If Dan filmed himself going to break some fingers using the company car, it still wouldn’t be a tax write-off, but you could subsidise the cost of his bail.
he probebly can on some. what I think is that there two tax write off. full and limited. Like if I own a privet car and I use it in/at/on/for work a lot I can write some of my car tax off. I can´t write off all my taxes on the car. the crux is 1 how much can I write off and is that worthwile to go after. 2 would it be easier to just not write it off at all. the problem is that there been so many scandals where soem Rich corpo have bought a Privet jet and then written off 100% of the jet as tax write off when in reality he might only been able to write off 1-2% of that tax sum. problem been the IRA dont have the resorses to go and tell and prove to MR rich that no he can´t tax write of the whole jets taxes only about 1-2% of the tax sum is valid. now some sneaky companies are a bit more smart and goes well we use the jet for 5% of the tax write off and its not a small sum so we defently will request the 5% if we write it off at 100% or 90% IRA will spot it fast. so we are just going to write off 10-20% (we will be "making" money from this still but its not that insane shit.
The problem would be that treating his home as a tax write-off would expose his property and personal assets to plaintiffs in civil liability lawsuits or chapter 7 bankruptcy which could result in him losing everything if the judgement of settlement is sufficiently large or if he's forced to file chapter 7 bankruptcy to repay debts to creditors. whereas instead if he doesn't do this then the bankruptcy or lawsuits can only affect the company's assets.
It literally can be, at least in the US. The IRS explicitly allows any portion of a home or space that is primarily used for business to be written off. So if you have a room that is used as a home office, that takes up 100 sqft in a 1000sqft house, you can write off about 10% of all expenses including mortgage, water, electricity, etc. Now for some people it might make sense to install monitoring, such as an electricity watt meter (if your electricity use for work is more than the square footage percentage).
Not saying larger businesses don't do this as well. But small businesses tend to be where people try to "write off" everything, including clearly personal expenses.
fun fact about cts: with current tech, we can do way better scans than top end medical scanners can do of a human, but doing so would give the patient a way higher radiation dose than what is considered safe, so we don't do that. so it might genuinely be dangerous for elijah to do a ct of his head, if the ct they got is designed for non-human scanning
This is definitely true. I have two 450 kV CT systems at work, and at max power the lower flux of the two will deliver a lethal dose of x-rays in about 16 s. One advantage that medical scanners do have though is the knowledge that your specimens do not have significant variation in their composition, so the hardware and software can be optimized for imaging them. This dramatically speeds up the process, which lowers dose. I wish I could make scans that look as good as medical scans in the same amount of time. But here I am, taking 12 hours to scan nickel airfoils...
Ah taxes. After moving away from my birth country to another one, I discovered one thing: I don't have issues with paying taxes. I do have issues with how the taxes I pay are used.
I've seen pools successfully written off *as a business expense* on a corporate tax return when they were provided to a vendor/customer as a legitimate incentive for their business. Many Brampton pharmacists have some real nice pools on behalf of generic drug manufacturers pre- 2008.
@@Real_MisterSir no, it was generic drug companies paying to put in pools for their *customers* ie pharmacists. They claimed it was a business expense the same way taking a client out to dinner is (lol) Like I said it all changed and none of that is allowed anymore.
Something that I don't think a lot of people know is the CRA is much stricter on businesses than the IRS. If Linus actually tried to write off his pool, it would not surprise me in the slightest if the CRA considered going straight for the jugular
yes it would be a business expense, but then Linus would have to pay personal income tax on that, no different than if the company had just paid him the cash directly.
5:03 isn't possible anymore. What was described there is very close to a synthetic lease. Auditors now heavily crack down on these. You might already know that, but just in case some commenters don't: yes, this "loophole" has been exploited before and is now closed.
Pretty much spot on. As for the invoicing thing (6:20), yeah that's basically how it works but they require the transaction to be at "arm's length" and "reasonable." Meaning you can't charge significantly more than another business would charge for the same service.
The way I have come to understand tax write-offs is that, in the case of using them for a purchase, you basically bought the thing using pre-tax dollars, same as making 401(k) or health insurance contributions.
The difference between a "small" company, like Linus Media Group, and big financial corps, is pretty much the limit of "What am i, as the majority shareholder, willing to fenegle into writing off on taxes". Linus is simply to kind to do that sort of stuff.
My dad is an accountant and one of his friends owns a small business and has warned him quite a few times about things being "business expenses" when they really aren't. Like sure the minivan that has your company logo on it and is mostly used for delivering pieces of equipment to customers but is sometimes used for personal stuff is a business expense, but the other minivan the "company" bought that his wife uses to drive to work (at a different place) and drop off the kids at school is *not* a business expense. My dad kinda turns a blind eye to it and doesn't do his friends taxes but does warn him that he could easily get in trouble if they were ever audited.
You know, this "small" companies, like LTT or MrBeast. Right now, it's rubic cube "they just send it." What will be next? The EV car "they just send it, I don't even declare it".
@@kaushalsuvarna5156 That's pretty normal for higher ups, like the video said about the dedicated chargers though there would be some indirect income taxes that would need to be paid by the boss, not sure how that's calculated though.
@@MEatRHIT2009 the difference would come down to value. A rubix cube with some custom stickers that is meant to be a promotional gift (which Dbrand would have already paid taxes on the purchase of) would be so easy for an existing company to bang out a few thousand of that a single cube being gifted is literally not worth the cost of follow up in employee time and paperwork costs. A car most assuredly is. There will be a limit under which it costs them more to dig all the shit up than it would get them in taxes that come to maybe two or three cents if they're lucky. It's also a lot harder to hide something like a car. A rubix cube can be handed to you by a rep, whacked on a shelf and never noticed again. A car has to be roadworthy and registered and insured. That's a lot of other corroborating paperwork that leaves a trail which is very easy to follow if they are given reason to go looking. I work admin at a retail company and we cannot raise a journal for anything under $3 and cannot raise a credit claim for less than $15. Anything that falls into those cracks is just a write off (in the chuck it straight in the bin and just wear the cost sense). It's not worth the time of paying someone earning upwards of $20-30 dollars an hour to chase the handful of cents they could recoup by finding it.
