The USA doesn't inspect every package -- almost all current tariffs are on the honor system. They could start by checking every 1 in 10,000 packages and then build up the system until they're spot-checking x in 100.
Customs doesn't even know what half the shit is. If I order a quarter-pound of palladium for $4,000 from China, but pay tariffs on 4 ounces of lead (say, $5), do you really think customs can tell the difference? They open the package, see a chunk of metal, and go "okie dokey". Yes, sometimes they'll whip out an XRP gun and double-check the alloy, but not for a completely random & arbitrary 4-ounce package.
They got rid of the de minimis exemption. Now every package needs to pay duty.
They may not inspect the package but they still have to collect duty on it.
I live in Canada where our de minimis exemption is like $20. Generally when a package comes to in it is help at the border where a broker certifies it for customs. Below $20 there's no broker.
Now you need brokers etc for every single package. Def more paperwork even if they keep the same inspection ratio.
Sure when you courier stuff into Canada but when it’s through the postal service, duty & sales tax collection is at the discretion of customs.
Customs used to check everything and tax/duty any parcel over $20 until ~2011 or so.
Not sure if it was because of cutbacks, rationalization (it’s a lot of paperwork to collect a couple bucks even with their, at the time, $6.95 fee), or a part of their reinvention as gun carrying “law enforcement” and consistent tax collection being beneath them.
There's still more paperwork though. Canada Post cites a $9.95 handling fee on international packages over $20.
I'm not saying US customs will inspect everything. My point is on $800 packages they're moving from a very low level of scrutiny to some scrutiny and at scale that matters. They'll need to add staff to handle the new process and make the new process.
It's divide and conquer tactics. They are not interested in continuity or a smoothly functioning economy. They want chaos and panic because they can exploit it.
The problem is they've already threatened most of their allies. In divide and conquer the goal is supposed to be to divide your enemies, not divide yourself from your allies. As it is their enemies and allies now have good reason to work together.
If you assume they are both compromised by Russia and China(which they are), then all of their actions make much more sense by treating our allies as enemies because they are enemies of Russia and China.
I wasn't thinking IR terms. I think they're perfectly willing to crash the US economy in order to consolidate domestic power, even if it causes an overall loss for the US.
The biggest one I've run into is GDI support (Graphics Device Interface). This covers things like two-dimensional vector graphics, imaging, and typography. So simple things like transforming or drawing images are no longer supported.
There are decent third party open-source libaries like SixLabors/ImageSharp that have stared to fill the gap.
System.Drawing was always just a wrapper for GDI(+), and you CAN use it on Linux via using System.Drawing.Common which is a wrapper for GDI+ (Windows) or something else like libgdi+ on non-windows. It works - but it feels more like a compat hack than anything else. System.Drawing wouldn't look the way it does if it wasn't designed to be a Windows only API around GDI+.
ImageSharp was always a good lib but now the license was murdered. Hopefully a true OSS fork will come along. SkiaSharp is also a good alternative, especially if you also need the drawing bits.
Missing a Graphics Library in .NET (5-8) is just half the story. It's of course missing an entire UI library too. But Microsoft, perhaps wisely, chose not to also implement a whole xplat UI library. Avalonia/Uno/etc are already there.
In case you're curious what this costs: "In Canada, participants get invited through a local dealer and pay about half of the $20,000 cost to attend but the trip includes a plus one. Dealers often pick up the other half of the cost as a reward to a client for years of business or as a way to firm up future business. In the U.S., the cost is $14,500. It includes the full day of ice driving, two-night accommodations at Hotel Sacacomie, all airport transfers and meals. "
There are a variety of snow-driving schools throughout the world, most cheaper (although you're not driving a Lambo). The Bridgestone Winter Driving School in Steamboat (Toyota) is very fun and much more affordable.
You used to be able to deduct any consumer debt. But that stopped in 1986. The reason was "Congress believed deductions for personal interest encouraged people to consume and stifle savings."
There used to be mostly piddling deductions for all sorts of things that you don't have today. It's probably mostly a positive to not keep track of things like sales tax in order to minimize your income tax.
Deductions also cause people to go temporarily insane - it’s fine paying 5% unnecessarily because I get 2% back on my taxes! Ignore the 3% that is gone forever …
The the 1980s the deduction for mortgage interest would have been significant, I suspect most people itemized then. And the huge standard deductions we have now are a fairly recent tax change.
It was 3400 for a married couple in 1980, but yes, many more people deducted mortgage interest until 2018 when the standard deduction nearly doubled.
Many people didn't math the interest deduction correctly - only the amount over the standard deduction should be counted, as you'd get the standard deduction anyway. Can vary depending on SALT and charity donations.
