News and notes from around the interweb:
- Cathay Pacific may buy Hong Kong Airlines and HK Express from struggling HNA Group.
- United vows to combat anti-semitism at this point though I wonder about anyone thinking that poor treatment of customers by United stems from race, gender, religion etc rather than simply because they’re a passenger?
- Video of this woman struggling with a luggage cart at the Sydney airport has gone viral. Sadly no one stops to help her.
- Million dollar lawsuit after emotional support pit bull mauled 5 year old girl at Portland airport
- Amtrak’s CEO wants to kill America’s most storied trains and he’s probably right to do so. Trains are great for densely traveled routes, and long surpassed by air travel for ultra long haul.
- Last month I wrote about American Express sending out 1099 forms to cardmembers who referred customers in exchange for bonus points. Chase is doing the same. That seems to be the new industry consensus, that these bonus points amount to compensation for marketing their cards — distinct from the rewards you earn for spending which are considered a rebate. The New York Times has now covered this.
Remember that you can dispute the value of these points that get reported on a 1099. Some customers even won a class action settlement against Citi for failing to disclose they’d be reporting transactions to the IRS which seems odd to me. The reporting isn’t what makes you owe tax, it just tells the IRS the transaction occurred.
As I reside in a very “True Blue” state, the tax increases just keep coming. If the credit cards/airlines claim value for miles provided, they will likely be gross overestimates. For example, both AA and UA value their own miles at between 2.0-2.4 cents apiece. Try cashing these in for flights. In my experience, AA miles have been worth about 0.9 cents per mile. Let’s hope that we won’t need to go down the path of taxing miles.
Personally, while it’s clear service animals are legit, it sure seems to me like “emotional support” animals are a scam to allow people to bring their animals. If the need *is* legit, let’s require that the emotional support animal be muzzled while traveling. I’m sure they can provide emotional support when unable to bite other travelers. Or, let’s just get rid of the concept of emotional support animals at all. If you can’t travel without your pit bull, perhaps that means you can’t travel.
All miles that are earned for a flight/hotelstay that is also expensed as a tax deductible expense should be taxed as income. All miles earned from flying for work, should be taxed as income.
it’s quite surprising to see that guy Matthew Lesko still around. LOL
“If you… earn 5,000 bonus points or frequent flier miles if you spend a certain amount of money within three months of opening the card account, that’s not taxable”
Wrong. Earning a signup bonus of only 5,000 points or miles is clearly an idiot tax.
It’s seems to be a bad cart. Who is supposed to help her and how?
Why is this even worthy of being on this blog, probably happens everywhere every day.
What did I miss?
Yup, it’s time to pull the plug on emotional support animals and that includes PTSD dogs for veterans.
How can miles be taxes as income. Miles are a discount on spending. That is just like going into a store that has jeans list priced at $100 with a 50% off sale, making the jeans $50 and then taxing $50 difference as income. For oldsters, that is just like the Beatles song Taxman. Sheese.
@Norita: The cart is tipped on its back. Look a little more closely