Archive for October, 2011

Health Care Reform Bill Levies 3.8% Tax on Sale of Residential Real Estate



IS IT TRUE? WILL THE RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE BE TAXED 3.8% AS PART OF HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL?

Recently, a friend of mine mentioned that the new health care reform bill was going to include a 3.8% sales tax on the sale of homes. I think I blurted out, “you’ve got to be kidding me!”  Of course, I had to come home and research the details.

Before I got to doing the research, I had all kinds of expletives circled around in my head. Thankfully, they stayed inside there. Other thoughts included; could our leaders in Washington really be that stupid? Hasn’t the housing industry already gone through enough trauma? Why would Washington want to kill the real estate business and therefore the economy?

My research did verify the new health care reform bill does in fact have a provision to charge 3.8% sales tax on the sale of homes, but there is much more to it than that though. The 3.8% real estate sales tax only applies to single tax payers making more than $200,000 or joint taxer payers making more than $250,000 AND you wouldn’t pay on the first $250,00 in profits for a single tax payer or $500,000 in profits for a joint tax payer.

Whew…I was worried there for a minute.  All the residential real estate I own has dropped 40-50% in value so no need to worry about profits. For many us real estate types, it will be many years (if ever) before we work off carry forward losses from real estate activities of the last several years, so income thresholds aren’t an issue either.

My friend made it sound like it was a straight dollar for dollar 3.8% sales tax, which would have been the single stupidest thing Washington could have done since the beginning of the republic. I am never glad to hear Washington is tinkering with the market in which I earn my living, but I am glad to know that this 3.8% sales tax only applies to profits over 500k for joint filers. The 500K profit threshold pretty much eliminates most home sales unless the homes are selling for millions of dollars, which is a very small percentage of homes.

I think the potential bigger issue may be commercial properties owners where buildings that cost millions of dollars could easily appreciate a small percentage but increase in value $250K or $500K in net terms. The year you report the sale, your income would be increased by the net profit from the sale of the building.  For example, a retired couple on a fixed income could sell a commercial property from a business they once owned. Even though the couple is on a relatively small fixed income, the sale of the building would trigger them into the 250K income class when the profit of the sale exceeds 750K. Again, this might not happen that often, but one thing we know for sure…Washington put the provision in to raise revenues and that it will.

Posted in News And Society

Surprising Health Issues Associated With Snoring



There is no question that losing a night’s sleep can lead to all kinds of misery the next day. While you may be focusing on the emotional aspects, you may not realize that snoring can also cause a great deal of harm to just about every system in your body.

Although there is a completely different term for the lack of oxygen during sleep which is known to many as Apnea, many people fail to recognize that snoring can be considered at times one of the early warning signs to this problem. As we address snoring, in many cases, Apnea may not be that far behind.

Snoring and Cancer and Heart Disease

One of the negative effects associated with snoring occur, because of disruptions in the production of Melatonin. This hormone is produced by the Pituitary gland. Aside from regulating sleep and wake cycles, Melatonin also serves as a powerful antioxidant.

Therefore, when you awaken because of snoring, you literally deprive your body of a hormone that it needs to help stave off dangerous changes to the DNA in the cells of our body. Unfortunately, when you do not get enough sleep, the loss of Melatonin can easily lead to a larger number of cells that cannot repair their genetic material.

Snoring, Cholesterol, and Heart Disease

In addition, snoring also has some other indirect effects. As you may be aware, increased cholesterol may occur from consuming meat products. Cholesterol can also be produced by the gallbladder. Typically, increased levels of Melatonin inhibit this additional production of cholesterol. If you are looking to reduce your risks of having a heart attack, lowering cholesterol levels is absolutely necessary. If you snore at night, you may want to look at this issue as part of your treatment plan. Supplementing with melatonin may be an important part of your daily regimen while you are getting your snoring problems under control.