Yes, real estate tips always seemed full of self serving nonsense to me and usually talked big about the tax savings. But with my modest house and mortgage I calculated that even at the start of my mortgage I saved a whopping $800/yr on taxes with deductions versus the standard deduction. I spent well more than that on furnishings and repairs every year. And that tax advantage (for me) disappeared entirely after maybe 5 years or something.
For a long time I would read money saving tips articles and a tip that frequently came up in these and in pro real estate pieces was that paying a single extra mortgage payment per year would let you pay your mortgage off 12-15 years early.
When you did the math you realized it was bogus. As near as I can tell, this actually was true for one brief period in the 1980s when mortgage rates were at their zenith. Articles were written about this amazing tip well into the 1990s before the BS was transcribed to the internet and then repeated well into the super low interest rate era where it wasn't even close to being true.
Of course it wasn't even really true in the 1980s either. Once interest rates went down you'd have been wise to refinance at the newer lower rates instead of prepaying the mortgage as it would improve your cash flow and lock in the savings. So in reality, it would have only made sense if interest rates had stayed at that same high rate for the whole length of the mortgage!
Well written ORMs let you express queries without the operations happening in the business logic. For example C# and Linq. You can express pretty much any query using the linq language and that's then converted into SQL automatically.
If you just have W2 income, there's no reason you can't fill out the regular 1040 form yourself. Sure might take you an hour or so, but no software to purchase. Just costs a stamp to mail it in!
Just a caveat: in 2020, processing paper returns was considerably more delayed than digital submissions. If you want your return to be processed quickly, digital is almost always faster.
I have a form telling me about the interest the IRS sent me because amendments to forms are almost always paper-sent, and it took so long to process my additional return that they owed interest on it.
This is true. The thing that most people won't appreciate is that taxes that are not done online are processed at a very slow pace. Most people don't try to optimize their withholding in a way to get close to 0 tax returns and won't be willing to wait long times to get any kind of returns. We all are paying cost of capitalism.
It seems odd to be willing to give the government a loan over the course of the year, in the form of overwithholding, but then not be willing to wait a few more weeks to get the payout. If somebody is impatient to get their hands on that money, why not fix their W-4 so they get it with every paycheck?
(Also, as noted in the parallel comment, the forms can be submitted online, separately from the Free File service)
Well most people are just not literate when it comes to finances. They are not aware of what withholding means, how to calculate things. I'm sure it's not simple to do when you are working multiple jobs, or temp jobs in between (well these won't be those simple W 2 scenarios we are talking about).
We are know that the tax codes are intentionally complicated and big firms don't want government to fix them. Rules being complected allows having loopholes for certain people.
I think we’re talking about different, related things.
The tax code in the US (and the filing process) is overcomplicated for a variety of political, corporate, and cultural reasons.
The average US taxpayer is under-educated on finances generally and tax code specifically.
That said, the W-4 is one area that’s actually gotten simpler in recent years. I simultaneously think the tax code needs serious simplification and that the average person has the capacity to read a W-4 and get reasonably close on their withholding. The reason many of them don’t is because they like getting a refund check once a year.
Government: creates a byzantine tax code to allow the richest/most competent avoiders keep their wealth while consistently over-targeting lower-income groups for audits
For profit tax-co’s: do back door deals with the government to prevent lower-income/competence individuals from working directly with the gov’t while engaging in dark patterns to make the lower cost products harder to use/find
This guy: It’s the citizen’s fault and they get what they deserve for having other priorities than wealth management!
I think it’s fair to assume that all users want taxation to be as close to 0 overage as possible while also wanting all overage returned as quickly as possible. Anyone not working towards that sucks and is the universal enemy.
I know plenty of people who do not want their tax return to be close to zero. They like getting a big refund check back. This is the kind of person being described in the comment I replied to.
I have seen some people on reddit admit that they are bad at managing finances month to month and would rather have that big refund come back that they can use to pay off debt or something. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but whatever works for individuals man.
I doubt the cottage industry is focused on debt reduction. That said, forced savings techniques can certainly make a lot of sense even if they're financially suboptimal.
If you only have income from one W-2, two if you are married, yes it is easy. But if you have any variability in your income, it's hard to predict how much you tax you are going to owe. Not every income supports withholding (i.e. savings accounts) and the way you can set withholding varies by income source (W-2 supports a dollar amount per paycheck, RSUs often use a percentage). So getting the right combination of withholding settings to cover your tax liability across all income sources can be tricky.
If I don't get the refund quickly, I don't trust that I'll get it ever. Things can fall through the cracks, and support dwindles for older tax returns.
There are new operating modes for Blazor in .Net 8 that don't require Web Assembly. There's the new "Static server" and "interactive server" that don't require WASM.
