sonny-dev/inters-qdu huggingface dataset:
Query: Why are we taxed on revenue and companies on profit?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "I pay taxes on revenue.  You do have the ability to deduct expenses, though it's not as comprehensive as what companies can do: These figures apply to everybody, so those that earn more get taxed more on thee additional income in each bracket (meaning the first $100,000 of taxable income is taxed the same for everybody at one rate, the next $100,000 at a different rate, etc.) So you do get to deduct personal expenses and get taxed on ""profit"" - but since the vast majority of people don't keep detailed records of what they spend, it's much simpler just to use blanket deduction amounts for everyone. Companies have much more detailed systems in place to track and categorize expenses, so it's easier to just tax on net profit. Plus, the corporate tax rate is much higher than the average individual tax rate - would you trade more deductions for a higher tax rate?"
Query: How to stress test an investment plan?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> Here are a few things I've already done, and others reading this for their own use may want to try.  It is very easy to find a pattern in any set of data. It is difficult to find a pattern that holds true in different data pulled from the same population.  Using similar logic, don't look for a pattern in the data from the entire population. If you do, you won't have anything to test it against. If you don't have anything to test it against, it is difficult to tell the difference between a pattern that has a cause (and will likely continue) and a pattern that comes from random noise (which has no reason to continue). If you lose money in bad years, that's okay. Just make sure that the gains in good years are collectively greater than the losses in bad years. If you put $10 in and lose 50%, you then need a 100% gain just to get back up to $10.  A Black Swan event (popularized by Nassim Taleb, if memory serves) is something that is unpredictable but will almost certainly happen at some point. For example, a significant natural disaster will almost certainly impact the United States (or any other large country) in the next year or two. However, at the moment we have very little idea what that disaster will be or where it will hit.  By the same token, there will be Black Swan events in the financial market. I do not know what they will be or when they will happen, but I do know that they will happen. When building a system, make sure that it can survive those Black Swan events (stay above the death line, for any fellow Jim Collins fans). Recreate your work from scratch. Going through your work again will make you reevaluate your initial assumptions in the context of the final system. If you can recreate it with a different medium (i.e. paper and pen instead of a computer), this will also help you catch mistakes.
Query: What fiscal scrutiny can be expected from IRS in early retirement?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "IRS Pub 554 states (click to read full IRS doc):  ""Do not file a federal income tax return if you do not meet the filing requirements and are not due a refund. ... If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, you must file a return if your gross income for the year was at least the amount shown on the appropriate line in Table 1-1 below. "" You may not have wage income, but you will probably have interest, dividend, capital gains, or proceeds from sale of a house (and there is a special note that you must file in this case, even if you enjoy the exclusion for primary residence)"
Query: How much should a graduate student attempt to save?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "While I haven't experienced being ""grad student poor"" myself (I went to grad school at night and worked full-time), I would shoot for 10-20% per month ($150-$300).  This depends of course on how much you currently have in savings.  If it isn't much, you might want to attempt a higher savings percentage (30-40%). If you can move to a less-expensive place, do that as soon as you can.  It's your largest expense; any place you can spend less on than $900 creates instance savings without having to sacrifice what you categorize as living expenses."

