I just want to take a quick poll...

[john]

You've obviously didn't own a house more than three years ago as every home owner in the US rode the housing market wave after Clinton forced Fannie and Freddie give everybody a home loan. We all did pretty nicely on that, you wouldn't be so excited about doubling the capital gains tax if you were one of us. And besides that, exactly what do you think the government is going to do for you with that extra money? Show me any government program that is self-sufficient.


First off, the housing market did too well for too long. I knew coming out of HS that it was going to collapse. The price of housing was rising a lot faster than peoples income levels. This is not a sustainable trend.

What happend is that people bought houses when they could hardly afford them banking on the houses gaining in value and being able to make ends meet in the short term as the long term outlook was good. They thought, if I wait a couple years when I can afford this house, it will be another 60k higher and I won't be able to afford it. Everyone was buying a house from an investment standpoint, not for a place to stay for their entire lives.

There is an exemption if someone holds a house as a principal residence (250k and 500k for joint) for 2 years or more. What this did is make is so most homeowners didn't have to pay capital gains tax on the sale of their home. What I am trying to get at is that even if you sold your house now and made $200k, you would most likely not be taxed.

People doing well in the housing market had absolutely nothing to do with the capital gains rates. If you are doing it every couple of years, the exemption applies. If you are flipping houses every few months, it is ordinary income and capital gains rates also don't apply. Only in the 1-2 year mark does the capital gains rate come into play, which is not very often.

If their wasn't demand for the houses, the market wouldn't have soared. The problem was that the demand was triggerred by houses appreciating too fast.

Don't try to get Obama's tax plan tied into the housing crisis as it has not affect on the future of the housing market. The capital gains rates are rare in the housing market.

[john]

You pay capital gains at the end of the tax year on anything higher than your regular income if I remember correctly. My mother had to go out and buy a new car in 2001 with what was left over from when she refinanced her home. If she hadn't, she would've been hit with capital gains on what was left.


YOU HAVE NO IDEA AT ALL WHAT CAPITAL GAINS TAX IS.

If you want to post about it, do some reading first. A house refinance is not a taxable event, buying a car is not a tax deduction, and capital gains has nothing to do with a higher than regular income.

[john]

The economy is mostly screwed because of the housing market collapse, and Bush had pretty much nothing to do with it. Maybe you should look into who the politicians were that encouraged subprime lending and who was involved at Freddie/Fannie. As a hint you will find a lot of "D"s


Here you are trying to point the housing crisis at the democrats, F-ing rediculous. It is america that is to blame for the housing crisis, if the demand wasn't pushing the mortgage lenders, this wouldn't have happened. It is easy to blame this on Freddie/Fannie but this wouldn't have happened if the opportunity wasn't there. If were were responsible people who knew that not all of us could afford a house, there wouldn't have been any pressure on them to act.

I agree that this is not bush's fault but don't try and point the finger at democrats. They couldn't do anything on their own.

[john]

When you are saving lives and allowing people to live longer (or keep children alive that even just a few years ago would have died) then yes, billions in profits is acceptable. They are supplying a great service to this world and deserve to be rewarded for it. If they were not rewarded for it, do you think they'd being doing it?

I think opinions like this are interesting, companies "serving the community." If a company is in business to make money, are they in business to serve the community???? Is the goal of these said companies to come up with a life saving product or is it to make a ton of money because they came up with a good product??? I think the latter. I have no problem with a for profit company making money, I have an issue when they are in business to make money and call it "serving the community."

As you can guess, I don't believe that a lot of businesses are here to "serve the community."

[slowbubblecar]

The economy is mostly screwed because of the housing market collapse, and Bush had pretty much nothing to do with it. Maybe you should look into who the politicians were that encouraged subprime lending and who was involved at Freddie/Fannie. As a hint you will find a lot of "D"s

Since when do politicians grant loans???? Last time I checked it was financial institutions making these loans. Fannie and Freddie bought the loans from financial institutions if you didn't know. They don't have offices open for people to go into to get a loan. The only reason Fannie and freddie are having problems is from people not paying their loans. It has nothing to do with home values. Regardless of home values, if people were paying their loans as the terms stated, they would be doing just fine.

[john]

Outsourcing of jobs was done with NAFTA (remember when CLINTON passed this through? ) and how can lowering taxes possibly hurt the economy? Lowering taxes means there is more money in the economy, which actually strengthens it. We are a capitalist society, why should goverment control our private party health care system? It doesn't work well in any other country where it is implemented, so why do that here?

How can lowering taxes ever help a country which is trillions in debt and struggling to balance the budget? There is no proof that lower taxes means more spending, especially in a recession. People are more likely to save the money as they do not know how bad times are going to get. I know that I didn't do anything special when I recieved my stimulus check, did you?? It just went in my account and was used like normal. No increase in spending.

[john]

I will make a correction to a post without quoting as I have probably filled an entire page.

Regarding capital gains rates, selling a property in the 0-1 year range is considered a short term capital gain, which is taxed at ordinary income rates. Most of these are businesses where it is ordinary income anyhow.

I am done posting on this. We may want to closes this soon before people start getting stupider from reading it.

[311evo]

yes yes we know, Obama is great and he will save us all and we'll magicaly have more money.

Dumb. theres not going to be many people making 200k a year, but the few that do need to spend money to keep our economy going, but that wont happen because all their hard earned money is being taken. sweet.

Were Fuct. Completely. let the thread die.


until 4 years from now when all of our ass hopes are ruptured from Obama, then we can bring it back up.

[Febo]

Holy crap! John is on fire! Your my hero!!!

[MATCHBX]

YOU HAVE NO IDEA AT ALL WHAT CAPITAL GAINS TAX IS.

If you want to post about it, do some reading first. A house refinance is not a taxable event, buying a car is not a tax deduction, and capital gains has nothing to do with a higher than regular income.

Sorry that I misspoke myself. It was a home improvement loan that she needed use up the money from. She wasn't looking for a tax deduction, just not get hit at the end of the year.

And yes I do know about capital gains tax. I was generalizing when I typed instead of reciting volumes of text from the IRS site. There are a few levels of tax rates for the long terms and short terms are at income tax levels. These things I do know as well as others. I just don't feel the need for typing everything all at once. So is there anything else that you want to recite from the tax code to me? I'm not trying to be a dick, but when you come after many people like a pompous ass, you're gonna get it back a little.