Declaration Of Ownership Of Personal Property To Be Included In Sale: Fill & Download for Free

Adding on to other excellent answers here, I want to examine two different men from the 19th century whose surnames have become words so commonly used that I would wager most people don’t even know that they are taken from people’s names.Charles BoycottIf you are to have your name become a household word, you don’t want it to be like Boycott’s. But then there are probably a lot of other ways that you shouldn’t be like Charles Boycott as well.Charles Boycott lived in Ireland in the 19th Century, when agriculture was the largest national industry. It was also a time when more than half of Ireland was owned by one of only 750 landlords. Most of these were “Absentee” Landlords, which meant that they didn’t actually live in the vicinity of the land they owned but rather spent their time in England or other parts of the British Isles and had local Irishmen handle their property for them. This absenteeism greatly exacerbated the harmful effects of the Great Famine, as these landlords continued to export shiploads of food from Irish farms every day even as Irish people were starving to death.It was during the 19th Century that advocates for the land rights of the Irish people and for Home Rule and Republicanism became more organized and began aligning the causes of Land Rights and Republicanism into a united national effort.One of the other major problems exacerbated by absentee landlords was the total lack of humanity in the eviction of families. The landlords who ordered the evictions of households who had failed to pay steep rents after poor harvests never needed to look into the eyes of the families they were casting into homelessness. Human beings were dehumanized into statistics in a way that allowed dispassionate cruelty on a wide scale.In Boycott’s own County Mayo, and more rapidly across the country as a whole a Land League came together to protect the rights of farmers. They saw a single way to end the practice of these evictions. If everyone in Ireland refused to buy the repossessed land from which their neighbors had been evicted, then the practice of eviction could be made unprofitable, providing the Land League with the leverage they would need to attain the “Three F’s” that they sought: Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure, and Free Sale.The problem with this plan is that it required the unanimous consent of the community. So long as a single Irish person was willing to buy the land from which their neighbors had been evicted, nothing would change. If everyone in Ireland stood united, then the absentee landlords would be forced to come and face the community themselves, but it only took a single local collaborator to deny the community the power to enact the changes they sought.Enter Charles Boycott.Charles Boycott didn’t follow the Land League’s guidelines. Having accepted a job as an agent for Lord Erne, a wealthy landlord who lived in Crom Castle, County Fermanagh, but owned more than two-thousand acres of land in County Mayo, he worked to manage and acquire local farmland for his patron. Those who knew him attest that Boycott had fully bought into and accepted the political structure of Ireland and strove to dutifully serve the ruling class, which included a businesslike approach to the acquisition of land. When families were cast off of their farmsteads, Boycott saw nothing wrong with buying the foreclosed land at a discount.The tension built to a crescendo, and it was Charles Parnell who first proposed a new kind of civil justice.In a speech on the 19th of September, 1880, Parnell asked a gathered crowd what ought to be done with an Irishman who bought the land from which his neighbor had been evicted. The crowd responded that he ought to be shot. Parnell, however, proposed a nonviolent alternative by which the people—without the assent of the ruling class or their agents of law enforcement—could enforce their own social justice in their own communities:I wish to point out to you a very much better way – a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost man an opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him – you must shun him in the streets of the town – you must shun him in the shop – you must shun him on the fair green and in the market place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were the leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he committed.[1]So it was that a new form of nonviolent social justice was enacted, and Charles Boycott was its first target. After Boycott wrote a letter to the Times complaining of his treatment, his story became a widespread illustration of the political tension between the people of Ireland and their governors. Loyalist workers came to work his fields, replacing the farm hands who had refused to continue working for him, and his name was enshrined in history as a term for the very social or economic excommunication to which he was subjected.But not everyone whose name becomes a common term has so negative a connotation attached to it.Samuel MaverickSamuel Maverick was a lawyer, a land baron, and a somewhat reluctant ranch manager in Texas, and lived there during much of the revolution that established the Republic of Texas, even signing the Texas Declaration of Independence.Primarily concerned with matters of real estate, Maverick also acquired at one point as payment of a debt 400 heads of cattle. Seeing as he wasn’t particularly interested in ranching, Maverick was generally unconcerned with adherence to the practices of the trade.Most