Well, Christmas came early this year…or else here’s one-quarter of your full complement of eight (8) Hanukkah presents, whichever faithway works for you. Firstly, Outside have just published this delightfully satirical column in which I send up the idea of tax incentives for bicyclists:
For the record, I’m not necessarily for or against tax breaks for cyclists. I mean yes, obviously I’m for them in that if someone’s gonna give me a tax break for riding a bike I’m certainly going to take it, but at the same time I just assume if they’re doing that then they’re hitting you someplace else instead and it all winds up being a wash. Also, tax breaks or no tax breaks*, riding a bike is its own financial incentive anyway since it’s so cheap–or at least it is if you’re doing it right. Maybe instead the government should just send every household in America a bicycle. I’m sure they could squeeze a few million bikes out of Stephen Bilenky and save us all a bunch of money by grossly underpaying him for them.
*[That’s tax breaks, not tax brakes; the heavy tax on brakes in the early aughts is obviously what led to the fixed-gear phenomenon. It was then repealed, which contributed directly to mass disc brake adoption and in turn the gravel bike phenomenon.]
Anyway, none of this really matters to me, since I show a straight line depreciation for all my bike purchases, and then at the end of their useful life I buy them from myself via my holding company; then the holding company sells them to a third party and finally passes the proceeds back to me in the form of tax-free dividends, which is how I earned $3.9 million last year:
Less whimsically, I’m sure by now you’ve heard about that horrible incident involving a 16 year-old driver in Texas, and in that context here are some reflections on teen driving–though please note it does look like Outside have set this one for members only:
What I fail to point out is that, statistically speaking, we should probably forget about age altogether and only let women drive:
As for the men, they”ll just have to avail themselves of those bicycle tax credits…and they can even keep “rolling coal!”
Everybody wins.