Many people do not realize that respiratory and cardiac functions are strongly affected by levels of carbon dioxide in the blood. In some cases, if the obstructions that lead to snoring are severe enough, they can bring a halt to your breathing. This is known as Apnea. Many people have heard the term “Sleep Apnea”, unfortunately, reduced levels of oxygen in the blood can have serious effects on every organ in the body and can lead to damage that occurs over months to years. This damage, can, at times, start to be reversed once the cause, (apnea due to snoring) is corrected.

As carbon dioxide levels rise, the heart tends to beat faster and harder than normal. Since the heart receives a fresh and direct supply of oxygen directly from the lungs, it (the heart) is often one of the first organs to suffer from oxygen deprivation. This is just one of the many reasons why snoring can lead to increased risks of stroke, hypertension, and other cardiovascular problems.

Fix Your Snoring Problems

No matter how you look at it, snoring causes some very serious problems in your life. Even though you may be accustomed to feeling drowsy during the day, there are a number of hidden damages that can shorten your life by several decades.

In a similar way, once your heart and brain begin to suffer from oxygen depletion, it can be very difficult for the tissue to be repaired. While these effects may seem very small on a daily basis, the detrimental effects can add up over the years.

Regardless of your age, one of the best things you can do is to ensure that you treat snoring as a serious health issue. The sooner you get this problem under control, the better chance you will have of leading a healthy and full life.

Posted in Health And Fitness

Health & Fitness With Homeopathy



Health & Fitness

Homeopathy is so rich in remedial agents that often its practitioners tend to rely on their drugs alone, and to disregard hygiene and other adjuvants to cure. Especially do they fail to work out diets in detail for their patients. It is essential that they bother to do this for a number of reasons. In the first place, for the psycological effect upon the patient. Patients want to feel that every scientific care is being given them, and that (he doctor takes flattering pains with them; and they need something to do, a call to active co-operation on their part. Especially is this the last case when the actual remedy administration is in so pleasant, simple and sparse a form as Homeopathy prescribes. In the second place, without any drug of any kind, diet can do wonders for many types of cases as modern medicine so ably demonstrates.

Let us consider, for instance, the value without any drug, of strict diets in such diseases as: Diabetes, nephritis, high blood pressure, renal colic and the uric add diabetes, arthritis, gall-stones and jaundice, gastric and duodenal ulcer, mucous colitis, visceroptosis, constipation, obesity, and last, but by no means least, tuberculosis and cancer. Every Homeopathic physician must be grounded in the classical dietary treatments; must know w.hen to give a diabetic the Newburg high-fat diet; and the difference between diets for nephritics and nephtotics; must enforce pure-free diets on the chronic renal colics; must be conversant with the Lippe diet for ulcer; and the LaheyJordan diet for mucous colitis (with its cream of wheat and celery, whose roughage combined with the concomitant rest prescribed does such wonders in those obstinate cases). The physician must know how to influence acidity; strong urine, asthma and eczema by dietary means.

It is good training for us, and a helpful method of experimental control of our remedies, to start chronic patients who have some one of the above mentioned diagnoses, on diet and regimen plus Sac. lac. without any remedy, and see how far you can improve their condition .. Thus do we learn what scientific common sense will, and will not, do for us. Meanwhile you are getting closer to the patient’s true similum, and can give it in prepared ground, with startling and enlightening effect.

Diet can often replace the use of drugs a valuable help for the Homeopath. Take a patient who has been ‘living’ on soda bicarbonate for years. Teach them that soda, chemically alkaline, produces acid, physiologically, in the stomach, and train them to substitute lemon juice and the citrous fruits in general, and watch. You will be amazed that so simple a means will work so well. Meanwhile the soda intoxication symptoms will pass off, and your case values will begin to be unravelled.

The physician must also at the onset remove articles of diet and diet habits of eating which hold the patient back from cure, and which cover the spoor on the trail to a ‘totality’, and therefore to subsequent healthful progress. He learns in this quest the idiosyncrasies to food on t.he part of the patient. These, as every Homeopath knows, are

Posted in Fitness