Ming Zhao Profile picture
May 5, 2021 14 tweets 4 min read Read on X
🌴💰🍸⛵️ Tax Evasion For Traders & Founders: How Billionaires Pay Less Than Secretaries

With tax season around the corner, here’s a compiled list of (mostly legal) hacks to reduce your future bleeding.
👇

P.S. Not a lawyer. If you’re the IRS, don’t kill the informed aggregator Image
1/ Set up a tax haven shell company

The Cayman Islands have only 2 types of residents: shells and shell co’s. No corporate tax, no income tax, no cap gains tax.

Half the world’s politicians have channel(ed) income to its sandy beaches to exploit this tax loophole...
Have you? Image
2/ Incorporate an LLC pass-through

As a founder/IC/celebrity, set up an LLC or S-corp so profit flows directly to the partner (aka you). Expense all your meals, party supplies, “office rent” as bizniz opex. Also invest directly from the LLC, pre-tax. Like a hedge fund.
3/ Exploit 1031 repeatedly 🛖 ->🏠 ->🏘️

IRS Sec-1013 says: use proceeds from selling 1 property to buy another & defer all cap gains tax.

Do this on a loop.
i.e. use proceeds to keep buying ever-larger houses, defer taxes indefinitely, keep pocketing ever-larger rental income. Image
4/ QSBS

QSBS (qualified small business stock) tax exemption lets founders & angels avoid 100% capital gains tax up to $10M (or 10x initial investment, whichever higher) at exit.
Caveats:
⁃Must hold stock for >5 years
⁃Startup must be C-corp w/ <$50M at issuance
5/ QSBS part 2...

"What happens if I exit my startup before 5y?" you ask.

Well first, congratufuckinglations. Second, take advantage of 1045 rollover, i.e. you can roll proceeds from startup #1 into new startup #2 (another QSBS investment) and extend the clock until >5y 🕐🕒🕔 Image
6/ Liquidate on low income years

Pretty vanilla, not really a "loophole" per se, but deserves clarification. Say u make $0 income & 500K gains selling $DOGE 🐶 in 2021. Only the first 40k is tax-free. The next 441.5K is 15% taxed, next 18.5K is 20%. Image
7/ Pseudo wash sale
Wash sale = selling a loser asset to tax-loss harvest & then buying back exact same asset (or its options) w/in 30d. Illegal.
To skirt anti-wash-sale rules, buy back a similar but not “substantially similar” asset (eg tokenized asset or same-industry basket) Image
8/ Borrow against whole-life insurance
“a clever transmogrifications of income -> loan”🤨

Loophole works like this: Bank lends u 90% surrender value of the policy. Bc its a loan, not eligible for income/gains tax. Bc its collateralized, interest rate will be super low, <3.5%.
9/ Buy crypto w/ international life insurance

Fund an offshore private-placement life ins (similar to Roth IRA, but no contribution limits). 💎🙌 ‘til death. Pass the policy to heirs. Step up in basis means your heirs receive all crypto & other assets at 0% tax on appreciation.
10/ Shell trust fund
“a 2nd clever transmogrifications of income -> loan”🤨

Exploiters pay as little as 1% income tax.
First, they "donate" 💸 to a trust fund. Fund then offers cheap loans, which they conveniently "forget" to pay back. Result: can write off mucho income tax.
11/ Equity Swaps: swim w/ a buddy!

2 rich friends collude to exchange the gains on a set of assets without actually transferring ownership.

e.g Alice wants out of TSLA but instead of selling & incurring tax, she pays TSLA gains/loss for 1Y to Bob in return for LIBOR + spread Image
12/ NOL carry-forward

Only applicable to corporates. Net operating loss (NOL) is incurred when a corp make negative income during some taxable period. The IRS allows u to carry-forward this loss to offset tax in future positive-income years (and as of 2017, carry indefinitely).
13/ Move to Puerto Rico

The only corner of the world where US citizens can hide from “worldwide taxation” on federal income.

Acts 20 & 22 exempts bonafide residents’ PR source income as long as they’re physically in PR for 183 days of the year.

But dat lifestyle tho.

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More from @FabiusMercurius

May 27, 2023
Nvidia is about to become the 1st trillion-dollar chipmaker, after surging $200B in valuation in a single day.

But when cofounders Jensen, Chris, & Curtis started the company in 1993, they had only $40K in the bank.

Here’s Nvidia’s founding story, from 0 to Taxman of AI.
👇
🧵/ ImageImage
1/ On Day 0
The idea came together over breakfast at Dennys — to bring 3D graphics computing to the burgeoning video game industry.

