2 entries tagged taxes. All writing.
SEPTEMBER 30, 2026 Two-Tenths of a Percent, If Illinois Can See You Illinois just became the first state to tax Bitcoin transactions directly — a 0.2% Digital Asset Tax Act taking effect January 1, 2027. I went looking for what it actually reaches, using two Kankakee residents as the test case: one who owns a Bitcoin ETF inside an ordinary brokerage account, and one who wants to buy coffee with sats over the Lightning Network. The tax lands hard on one of them, barely touches the other, and can't see the actual coffee purchase at all — and the reason why says a lot about how a state can tax a ledger it doesn't control. SEPTEMBER 25, 2026 Ninety Percent of Nothing A tax idea keeps making the rounds: abolish federal and state income taxes for every US citizen, tax the profits of big public companies at 90% instead, keep taxing non-citizens, and break up monopolies in the process. It's easy to see why it appeals, since it hits a real nerve. I ran the arithmetic and followed what companies would actually do the morning after. The honest answer is that a 90% rate on corporate profit mostly teaches companies to stop reporting profit. After that I go through six alternatives that aim at the same targets, with what each one really costs.