Clerky when I last used it nearly a decade ago was lead generation for Delaware's business franchise tax.
Nothing ever came of my incorporated business (no spend, no revenue) and I received extremely menacing "collections" physical mail over many months about delinquent business incorporation franchise tax payments and escalating fees + fines (which I never paid).
The experience left me a very negative opinion of Clerky (and Delaware).
Sorry to hear you had a poor experience. Just for clarity, we don't get anything out of the Delaware franchise tax. We'd certainly rather it not exist. But the franchise tax and the late penalties, and the fact that there is a minimum tax even if your corporation didn't do anything, are just part of Delaware law.
I know, pretty much everyone on HN is a self-selected group that's pretty high up on the privilege/luck/wealth scale.
I immigrated to Germany from the US in 2013. My employer handled basically everything--even hired a personal assistant to accompany me to the immigration office and help with finding housing, which is pretty competitive in a major German city.
Honestly, immigration for highly skilled tech people is a walk in the park compared to basically everyone else. I used the term privileged because it's accurate--and I daresay it was a tad bit easier being white, having an advanced degree in tech, and even having some German roots. My experience was absolutely not what other people immigrating to Germany face, as they come from all over the place, there are far fewer slots, and there's a host of soft discrimination that even Eastern Europeans face trying to come to Germany. Like everywhere, there's xenophobia and isolationism, mistrust, and blame. Literally the exact same arguments, finger-pointing, suspicion. And that didn't fall on me.
I moved back to the US and handled the backend of that process, which honestly isn't too bad, but it was so much harder to deal with than one would expect--and that was just leaving. I have a bit of German language skills but legal German is a whole other matter.
When I read OP's comment it raised my hackles because it just sounds incredibly tone deaf. Lots of people want to come to America, and it isn't easy, even doing it right. Telling them they need to be prepared to get kicked out at the drop of a hat is a shitty welcome.
If we want to have reasonable controls on immigration and a better policy, I'm all for it, but let's focus on things that would work without screwing people over and treating them like subhuman garbage like this administration has. Limit the number of visas, handle visa overstays better. A ham-fisted, incompetent over-correction that has untrained meatheads shooting US citizens in the streets with no consequence isn't it.
I don't have a lot of patience for anyone carrying water for this administration. Not a thimble-full. If you think you have nuanced, smart-sounding take on immigration but is just victim-blaming, then it deserves to be challenged. I haven't got time for the leading edge of the Overton-window people who just can't confront their deep anti-immigrant biases and provide cover for the tragic and cruel things that are going down as we speak.
I have never had a silver spoon expat package. When I live abroad, I DIY: navigating immigration processes without employer or legal assistance.
I am extremely mindful that the visa that I am using is temporary. Perhaps as a white person in Asia, I'm reminded daily that I am a guest and that I don't accidentally fall into a mindset that misaligns with my visa status.
Its insane the hoops that I have to jump through that American Immigrants don't. For example, this week my landlord cut off my water and ended my lease due to me failing register an overnight guest with the local government. [0]
In the USA, its very expensive to find people that overstay, but in Vietnam b/c the government tracks everyone, they know exactly where you sleep every night.
I know that: "just because you have it bad, doesn't mean we have to have it bad." but the US system is much much more kind than any country I have lived in.
In the USA, we pay you to leave. In Thailand or Vietnam, they can toss you in jail if you can't pay the overstay fine.
The US economy provides a lot more resources for immigrants. In Vietnam, a 'good' salary is $850usd/mo. The lawyer I spoke to about assisting me said her hourly rate is $300/mo...
[0] - there is more to the story, for brevity ill just leave it short.
The outcome depends on the perspective of the person being talked about.
For the people looking to buy a home, do they really want to buy a home where property taxes can be raised without a limit? One of the benefits to home ownership is locking in housing expenses. A home becomes a lot less appealing when property taxes go unchecked.
You’re assuming all homeowners are rich. The whole point of capping property taxes increases is to not price normal people out of their homes. Home prices in California went up a lot over the past several decades. It is possible that someone is “rich” when it comes to net worth, because their home appreciated in value a lot, but that doesn’t help cash flow, which is what would be required to pay the property taxes. Because their home went up in value, should they be expected to sell the house, just to pay the taxes, and get pushed back to a rental? That sounds rather dystopian.
I’m all for rent control. If home owners can lock in rates, so should renters. We should encourage long-term stable rentals, instead of forcing people to move constantly. I would think landlords would want long-term stable renters, but my experience doesn’t align with that (except for one place).