notably, Maverick resolutely refused to brand his cattle, citing his opposition to animal cruelty as the reason. Other ranchers in the region were more skeptical, and thought that it might be a ploy so that he would be able to claim any unbranded cattle as his own, claiming the lack of a brand as his mark of ownership. Despite all protests, Maverick stood firm in his refusal to brand.As it happens, he wasn’t particularly interested in any other aspect of ranch management either, and hired others to tend to his herd, which was allowed to wander quite freely through central Texas. Maverick’s own unbranded cattle would frequently wanter into the herds of other ranchers, who were more than happy to take advantage of the situation and throw their own bands on these stray and unmarked animals, now coming to be known as “Mavericks.”So it was that “maverick” made its way into common usage, and carried with it two different elements combined. Someone who travelled outside of the herd or went against the flow was known as a maverick, just like the unmarked cattle that roamed free over Texas, but Samuel Maverick’s name also became a common term for someone who stubbornly insists on not complying with the norms of society and won’t have their minds changed by any kind of argument.Today, his name is so well known that Dallas uses it as the name of their NBA team.And it all came from refusing to hurt animals.Thanks for reading.Footnotes[1] Charles Stewart Parnell’s Famous Speech at Ennis

The Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) last year issued a notice addressing the tax treatment of Bitcoin. It chose to treat bitcoin as “property” rather than “currency” for tax purposes. In this backgrounder we will look at the classification options the IRS considered, what it chose to do in its notice of March 2014, and why.Now that you can invest hugely on Power-Miner Startup Lab (www.power-miner.store) where you can get daily profit off your bitcoin investments for as long as 6 months through mining and daily trading, then life is getting better for Bitcoin investors now. Thanks to the world cryptocurrency leaders for bringing in other options of earning cryptocurrencyDifficult ChoicesThe IRS had several options to consider in providing a framework for the taxation of bitcoin and bitcoin transactions. It is clear that bitcoin is an intangible property. The specific type of property, however, is elusive. Possible tax categories for bitcoin include taxing it as personal property, a commodity, a currency, a security or a debt instrument. Bitcoin has qualities resembling all of these property forms, yet it does not neatly fit any of them. Irrespective of the difficulty of finding a good match, bitcoin’s classification has had and will continue to have significant tax consequences.For example, had the IRS treated bitcoin as a currency, special tax rules would have applied to its use and ownership. Unlike most assets, the gain or loss from a sale of bitcoin, or its use in an exchange, would generally be taxed as ordinary income, and be ineligible for capital gain treatment.[1] This would mirror our normal interaction with dollars or other fiat currencies; if you get paid in dollars it doesn’t matter that the price of dollars against rubles or euros changes before you spend it. The value of the dollar may be rising internationally, but you are not taxed on that return like a normal investment.Treatment as currency would have also qualified personal bitcoin use for an exclusion from the recognition of gain or loss in ‘small’ transactions.[2] To illustrate, say you bought one bitcoin when the price was at $100 and then used a fraction of that bitcoin to buy a cup of coffee months later when the price was at $200. Treatment as currency would excuse you from calculating the profit you made by buying the bitcoin low and selling some of it at a high (for your coffee). This exclusion could make the currency option attractive to many bitcoin users because reducing the transaction cost inherent in calculating every gain or loss may facilitate the use of bitcoin as a viable medium of exchange for commerce.Other property-type categories each present idiosyncratic tax treatments that emerged over the years as the use of the targeted asset type (e.g. stocks, commodities, or debt instruments) matured. For example, the concept of a stock as a share of ownership in a company is relatively easy to grasp and early tax rules were also easy to grasp and apply. But as the securities market matured, and stocks became complex, complex tax rules grew to meet the challenge. Today, differing tax treatment is applied to equity options, calls and puts, derivatives, LEAPS, index futures and other forms of stock and stock-based transactions. Again, fitting bitcoin into this multi-faceted structure, similar to its treatment as a currency, is difficult.The IRS has been curiously silent on the taxation of virtual currencies for decades. This is so, despite the IRS Taxpayer Advocate, and more recently, the Government Accountability Office, calling upon the IRS to issue administrative guidance to taxpayers who desire a degree of certainty for tax reporting of their virtual currency transactions.[3] Virtual currencies are not a new phenomenon.[4] However, the emergence of bitcoin presented potential broad economic impact, and the IRS responded by the issuance of IRS Notice 2014-21 in March of 2014.