Weekly Standard
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.
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Wild Thing’s comment……….
Not sure who came up with doing this, but I find it very offensive. Our country does not help these athelets like so many countries do and then to turn around and tax them on their medals …..sheesh.
Newsmax: “U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL, today (8.1.12) introduced The Olympic Tax Elimination Act, a bill that would exempt U.S. Olympic medal winners from paying taxes on their hard-earned medals.”
The IRS has been doing this for some time now. I wonder why now the concern? If this law is enacted, will they pay back the taxes taken from previous Olympic medalists? It wouldn’t be hard at all coming up with the money to pay them back. Just keeping Michelle from taking one short taxpayer paid vacation will sufficiently cover it.
This is really just an example of how we are taxed on alm ost everything we do. Most taxes are hidden in the form of fees and costs of items and services. To me the most hideous and amoral tax is the estate tax. Better known as the “death tax”. Liberals worship this tax.
…ahh, but in Pres. I-Me-My’s universe, the Medalists did not do it themselves and need to pay back those who sat on their butts while the Medalists were busting theirs in order to win. It’s only fair…
The big kick in the butt is the medals aren’t even gold or silver. I’ve held one and it wasn’t real silver.