I litigated this issue on a car repo that ended in a 1099. My client, the debtor, lost and had to pay the IRS through the Chapter 13 plan on that phantom income. Prior to filing his bankruptcy, the IRS sent him countless notices that he owed tax on this "income." If the creditor issues a 1099, the IRS will expect you to pay it. For mortgages, IIRC, the rules changed in 2006. The mortgage servicer will generally be prevented from sending a 1099. The rules were changed due to the surge in foreclosures.
Of course, homeownership is higher in canada with educated foreigners on higher salaries moving to Canada. Their rules wouldn't work so well in the USA, where you got millions of low-skilled uneducated south americans and mexicans jumping the border. Our healthcare costs are higher for each tax dollar we collect, because we are subsidizing healthcare for millions of illegals and collect zip in payroll taxes from them.
HUD doesn't require them to give out NINJA(No Income No Job No Assets) or "tweak" the numbers so they qualify, either.
Most people just need their supplies and test results. My friend has a insulin pump he just goes to get new prescriptions and equipment. The Dr. does nothing. When is the last time anyone not needed surgery had the Dr. "do" something besides prescribe medicine? We pay for the worlds medicine since we do not negociate as a whole country like they do. Med companies charge other countries less and make it up on us. Japan has half of their hospitals on verge of bankruptcy. They get an MRI at the drop of a hat because it is so cheap. The problem is it is so cheap. The .gov limits how much can be charged and no one can make any money. This means hospitals go bye bye. In Germany Dr.'s are striking because their salaries have been capped. They now are .gov employees basically and make very very little. They paid tons of cash to go to med school and now are getting bent over. The best and the brightest are now go to business, engineering and law school over med school. There is a Dr. shortage already from both sides. Older Dr's retiring and a lack of influx from new young Dr's They best system is probably Taiwain but it is to late for us to change to that at this point. The much easier thing to do is to reduce the price of drugs. You could set timelines for reductions that would allow the companies other agreements to run out and make the transition smooth.
If you want to reduce the level of health care recieved by the working middle class, get a universal health care system. The rich will always just go wherever they want. You will create a huge gap where a hard working person cannot possibly afford to see a top surgeon. I think the net result would be slightly raising the bottom 10% and drastically dropping the middle 65%.
I never thought of that, and it could not make my point any more clear. We have top flight professionals here. Thats called a freaking asset. Top Dr's from around the world want to train come HERE, not the UK. Drugs on the other hand are out of control in price and are basically a commodity. The same company makes them all but since Canada negociated a price for their drugs it costs them less.
they created it in 1995 and tweaked it in 2002. But unlike us they had no baggae to deal with. They started with a basically clean slate and could do whatever they wanted to do. They pick and chose the best of all the systems in the world and went pretty close to free market system but with certain caps and restrictions. They actually increased costs of services recently as they were to cheap and they were headed the way of Japan.
I was talking more along the lines of abandonment of a home in lieu of foreclosure. I wouldn't have enough facts to say what should have happened in his case. You always should report a 1099, it is all just a matter of how to report it. You still get 1099s on foreclosures, but they have changed the law to help those people to not pay any tax on their gain.
Actually, there are millions of illegals that use bogus Social Security cards, pay payroll tax and FICA, and never collect Social Security or tax refunds. This amounts to billions of dollars that come into the system never to be paid out again. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html
We are talking about two vastly different things. Under the Internal Revenue Code, if your home is foreclosed on and after the sale proceeds are applied you still owe $20,000.00, the mortgagee can forgive the rest of that debt. This is forgiveness of debt income and you have an additional $20,000.00 in taxable income to report. This is not where you get a check of excess proceeds.
I think you're right that the Taiwanese system is an interesting one to look at, but you've got the details backwards. It is a universal, single payer, system much like Canada's, but with extended coverage and some modifications.