[5]What the Notice SpecifiedThe Notice provides three basic principles. First, it globally classifies bitcoin as property for U.S. federal tax purposes. Second, it states bitcoin is not ‘currency’ that generates foreign currency gain or loss for U.S. federal tax purposes. Finally, it declares that ‘mining’ income is to be recognized for tax purposes when the miner receives the bitcoin at its then fair market value.In effect, the IRS left many options on the table by releasing guidance to the taxpayer that provided a broad and generic classification of bitcoin (“property”) and excluded but a single subcategory, currency. Moreover, only a single unique activity in the virtual currency arena, that of bitcoin mining, is specifically addressed.Notice 2014-21 does offer some concrete specifics, however. It expressly applies to only “virtual currencies” which have an “equivalent value in real currency, or acts as a substitute for real currency.”[6] Sixteen questions are posed and answered by the IRS, most of which flow from the answer to the first question posed which states, in part, that “[f]or federal tax purposes, [convertible] virtual currency is treated as property,”[7] reportable in its equivalent value in U.S. dollars.[8]As mentioned, the Notice does not classify what kind of “property” bitcoin is, other than specifically stating that it is not “currency.” It requires that bitcoin used in an exchange for goods and services be valued at fair market value when received.[9] This value thereafter constitutes thebasis of the bitcoin received.[10] Taxable gains and losses from that basis are recognized in the exchange and the type of gain or loss, capital or ordinary, depends upon whether the bitcoin was held for investment, as inventory, used in a trade or business or held for personal reasons.[11]Bitcoin received for services by employees are wages for both U.S. income and employment tax purposes, reportable as such by both employer and employee at fair market value.[12] Likewise, bitcoin received by independent contractors constitutes self-employment income to be reported and taxed as such.[13]Traditional U.S. tax reporting requirements apply to bitcoin payments as are applicable to any other transaction involving property.[14] As well, “backup withholding”[15] and reporting by third party settlement organizations[16] are mandatory as if the bitcoin were U.S. currency.In addition to treating bitcoin as property, two other principals were addressed in Notice 2014-21. Both areas were unique to virtual currencies. The first states that virtual currencies are notcurrency as might give rise to foreign currency gain or loss. [17] Among other things, this means that bitcoin is not eligible for the personal use exemptions to capital gains taxes on small transactions, as described earlier in the coffee example. The notice also specified that income from virtual currency mining for tax purposes is to be recognized when the miner receives the reward from the mining efforts and not upon a later sale of the currency. [18] In other words, you owe income taxes on the bitcoins you mine for the tax year in which you mined them, not for any future year when choose to sell or spend them.The Challenges of Building a Tax Framework for BitcoinThe U.S. federal tax framework for bitcoin and other virtual currencies remains confusing and largely undefined. As frustrating as this may be, it is not hard to understand why this is so. The IRS, like those holding bitcoins themselves, are participants in the emergence of one of the most novel and potentially far-reaching technologies of the 21st century.Historically, a cautious approach to the taxation of new intangible assets by the IRS is typical. Software technologies are dynamic, and their development, categorization, use and transfer permit only “best guess” tax treatment until a level of technological maturity is reached. For example, the tax principles initially applied to mainframe software were challenged by the emergence of the personal computer. They were challenged once again as the internet emerged.Difficulties also arise as U.S. income taxes are assessed annually. Yearly cut-off dates are difficult to apply to developing technologies.[19] The IRS, and taxpayers, often cannot report technology-based assets and transactions with certainty. Indeed, what the asset is may itself be elusive.Bitcoin is an excellent example. It has already morphed from the transactional medium of exchange envisioned by its inventor into a variety of uses: a system of stored value, an asset identification and management tool, a tokenized instrument of title, a key for the encryption, authentication or escrow of other assets, and more. Bitcoin as only a currency is no longer reality. And the technology is still in its infancy. No wonder the IRS is taking a cautious approach.A cautious regulatory approach is prudent for reasons other than how dynamic the technology is. Hastily drafted rules may stifle innovation or, even worse, chase technological development from U.S. shores to thrive in unfriendly jurisdictions. The wait-and-see tax attitude is indeed confusing to taxpayers, but not without foundation.Finally, as virtual currencies need not respect political boundaries, the harmonization of a regulatory environment with other jurisdictions is a necessary consideration. Tax and other policies must consider global impact and circumstance, and the efforts by multiple jurisdictions must be harmonized, a process that involves significant time and effort.The tax treatment of bitcoin will likely follow a cautious approach for some time. This will be frustrating to taxpayers at best, but that caution is warranted.Bob Derber is a corporate tax attorney at Summit Legal Group, previously he was general counsel at the gaming software pioneer Maxis.

