. But your initial investment of your own funds is only the first $9. In other words if you only had $9 in the bank at the start of the year you could make $365 profits during the year and finish up with $374 in the the bank at the end of the year.', 'Not sure if your question is on topic, but the investment is only $9 because that is maximum amount of money the merchant ever needed to start up the business. He put in $9, started turning a profit, and never looked back.', '"Nothing wrong with the other answers, but here\'s a ""trick"" to hopefully make it totally transparent. Imagine that you\'re not the one implementing this business plan, but someone else is. Let\'s call this other person your asset manager. So on the first day, you give your asset manager $9. He takes this and generates $1 profit from it, recovering the $9 which he then reinvests to generate $1 profit every day. From your perspective, you just gave him $9. At the end of the year, he gives you $365 in addition to your original investment of $9 (in real life he\'d take the fees of course, or perhaps he\'s been lending out the money he\'s been accumulating and taking the interest from that as pay for his services). So your return on investment is 365 / 9 * 100 % > 4000 %, as claimed by your source."', "You're confused because the source you cite leaves out one number that isn't relevant to the argument they're making: total costs. The number you're expecting, $9 x 365 or $3285 is the total cost of buying the jewelry which, when subtracted from the $3650 sales volume gives us the net profit of $365. The investment is the amount of money original put into a system our company. In this case the merchant bought his first piece of jewelry for $9, sold it for $10, took one dollar in profit and used the other 9 to reinvest by buying a new piece of jewelry. We can extend the analogy further. After 9 days of selling, the merchant will posses $18, allowing him to now buy 2 pieces of jewelry each morning and sell them for $20. Every day his costs will be $18 and he'll turn a $2 profit, all with the original investment of $9.", "Another way to look at this is if we separate the owner's account from the business's account. At the start of the year, the owner puts $9 into the business account to get the business started. At the end of the first day, the business account has $10, and at the end of the second day, the business account has $11. The owner doesn't need to add any more of his own money into the business account. At the end of the 365th day, the business will have $374, which is $365 profit + $9 investment. Assuming the business has no other expenses, the business will calculate profit for the year like this: The author is making a strange point. The two numbers he is talking about are two different quantities. The business owner's return on investment is $365 / $9 = 4056%. But the business's profit margin is $365 / $3650 = 10%. Both are useful numbers when running the business. I disagree with the author's insinuation that a business is doing something tricky when calculating profit margin. Remember that, in addition to the business owner's monetary investment, he worked every day for a year to earn that $365."]

Can my own corporation deduct my expenses even if I am a full time employee?

['"No, your business cannot deduct your non-business expenses. You can only deduct from your business income those reasonable expenses you paid in order to earn income for the business. Moreover, for there to be a tax benefit, your business generally has to have income (but I expect there are exceptions; HST input tax credits come to mind.) The employment income from your full-time job wouldn\'t count as business income for your corporation. The corporation has nothing to do with that income – it\'s earned personally, by you. With respect to restaurant bills: These fall under a category known as ""meals & entertainment"". Even if the expense can be considered reasonable and business-related (e.g. meeting customers or vendors) the Canada Revenue Agency decided that a business can only deduct half of those kinds of expenses for tax purposes. With respect to gasoline bills: You would need to keep a mileage and expense log. Only the portion of your automobile expenses that relate to the business can be deducted. Driving to and from your full-time job doesn\'t count. Of course, I\'m not a tax professional. If you\'re going to have a corporation or side-business, you ought to consult with a tax professional. (A point on terminology: A business doesn\'t write off eligible business expenses — it deducts them from business income. Write off is an accounting term meaning to reduce the value of an asset to zero. e.g. If you damaged your car beyond repair, one could say ""the car is a write-off."")"']

Can Per Diem deductions include family travel, meals and housing?

["You cannot deduct anything. Since you're actually moving, your tax home will move with you. You can only deduct the moving expenses (actual moving - packing, shipping, and hotels while you drive yourself there)."]

How to start investing for an immigrant?

['"For starting with zero knowledge you certainly did a great job on research as you hit on most of the important points with your question. It seems like you have already saved up around six months of expenses in savings so it is a great time to look into investing. The hardest part of your question is actually one of the most important details. Investing in a way that minimizes your taxes is generally more important, in the end, than what assets you actually invest in (as long as you invest even semi-reasonably). The problem is that the interaction between your home country\'s tax system and the U.S. tax system can be complex. It\'s probably (likely?) still worth maxing out your 401(k) (IRA, SEP, 529 accounts if you qualify) to avoid taxes, but like this question from an Indian investor it may be worth seeing an investment professional about this. If you do, see a fee-based professional preferably one familiar with your country. If tax-advantaged accounts are not a good deal for you or if you max them out, a discount broker is probably a good second option for someone willing to do a bit of research like you. With this money investing in broadly-diversified, low fee, index mutual funds or exchange traded funds is generally recommended. Among other benefits, diversified funds make sure that if any particular company fails you don\'t feel too much pain. The advantages of low fees are fairly obvious and one very good reason why so many people recommend Vanguard on this site. A common mix for someone your age is mostly stocks (local and international) and some bonds. Though with how you talk about risk you may prefer more bonds. Some people recommend spicing this up a bit with a small amount of real estate (REITs), sometimes even other assets. The right portfolio of the above can change a lot given the person. The above mentioned adviser and/or more research can help here. If, in the future, you start to believe you will go back to your home country soon that may throw much of this advice out the window and you should definitely reevaluate then. Also, if you are interested in the math/stats behind the above advice ""A Random Walk Down Wall Street"" is a light read and a good place to start. Investing makes for a very interesting and reasonably profitable math/stats problem."', "I am in a similar situation (sw developer, immigrant waiting for green card, no debt, healthy, not sure if I will stay here forever, only son of aging parents). I am contributing to my 401k to max my employer contribution (which is 3.5%, you should find that out from your HR). I don't have any specific financial goal in my mind, so beside an emergency fund (I was recommended to have at least 6 months worth of salary in cash) I am stashing away 10% of my income which I invest with a notorious robot-adviser. The rate is 80% stocks, 20% bonds, as I don't plan to use those funds anytime soon. Should I go back to my country, I will bring with me (or transfer) the cash, and leave my investments here. The 401K will keep growing and so the investments, and perhaps I will be able to retire earlier than expected. It's quite vague I know, but in the situation we are, it's hard to make definite plans."]

Why is tax being paid on my salary multiple times?

['Businesses do not pay income tax on money that they pay out as salary to their employees. Businesses generally only pay income tax on profit. Profit is the money that comes in (revenue) minus the business expenses. Payroll to the employees is a deductible business expense.', '"Your wages are an expense to your employer and are therefore 100% tax deductible in the business income. The company should not be paying tax on that, so your double-tax scenario, as described, isn\'t really correct. [The phrase ""double taxation"" with respect to US corporations usually comes into play with dividends. In that case, however, it\'s the shareholders (owners) that pay double. The answer to ""why?"" in that case can only be ""because it\'s the law.""]"']

Credit card fee and taxes

["Credit card fees on a credit card used for personal expenses are not tax deductible. Credit card fees on a business credit card are deductible on schedule C (or whatever form you're using to report business income and expenses). If you are using the same card for both business and personal ... well, for starters, this is a very bad idea, because it creates exactly the question you're asking. If that's what you're doing, stop, and get separate business and personal cards. If you have separate business and personal cards -- and use the business card only for legitimate business expenses -- then the answer is easy: You can claim a schedule C deduction for any service charges on the business card, and you cannot claim any deduction for any charges on the personal card. In general, though, if you have an expense that is partly business and partly personal, you are supposed to figure out what percentage is business, and that is deductible. In an admittedly brief search, I couldn't find anything specifically about credit cards, but I did find this similar idea on the IRS web site: Generally, you cannot deduct personal, living, or family expenses. However, if you have an expense for something that is used partly for business and partly for personal purposes, divide the total cost between the business and personal parts. You can deduct the business part. For example, if you borrow money and use 70% of it for business and the other 30% for a family vacation, you can deduct 70% of the interest as a business expense. The remaining 30% is personal interest and is not deductible. Refer to chapter 4 of Publication 535, Business Expenses, for information on deducting interest and the allocation rules. (https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/deducting-business-expenses) So, PROBABLY, you could add up all the charges you made on the card, figure out how much was for business and how much for personal, calculate the business percentage, and then deduct this percentage of the service fees. If the amount involved is not trivial, you might want to talk to an accountant or a lawyer."]

