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February 23, 2012 at 11:04 AM in reply to: OT-Contest to guess the occupant of beautiful new building in RSF #738543
SK in CV
ParticipantBring back Ron Paul! He can win Iowa and it’s 7 electoral votes! And he’ll legalize pot!
peace bra!
February 21, 2012 at 2:44 PM in reply to: State tax deductibility of all Mello-Roos charges threatened beginning tax year 2012 #738433Participant[quote=flu]You’re missing the entire point. Where is the state going to come up with the money to build this “system”. Hello???? We’re in the red, which budget is this going to come from?
][/quote]
I’m not sure why you think this would be a tough system to build. The tax returns with the property tax deduction requires a parcel number. Each of the less than 60 counties in the state provide the FTB with data related to each parcel. Tie the deductible taxes to the tax return. Send out a notice when there’s a variance. Done.
Not exactly that simple, because property owners don’t always pay 2 bills a year. Sometimes 1, sometimes 3, sometimes more if they’re delinquent. But I don’t think it’s all that difficult. Just one more compliance check. It will pay for itself in the first year.
February 19, 2012 at 9:32 PM in reply to: Reducing your tax bill…401k or Maximizing your primary mortgage interest deduction and buying rental properties. #738338ParticipantSounds like his timing was right. Maybe even perfect. If he’d been doing that beginning in say….2002, and continued through 2007 or 2008, it wouldn’t have looked so pretty. Highly leveraged RE can be risky, with commensurate potential rewards. I don’t have to tell anyone here that. Glad his timing was right.
ParticipantAfter a recount, and including the Waldo County previously uncounted caucus votes, Romney is still ahead, now by 239 votes. Washington County concluded their caucus yesterday, and Paul gained 83 votes. Whether those votes will be included in the final talley is yet to be decided. If they are included Romney will still win, by 156 votes. Paul still loses. The meaningless caucus can now be put to rest.
February 19, 2012 at 9:07 PM in reply to: Reducing your tax bill…401k or Maximizing your primary mortgage interest deduction and buying rental properties. #738334ParticipantHow long ago? How’d it work out for him?
Participant[quote=sdrealtor]Agreed but not the point. There aren’t high paying private sector jobs waiting for them. That’s the point[/quote]
Fair enough. I wasn’t really following the entire conversation. Thought maybe my comment wasn’t really pertinent. On the other hand, I’m not sure there aren’t some pretty high paying jobs waiting for some safety workers. For experienced cops anyway.
Participant[quote=sdrealtor]None of those jobs do you walk in and get 100k. They require years of training and most of them still don’t make that unless they own the business which is an entirely different thing. Commercial fisherman don’t make the money if they don’t catch the fish so they are commission paid as are realtors and mortgage guys. Sometimes they make it and most times they don’t. I am still waiting for five jobs that someone could leave their 100k public safety job and get a salary or hourly position paying more. Still calling b.s. on this.[/quote]
No one walks into public safety jobs and makes $100K a year either.
Participant[quote=AN]I wasn’t referring to the “come and set up my router” type. I’m talking about come and setup big ERP system. I’ve setup a small scale ERP system before (Microsoft Great Plains). It’s not rocket science. It’s much easier than writing those ERP software. I did that while I was fresh out of college too.
At $400/hr, that equivalent to hiring someone full time and pay them ~$800k/yr. I’m not in IT consulting, so I don’t know, but I’m skeptical about the $400/hr rate since I was in the S/W consulting business. Even at the best of time, a S/W architect can’t fetch anywhere near $400/hr.
I didn’t know IT consulting is more lucrative than S/W consulting. Typical rate today for S/W consulting range for 1.5-2x hourly rate (Wipro type to more high end Teleca type). I’d impress to know that there are people who would pay that much more for IT consultant. Even at the high end of your range, 3.5x hourly pay, your typical Sr. IT is probably making around $40-50/hr., so 3.5x that would be $140-175/hr. That’s a far cry from $400/hr.[/quote]
The guys that are doing the installs for the big ERP systems (not GP, which is now MS Dynamics), like Oracle and SAP systems pretty typically bill in the $175-$225 range. The EPM guys that do Hyperion and SAP’s EPM solution tend to be a bit higher. Solution architects tend to be a bit more. The tech guys related to those installations are $250 at the very low end, up to $400. The $400/hr for the non-tech work is typically for the very esoteric stuff. (like SSM and PCM work) I may have exaggerated a bit, in that for one, there aren’t too many of those guys out there, and second, there isn’t that much work for them. (Literally, there may not be more than a dozen guys in the US that know SAP’s SSM module inside and out.) But that is the standard rate for some firms.