I think what's missed is not the fact that LMG is too big to get away with stuff, but that it's too small to influence policy, and too Canadian to get away with things that US corpos do.
Yeah a lot of people definitely do NOT understand how taxes work. The number of people who seem to be insinuating that "tax write off" = "free" shows this. "Oh you can just write it off on your taxes" basically implies "The government is going to just give you your money back." No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And easily the classic example of that in the US, which so many people end up learning the hard way, is the mortgage tax deductions.
I admit i dont know alot about taxes... though thats likely because of how my country, and my situation, work, means i dont really need to Sales Tax is VAT, so (with a couple rare exceptions online) i never see the non-tax number, unless i go out of my way to look for it. I dont have to file anything either.
It is AMAZING how few people actually understand corporate taxes because of how few people HAVE incorporated (either a separate entity or have self-incorporated).
Whats a bummer is - This is what it sounds like, when an honest person talks about the taxes. In the states - there are plenty of people who get away with never paying taxes. They will tell you is that they deserve to not have to pay taxes. And the IRS will tell you it’s too expensive to go after them and on mass.
It's worse even, the IRS is more likely to go after little guys who made small errors and mistakes than the big fish because the resources to go after them is substantially less than it is to go after the people who cheat on the millions of dollars. If I get a bill from the IRS, I'm just going to pay it because I can't fight it and accept I probably messed something up. Meanwhile a billionaire has an on staff tax guy and lawyer who's only job is to dispute the claim.
@@jackieAZ Exactly. And 30x$5k home devices in the scale of $1B business (as they claim) is also within the limits of error. They have thousands of units just collecting dust on the shelves.
The thing many people don't understand about why so many hate paying taxes isn't even the paying most of the time. It's they never feel like they can see the benifits the taxes are theoretically going to. When you look at the $15k (way more for Linus) you spent on taxes a year but then look outside and see the poor state of the government services availbile to anyone in your community, you start to realizehow much more you could personally accomplish for you comunity than what the government does with it.
This has been a chronic issue in the UK for a long time now. Our public services, healthcare and infrastructure are falling apart yet we pay the highest taxes since WW2. It's scandalous where the money goes.
@@bobsworth7082That's part of the con. They're waisting money on purpose so people will resent taxes more, so they can reduce taxes, so public services get even worse...
So many people genuinely think that if a business makes $100 dollars and spends $50 on legitimate business expenses that the government will just comp them the entire $50 if they "write it off".
I mean that's genuinely how it works - it's just implementation that differs depending on some factors such as what industry segment your company is registered in, what your operating procedures are, what your typical income revolves around, etc. The goal of companies for the most part is to reach a net zero - where income revenue is poured straight back into the company to scale it rather than going to the government as tax -scaling in the form of business expenses that optimizes the company for future growth. No government wants businesses that stale out, so reaching net zero is incentivized. Any leftover capital is essentially useless (apart from being regarded as a safety blanket in an emergency, but even then there are other options to consider that don't rely on baseline capital). If a company pays a lot of company tax, it's generally regarded as an unoptimized business. Afterall, it's better for a country if the economy comes not from business taxation, but rather employee taxation and goods trade. Because where taxing a worker doesn't limit their scale of objective value generation, taxing a company DOES limit their ability to scale and grow and turn into a 10x or 100x economic factor in the future, with potential for many more job positions (that then get taxed individually).
I had an argument with an ex-girlfriend where she asked me why we couldn't have European vacations every month. She reasoned that you could label the trips as "meetings with potential clients."
But IF you steal stuff from the office (per EVERY SINGLE extreme tech upgrade where Linus finds company assets in employee residences)... Then it's free! And no taxes paid on it by the "owner" who took it from the company!!!!
It’s still his company. It doesn’t look good on a balance sheet that shows shrinkage from a company that doesn’t have brick and mortar stores. This is just as stupid as the idea of making needless expenses to pay less tax. This is broke man mindset
Whereas in the US, you are specifically REQUIRED to disclose and pay taxes on stolen and other illegally aquired income and property. Rob a bank? Better report the money you stole! Sold drugs? Don't forget to report that income! Steal a car? Better disclose the fair market value as a capital gain!
4:42 No, but the point i made, which, i feel others probably made as well, is that, while yes, ON PAPER you don't own a "slate" you have access to one you can use. Its like having a company Tesla right. You've used the car as a tax write off, yes, "Linus Sebastian" doesn't own it, LMG does. But Linus CAN use that car whenever he likes and has access to it anytime.
Yeah, no. Illegal almost everywhere. Either you or company will have to pay tax for you to be able to use it personally, or you or the company is straight up forbidden from allowing personal use, depending on where you live.
I think American viewers may underestimate the tax burden in Canad for rich people like Linus. If the IRS scares you, the CRA would make you sh*t bricks.
As a small business owner who knows many other less scrupulous small business owners … the luxurious things some people write off for the most tenuous reasons is just wild.
Watching & Hearing Luke & Dan act like teenage boys winding Dad Linus up and ribbing him while Linus just stares into the void with a deadpan face, stress aging by decades will never NOT be hilarious 😂
Man, Canada is weird. In the US, if you want to get paid in vacations and perks without claiming it all you need is an appointment to the Supreme Court.
