"Don't be kind." Human trying to help homeless friend compared to prioritizing corporate profit

[lostnfound]

Man and woman (“Jane and Joe Smith”) in semi-retirement, an old love rekindled, move in together. Thus end up with a second, smaller house. Joe’s kids were raised.there, now out of country for a few years. Could sell. Market values going up. I suppose the Smiths could split (never-in-a-million-years) but on paper that’s theoretically possible.

Smiths know a family — (“Jones”) a mom and grown kid — about to have no place to live. It’s hard to get by, to keep a job, when you’re injured or afraid of the pandemic or a dozen other reasons. Almost retirement age anyway. Stressing out, and Mrs. Jones’ blood pressure regularly visits 200, 210… “Friends, come live here in this empty house. Don’t be homeless. We got your back for now. We got the mortgage, the utilities, the taxes.. Borrow Jane’s car, too. You got a place to live, don’t worry, just breathe.”

The joy on their faces. They grew lots of plants, settled in. Looked happy and relieved. A few years later, we are all getting tired. Grown-kid-Jones wants to enroll in university. Both Jones’ get local driver licenses. Expensive fees, on credit card. Needs insurance to get a license. Jane’s car’s already has insurance but driver must have it too per law, even if they don't own a car. So the Jones’s get driver-only insurance at a separate insurance company (IC) that does that type.

All cool, right?

Joe Smith keeps insurance on his grown-kid-working-abroad’s car ( foreign traveler visits occasionally). Joe Smith’s auto insurance suddenly went up by $1600 (on a car worth maybe $6000).. The insurance company has ADDED a new person to HIS auto insurance policy WITHOUT his consent or knowledge. What?? Why?? The Jones’s aren’t even DRIVING that car. The state and IC exchange information. I bet AI is flagging an adult driver living at the same address.

The Smiths are letting them live there out of compassion. They get no tax break from it, of course. Incidentally, if the fair-market value of rent plus utilities is $2500 a month, technically this is all a GIFT, subject to gift tax. If the Smiths had a company they could PAY the Jones (consultants? cleaners?) and DEDUCT it from the company’s income.

Humans are screwed in 1000 ways in the fascist, built-for-corporations-society.

The young people I know do NOT want to live here.

[lapfog_1]

1. couple of ideas

I don't quite understand the car and driver insurance, but it sounds like they would be better off to sell the car to whoever is driving it... for a nominal fee. The transaction will generate a sales tax which someone must pay... but the insurance rate is likely to drop more than the tax.

As for the donated in kind rent situation... and resulting gift tax... that one is easier.. make it a loan not a gift... with VERY generous repayment plan and low interest (interest only with a balloon payment in, say, 50 years). No one has to pay any gift tax. Make sure they get a loan agreement in place, and that some interest is paid every year ( and they can gift that amount to the loan recipients and pay a possible gift tax on THAT amount... which will likely be 0 anyway because of the exclusion amount).

Yes, it's a system... but you have to game the system.

[Hugin]

2. Over the last forty years...

The fascist have created a world of hypocrisy and veneers. Where everything they want is perfectly legal. They made sure it was. Sometimes the law and justice are very much at odds.

They pride themselves on maintaining a system where “if you aren’t at the table, you’re on the menu.” There’s no way for us to be at the table because it’s only set for one. (I literally almost puked every time the “management” pulled out that trope.)

I’d like to live a life of honesty and openness. Where the Smiths were allowed to be kind to the Joneses. Admitting that they aren’t taking advantage of the system in an amount which is less than pennies annually compared to what the corporatist get away with at high frequency trading speeds of thousands of times per second.