What corporation tax am I required to pay as an independent contractor?

['"The difference between the provincial/territorial low and high corporate income tax rates is clear if you read through the page you linked: Lower rate The lower rate applies to the income eligible for the federal small business deduction. One component of the small business deduction is the business limit. Some provinces or territories choose to use the federal business limit. Others establish their own business limit. Higher rate The higher rate applies to all other income. \xa0 [emphasis mine] Essentially, you pay the lower rate only if your income qualifies for the federal small business deduction (SBD). If you then followed the small business deduction link in the same page, you\'d find the SBD page describing ""active business income"" from a business carried on in Canada as qualifying for the small business deduction. If your corporation is an investment vehicle realizing passive investment income, generally that isn\'t considered ""active business income."" Determining if your business qualifies for the SBD isn\'t trivial — it depends on the nature of your business and the kind and amount of income it generates. Talk to a qualified corporate tax accountant. If you\'re looking at doing IT contracting, also pay close attention to the definition of ""personal services business"", which wouldn\'t qualify for the SBD. Your accountant should be able to advise you how best to conduct your business in order to qualify for the SBD. Don\'t have a good accountant? Get one. I wouldn\'t operate as an incorporated IT contractor without one. I\'ll also note that the federal rate you would pay would also differ based on whether or not you qualified for the SBD. (15% if you didn\'t qualify, vs. 11% if you qualify.) The combined corporate income tax rate for a Canadian-controlled private corporation in Ontario that does qualify for the small business deduction would be 11% + 4.5% = 15.5% (in 2013). Additional reading:"']

Tax implications of corporate housing

["If the employer provides housing to the employee, the employer has to identify whether it is taxable or not. If it is - the amounts would be added to the taxable income on your W2. All the withholding and FICA tax calculations will be performed based on that taxable income. If the employer fails to do that, and you get audited, you can be left on the hook for the unpaid taxes on the unreported income. In some cases, employee housing is a non-taxable fringe benefit, in others it is taxable. Your tax adviser will help identify which case applies to you. After you added in a comment that you're trying to see if you should be asking your boss to pay your personal expenses vs. giving you a raise - as I said in the comments, your personal expenses are not deductible neither for you nor for anyone else. If your boss pays your rent instead of a raise - its taxable income for you."]

What risks are there acting as a broker between PayPal and electronic bank transfers?

["This sounds like a scam. Did they email you out of the blue to offer you this 'job', by any chance, and you'd never heard of them before? That's an incredibly large red flag in and of itself. While I don't know quite what the scam is likely to be, here's how I would suggest it might work: Other variants are possible - say using a cheque rather than PayPal, or having Person A be the scammer as well. But this being a legitimate transaction is very unlikely.", "There are several red flags here. can they get my bank account info in any way from me transferring money to them? Probably yes. Almost all bank transactions are auditable, and intentionally cause a money track. This track can be followed from both sides. If they can use your bank account as if they were you, that is a bit deeper than what you are asking, but yes they (and the polish cops) can find you through that transfer. I did look up the company and didn't find any scam or complaints concerning them. Not finding scams or complains is good, but what did you find? Did you find good reviews, the company website, its register, etc, etc? How far back does the website goes (try the wayback machine) Making a cardboard front company is very easy, and if they are into identity theft the company is under some guy in guam that never heard of poland or paypal. As @Andrew said above, it is probably a scam. I'd add that this scam leverages on the how easier is to get a PayPal refund compared to a regular bank transfer. It is almost impossible to get the money back on an international transaction. Usually reverting a bank transfer requires the agreement in writing of the receiver and of both banks. As for paypal, just a dispute from the other user: You are responsible for all Reversals, Chargebacks, fees, fines, penalties and other liability incurred by PayPal, a PayPal User, or a third party caused by your use of the Services and/or arising from your breach of this Agreement. You agree to reimburse PayPal, a User, or a third party for any and all such liability. (source) Also, you might be violating the TOS: Allow your use of the Service to present to PayPal a risk of non-compliance with PayPal’s anti-money laundering, counter terrorist financing and similar regulatory obligations (including, without limitation, where we cannot verify your identity or you fail to complete the steps to lift your sending, receiving or withdrawal limit in accordance with sections 3.3, 4.1 and 6.3 or where you expose PayPal to the risk of any regulatory fines by European, US or other authorities for processing your transactions); (emphasis mine, source) So even if the PayPal transfer is not disputed, how can you be sure you are not laundering money? Are you being paid well enough to assume that risk?", "Another reason to think it's a scam: fake paypal email notifications are a thing. I've seen one that was quite convincing (but it wasn't mine to properly analyse or report), so the intial payment may be a fake from another account belonging to the scammer, and you've just transferred money to the scammer. The fake email can include links to log in to a fake paypal website, which can be quite convincing as the mark will give the login details which can be used to scrape data. Links not going to where they say is the giveaway here.", "This is definitely a scam. I had a friend sign up for a very similar offer and what they did was send a fake check and then asked to transfer the same amount to them. So now you just send them a couple grand and you're holding a fake check.", '"This is definitely a scam. My husband was inquiring with a ""company"" that was offering him to be. Representative for them. He got the same job details but the company was called Ceneo. I did due diligence and found that the real Ceneo has no problems receiving money directly from buyers around the world. The fake company mirrored their website, posted jobs on the net,hoping to ""employ"" unsuspecting people in the U.S. This is their reply to my husband when he asked the job details. DO NOT GET SCAMMED and held accountable for money laundering."', "The sting here is definitely in the tail, the PS that says We are starting to call you from the same day when we get your details. The initial email doesn't ask for details, it asks for commitment. Once committed, you will be more relaxed about providing details. This makes me think that this is more serious than a simple financial scam. This is an effort to steal your identity, and that could be much more serious than the one-off loss of a few thousand dollars. Here's why: 1. The scammer could get numerous credit cards and store cards in your name, run up thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges, and leave you stuck with explaining what happened. I know someone who went from being a multi-millionaire to a pauper in a few months when his identity was stolen - and he is no fool. 2. It will take you years to clear your name. Meanwhile, your credit is shot, and you might have trouble getting a job, renting an apartment, or simply getting a cellphone contract. 3. Once you've repaired your credit, the scammer can just go through his old files and do it all over again. 4. Cloaked in your identity, and therefore being seen as you, the scammer can pull any number of scams, for which you will eventually be blamed. Then as well as dealing with credit bureaus, you will be dealing with another, more serious bureau: the FBI.", '"I too received a ""job offer"" from this CENEO outfit but mine was a proof reading position.Supposedly,I was to edit the email they were sending to U.S. customers. They needed proof reading alright,I\'ve never seen such atrocious grammar and syntax.Half the time I could not figure out what these polaks were trying to convey. Anyway,I was getting a whole page to ""proof read"" daily and then, they sent me an email stating that the ""position"" had been eliminated.I never got the money I was owed."']