I once spoke to a new college graduate in economics who thought that if you donate $1 to charity, you save $1 in taxes. I tried to explain to him that this is wrong. My how the universities failed him. He later confused/conflated revenue with profit. Some people don't know how taxes work, even if they have a piece of paper that says they should.
ct scan the logistic papers of the tax right-off of the ct scanner, make it a shirt and sell it, tax right-off the money making the shirts. I am pre-ordering 10 size xl if the the ticket on the washing instructions say, :"for proper cleaning, just tax right-off the shirt"
Surely the difference in cost between what you would do yourself, vs what you would do for a video could reduce your taxable income, or be paid amount that by the company account which would lower the net profit and thus less business tax.
17:35 please be very careful with closing the box because scattered radiation is still radiation. Or at the very least look up how the basic protocols of handling radioactive stuff.
Yeah, I think this is a confusion on Linus's part between what is legal and what is common. So many people commit tax fraud all the time in the states (I'm not sure about canada). We've kinda taken the approach of if it can be twisted as a right off it is a right off.
If you spun off the pool and other assets into a holding/leasing company, you could then use that revenue toward the maintainence of the pool tax-free.
My favorite thing about Linus educating the audience about how businesses and taxes work is that the ones who will understand, already aren’t commenting such stupid comments, and the ones who are commenting them will never be capable of understanding how it works, which is why they’re commenting.
14:35 you say it's stupid to air condition in the winter because there are more efficient ways. But Heat pumps are just air conditioners in reverse and they are remarkably efficient
That's out of context tho. He doesn't want to run air conditioning for his server room in the winter because it's dumb. If he turned on the heating, he's dumping energy into the room he's trying to cool, which is counterintuitive. Cooling the room is a priority because the heat generating components constantly... increase the room temperature.
5:03 The way legally not paying taxes actually works is you don't generate income. You get paid in equity or other intangibles, which you don't sell. Instead of getting paid you generate expenses which are deductible allowing you to run as barely profitable or a small net operating loss. Most people are so wealthy they are simply delaying taxes overall and don't need the money. If you do need money you borrow it at low preferential interest rates using the assets as collateral, you can then expense the interest as a deduction. If you manage to hold the assets until you die you can pass them to your heirs tax free as there is a step up in tax basis when someone dies.
@@hahasamian8010 Sort of, you want to make as much money as possible. But you once you make the money you have two options, spend it and take it as income or reinvest it and use it to buy assets to make more money later. If you invest the money instead of taking it as cash you don't get taxed until you actually pull money out (what accountants call realizing the income). So if you say hire staff, buy equipment, or buy inventory you can increase your net worth without increasing your cash flow (your day to day income in your bank account).
@@hahasamian8010 The key thing is you control what your expenses are. If I make a million dollars and spend a million dollars I made a net profit of zero. If I buy assets like buildings, equipment, inventory, etc. that will make me more money later I don't pay tax until I actually receive the future income. Delay receiving the income and you delay paying tax.
19:30 Bro BILLIONAIRES were getting away with writing off their private jets. In the states IRS basically doesn’t audit rich people. It’s too expensive for them, they basically only audit upper middle class people
Rich people can get audited but it's a waste of time for the government because they can afford way better accountants than the government or the middle class
He is a Canadian, to the best of my knowledge in Canada, a lot of the top grossing people are way more serious about their taxes here because the CRA is ruthless when it comes to dealing with that kind of stuff unlike the IRS
@@the_undead Yep they are relentless, its why so many "Canadians" who are rich or famous magically chose to have a primary residence in other countries yet still live there.
Personally I would really love if you guys published 3d models of the stuff you CT scan. Not the most widely useful but could be invaluable in the right circumstances
I blame short form grindset content for this. Everyone throws the term tax write off around, but writing off EVERYTHING left and right will land you in a big audit (at least here in the US).
Same with Canada. The CRA very often is more likely to go after people for doing that. In fact theres been recent court cases that had the defendant walking away beaten with a big tax bill for their stupidity
11:52 - the problem here Linus is that the confusion is are YOU (personally) buying the TV (with money you have already paid tax on) or is the COMPANY LMG Ltd (whatever you are official called) buying it (with profit from elsewhere that you are then using to invest in the company (by buying inventory for videos). Surely if you personally are buying it but then the company makes the money off the videos then you can't claim the tax back on that income as it is yours not the companies, but if the company buys it then uses it for commercial use (in the videos) then they can as it is an investment and not pay tax - who owns the TV? YOU or LMG Ltd?
Is the difference between the Canadian tax code and the US tax code. I'm pretty sure in the US people would have written off the pool and charge the company for use.
26:34 this is where Luke and Dan reached Peak Stupid and Linus straight up snapped and decided they were gonna eat shit financially to prove a point. Bless this entire WAN show team. 10/10
17:30 ish Luke misunderstands CT (Computer tomography) vs MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) and Linus misunderstands him right back, For clarity CT as Linus says exasperated earlier uses xrays while MRI is the one that uses magnets and would therefore have issues with magnetic stuff and While it is relatively safe, having worked at a company (a few summers (small office of 5 total people in a larger company (my dad worked there))) that had an xray box (which is incredibly safe) for development of a new CT detector, not to cast aspersions on lmg nor on lumafield I hope the people working most with this ct scanner wear dosimeters as an easy way of proving it never malfunctions
The thing with the pool i believe happened because many many many people do what you just said you won't do because it's not legal. And i'm pretty sure you joked about it in a pool video about how it was gonna be a tax write off (and it didn't really sound like a joke) I'm italian and i can tell you with all the tax evasion that happens here there isn't a single business owner that doesn't do random ass tax write offs for pretty much anything
isnt the pool server infrastructure since its cooling it. also cant the pool be used as a conference space for meetings, cant it be claimed as adaptive effort to comply with neurotypical workspace optimizations
Elijah is just a massive insurance liability at this point. Better put him in more videos to offset the impending increase in premiums. Plus he's funny as hell to watch. 😆
Not sure how it's so hard for people to understand why you don't pay income tax on business expenses because expenses are not income... For the stuff that's proportional to business use it would often cost more to track and document than the write off would be worth.
