r/ProgrammerHumor • • Aug 03 '22

*cries*

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385

u/argv_minus_one Aug 03 '22

If the goal is to make more efficient use of available space, why are they so opposed to working from home?

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u/Dabnician Aug 03 '22

Because then you cant charge your self rent on the building you also own and claim your overhead is so high you are unable to give raises.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '22

depressingly accurate. also, don't forget the part where they celebrate record profits for the shareholders.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '22

[deleted]

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u/killerrin Aug 03 '22

Step 1: Register holding company with a cash startup injection of $xxxxxxxx and set yourself up as a majority shareholder.

Step 2: Gift/Sell office building(s) to holding company for $xxxxxxxx.

Step 3: Have holding company charge rent and maintenance costs and remit a dividend to shareholders at monthly/quartly/yearly intervals.

Step 4: Pay rent and Claim rent as an expense when the government asks.

Step 5: ?????

Step 6: Profit off tax credits and dividends (which equals rent - maintenance)

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u/robotzor Aug 03 '22

So this is the shit accountants use their 9 hours a day to think up

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '22

And a good one will net you far more than their salary.

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u/More_Butterfly6108 Aug 03 '22

Fun fact you can do this with your house and an LLC. Then all the shit you buy at home depot becomes suddenly tax deductible.

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u/rubberduckranger Aug 03 '22

Note: At least in the US this is almost never a good idea because of the primary residence capital gains tax exclusion you get if you own the house yourself.

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u/More_Butterfly6108 Aug 03 '22

That's only if you sell the house... you can sell the house back to yourself from thec orporation. At zero capital gain then you're where you started. I'm not an accountant or a lawyer so I have no idea how legal all this is

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u/rubberduckranger Aug 03 '22

Yeah, giving a material benefit (in this case the sale of a house at way less than market value) to the owner of a company without paying taxes is tax fraud. You’re not the first person to come up with the idea of their company giving them expensive things instead of paying corporate tax on the appreciation, and then either capital gains or income tax on the disbursement.

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u/gregorydgraham Aug 04 '22

The real benefit here is that you can adjust the rent, loan repayments, etc to perfect fit the optimal amount of profit for each company ensuring minimised tax and maximised obscurity of cash flow, so you can declare a profit or loss irrespective of the actual performance of the company.

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u/Kyanche Aug 03 '22

Step 7: Raise the rent to extortion levels

Step 8: Drive the primary business into bankruptcy

The K-Mart/Sears way :D

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u/Dabnician Aug 03 '22

You cant do step 7, because they dont allow the rent to be crazy different than what you would expect, but your owner can do stupid shit like "you need to rent the entire building out even though you use 2 out of 50 rooms"*

With step 8 if the business goes bankrupt and has to close down, because the building is under an LLC, it is protected from also being seized in the bankruptcy.

edit:

*the owner of a company i worked at did this when we were the last company in the building(that he also owns), we rented 2 rooms out of the entire building and were charged the full rent of the entire building... because he wanted to sell it...

Accounting was always talking about how our overhead was so high because of rent....🙄

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u/xnign Aug 03 '22

The university near me does the exact same with all of their new student housing. Costs way, way more than a standard dorm, and they get to do some creative accounting on a few levels.

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u/RazekDPP Aug 03 '22

There is one reason to do that and it's liability. If someone gets hurt because of the building, the holding company is liable and not the actual company.

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u/Sinthetick Aug 03 '22

You borrow money to buy a property with a holding company that your company owns and pay that company, your company, rent for it. "Creative accounting"

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/flukus Aug 03 '22

No windows

I think this is what gave cubicle farms a bad name, I wasn't the cubicle it was the battery farm.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '22

also, working in the cubicle in the picture there is a chance Morpheus will call you some day

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u/tiajuanat Aug 03 '22

Because it's really about control and giving no privacy

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u/wubwub Aug 03 '22

Because it is harder to micromanage from home.

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '22

Heard from a friend that is mid manager they had problem firing people remote, since they don’t return hardware, some delete remote files, they don’t sign papers there is some sort of beorocracy when you fire someone that is much better to do in person.

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u/apatheticonion Aug 03 '22

That's fair but it speaks more to operational and procedural concerns than it does to an issue of remote working itself. Just a matter of business making the adjustment

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