lnofeisone

The conversion to shares can cause all sorts of issues. Your basis will be strike price + cost of option. If price of the stock went down, exercising won't let you capture that loss. Inversely, if the stock price went up, you are not paying tax on gain until you sell the stock. Also, the clock on long term/vs. short term taxation starts when you exercise. So the period of you holding the option doesn't count for LT tax purposes.

If you search, there is a thread with some passionate wash sale discussion. 1) Look up Gantner vs. IRS Commissioner case. In that case the taxpayer purchased call options, sold them at a loss, and then bought shares. Tax court ruled that options are not the same as stock. 2) Having said that, congress did amend rules to say that wash sales rule do apply to options and stock/option combos. Net, net the language "like securities" muddies the water a lot. Basically, options, no matter the strike, etc. and stock are treated the same in the eyes of IRS.

This would not work if the stock stays flat as he won't have a loss to capture on the option. So shares would need to be sold.

This would be a great use case for using options but ADBE options are incredibly richly priced.

I just need some coffee because it's serious mental gymnastics to say, "Oh, we had this agreement, but it doesn't conflict with us taking it back today." Let me remind you that Denmark sold the US Virgin Islands as part of that deal. Let's be honest here. Greenland is estimated to have rare earth minerals. That's the impetus. Just to be clear here is where my logic doesn't bend this morning. 1) Denmark was staking out a position in Greenland which was going counter to US Monro doctrine 2) Denmark was making every effort to bring Greenland under its control economically and politically. That would imply resources, lands, military, etc. 3) US, the only power that would have any issues, then says, "It's fine. We want US Virgin Island, and we don't object to you having all of Greenland," and this is the world order for 100+ years. Something happens. 4) It's now fine for US to go and take Greenland back? That's like me selling my house and then coming back sometime later and telling the new owner, "Never mind, I'm going to take the basement back."

Can you elaborate on the number of ways you can interpret this document? Especially in the context of Greenland being what Greenland is today for the last 100 years.

I had lunch with someone fairly senior at the IRS dealing with these layoffs. The IRS hired seasoned professionals from the top 10 accounting firms in the last several years. They felt they had pulled off a recruitment coup dealing with complicated issues, and now the program is dismembered. If you are US-based, feel free to be as aggressive as you want on your taxes - especially if your taxes are going to SB/SE or LB&I. Short of you not mailing your payment or committing fraud, there is no way the IRS will be able to get to you in time (3 years by law, 26 months is the guideline). I think $500B underestimates how much of a loss there will be. But all is good! Elon saved us some ceiling space on some random contract. What a clown show.

As Trump is showing today, he is the executive and he can wreak havoc on any agency and bring the party in line. He had the opportunity to do what he is doing today his first term. Let's also remember the whole email server fiasco that Republicans hung on Hillary (she was wrong to set it up, but there was nothing particularly of interest). So no, his first term wasn't stolen. And it's an absolute no for him being here for the third term.

In my head, I have a juxtaposition of Musk with the chainsaw and him crying like al little b**** on Fox saying how he is shocked by the hatred towards him from the left. If he is truly shocked, he is really delusional.

I've been buying Google slowly. I've only been working with their products for 10+ years and this is my 3rd time owning them including buying shortly after IPO and sold for 30% gain thinking I was smart.

Just to unpack this a little bit. CISA - the agency started by DJT during his first term - had a mission that followed the roadmap laid out in 2018, including the presence of a non-profit. So DJT hated the very thing he created and approved that Biden just allowed to happen. What irony. This report widely cites reports by an OIG investigation done in 2024 (before DJT 2.0). The very same OIG that was fired by DJT 2.0. Feels like there is an Inception-level irony here. Let us not ignore the fact that while Biden Admin got sued, SCOTUS dismissed the case. I don't like the expansion of CISA beyond the few very narrow specific things, but to lay this at the feet of dems is disingenuous.

It's only an issue if you claim loss in taxable and buy identical shares in non-taxable accounts. Also, sounds like you have gains so wash sale wouldn't apply.

Picked up PLTR vertical bull spreads.

In the US, things are very streamlined on the federal level, and pulling things like that off is unheard of. The federal government is far more sophisticated than the state and local so I can see how this could happen at those levels but not Federal. When I was doing work for fed they were sophisticated enough to get firm fixed price contracts and have us bear a lot of the risk. We would constantly have to manage cost and demands (and they were very demanding). When i have time and materials (or variants thereof) the clients were always judicious. Did I work with some monumental idiots, yes but I work with monumental idiots doing work for large (think F1000-F500) firms as well. The only common denominator is the people.