The sales tax is high, but it’s not so far off other states that it looks egregious.
Income tax is only mentioned once in the article and it says it’s progressive, which is what the author seems to want. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take issue with there?
I rose an issue with the property taxes, because I think there is another side to the coin that is important.
>Because their home went up in value, should they be expected to sell the house, just to pay the taxes, and get pushed back to a rental?
Not that it's always necessarily ideal, but presumably they could sell the house and buy one in a cheaper community, that's sorta the natural flow of neighborhoods. People buy into a neighborhood and raise their families and then sell to new families after their kids move out and then they move on to smaller retirement sized homes.
You’re ignoring several decades of a person’s life. People don’t tend to downsize until they retire, when the kids might be out of the house by the time they’re 45. My mom has been in her home alone for 25 years, it’s 900sqft… what is she supposed to downsize to? It’s also nice to have a place to stay when I’m in town, and she enjoys that as well, in addition to having the grandkids over.
Also, downsizing in retirement is usually due to a failure to accumulate enough retirement savings during their working years. Leaving property taxes unchecked exacerbates that problem. That’s assuming they bought a big house to begin with.
Most people in my extended family never bought big homes. There is no downsizing, as the home is already very modest, like my mom’s place.
I also bought a modest home. If property taxes were to grow unchecked and I had to downsize… there isn’t anywhere to go, other than moving to the middle of nowhere, a trailer park, or a high crime area. My place is about the size of a single-wide trailer… how am I supposed to downsize without going to a studio apartment?
I’m kind of shocked people are trying to defend the idea of raising taxes at rates that outpace inflation. Why would anyone want this? People buy homes based on the current tax rate, because they can afford it. They can’t control if property values go up, yet you want them to be punished for it? Do you want this to happen to you if/when you buy a home?
A home is supposed to create some stability in a person’s life. Leaving property taxes unchecked erodes that stability, as the city could rug pull them at any moment.
Where I’m at, a lot of people are knocking down homes from the 1940s and building big new homes. I still have a 1940s home. The trend going on here is pushing up property values, and that’s not my fault. I don’t know what it costs to rebuild a home on existing property, but some homes a block away from me were going for $1m, almost 4x what I paid just a few years ago. I don’t know what prices will be like in 20 years, but it gives me some peace of mind knowing property taxes won’t run away on me. I’ve moved 24 times in my life… I need a break.
Exactly—and that’s the normal, healthy function of a housing market.
Prop 13 distorts that by making it financially irrational to ever move, which contributes directly to the lock-in and underutilization the article describes
There is no law regarding how and when (non-exec) employees can sell company stock. The SEC only restricts insider trading, and some companies voluntarily enforce blackout periods to reduce the chance of insider trading. Plenty of public companies (e.g. Microsoft) let employees trade whenever they want.
I think the effect is actually backwards: there may only be 2 windows instead of 4 but the total amount of time window per year should theoretically go up significantly. The 2 removed reports should make both of those quarters less subject to insider trading and therefore more tradeable.
In companies I've been in, insider trading windows close because there's been a certain amount of time since the last report. So less frequent reports = more time for insider to know things that aren't public yet = more time unable to trade, not less.
however the bigger issue here - is this is a ruse - there is a reason quarterly reporting brought transparency to companies - now they can easily hide nasty things.
you as an employee with stock options - yeah those are close to worthless since the price hit you can take can vary a lot.
For 6 months instead of 3. One could argue the need to show quarterly growth forces companies to do nastier things. Long term thinking is definitely needed these days when all companies are only focusing on short term gains.
Before 1970, the reporting was twice a year and in the first half of the twentieth century it was once a year.
Would that necessarily be a bad thing? I remember how that would drive short-termism on the part of regular employees. Since stock comp was a major part of many companies' salaries, people would hope for a bump in the earnings report. We complain about short-termism in the markets, but you can't say one thing and then do something else.
It would be bad in that it makes employees' stock less liquid. Stock-based compensation is a huge part of many employees' comp packages.
I think a small subset of people might adopt a short-term approach to equity ownership. I think a much larger subset would simply be selling to access the money they rightfully earned or to diversify their holdings instead of having the bulk of their stock portfolio in a single company.
What if someone froze half of your paycheck and said you can't touch it except for the two months out of the year that they say you can?
Nothing ever came of my incorporated business (no spend, no revenue) and I received extremely menacing "collections" physical mail over many months about delinquent business incorporation franchise tax payments and escalating fees + fines (which I never paid).
The experience left me a very negative opinion of Clerky (and Delaware).
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