Tag Archives: massive-stars

Gold Coin Sellers Angered by New Tax Law Amendment Slipped Into Health Care Legislation Would Track, Tax Coin and Bullion Transactions

Those already outraged by the president's health care legislation now have a new bone of contention — a scarcely noticed tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny. The issue is rising to the fore just as gold coin dealers are attracting attention over sales tactics. Section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will amend the Internal Revenue Code to expand the scope of Form 1099. Currently, 1099 forms are used to track and report the miscellaneous income associated with services rendered by independent contractors or self-employed individuals. Coin Dealers Flipping Starting Jan. 1, 2012, Form 1099s will become a means of reporting to the Internal Revenue Service the purchases of all goods and services by small businesses and self-employed people that exceed $600 during a calendar year. Precious metals such as coins and bullion fall into this category and coin dealers have been among those most rankled by the change. This provision, intended to mine what the IRS deems a vast reservoir of uncollected income tax, was included in the health care legislation ostensibly as a way to pay for it. The tax code tweak is expected to raise $17 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Taking an early and vociferous role in opposing the measure is the precious metal and coin industry, according to Diane Piret, industry affairs director for the Industry Council for Tangible Assets. The ICTA, based in Severna Park, Md., is a trade association representing an estimated 5,000 coin and bullion dealers in the United States. “Coin dealers not only buy for their inventory from other dealers, but also with great frequency from the public,” Piret said. “Most other types of businesses will have a limited number of suppliers from which they buy their goods and products for resale.” added by: im1mjrpain

Scientists Discover Star 300 Times More Massive Than The Sun

Astronomers have identified the most massive stars known. These objects are millions of times brighter than our Sun and the largest of them all is a whoppin' 300 times the mass of our favorite star. The stars were discovered in two clusters—NGC 3603 and RMC 136a—and researchers used a “combination of instruments on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, in addition to archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope, to study the stellar nurseries.” With this combination of tools, they were able to discover some almost scary details about R136a1, the most massive of the stars: Its current mass is approximately 265 solar masses, and its estimated birth weight was as much as 320 times that of our sun. R136a1 also has the highest luminosity of any star found to date – nearly 10 million times greater than the sun. I can almost feel my skin turning red just reading that. http://gizmodo.com/5592604/this-star-is-so-fat-that-its-300-times-the-mass-of-th… added by: pjacobs51