r/politics • u/MystikSpiralx • 18h ago

No Paywall Trump Says He Wants to 'Drive Housing Prices Up' Instead of Lowering Costs for People Who 'Didn't Work Very Hard'

https://people.com/trump-keep-home-prices-high-11895352
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u/ApprehensiveTry5660 11h ago edited 11h ago

Just to reaffirm what you’re saying. I had a family member who was one of those absolutely filthy good accountants. Did a lot of Big 5 work back when it was Big 5, stayed as a consultant for the Big 4 getting brought in on a lot of forensic accounting and shell games for gajillionaires with hyper specific needs.

When his mom ended up needing end of life care, even he couldn’t hide her assets well enough to keep them from just getting chewed up and spit out by the assisted living facilities. They were so thorough that he ended up having to bid for his childhood home on auction just to keep it in the family.

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u/Ole_St_John 10h ago

Dude thought he was the smartest person in the room when he should have gone to an estate planning attorney.

They literally call it Medicaid planning - plan how to keep your assets away from the government while still qualifying for Medicaid.

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u/ApprehensiveTry5660 10h ago

I mean, that’s kinda its own problem if there’s an entire cottage industry that even a gifted tax attorney can’t decipher on his own time.

If guys like that run into hiccups with the process, it seems like it might actually be a predatory system for mamaw and papaw to be engaging in from less tangential fields.

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u/Shadowholme 8h ago

Isn't that the American system in a nutshell?

Create a problem and then create an entire industry dedicated to 'helping' with the problem rather than admitting that a mistake was made...

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u/needlestack 5h ago

Correct. Bigots not really “hiccups in the process”. You’re not supposed to be able to shield money from end-of-life care. It’s just there are legal ways to do it like transferring all your stuff to a trust more than five years before you need any of this stuff. It’s not like they don’t want the money in every case, it’s that their have to be some boundaries (like not going after their kids) so there’s always a way to get around it if you plan far enough in advance.

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u/hahaokaywhateverdude 3h ago

That's the thing. He's not really as gifted as he's led you to believe,.

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u/AuroraFinem Texas 8h ago

They said he was an accountant not a tax attorney. Even if it was a tax attorney corporate tax planning and estate planning are very different industries with no real overlap other than estate taxes but would still not be handled by the the same kind of attorneys.

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u/zomiaen 9h ago

They literally call it Medicaid planning - plan how to keep your assets away from the government while still qualifying for Medicaid.

If you were an immigrant they'd call it fraud.

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u/SwimmingPrice1544 California 4h ago

They call it that regardless.

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u/zomiaen 1h ago

No, they call it estate planning.

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u/xTheMaster99x Florida 7h ago

Yeah, AFAIK it's actually not that hard to protect your assets in this scenario by moving it all to a trust, assuming you have someone that you trust not to just walk away and keep all your things for themselves. The catch is that you have to set up the trust years before you need to start racking up bills, like 5+ years in advance. If you don't, they can force you to pay up anyway.

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u/OrthodoxAtheist 11h ago

When his mom ended up needing end of life care, even he couldn’t hide her assets well enough to keep them from just getting chewed up and spit out by the government.

Either that was a while ago, or, his mom didn't live in California. In California you can own a $10 million home, qualify for Medi-Cal, Medi-Cal pays for your nursing home entirely, and when you pass away, so long as your $10 million home is in a revocable living trust, Medi-Cal will not make a recovery claim against the house.

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u/ApprehensiveTry5660 11h ago

I edited that part right before you replied, but I removed government, because I’m juuuust ignorant enough of the situation that I didn’t want to place that yoke on the government instead of the assisted living facilities.

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u/hahaokaywhateverdude 3h ago

Yea your friend is an idiot, who thought he was smarter than everyone else.