Off the top of my head: Whatever taxes you saved by claiming the pool + a penalty + interest + at least one auditor looking at every financial transaction for the year = getting your ass kicked so hard you can wipe with your tounge.
Nutshell version: The money Linus makes in profit is taxable. Any profit that goes to assets for the company (I.E: write-offs), is no longer profit that is taxable.
So if the company OWNS the pool and films there, but lets Linus use it...... Then it's an employee benefit and Linus(The person) has to pay taxes on his employee benefits.
The reality for anyone who is genuinly upset by somebody writing things off is that they either have genuinly no idea how taxes work, or you are just mad at the wrong people because nobody at LMG wrote the tax code. If you dont like what people are allowed to do to skirt paying taxes then write your representative who wont ever listen because you dont pay them enough to care about what you think. And then once you realize how hopeless your frustration is DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Politicians work for who they fear the most and its not the peasants watching this video right now.
I think he would rather take on the IRS over the CRA (Canadian equivalent of the IRS) because in the US tax code is such a mess that defending yourself is possible when you're doing stuff like this, in canada tax code is relatively cut and dry. So if you're breaking it, the CRA can come after you and there is nothing you can do apart from accept defeat or get yourself a deeper hole by trying to fight it
You could set up an advanced heat pump system that moves heat from your server room to heat other rooms in your house (tech connections mentions this in his latest hvac videos)
First you insure your company in Linus Insurance Inc., then you allow access of your company on to your old pool, the company writes off the pool (i.e. damages it beyond repair). And then the very generous *to you* insurance group fixes it. Payments that are meant to reimburse you or make you whole are not taxable. Basically anything can be a tax write off.
Yeah, I own a business and it’s not that simple. Taxes are nerve wracking. I can’t imagine how crazy it is in Canada. Our tax code in America is so confusing.
The "dying inside" stare on Linus face every time they interrupted with the stupid ideas, priceless.
Or tax writeoff suggestions
The tax code triggers this man lol
I really enjoy Luke and Dan saying dumb shit just to screw with Linus.
dunno man, i don't think there's anything dumb about what they said
;)
They continue to call things tax write offs for the rest of the show
We all do 😂😂
It triggers Linus a little coz it takes a moment for Linus to realize the guys are messing with him.
Made me keep watching.
So you're saying it's _not_ owned by Linus Pool Parties, a subsidiary of Linus Pool Group Inc. who then in turn rents it to Linus Family Group? 😂
Linus Family Group. 😆😆
I don't have any LTT merch yet, but I would 100% buy a "This ____ is a tax write off" shirt/hat/hoodie/etc
But would it be?
This is, unironically, a great idea.
"This shirt is a tax write off", "This backpack is a tax write off", etc.
@@kaushalsuvarna5156 no, but the taxes could be a shirt write off
Well well well looks like you can
I 100% agree!
Luke: These mic stands are tax write offs. Basically free...
Linus: Can you relax for a moment here *Starts Shaking Violently*
Especially since if they get something for “free” they still have to report it as income
I bet it was free because sponsorships 👀
Just visibly seeing Linus' blood pressure steadily rising over the course of half an hour because of Dan and Luke is always good entertainment xD
People thinking they found the infinite money glitch is how you get 2008
Underrated
Id blame blackrock and vanguard more. No wait, that's antisemitic, my bad!
@@BichaelStevensas much as PMCs are shit, they weren’t responsible for 2008
@@Coliflower185 Kneeqa they're investment and real estate companies...
I didn't know people are named BlackRock and the Federal Government
linus is faking anger so that he can go to a therapist as a tax writeoff.
(meme, of course)
If Dan filmed himself going to break some fingers using the company car, it still wouldn’t be a tax write-off, but you could subsidise the cost of his bail.
Your house is an independent studio. Write it off.
he probebly can on some.
what I think is that there two tax write off.
full and limited.
Like if I own a privet car and I use it in/at/on/for work a lot I can write some of my car tax off. I can´t write off all my taxes on the car.
the crux is
1 how much can I write off and is that worthwile to go after.
2 would it be easier to just not write it off at all.
the problem is that there been so many scandals where soem Rich corpo have bought a Privet jet and then written off 100% of the jet as tax write off when in reality he might only been able to write off 1-2% of that tax sum.
problem been the IRA dont have the resorses to go and tell and prove to MR rich that no he can´t tax write of the whole jets taxes only about 1-2% of the tax sum is valid.
now some sneaky companies are a bit more smart and goes well we use the jet for 5% of the tax write off and its not a small sum so we defently will request the 5%
if we write it off at 100% or 90% IRA will spot it fast. so we are just going to write off 10-20% (we will be "making" money from this still but its not that insane shit.
The problem would be that treating his home as a tax write-off would expose his property and personal assets to plaintiffs in civil liability lawsuits or chapter 7 bankruptcy which could result in him losing everything if the judgement of settlement is sufficiently large or if he's forced to file chapter 7 bankruptcy to repay debts to creditors. whereas instead if he doesn't do this then the bankruptcy or lawsuits can only affect the company's assets.
@@Zack_Wester I am just going to point out the "privet car" is the car you take sh*ts in -- so NO ONE else is going to want a ride in it!
It literally can be, at least in the US.
The IRS explicitly allows any portion of a home or space that is primarily used for business to be written off.
So if you have a room that is used as a home office, that takes up 100 sqft in a 1000sqft house, you can write off about 10% of all expenses including mortgage, water, electricity, etc.
Now for some people it might make sense to install monitoring, such as an electricity watt meter (if your electricity use for work is more than the square footage percentage).
Dan threatening to "break fingers" is somehow suprisingly convincing
Part of the misconception is there's a not insignificant amount of small businesses in the US committing tax evasion.
And large businesses, and medium businesses too
And very large businessess
@isaacbelloso7921
and not just large businesses but the Medium and Small Businesses too!
