Many of those 32% are adult kids moved back home (who generally pay minimal rent), or have everyone on the lease.

Moreover, I just took the Schedule E class, and nobody talked about this. So I wouldn't worry that the IRS is gonna target roommates. Almost all of these would be break-even because the rent taken from the roommates is equal to the rent given the landlord.

Now if you own the House, then you should probably do a Schedule E.

So it's more common then I thought, but still not very common.

Reread those statements. "Bend the cost curve" is jargon for reducing the double-digit increases we'd been experiencing every year. "Spend less on health care than if this bill doesn't pass" is also clearly a claim that costs would grow less under Obamacare.

If Obama was claiming it would reduce total costs deficit reduction would have been the headline, not "universal coverage."

Question:
Have you heard of the Federal Republic of Germany? Are you aware that the biggest difference between their system and Obamacare is that their insurers are non-profit?

If a subsidized private insurance market that shields consumers from most costs, and includes a risk-mitigation system, can survive in Germany why not here?

What about the Dutch?

Two points:

1) Fiduciary duty in tax prep means filing the most advantageous legal return possible. If somebody hands me a 1099-MISC, then a return that does not include that is illegal. Period. They can go to some other tax office, refuse to hand over the form, and we'll all be happier that way.

2) I've never had a client who admitted making $350 and didn't get some paperwork. If you're being paid under the table you're being paid under the table, and you ain't gonna tell your tax guy about it.

Have you ever heard of ethics?

It's kind of important in the tax prep field. I do not file returns I know are wrong. Period. I've filed returns that I'm pretty sure we're seriously bending the rules, but if a client hands me a piece of paper that legally required to be on a tax return he'll just have to live with me putting it on the damn tax return.

This exact scenario actually happened to me. Guy got out of prison, worked a couple days as a groundskeeper, and got a better job. So he had just under $400 on a 1099-MISC. Since it was on a 1099-MISC it was definitely reported to the IRS.

If I hadn't reported it, it probably wouldn't have resulted an audit. But that's because they don't bother with audits when they know they're right. What they do is program their computer to send you a letter (starting with a CP-2000) saying they think the return is wrong. Since he can't show them he didn't get paid for those two days a few months later he'd get a CP-22 informing him it was time to pay up. Now they wouldn't send the cops after him, but his next year's tax return would be reduced by whatever number was on the CP-22 plus interest.

Which would mean that, from his point of view, he paid me to do a simple thing right, and not only did I do that one thing wrong I got him in trouble with the law again.

Whether a retail tax place is a good deal really depends on two things:

1) How good you are at following instructions written in simplified legal English.

2) How much you're depending on these taxes to be exactly right.

1) is much harder for most Americans then you'd think. The phrasing is quite complex. You have to immediately pick up on whether a line is asking you to use Adjusted Gross Income or Modified Adjusted Gross Income, etc. As Engineers most Slashdotters could probably do it. OTOH, as Engineers, with absolutely no instruction in the field, many many Slashdotters would totally fuck it up and file a completely wrong return due to the Dunning-Krueger Effect. There is a reason the IRS insists everyone who works at a retail tax office take 15 hours of Continuing Education Credits after taking 150-200 hours in class instruction on the subject.

Now if you start from a form prepared by a retail tax place, and your life hasn't changed much (i.e.: having a kid changes your taxes completely, as does switching over to being a contractor from an employee), this will work fine even if you don;t know what you're doing.

It is incredibly fucking complex.

I work for a major tax prep company, and we're upgrading this year. The big bosses finally got sick of paying two guys to come out of retirement every year because nobody else understands a DOS Codebase.

They've been trying to upgrade for about three years, but the program was never ready. Even today we'll have to switch over to the old DOS software for certain returns.

More importantly, new tax software costs money. The government is out of money, Obama refuses to let the Republicans fire half the staff, and the Republicans refuse to let Obama double the tax rate.

Since everybody hates the IRS when Obama/the GOP need $15 million for some really politically popular program they raid the IRS budget.

Depreciation may not be hard for you.

For damn near everyone else, including lots of people who think taxes are easy, remembering which category every-damn-thing falls into is virtually impossible. Remembering that MACRS replaced ACRS in '86, which means that a rental house that's been rented out sine 1984 could be on a 15, 35, or 45-year table (depending on what the taxpayer chose back then), etc. is just a fucking nightmare. Especially for personal vehicles used for business use. Sometimes you can deduct depreciation, other times your business use fell below 50% so you have to pay your old depreciation back and flip over to a completely new method (straight-line, IIRC).

I strongly suspect you think it's easy because your software is doing all the actual work, and all you had to do was tell it a) what you paid, and b) what kind of thing it was.

"Self-employed" in IRS-speak covers a whole fucking lot of people. If you get paid more then $400 from somebody who doesn't withhold Social Security and Medicare you're self-employed.

You are required to file a Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ with a 1040A. You can;t use the simpler (and, at tax places that charge by the form, cheaper) 1040A or 1040EZ.

I do taxes in a fairly poor neighborhood. Per capita income is in the $20k range. And I get a lot of people who have a side-gig that doesn't do withholding. If they only make $350 I can avoid the Schedule C by reporting it as "Other Income" on line 21 of a 1040, but I cant get that onto a 1040A or an EZ.

If you have a side-job that doesn't withhold you are legally required to report it as a business. That way Self-Employment taxes get calculated properly, and you get credit with Social Security administration. The only out is if you earned less then $400. Then you're exempt from Schedule SE.