 <=SEP=> "First, don't save anything in a tax sheltered vehicle. You will be paying so little tax that there will be essentially no benefit to making the contributions, and you'll pay tax when they come out. Tax free compounding for 40 years is terrific, but start that after you're earning more than a stipend. Second, most people recommend having a month's expenses readily available for emergencies. For you, that would be $1500. If you put $100 a month aside, it will take over a year to have your emergency fund. It's easy to argue that you should pick a higher pace, so as to have your emergency money in place sooner. However, the ""emergencies"" usually cited are things like home repair, car repair, needing to replace your car, and so on. Since you are renting your home and don't have a car, these emergencies aren't going to happen to you. Ask yourself, if your home was destroyed, and you had to replace all your clothes and possessions (including furniture), how much would you need? (Keep in mind any insurance you have.) The only emergency expense I can't guess about is health costs, because I live in Canada. I would be tempted to tell you to get a credit card with a $2000 limit and consider that your emergency fund, just because grad student living is so tight to the bone (been there, and 25 years ago I had $1200 a month, so it must be harder for you now.) If you do manage to save up $1500, and you've really been pinching to do that (walking instead of taking the bus, staying on campus hungry instead of popping out to buy food) let up on yourself when you hit the target. Delaying your graduation by a few months because you're not mentally sharp due to hunger or tiredness will be a far bigger economic hit than not having saved $200 a month for 2 or 3 years. The former is 3-6 months of your new salary, the latter 5-7K. You know what you're likely to earn when you graduate, right?"
Query: LLC: Where should the funds for initial startup costs come from?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "Like you said, it's important to keep your personal assets and company assets completely separate to maintain the liability protection of the LLC. I'd recommend getting the business bank account right from the beginning. My wife formed an LLC last year (also as a pass-through sole proprietorship for tax purposes), and we were able to get a small business checking account from Savings Institute and Trust that has no fees (at least for the relatively low quantity of transactions we'll be doing). We wrote it a personal check for startup capital, and since then, the LLC has paid all of its own bills out of its checking account (with associated debit card). Getting the account opened took less than an hour of sitting at the bank. Without knowing exactly where you are in Kentucky, I note that Googling ""kentucky small business checking"" and visiting a few banks' web sites provided several promising options for no-fee business checking."
Query: Is there a standard or best practice way to handle money from an expiring UTMA account?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "I'd first put it in CDs or other short term account. Get through school first, then see where you land.  If you have income that allows you to start a Roth IRA, I'd go for that, but keep it safe in case you actually need it back soon. After school, if you don't land a decent job fast, this money might be needed to live on. How long will it last if you take a few months to find work?  If you do find a good job, moving, and setting up an apartment has a cost. Once you're there, I'd refer you to the many ""getting started"" Q&As on this site."
Query: Co-signer deceased

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> Co-signing is not the same as owning. If your elderly lady didn't make any payments on the loan, and isn't on the ownership of the car, and there was no agreement that you would pay her anything, then you do not owe either her or her daughter any money. Also the loan is not affecting the daughter's credit, and the mother's credit is irrelevant (since she is dead). However you should be aware that the finance company will want to know about the demise of the mother, since they can no longer make a claim against her if you default. I would start by approaching the loan company, telling them about the mother's death, and asking to refinance in your name only. If you've really been keeping up the payments well this could be OK with them. If not I would find someone else who is prepared to co-sign a new loan with you, and still refinance. Then just tell the daughter that the loan her mother co-signed for has been discharged, and there is nothing for her to worry about.

 <=SEP=> "People act like lawsuits are the end of the world, her suing shouldn't be considered a threat, it should be considered the accurate course of action to resolve contractual obligations. Of course, it would be convenient if she did nothing at all!  If you believe her real goal is to ""get it off her credit"", then have her come refinance with you. This will give you the opportunity to not have her on it and you to get different terms. Of course, if your credit still is poor then this option also exacerbates the inconvenience. None of the options sounds like they will ruin your credit (unless you are scrounging for cash through credit facilities to pay her off). You have several completely benign options available."
Query: What is vested stock and yearly dividends?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> Vesting As you may know a stock option is the right to acquire a given amount of stock at a given price.  Actually acquiring the stock is referred to as exercising the option.  Your company is offering you options over 200,000 shares but not all of those options can be exercised immediately. Initially you will only be able to acquire 25,000 shares; the other 175,000 have conditions attached, the condition in this case presumably being that you are still employed by the company at the specified time in the future.  When the conditions attached to a stock option are satisfied that option is said to have vested - this simply means that the holder of the option can now exercise that option at any time they choose and thereby acquire the relevant shares. Dividends Arguably the primary purpose of most private companies is to make money for their owners (i.e. the shareholders) by selling goods and/or services at a profit.  How does that money actually get to the shareholders?  There are a few possible ways of which paying a dividend is one.  Periodically (potentially annually but possibly more or less frequently or irregularly) the management of a company may look at how it is doing and decide that it can afford to pay so many cents per share as a dividend.  Every shareholder would then receive that number of cents multiplied by the number of shares held. So for example in 4 years or so, after all your stock options have vested and assuming you have exercised them you will own 200,000 shares in your company.  If the board declares a dividend of 10 cents per share you would receive $20,000.  Depending on where you are and your exact circumstances you may or may not have to pay tax on this. Those are the basic concepts - as you might expect there are all kinds of variations and complications that can occur, but that's hopefully enough to get you started.
Query: Mortgage loan implications when tearing down existing house and building new one?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> You would probably be best off checking through your loan documents to see if anything is listed in it in regards to tearing down the existing house. Likely it is not allowed. Thinking about it logically, the house is collateral for the mortgage, and you are wanting to destroy the collateral. I would expect the bank would not be pleased. Semi related question (answers have some good info) -  Construction loan for new house replacing existing mortgaged house?
Query: Should I take a student loan to pursue my undergraduate studies in France?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "Stripping away the minutia, your question boils down to this: Should I take a loan for something that I may not be able to repay? The correct answer, is ""No""."

