| #: |
From / Date: |
Question / Answer: |
| 7065. |
Roger
Baytown, Texas
Age: 60
Feb 1, 2010
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LLC owned cars #7060
Tangible personal property can be taxed if it is used in the producction of income. SB340 was passed in 2003 and became effective in January 2004.
Harris county's web site can provide more info hcad.org. If it is not used in the production of income it shouldn't be taxed, but you will have to protest the tax.
Submitted Link #1: HTTP://hcad.org...
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| 7064. |
Seth
collbran, co
Age: 50
Feb 1, 2010
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LLC-owned cars taxed as business property
"I have received an appraisal notice from Harris County on the two cars owned by my LLC. It seems they want to levy tax on the cars as business assets. What is the best way to respond? The cars are not used as business assets; the LLC does not even operate a business or operate as a business. There are exemptions that can be applied for. The Personal Use Leased Vehicles exemption may apply, but I'm not sure yet. This has surely happened to others previously so I hope I can get some good advice based on experience.
{Answer]:
... If it has happened to others, I have certainly never heard of it. Let's see if any Texas drivers respond.
========================
You have just run squarely into the conundrum of using a business (an LLC) to hold title to anything: Business Use and Ownership taxes.
While this may be a new phenomenon in Texas, it's been the law in Colorado for a long, long time that the state and many local cities and towns require ALL businesses to list ALL business personal property that a business owns (from coffee makers to computers) with the county tax assessor so that they can send you an ownership and use tax bill.
This is THE single most disobeyed law in Colorado. Few small business owners ever bother to file the required list of equipment, and it's routinely been ignored for decades. However, with the current financial crisis faced by most municipalities, they are dusting off these old statutes looking for revenues, and they are starting to crack down on businesses which fail to file the lists and fail to pay the tax.
In a couple of cases, some over-zealous tax assessor, on orders from the City Council, not only started physically going to businesses and inventorying equipment, but they started assessing not only BACK TAXES (I think they can go back 3 to 5 years) and PENALTIES for failing to file the necessary paperwork. This sometimes amounted to tax bills nearing $100,000 for delinquent small businesses, which threatened to put them out of business.
This resulted in some major fireworks around here, and the Legislature has been trying for a couple of years to repeal the business personal property tax at the state level. Which doesn't help at the municipal level.
Whether you can get away with claiming the vehicles are not used for business while they are actually owned by a business is going to depend on your local laws. My instinct would be to immediately move your LLC's principle place of business to a state where they don't impose such business personal property taxes (like possibly Montana) and register your vehicles there. That will require some research though, to make sure Montana isn't going to do the same thing.
Good luck!
...
Although you say "they are actually owned by a business," I disagree. They are owned by a legal entity which may or may not be a business. The IRS, for example, completely ignores single-member LLC ownership as long as no tax number has been assigned to it.
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| 7063. |
Alan
Austin, TX
Age: 29
Jan 31, 2010
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DL
IF a drivers license expires, how long does it take for it to "disappear" from the system database, where it is no longer able to be looked up?
...
Probably never.
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| 7062. |
Orin
Harper Woods, MI
Age: 36
Jan 31, 2010
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Do I have too many phone numbers?
For years, I've always maintained several different mail receiving addresses, each with a corresponding different voice-mail number. Along with each unique address and phone number is a slight variation of my name spelling.I take pains to give the least information possible for whatever situation I'm in. Currently I've got 5 different addresses, each with its own unique phone number corresponding to that geographic location. It gets complicated sometimes remembering to stay current with checking email and snail mail, especially since several are in different states. Perhaps there is a simpler way to maintain maximum privacy and to stay off databases? Thankfully I rent a small home under an assumed name, paying the landlord cash in 3 month installments, getting a discount too. All utilities are included except phone and cable. My car is stored in a private garage a few miles away, and I walk to work, since it's only a 1/2 mile away. Thank you all for any helpful advice.
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| 7060. |
Bill
Houston, TX
Age: 49
Jan 30, 2010
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LLC-owned cars taxed as business property
I have received an appraisal notice from Harris County on the two cars owned by my LLC. It seems they want to levy tax on the cars as business assets. What is the best way to respond? The cars are not used as business assets; the LLC does not even operate a business or operate as a business. There are exemptions that can be applied for. The Personal Use Leased Vehicles exemption may apply, but I'm not sure yet. This has surely happened to others previously so I hope I can get some good advice based on experience.
...
If it has happened to others, I have certainly never heard of it. Let's see if any Texas drivers respond.
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| 7059. |
Kay
Sydney, Australia
Age: 26
Jan 29, 2010
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Book on dressing well
Hi Mr Luna. I remember reading in one of your books that you recommended a book about how it is really important to dress well. I was wondering if you could tell me the title?
...
"Dress for Success."
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| 7058. |
Preston
Spuzzum, BC
Age: 40+
Jan 29, 2010
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deleting myself from the net
How do I go about removing myself from the net? In my younger years I made the mistake of filling out company data bases for contests etc so my name and home address exist in literally hundreds of corporate and government databases. I've read your book (revised edition) and I already practice some your techniques. The only thing I can think of is go into Iran-Contra mode and exercise 'plausible-deniability'. Do I simply hope that information will just expire after no contact and denials that I no longer live at that address or exist?
Lastly, can anyone verify that that the NSA has a new e-mail snooping software codenamed Pinwave? Any advice would be appreciated.
...
Until you MOVE, not much hope. Sorry.
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| 7057. |
Henry
Lansing, MI
Age: 27
Jan 29, 2010
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Re:Pete Hong Kong re: good anonymous email services
I think you'll find that sending e-mail through safe-mail.net will reveal the sender's IP ADDRESS to the recipient. Hushmail DOES NOT reveal the sender's IP ADDRESS. For that reason, I prefer the free version of hushmail, when I feel the need to be anonymous.