"In business we call that tax OPTIMIZATION"
Not saying larger businesses don't do this as well. But small businesses tend to be where people try to "write off" everything, including clearly personal expenses.
fun fact about cts: with current tech, we can do way better scans than top end medical scanners can do of a human, but doing so would give the patient a way higher radiation dose than what is considered safe, so we don't do that.
so it might genuinely be dangerous for elijah to do a ct of his head, if the ct they got is designed for non-human scanning
Yep very true. This is why there are SO MANY safety implementations of the X-ray machines at the company where I work. (I work at a PCB manufacturer)
This is definitely true. I have two 450 kV CT systems at work, and at max power the lower flux of the two will deliver a lethal dose of x-rays in about 16 s. One advantage that medical scanners do have though is the knowledge that your specimens do not have significant variation in their composition, so the hardware and software can be optimized for imaging them. This dramatically speeds up the process, which lowers dose. I wish I could make scans that look as good as medical scans in the same amount of time. But here I am, taking 12 hours to scan nickel airfoils...
linus casually makes the most perfect nintendo switch click sound at 8:40
Watch Nintendo copyright the video now
Ah taxes. After moving away from my birth country to another one, I discovered one thing: I don't have issues with paying taxes. I do have issues with how the taxes I pay are used.
And the amount. The amount that disappears into *administration* is absolutely f*ing absurd.
@@willdabeast6503 Fun fact, it's hard to run a miti trilliomn dollar enterpirse
And this is a larger problem if you're a young professional without a family
I've seen pools successfully written off *as a business expense* on a corporate tax return when they were provided to a vendor/customer as a legitimate incentive for their business. Many Brampton pharmacists have some real nice pools on behalf of generic drug manufacturers pre- 2008.
If it's regarded as an employee benefit for mental health and work-life balance to promote better efficiency and stress tolerance - why not.
@@Real_MisterSir no, it was generic drug companies paying to put in pools for their *customers* ie pharmacists. They claimed it was a business expense the same way taking a client out to dinner is (lol)
Like I said it all changed and none of that is allowed anymore.
Something that I don't think a lot of people know is the CRA is much stricter on businesses than the IRS. If Linus actually tried to write off his pool, it would not surprise me in the slightest if the CRA considered going straight for the jugular
yes it would be a business expense, but then Linus would have to pay personal income tax on that, no different than if the company had just paid him the cash directly.
@@the_undeadSo what you're saying is yours kind of works and isn't pludgened into the ground by the 🤑?
Just don't pay them. Problem solved.
If enough people stopped.....
I don't care who the IRS sends I'm not paying my taxes.
@@552jacki3 What if they send Andre Rush?
@@552jacki3IRS? Never heard of her
Live outside of society then, easy peasy.
1:58 that closed mouth yawn.
hahahaha, good catch
😆😆😆😆😆
5:03 isn't possible anymore. What was described there is very close to a synthetic lease. Auditors now heavily crack down on these. You might already know that, but just in case some commenters don't: yes, this "loophole" has been exploited before and is now closed.
As an auditor we tested related party transactions and these type of non arm lengths transactions because the risk of fraud is so high and common
Tax Write off shirt when?
I would honestly prefer a terrible bootleg tax write off shirt
When tax shirt write off.
Pretty much spot on. As for the invoicing thing (6:20), yeah that's basically how it works but they require the transaction to be at "arm's length" and "reasonable." Meaning you can't charge significantly more than another business would charge for the same service.
A tax write off is not a refund.
It’s more like “not getting charged twice for the same item”
The way I have come to understand tax write-offs is that, in the case of using them for a purchase, you basically bought the thing using pre-tax dollars, same as making 401(k) or health insurance contributions.
The difference between a "small" company, like Linus Media Group, and big financial corps, is pretty much the limit of "What am i, as the majority shareholder, willing to fenegle into writing off on taxes". Linus is simply to kind to do that sort of stuff.
My dad is an accountant and one of his friends owns a small business and has warned him quite a few times about things being "business expenses" when they really aren't. Like sure the minivan that has your company logo on it and is mostly used for delivering pieces of equipment to customers but is sometimes used for personal stuff is a business expense, but the other minivan the "company" bought that his wife uses to drive to work (at a different place) and drop off the kids at school is *not* a business expense. My dad kinda turns a blind eye to it and doesn't do his friends taxes but does warn him that he could easily get in trouble if they were ever audited.
My friend's boss gets a new SUV sized car from a big brand every year, of course paid for by the company
You know, this "small" companies, like LTT or MrBeast. Right now, it's rubic cube "they just send it." What will be next? The EV car "they just send it, I don't even declare it".
@@kaushalsuvarna5156 That's pretty normal for higher ups, like the video said about the dedicated chargers though there would be some indirect income taxes that would need to be paid by the boss, not sure how that's calculated though.
@@MEatRHIT2009 the difference would come down to value. A rubix cube with some custom stickers that is meant to be a promotional gift (which Dbrand would have already paid taxes on the purchase of) would be so easy for an existing company to bang out a few thousand of that a single cube being gifted is literally not worth the cost of follow up in employee time and paperwork costs. A car most assuredly is. There will be a limit under which it costs them more to dig all the shit up than it would get them in taxes that come to maybe two or three cents if they're lucky.
It's also a lot harder to hide something like a car. A rubix cube can be handed to you by a rep, whacked on a shelf and never noticed again. A car has to be roadworthy and registered and insured. That's a lot of other corroborating paperwork that leaves a trail which is very easy to follow if they are given reason to go looking.
I work admin at a retail company and we cannot raise a journal for anything under $3 and cannot raise a credit claim for less than $15. Anything that falls into those cracks is just a write off (in the chuck it straight in the bin and just wear the cost sense). It's not worth the time of paying someone earning upwards of $20-30 dollars an hour to chase the handful of cents they could recoup by finding it.