Which means that if you make $500 helping a caterer do big banquets, or even if you work for a cheap-skate who does't like withholding, you've got a Schedule C. You have to have some records of whatever expenses you paid to do the job (this is pretty much the only way you can deduct commuting mileage), you have to put them on the form, the whole nine-goddamn yards.

Schedule D is less common, but not as rare as you'd think. It;s where you report stock sales, so any Slashdotter who lived the dream of a successful start-up has filed quite a few of these. Most of Mitt Romney's income is actually reported on a D, because he pays himself with stock from his company, which he holds for a long time, which allows him to take advantage of the very low long-term Capital Gains rate.

Schedule E is the rare one. It's only for landlords.

If you can find a politician saying costs would actually be reduced in toto I'll be stunned. They argued people like my Mom would see reduced costs, due to the Individual Mandate, guaranteed issue, and subsidies.

As for the free market, all free markets encourage short-term decision-making. The point of the free market is that millions seeking short term gain are more likely to be right then some planner ion the capital in a fancy suit. Moreover you;re demonstrating that you don;t understand the how the program works with this particular objection. Guaranteed issue and the mandate means everyone is on the marketplace. That means the person who gets the $3 million cancer treatment is on the marketplace. Her risk is going to be assumed by the system as a whole regardless of who pays the bill. All the risk-mitigation system does is ensure her insurance company does;t go bankrupt.

In other words, if you actually knew what you were talking about, you'd understand that this policy is the only thing that will keep small insurers from going bankrupt.

As for the sustainability, you have yet to mention a single problem with Obamacare sustainability that isn't present in numerous other countries. If the Canadians can survive since the Great Doctor's Strike of '62 it's fairly silly to argue Obamacare is doomed.

What's the fallacy?

That email is insecure, that faxes are secure, or that Ontario Doctor's offices still use faxes because it's illegal for them to use email?

You are free to believe anything you want.

I intend to listen to the accountants in charge of monitoring government expenditures, who say flat-out Obamacare is controlling costs.

So you admit that the actual numbers so far so absolutely zero signs of the disaster you predict, and that your conclusion is based entirely on your anticipation of future events?

Problem is you have demonstrated precisely zero knowledge of how health care economics works in the real world.

An interesting criticism. It would be significantly more persuasive if there following weren't true:

1) The alternative to Obamacare is employer-sponsored health plans that are significantly worse at giving consumers "skin in the game" then an Exchange policy.

2) This line of reasoning is precisely the opposite of what one observes when one looks at reality, rather then elegant economic theories. The UK has no version of cost-sharing, the Canadians have very little cost-sharing, and the US lots of cost-sharing. Yet the Brits have lower costs then the Canadians, who have lower costs then us. If you're going to counter with that ridiculous "but Americans are just more expensive to treat " argument I'll be forced to bring out the actual costs of US programs.

In healthcare the main driver of actual costs is always what Doctors tell their patients. People go to my employer (Home Depot) and pick the second-most expensive product all the time because they figure that';s the one they need, but at a Doctor's office they're going to either a) trust the Doctor's judgement and move heaven and earth (prior to Obamacare Spaghetti Charity dinners were the method chosen) to get the exact procedure he recommends. In a centralized system these costs can be contained by whomever is in charge. In a decentralized system they cannot be contained.

Bullshit.

The cost control feature in Medicaid is that it's reimbursement rates are crap. It's hard to convince Doctors to care for Medicaid patients is that they read the fee schedule and said fuck that, not isn't that they read some asshole's Economics PhD's thesis on supply and demand in the health industry and concluded they had a moral duty to encourage people to get off Medicaid by refusing service.

If this is true, why isn't it worse in Canada? Or the UK? Sweden? You do realize that, even prior to the passage of Obamacare, we spent more dollars per capita on health care then any country in the entire fucking world?

The simple answer is that it's not worse in those countries because you don't understand how economics works in the medical field. Demand in medicine is provider-driven, which means that the only way to keep prices from increasing exponentially is have a payer with the market-power to say no and make it stick.

That's one of the reasons people like Obamacare. My Mom had skin cancer. She's 63. She is high risk. She works in retail. Any market-set price for her insurance policy would probably be greater then her income.

ObamaCare fixed that.

So you're telling me that a) you support free-market principles, and b) you think a bunch of companies are going to fuck up by assuming too much risk and failing, and you are concluding c) that's a terrible thing?

So you're arguing that it's linguistically possible to have a universal health care program that doesn't have universal coverage, and that the private market would spend $10 Billion a year on space shuttles if only NASA hadn't crowded them out?

My Dad made an earnest attempt to explain how Animal Farm was a parable of the struggles between Stalinists and Trotskyists when I first read it, so if you;re in the "Reagan Greatest President who Ever Lived" School you really don't want me to take his word as gospel.

I've probably got a better handle on the era then most people who lived through it, because I'm not only a history major I also debate this shit extensively online. I've picked up a lot of info on Iran-Contra, the "Was it Reagan or Volcker" debate over the end of Stagflation, Carter proving an entirely morality-based policy increases immorality by an order of magnitude, etc.

Moreover you're ignoring my argument. I am not saying that Reagan was a bad guy, or that I won't understand what you mean intellectually if you tell me "so-and-so is the new Reagan," or "such-and-such-policy is the most Reaganesque" I'm saying it has zero emotional resonance for me. I get the logic, but logic alone ain't never changed a vote. If it did nobody would talk about Reagan, because he would have been unnecessary.