Three Bullet Thursday

Aug 01, 2025

🎵 Music: Spiral Architect | Black Sabbath | Black Sabbath is in heavy rotation for obvious reasons lately. Ozzy was an underrated musician and an underrated human.
🎧 Podcast: Ben Harris on the Fiscal Health of the US Government | Macro Musings | A very dry (in a good way), objective discussion of the fiscal health of the US government, including the rising primary deficient, the impact of the Big Beautiful Bill, etc.
📰 Article: Major gambling tax changes... What US citizens, expats, and non-residents need to know | Taxes for Expats | The major legislation recently passed ("One Big Beautiful Bill Act") does something weird with gambling income by limiting deductions from losses to 90%. Previously, a gambler could deduct all losses from their income (you have to report all gambling income).

For example, if a gambler made $100k at the casinos but lost $20k, their taxable income would be $80k ($100k gains - $20k losses). Now, gambling losses are only 90% deductible, so that same gambler would only be able to deduct $18k (90% X $20k) from their $100k income, and their taxable income would be $82k.

Personally, I'm in favor of "Pigouvian" taxes (taxes on bad things), so I'm not mad about this policy change. There's been a lot of research on the impact of legalized app-based betting, and it's not good.

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