Originally Posted by
sailingfun
I really thought I was going to get screwed this year. Did a preliminary run on my taxes and will do much better than last year. I am no longer subject to the AMT which is huge and the lower brackets help. Went from usually owing 5 to 6k a year to a substantial refund.
We have not run our final numbers yet, but in 2015 taxes on our earnings from short term gains in real estate were 51% (Fed, ACA on investments & State of GA) This year it is looking like 27%. We are paying half as much in taxes as we used to.
I have no idea if that is sustainable for our nation.
The problem (and is this political if I'm complaining about both sides of the partisan divide?) is the unfairness of the system.
During the Presidential debates Trump made the statement that if a guy was in real estate and was paying any taxes he "is dumb." Trump mostly (completely) avoids taxes by setting everything up in myriad accounts which cover his personal expenses as business expenses and receiving very little money personally. Most of us cannot set up shell companies that will fly us around in 757's, but, a self directed IRA is a decent way to isolate investment income and at least defer taxes on it. Hey, if your investments do well enough, your holding company needs a 757, right :-)
So far, Paul Ryan's tax plan (not really Trump's) seems more fair.