Setting up general ledger/tax reporting for a Real Estate Rental LLC in GnuCash

["No, GnuCash doesn't specifically provide a partner cash basis report/function. However, GnuCash reports are fairly easy to write. If the data was readily available in your accounts it shouldn't be too hard to create a cash basis report. The account setup is so flexible, you might actually be able to create accounts for each partner, and, using standard dual-entry accounting, always debit and credit these accounts so the actual cash basis of each partner is shown and updated with every transaction. I used GnuCash for many years to manage my personal finances and those of my business (sole proprietorship). It really shines for data integrity (I never lost data), customer management (decent UI for managing multiple clients and business partners) and customer invoice generation (they look pretty). I found the user interface ugly and cumbersome. GnuCash doesn't integrate cleanly with banks in the US. It's possible to import data, but the process is very clunky and error-prone. Apparently you can make bank transactions right from GnuCash if you live in Europe. Another very important limitation of GnuCash to be aware of: only one user at a time. Period. If this is important to you, don't use GnuCash. To really use GnuCash effectively, you probably have to be an actual accountant. I studied dual-entry accounting a bit while using GnuCash. Dual-entry accounting in GnuCash is a pain in the butt. Accurately recording certain types of transactions (like stock buys/sells) requires fiddling with complicated split transactions. I agree with Mariette: hire a pro.", '"You will need to set up accounts in your chart of accounts for each of the partners. These are equity accounts where you can track your contributions, share of the profits and losses, and distributions. You\'re going to have to go back into the beginning years to get this right. I\'m not sure what you mean by a ""Built-in function"". All the accounting software I\'m familiar with requires data entry of some kind. You need to post your contributions and distributions to the correct accounts, and close properly at year end. You were indeed legally considered a partnership as soon as you started a for-profit business venture together. It\'s a bug in the legal system that a written partnership agreement is not necessarily required - you can form a partnership unknowingly. (BTW, a partnership actually is pretty far off from a sole proprietorship, legally and taxwise - the change from one person to two is major. It\'s the change from two to three or four or more that\'s incremental ;) I know you said you didn\'t want to consult a professional, but I have to say that I think it\'s worth the money to get your books set up by someone who has experience and can show you how to do it. And get a separate bank account for the partnership, if you haven\'t done so already. And check with your state to see if there are any requirements regarding partnerships. Hope this helps, Mariette IRS Circular 230 Notice: Please note that any tax advice contained in this communication is not intended to be used, and cannot be used, by anyone to avoid penalties that may be imposed under federal tax law."']

Get tax deduction for expensive car expense

["Unless you own a business and the car is used in that business you can't write off your auto repairs. If you start a sole-proprietorship in your own name there are all sorts of things you can write off as long as there is a reasonable expectation of profit. This includes a portion of your car repairs, a portion of your home expenses (assuming it's a home-based business), any tools used in the business, all kinds of stuff. The portion of your auto is based on total miles driven in the year vs. total miles driven for business purposes. Eligible auto expenses include repairs, gas/oil, insurance, parking, and interest on the auto loan. There are some things to remember: I'm no expert on California business law. Talk to a lawyer and an accountant if you wish to go this way. Many offer a half-hour free session for new clients."]

What is the relationship between the earnings of a company and its stock price?

['In general over the longer term this is true, as a company whom continuously increases earnings year after year will generally continue to increase its share price year after year. However, many times when a company announces increased earning and profits, the share price can actually go down in the short term. This can be due to the market, for example, expecting a 20% increase but the company only announcing a 10% increase. So the price can initially go down. The market could already have priced in a higher increase in the lead up to the announcement, and when the announcement is made it actually disapoints the market, so the share price can go down instead of up.', "I have heard that people say the greater earning means greater intrinsic value of the company. Then, the stock price is largely based on the intrinsic value. So increasing intrinsic value due to increasing earning will lead to increasing stock price. Does this make sense ? Yes though it may be worth dissecting portions here. As a company generates earnings, it has various choices for what it can do with that money. It can distribute some to shareholders in the form of dividends or re-invest to generate more earnings. What you're discussing in the first part is those earnings that could be used to increase the perceived value of the company. However, there can be more than a few interpretations of how to compute a company's intrinsic value and this is how one can have opinions ranging from companies being overvalued to undervalued overall. Of Mines, Forests, and Impatience would be an article giving examples that make things a bit more complex. Consider how would you evaluate a mine, a forest or a farm where each gives a different structure to the cash flow? This could be useful in running the numbers here.", 'You would think that share prices is just a reflection of how well the company is doing but that is not always the case. Sometimes it reflects the investor confidence in the company more than the mere performance. So for instance if some oil company causes some natural disaster by letting one of there oil tankers crash into a coral reef then investor confidence my take a big hit and share prices my fall even if the bottom line of the company was not all that effected.']

Company Payment Card

["Most corporate policies strictly prohibit the card's use for personal use, even if the intent is to re-pay in full, on or before the due date. I'm certain it has something to do with limitation of liability, i.e. the monetary risk the company is willing to put itself at, in order to offer a corporate card program. In my experience, AMEX Corporate Card Services is the most widely-used card, and in my experience, it is your employer that determines and administers the policy that outlines the card's appropriate use, not the credit card provider, so you're best to check with your employer for a definitive answer to this.", "From the other point of view (company use) it makes sense to segregate expenses incurred on the company's behalf away from an employee's personal expenses. This way if there were any requirement to prove that certain expenses were for the company's benefit it is not intermingled with an employee's personal expenses. From an ethical point of view: To avoid these types of confusing and conflicting issues, most employer's prefer to have a segregated expense process especially if an employee is regularly incurring expenses on the company's behalf. As YMCbuzz mentions you should check with your employer about their expense policy."]

US Foreign-Owned LLC that owes no income tax - Do I have to file anything?

['"If you intend to do business ""outside the country"", why establish an LLC ""here"" at all? You should establish a business in your home country if you desire business organization for sequestering liabilities or something. With or without a business organization, you will presumably be taxed for domestic income ""there"", wherever that is."']

Calculating the cost of waiting longer for money

['This looks correct to me, for simple interest. If you are dealing with compound interest, the formula would be: So, A = 500000(1+0.036/365)^(30), or 501,481.57, or an interest of 1481.57, assuming the 3.6% is the annual nominal interest rate and it is compounded daily. Note that you are ignoring the depreciation and also ignoring the percentage of customers who will forfeit their debt in the 30 - 60 day period.', 'The cost of an extra 30 days is $1459.80']

Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do?

['Go to the police. This is fraud and is illegal. Sure, this will hurt your friend but better now then when he starts abusing of his position to fraud even more people... Original comment by Bakuriu sorry for not giving credit', '"If this is your friend, and he that convinced he will ""get rich"" from this then there\'s really nothing you CAN do. You\'ve obviously done your best to explain the situation to him, but he\'s been caught up in their sales pitch, and that\'s more convincing to him. I worked in sales for many years, and the answers he gives you (the one about not needing to know the details of how your smartphone works is a classic variation of typical objection-handling that salespeople are taught) proves that he has been sucked in by their scheme. At this stage, all you\'re going to do is ruin your friendship with him if you continue to press the matter, because he has made it clear he can\'t be convinced that this is anything other than legitimate. The reality is, he is probably in too deep at this stage to just walk away from it, so he has to convince himself that he made a wise choice. Schemes like this use a ""scarcity"" approach (there\'s only so much to go around, and if you don\'t get yours now then someone else will get it) coupled with ego-boosting (boy, Mr. Prospect, this is such a great opportunity, and you\'re one of only a few who are sophisticated enough to understand and take advantage of it) to get people to lower their guard and not ask a whole lot of probing questions. Nobody wants to feel stupid, and they don\'t want others to think they\'re stupid, so these schemes will present the information in such a way that ordinarily prudent questions come across as sounding dumb, making the questioner seem not so smart. Rather than walking away from it, peoples\' pride will sometimes make them double down on it, and they\'ll just go along with it to come across as though they get it, even when they really don\'t. The small payouts at early stages are a classic sign of a Ponzi scheme. Your friend will never listen to you as long as those little checks continue to come in, because to him they\'re absolute proof he\'s right and you\'re wrong. It\'s those checks (or payouts, however they\'re doing it) that will make him step up his efforts to recruit other people into the scheme or, worse yet, invest more of his own money into this. Keep in mind that in the end, you really have no power to do anything in this situation other than be his friend and try to use gentle persuasion. He\'s already made it clear that he isn\'t going to listen to your explanations about why this is a scam, for a couple reasons. First (and probably greatest), it would be an admission that he\'s dumb, or at least not as smart as you, and who wants that? Second, he continues to get little checks that reinforce the fact this must be ""real"", or why else would he be getting this money? Third, he has already demonstrated his commitment to this by quitting his job, so from his point of view, this has become an all-or-nothing ticket to wealth. The bottom line is, these schemes work because the sales pitch is powerful enough to overcome ordinary logic for people who think there just has to be an easy way to Easy Street. All you can do is just be there as his friend and hope that he sees the light before the damage (to himself and anyone else) gets too great. You can\'t stop him from what he\'s doing any more than you can stop the sun from rising as long the message (and checks) he\'s getting from other people keep him convinced he\'s on the right path. EDIT After reading the comments posted in this thread, I do want to amend my statements, because many good points have been raised here. You obviously can\'t just sit by and do nothing while your friend talks others into taking the same (or worse) risks that he is. That\'s not morally right by any measure At the same time however, be VERY careful about how you go about this. Your friend, as you stated, sounds pretty much like he\'s all in with this scheme, so there\'s definitely going to be some serious emotional commitment to it on his part as well. Anyone and everything that threatens what he sees as his ticket to Easy Street could easily become a target when this all comes crashing down, as it inevitably will. You could very well be the cause of that in his eyes, especially if he knows you\'ve been discouraging people from buying into this nightmare. People are NOT rational creatures when it comes to money losses. It\'s called ""sunken costs"", where they\'ll continue to chase their losses on the rationale they\'ll make up for it if they just don\'t give up. The more your friend committed to this, the worse his anxieties about losing, so he\'ll do whatever he has to in order to save his position. This is what gamblers do and why the house does so well for itself. Some have suggested making anonymous flyers or other means of communicating that don\'t expose you as the person spreading the message, and that\'s one suggestion. However, the problem with this is that since the receiver has no idea who sent the message, they\'re not likely to give it the kind of credibility or notice that they would to something passed to them by a person they know and trust, and your anonymous message will have little weight in the face of the persuasive pitch that got your friend to commit his own money (and future). Another problem, as you\'ve noted, is that you don\'t travel in the same circles as the people he\'s likely to recruit, so how would you go about warning them? How would they view their first contact with you when it comes with a message not to trust what someone else they already know is about to tell them? Would they write it off as someone who\'s butty? Hard to tell. Another huge ploy of these schemes is that they tend to preemptively strike at what you propose doing -- that is, warning people to stay away. They do this by projecting the people giving the warnings as losers who didn\'t see the opportunity for themselves and now want to keep others away from their own financial success. They\'ll portray you as someone who isn\'t smart enough to see this ""huge opportunity"", and since you can\'t understand it, you don\'t think anyone else does either. They\'ll point out that if you were so good with finances, why aren\'t you already successful? These guys are very good, and they have an answer for every objection you can raise, whether its to them or to someone else. They\'ve spent a long time honing their message, which makes it difficult for anyone to say something persuasive enough to sway others away from being duped. This is a hard path, no doubt. I hope you are able to warn others away. Just be aware that it may come at a cost to you as well, and be prepared for what that might be. I hope this helps. Good luck!"', '"I will disagree with some of the other answers here. In my view, the most important dimension of the situation is not your friend\'s potential loss but the potential losses of the people he may convince by using his position as youth group leader, etc., to draw more them into the scam. Exactly how to handle this depends on many factors that aren\'t mentioned in your question (and probably rightly so, as this aspect of the situation moves beyond personal finance). For instance, if your friend is a ""pillar of the community"" who is widely trusted, and you are not, there may be little you can do, since people will believe him and not you. If you have some influence over the groups he is trying to recruit, you can attempt to provide a counterweight to his recruitment activities. Again, how to do this depends on other factors, such as how he is recruiting them. If he is just privately contacting individuals and inviting them to these meetings, you may have to just keep your eyes peeled for anyone who seems tempted and try to dissuade them before they suffer the ""brainwashing"". If he actually tries to do some sort of public recruitment (e.g., holding a meeting himself), you could try to inject doubt by, e.g., attending and asking probing questions to expose the dangers. If you think the danger is widespread, you could consider taking some more public action, like writing a column in a local paper about this organization. Of course, another major factor is how much you think people stand to lose by this. However, in your question you indicated that your friend has invested ""multiple month or years of income"". If he intends to pressure others to invest similar amounts, this sounds to me like enough danger to warrant some preventive action. Few people can afford to lose months or years of income, and sadly those most vulnerable to a scammer\'s siren song are often those who can least afford it. It doesn\'t sound like a situation where you\'d have to devote your life to the cause of stopping it, but if I knew that dozens of people in my community stood to lose years of income, I\'d want to make at least a small effort to stop them, rather than just keep my mouth shut. In doing this, you may lose your friendship. However, you stated that your goal is to resolve the situation in a way that is ""best with lowest loss of money for everybody"". If you really take this utilitarian view, it is likely that you may have to give up on the friendship to prevent other people from losing more money."', '"Even though this is really a psychology question, I\'ll try to give you an answer. You do nothing but stay away. What\'s going on is too small to matter. Bernie Madoff took investor\'s money and scammed them for $15B. That\'s B, billion, 9 zeros (Yes, I realize the UK Billion has 12, these are US Billion). Harry Markopolos was on to him, and presented his evidence to the government, but ""No one would listen."" In quotes because that\'s the title of the book he published on his experience. Even Barron\'s had an article suggesting that Madoff\'s returns were impossible. Eventually, it came to light. In my own experience, there was a mortgage acceleration product called ""Money Merge Account."" It claimed to help you pay off your mortgage in a fraction of the time ""with no change to your budget."" For two years or so, I was obsessed with exposing this scam, and wrote articles, nearly every week discussing every aspect of this product. Funny how even though mortgages are math that\'s pretty easy to explain, few sellers wanted to talk about the math. Using the same logic that you don\'t need to understand how a car works as long as you know how to drive. There were some people that would write to tell me I saved them the $3500 cost of that product, but mostly I argued with sellers who dismissed every word I wrote as if the math were incomprehensible to anyone but the software guys who wrote it. In the end, I had compiled a PDF with over 60 pages of my writing on the topic, and decided to call it quits. The product was recycled and now is sold as ""Worth Unlimited,"" but the software is the same. This is all a tangent to your problem. It simply offers the fact that the big scam, Bernie, continued for a long time, and people who were otherwise intelligent, fell for his promises, and didn\'t want to believe otherwise. The mortgage software had many bloggers writing. Searching on the web found a lot of discussion, very easy to find. People will believe what they wish. Tell an Atheist that God exists, or a believer that He doesn\'t, and your words will fall on deaf ears. Unfortunately, this is no different."', '"First, there are MLM businesses that are legitimate and are not Ponzi schemes; I actually work with one (I will not name it lest I give the impression of trying to sell here). One thing I learned was how to respond when a prospect raises objections related to the actual scams, which are abundant; the answer being to point out, and you mentioned this yourself, that in an illegitimate scheme, there is no actual product being offered - the only thing money is ever spent on is the expectation of a future profit. Ask your friend, ""Would you buy the product this company sells, at the price they ask, if there were not a financial opportunity attached to it?"" If not, ""How can you expect anyone else to buy it from you?"" There are only 3 ways he can respond to this question: he can realize that you\'re right and get out now; he can change the subject to the concept of making money by climbing the ranks and earning off of a salesforce, in which case it\'s time to educate him on Ponzi; or he can claim to be able to sell something he doesn\'t believe in, in which case you should run fat, far away. If he does indicate that he would be a customer even without the chance to sell the product, then offer