Follow-up on Nobel Prises and taxation

[micky]

Follow-up on Nobel Prises and taxation

I did some checking and I gave the rules correctly as of 1974, when last I had a course in law. I am not a lawyer.

Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes and many smaller less well-known prizes were not taxable. The standard used was that if no work or other acts were done fory whoever awarded them, not even filling out an entry slip with just ones name or name and address, they were not taxable. They were not earned income, since, though the recipient might have worked for Monsanto or someone while doing the work that got him the gift, he was already paid for that and he didn't do any work for the Nobel Foundation or Committee.

However this changed in 1985,

Ronald Reagan signed a tax law that made scientific and academic prizes taxable.

The only way to avoid the taxes now is to give the money away before receiving it, which is sometimes done, or perhaps to refuse the money.

Here's Publication 525

"Pulitzer, Nobel, and similar prizes. If you were awarded a prize in recognition of accomplishments in religious, charitable, scientific, artistic, educational, literary, or civic fields, you generally must include the value of the prize in your income. "

[Robert Green]

Useful for those with time machines that wish to return to the '70's to give out gifts. (-"

(Just funnin' ya, son) The mid 70's is about when I stopped taking law classes, too. Today I learned that the luxury car, the Countach is actually pronounced Koon-tash. The list of words I've been mis-pronouncing all my life seems to grow and grow and attempts to correct those errors have been largely futile. It seems that if someone has been saying something the wrong way most of their life, it seems likely that trend is going to continue. At least it has for me. There's one exception. I can remember "papal" now with a mnemonic - a pope never gets a pap smear - it's Paypal, not Pap-al.

(-:

To completely change topics, try to decode this set of instructions that came with my 5" video monitor:

The Product shelf life of 12 months. Warranty Period from the purchase date. (Here's where it gets dicey)

Outside the scope of the three guarantees:

1, more than three bags 2, due to damage caused to improper use 3, Split of the company moving repairer damage

Got any idea about 1 and 3?

[micky]

Nope. But a lot of fun to think about. I miss the days when the instructions were like this.

[Robert Green]

Yes, those were the "3 bag days" - I actually had a dream about this - remember the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep" - that was the last time, short of Philip Seymour Hoffman's death, that I remember hearing anything about "3 bags." Somehow that all got conflated in my dream that also included part of the Simpsons episode where Marge's ancestor weaves a tapestry of demon wool that becomes Moe's bar rag - eventually.