Well-written, comprehensive advice and strategies detailing the whys, the hows, and the potential pitfalls of real estate...
A debut guide offers tips for those actively investing in real estate or considering the move to boost income and build wealth.
In this book, Han and MacFarland detail tax-saving strategies, stressing the need for proactive tax planning before any real estate investments are made and explaining why full and accurate record-keeping and documentation remain vital to business success. The manual covers how related expenses, such as traveling to view potential properties and catering at open house events, can be broadly defined but still legally deducted as long as they are an ordinary and necessary part of doing business. The correct way to establish and use legal entities such as Limited Liability Corporations and S Corporations to protect assets is also discussed. Furthermore, the authors address how investors can avoid the dreaded IRS audit and demonstrate why striving to become as audit-proof as possible is so important: “Unlike the U.S. criminal court system, which deems a person innocent until proven guilty, the IRS has a completely different viewpoint: the taxpayer is guilty until proven innocent.” Another section identifies the ways in which flipped properties are taxed differently than other real estate investments and what effect that has on individuals. The authors write in a friendly, engaging style, explaining complicated real estate tax and legal matters clearly and without condescension. Although some of the tax strategies outlined may sound familiar to investors, other information may be new. For example, the authors explain how an individual’s retirement account can be designated as self-directed rather than based on the stock market and then leveraged to finance property purchases. Their main points are underscored and enlivened by case studies describing the experiences of their clients who’ve made good and bad decisions in their real estate investments and the consequences that resulted. It’s not necessary to be a tax expert to follow the arguments in this guide, and the appended glossary of terms provides additional help.
Well-written, comprehensive advice and strategies detailing the whys, the hows, and the potential pitfalls of real estate investing.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9907117-6-6
Page Count: 210
Publisher: BiggerPockets
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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