Posted on 08/01/2012 2:30:10 PM PDT by NYer
Because conservatives are scrooges, the good folks at Americans for Tax Reform have gone through the fine print to find out what our Olympians will have to cough up to the IRS should they be lucky enough to win any medals in London.
Even by the standards of our government, the numbers are insane.
For instance: Americans who win bronze will pay a $2 tax on the medal itself. But the bronze comes with a modest prize—$10,000 as an honorarium for devoting your entire life to being the third best athlete on the planet in your chosen discipline. And the IRS will take $3,500 of that, thank you very much.
There are also prizes that accompany each medal: $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze.
Silver medalists will owe $5,385. You win a gold? Timothy Geithner will be standing there with his hand out for $8,986.
So as of this writing, swimmer Missy Franklin—who's a high school student—is already on the hook for almost $14,000. By the time she's done in the pool, her tab could be much higher. (That is, unless she has to decline the prize money to placate the NCAA—the only organization in America whose nuttiness rivals the IRS.)
ATR notes that the real twist of the knife is that most other Olympians won't pay any taxes on their medals because America is one of only a handful of countries which taxes "worldwide" prize income earned overseas.
You got the Silver and the right mind set if I may be so bold.
*chuckle* I want a rematch in 2016.
Look at her mouth-doesn’t it look like she has a couple of small FANGS???
They think they’re good athletes? Well, there’s a lot of people in this country who think they’re good athletes. What about the roads and bridges? If you’re a good athlete - you didn’t build that.
My daughter is a competitive swimmer who has her eye on the 2016 Olympics. (As do all 15 year old competitive swimmers I suppose)
Let’s assume she reaches her goal and wins a medal and has to pay taxes on that medal.
Seems logical that I should be able to deduct all of the various annual costs.
Membership fees for a USA Swim Club: $3500
“Splash Fees” $500
Hotels for away meets: $4000
Travel for away meets: $1400
Training suits: $300
Race suits at $350 each: $1400
Private Coaching $2000
(All prices are estimates as I don’t want to get up and pull out our records.
Cool. $13,100 tax deduction.
With a standard deduction of $5,800 and an exemption of $3,700, the first $9,500 of income is tax-free. The next $8,000 of income is only taxed at 10%, and then the rate only increases to 15% all the way to $34,000.
And if the award money is taxable income, the Olympian can file a Schedule-C and deduct related expenses such as travel, training expenses, etc. By then there's no tax to pay.
How I despise sensational fake lying news articles!
Are you trying to spoil a good rant?
With all due respect, the fact that you had to explain this tax situation at all clearly demonstrates the problem. Taxes are needed to pay for government. The only reason it needs to be complicated is for obfuscation.
Schedule C? Why would there need to be anything then a bill sent to you for your portion of the cost of running government? I agree, the author is clearly trying to gin up controversy to attract attention. The fact that they are able to is a demonstration of the problem.
Not trying to contradict you. Just marveling that we have to spend this much thought on taxes at all. If we have to have big brains working on complicated taxes, we won’t have big brains working on solving big brain problems that aren’t of our own convolutions.
I pray your daughter makes it and is safe, I just heard that a cyclist was hit my a media van at the Olympics and was killed.
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