You may well be describing me, as a Seattle resident with a blue coat and a chocolate lab who currently has an upset stomach and is in need of many walks recently. We're working on the food/diet part, but your comment inspired me to buy a reflective arm band for myself. His harness is already a bit reflective. Anyway, thought it was funny and thanks for the sanity check/advice.
I am not sure the GP caught the article's statement that the regulatory cap on SAF is 50%, and that as a result this is arguably the most aggressive test UA could have run.
"Freedom Watch's First Amendment claim fails because it does not adequately allege that the Platforms can violate the First Amendment. In general, the First Amendment 'prohibits only governmental abridgment of speech,'" the court wrote, citing a previous opinion issued by the D.C. Court of Appeals. The judges went on to say that "'a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor.'"
The author does address this. "Some people used to argue that buybacks were a more tax-efficient means of distributing money to shareholders than dividends. But that has not been the case since 2003, when the tax rates on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends were made the same."
As a Canadian, US dividends get taxed like full-income. Capital gains get taxed just like Canadian capital gains: at one-half the income tax rate.
In one of our tax-free savings vehicles: the tax-free savings account, capital gains would be tax free, but dividends are still stuck with IRS withholding taxes of 15-30% of dividends.
That addresses the objection but doesn't fully satisfy it. First, not all shareholders are taxed the same way, as the other commenter noted. Second, the tax rate of long-term gains might change before the stock is sold; a fraction of shareholders in the US probably believe that will happen. Third, the dividend tax is collected immediately (on the next tax return), so it reduces how much the shareholder can reinvest unless they take money from elsewhere. Buybacks compound in the stock more easily than dividends.
