How are you taxed?

[Mark Leavy]

If you look at how you earn your income, you can see that (in the US) there is a progressively less onerous system as you move first towards the societal norm, and then away from it...

Self employed < W2 < 1099 < K-1 < Long Term Capital Gains.

Many tax saving schemes are simply local optimizations.  Much better to push yourself along the continuum.

But like any global optimization, it may mean that you have to traverse a less optimum state and will be on the downhill slope for some period before reaching a new optimum.

[I Shrugged]

That's easy for you to say.