Will anything happen to me if the AMT is not re-established before 2011?
According to pages 6 & 7 of the instructions for form 1040 in 2009 AMT was only temporarily patched for the year. Congress can't politically afford to drastically cut AMT exemptions by 30 to 40%, and may even retroactively change it, if it isn't passed by the end of the year (despite the constitution forbidding ex post facto laws) : What’s New for 2009 ...    Alternative minimum tax (AMT) exemption amount increased. The AMT exemption amount has increased to $46,700 ($70,950 if married filing jointly or a qualifying widow(er); $35,475 if married filing separately)... What’s New for 2010 ...    Alternative minimum tax (AMT) exemption amount. The AMT exemption amount is scheduled to decrease to $33,750 ($45,000 if married filing jointly or a qualifying widow(er); $22,500 if married filing separately). So, if you are married, and several regular tax deductions push your income below the AMT exemption amount of $45,000, it's quite possible you would be required to pay AMT, even if you didn't last year. There is a work sheet for AMT in the instructions for line 43, but the IRS also provides an AMT calculator. According to page 146 (E-8) of the instructions for form 1040 AMT is paid as: the smallest amount you are allowed to report as your taxable income (Form 1040, line 43). It is also the smallest amount you are allowed to report as your alternative minimum taxable income   (AMTI) on Form 6251, line 29. If the [AMT calculation] is larger than your taxable income would otherwise be, enter the amount from column (c) on Form 1040, line 43 [or ...] Form 6251, line 29.  As always, congress finds ways to further complicate things by making a few credits and losses deductible against the absolute minimum you're expected to pay taxes on, making the AMT a misnomer. Depending on your income, you may owe AMT instead of the taxes from the regular code.  Even if you don't do that, you may hit the place where you have to at least check if you owe AMT. As you probably know, AMT was established early on to catch the wealthiest of tax payers who were able to use various loop holes in the code to pay much less tax than one would expect.  Over time the limits on AMT have not risen with the rising wage gap, and AMT catches an increasing number of tax payers each year.  If the limit is not raised at all for 2010 then it will catch even more people this year.   AMT has worked it's way into the upper-middle class fairly solidly, especially if you exercise stock options whose strike price is significantly different than the current sale price.
"&gt; ...from McConnell's POV, that's where the amorphous ""spirit of the system"" was broken.   I don't see how.  Scalia's nomination happened in a Republican controlled Senate.  Bork's nomination happened in a Democrat controlled one.  Also twice before, with Haynsworth in 1969 and Carswell in 1970, a Democrat Senate rejected a Republican appointment so Bork was not unprecedented.  Since that same time, a Democrat Senate has approved 7 Supreme Court justices appointed by a Republican president.  The last time a Republican Senate approved a Democrat appointment?  1895.  Even if you're right about McConnell's opinion, then he should have brought the nomination to the floor and insured it failed as that would have been an equal violation of the spirit of the system.  He went beyond that.  &gt; The topic at hand is healthcare...  Agreed, and a bipartisan healthcare bill is not possible while the Republican party acts without integrity.  &gt; As many times as it takes to find someone on the other side to work with to actually accomplish anything.  I understand the perspective and embraced it twenty years ago.  Today I see this as purposefully bringing a knife to a gunfight.  &gt; No GOP senator who failed to Repeal is going to want to talk about health care at all come re-election time...  If it is a hot-button issue, I disagree.  They will either blame the Democrats for obstructing real reform or blame Democrats for the compromise Republicans had to make.  Think about the ACA.  Republicans have made it an incredibly divisive issue despite the fact that the core is a Republican solution and most of the talking-point problems are either illusion on Republican caused.  &gt; Deeper trenches just lead to a longer war.  Bill Maher has a joke I like: ""The left has moved right and the right has moved into the loony bin.""  I think the Democrats generally don't dig in and as a result ended up digging new trenches further to the right of where they were.  Republicans now push mantras like ""Government is the problem, not the solution"", ""Freer markets lead to more opportunity"", ""You will get more money by letting the rich keep more of theirs"", and ""Immigrants and the poor are taking your job.""  This narrative is toxic and is only emboldened with Democrat willingness to keep communication open.  Thanks for your well thought out reply, /u/BigKev47." "&gt; I've been working with blockchain implementation since before you became an armchair investor.  Really what implementation? Let's see it! You have anything to show for the bullshit you're babbling? I've been involved with Bitcoin since 2011.What bitcoin implementation do you program from?  &gt;bitcoin's incentive is the mother of all pyrimid schemes  Yet another person that doesn't even understand what a pyramid scheme is. Google a pyramid scheme.  &gt; The security comes from the immutability of the chain that is generated which is what everyone subscribed to the chain gains  And you're proposing that this security is to be handled by some host of nodes on an internal network? Kinda like ..... a database with rolling backups ? lets walk through your example...  &gt;a company has several partners who it coordinates exchange rates with  exchange rates for what? currency? They set the value and they want to share that with their partners? So like they're in a trading group and they're agreeing to sell shares at a specific rate? I don't really get this thus far.   Your partners trust each other not to trade at differing values right?   &gt; no amount of hacking a centralized system could change the confirmed blocks,  Unless he hacked the central node which other nodes subscribe to and surreptitiously modified future values  &gt; in the fact that bitcoin HAD no value except as a currency before people started hacking contracts and the like into it.  I LOVE how you use the term ""fact"" for something that is provably incorrect. Bitcoin had already hit a value of ~$250 before ""people started hacking contracts and the like into it"".... They're not even the same protocol.   can you give me an **ACTUAL** example of a functional permissioned/private ledger that *needs* a blockchain?" "&gt; That is in large part do to insane healthcare costs passed on to the consumers by the aca. Healthcare spending has increased on average 1.5% annually since 2009 where as the highest growth in spending from 1991 until 2006 was 1.3%  Health Care costs have actually been on the rise for decades now. It was only ""noticed"" by the majority party (i.e. the GOP who had held the majority for 16 of the years prior to 2009) when the ACA was enacted. Suddenly, health care costs ""started"" to ""explode"". The truth is that health care costs have been on a steady rise. In the time period from 1972 to 1982, costs rose on [average 14% per year](https://www.thebalance.com/causes-of-rising-healthcare-costs-4064878). Keep in mind, this was prior to the expansion of Medicare. From 1983-1992 costs grew at a rate of 9% per year - 3 times faster than inflation. From 1993 to 2010, cost rose at a rate of 6.4% per year. The ACA of course was passed in 2009, but didn't start to take effect until 2011. Since 2010, health care costs has risen about 4% per year. That is a 2% drop in a short amount of time, compared to the previous years. However, the numbers are already so big, just like the national debt, that the GOP (who had as much part to play in the health care costs as they did in the debt) had tons of numbers they could use to make it seem like ""health care costs have exploded"".   In reality, what happened is that people who never had health insurance before were forced to get it, and started to realize how expensive it is when it actually covers what it was intended to cover - preventative care as well as emergent care. The GOP has been on a steady march to undermine the new law as much as possible since it passed, because it made some of their biggest donors (HMOs, and Health Care Insurance providers) uncomfortable the fact that they HAD to share their cost information, and that the health care exchange required them to do a line item by line item comparison with other companies out there.   So, here we are. The ACA is going to be cut, and millions of people are going back to be uninsured or underinsured. What you are going to see is the rate of costs growth start to increase again after decades of slowly decreasing rates. Why? Because of the renewed ability of insurance providers to hide the costs, to hide costs increases. It will also cause hospitals to greatly overcharge the uninsured, as they were doing before, but there will be many more of them. The goal being, that the uninsured are unlikely to pay for the (very large) medical bills. So, knowing this, hospitals artificially inflate the bill in the hopes of getting a larger portion of that unpaid bill liquidated through Medicare.   Uninsured populations also lead to more unhealthy people. You would think that not having health insurance would make people want to remain more healthy. However, studies show [the opposite to be true](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2011/07/does_health_coverage_make_people_healthier.html). In actuality, people stress more about their health, and avoid periodic checkups. Both of which lead to bad health results.   Trying to blame the cost increases in health care on government ""meddling"", or say it is a problem brought on by the ACA is weird since there are [so many examples of government provided](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/06/16/u-s-healthcare-ranked-dead-last-compared-to-10-other-countries/#175cf39e576f) health care programs out there which are so much more efficient, less costly, and have resulted in much healthier populations.   &gt; I dont have health insurance and an ER visit with xrays costs me less out of pocket than 90% of the country why is that?   I am going to call BS. Number one, that is a huge claim to make without supporting evidence. Number two, you would have to demonstrate how much that same visit would cost to those *with* health insurance.   &gt; Do you think it has to do with the fact that with the aca hospitals know they are getting paid with 0 questioning on pricing so charge whatever they want and with me they think ""shit this guy might not ever pay us lets just give him a decent price and get some money from him because all we can do is send his bill to collections""   Actually, no. The [exact *opposite* happens](http://www.alternet.org/story/16466/why_hospitals_overcharge_the_uninsured). They now, because you are uninsured, that you are unlikely to pay. So they *overcharge* you for the same services because they know that they will only be reimbursed a percentage of the costs if it goes to Medicare for non-payment.   &gt; The swiss do everything better,  You keep referring back to Switzerland. Don't get me wrong, they are a very good country, and have the number 2 ranked health care system in the world. However, I don't think they are the low tax haven that you think they are. They have an [average corporate tax rate of 17.2%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates), whereas the US has it at 32%. Their highest income tax bracket is 13.2, whereas the US is at 39%. Their sales tax goes at high as 8%, where ours go as high as 11%. Their [average effective tax](http://www.economist.com/node/14340551) rate is around 11%, while ours is around 18%. Including Social Security puts Switzerland at 17%, and the US at 24%.   So, they are definitely a lower tax rate country, but in no way are they a no tax rate country. Then again, Switzerland has no military to speak of, while the US spends more on military then the next 7 countries put together.   &gt; This is the dumbest statement youve made this entire time.   I have been very patient. I have stuck with this conversation, in spite of the put downs and snide remarks. I have jabbed a little too, but you can go back to most of my remarks and see that I have been more congenial. I have given you some leeway because of your age, and I am almost twice as old as you.   So, you gave me your background. I will give you mine. I am closer to 50 then I would prefer. I left the house at 17, enlisted in the Navy, and spent the next 15 years serving in the military. I ended my career in a select community. I have been out for ten years this July. I am now owner of a company that does R&amp;D and works with the government. A lot of my knowledge about inventions, and how commercial works with government comes from my own personal experiences. I have seen the best, and worst, of government - as well as seen the same on the commercial side of the house. Anyone comes to this game with the presupposition that government can't get anything done as well as commercial quickly learns that is not true. Likeways, anyone comes thinking that commercial equals efficient learns *that* is not always true too.   &gt; Take apple for instance where is all the government funding they recieved to be one of the most innovative companies in human history or microsoft?  As I said previously, that you thought was a ""dumb"" comment - commercial is very good at taking existing systems and finding ways to make them efficient and better. Apple and Microsoft is the same. They both made their mark in history by expanding on and creating innovation with existing technologies that had their foundation in government R&amp;D projects - including the [digital computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vincent_Atanasoff), as well as computers like the [ENIAC and the UNIVAC](https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm), and the advancements into [microsecond multitasking](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/06/did-ibm-invent-the-personal-computer-answer-no/) which lead to the first efficient and cost effective personal computers. The touchscreen was actually first invented in by [engineers at CERN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#History). And of course, we know that the [internet started as a government funded project called ARPANET](http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/who-invented-the-internet).   I think you would be surprised how much many if not most of the things we take for granted today have a foundation in government funded R&amp;D. My company is a commercial company, and we do a great job creating our own products and innovation. And yet still, our best selling product is a design of a national laboratory that we license from them. Commercial industry is great at manufacturing and producing, something the government is not as good at, and so often they will license out designs for production to companies like ours. Some of the biggest commercial companies out there do the same." no insult, Detroit was to cars what Glasgow was to ships... it happened all over the west during the last 30 years.  Ayrshire is funny though, I live in a small town really a few miles out of Kilmarnock, Glasgow is technically more accessible to me (to the north).  Glasgow has been pretty much rebuilt from it's tenements and shipbuilding fame.  Still issues, but they are getting there - Detroit will too.  In ayrshire (south west) we had a MASSIVE industry of lace and mining once.  Some of the best in the world apparently - that all disappeared to the far east during the 50s. during the 80s/90s we had a massive Fullerton plant, beacham Glaxosmithklein and even DEC had production here.  Guess what? as those could be automated - that was all offshored too.  Further North we had 'Silicon Glen' I believe the pun was intended.  IBM had a massive site of many thousand workers, Lenovo took them over and within a few years that was all gone too.  The original IBM workers had great benefits... they originally sold the site and weaned off the staff and then re-leased the site and took all the staff back on via an agency.  