The president's yearly salary alone is $400,000. Am I to believe that his income on top of that was only 2 or $300,000 more? There's just no way. -- droxford
Not true -- you get sizable deductions if you live in a state that has state income tax (most do, especially coastal states w/high paying jobs and costs of living), and there are others you can get as well (not sure but can't you still get the home mortgage deduction?) Then you have the AMT kick in, which is problematic for any number of reasons. In fact, if you make around 200k, you actually have incentives to not get deductions for precisely those reasons as the AMT can be a serious headache.
SamFisher: what do you know about IRS Form 1041 and how it might have an impact here? I've heard that most of the US Senators file Form 1041 rather than Form 1040. I think it has something to do with formation of Family Foundations and sacrifice of ownership of assets while fully remaining in control of said assets. I've heard that you can seriously reduce your federal tax burden. That would seem a fair description of what these numbers indicate.
I don't make enough $$ to know about that! But I'm sure theere are tax loopholes that you can exploit via trusts and that most economically rational rich folks use them.