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| 7056. |
Hamish
Salem, Oregon
Age: 67
Jan 29, 2010
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Re:#7048, Printer Identification
Those "yelloow dots of mystery" are to identify colour printers that are being used to produce counterfeit currency. To generate an anonymous letter, print it on a black-and-white printer. Or produce a black-and-white photocopy using a copier set to produce only two shades of grey: black and white.
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| 7055. |
Marc
Seattle, Washington
Age: 52
Jan 29, 2010
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LLC Realty Purchase
When purchasing realestate in the name of a LLC would a SSN or TIN/EIN be required?
...
No.
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| 7054. |
Michael
Columbus, OH
Age: 38
Jan 29, 2010
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7051: Infragard
Just to fill you in on this, in the early days, Infragard was trying to fill a void that lacked between the federal government and private companies pertaining to communications about security threats and really to develop connections between security teams, government and corporate alike. After about 3 years, this function started to become more about information security awareness. The fb1 already keeps in touch with security teams at particular institutions; banks, airports, telecommunications. Infragard has not really amounted to much in several years and I would advise that no one be overly concerned about what this group does. They are just resume' filler for corporate IT security people looking for new jobs.
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| 7052. |
Pete
Hong Kong
Age: 27
Jan 29, 2010
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re: good anonymous email services
This is for Michael, q# 7049. The short answer is that there are not any that are very good. I find safe-mail.net to be the easiest and best though. The is also a new outfit I am excited about - countermail.com - but it's not known when they will be past beta-testing mode. I actually wrote something on this topic you may find insightful (see link).
Submitted Link #1: http://privacyoriented.baywords.com/2009/08/28/the...
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| 7051. |
Drake
LA, CA
Age: 34
Jan 29, 2010
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6927 - Infragard
Rex mentioned the public/private partnership between the FBI and corporations at Infragard (dot) com. Their members include public utilities, banks, technology companies, etc. The link below is a story about the kinds of information they are focused on.
"Many of the world’s critical infrastructures were built for reliability and availability, not for security."
Submitted Link #1: http://cicentre.net/wordpress/index.php/2010/01/28...
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| 7050. |
Drake
LA, CA
Age: 34
Jan 28, 2010
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Forfeiture Scam
My posts keep sounding anti-government or anti-law enforcement. Don't get me wrong. A good person - who happens to be employed as a cop/government official - is a great friend to have. Some of the players are bent, many of the rules are not logical or realistic, and all of the organizations/bureaucracies have a rotten core.
Frustration at the system leads to ideas like that in the link below - stabs in the dark, wild, uncontrolled, and ultimately illegal.
Submitted Link #1: http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeitu...
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| 7049. |
michael
chicago illinois
Age: 56
Jan 28, 2010
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good anonymous email services
ok obviously hushmail is comprimised has anyone had any good luck with an anonymous email service outthere. Mail vault is to unreliable. Also any vpn service that individuals would recommend i have used smart hide however im looking to switch over just to mix things up. Any suggestions greatly appreciated happy hiding all
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| 7048. |
Robert
Rialto, CA
Age: 47
Jan 28, 2010
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Printer identification
There are some printers out there, HP that I know of, that mark each page printed with unique identification. I found this link below.
So sending anonymous letters is easily trackable especially if you bought your printer with a credit card.
Submitted Link #1: http://www.instructables.com/id/Yellow_Dots_of_Mys...
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| 7047. |
jay
phoenix,az
Age: 35
Jan 28, 2010
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How traceable is your browser?
Combined with your web browser's user-agent, accept-language, and other HTT P header information as part of each request as well as some system information obtained by JavaScript, this site [below] shows that your browser/OS is uniquely identifiable without using a single cookie or needing the same IP address on a subsequent hit should a web site desire to track unique visitors. Besides the JavaScript, you can control if you choose the data in the H TTP headers such as the user-agent if you choose, but along with an IP address, there is almost no way NOT to be uniquely identifiable if you browse without a proxy or some intermediary filter. For the truly paranoid, disable JavaScript and go through a proxy, or use a common prebuilt machine for your anonymous coffee shop web browsing so your browser fingerprint "blends-in".
Submitted Link #1: http://panopticlick.eff.org/...
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| 7045. |
Hamish
Salem, Oregon
Age: 67
Jan 28, 2010
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Google Toolbar Tracks Browsing Even After Users Choose
For people concerned about privacy, the Google Toolbar is a disaster. See the article at the link below, which concludes:
I’ve run Google Toolbar for nearly a decade, but this week I uninstalled Google Toolbar from all my PCs. I encourage others to do the same.
Submitted Link #1: http://www.benedelman.org/news/012610-1.html...
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| 7044. |
Richard
Park City, UT
Age: 30
Jan 26, 2010
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Google Voice and Ring Central
If you have Google Voice that gives you a free alternate number, there is now good iPhone integration so you can call from that number instead of your true number: m.google.com/voice
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| 7043. |
Alan
austin, TX
Age: 29
Jan 26, 2010
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Trust
Does one need a lawyer to create a trust or can this be easily done with the self-help books that are out there. To my understanding, a trust can be made by anyone and is not submitted anywhere, just stamped by a notary and mostly only disputed upon expiration of the author(s). Is this correct?
...
You need an attorney. Each state is different. Some states require two witnesses. Some states require that your name must be in the title of the trust! A trust is not as simple as you think. (If it were, I'd be recommending trusts for vehicle ownership instead of LLCs, especially for NY state!)
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