It's with mixed emotions that I report that Canada won against the USA
1-0 in the semifinals today in Sochi. Canada next plays Sweden for the gold medal, and the USA plays Finland for the bronze.
But, ALL of the players on both the Canadian and American teams were professionals from the NHL. Canada also has it's own CHL, the Canadian Hockey League, but most of the CHL teams are farm teams for the NHL.
So, it's no friggin wonder we won against the Slovanian team, who only had a single NHL'er on their team. I feel just about as proud and nationalistic as I would if Canada were to win 387 - 0 against Equador whose team captain fishes squid for a living. Or, if Canada won in mens and women's curling against Japan, whose team members had never curled before.
Oh well. Back in the day we used to bytch that the USSR was sending professional hockey players to the Olympics. They were officially members of the Red Army, but all they did all day was play hockey. They were really paid to play hockey, and that's the definition of a pro.
I'd feel so much better about it if the best AMATEUR Canadian team we could put together came out 1-0 against the best AMATEUR American team you guys could put together. That way, it would be a contest, and amateur teams from around the world would stand a chance at being on the podium. This way, it's a foregone conclusion that the medals are going to go to the major powerhouses in professional hockey, like Canada, the USA and Russia because all of these guys are pros. They're all paid millions of dollars per year just to play hockey.
Yes. I'm no great fan of hockey but I r emember those days, and I also remember that while some were criticizing the Soviets, others were saying, Why don't we do that too!. I think some of the critics were saying, Why don't we do that too.
So now we do, I see.
How many countries have actually sent a lot of competitors to the winter Olympics. Is it more than 10?
How many have sent a token delegatoin. Like the Jamaican Bobsled Team, or the East Timor whatz'its. How many are like that.
The days when a team like the Kitchener Dutchmen and the Edmonton Mercurys represented Canada at the olympics were contests of REAL ameteur atheletes. In '52 the Merc's took Gold, In '56 and '60 the Dutchies took bronze and silver. In '64 was the first year we had a "national" team at the olympics.
Many of the competitors are what I'd call "professional" athletes. They may not be paid for competing by a team, but they make tons of money from product endorsements. These are, or course, the few that are at the top of their game and have good recognition.
The hockey game was probably closer to an All Star game and the Canadian team just made a slightly better pick from the NHL.
But at the top of popularity, you have the Jamaican Bobsled Team.
Generallly, in the US, any prize you win which you made an effort to win is taxable income. Not especially heavily, Just at whatever marginal tax bracket you're in, and these days in the US the range of brackets is only from 30 to 33% iirc.
If you did nothing and you won it anyhow, it's not taxable. A Forbes article refers to these as gifts, but I don't think the giver always does. .
This left me wondering if Nobel prizes were taxed. People spend as much as their whole working lifetime trying to do the things they win the prize for, but otoh, rarely is any of that effort directed at winning the prize itself. Well, they're taxable too.
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"The tempest in a teapot story about Olympic medals triggering tax seems a little silly. If you are about to rake in millions in product endorsements, is it likely you care if your $25,000 cash prize is $16,000 after taxes? I doubt it."
A silly first paragraph. Most medal winners don't make much in endorsements. Even many gold medal winners don't.
But he's only talking about taxes on a cash prize that accompanies the medal. I don't know there was such a thing.
I thought you were saying the value of the gold or silver in the medal itself. People are sometimes surprised at how large they are, and if they are 14 carat gold, they'd be worth a lot. Are they taxed? The fact that they're not cash probably doesn't matter. When one goes on Wheel of Fortune and wins a car, the value of the car is taxable to the winner. I'll bet some people have to refuse the car and take whatever cash they'll give instead, or sell the car, so that they have money to pay the taxes.
OTOH, when Oprah gave away a car to everyone attending the show one day, I don't know. They didn't go to any extra effort to get the car, and they didn't know they would get one. Seems like it should not have been taxable.
"President Obama is throwing his support behind a proposal introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to exempt American Olympic medal winners from paying tax on their winnings.
"In a White House Press Briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney said the President would sign the bill if it lands on his desk. It doesn?t cover endorsement income, nor should it."
Just noticed that this quote was from an article dated 8/08/2012.
Look what was written on 12/11/2012
"Remember the flap over Olympics medals and the cash prizes that come with them? U.S. Olympians received cash payments of $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze. Is that taxable? You bet. During the Olympics a bill was introduced in Congress by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), S. 3471, to eliminate the tax. President Obama supported it and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the President would sign it.