him the chance to prove it, by giving you one sales pitch on the condition that he is not allowed to breathe a word about joining the business. Do him the courtesy of listening with an open mind, and decide for yourself whether you could ever be a customer. If the possibility exists, even if not today, he has found one of the few legitimate MLM companies, and you should not try to stop him. If not, you\'ll have to determine whether it\'s because the product just isn\'t for you, or because it\'s inherently worthless, and whether you should encourage or discourage your friend going forward."', '"So here\'s the sad truth. He might actually be making a return on his investment. Not because it\'s right or because the system works, but in all these schemes there are a range of people that actually do make money. In addition to that, there is that fact that he ""believes"" that he is doing a good thing, and is unwilling to discuss it. So, if he is making, even a tiny return, and really believes that he is making a large return, or that that large return is just around the bend, your never going to convince him otherwise. You have two real options; If he will listen, go though and look at money in v.s. money out. If money out is larger then money in, your screwed. Make sure to point out that he should look at real money in (left a bank account) and real money out (deposited to a bank account). Again be prepared for the fact that he is actually making money. Some people in the pyramid will make money, it\'s just never as much, or as many people as they make it out to be. Don\'t attack the system, attack other aspects. Try and argue liquidity, or FDIC insurance. Again not trying to show why the system is bad, but why a investment in foo instead may be better. If nothing else, go with diversify. Never put all your money in one spot, even if it\'s a really good spot. At least in that case he will have some money left over in the end. That said, your friend may not go for it. May just put on blinders, and may just stick finger in ears. Move to option two. Respect his wishes, and set boundaries. ""Ok, I hear you, you like system X, I won\'t bring it up again. Do me a favor, don\'t you bring it up again either. Let\'s just leave this with religion and politics."" If he continues to bring it up, then when he does, just point out you agreed not to discuss the issue, and if he continues to push it, rethink your friendship. If you both respect one another, you should be able to respect each others\' decisions. If you can\'t then, sadly, you may need to stop spending time with one another."', "I believe the only thing you haven't mentioned to him is the possibility that his activity is criminally fraudulent. I would sit him down, and say something substantially similar to the following: We've talked about your investment before, and I know you believe it's fine. I just want to make sure you understand that this is very likely fraudulent activity. I know you believe in it, but you've said you don't understand how or why it works. The problem with that is that if it is a fraud you can't protect yourself from criminal prosecution because you didn't understand what you were doing. The prosecutor will ask you if you asked others to give you or the organization money, and then they will convict you based on trying to defraud others. It doesn't matter whether you did it on purpose, or just because you believed the people you are investing in. So I very strongly advise you to understand exactly what the system is, and how it works, and then make sure with a lawyer that it's legal. If it is, then hey, you've learned something valuable. But if it's not, then you will save yourself a whole lot of trouble and anguish down the road if you step away before someone you attract to the investment decides to talk to their accountant or lawyer. A civil lawsuit may be bad, but if you're criminally prosecuted it will be so much worse. Now that I've said my piece, I won't talk to you about it anymore or bother you about it. I wish you luck, and hope that things work out fine. I wouldn't talk to the police or suggest that I'd do anything of that nature, without proof then there's no real way to start an investigation anyway, and unfortunately scams like this are incredibly hard to investigate, so the police often spend little to no time on them without a high level insider giving up evidence and associates. Chances are good nothing would happen to your friend - one day the organization will disappear and he won't recover any more money - but there's a distinct possibility that when that happens, the people below him will come for him, and he won't be able to look further up the chain for help. Perhaps the threat of illegal activity will be enough to prevent him from defrauding others, but if not I think at least you can let it go, and know that you've done everything for him that might work.", 'The title of your question basically asks: What can I do? And you state this regarding the meeting and “advice” they gave towards criticism of their method: While this they also indoctrinated that you should avoid talking to people talking bad about it (or say it is scam) because you gain no money from them and they just want to destroy your business. First, you really cannot do anything to “save” your friend if they have bought this nonsense. You are right, it’s a scam. But past stating as such to your friend, there is not much you can do past shielding yourself. The reality is this: Any scenario you are in where you cannot ask basic questions and get a reasonable response or are given—at least—the option to walk away unscathed or uninsulated is basically a cult-like mentality. Simple as that. If the first thing someone tells you is “Don’t listen to others, just listen to me…” then you need to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom or something and just leave. From my personal experience meeting people who are successful and have power, they always—and I mean always—ask questions and are critical of things they invest in… Whether that investment is time, money or just basic mental energy. Rich people are just like you and me! Except they have more money so they can take bigger risks. Critical thinking and the ability to walk away from something are key life skills. Now others have talked salesman psychology which is on point. But here is something else you brought up in your question: He also wants to use his position as respected member of multiple local youth and other communities to get their members as referals or in his words “…to give them the oppurtunity to also simply earn money.” Okay, so you can set personal boundaries between you and this clown, but you cannot stop him. But if he plans on targeting people and organizations in your community, you can warn them about him and his behavior and this scam. Chances are other people will know right away it’s a scam, but honestly if you feel the need to help others, that’s the most reasonable thing you can do to help them. But whatever you do, don’t take any of this emotional crap personally. If anything, maybe you can learn some reverse salesman techniques to get this “friend” to disengage. Such as only meeting with them in public and if they say something really vile to you, repeating what they said back to them as a question… Maybe even louder so everyone can hear. Remember a harsh reality of life: Public shaming can work to change someone’s behavior but you never want to do something like that unless you have utterly no choice. That last bit of advice is pretty harsh, but the reality is at some point you need to do something to “smack” reality into the situation.', "As others have stated, it will be very difficult for you to turn your friend around. He has already demonstrated great commitment. What can I do? There may be other people (perhaps mutual friends of you and this man) who are in danger. He may try to get them into this (as he apparently tried to with you). If this was me, I would try to warn the mutual friends of me and him. It's easier to get to them before they have been exposed to the brainwashing. So I would: Yes, I realize this means you're going behind his back, talking to his friends, etc. But I believe these people also deserve to be warned. They are in danger of being adversely affected by what he is doing.", "Chances are high your friend isn't in it for the money, but the community or some vague dream of having a future income-generating side business because he can't get a loan for a 7-11 franchise. I run a few successful online businesses and had an import/export so naturally I run into these guys looking for advice on selling their MLM wares easier. I always point out they can make a lot of money cutting out the middle man MLM distributor and buy the same products from eBay or the same local supplier the MLM uses for a fraction of costs...then collect all the profit sans kickbacks to their host MLM goon/sponsor/father. I've never had anyone that bailed on the MLM, but I could see their eyes gloss over after they realized their own middle man is holding them back from making a lot of money (assuming they could offload that stuff). People actually in it for the money tend to bail (better sales job exist, MLM dreams don't pay rent, etc.) so you'll probably just need to isolate your friend from these losers somehow. You could investigate his sponsor and find out how much money he's actually making....if he tells your friend he's rich, but you find out he lives in the slums with his mom, your friend might bail on friendship/association with the group out of sheer disgust. It's the friends, not the logic you need to attack. His MLM friends would consider it a betrayal if he left them so you need to show him it's the MLM group that's betrayed his friendship. Point out all the long-term members driving junky cars to events who brag about their $$$. Laugh at the piss poor finance credentials of the local group leaders....ask where the investor perks are and suggest the sponsor/leaders are just hording them. Point out that he's a success and the fellow team members are just milking him to prop up their failing investments/sales/recruitment numbers. Nobody wants to let a team down....but the team isn't good enough for him. Deep down he knows the logic is questionable or at least risky/improbable, but his faith in the good intentions of his MLM cohorts is high.....crush that faith and all he's left with is bad finance tips or cheap protein shakes.", "The one thing your friend needs to understand is for every dollar paid out, there is somebody paying that dollar in. The mark of a Ponzi scheme is that it feeds on itself. The stock market has trade volumes where it almost meets the definition of a Ponzi scheme. However, it deals with shares in actual production facilities (rather than only financial institutions) and provides means of production in return for large amounts of the profits. So there is someone legitimately expecting to pay back more than he gets out, in return for the availability of money at a time where he could not finance matters except by credit. With your friend's scheme, there is nobody expected to pay more than he gets out. Nail him down with that: every dollar paid out has to be paid in. Who is the one paying? At this point of time, it sounds like there will be two possible outcomes. You'll be visiting your friend in debtors' prison, or you'll visit him in criminal prison. If you highly value your friendship, you might get him out of the former with your own money. You won't be able with the latter. And if you let him exploit his standing for scamming his community, make no mistake, it will be the latter. I don't envy you.", "If this 'scam' has a name, address and/or phone number, I forward it to the FBI anonymously. That is my advice. You may also wish to consult a lawyer.", "Your friend is investing time & money in a business that does not list an address or phone number on its website, not even in its 'press kit'. Even when they make a press release about moving into a new building, it does not list the address or even the street! C'mon, this is obviously a scam. No real business acts like this.", "I don't want to repeat things that have already been said as I agree with most of them. There's just one little thing I'd like to add: If things go the way we're all expecting, this guy will eventually be in desperate need of a friend as he is extremely likely to lose most of his friends sooner or later. Perhaps all you can do is signal that you will not support him now (for obvious reasons), but that you'll be there for him when he may need you in the future..."]

