Homer Approved

Wake-n-Bacon

(seen on Nealz Nuze)

tax rant of the day/week/whatever

(I'm hoping to make this a regular feature during tax season. Feel free to join me...)

Non-monetary prizes:

When I was a kid I remember watching "Wheel of Fortune". In those days the game was pretty cool... after each round the winner would get to choose prizes on which to spend their money. If you won and reached the bonus round you'd get to choose which prize you wanted to play for. I remember at some point the prizes were ridiculous... a Lamborghini was one of the choices. But the contestant would always pick the $25,000 cash. I expressed disbelief about this to my dad, who responded by telling me how the winner has to pay taxes on the prizes they win.


So even if you won a $100,000 (?) car, you'd have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes before you could get it, and then you'd be faced with trying to sell it to make a profit.

Nowadays we have the stories of winners of fantastic prizes who find out that it's just not worth it to win:

• Will this man's dream of space travel become a reality?
• Free round-trip tickets?
• A dream home?
  

Leave it to the government to take the fun out of winning stuff.