Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.

Sequester

The image of the end is nigh with the sequester is playing out on news channels today. The heart string are being pulled. And the political ploys and threats of government agency shutdown and closure abound. But should you really be worried? In the grand scheme of things, the answer is…no. Will it impact the economy? Sure. It won’t end it. As the Tax Foundation so eloquently puts it: Continue Reading…

Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.

Facebook Outrage

It’s always a good thing to know the whole story. Earlier this week, Facebook took a lot of flack (should be used to it by now) over their lack of taxation. A result of going public last year provided the company with a healthy tax refund. Nothing out of the ordinary really. This happens all the time. When a company goes public and employees have a vested interest in said company (read exercised stock options), those options are considered a business expense.

Instead of telling the whole story, the media and an advocacy group wants to focus solely on the refund. Which really isn’t a story. In 2011, the IRS issued $318 billion in tax refunds. Yet, somehow, Facebook’s $429 million refund is outrageous.

What wasn’t covered, was the billions in taxes paid due to those exercised stock options. As the tax foundation points out, Zuckerberg  alone will pay close to $2 billion in taxes for 2012.

I’m curious if their outraged by their own tax refunds too. Continue Reading…

Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.

Overhyped

We read into things. We raise expectations. We over hype possibilities. Businesses are built around products that help us cut down our daily tasks. Think TV dinners and the 8 minute exercise video. It simplifies things. Makes it easier. It frees up time. And the possibilities become endless.

Except it doesn’t.

At the same time this is happening, other businesses are being built around products that distract us from that free time. That drain every free second of our attention.

Which brings us to Facebook. The biggest of the time sucks created in the past decade. With glazed eyes and rose-colored glasses we bit. Wasting more time on the site than any other. In the process, over hyped its possibilities and potential for what it could do. Not what it does. Continue Reading…