mrjin

We don't understand how do we understand. Then, how can we be expected to create something that can understand?

No too many, and lots actually run without any issues by using compatible mode.

Cannot agree more. Used Windows Server 2003 for over a decade, until I moved away from desktop to laptop and started having driver issues.

Nope, I did not. I clearly mentioned the account initial balance etc., and most importantly I did not want to set up a whole charter of accounts. You cannot simply say the sum of all accounts should be zero, depending on the convention used, the balance of account can all be positive. The only thing you can say for sure is that sum of all credit amounts minus all debit amounts should be zero.

I don't think those listed companies tend to undervalue their inventories as it will make their balance sheet ugly and potentially reducing their ability to raise more capital. But even if they did do so, those gaps should be shown in accounts like unrealized loss etc instead of just evaporate. Tesla has a professional accounting team, it's impossible they made such mistakes.

Hey, it's time for some basics of accounting. Below are how those going to look like in the books. Assume initially there were $2000 in cash account, nothing in assets.

Cash-Account^^^^^^^^^^^^Assets^^^^^^^^^Asset-Fluctuations^^^^Comments

$2000CR^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^$0CR^^^^^^^^^^^$0CR^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Initial entry/balance

$2000DR^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^$2000CR^^^^^^^^$0CR^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Buying the asset*

$1500CR^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^$2000DR^^^^^^^^$500CR^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Selling asset with a loss*

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

$1500CR^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^$0CR^^^^^^^^^^^$500CR^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Final balances

You can see that for each transactions, the CR/DR amount are always matching, but the money flows to different accounts. After those two transactions, the company still has $1500 in cash, and realized a $500 loss, but the sum of all account balances is still $2000CR.

Given the huge amount of transactions and the rounding associated with taxes, thus there might be very small discrepancies between CR entries and DR entries, and that's only legit reason money vanished from accounts. I would expect such amount is no more than a couple of hundred dollars, even take a step back thousands, that's still heaven and hell differences. I cannot find a reason other than fraud can lead to such a big hole.

Lol. That's probably one of the considerations while designing the tax rules.

There is a level of indirection as it should. But that indirection also adds distortions.

It should matter, but it actually doesn't matter as much as you thought as there is a level of indirection.

Just look back to the promises made before the election, how many were never fulfilled?

You don't cut your own fingers. And that pretty much the whole story.

Yep. Get your points. They can if they wish. The question is do they want to? If so, why were those loopholes there in the first place?

Those loopholes were by design, complicated enough to prevent most people like us to take advantage of it but will allow those who can afford to evade lots. I'm not sure if people is just naive or playing dumb.

My point was that Tax Laws were deliberately complicated to allow some people to evade taxes. If you put that into consideration, you will find it's a lot easier to understand the status quo. Again, what you think or what I think do not matter after all.

Even if you try to tax the riches, they have billions of ways to evade it. The tax laws are so complicated for a reason. Here in Australia, there were cases that some individuals that earned just about A$1M pa., and they paid ~A$980K to companies registered in Virgin Islands etc. for managing tax affairs. Such arrangement knocked down their taxable income to ~A$19K, and thus they paid probably a couple of dollars taxes if not not even a dime. Eye-opening, right? But those were not those super rich ones. You can just imagine what those super rich people can do. So the burden of the tax would be on mid-income people. I would expect the same in US.

Nothing lasts forever. The rich get most of the economic growth is inevitable. It's the Matthew effect. In general, the more assets you have, the more passive income you have, which in turn frees people up from worries about making breads for the family, and thus can spend more time on think and do things more important in the long run. Again, that would reinforce their financial status. In the meantime, the poor would have to worry about next meal, and mostly don't have the reserve for investments. Thus, they will most likely struggle to save something, and even if they do manage to save some, an unexpected event can easily wipe it out before it reaches the threshold.

If the riches were conscious enough, they would return a fair share to the poor and the eventual crash will be deferred much longer. But you know, everyone wants more money, no exception for the riches. It looks the only thing we learn from the history is that we learn nothing from history. So here we are: the same drama of empires' rise and fall, the only differences are the locations and the actors.