Month: April 2018

In one of the strongest signs yet of the long-term effects of the economic recovery, for the first time since 1974, the world’s five largest corporations by market capitalization are both US-based and all in the same sector.

While the last two years have been particularly bullish for tech stocks, the broader-market slowdown combined with continued growth in the internet sector have shifted the focus away from the traditional market titans, energy and heavy industry. This change reflects the shift in the employment market as well, with the smallest share of American labor involved in manufacturing since pre-industrial times. Read more…

One month ago, amid even higher than normal volatility, Bitcoin underwent a split known as the “hard fork”. While there were myriad technical reasons for this to happen, the most pressing issue was the Bitcoin network being too slow to process the much higher volume of trades developing as cryptocurrency becomes a viable investment. After a few alternative solutions failed to get enough support to improve this situation, including a “replace-by-fee” method where, in essence, the trades that paid the highest commission would pass through the exchange first, the community gained enough votes to support splitting in two, and launching a second currency. While a financial advisor may compare this to a stock spinoff, what is actually happening is rather different, since unlike a stock spinoff, no value needs to be lost or redistributed from Bitcoin into an alt-coin. Read more…

While Medicaid pays for 59% of long-term elder care in the US (its largest category of spending by far), when the program was created it was intended as a “payer of last resort” — a form of insurance that takes over for poor seniors or, as is often the case, senior citizens made poor by their long-term care. With the average cost of a nursing home in New York reaching $128,000 per year, twice the cost of college, Medicaid is an inevitable fact of life for even successful retirees with what seemed like perfect estate planning.

Due to its need-based mandate, Medicaid has notoriously stringent criteria for eligibility, including hard limits on income (zero – any incoming payments must go directly to Medicaid), assets (no more than $14,200 in cash or investments), and gifts, both given and received. These rules became stricter after the Deficit Reduction Act of 2006 (which also made bankruptcy a more difficult, painful process) and will likely be tightened again in the next few years through the currently proposed health care reform. Read more…

If you have been considering filing for bankruptcy, you’ve probably heard about the “means test,” a requirement for filing Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in US courts.

Bankruptcy, by definition, depends on not having enough money to pay off one’s debts, let alone money to save or spend. Therefore it is a function of total net income, disposable income, and discretionary income, such that the total of one’s bills is greater than their disposable income, the amount that they receive in paychecks after tax withholding. If the remaining amount, the discretionary income, is zero or negative then you are, in fact, bankrupt.

The means test, specified by the Bankruptcy Protection Act of 2005, is an added eligibility requirement to file for bankruptcy, introduced by the Bush administration to make it more difficult for higher-income households to declare bankruptcy and have their debts discharged. Previously, the only requirement was to have negative discretionary income, i.e., more bills than earnings, especially when these bills are related to servicing debts such as mortgage and credit cards. Read more…

As most of us know, there have been drastic changes to the income tax system taking effect this year, thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, otherwise known as the Republican tax reform.

This is the first in a series of special articles to guide you through the most important changes, and show you where you may be able to maximize your refund or save money on your tax payments this year.

Did you know that the federal tax code is 6600 pages long? Or that there is another 70,000 pages and growing of case law around it, interpreting, expanding and attempting to clarify these rules? And despite being an attempt to simplify tax law, this year’s legislation is likely to lengthen the code even further, rather than making it less, well, taxing. Read more…

As tax time approaches, there are even more questions than usual this year. With the sweeping changes in tax law that passed in December, what used to be deductible might not be anymore, and what used to be taxed might be taxed differently, or not at all, now.

The scariest change for millennials, the removal of the deductions for tuition, student loan interest, and grad student tuition waivers, was removed from the House bill at the last minute, sparing college students from the worst of the tax reform.

But what else does the new tax code have in store, and how will it affect you? Read more…

Like it or not, the gig economy is here to stay, especially for younger workers and job searchers. While, according to a study from Intuit, 34 percent of workers under 30 are working temporary and/or independent contractor jobs at any given time, and statistics from the BLS show about another 10 percent are permanently freelancers or self employed, nearly 80% of millennials have participated in the gig economy at least once, whether as Uber drivers, contract bloggers and writers, social media marketers, participants in brand-new unstable startups, or at more traditional employment agencies. That’s not to say all of them want to stay there… only 1 out of 11 don’t want to eventually work a standard full time job. Read more…