How to handle capital gains on a Virginia Individual Income Tax Return

['In Virginia the maximum tax rate on income is 5.75% which is the same as the capital gains rate. http://www.tax.virginia.gov/income-tax-calculator']

How to invest with a low net worth

['"You most definitely can invest such an amount profitably, but it makes it even more important to avoid fees, um, at all costs, because fees tend to have a fixed component that will be much worse for you than for someone investing €200k. So: Edit: The above assumes that you actually want to invest in the long run, for modest but relatively certain gains (maybe 5% above inflation) while accepting temporary downswings of up to 30%. If those €2000 are ""funny money"" that you don\'t mind losing but would be really excited about maybe getting 100% return in less than 5 years, well, feel free to put them into an individual stock of an obscure small company, but be aware that you\'d be gambling, not investing, and you can probably get better quotes playing Roulette."', "I'm of the opinion that speculating is for young people like you, because they can afford to lose it all. Avoiding losses becomes necessary once you have to sustain a family, and manage a somewhat large retirement funds. Even if you lose all your money when speculating, you'll probably be better off later, because you make less costly mistakes once you have larger amounts of money.", "You might want to consider 'investing' a portion of that money into educating yourself. The payoff might not be as immediately obvious or gratifying but with appropriate determination, in the long term it will generate you a much greater return. If you would like to learn about investing, a great starting point would be to buy and read the book 'The Intelligent Investor' by Benjamin Graham. This will be a great barometer for how ready you are to invest in the stock market. If you are able to understand the concepts discussed and comprehend why they are important, you will have gone far in ensuring that you will make adequate returns over your lifetime and will - more importantly - increase the odds of safeguarding your capital.", 'I have an opposite view from all the other contributions here. Why not consider starting your own business. With the little money you have the return will most times be much higher than stocks return. The business is yours; you keep the business and the profit streams in the long term. Simply find businesses you can even start with a 100 or 200 euros and keep the rest with your bank. this is a sure way to become millionaire my friends.']

Income and taxes with subcontracting?

["Since you say 1099, I'll assume it's in the US. :) Think of your consulting operation as a small business. Businesses are only taxed on their profits, not their revenues. So you should only be paying tax on the $700 in the example you gave. Note, though, that you need to be sure the IRS thinks you're a small business. Having a separate bank account for the business, filing for a business license with your local city/state, etc are all things that help make the case that you're running a business. Of course, the costs of doing all those things are business expenses, and thus things you can deduct from that $1000 in revenue at tax time."]

How can I get a wholesaler ID number?

["This is a state by state thing, and I'm cheating because I know you are in New York State:", "Seems like it's more dependent on who you want to be your supplier. The times I've been involved in requesting this, each company had its own application form. They usually need proof of business activity, which gets back to SpecKK's answer.", '"Small businesses are often governed by local regulations and state law. In a low liability small quantity arena, you should be able to get away with a DBA (doing business as) arrangement, such as DBA ""Jay\'s Gem\'s"". A small business license may come with a state Tax ID and satisfy your supplier, but a Federal EIN can be obtained from the IRS, and may be necessary to apply for the business license. It wouldn\'t hurt to talk to the local chamber of commerce or state small business agencies if you have questions about local requirements."']

Start a Holding Company?

["If you are trying to invest in closely held / private companies (things that don't trade on the stock market), you will run into a variety of regulatory problems. For various reasons, most private companies only raise funds with accredited investors. To be an accredited investor you basically have to have $1,000,000 in net worth - NOT including your primary residence, OR you have to make over $200,000 a year for the last two years and expect to keep making that much. This is a class distinction the Federal government created, you will see different but similar wealth and investment classes worldwide. So your best most organized opportunities are left out, unless you do qualify as an accredited investor. There are tons of other companies, things you will find locally, that will let you invest in their smaller time operations. (Think like a local yoga studio looking for $20,000 and willing to split the profits with you). But the problem here is lack of accountability, where partners skip town or just stop answering your calls, and the legal remedies cost you more than your claim. That being said there are people that provide capital to smaller publicly traded companies on the bulletin boards and pink sheets. They have opportunities do much better than the actual stock market investors in these companies, because you can negotiate contracts that let you cash out in their inevitable financing death spirals with very little risk to you. You can do these things as an individual or as a holding company, but the holding company will limit your liability to the amount your holding company invested, instead of your personal assets, in case your financing starts to incur liability with the company."]

Can you depreciate assets differently between Federal, State, and Local?

["In general, you most definitely can. In some cases you must. However for each State you'll have to check whether you can choose how to depreciate. Many States require you to take the same depreciation as on the Federal schedule, including Sec. 179, others won't allow Sec. 179 at all. Specifically to PA, I haven't found any current guidance, but the rules from 2012 put PA in the bucket that requires you to take the same Sec. 179 on the State return as appears on your Federal return. If you elect to expense Section 179 Property for FIT purposes, you are required to expense the property for PIT purposes. However PA limit for Sec. 179 is $25K, so if your Federal deduction is larger - you can depreciate the rest. Check with a PA-licensed CPA or EA for a more reliable opinion, since I'm not a tax adviser. Just googled it."]

