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.
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
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They’re probably also charged a carbon tax for the emissions from airliner they flew to London on…
So, how many medals do team USA need to win to pay off the National Debt?
The land of the free.
In the new America we now know that US Olympians didn’t earn their success. It was provided to them by big government progressives who believe that they work just as hard and just as smart as these Olympians and that they should have gold medals too, and therefore they have the right to redistribute Michael Phelps medals to themselves.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
Why shouldn’t the money be taxable income? And very few of the athletes are in the 35% marginal tax bracket.
And why shouldn’t they pay their fair share of taxes?
They’ll have been supported throughout their ‘career’ by taxpayers.
Sports Training does not add to a country’s GDP.
Even the Soviet commies respected their athletes
Doctors & Preachers are respected too. But they pay taxes on their earnings.
Pity the poor Brits. They simply get their mugshot on a postage stamp for winning gold!
Why are you arguing about this?
If we are $16 trillion in debt, someone has to pay taxes. Everyone thinks they shouldn’t be taxed. With that mentality and the lack of will to cut entitlements, it is only a matter of time before the ship goes under.
How about cutting spending?