Yet interest in the bill waned almost as soon as the Closing Ceremonies were over. Prizes and awards are taxed whether you win a drawing, quiz show, beauty contest, or lottery. When you win merchandise or products rather than cash, reporting the fair market value of the items can force you to sell them to pay your tax. After all, you can?t pay the IRS in doughnuts."
Current details are probably included with the instructions for form
Actually, the CHL is a junior league. The AHL (26 teams in US, 4 teams in Canada) is the NHL farm league. The CHL serves as a farm if you consider that approx. half NHL players come from there (and 40% from the US colleges, 10% from European leagues). It's not a "farm team" though.
Seems to ma a lot of things should not be taxable, but gifts over $12,000 are, even to your kids.
The people that wrote the laws think that since you came into the world with nothing, you should leave the same way and if you do leave stuff behind, they want it, or at least to tax it.
If I hit the Powerball for 200 million, not only do I pay income taxes, (OK fair enough) you pay tax if I give you a big chunk of it. So, in order to save you tax problems, I won't be giving you any.
I kinda doubt it. Our government gives out $200,000 for a gold medal, $100,000 for a silver and $50,000 for a bronze. If an athlete reports a $200,000 income on his tax return, that would put him in the top tax bracket, and he'd be paying back close to half of that money to the provincial and federal governments.
It would make more sense to simply give them half of those amounts tax free.
The medals themselves are worthless to anyone but the winners. My understanding is that only the bronze medal is solid bronze. The gold and silver medals are simply gold and silver plated, and therefore have little inherent value and wouldn't be taxable as "income".
I don;t know where you got this idea that non effort has any impact on whether or not you pay taxes. Oprah caught six kinds of hell in the media for that stunt because she did not pay the taxes. I get 1099-Gs every once in awhile for my slot machine winnings and you can't get less effort than that one.
Assuming marriage you could give me around $26,000 a year. I'd be willing to take it. Actually I would have no tax problems with giving me more because that would fall under the gift tax and YOU would pay it.
It's one major way to mark the difference between receiving income and receiving a gift.
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How Are Prizes Distinguished From a Gift?
Prizes and awards are usually given in recognition for some affirmative act by the recipient, such as entering into a contest, giving an exceptional performance in work, or inventing something new. A gift, on the other hand, usually depends on the intent of the donor; the donor normally must make the payment with detached and disinterested generosity. A payment primarily made out of moral or legal obligations or for some past services of the recipient is usually not a gift. Generally, a gift will require no actions from the the recipient.
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You don't owe Uncle Sam income taxes on:..... Gifts. Money you received as a present isn?t taxable ? but you do owe taxes on any income it produces. For example, if you receive bonds as a gift, you must report any interest the bonds earned after you received them.
If any of the recipients complained, even after the law was explained to them, they're ingrates. I can see how they might be disappointed if they didn't know there would be income tax -- I too thought there woudn't be -- especially if they had accepted the car and driven it, and now couldn't sell it as new, although I doubt that since the tax issue is in the news by the following week,
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"Like any prize, the value is counted as income; winners must pay up to $7,000 or forfeit the car. September 22, 2004". CNN too called it a heavy tax, but that's only true because it was a heavy prize.
"Who can forget the Sept. 13, 2004, episode of the "The Oprah Winfrey Show," when the talk show queen gave every member in her audience (yes, all 276 of them!) a brand new Pontiac G6?" So that was 9 days before the CNN article, but other articles and info may have appeared earlier. "had a sticker price of $28,500, which would need to be claimed as income. That income would be taxed and, depending on the recipient's tax bracket, the "winner" would have to fork over as much as $7,000 to Uncle Sam. At the time, Oprah's Harpo Productions said winners could keep the car and pay the tax, sell the car and pay the tax with the profits, or forfeit the car completely."
One winner who decided to sell the car was Kiley Russell. A recent update on Oprah's OWN show "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" highlighted Russell, who sold her G6 and used the money to start her own business, a makeup line that includes an Oprah tribute lipgloss called Angel's Halo.
"I decided to sell the car and use that as seed money to start Big Girl Cosmetics," Russell said. "Since [Oprah] gave us our start, and she was my angel, I thought it'd be nice to offer a tribute to her."
