The tax man seizes cryptocurrencies

But I thought crypto currencies were decentralised, anonymously owned/transacted and many steps removed from ‘the man’?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-18/irs-sees-crypto-seizures-totaling-billions-of-dollars-next-year?sref=qLOW1ygh

25 Great Truths & Possibly The 5 Best Sentences

GREAT TRUTHS

1. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress. —   John Adams

2. If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. —   Mark Twain

3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. —   Mark Twain

4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. —   Winston Churchill

5. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. —   George Bernard Shaw

6. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. —   G. Gordon Liddy

7. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. —   James Bovard , Civil Libertarian (1994)

8. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. —   Douglas Casey , Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

9. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. —   P.J. O’Rourke , Civil Libertarian

10. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. —   Frederic Bastiat , French economist(1801-1850)

11. Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. —   Ronald Reagan   (1986)

12. I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. —   Will Rogers

13. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free! —   P.J. O’Rourke

14. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. —   Voltaire   (1764)

15. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you! —   Pericles   (430 B.C.)

16. No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. —   Mark Twain   (1866)

17. Talk is cheap…except when Congress does it. —   Anonymous

18. The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. —   Ronald Reagan

19. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. —   Winston Churchill

20. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. — Mark Twain

21. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. —   Herbert Spencer , English Philosopher (1820-1903)

22. There is no distinctly Native American criminal class…save Congress. —   Mark Twain

23. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. —   Edward Langley , Artist (1928-1995)

24. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. —   Thomas Jefferson

25. We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. —   Aesop

FIVE BEST SENTENCES

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for…another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!

Could inheritance tax make a comeback?

Retirement and baby boomers continue to be a large growth demographic for the legal and financial industry, but I think retirees are becoming disenchanted about the various pieces of advice that they are receiving.

My experiences of Estate Planning have often involved either buying life/trauma insurance and establishing a will, while family trusts are used for tax minimisation and the distribution of income.

Although many retirees have an attitude towards their wealth of either, “It’s no use to you when you’re dead” or “That you can’t take it with you”, they do feel concerned what happens to the money after they have died.

Yet, it seems that even the best estate plans still end up in arguments and disputes.

Bickering over estate assets may be curtailed if estate planning advice extends beyond the selling of insurances or pre-paid funeral packages.

One aspect of estate planning that I don’t hear being discussed is “asset protection”.

When I think of the phrase “asset protection’, it’s often based around protecting your wealth from creditors and soured family, personal or business relationships. In other countries, asset protection also involves planning for inheritance tax.

Maybe a company, a family trust or my pension fund should own more of my assets. After all, these entities “keep on living” after I have passed away.

Planning for taxes?

Australia abolished inheritance tax (sometimes called death or estate duties) in 1979. Some readers will have experiences of how devastating this tax was on their family wealth.

We are now heading into a period of a massive transfer of generational wealth. At the same time governments are now looking to distribute wealth “wider and more evenly”, while also searching for more revenue.

Australians should at least prepare for a possible return of estate taxes.

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