 <=SEP=> Edit: lazy math The answer to this question depends on two things: How bad will it be if you cannot repay this loan in the way you expected? - How likely are you to actually get into a PhD program with a stipend? Is there a possibility that you will not get a stipend?  What is the penalty for failure to repay?  Will you have to support yourself after university?  How much money could you expect to earn if you found a job after your undergraduate degree? How much could taking this loan improve your finances/life? - Could you get your degree at anther institution without going into debt?  Would your career be better if you went to Ecole Polytechnique? I would take the loan if:
Query: Regarding Australian CBS takeover of TEN

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "they are purchasing the company"" is this correct? Yes this is correct. If I purchase a ""company"" here in Australia, I also purchase its assets and liabilities Yes that is correct. How can it be NIL? How can it be legal? The value of shares [or shareholders] is Assets - liabilities. Generally a healthy company has Assets that are greater than its liabilities and hence the company has value and shareholders have value of the shares. In case of TEN; the company has more liabilities; even after all assets are sold off; there is not enough money left out to pay all the creditors. Hence the company is in Administration. i.e. it is now being managed by Regulated Australian authority. The job of the administrator is to find out suitable buyers so that most of the creditors are paid off and if there is surplus pay off the shareholder or arrive at a suitable deal. In case of TEN; the liabilities are so large that no one is ready to buy the company and the deal of CBS will also mean nothing gets paid to existing shareholders as the value is negative [as the company is separate legal entity, they can't recover the negative from shareholders]. Even the current creditors may not be paid in full and may get a pro-rated due and may lose some money."
Query: Why does Yahoo Finance's data for a Vanguard fund's dividend per share not match the info from Vanguard?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> In the context of EDV, 4.46 is the indicated dividend rate. The indicated dividend rate is the rate that would be paid per share throughout the next year, assuming dividends stayed the same as prior payment.  sources:

 <=SEP=> http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=EDV+Historical+Prices shows this which matches Vanguard: Mar 24, 2014  0.769 Dividend Your download link doesn't specify dates which makes me wonder if it is a cumulative distribution or something else as one can wonder how did you ensure that the URL is specifying to list only the most recent distribution and not something else. For example, try this URL which specifies date information in the a,b,c,d,e,f parameters: http://real-chart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=EDV&a=00&b=29&c=2014&d=05&e=16&f=2014&g=v&ignore=.csv
Query: What credit card information are offline US merchants allowed to collect for purposes other than the transaction?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "Zip code, as well as billing address, is used in conjunction with the Address Verification Service (AVS).  AVS is a web (or phone) service that actually verifies the address with the billing address on file with the issuing bank.  It does not use the credit card stripe.  You can see more information from various sources such as bank merchant help pages like Bank of America's. As far as what is stored on the stripe, it varies some by bank (as there are some ""optional"" areas).  The standards are discussed here. Fields include your account number, name, the expiration date, some card-specific stuff, and then the discretionary section.  I would not expect much in terms of address type information there. So - the answer to your question is that they can't really take much more than your name and CC #, unless you give it to them.  If you give a false zip code, you may have your purchase rejected.  They certainly do keep track of the credit card number, and I would suppose that is the most valuable piece to them; they can see you make purchases across time and know for a fact that it's the same exact person (since it's the same card). Additionally, zip codes for AVS from pay-at-the-pump are supposedly not generally used for marketing (see this article for example).  That is probably not true at at-the-register (in-person) collections, most of those aren't for AVS anyway.  Even California permits the pay-at-the-pump zip verification as long as it's only used for that (same article).  I would assume any information given, though, is collected for marketing purposes."
Query: For insurance, why should you refuse $4,000/year for only 10 years and prefer $500/year indefinitely?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> The breakeven amount isn't at 8 years. You calculated how many years of paying $500 it would take to break even with one year of paying $4000. 8 x 10 years = 80 years. So by paying $500/year it will take you 80 years to have spent the same amount ($40000 total) as you did in 10 years. At this point it may seem obvious what the better choice is. Consider where you'll be after 10 years: In scenario #1 you've spent $5000 ($500*10) and have to continue spending $500/year indefinitely. In scenario #2 you've spent $40000 ($4000*10) and don't have to pay any more, but you currently have $35000 ($40000 - $5000) less than you did in scenario #1. If you had stayed with scenario #1 you could invest that $35000 at a measly 1.43% annual return and cover the $500 payments indefinitely without ever dipping into your remaining $35000. Most likely over the long term you'll do better than 1.43% per year and come out far ahead.
Query: does interest payment on loan stay the same if I pay early

