There's no case against Adam. You bicker on the ethics of his operations, but he did not violate any law. In fact, he took advantage of poor corporate laws, which is not a crime either.
Be bitter with him, fair enough, but be intelligent still
It's in the same bracket with the whole "Amazon pays $0 in taxes". Taking advantage of poor laws is not a crime. You can accuse them all you want, but we all do it albeit at a microscopic scale.
Punishing circumventers is not the answer, reviewing the law is.
Neumann did what was best for him. It was legal. That's all.
Your expectation of a person doing what is good for the greater good is your own weakness. I'm not telling you to stop, just don't cry foul when folks from other schools of thought do what they do best. Maximize returns.
> You can accuse them all you want, but we all do it albeit at a microscopic scale.
I've always found this argument fascinating. I certainly don't, with the specific example of taxes (within my country, Australia). Is it that rampant in the US? Or is it really more that people who break the law assume everyone else does too?
If you claim the maximum you can claim, take advantage of negative gearing, property depreciation, tax free capital gains on primary residence, one of the many parental rebates/handouts that are or have been available to middle class on good incomes, various arrangements to get around paying tax on shares from your company, etc. etc. then yes you are probably getting away with paying less tax by knowing the rules, whereas the uninformed wont. Where the line is drawn between this and say domiciling elsewhere to avoid tax, going to work in Singapore for a few years and bringing the money back or whatever, all the way to doing what the big corps do to systematically avoid billions in tax - who knows?
I, personally, don't do any of that: I don't own property, which the bulk of those schemes require, and I don't have children, which the other set usually does. No trusts or anything involved to reduce my tax burden. I pay what I pay, basically, because I fall into the slightly weird edge-case of having a decent salary but none of the other things that would give me access to these sorts of systems for better or worse. Doesn't really worry me though, I earn more than enough for a happy life!
Good for you, but unless you are avoiding these situations on purpose, or promise to pay above what's legally required for taxes, you can't claim ethical superiority than those that do.
Claiming the home sale exemption is not exploiting the tax code any more than claiming the standard deduction.
If you don't claim depreciation on your rental property, the IRS will still recapture when you sell it- even though you didn't take it. So how is taking it an exploitation?
Well how do you define exploiting? For example well-off person buys a house, improves the value, sells it tax free, makes a couple years salary in profit tax free, repeats it again and again. Property ladder on steroids.
The intent of no CGT tax on your primary property is IMO security for families, but it can be exploited to make a regular alternative source of income tax free.
The point of the home sale exclusion is to allow you to move. The presumption is that when you sell your primary, you are likely using the proceeds to buy another primary- which has probably gone up in value just as much as your old house.
Exploiting would be more like renting a house out for twenty years and then claiming it as your primary just long enough to sell & claim the exclusion, maybe without even renting out your original-primary.
The resident-renovator isn't something I worry about. You might be getting a tax break on your sweat equity but improving a house is hard work and when you run the numbers it's often not much more profitable than working a day job.
There's no way of knowing whether or not he violated laws or whether there's a case against him at this stage. The purpose of the NY AG investigation is literally to establish whether there's a case and the purpose of a hypothetical subsequent trial would be to establish whether in fact he violated laws.
You are making some awfully strong assumptions about the legality of Neumann's actions. How could you possibly know that everything he did was perfectly legal? The very fact that this investigation was opened strongly implies that you should be less certain in that assumption.
Most HN-posted stories about big gubmint looking into startups will have at least a few comments that seem eager to advocate on the behalf of the company in question. Perhaps they imagine themselves as one day being in a position to get paid $6m as a trademark fee for the name "We".
I’m not one of these people, but maybe they just don’t understand the purpose of this and think it’s a “shakedown,” a “help me get re-elected” thing, etc. Not everything is a conspiracy.
That may be the point, but it’s not what happens in practice. In reality, laws are vaguely worded on purpose with the promise that “we won’t enforce it in instance x”
Be bitter with him, fair enough, but be intelligent still
It's in the same bracket with the whole "Amazon pays $0 in taxes". Taking advantage of poor laws is not a crime. You can accuse them all you want, but we all do it albeit at a microscopic scale.
Punishing circumventers is not the answer, reviewing the law is.
Neumann did what was best for him. It was legal. That's all.
Your expectation of a person doing what is good for the greater good is your own weakness. I'm not telling you to stop, just don't cry foul when folks from other schools of thought do what they do best. Maximize returns.