[lbo-talk] who the FRICK came up with this crap

[joanna bujes]

In California it pays to itemize because state taxes are very high -- 
and you get to deduct those. If you then add normal charitable 
contributions of a few thousand a year -- you're already ahead of the 
standard deduction. If you own your own house (which I don't) and you 
itemize, you can also write off all your interest payments.

The deduction for home office used to be much better. ...as did the 
deduction for medical expenses. But they do this stealth tax hike every 
year where they increase the threshhold above which you get to deduct. 
So, once upon a time, you could deduct all home office expenses, then 
only those that exceeded 2% of your income, then only those that 
exceeded 4% of your income.

Basically if you're a wage slave you pay. If you're capital you don't. 
That's why they call it Capitalism.

Joanna

Jeffrey Fisher wrote:


>it's only worth anything if you can write it off (i.e., count it as a
>loss against profit, which is to say, that it's your own business and
>not someone else's). now if you can combine that with other home
>expense deductions or whatever to surpass the standard deduction, then
>you're in business.
>
>um, right?
>
>but the thing i've never understood is why it would ever be worth it
>for a normal person to bother itemizing deductions? does anyone have
>numbers on how many people could deduct more than the standard
>deduction? and how many could deduct enough to make it worth itemizing
>(which would have to be a substantially more than the standard, imo)?
>
>
>On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 22:01:18 -0400, snit snat
><snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>ps/ what i discovered, after about 6 hrs of filling out this form and that
>>form and trying to figure out how a FT employee can declare office expenses
>>(it's not intuitively obvious and I'm still mystified), was that deducting
>>3k worth of office expenses was worth exactly squat.
>>
>>zip.
>>
>>zero.
>>
>>zilch.
>>
>>nada.
>>
>>big fat fuckin' nothing. less than nothing.
>>
>>i can't even believe my boss had the NERVE to tell us, underpaid and
>>overworked, that the rilly rilly kewl thing was that we could declare home
>>office expenses. like it was some kind of benefit!
>>
>>k
>>
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