Open Thread


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  1. concert turned out well. Good sized audience and they seemed to enjoy. The BrooklynSymphonyOrchestra is well worth attending, only $15 suggested admission and concerts are not that long. Like 90 minutes.
    Great venue for people with lots of tax deductions(kids) – to expose them to classical music where not stuck in a cramped seat.

  2. AMT is totally a red state vs blue state issue. Lower taxes are usually a conservative cause but the people who get hit with AMT tend to be blue staters. Kind of obvious why there is no political will to do anything about it.

  3. Lech, you’re right with mortgage interest – just updated that on my notepad.

    if you ever buy a house and have enough equity to tap a HELOC, you can use that to pay off all or some of your student loan cause interest on the HELOC is deductible

  4. In an attempt to not ‘spin’ issues to fit ones dogma….
    There have been attempts to change AMT which is not indexed for inflation and therefore hits more ‘middle’ income people over the years.
    But as I understand it, tax bills changes must be revenue neutral and cannot just reduce without making up somewhere else. So if get less revenue from that(AMT) – need to make up somewhere else…and that of course entails getting from someone else.

    Next part may have some of my ‘viewpoint’…..as was pointed out earlier, the AMT which limits amount of deductions falls more heavily on “blue” states and therefore non-blue legislators don’t object or at least aren’t so inclined to lower the tax burden on “blue”s …especially if had to be made up from “red”s. There have been several attempts by democrats to reform or index the AMT.

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