taxes speaking of taxes, our tax rate was way up again this year. generally because most of our taxable income was wages. that's not to say we didn't have investment income. we did. just none of it was taxable. cool huh? course the tax rate depends on what you count. i like to count everything. though that's still really imprecise. income is the sum of: wages, taxable interest, non-taxable interest, 401k, and maybe capital gains. why maybe capital gains? we're still carrying forward a loss larger than this year's gain. ouch. on one hand it's money we made this year. so it should count. but the tax rate on it is 0%. pah. i'll serve up numbers with and without. tax is the sum of: federal income tax, employee social security, employer social security, employee medicare, employee medicare, state, foreign, sdi, real estate, maybe federal amt, maybe state amt. why maybe amt? gawd i fucking hate amt. we exercised options on private stock for which there is no free market. ie it's not a real gain cause i can't sell it. yet the law says i have to pay real money taxes on a gain that only exists in paper. and might never become a real life gain. apparently, the law doesn't give a shit. so why should i? sheehs. anywho. after all the smoke clears, this year's tax rates: 49% (amt, no cap gains), 38% (amt, cap gains), 30% (no amt, no cap gains), 24% (no amt, cap gains). which is actually quite a swing. and really illustrates the points i've tried to make many many times in past posts: taxes on active income (like wages) are way to goddam high. taxes on exercising founder stock where i'm actively innovating my ass off are way way to goddam high. and taxes on passive income are too low.  ¶ 8:00 AM