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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • How could you misunderstand his comment so completely?

    Bitcoin is not money. You cannot file your tax return with a line-item with the number of Bitcoin you were paid. On a US tax return, you have to say how many USD you were paid. On a Canadian return, it is Canadian dollars. In the UK, it would be GBP.

    If I demanded that my US employer paid me in GBP, they may do so. They would also track internally the dates they paid me, the value in USD that they paid me, and the exchange rate to GBP. The tax deducted from my check would be in USD.

    This is part of the tax code in every country. You get paid in the currency of that jurisdiction ( regardless of how you choose to take payment ).

    If you wanted to receive Bitcoin, it would be an investment. The taxable income would be the value on the day I received it. The value on the day that I sold is irrelevant. This is not “unrealized gains” by any stretch.

    You cannot “elect” how to be paid for tax purposes. The currency on your return is a matter of law as are the rules about moving in and out of that currency. This is practically the definition of “realization”.



  • Both my examples are about being taxed on money that may never exist. Your second comment makes me think you did not understand me.

    I am not talking about political impossibility. And I am certainly not talking about the difficulty in calculating current market value. I am talking about the poor correlation between current value and the gains that will potentially actually be “realized”. I am talking about bad policy.

    Here is an example. Back in the 2000’s, there were people that were taxed on the value of their stock options using exactly this same logic ( the “value” on paper ). Later, when the market crashed, there was not even enough value left in the shares and options to pay the taxes already owing. People literally paid well over 100% tax ( in some cases hundreds of percent ). Who were these super rich people that deserved such tax treatment? Many were relatively young employees of technology companies using equity as compensation. These employees had little wealth before being taxed on their “unrealized gains” and may have been bankrupt after. The whole concept is incredibly flawed.

    I personally dislike Elon Musk. But even with him, taxing him on what he was worth at the high point would be totally unjust as he is not worth that now. It makes way more sense ( in my view ) to tax him when, and if, any of that wealth materializes. I am no fan of Donald Trump. But I think it would have been totally insane to tax him on the value of his Trump Media “wealth” when it was “valued” at $8 billion. If he gets even $1 billion out of it I will be amazed. Anyway, tax him on that. Tax it at 90% if you want. But don’t tax him on “wealth” that nobody is ever going to see.

    I do not know what state you are in but I am unaware of anywhere that would tax you on “unrealized” income from your high-tax bracket salary. Nobody is taxing you on the “unrealized” benefit of your salary. Are you trying to tell me that it does? Where I am, leaving the jurisdiction for more than 6 months would render my income and gains beyond that point non-taxable so the government of course wants a “final return”. Are you talking about something similar?

    Again, I am all for taxing the rich. Tax actual gains however you want. What I do not think you should do is tax “unrealized” gains. It is an incredibly flawed idea.


  • I know the 12 year olds will be upset but this is dumb.

    Unrealized gains may never be realized. If they ever are, they may be worth less at that point than the tax you paid. It is like taxing everybody on income at the beginning of the year and then telling them tough luck if they get fired and never get that income.

    Also, borrowing in assets does not make you wealthier. How much tax should we charge people when they get a mortgage ( not when they sell, when they first borrow ). I mean, somebody just gave you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why shouldn’t you have to pay tax on that? ( according to the OP at least ).

    Anyway, I will stop there. We are not going to get back at the rich by saying a bunch of stupid things. If you don’t like generational wealth, fine. Have an estate tax. If you don’t like windfall wealth, fine. Have a super high progressive tax rate. I have no problem limiting extreme wealth ( it won’t hurt me ). But “tax people I don’t like on things that make no sense” just tells people you cannot think well and are not into math.









  • Except Macs that go out of support do turn into pumpkins. Because software will start to refuse to run on it because the OS is too old. That is how I define unusable.

    OpenCore Legacy patcher is awesome but it is not without issue.

    I guess some people think that unsupported operating systems causing GPU glitches or being stuck in ancient application versions is a better experience. Not me. I am very happy to put Linux on a Mac, get better performance, and enjoy totally up-to-date applications. If I really need to, I could always run one or two macOS or Windows applications in a VM. I am not sure what those would be though.






  • Basilisk is the odd one out here. It is a continuation of pre-Servo Firefox ( Firefox before Rust ). It is not exactly a “new” engine.

    Ladybird is probably the most exciting project as it is most likely to create a new independent browser suitable for daily use.

    Servo was very exciting back when Mozilla was heavily invested in it. Sadly, it was long dormant. It really seems to be heating up again though so that is awesome.