These guys get paid more than $50/hr. Some of them a lot more. I’ve got a contractor I pay $165/hr because he has skills that very few had, and he won’t become an employee. His 1099 was over $300K. he’s being cut loose because of that, but the employees that have acquired his skills have W-2’s >$200K, and they bill at $250+. On the lower side of margin %, but still a high margin $ for the industry.
Participant[quote=AN][quote=SK in CV]We’re talking apples and oranges. Most IT consultants work for/are employed by IT consulting firms, they’re not independent contractors. Hourly rates for these firms commonly range from $100 to $400+ per hour.[/quote]
$400+/hr for IT? Really? For software engineer contracting house, they’re charging between $100-150/hr depending on experience. Those contracting house provide healthcare, 401k, etc”, so they typically charge twice the hr. rate they pay their contractors.[/quote]Yes, $400/hr. The label “IT Consultant” spans a pretty wide range of services from programming to installation and customization plus tech consulting. Rates at $400+ per hour at some of the global SI’s are not uncommon. We’re not talking about come and set up my router. (I think that’s usually about $100/hr.) Consulting related to installation of big ERP systems commonly run in the many many millions of dollars.
And it’s more like 2.5-3.5 x hourly pay rate, which is lower than most professional service industries.
Participant[quote=CONCHO][quote=dumbrenter]I pay IT consultants for their services and always thought their rates are too high for what they do.[/quote]
Their rates seem high because:
* They pay DOUBLE SS/MDCR tax
* They pay for their own health insurance
* They pay for their own life insurance
* They don’t get 401K matching from you
* They don’t get any bonuses
* They don’t get a yearly raise
* They don’t get paid vacation
* You can get rid of them at anytime, and they may be unemployed for a period of time with no income
* They have a lot more paperwork and taxes to deal with at the end of the year.With consultants you are paying for the convenience factor. My experience is that most of them do not make any more money than your typical 9-to-5 employee at the end of the day and many make less.[/quote]
We’re talking apples and oranges. Most IT consultants work for/are employed by IT consulting firms, they’re not independent contractors. Hourly rates for these firms commonly range from $100 to $400+ per hour.
Participant[quote=markmax33]
No but if he wins a few states it shuts up the retards. [/quote]I really hate the way you used that word “retards”. I’m pretty sure I’d hate it regardless of how you use it. My offense towards your word choice notwithstanding, these are the Republican primaries we’re talking about. In order for stupid comments to end, the balance of the primaries would have to be cancelled. That’s unlikely to happen, irrespective of any Paul victories.
(Did you hear the Washington County caucus votes are going to be included? It may take 6 weeks to count the 200 or so votes. But eventually someone will be declared the winner of this super-meaningless caucus.)
Participant[quote=markmax33]
The 8 vote count was wrong:
““Just the votes of Washington County would have been enough to put us over the top. This is an outrage. But our campaign is in this race to win, and will stay in it to the very end,” it continued.
It remains to be seen whether the results in Washington County would lean towards Paul’s favor. In addition, only 118 votes were cast in the county in 2008 – not enough to make up the difference between Romney and Paul if a similar number of voters showed up to caucus.
Neither state chair Charlie Webster nor the staffer who wrote the email immediately responded to a request for comment on Thursday.Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72989.html#ixzz1mbd5AVNX
118 votes for a county sounds much more realistic than 8 votes.[/quote]
The 8 vote total was for the 2008 caucus. That was the number of Paul votes in Washington County, out a total of 113. The total in Waldo county in 2008 was 97 votes for Paul out of 324 total votes. He came in 2nd place behind Romneys 134 votes. He didn’t win either county in 2008.
Here’s the link to the 2008 results.
http://mysite.verizon.net/mark.j.ellis/Caucus%20Tally%20Report.pdf
Participant[quote=pri_dk]Is this an argument about semantics?
;-)[/quote]
Pedantically speaking…..yes. And I resign 🙂
Participant[quote=markmax33]
I guess there needs to be a distinction. There is voter fraud and there is election fraud. When the state GOP Chair (A known Romney supporter) elects not to count votes from 17 districts that are known to be Paul territory and an entire county that was the only county Paul won in 2008, it is clear the Romney supporter is cheating in an extreme manner.[/quote]I can’t dispute that maybe there was some intentional manipulation of the process here, but there really is no reason to exaggerate its potential effects. In Washington county in 2008 he got 8 votes. And depending on the source, he either won Waldo county this year by 2 votes or the more official looking thing that I found said he won the county by 13 votes. Neither would have been sufficient to provide a Paul win.
I can’t find any reliable source that indicates he actually won either county in 2008. There’s a post on a Paul blog that looks less than final showing he lost Waldo County. The Washington County numbers seem pretty consistent with him getting 8 votes out of just over 200. The only evidence I can find that says he won either county in 2008 is some guy on Drudge says so. Which means I found nothing.
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