You could do a tax write off on putting Elijah in the CT scanner.
while playing along with the joke it's a bad idea to xray people unnecessarily
What's the taxable value of writing off an entire person? Asking for LMG. 😆
Actually no. Large appliances/medical equipment have a standard useful life and must be depreciated monthly.
Think of all the write off from the cancer treatments too! Wait they're in Canada nvm.
@@matthewcohen3521Payroll is already a business expense. It is taken from your taxable (pre-tax) income reducing your tax liability
"I. Hate. Computers." -Everyone who works in IT long enough
23:10 this is amazing 😂😂
I know a guy, who is manager in a bank and write of hair dryer and vacuum cleaner. I couldn't sleep at night fearing audit.
I think what's missed is not the fact that LMG is too big to get away with stuff, but that it's too small to influence policy, and too Canadian to get away with things that US corpos do.
Rather it's run by people with too much of a conscience to even attempt any -loopholes- optimization strategies
Yeah a lot of people definitely do NOT understand how taxes work. The number of people who seem to be insinuating that "tax write off" = "free" shows this. "Oh you can just write it off on your taxes" basically implies "The government is going to just give you your money back." No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And easily the classic example of that in the US, which so many people end up learning the hard way, is the mortgage tax deductions.
I admit i dont know alot about taxes... though thats likely because of how my country, and my situation, work, means i dont really need to
Sales Tax is VAT, so (with a couple rare exceptions online) i never see the non-tax number, unless i go out of my way to look for it. I dont have to file anything either.
French ?
@@xenio8736 Close, Danish.
It is AMAZING how few people actually understand corporate taxes because of how few people HAVE incorporated (either a separate entity or have self-incorporated).
Whats a bummer is - This is what it sounds like, when an honest person talks about the taxes.
In the states - there are plenty of people who get away with never paying taxes.
They will tell you is that they deserve to not have to pay taxes.
And the IRS will tell you it’s too expensive to go after them and on mass.
Suuuuuure.... Every phone charger in Linus' house is definitely paid out of pocket.
@@HungrysitesRu Given the rate Linus seems to lose things, they (or more likely the replacements) probably are.
It's worse even, the IRS is more likely to go after little guys who made small errors and mistakes than the big fish because the resources to go after them is substantially less than it is to go after the people who cheat on the millions of dollars. If I get a bill from the IRS, I'm just going to pay it because I can't fight it and accept I probably messed something up. Meanwhile a billionaire has an on staff tax guy and lawyer who's only job is to dispute the claim.
@@HungrysitesRubro let’s be real, who actually cares with that kind of stuff lol
@@jackieAZ Exactly. And 30x$5k home devices in the scale of $1B business (as they claim) is also within the limits of error. They have thousands of units just collecting dust on the shelves.
The thing many people don't understand about why so many hate paying taxes isn't even the paying most of the time. It's they never feel like they can see the benifits the taxes are theoretically going to. When you look at the $15k (way more for Linus) you spent on taxes a year but then look outside and see the poor state of the government services availbile to anyone in your community, you start to realizehow much more you could personally accomplish for you comunity than what the government does with it.
This has been a chronic issue in the UK for a long time now. Our public services, healthcare and infrastructure are falling apart yet we pay the highest taxes since WW2. It's scandalous where the money goes.
@@bobsworth7082That's part of the con. They're waisting money on purpose so people will resent taxes more, so they can reduce taxes, so public services get even worse...
But the government acomplishes a lot, we just take it for granted
Yes a lot of shit @@JZTechEngineering
So many people genuinely think that if a business makes $100 dollars and spends $50 on legitimate business expenses that the government will just comp them the entire $50 if they "write it off".
I mean that's genuinely how it works - it's just implementation that differs depending on some factors such as what industry segment your company is registered in, what your operating procedures are, what your typical income revolves around, etc.
The goal of companies for the most part is to reach a net zero - where income revenue is poured straight back into the company to scale it rather than going to the government as tax -scaling in the form of business expenses that optimizes the company for future growth. No government wants businesses that stale out, so reaching net zero is incentivized. Any leftover capital is essentially useless (apart from being regarded as a safety blanket in an emergency, but even then there are other options to consider that don't rely on baseline capital).
If a company pays a lot of company tax, it's generally regarded as an unoptimized business. Afterall, it's better for a country if the economy comes not from business taxation, but rather employee taxation and goods trade. Because where taxing a worker doesn't limit their scale of objective value generation, taxing a company DOES limit their ability to scale and grow and turn into a 10x or 100x economic factor in the future, with potential for many more job positions (that then get taxed individually).
@@BeerMoneyforTokyo pay your employees more and then suddenly as a whole you pay less taxes
23:38 BAHAHAHA OMG LINUS FACE AHAHAHAAH OMG
I had an argument with an ex-girlfriend where she asked me why we couldn't have European vacations every month. She reasoned that you could label the trips as "meetings with potential clients."
Most people’s tax advice is just fraud
I genuinely laughed most of the 29 minutes... One of the funniest LTT video!
Having Linus lose his temper and Dan and Luke poking him was so funny!
@18:00 Luke is confusing a NMRI with a CT scanner. NMRI works with magnets, CT with radiation.
But IF you steal stuff from the office (per EVERY SINGLE extreme tech upgrade where Linus finds company assets in employee residences)... Then it's free! And no taxes paid on it by the "owner" who took it from the company!!!!
It’s still his company. It doesn’t look good on a balance sheet that shows shrinkage from a company that doesn’t have brick and mortar stores. This is just as stupid as the idea of making needless expenses to pay less tax. This is broke man mindset
This comment is the epitome of broke people mindsets
@@josephtimothy1398 This comment is the epitome of the misunderstanding of embezzlement of company assets good sir.
Whereas in the US, you are specifically REQUIRED to disclose and pay taxes on stolen and other illegally aquired income and property. Rob a bank? Better report the money you stole! Sold drugs? Don't forget to report that income! Steal a car? Better disclose the fair market value as a capital gain!