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> The typical case would be - as you expected - that the interest goes down equally dramatically, and you would pay much less interest. Note that that does not remove your obligation to pay the full 1000 every month - even though you could argue that you are 90 months ahead in paying, you still need to deliver 1000 a month, until it is fully paid. Some mortgages are made differently - they do not allow that. Basically, if you pay a large amount at once, it is considered a 'pre-payment' for the next x month. As a result, you are now x months ahead (and could stop paying for that much time), but your interest stays high. The latter type 'protects' the bank against 'losing' the interest income they already planned for. As a balance, those type of mortgages are typically slightly cheaper (because the bank is in a better position). You did not specify a country; in Germany, typically all mortgages are of the second type; but - you can get 1.35% mortgages... In the US, most are the first.  You need to check which type you have, best before you pay a large amount. In the latter case, it is better to invest that money and use it to pay off as soon as you reach the threshold; in the first case, any extra payoff is to your advantage.

 <=SEP=> It depends on the type of loan.  Fully amortized loans have a schedule of payments don't recalculate as you pay.  If you want to make an additional payment you need to contact the lender to apply your payment toward principle and reamortize the loan.  Otherwise all your additional payment will do is change the amount due on your next payment, or push out your next payment due date. Regarding interest calculation, you owe interest on the principle outstanding.  Say you have a 10 year loan (120 Months), at 5% APR, and a $1,000 payment (this means you borrowed roughly $94,000) Each month the amount of interest owed reduces because there is less principle outstanding.  The reason loans are amortized like this is so the borrower has a predictable, known, monthly amount due.
Query: Invest in low cost small cap index funds when saving towards retirement?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "I think you're on the right track with that strategy. If you want to learn more about this strategy, I'd recommend ""The Intelligent Asset Allocator"" by William Bernstein. As for the Über–Tuber portfolio you linked to, my only concern would be that it is diversified in everything except for the short-term bond component, which is 40%. It might be worth looking at some portfolios that have more than one bond allocation -- possibly diversifying more across corporate vs government, and intermediate vs short term. Even the Cheapskate's portfolio located immediately above the Über–Tuber has 20% Corporate and 20% Government. Also note that they mention: Because it includes so many funds, it would be expensive and unwieldy for an account less than $100,000. Regarding your question about the disadvantages of an index-fund-based asset allocation strategy:"

 <=SEP=> You can simply stick with some index funds that tracks the S&P 500 and Ex-US world market. That should provide some good diversification. And of course, you should always have a portion of your money in short/mid term bond fund, rebalancing your stock/bond ratio all the way as deemed necessary. If you want to follow the The Über–Tuber portfolio, you'd better make sure that there's minimum overlapping among the underlying shares that they hold.
Query: I might use a credit card convenience check. What should I consider?

Relevant passages:
 <=SEP=> "Read the terms carefully.  With promotional offers, if you do anything ""bad"", the promotion is terminated and you immediately revert to either your normal rate or a penalty rate. ""Bad"" includes things like: making a late payment, going over your limit, paying less than the minimum payment, etc. I wouldn't sweat the potential credit score impacts. These promotions are pretty much the best deals that you can get for an unsecured loan."

 <=SEP=> I tried this a few months ago when I got one from Chase for 0%.  Thought it might be fun to play with, maybe make some money with the interest elsewhere over the 6 months.  Read the term and called Chase for more information on these and didn't see any issues at first.   The big thing that got me was that the rest of my account (not the money from the convenience check) was converted so that interests accrued on a daily basis even if you paid it all off at the end of the month.  So even though I was making the required payments that would normally not incur any interest, just by having the convince check balance on my account I was being charged the interest for my normal credit card charges over the month.   The amount of charges came out to only be around $10-$20, so wasn't much of a loss really.  But something to keep in mind when using these, (I tried it with 0% APR and still couldn't get away from the interest).  If I had needed the money this would still be an excellent way to go.  But if your trying to beat Chase with this game, it doesn't work...  Although if you don't use the card for anything other than the convenience check it's free money (or cheap @ 3.99% in your case) Everything in my account went back to normal after it was paid off, so no harm really, but some things to keep in mind at least.

 <=SEP=> Well, you might take a minor hit to your credit score. This is snapshot of my credit utilization written for an article on my site. The point there was that zero card use actually dinged the score, but for you, going over the 20% level is the risk. It's not too large a hit, depending how high the utilization goes. I'd not lose sleep over it. Kind of you to help.