You invested a hundred grand in Amazon two weeks after the IPO cratered. You held it twenty years and now it's worth about a hundred million. You sell it and start shopping for a ninety-million dollar yacht, with a helicopter pad on top.
To your chagrin, the hundred million dollars you thought you were getting because you live in a high-tax blue state...visits the financial version of Jenny Craig in a violent juice cleanse of cash.
You pay 25% long-term gain, 13.3% state tax, 3.8% for residual Obamacare tax, a city and or county tax here and there, and your hundred million dollars of pre-tax dough has quickly turned into sixty-million dollars. Because yes, you've just paid forty-million in taxes. You'll have to look for the economy-sized yacht.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is the Alternative Minimum...2 Views
Finance a la shmoop. What is the alternative minimum tax or AMT? People
it's evil pure evil originally the alternative minimum tax affectionately [Guy wearing devil horns with flames in the background]
called alt min existed so that truly wealthy taxpayers had to at a minimum [Guy opens a letter from the IRS]
pay something think about the concept when you envision a Warren Buffett with
over sixty billion dollars in net worth paying a hundred grand a year in taxes
yeah that's what he does well the problem the altman tax system wasn't
indexed to inflation so lots of middle-class folks today now indexed to [Lots of people walking]
inflation are caught in the alt min trap this is the tax system that ended up
punishing the super duper wealthy you know people like in orthodontists
married to a substitute school teacher that's who alt min punishes yeah the tax [Tooth and drawing of a teacher appear]
man cometh for you well Congress gave birth to this tax in
nineteen sixty nine because well at the time a hundred fifty five tax payers had [Guy holding the alt min tax bill]
the temerity to pay no tax today about 5 million people pay alt min taxes which
has really become a parallel tax or incremental tax to the normal tax people
already pay the taxpayer figures out his tax completely ignoring alt min at first [Woman looking through papers]
then she figures out what she owes under alt min and if she owes more under alt
min well then she pays alt min if she owes more without alt min well then she [The tax bills are shown]
just ignores it in other words the IRS always wins the schmucks caught in alt
min lose all sorts of deductions state and local taxes business expenses and
childcare and it's pretty much the middle class of America today who bears
the most pain in this alt min situation people in high tax states bear much of [High tax states are highlighted]
the burden but well good for the IRS they were really hurting [Desk full of piles of tax checks]
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