@@matthewcohen3521 Probably the best part of IRS pub 17!
All of this talk about tax write offs reminds me of that one scene from Schitts Creek where the dad is yelling about things not being a tax writeoff
4:42 No, but the point i made, which, i feel others probably made as well, is that, while yes, ON PAPER you don't own a "slate" you have access to one you can use. Its like having a company Tesla right. You've used the car as a tax write off, yes, "Linus Sebastian" doesn't own it, LMG does. But Linus CAN use that car whenever he likes and has access to it anytime.
I dunno how it works in canuckia, but here you can't use company owned vehicles for personal comings and goings.
not legally, you can't
Yeah, no. Illegal almost everywhere. Either you or company will have to pay tax for you to be able to use it personally, or you or the company is straight up forbidden from allowing personal use, depending on where you live.
I think American viewers may underestimate the tax burden in Canad for rich people like Linus.
If the IRS scares you, the CRA would make you sh*t bricks.
Still one of the top moments in WAN show history for me. That was an epic and passionate rant 😂
As a small business owner who knows many other less scrupulous small business owners … the luxurious things some people write off for the most tenuous reasons is just wild.
Watching & Hearing Luke & Dan act like teenage boys winding Dad Linus up and ribbing him while Linus just stares into the void with a deadpan face, stress aging by decades will never NOT be hilarious 😂
Man, Canada is weird. In the US, if you want to get paid in vacations and perks without claiming it all you need is an appointment to the Supreme Court.
fun fact in the US the irs has stated that you are supposed to report money made from illegal gains
I read the title as "Linus keeps ranting about TEXAS" and kept thinking "when is he going to start talking about Texas? :'D:'D
The pain/anger in Linus's face 😂
This was so funny. Obviously they were teasing him but Linus took it so personally lol
That subsidiary mention at 5:20 is basically how shell corporations work for money injection which *is* fraud 😅
I once spoke to a new college graduate in economics who thought that if you donate $1 to charity, you save $1 in taxes. I tried to explain to him that this is wrong. My how the universities failed him. He later confused/conflated revenue with profit.
Some people don't know how taxes work, even if they have a piece of paper that says they should.
19:00 "It's like, they don't wanna understand!"
One step closer to the truth, Linus.
ct scan the logistic papers of the tax right-off of the ct scanner, make it a shirt and sell it, tax right-off the money making the shirts. I am pre-ordering 10 size xl if the the ticket on the washing instructions say, :"for proper cleaning, just tax right-off the shirt"
Surely the difference in cost between what you would do yourself, vs what you would do for a video could reduce your taxable income, or be paid amount that by the company account which would lower the net profit and thus less business tax.
17:35 please be very careful with closing the box because scattered radiation is still radiation. Or at the very least look up how the basic protocols of handling radioactive stuff.
Also worth understanding that tax laws differ country to country and in some places like USA state to state.
Yeah, I think this is a confusion on Linus's part between what is legal and what is common. So many people commit tax fraud all the time in the states (I'm not sure about canada). We've kinda taken the approach of if it can be twisted as a right off it is a right off.
If you spun off the pool and other assets into a holding/leasing company, you could then use that revenue toward the maintainence of the pool tax-free.
Donald trump did exactly what Linus is describing at 6:45 with his Casinos. He would pay himself appearance fees for visiting the Casinos.
the type of "personal business" you were thinking of in the middle is called a sole proprietorship.
"I don't even think you can joke about that" Linus trying not to have another wan show incident
My favorite thing about Linus educating the audience about how businesses and taxes work is that the ones who will understand, already aren’t commenting such stupid comments, and the ones who are commenting them will never be capable of understanding how it works, which is why they’re commenting.
14:35 you say it's stupid to air condition in the winter because there are more efficient ways. But Heat pumps are just air conditioners in reverse and they are remarkably efficient
That's out of context tho.
He doesn't want to run air conditioning for his server room in the winter because it's dumb. If he turned on the heating, he's dumping energy into the room he's trying to cool, which is counterintuitive. Cooling the room is a priority because the heat generating components constantly... increase the room temperature.
@@hhhfghhh ah right i get it
5:03 The way legally not paying taxes actually works is you don't generate income. You get paid in equity or other intangibles, which you don't sell. Instead of getting paid you generate expenses which are deductible allowing you to run as barely profitable or a small net operating loss. Most people are so wealthy they are simply delaying taxes overall and don't need the money. If you do need money you borrow it at low preferential interest rates using the assets as collateral, you can then expense the interest as a deduction. If you manage to hold the assets until you die you can pass them to your heirs tax free as there is a step up in tax basis when someone dies.
Does this essentially mean an incentive to not make too much money?? If so, that actually explains a lot of bizarre company behavior....
@@hahasamian8010 Sort of, you want to make as much money as possible. But you once you make the money you have two options, spend it and take it as income or reinvest it and use it to buy assets to make more money later. If you invest the money instead of taking it as cash you don't get taxed until you actually pull money out (what accountants call realizing the income). So if you say hire staff, buy equipment, or buy inventory you can increase your net worth without increasing your cash flow (your day to day income in your bank account).
@@hahasamian8010 The key thing is you control what your expenses are. If I make a million dollars and spend a million dollars I made a net profit of zero. If I buy assets like buildings, equipment, inventory, etc. that will make me more money later I don't pay tax until I actually receive the future income. Delay receiving the income and you delay paying tax.
19:30 Bro BILLIONAIRES were getting away with writing off their private jets. In the states IRS basically doesn’t audit rich people. It’s too expensive for them, they basically only audit upper middle class people
Rich people can get audited but it's a waste of time for the government because they can afford way better accountants than the government or the middle class
He is a Canadian, to the best of my knowledge in Canada, a lot of the top grossing people are way more serious about their taxes here because the CRA is ruthless when it comes to dealing with that kind of stuff unlike the IRS
@@the_undead Yep they are relentless, its why so many "Canadians" who are rich or famous magically chose to have a primary residence in other countries yet still live there.
