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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greatplains_guy who wrote (70919)	11/2/2014 12:27:04 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I have been advised by multiple successful businesspersons to never invest to take advantage of tax advantages. They told me (and others who would listen) to make sound investing decisions. Then they advised to take advantage of tax loopholes that happen to coincide with good investment decisions. It is excellent advice and when I was a practicing CPA I gave the same advice every time it came up. At that time, tax shelters were in their heyday. A client came to me with a partnership, with 20+ partners, who had purchased a certified historic structure and begun to rehab it. It was cool -- 25% tax credit for partners, almost all the money was borrowed, so they put up nothing and got a combined $20M in credits. They were happy the day it opened. A few months in, under the leadership of an incompetent fool, the entire operation collapsed financially. 20-something partners, all lawyers, and all jointly and severally liable on the debt. Adding insult to injury, they had to recapture [pay back] every nickel of tax credit the next year. Great tax benefit, lousy investment, turned out to be a lousy tax benefit, too. Corporate income taxes are different, of course, because if you're not fighting them you're losing big dollars. This country, if its leadership had any sense at all, would totally do away with the corporate income tax. If not that, at least cut it to something reasonable. You would quit driving business away from the US and make this the place for business to be. Along with it, you would create tons of jobs and investment here. The corporate income tax collected is simply not worth giving up the opportunity. Not sure why they can't see that.