The only difference being all the benefits of working for IBM were gone.  That went on for a few years or so and then Lenovo took over IBMs consumer hardware side.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_glen  This being the funnier side of things, InverKip Powerstation, built for Silicon glen and then hardly used:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverkip_power_station  To be fair there is still a huge GlaxoSmithKline site at Irvine and we are supposedly getting another 3k workers back ( a bit like the CAT story )  This area will be very grateful for the work, just like your Southern states.  The trend I interpreted is that, as soon as things could be automated that was when things went away and when margins started to fall out of electronics, that was just the excuse they needed.  In theory a production line that had 100 staff might be doable with just 10 these days - maybe with all the horrific horror stories of abroad, companies are now being able to justify 10 plebs over here?  It starts to sound like I'm being slightly anti-globalist here - I've no problem with globalism, but the same thing that helps companies should allow me to buy shit from abroad at the cost I can find rather than being forced to buy region locked or extortionate crap.  If it costs you £5 to make a shirt in india, you should be selling it to me for £15, not £35!  What you talk of does represent more what happened across Europe rather than just the UK (Poland and the previous eastern bloc being your southern states)  Thatcher, for (good or bad) tore the unions in the UK a new one when she was in power (hence the only 1 time the natural gas powered plant was fired up)  We have rights in the uk that are now being legislated from Europe but to be honest they hardly seem worth the paper they are written on, the unions - like yours just don't have the smite anymore.  On thinking about it - do you think the Earthquake had anything to do with the migration of that CAT site back to the US? "The T+3 ""rule"" relates only to accounting and not to trading.  It does not prevent you from day trading.  It simply means that the postings in you cash account will not appear until three business days after you have executed a trade.  When you execute a trade and the order has been filled, you have all of the information you need to know the cash amounts that will hit your account three business days later. In a cash account, cash postings that arise from trading are treated as unsettled (for three days), but this does not mean that these funds are available for further trading.  If you have $25,000 in your account on day 1, this does not mean that you will be able to trade more than $25,000 because your cash account has not yet been debited.  Most cash accounts will include an item detailing ""Cash available for trading"".  This will net out any unsettled business transacted. For example, if you have a cash account balance of $25,000 on day one, and on the same day you purchase $10,000 worth of shares, then pending settlement in your cash account you will only have $15,000 ""Cash available for trading"". Similarly, if you have a cash balance of $25,000 on day one, and on the same day you ""day trade"", purchasing $15,000 and selling $10,000 worth of shares, then you will have the net of $20,000 ""Cash available for trading"" ($20,000 = $25,000 - $15,000 + $10,000). If by ""prop account"" you mean an account where you give discretion to a broker to trade on your behalf, then I think the issues of accounting will be the least of your worries.  You will need to be worried about not being fleeced out of your hard earned savings by someone far more interested in lining their own pockets than making money for you." You would generally have to pay interest for everyday you hold the position overnight.  If you never close the position and the stock price goes to zero, you will be closed out and credited with your profit. If you never close the position and the stock price keeps going up and up, your potential loss is an unlimited amount of money.  Of course your broker may close you out early for a number of reasons, particularly if your loss goes above the amount of capital you have in your trading account. Timing the market and by extension the efficient market hypothesis is one of the most hotly debated subjects in finance academia. If you are to believe the majority of finance professors and PHD's out there chances of timing a market like the NYSE, NASDAQ or LSE is not possible. If you are to take into account the huge amount of hedge funds and money managers who make it their job to prove the efficient market hypothesis wrong then you may have a chance. My opinion is that the EMH is true and that timing a highly efficient market like the NYSE is very difficult or impossible even for those who spend their whole lives trying to beat it. For someone whose primary job isn’t in investments I would put the idea of timing the markets out of your head. Greek bank deposits are backed by the Greek government and by the European Central Bank. So in order to lose money under the insurance limits of 100k euros the ECB would need to fail in which case deposit insurance would be the least of most peoples worries. On the other hand I have no idea how easy or hard it is to get to money from a failed bank in Greece. In the US FDIC insurance will usually have your money available in a couple of days. If there isn't a compelling reason to keep the money in a Greek bank I wouldn't do it.