Personally I would really love if you guys published 3d models of the stuff you CT scan. Not the most widely useful but could be invaluable in the right circumstances
I blame short form grindset content for this. Everyone throws the term tax write off around, but writing off EVERYTHING left and right will land you in a big audit (at least here in the US).
Same with Canada. The CRA very often is more likely to go after people for doing that. In fact theres been recent court cases that had the defendant walking away beaten with a big tax bill for their stupidity
"You don't have to pay taxes on money you don't make" - - - not yet
"You had a deficit? Mmm there's a tax for that" - A very oversimplified man
Software companies reading 2024 US tax code: Uhhhhhhh that's happening now
Unity trying to put a price tag on individual game downloads even if that game is f2p be like:
"I hope this email finds you before I do"
30 minutes of winding Linus up is A+ content.
This is like the seinfeld episode where Kramer talks about write offs
11:52 - the problem here Linus is that the confusion is are YOU (personally) buying the TV (with money you have already paid tax on) or is the COMPANY LMG Ltd (whatever you are official called) buying it (with profit from elsewhere that you are then using to invest in the company (by buying inventory for videos).
Surely if you personally are buying it but then the company makes the money off the videos then you can't claim the tax back on that income as it is yours not the companies, but if the company buys it then uses it for commercial use (in the videos) then they can as it is an investment and not pay tax - who owns the TV? YOU or LMG Ltd?
Is the difference between the Canadian tax code and the US tax code.
I'm pretty sure in the US people would have written off the pool and charge the company for use.
I thought it said "Linus keeps ranting about texas" and I was genuinely prepared to hear something crazy
26:34 this is where Luke and Dan reached Peak Stupid and Linus straight up snapped and decided they were gonna eat shit financially to prove a point.
Bless this entire WAN show team. 10/10
5:43 "except for the pool"
He is going to EXPLODE
Hot tub WAN show under the Hot tubs and pools category on Twitch?
17:30 ish Luke misunderstands CT (Computer tomography) vs MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) and Linus misunderstands him right back,
For clarity CT as Linus says exasperated earlier uses xrays while MRI is the one that uses magnets and would therefore have issues with magnetic stuff and While it is relatively safe, having worked at a company (a few summers (small office of 5 total people in a larger company (my dad worked there))) that had an xray box (which is incredibly safe) for development of a new CT detector, not to cast aspersions on lmg nor on lumafield I hope the people working most with this ct scanner wear dosimeters as an easy way of proving it never malfunctions
The thing with the pool i believe happened because many many many people do what you just said you won't do because it's not legal. And i'm pretty sure you joked about it in a pool video about how it was gonna be a tax write off (and it didn't really sound like a joke)
I'm italian and i can tell you with all the tax evasion that happens here there isn't a single business owner that doesn't do random ass tax write offs for pretty much anything
isnt the pool server infrastructure since its cooling it. also cant the pool be used as a conference space for meetings,
cant it be claimed as adaptive effort to comply with neurotypical workspace optimizations
Amazing ... need to follow the WAN show more 😆😆
Elijah is just a massive insurance liability at this point. Better put him in more videos to offset the impending increase in premiums. Plus he's funny as hell to watch. 😆
Not sure how it's so hard for people to understand why you don't pay income tax on business expenses because expenses are not income... For the stuff that's proportional to business use it would often cost more to track and document than the write off would be worth.
Lol @Luke at 1:59 with that stealth yawn
Off the top of my head: Whatever taxes you saved by claiming the pool + a penalty + interest + at least one auditor looking at every financial transaction for the year = getting your ass kicked so hard you can wipe with your tounge.
Nutshell version:
The money Linus makes in profit is taxable.
Any profit that goes to assets for the company (I.E: write-offs), is no longer profit that is taxable.
So if the company OWNS the pool and films there, but lets Linus use it......
Then it's an employee benefit and Linus(The person) has to pay taxes on his employee benefits.
The reality for anyone who is genuinly upset by somebody writing things off is that they either have genuinly no idea how taxes work, or you are just mad at the wrong people because nobody at LMG wrote the tax code. If you dont like what people are allowed to do to skirt paying taxes then write your representative who wont ever listen because you dont pay them enough to care about what you think. And then once you realize how hopeless your frustration is DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Politicians work for who they fear the most and its not the peasants watching this video right now.
Linus do be like: I'm crazy enough to take on nintendo, but the IRS nooo thank you
I think he would rather take on the IRS over the CRA (Canadian equivalent of the IRS) because in the US tax code is such a mess that defending yourself is possible when you're doing stuff like this, in canada tax code is relatively cut and dry. So if you're breaking it, the CRA can come after you and there is nothing you can do apart from accept defeat or get yourself a deeper hole by trying to fight it
@@the_undeadI was referring to a scene from Batman TAS
You could set up an advanced heat pump system that moves heat from your server room to heat other rooms in your house (tech connections mentions this in his latest hvac videos)
They should teach this stuff ( taxes and money management) from high school onwards.
First you insure your company in Linus Insurance Inc., then you allow access of your company on to your old pool, the company writes off the pool (i.e. damages it beyond repair). And then the very generous *to you* insurance group fixes it. Payments that are meant to reimburse you or make you whole are not taxable. Basically anything can be a tax write off.
I need to take a tax code class for sure
It's almost like taxes are really complicated and requires an entire semester dedicated to learning about them. There's a reason accountants exist
0:08 luke just laging when he speaks
Video idea, turn an old electric typewriter into a sleeper gaming computer
Yeah, I own a business and it’s not that simple. Taxes are nerve wracking. I can’t imagine how crazy it is in Canada. Our tax code in America is so confusing.
More of this! This is Linus at his best.
Luke is having to much fun trolling Linus to claim this as a work expense