The era of big tax cuts may be over – Our GOP rulers have very clearly shown their utter disregard for limits on government spending.  Are they going to next wimp out on reducing tax rates?  There is still one political party that strongly believes in low taxes and low government spending.

So, You Want to Be A Landlord… – You too could end up with a psycho tenant who uses the movie Pacific Heights as his game plan to steal your property from you, as we had back in the Bay Area.

Q:

Subject: query regarding blogads on the taxguru site

Hello,

 

I manage an internet store that sells t-shirts and mugs for tax attorneys and accountants (www.taxshirts.com).  I was wondering whether your site accepted blogads, and if so, what the weekly rate is.

 

Thanks so much,

Lisa Binder

www.taxshirts.com

A:

Lisa:

Currently, the only ads I have on my sites are the standard vendor affiliate programs.  I am not set up with BlogAds.  However, you are the second person to inquire about that; so I will look into setting that up if there appears to be sufficient demand.

Good luck with your product sales.  Thank you for your interest in advertising on my sites.

Kerry Kerstetter

Today’s Braingle Brain teaser covered how so-called stock market gurus pull in gullible victims.  Again, this isn’t new, but is crucial to remember.

Ok, so here is the deal. One day, you get a call from some random guy who says “Next week, ABC stock is going to move up. I’m not asking you to buy any stock from me, but just take a look.” You do so (why not, it can’t hurt…) and he was correct. Sure enough, next week you get another call from the “Lucky Guesser”. His pick? “DEF is going to go down.” And guess what! He was right again!

For five weeks, this guy predicts the behavior of stocks. The sixth time he calls he says, “I’ve been right the past five times. This time I have a stock for you and I do want you to buy some shares through me. What do you say?”

Well, what do you say. Do you buy shares from this guy?

 

Answer:

Heck no! He’s playing you like a puppet. First week he calls 100 people, says to half ABC will go up and to the other fifty, he claims it will go down. When ABC goes up, he called the fifty he’d correctly predicted to and told half DEF would go up, and half it would go down. By the time he’s at week five, he has a few people (2-4) thinking he’s a stock market god.

 

 

While Federal individual income tax rates and brackets, as adjusted for inflation, are made public relatively early (9/23/04 for the 2005 rates), the California Franchise Tax Board takes its sweet time announcing theirs.  According to this article from CCH, the 2005 inflation adjusted rates have just been released.  I wasn’t able to find this on the FTB’s website, or even on Spidell’s.

Update: Spidell has produced a pdf document with the newly announced 2005 figures.