My uncle got filthy rich parallel importing medical drugs from Italy to Sweden. Buying cheap and selling with a large profit. No work just re labeling.

Moved to London. Accounts all over - canal islands etc.

As an example his sold some stock in one of his Swedish companies last year. Made $50 mil. Swedish Tax authorities was all over him. He ended up paying zero tax for that sell.

i bet your uncle knows my uncle Livi...
does he hang out in Saint Tropez for 2 weeks every summer?

As a matter of fact, yes, at least. He spends a lot of time in southern France. He has a wine yard with rather good production of different wines just half an hour from Cannes. Also has an old restored big wooden classic boat.

Talk about coincidence!

People like Gates are truly rich. But democrats definition of rich starts at about $10/hour wages. In fact it was the democrats who made withholding mandatory for all those rich waitresses and taxed unemployment income, on everyone.

I can show you how to get rich for less. Just send me $10 via paypal, cash, check or money order. Once enough of you have done this I will write a book thanking all of you and tell you how I am spending your money. So don't waste $14.95 when you can get the same thing for $10.00

PS tell a friend

You're obviously ignoring the "standard 20% yearly appreciation rule," as proven by the There is no housing bubble! blog ;)

Here's a great nugget:
on-ramp, are you taking notes?

Ever think that the last generation to be able to really retire and the last generation to actually be able to afford a private home have already been born and in fact are working right now?

Every year I have to explain to my wife why we don't get back thousands of dollars at tax time. She can't comprehend why her bartender and waitress friends are so well off....
'til she has to ride in their old cars and party in their 1 -bedroom apartments..
:rolleyes:

Do we have a 'beating a dead horse' smiley?

Rich is when you can pay all your bills and have money left over. Wealthy is what you become if you spend the leftovers wisely over an extended period.

Is there a number that quantifies wealthy? Nope, it depends on your needs and wants, but making twice what you require is a nice ratio. I do, don't owe any money, so I must be rich.

My son is a pilot. His company just bought a new Lear 60 for $14 mil, complete with lots of leather, burl wood and $80 vodka in the fridge. If I needed it, I would be poor.

What do you need?

what's a "shiv"?
:confused:

on-ramp, shiv is a knife. The other guys have already covered it. There is no easy ride. There are very few tax loopholes. The 1031 exchange may be one of the last loopholes remaining. It allows you to defer capital gains on investment real estate.

There is no magical deduction, because the fact is you have to spend $1 to get somewhere between 10-50 cents back. How is that a good deal?

Welcome to the real world.

The fact is that some people will ALWAYS be better off than others. The proper way to "deal with it" is not to try to bring everyone down to a single level, cause its NEVER going to happen, but to allow everyone equal access to move up to the promised land. At least that way the maximum number of people will be well off rather than the Minimum number of people. Also the general level will be higher for everyone, for example the USA vs anywhere in the world. As proof I see no trail of Americans moving anywhere else.

Yet, for those of us who have been here a long time, we see ominous signs of us becoming like them, the them that moved to here to get away from them. Got that? The mathematical equivalent is called the Central Limit Theorem. Hope thats not to high level for the lefties to comprehend.

I love my Wife, She loves Me, sex is good, the cars are all paid for, the houses have a small Mortgage left on them, We have our Health, Life is good, ...I am Rich!

Its a simple analysis in the United States. In California the average per student tuition cost for k-12 is $6,500 per kid. So if you have two kids in school, your cost in taxes just to put your two kids through K-12 is $13,000/year. Do you pay that much in state income, property and sales tax? Lets forget about roads, flood control, fire, police and everything else. In fact the average annual income in CA is around $44k, and you pay about $3,500 in income taxes add in all the other taxes mentioned above, and services and quess what? The average citizen doesn't even come close to paying their "Fair Share" of taxes. "Fair Share" meaning you take out services that are remotely close to what you paid in. Who pays the difference? I guess those rich bastards who don't pay their fair share, unless you think its the working poor and the illegals.

Hugh, Its all those Rich people who don't pay any tax.

Taxes? Just part of the deal. I'd rather pay 100K than 10K per year. Old, but still true:

Subject Taxes
This is a very good explanation of how income taxes really works!! Sometimes politicians, journalist and others exclaim, "It's just a tax cut for the rich" and it is just accepted to be fact. But what does that really mean? Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, I hope the following will help. Please read it carefully. Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner and the bill for all tem comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this.

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So that's what they decided to do.
The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant everyday and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." Dinner for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to eat their meal.

So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar too; it's unfair that he got ten times more than me."

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute" yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill.

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore, in fact they might start eating overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D
Professor of Economics, University of Georgia

I like that, Howard. Thanks.

That is one of the best explanations of taxing that I have ever heard.

Well, said, snowman. I think we could have just as well said the same thing about our public education system.


On a side note I do like Kiyosaki's method of categorizing assets and liabilities.
Asset - puts money into my pocket
Liability - takes money out of my pocket

Being a business owner does have advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. Like being taxed twice! Make a profit and pay income tax on the business. Disburse the profits to the shareholders, it is called a dividend. Then you pay tax on that.

The write offs help a little around the edges, but cannot make a business work. The business needs to make value to work in the long term.