States have a lot more flexibility and can be gamed like that but for smaller amounts of $. You can't just buy trucks in Federal. Just look at the Tesla for the Dept. of State. Federal gov't has mechanisms for contracts that extend multiple years so this gamification actually hurts departments.

When I was working on Gov't contracts, my smallest contract was $3M. Biggest $300M over 5 years. All Federal. I've never seen anyone just blow through money. In fact, I've very frequently finished contracts that would have ceilings that were untouched (i.e., how much the limit was vs. how much was actually spent). I don't know what country you are in but this is 100% not Federal gov't. Maybe some state or grant-based locale.

Is your brother in state govt?

I have to disagree here. Unemployment initial claims are way up. People are pulling back on spending. Real estate houses are started to sit on the market longer than last year. A lot of negatives are starting to pop up.

And more fired probationary employees must now be reinstated...with back pay. Add that to the pile of waste and abuse. Add in a Trump/Musk-appointed influencer posing from a government office during work hours, and you now have fraud. A trifecta that describes the current administration. https://nypost.com/2025/03/12/us-news/trump-official-mclaurine-pinover-posted-fashion-influencer-videos-from-her-opm-office/ I wonder if she wrote this as part of her 5 bullets.

Your argument is likely correct for Model Y but fails to account for Model 3 also getting destroyed on sales. I don't think this is the end of Tesla. Tesla sales will stay impaired until Musk departs the company (even if he retains significant ownership) or until they offer substantial discounts. Some people overlook that failure to sell cars really hammers Tesla. Each unsold car hits their bottom line twice. Once for car profit and then with the inability to produce and sell a credit. Europe also extended their emission goals to 3 years instead of 1, another small cut for Tesla. Tesla's numbers in the next few quarters will be mighty ugly.

While I find @flesh's prose a bit logorrheic, I don't think anyone would disagree with having an efficient government that minimizes or eliminates fraud, waste, and abuse and maintains a healthy budget. The crux of the argument here is the HOW. How are Elon and DT going about fixing the gov't. There are laws and processes and they disregard both. So far the savings amounted to fractions of what they claim and their actions are being reversed (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-civil-service-board-reinstates-thousands-fired-usda-employees-2025-03-05/) which basically amounts to added cost (workers were out 2 weeks doing 0 work, they will get backpay, and now they have to get reprocessed back in, which is extra work). Add in republicans threatening to impeach judges they don't like and the DOJ, on behalf of OPM, straight up lying to the court (and the DOJ got rightfully called out by the union and scolded by the judge); there is a lot not to like about the approach of the current administration. Given that Musk is running DOGE with the blessing of DT, this is 100% on him.

Add a bit of a broader context here about US population: 32% identifies as republican. 15% are center, lean republican. 33% are democrats 16% are center lean democrat 51% of viewers identified as republican. 27% of viewers identified as independents 20% of viewers identified as democrats Do you see the sampling problem or do you need me to walk you through how this poll was mostly republican current view of Trump?

I know several LB&I Revenue Agents who were let go. All hyper-talented folks from the likes of PWC, Deloitte, BDO. Some handled tax accounts for the stocks we discusson this board. This means that tax issues won't get solved as fast and since most corporate taxpayers tend to pre-pay while debating issues, this is capital tied up at 6% (IRS will pay interest) while taxes are being resolved. Doesn't take much to figure out that a $1.5M tax issue delayed a year just cost corporate tax payer (and ergo shareholders) the salary of a revenue agent. Just to give you a feel for the magnitude of LB&I issues, Coca-Cola paid $6B in back taxes while waiting for the judge's decision. But sure, our outlier president can claim he saved $150k cutting a revenue agent while costing shareholders tens of millions in opportunity cost. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-08-05/coca-cola-to-pay-6-billion-in-irs-back-taxes-case-while-appealing-judges-decision

Gov't processes aren't synched like that. Something is happening every single month (for example, Gov't FY starts on Oct 1st), so there is no excellent transition month that won't set off fireworks. Especially when fireworks are poorly thought out and largely illegal. Speaking of our outlier leader, he just crossed favorable/unfavorable (very much entering unfavorable). Even Joe Biden took 9 months to get to this point. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/

Part of the IRS handling the filing season isn't getting hit. That's the IT bunch. The compliance and enforcement are getting gutted. Those are the revenue agents focusing on large businesses and international and just broad compliance programs.