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Leisure Suit Larry Shows Up In Tax Court Decision

Leisure Suit Larry Shows Up In Tax Court Decision

I can imagine one of them telling me the story “You wouldn’t believe it, Pete.  This guy comes in and he tells me that he is going to make a video game.”  I reply that that is getting to be a big business now.  I know this because my buddy Mikey and I always go to the Dream Machine and drop quarters into Spy Hunter on our dinner breaks during tax season.
“I know, I know, but listen to what the game is about.  It’s about a forty-year-old guy going to discos and not getting laid.”  I agree that it seems kind of stupid.  Too much like real life.  “It gets even better, though. He thinks that in the long run, he’ll be making training simulators for the FBI and groups like that.”  Now that is really crazy.  Lots of guys in the FBI come from Jesuit Colleges.  They learned how not to get laid in Catholic grammar school, they don’t need a computer program for that.  “No. No.  The FBI stuff is from a submarine game.”  The FBI has submarines? “Anyway, I told the guy we were kind of busy and probably couldn’t help him”.
Accountants actually do provide value to entrepreneurs, but many of us are lacking in “the vision thing”.  It is not reasonable to chide someone who has succeeded in improbable ventures for not asking “experts” whether a business scheme is feasible or not.

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Billy Sol Estes – Better To Owe It To You Than Cheat You Out Of It

Billy Sol Estes – Better To Owe It To You Than Cheat You Out Of It

  If I sell you the Brooklyn Bridge that creates immediate income.  If I can convince you to loan me money using my interest in the Brooklyn Bridge as security and the transaction is recognized as a loan, that is not immediate income.  Someday, I may have to pay the piper if I finally stiff you, but there are ways around discharge of indebtedness income, like bankruptcy, for example.  That is why it is better to owe it to you, than cheat you out of it.

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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.