At 10:39 PM -0700 9/7/98, Tim May wrote:
Folks, I generally restrain myself from passing on all the various news stories I see or read.
But tonight Fox News is reporting that the IRS has said it may seek to assess "gift taxes" if the guy who recovered Mark McGwire's 61st home baseball gives the ball back to Mark McGwire.
(The ball is said to have a street value, to museums or collectors, of $250K or so. The 62nd home run ball, the one which breaks Maris' record, will supposedly be worth more than a million bucks.)
As you may have heard by now, if you are watching the game tonight, the IRS Commissioner issued a statement saying anyone who gets the ball and gives it to another (esp. McGwire) will NOT face taxes. (Ah, but will McGwire face taxes on such a gift? Just think, had the IRS not issued a royal decree absolving the perpetrator of taxes, they could have collected taxes on the guy who got the ball and then taxes on the guy who had the ball given to him. Through the miracle of multiple taxation, the IRS gets it all....) The IRS Commissioner also acknowledged the absurdity of this particular clause of the tax code, and compared the tax code to obscure baseball rules. Someone suggested in private e-mail to me that the IRS would likely _not_ seek taxes, but acknowledged that it _could_. And there's the rub. As it happens, a ballpark employee actually _caught_ the ball, it is being reported, in a special restricted zone. He says he'll give the ball to McGwire ("but I don't want to be taxed!" he said on camera). Possibly a good deal for him, as it heads off a typically American lawsuit by the owners of the ballpark claiming they own the fruits of his labor, and he maybe gets a minor book deal, and he avoids villification by the Oprah and Geraldo crowd. (I confess that if I'd gotten the ball I'd let capitalism work its magic by selling the ball to the highest bidder. A million bucks, for starters.) --Tim May "The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants...." ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments.