jdminhbg 10 months ago

Very big! Minimization is when I do it, avoidance is when Apple does it.

  • AmericanChopper 10 months ago

    According to this article, it’s actually evasion when Apple does it!

    • brookst 10 months ago

      The great thing is nobody knows the difference between minimization and avoidance unit after years of very expensive litigation.

      • AmericanChopper 10 months ago

        Those two concepts are very much the same thing. There is no literally distinction between legally minimising the taxes you have to pay, and legally avoiding a tax that you would otherwise have to pay. You just want to have a different word to use to criticise people/groups/companies you don’t like doing something you seem to otherwise approve of, so you don’t look like a hypocrite.

NoboruWataya 10 months ago

How? There's a big difference between avoidance and evasion, but avoidance and minimization mean pretty much the same thing in this context.

  • sroussey 10 months ago

    I think of minimization as doing things like taking deductions, and avoidance as creating confusing structures of new entities in order to take advantage of gray areas and deciding that the cost of getting caught is not material.

tombert 10 months ago

Yeah, that's fair enough; outside of keeping as much money as I can in ETFs and index funds, my tax strategies are pretty much non-existent since I don't have enough money for it make a huge difference.

  • quesera 10 months ago

    If there are any novel or situation-specific conclusions drawn, that sounds like an easy sell to CPAs and independent tax preparers. Maybe even individual tax optimizers.

    My naive assumption is that sophisticated analysis will return the same few well-known recommendations almost all the time -- the taxation variant of eating properly, sleeping regularly, and getting appropriate exercise.

    • tombert 10 months ago

      Certainly for anything I actually do, I've not found anything that is better than something like TurboTax gives me.

      The scope of what I'm working on is trying to build strategies for holding and selling stock as well in order to minimize taxes. I've only ever used it on paper trades.