The best credit card for people who pay their balance off every month

['BillShrink.com lets you compare credit cards based on all your specifics (miles vs. cash, where you shop the most, etc) and tells you what the best card is for your specific habits. MOD EDIT Looks like billshrink.com is shut down. From their site: Dear BillShrink customer, As you may have heard, BillShrink.com was shut down on July 31, 2013. While we’re sad to say goodbye, we hope we’ve been able to help you be better informed and save some money along the way! The good news is that much of the innovative award-winning BillShrink technology will still be available via our StatementRewards platform (made available to customers by our partnering financial institutions). Moreover, we expect to re-launch a new money-saving service in the future. To see more of what we’re up to, visit Truaxis.com. We have deleted your personal information as of July 31. We will retain your email address only to announce a preview of the new tool. If you do not want us to retain your email address, you can opt out in the form below. This opt out feature will be available until September 31, 2013. If you have already opted out previously, you do not need to opt out again. If you have any further questions, contact us at [email protected]. Thanks, The BillShrink/Truaxis Team', "The answer for this question varies from person to person. However most cards give lousy rewards percentage-wise. Take a look at where your money is being spent each month (say with a tool like mint.com), and seek out a card that rewards you in categories where you already spend a lot of money. Many people here have suggested cards with high gas rebates, and that's great if you drive more than anything else. However, the important thing is to pick what benefits you most.", '"I\'m not going to recommend a specific card. New card offers pop up all the time. My answer would be out of date in a month! As a general rule, if you pay off your balance every month, you should be looking at a cash-back or a rewards card. Cash-back cards will give you some money (say 1%) of every dollar you spend. Some will give you larger amounts of cash-back for certain types of spending (e.g. groceries). With a Rewards card, you usually get ""points"" or ""airline miles"", which can be redeemed for merchandise, flights around the wold, concert tickets, etc. With these types of cards, it makes sense to do as much of your spending as possible with the cards, so you can maximize the benefits. Which specific card is best will depend on your shopping habits, and which bank is offering the best deal that week. I recommend you start at http://www.creditcards.com to compare card offerings. For cash-back cards, you can also go to http://www.creditcardtuneup.com, enter some details of your spending, and see which one will give you the most cash back."', 'PenFed Platinum Cashback Rewards Visa Card is another good choice. Pros: Cons:', 'The answer today is the Fidelity Rewards Amex. This card pays the highest cash back (2%) on ALL purchases. The answer gets more complicated if you like miles, or you want to use one card for groceries and gas and another for restaurants, etc. But the Fidelity Amex gives you 2% on everything you purchase, automatically deposited into your Fidelity account as cash (no coupons to rip off, or checks to deposit).', "For people who are already a Costco member. The American Express TrueEarnings Business Card is a good choice. Note: If you don't own a business, just use your name as the business. The business card is better than the regular TrueEarnings card. Pros:"]

Personal Asset Protection - How to protect asset against a deficiency judgement?

["You should talk to a bankruptcy attorney local to you. While bankruptcy laws are federal, there are a variety of local rules. As an example in CA, I've heard of a trustee going after a debtor's IRA account. Retirement accounts are generally off limits, but not always. Additionally, structuring your assets for the purpose of shielding them from creditors after the start of foreclosure proceedings may constitute fraud. At the very least that may open those assets back up to your creditor(s).", "Find out whether your state has a homestead law or something similar, which might protect your primary residence during bankruptcy. You may have to explicitly register to receive that protection; details differ. Frankly, you'll get better answers to this sort of question from an agency in your area which deals with folks at risk of of bankruptcy/foreclosure/etc. They should know all the tricks which actually work in your area. Hiring a lawyer may also be advisable/necessary"]

How should I handle taxes for Minecraft server donations?

['"Technically, this is considered ""income"" for you, and is actually not considered a ""donation"" for your donors, but is instead a ""gift"" (not tax-deductible for your donors). So, you are technically required to report it, and there is a pretty significant audit trail that can be followed to prove you made that money. I don\'t know if PayPal is required to file 1099s for payments received, but if you\'ve ever received such a document, so has the IRS, and they\'ll match it to the income you claimed and see a discrepancy, triggering an audit. Depending on the amount that it affects your taxes (it can be significant; if you have a $50k/yr day job, you\'d owe the government 25 cents on every dollar donated), they can let it slide, they may simply dock your next return, or they may come after you for interest and penalties or even charge you with criminal tax fraud if they could prove you maliciously attempted to conceal this revenue. Now, if you already itemize using a Schedule A, then you can erase this income by deducting the costs of the server, not to exceed the amount of the donations. The best you can do is offset it; you cannot use this deduction to reduce taxable income from other sources. Also, you must itemize; you can\'t take your standard deduction, and with a maximum possible deduction of the actual costs of running the server ($1500, IF you receive enough donations to fully pay for it) compared to one person\'s standard deduction ($5800), you\'ll want to take the standard deduction if you don\'t have other significant deductions (medical expenses, mortgage interest/property taxes, etc). If you were charging users a monthly fee for use of the server, then you\'ve basically created a de facto sole proprietorship, and you would still have to count the fees as income, but could then deduct the full cost of running the server. You\'d fill out a Schedule C listing the revenue and expenses, and back them up with statements from your ISP/hosting company and from PayPal. Now, this would apply if you were running the server with the primary goal of making a regular profit; Schedule C cannot be used for income from a ""hobby"", undertaken primarily for enjoyment and where a few bucks in revenue is gravy. Whether you think you can get away with that in your current situation is your prerogative; I don\'t think you would, given that the donations are solicited and optional, and thus there is no expectation of ever turning a profit on this game server."', '"Its is considered a ""hobby"" income, and you should be reporting it on the 1040 as taxable income. The expenses (what you pay) are hobby expenses, and you report them on Schedule A (if you itemize). You can only deduct the hobby expenses to the extent of your hobby income, and they\'re subject to the 2% AGI threshold."', '"First to clear a few things up. It is definitely not a gift. The people are sending you money only because you are providing them with a service. And for tax purposes, it is not a ""Donation"". It has nothing to do with the fact that you are soliciting the donation, as charitable organizations solicit donations all the time. For tax purposes, it is not a ""Donation"" because you do not have 501(c)(3) non profit status. It is income. The question is then, is it ""Business"" income, or ""Hobby"" related income? Firstly, you haven\'t mentioned, but it\'s important to consider, how much money are you receiving from this monthly, or how much money do you expect to receive from this annually? If it\'s a minimal amount, say $50 a month or less, then you probably just want to treat it as a hobby. Mostly because with this level of income, it\'s not likely to be profitable. In that case, report the income and pay the tax. The tax you will owe will be minimal and will probably be less than the costs involved with setting up and running it as a business anyway. As a Hobby, you won\'t be able to deduct your expenses (server costs, etc...) unless you itemize your taxes on Schedule A. On the other hand if your income from this will be significantly more than $600/yr, now or in the near future, then you should consider running it as a business. Get it clear in your mind that it\'s a business, and that you intend it to be profitable. Perhaps it won\'t be profitable now, or even for a while. What\'s important at this point is that you intend it to be profitable. The IRS will consider, if it looks like a business, and it acts like a business, then it\'s probably a business... so make it so. Come up with a name for your business. Register the business with your state and/or county as necessary in your location. Get a bank account for your business. Get a separate Business PayPal account. Keep personal and business expenses (and income) separate. As a business, when you file your taxes, you will be able to file a Schedule C form even if you do not itemize your taxes on Schedule A. On Schedule C, you list and total your (business) income, and your (business) expenses, then you subtract the expenses from the income to calculate your profit (or loss). If your business income is more than your business expenses, you pay tax on the difference (the profit). If your business expenses are more than your business income, then you have a business loss. You would not have to pay any income tax on the business income, and you may be able to be carry the loss over to the next and following years. You may want to have a service do your taxes for you, but at this level, it is certainly something you could do yourself with some minimal consultations with an accountant."']

Can travel expenses be deducted from Form 1040A if they were used to gather material for a book?

['"Hobby expenses are not tax deductible. Business expenses are, but only if it\'s a bona fide business. First they look at profitability: if you reported a net profit (i.e. paid taxes) in your first 3 years, they will believe you rant on Youtube for a living. Remember, by the time they get around to auditing you, you\'ll likely be well into, or through, your third year. There is an exception for farms. Other than that, if you lose money year after year, you better be able to show that you look, walk and quack like a business; and one with a reasonable business reason for delayed profitability. For instance Netflix\'s old business model of mailing DVDs had very high fixed infrastructure expense that took years to turn profitable, but was a very sensible model. They\'re fine with that. Pets.com swandived into oblivion but they earnestly tried. They\'re fine with that too. You can\'t mix all your activities. If you\'re an electrician specializing in IoT and smart homes, can you deduct a trip to the CES trade show, you bet. Blackhat conference, arguable. SES? No way. Now if you had a second business of a product-reco site which profited by ads and affiliate links, then SES would be fine to deduct from that business. But if this second business loses money every year, it\'s a hobby and not deductible at all. That person would want separate accounting books for the electrician and webmaster businesses. That\'s a basic ""duck test"" of a business vs. a hobby. You need to be able to show how each business gets income and pays expense separate from every other business and your personal life. It\'s a best-practice to give each business a separate checking account and checkbook. You don\'t need to risk tax penalties on a business-larva that may never pupate. You can amend your taxes up to 3 years after the proper filing date. I save my expense reciepts for each tax year, and if a business becomes justifiable, I go back and amend past years\' tax forms, taking those deductions. IRS gives me a refund check, with interest!"']

