▲ | AnthonyMouse 12 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> Investments like land aren’t necessarily consumed. You can reasonably deduct when an actual expense happens, but buying steel etc to be used next year doesn’t guarantee it is actually used rather than sold. In many cases you're buying something intending it to be consumed, even if it hasn't been yet, and have to buy it ahead of time because you have to get it installed or connected or forged etc. before it can start being used. If you then sell the steel instead of using it, the sale price gets added to your income and the cost was already deducted previously, so that cancels the previous deduction and you're back to paying the tax on it. > Money is fungible, you hand me money to buy land and I can redirect money I would have spent to buy something else. In order to get a tax deduction for buying land to build a solar farm, you have to buy land to build a solar farm. You can't spend that money on something else and still get that tax deduction. You can spend other money on something else, but the amount of money you have available to spend on other things has gone down, and the point is to increase your incentive to build the solar farm, which it is effective in doing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
▲ | Retric 11 hours ago | parent [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> If you then sell the steel instead of using it, the sale price gets added to your income and the cost was already deducted previously, so that cancels the previous deduction and you're back to paying the tax on it. An interest free loan means you’re ahead in that transaction but society is worse off when people do useless things to avoid taxes. > You can spend other money on something else, but the amount of money you have available to spend on other things has gone down One can’t invest all their money in any given year or one lacks the ability to buy food. You also can’t spend all your money in a given year or you go broke. Thus both saving and spending are always happening and the government reducing the amount of money you’re required to save means you can up spending. There’s zero meaningfully differences between piles of money here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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