The risk was clear—$10M+ initial capex needed to ship the first accelerator with no pre-committed customers, no funding, and huge technology &… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
2/ Cofounders take action

So Jensen quit his director job at chipmaker LSI Logic (now Broadcom). And Chris and Curtis quit their engineering jobs at Sun Microsystems.

Nvidia initially had no name and the co-founders named all their files NV for “next version.” When the founders… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Read 12 tweets
Apr 15, 2023
🔎How to Read a Term Sheet

VC term sheets are one of the most talked-about & least-understood docs in existence.
What's dirty, what's standard?

Whether you're building a company or thinking about it, as founder or employee:

Here's what the VCs know that you need to know👇
🧵/ Image
0/ the basics

Your objective: build cool shit
VC's objective: achieve maximum rate of return

Interests on both sides usually align — until they don't.

Term sheets spell out the:
(1) control rights, and
(2) economic rights

of both parties as the company goes from 0->1.
Key parts:

- Valuation is always the 1st (&only) thing people talk about.

But other subtle clauses can and do foil a high val many times over to sour deal economics.

These include:
- Liquidation preference
- Participation rights
- Voting rights
- Conversion
- Anti-dilution Image
Read 19 tweets
Apr 9, 2023
8 Underrated ChatGPT Prompts for B2B Sales

(with real examples, each scored #/10 on usefulness & accuracy)

👇
1/ Sourcing potential clients
score: 9/10

Prompt:
"Find 50 [insert business, eg. brokers] in [target region] that [do X, eg. offer US stocks on their investment app]?
Indicate each's website, HQ, & [other relevant info: eg. their custodial partner]. Put everything into a chart.
2/ Forming Google Dork queries to refine souring
score: 9/10

If your clients are also clients of X & if you know what terms are in a standard partnership agreement, you can Google DORK to source many more "hidden" candidate clients that have no publicly announced partnerships!
Read 11 tweets
Mar 25, 2023
Dissecting the Impending CRE Crisis

Soon u'll hear a lot more on CRE.

Why? B/c US banks & PE firms are headed for real estate doomsday.
4 collapses in 11 days
$270B in CRE loans due EoY
$3B+ defaulted in March 2023 alone

What is CRE & why does it matter?
What's next?
👇
🧵/… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
1/ What is CRE?
"Commercial real estate" = property for business

The US CRE industry is a $20.7 trillion market.

Core segments include:
- office
- industrial
- multifamily
- retail
- hotels
- land
Investors specialize into 3 major investment strategies:
- Core
- Value add
- Opportunistic

Core:
- low risk, "steady income" play
- safe geos (NYC, SF)
- high starting occupancy
- target IRR: 6-9%

Value add:
- medium risk, "asset appreciation" play
- investor must put in work… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Read 14 tweets
Mar 16, 2023
BREAKING:
Another wrinkle in the regional banks / $SIVB / $SBNY saga.

Retail investors about to lose $𝟑𝟏𝟎 𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐀𝐘— $130M on SVB + $180M on SBNY.
But NO ONE is talking about it.

WSB mods are even censoring posts about it.

What’s going on?
👇
🧵/
1/ The News

On 3/14, National Securities Clearing Corp (NSCC) said it will no longer accept $SIVB & $SBNY exercise. Settlements will be be broker-by-broker.

What does this mean?

In short, things are about to get fucked.
Put holders are about to get WIPED.

Let me explain ...
2/ Expectation vs Reality

Normally if u buy a put and stock --> $0, u should make a BOATLOAD of $$! Right?

Wrong
Not this time
Not on $SIVB

Why?
u can only cash in gains via 2 ways:
a) sell
b) exercise

For SVB puts, depending on ur broker, u might not be allowed to do either!
Read 13 tweets
Mar 10, 2023
🏦📉 SVB Crash Explained📉🏦

Silicon Valley Bank—#16 largest US bank with $212B — just crashed 60% in 1 day & fell 22% post-close. Stock halted now.

@BillAckman is calling a US gov bailout.
@peterthiel is calling a bank run.
JPM, BAC, WFC all dropped 6%.
What's next?

Is this… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
1/ How banks make money

Let's start at the beginning: SVB is a bank.
Banks make 💸💸 by taking in deposits & lending back out at higher rates.

This spread btw interest earned on loans vs paid on deposits is called NII (Net Interest Income).

NII is SVB's #1 profit source: ~73%
2/ How banks lose money

SVB's NII comes from 2 main sources:
1) interest on loans to startups
2) yield from fixed income investments (treasuries, MBS)

So SVB loses $ when:
1) startups default on debt
2) interest rates rise and SVB must sell its FI investments at a realized loss
Read 16 tweets

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