The article from the CPA website doesn't support your claim. From the article: The $28,500 would need to be claimed as income so, depending on the individuals tax bracket, the tax could be as high as $7,000. And that was after Pontiac agreed to pay most of the local charges, including state sales tax and licensing fees.
The only tax event here, according to both my CPA and my attorney, is that the value of the gift exceeded the federal gift tax ceiling per annum.
As I understand things, the IRS is still on the rampage. The IRS is or at least was at one time taking the position that the giftees ''earned'' the income by attending the programme and winning a ''prize'', a la the lottery, which position strikes me as positively ludricrous. The cars were clearly an outright gift, not a lottery winning -- after all, everyone in attendance ''won'', which of course never has occurred in any lottery in history.
That the several states involved are demanding sales tax (or use tax, depending) is its own separate outrage.