It's a civil proceeding not a criminal proceeding so he would not be incriminating himself.
He could argue that by answering he would be admitting crimes and opening himself to criminal liability. But there's a possibly they give him immunity and that route is taken away.
IANAL either but I'm not sure anyone involved in the civil case would have the power or authority to grant criminal immunity (perhaps up to and including the judge, at least local to me the civil judges do not do criminal cases - there is no overlap).
I don't need an answer to point out that your response is relevant to probably 3 or 4 people every year who:
- live in Washington State; AND
- are compensated at least in part in options; AND
- are compensated in excess of $1M a year; AND
- are compensated far enough in excess of $1M a year that they are willing to spend time and money lowering that tax liability
But the answer is "you can't, at least not legally" for everyone except those few people.
The first set of US federal tax rates when it was allowed by the 16th amendment with adjustments for inflation on the the right:
Orig Income Rate Adj Income (2025 Dollars)
Up to $20,000 1% Up to $600,000
$20,000 to $50,000 2% $600,000 to $1,500,000
$50,000 to $75,000 3% $1,500,000 to $2,250,000
$75,000 to $100,000 4% $2,250,000 to $3,000,000
Over $100,000 5% Over $3,000,000
The point being that once you allow the tax, it has a tendency to become more and more. It's much easier to raise income tax than establish it.
I don't have a dog in this fight and if it's what the people of Washington want, so be it.
This is important context, and people forget that "taxation without representation," which started a war, was about a tax of about 1.5%.
Why is it when people are against a tax they typically talk about it in terms of historical context, unintended consequences, interstate migration, while people in favor of the tax almost exclusively appeal to emotional blackmail statements like "paying your fair share" (when something like 40% of the country pays no federal income tax whatsoever) or "good conscience" or assume anyone with any money got it through borderline illegal activities?
It took 100+ years of horribly repressive policies to start that war, including far worse tax schemes including things like straight up requiring burning half your tobacco or only selling it through monopolized channels that required paying tariffs to England before it could be re-exported anywhere else. Policies that resulted in mass starvation and death, sometimes resulting in failed rebellions (like Bacon's). So there's history of Americans being willing to spend decades starving to death to pay high taxes or economically destructive policies before they will successfully rebel against it.
If you could identify where fees get decoupled from profit in finance, I’d be open to the position that they aren’t related but you didn’t share anything along those lines. Considering the costs like cash-back programs that would erode the profitability of those fees are largely in the banks control, I don’t think that is a strong position.
You are the one implying that the revenue becomes profit. The burden is on you to make the case not on me to prove a negative. There are plenty of high revenue low margin businesses. There are also low revenue high margin businesses. So there is not a direct correlation between revenue and profit.
This is bordering on a non-productive discussion but:
Yes, revenue provides cash flow, not profit. And costs provide the other part, as was already mentioned. But if it increases cash flow without increasing relative costs, it increases profit. Do you think banks would charge fees if they could make more money by removing them? Again, the banks are largely in control of these costs, like the amount of cash back they provide. For example, the federal reserve reports that bank fees account for 1.82% of purchase volume, while cash back programs account for 1.57% of purchase volume. In other words, they make a profit on balance.
You can read the financial statements to get more information. That's where the above numbers came from. They don't generally say "Fees contribute to X% of profits" but they do indicate they are relatively large parts of revenue. For example, JPMorgan lists $5.97B in fee revenue and rewards cost $4.28B, with the difference being profit. So where are the extra costs you are implying coming from that make fees a net cost?
>> Cards don't make money from their fees. They make money from people who fail to pay and then pay the ridiculous interest.
> Interchange fees seem to be a sizable portion of revenue. Discover has listed them as 29% of revenue, BoA at ~$10B annually…
My complaint is that pointing at revenue alone does not rebut the initial statement. That's all. The argument was insufficient, not your side of the argument is wrong.
I understand that, and I was trying to be helpful and foster an discussion instead of snark. I clearly pointed to costs as well, but it didn’t seem to sink in.
Saying “revenue doesn’t equal profits” is superficially true but lacking any real substantive claim. It’s like saying “to lose weight you just need to burn more calories than you consume.” True, but a lazy attempt at a retort.
I tried to foster discussion. If profits = revenue - costs, I asked where those costs are coming from that would erode those profits. Yet again, you replied in a manner that limits discussion. Many of us come to HN because we expect higher levels of discussion than the typical Internet forum cesspool, like the guidelines lay out.
Until you are dealing with a difficult employee or struggling with whether to put someone on a PIP or being asked to deliver things you don't have direct control over or dealing with penny-pinching edicts from above etc. etc.
Also when the project becomes a dumpster fire and you have to save it - or go through months of justifying what path is being taken or be clear with leadership what needs to change or be fired for the failure.
Because the standard for configure scripts says that the current directory at invocation is the build directory and the location of the configure script is the source directory. You are expected to be able to have multiple build directories if you want them. If you have written your configure script correctly, than in-tree builds (srcdir == builddir) also work, but most people don't want that anyway.
You can. But this makes intent clear. If you clone a git repo and see build/ with only a gitkeep, you are safe to bet your life savings on that being the compiled assets dir.
The trust fund is funded by the overage of collected Social Security taxes compared to Social Security payouts. It is not "tacked on" and does not use "separate government funding".
Currently there are more payouts than taxes so the trust fund is being used to make up the difference.
When the trust fund is depleted (barring any changes, this happens at some point in the next decade if I'm not mistaken) then there will be a reckoning. If no action is taken by Congress the result is that payouts will be cut by the necessary percentage to match the taxes.
Yes, it does. The Obama administration explicitly appropriated general government funds to try and make up a developing shortfall in the 'fund'. There is no money being accumulated because there are more payouts than taxes - but even if that wasn't the case, these are not actual "bonds" that have been bought on any market, they're just non-market government obligations.
Have you considered it was just proximity? The overlords know you were in proximity with your friend. It is not unreasonable to assume you share interests and would respond to the same ads.
It's a civil proceeding not a criminal proceeding so he would not be incriminating himself.
He could argue that by answering he would be admitting crimes and opening himself to criminal liability. But there's a possibly they give him immunity and that route is taken away.
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