How much taxes do corporations have to pay on dividends they receive from other companies?

['"Summary: The corporation pays 33.3% tax on dividends it receives and gets a tax refund at the same rate when it pays dividends out. According to http://www.kpmg.com/Ca/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/TaxRates/Federal-and-Provincial-Territorial-Tax-Rates-for-Income-Earned-CCPC-2015-Dec-31.pdf the corporate tax rates for 2015 are: According to page 3: The federal and provincial tax rates shown in the tables apply to investment income earned by a CCPC, other than capital gains and dividends received from Canadian corporations. The rates that apply to capital gains are one-half of the rates shown in the tables. Dividends received from Canadian corporations are deductible in computing regular Part I tax, but may be subject to Part IV tax, calculated at a rate of 33 1/3%. If I understand that correctly, this means that a Corporation in Quebec pays 46.6% on investment income other than capital gains and dividends, 23.3% on capital gains and 33.33% on dividends. I\'m marking this answer as community wiki so anyone can correct these numbers if they are incorrect. UPDATE: According to http://www.pwc.com/ca/en/tax/publications/pwc-facts-figures-2014-07-en.pdf page 22 the tax rate on taxable dividends received from certain Canadian corporations is 33 1/3%. Further, this is refunded to the corporation through the ""refundable dividend tax on hand"" (RDTOH) mechanism at a rate of $1 for every $3 of taxable dividends paid. My interpretation is as follows: if the corporation receives $100 of dividends from another company, it pays $33.33 tax. If that corporation then pays out $100 of dividends at a later time, it receives a tax refund of $33.33. Meaning, the original tax gets refunded. Note the first line is for the 2015 tax year while the second link is for the 2014 tax year. The numbers might be a little different but the tax/refund process remains the same."']

How to select a bank based on availability in two areas?

['Asking a bank for which ATM/branch network it belongs to and where those networks are would be your best bet.']

Can I default on my private student loans if I was an international student?

["What are the consequences if I ignore the emails? If you ignore the emails they will try harder to collect the money from you until they give up. Unlike what some other people here say, defaulting on a loan is NOT a crime and is NOT the same as stealing. There is a large number of reasons that can make someone unable to pay off a loan. Lenders are aware of the risk associated with default; they will try to collect the debt but at the end of the day if you don't have money/assets there is not much they can do. As far as immigration goes, there is nothing on a DS-160 form that asks you about bankruptcies or unpaid obligations. I doubt the consular officer will know of this situation, but it is possible. It is not grounds for visa ineligibility however, so you will be fine if everything else is fine. The only scenario in which unpaid student loans can come up relevant in immigration to the US is if and when you apply for US Citizenship. One of the requirements for Citizenship is having good moral character. Having a large amount of unpaid debt constitutes evidence of a poor moral character. But it is very unlikely you'd be denied Citizenship on grounds of that alone. I got a social security number when I took up on campus jobs at the school and I do have a credit score. Can they get a hold of this and report to the credit bureaus even though I don't live in America? Yes, they probably already have. How would this affect me if I visit America often? Does this mean I would not ever be able to live in America? No. See above. You will have a hard time borrowing again. Will they know when I come to America and arrest me at the border or can they take away my passport? No. Unpaid debt is no grounds for inadmissibility, so even if the CBP agent knows of it he will not do anything. And again, unpaid debt is not a crime so you will not be arrested.", "You signed a contract to pay the loan. You owe the money. Stories of people being arrested over defaulted student loans are usually based in contempt of court warrants when the person failed to appear in court when the collection agency filed suit against them. Explore student loan forgiveness program. Research collections and bankruptcy and how to deal with collection agencies. There are pitfalls in communicating with them which restart the clock on bad debt aging off the credit report, and which can be used to say that you agreed to pay a debt. For instance, if you make any sort of payment on any debt, a case can be made that you have assumed the debt. Once you are aware of the pitfalls, contact the collection agency (in writing) and dispute the debt. Force them to prove that it is your debt. Force them to prove that they have the right to collect it. Force them to prove the amount. Dispute the fairness of the amount. Doubling your principal in 6 years is a bit flagrant. So, work with the collectors, establish that the debt is valid and negotiate a settlement. Or let it stay in default. Your credit report in the US is shot. It will be a long time before the default ages off your report. This is important if you try to open a bank account, rent an apartment, or get a job in the US. These activities do not always require a credit report, but they often do. You will not be able to borrow money or establish a credit card in the US. Here's a decent informational site regarding what they can do to collect the loan. Pay special attention to Administrative Wage Garnishment. They can likely hit you with that one. You might be unreachable for a court summons, but AWG only requires that the collectors be able to confirm that you work for a company that is subject to US laws. Update: I am informed that federally funded student loans are not available to international students. AWG is only possible for debts to the federal government. Private companies must go through the courts to force settlement of debt. OP is safe from AWG.", "What are the consequences if I ignore the emails? That would depend on how much efforts the collection agency is ready to put in. I got a social security number when I took up on campus jobs at the school and I do have a credit score. Can they get a hold of this and report to the credit bureaus even though I don't live in America? Possibly yes, they may already be doing it. Will they know when I come to America and arrest me at the border or can they take away my passport? For this, they would have to file a civil case in the court and get an injunction to arrest you. Edit: Generally it is unlikely that the court may grant an arrest warrant, unless in specific cases. A lawyer advise would be more appropriate. End Edits It is possible that the visa would also get rejected as you would have to declare previous visits and credit history is not good."]

What are my options to make my money work for me?

["As stated in the comments, Index Funds are the way to go. Stocks have the best return on investment, if you can stomach the volatility, and the diversification index funds bring you is unbeatable, while keeping costs low. You don't need an Individual Savings Account (UK), 401(k) (US) or similar, though they would be helpful to boost investment performance. These are tax advantaged accounts; without them you will have to pay taxes on your investment gains. However, there's still a lot to gain from investing, specially if the alternative is to place them in the vault or similar. Bear in mind that inflation makes your money shrink in real terms. Even a small interest is better than no interest. By best I mean that is safe (regulated by the financial authorities, so your money is safe and insured up to a certain amount) and has reasonable fees (keeping costs low is a must in any scenario). The two main concerns when designing your portfolio are diversification and low TER (Total Expense Ratio). As when we chose broker, our concern is to be as safe as we possibly can (diversification helps with this) and to keep costs at the bare minimum. Some issues might restrict your election or make others seem better. Depending on the country you live and the one of the fund, you might have to pay more taxes on gains/dividends. e.g. The US keeps some of them if your country doesn't have a special treaty with them. Look for W-8Ben and tax withholding for more information. Vanguard and Blackrock offer nice index funds. Morningstar might be a good place for gathering information. Don't trust blindly the 'rating'. Some values are 'not rated' and kick ass the 4 star ones. Again: seek low TER. Not a big fan of this point, but I'm bound to mention it. It can be actually helpful for sorting out tax related issues, which might decide the kind of index fund you pick, and if you find this topic somewhat daunting. You start with a good chunk of money, so it might make even more sense in your scenario to hire someone knowledgeable and trustworthy. I hope this helps to get you started. Best of luck."]