Interesting. You are trapped into continued living in the same "old" house until you die because of a tax angle situation.

I read all you posters here living in the $500K homes with big taxes and I shudder.

I bought my little bitty 2 bedroom house in 1979 for less than $40K.

But something happened in my neighborhood and now forty years later the value of my house is less than $50K.

On the one hand, it is nice because my annual property taxes are less than $700.00. But, OTOH, I am forever trapped in this house because the worldwide market has appreciated and left me behind. I could not afford to move even if I wanted to. I'm mortgage free with low taxes and I am happy with that.

Who are the bottom feeders? And who are the greedy bastards? I would imagine opinions on who fits in these two catagories will range far and wide.

Sort of on topic. Canada--the entire country---is/ or has
legalized Mary Jane. The tax possibilities were just too rich to continue to ignore.

Interesting how a post that started out talking about new sales tax rules has morphed into a general discussion on taxes in general.

Amazon bitched about collecting sales tax for quite a long time and got a free ride at the expense of the brick and mortar stores. Amazon finally got too big too ignore and has been charging sales tax (to me anyway) for the last couple of years. Apple has been charging me sales tax for a long time so nothing new for these two large outfits.

But Amazon also sells Amazon Services which is some sort of computer time to small companies. Since Amazon already has the sales tax angle worked out for every city and county in the country, I'm guessing that Amazon will consider selling its "sales tax capabilities and services" to all of the mom's and pop's stores in the country. It is just a guess and I could be wrong but it is not outside the realm of possibility.

I thought it would turn into that it does not matter what state your company lives in; I thought you will be charging applicable tax at the destination state.

You guys give me a heart attack. I paid my little old house off in 1995. My best car is a 2003 model. I'm not fancy in neighborhood or going down the road. I try my best to live cheap. It saved my ass several times in the 1990s as I kept getting laid off, then recalled, then laid off again.

This all takes me back to my first decent paying job in 1979. Another guy who hired in with me was working in Colorado and was transferred to Louisiana. He did not care for crawfish country so he quit and headed home to Mother Kansas. He was in process of buying a house with his home equity from Colorado.

I asked him if he was going to pay all of his equity money on the house he was buying. "Hell Yes !! Fuck those $300.00 a month house payments".

And now, all of you younger guys talk in terms of what a bargain you are getting when your mortgage payment is "only" $1200.00 per month.

Yeah. Yeah. Spoken like Wall Street pro. Leverage everything to the max to get that last half point.

I took J. P. Morgan's advise and sold down to a sleeping point. When I paid off in 1995 rates were 8% and 9%. In 2002 rates had backed off to 7%. Nobody saw 0% Fed Funds coming in the future. Hind site being what it is, if I had known rates were going to colapse I would have loaded up on 30 zero coupon bonds in the IRA.

I don't need the leverage and really enjoy not having to make a house payment every month.

You cannot put a price on that !

Why do I get an image in my head that you are going to be linking us to a video of you sitting in a rented business jet telling us to "just buy my books and you can learn to be rich. " ?

You are starting to remind me of Dave Deldado from the 90s.

No. You did not offend me. I'm too old and have been down too many roads for that. Both of my parents grew up country and moved to the city. They were hard working, with no real education beyond high school. Both grew up during the Great Depression. My mother was a little kid when her farmer/rancher dad lost it all. They grew up with nothing and the promise of a steady job was the prize plum they sought. My dad had a small town Ford dealership in the 50s. In 1960, the economy sent south and he went broke. He finished his life working is sales.

I was not taught the ways of business when I was growing up. The risk-adverse mantra was get an education and get a job. Hustling real estate was not something that was taught. Lots of people have made lots of money in real estate. A lot of people have gone broke. Some took the risk and hit the waves at the right time.

I don't know how you got started in RE, but if you want to talk about leveraging up and you need to consider who your audience is before you expound on the virtues of leverage. You can't talk using leverage to buy multiple properties to a guy who has never owned a rental; You have first educate him on the virtues of even owning a rental, in the first place.

In 1986, after he retired from the Navy with a pension, and with a working wife with a paycheck, he ventured into RE. He lived outside Dallas. HE bought some acreage, and do to luck and good timing, he moved the acres in less than month and doubled his money. Not long after, the RE market in Dallas fell out of bed and the buyer who bought brother's acres was stuck holding for several years.

In the meantime, to avoid a cap gains tax hit, brother bought two duplexes for tax shelter and income. In 1997, brother died. My two nephews each inherited a duplex. One nephew sold out after 3-4 years. The other nephew sold out after 20 years. He was tired of all the BS it can take dealing with subpar renters. RE in the Dallas area has been going nuts on the upside. I have seen several long time land lords cashing out.

So, I am not offended by what you have been saying. I am offended to what I feel is you glossing over the risks. Leverage always has risks. You want to deal with the leverage; I respect that. But a lot us are not interested in leverage up. Please try to understand and respect that.

Thanks.