Articles

Upper-Income Taxpayers Plan for Capital Gains & Income Tax Hike, WSJ

Capital-gains taxes, currently set at 15%, are set to rise. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said they should rise to 20%. Without congressional action, they will be treated as regular income and will be subject to a taxpayer's top marginal rate.

Arch Brown has converted his traditional retirement accounts into plans with better tax advantages. Andrew Ahrens has been buyin gold and silver and selling stocks. Archie Anderson might speed up the sale of two equities himself. Mike Henry is considering selling timber.The four are among a growing group of high-income taxpayers who assume they will see higher taxes next year, no matter what Congress does to address the expiring tax cuts from the George W. Bush administration. More than four months before the expiration date, they are making plans to mitigate any impact.Mr. Brown, a Tucson,Ariz.,businessman, said he is working on the assumption that "the tax rates for people like me who have income over $250,000 will go up."The maneuvering ahead of Dec. 31 has confounded traditional tax preparations and spawned feverish activity among higher earners, a trend reported by tax planners and financial advisers across the country.
By Gary Knight, August 21, 2010 WSJ

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08/21/10 wsj

Billionaire Land Swap Triggers Colorado Dust-Up, WSJ

Billionaire William Koch wants to trade land elsewhere to acquire a strip of federal land, including the road seen above, that separates sections of his 4,500-acre ranch in Colorado..."There is always suspicion around a deal like this that is benefitting someone who is wealthy and influential...and this has not been a real open, public process," said Janine Blaeloch, director of the Western Lands Project, a nonprofit group that monitors land swaps and generally is opposed to transfers of public land into private hands.

COLORADO REAL ESTATE — Billionaire energy magnate William Koch's 4,500-acre cattle ranch in western Colorado is split in two by a large strip of federal land—and he wants to change that.The government land includes a road that takes hunters and hikers into a popular national forest, but some visitors stray and trespass onto Mr. Koch's property, according to his ranch manager. So Mr. Koch wants to take title to the federal land—and close the road—by swapping the parcel for land he owns elsewhere in the West.But the way the swap would be executed has drawn criticism in the region. Because the proposal involves multiple federal agencies and land in two states, the deal can't be dispensed with through normal administrative process, which include local public hearings and a thorough environmental review. Instead, it must be handled by Congress, through legislation mandating the swap.
By Stephanie Simon, August 20, 2010 WSJ

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08/20/10 wsj Billionaire Land Swap Proposal Stirs up Dust

Goodbye, Glitzy Condo Pitches, Hello Re-Invention, NYT

Some developers with stalled projects are confident that after a hiatus of a year or longer, now may be a good time to reintroduce
their buildings, because prices have stabilized.

The recession has not been kind to many new condominium developments in New York City. Some have stalled midconstruction; others have shuttered their sales offices because of inactivity; some developers have had to return deposits to buyers as prices took a nosedive.But two years after the real estate market seized up, some of the hardest-hit developments have found ways to rise from the ashes. In some cases, the original developers avoided default by renegotiating their construction loans, and in others new developers stepped in and took over.In all cases, the need for reinvention has been paramount.To adjust to a market strikingly different from the high-flying one that reigned when these projects were conceived, developers have not only created new marketing campaigns but also substantially changed the buildings themselves. Focusing less on trendiness and more on value, they have redesigned lobbies, combined apartments to create more family-sized units, and swapped luxuries like private roof cabanas for shared amenities like common roof decks. The changes all seek to appeal to today’s much more skeptical buyer.
By Vivian S. Toy, August 20, 2010 NYT

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Information Overload Is Nothing New, WSJ Oped

From the Roman Empire to the BlackBerry jam...In Roman times, there was the rise of written communication that became a huge part of the everyday lives of literate Romans... but "Elite, literate Romans were discovering the great paradox of information: the more of it that's available, the harder it is to be truly knowledgeable. It was impossible to process it all in a thoughtful way." People", Seneca the Roman philosopher observed, grazed and skimmed, absorbing information "in the mere passing."

It's high summer and we're all out there seeing each other. We're not hidden away in our homes and offices as we are in winter's cold. We're part of a crowd—on the street, in the park, on the boardwalk, on the top deck of the ferry to Saltaire. And we can see in some new or clearer ways how technology is changing us. For one thing, it is changing our posture. People who used to walk along the avenues of New York staring alertly ahead, or looking up, now walk along with their heads down, shoulders slumped, checking their email and text messages. They're not watching where they're going, and frequently bump into each other. I'm told this is called a BlackBerry jam.
By Peggy Noonan, August 20, 2010 WSJ oped

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