Amit Kumar

Now is the golden age of taxes. You will tell your kids you paid tax at 30% federal rates and they won't believe you. To test this, I calculated what $500,000 would be adjusted for inflation every year since 1929 and then used the tax brackets in effect for each year to check how much tax would be due (yes, 90 years of taxes 😆). The obvious point is that the inflation-adjusted $500k income to tax gap is widening since the 1980s. But inflation messes with the scale of this chart so I've gone turbo-nerd in another chart here: The purple line is the average effective rate on $500k of income. It's the lowest it's been since 1940. And absent 10 wild years in the earlier 2000s, LT capital gains rates (green line) are at the lowest rates since the 1940s too. In the last 90 years, the average rate on $500k of income has been 31% - so the current rate of 24% is a steal. The blue line is the top ordinary rate in effect, but isn't realistic because brackets used to go up to 90+% for ultra high incomes. 🤯 I inflation adjusted the 1950 tax bracket to show that: So what's the point? Don't let taxes overly influence your decisions to not sell something or pay tax - it's as good as it's been in 80 years. And depending on how you feel about the pace of federal borrowing, it may be the lowest it'll be for a while. Godspeed fellow nerds.

The price of newly constructed homes is falling sharply. The median price of a new home fell to $409,300 in October, down more than 17% from a peak of $496,800. This dynamic is not the same in the existing home market... Let's explore the difference. 1/