The #1 most overlooked rule, that makes the biggest difference to the game, is this one:BUYING PROPERTY… Whenever you land on an unowned property you may buy that property from the Bank at its printed price. You receive the Title Deed card showing ownership; place it face up in front of you. If you do not wish to buy the property, the Banker sells it at auction to the highest bidder. The buyer pays the Bank the amount of the bid in cash and receives the Title Deed card for that property. Any player, including the one who declined the option to buy it at the printed price, may bid. Bidding may start at any price.Making sure to observe this auction rule makes the game better in almost every possible way:The game is much, much shorter. All the properties are bought up fast, as soon as any of them is landed on by anybody.There’s much less luck. Yes, the person who initially lands on the property still has the first right of refusal, but if they choose not to buy it (or can’t afford to), then everyone gets a shot at it. Furthermore, because of the auction, players are paying what they think the properties are really worth, rather than getting undervalued properties at face value.People run out of money faster, which is really the point of the game.#2 another huge mistake:“FREE PARKING”… A player landing on this place does not receive any money, property or reward of any kind. This is just a “free” resting place.Awarding players any extra free money is a terrible idea! Again, if the game ends when all but one player have gone bankrupt, the last thing you want to do is keep handing money back to the players. It may seem “nice”, but it’s not nice when you’re still playing 16 hours later and everyone hates each other.#3 most overlooked and important (at least in my experience):It is an advantage to hold all the Title Deed cards in a color-group (e.g., Boardwalk and Park Place; or Connecticut, Vermont and Oriental Avenues) because the owner may then charge double rent for unimproved properties in that color-group.Again: Pay more = broke faster = shorter game.And #4, people often neglect the bankruptcy rule details:BANKRUPTCY… You are declared bankrupt if you owe more than you can pay either to another player or to the Bank. If your debt is to another player, you must turn over to that player all that you have of value and retire from the game. In making this settlement, if you own houses or hotels, you must return these to the Bank in exchange for money to the extent of one-half the amount paid for them; this cash is given to the creditor. If you have mortgaged property you also turn this property over to your creditor but the new owner must at once pay the Bank the amount of interest on the loan, which is 10% of the value of the property. The new owner who does this may then, at his/her option, pay the principal or hold the property until some later turn, then lift the mortgage. If he/she holds property in this way until a later turn, he/she must pay the interest again upon lifting the mortgage. Should you owe the Bank, instead of another player, more than you can pay (because of taxes or penalties) even by selling off buildings and mortgaging property, you must turn over all assets to the Bank. In this case, the Bank immediately sells by auction all property so taken, except buildings.Again, if the way to end the game is by one person owning everything and everyone else going broke, it’s ideal to observe all the rules that HELP THAT HAPPEN. It’s less important whether you sell off the houses and hotels and so on, but certainly don’t just hand everything to the bank.Finally, I’ll say that trying to “fix” Monopoly is kind of a fool’s errand in the first place:Monopoly was intended to be educational. Not fun. So it’s no surprise that it’s not the most fun game out there.Monopoly includes a whole lot of game elements that have almost entirely been eliminated in today’s most award winning games:Player Elimination - Because these games often take longer, and unless it’s a two player game like chess where the first eliminated player immediately ends the game, it’s a sure recipe for people sitting around being bored or excluded while 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 people keep sitting around playing. That just sucks.Runaway Leader - The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That’s a key reason why it’s an interesting educational tool but a terrible game. You have to admit that no game of Monopoly *ever* had a surprise winner. You know who’s the rich guy from about 20 minutes in, and then it’s a 3 hour slog to watch that prediction come to fruition. That’s no fun.Convoluted Rules - Even though the Monopoly rules aren’t long, per se, they’re unnecessarily fiddly and annoying. Especially some of the auction and bankruptcy rules, which is probably why a lot of people skip them even though that breaks the game. Broken without them, annoying with them.Luck - My brother and I used to jokingly call Monopoly “whoever lands on Boardwalk wins” because even though it’s an exaggeration, I still assume that the first person to land on and buy Park Place and/or Boardwalk probably wins a disproportionate amount of time. Never mind the way one single dice roll can make the difference between going bankrupt (that one spot with all the stuff on it) or not. That just sucks.Rather than fixing Monopoly, there are so many better, more recent games that have benefited from the 100 years of innovation in the time between now and then (same for a lot of other old “classics” like Game of Life and Battleship and Risk). Even if you want to stay in the realm of economic / real estate games, may I suggest the following, that are infinitely more fun:For Sale - Relatively simple game where players first bid on properties, and then sell them back to buyers. Easy to learn and a lot of fun.Acquire - A modern classic. Has a lot of the Monopoly feel, but without the annoying player elimination and runaway leader problems.Last Will - Kind of a Brewster’s Millions anti-monopoly sort of game where you have to buy property and luxuries in an effort to be the most broke at the end of the year. It’s harder than it sounds.And for board games in general, go visit the Top 100 games list at BoardGameGeek and it will change your life. Don’t waste another day of your life on Monopoly. Its popularity is irrelevant. It’s like trying to make a Pet Rock fun. Just walk away.