After calling Macy's every day for two years, Russell's dream came true when the department store chain came calling back and ultimately started carrying her line. In the end, Oprah's gift turned out to be the gift that keeps on giving.
In 2012, Inside Edition tracked down some other of the winners of the infamous G6s.
Winner Molly Vielweber said she lets her daughter drive her car -- which still boasts an original Oprah license plate -- and sometimes her daughter sees people taking pictures of the car while she's driving it. But another winner, Tricia Nester, immediately sold her car for $23,000, after logging a mere 15 miles on it.
Meanwhile, tax implications didn't stop the car-happy host from gifting. By 2010, when Oprah gave away the not-yet-introduced 2012 VW Beetle to yet another audience, the tax issues weren't taxing to the winners. According to the New York Post, Harpo said that the show made "a good faith estimate of the tax due for each audience member" and paid the bill on their behalf."
I guess the IRS considered going to the show as effort, especially since she had given away little things before and a person might think it not unlikely that he woudl get a hat or something.
If Oprah really didn't tell them when they got the car, her producers or lawyers aren't doing their job. But at least some of them knew to sell the car when it was still new, and the next time she estimated and paid the income tax on the car.
It's more likely, I think, that tv and money and general coloumnists, who have to write about something made an issue out of this that that the winners complained.
Of course you can. Playing the slot machine definitely requires effort. You have to go some place where there is a machine, go up to the machine, put money in, and then push some button. I don't make that effort and it's not the case that somehow I win or lose money in slot machines anyhow.
Playing the slot machine is entering into a contest.
By "no effort", I mean that you're sitting around the living room watching tv and you get a letter or phone call that you won some money or things even though you didn't enter any contest or perform any other action for whoever is giving the money.
INteresting. That was not my understanding, but then I was only half paying attention. Thanks.
Well that would seem to go without saying in this case, but there you are (grin0>
I was gonna suggest Publisher's Clearing HOuse, but even then you have to send stuff in (you could deduct the cost of the postage). Probably the closest would be the old Millionaire show where they just appeared on your doorstep.
That's not an exclusion I was aware of. According to the IRS:
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RS Tax Tip 2012-62, March 30, 2012
If you gave money or property to someone as a gift, you may owe federal gift tax. Many gifts are not subject to the gift tax, but the IRS offers the following eight tips about gifts and the gift tax.
1.. Most gifts are not subject to the gift tax. For example, there is usually no tax if you make a gift to your spouse or to a charity. If you make a gift to someone else, the gift tax usually does not apply until the value of the gifts you give that person exceeds the annual exclusion for the year. For 2011 and 2012, the annual exclusion is $13,000. 2.. Gift tax returns do not need to be filed unless you give someone, other than your spouse, money or property worth more than the annual exclusion for that year. 3.. Generally, the person who receives your gift will not have to pay any federal gift tax because of it. Also, that person will not have to pay income tax on the value of the gift received. 4.. Making a gift does not ordinarily affect your federal income tax. You cannot deduct the value of gifts you make (other than deductible charitable contributions). 5.. The general rule is that any gift is a taxable gift. However, there are many exceptions to this rule. The following gifts are not taxable gifts: . Gifts that are do not exceed the annual exclusion for the calendar year, . Tuition or medical expenses you pay directly to a medical or educational institution for someone, . Gifts to your spouse, . Gifts to a political organization for its use, and . Gifts to charities. 6.. You and your spouse can make a gift up to $26,000 to a third party without making a taxable gift. The gift can be considered as made one-half by you and one-half by your spouse. If you split a gift you made, you must file a gift tax return to show that you and your spouse agree to use gift splitting. You must file a Form 709, United States Gift (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return, even if half of the split gift is less than the annual exclusion 7.. You must file a gift tax return on Form 709, if any of the following apply: . You gave gifts to at least one person (other than your spouse) that are more than the annual exclusion for the year. . You and your spouse are splitting a gift. . You gave someone (other than your spouse) a gift of a future interest that he or she cannot actually possess, enjoy, or receive income from until some time in the future. . You gave your spouse an interest in property that will terminate due to a future event. 8.. You do not have to file a gift tax return to report gifts to political organizations and gifts made by paying someone's tuition or medical expenses.
For more information see Publication 950, Introduction to Estate and Gift Taxes. Both Form 709 and Publication 950 can be downloaded at
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