Tom WSMF wrote:
> Ok, show of hands. Your sporting 1million $ of worth on paper and it all
> hinges on stock options on a company you work for and whos value was doing
> the tech market tumble. How many DO NOT bother to keep an eye things?
Tom, had you ever even *heard* of AMT before this year?
My point is that this is not so much a matter of attention span of a user as it
is surface area of the tax code. True, AMT is a pretty obvious thing to be aware
of for people in Chou's circumstance, but regardless of that there's too much
there for any non-finance person to try and track. (Even the finance guys have a
hard time in complicated situations, my return extension beind an obvious result
of that. :-)
Further, whether Chou was in the following situation or not, this again speaks to
the concern I expressed earlier: that the tax code treats as taxable events
paper gains on assets before they are even *liquid* in some cases.
Bottom line: capital gains should be assessed when the asset is *sold,* never
before.
jb
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 29 2001 - 20:25:42 PDT