My greatest annoyance with liberals is the purebred hyporcracy of them. How many fly private jets or always first class, but lecture middle/lower class people about using gas or diesel powered cars. Or complain about "the rich" not paying their fair share, when they are work millions and use every dodge the tax code allows to shield their income.
Well, like millions, this past Monday I did not watch the Academy Awards. Last time I can recall watching is was in1993, when Unforgiven won. Now I've heard the nominees get gift bags with items worth tens of thousands in them. Well, guess who is interested in those now? The IRS.
Oscars Nominees to Be Hit with Up to $63,000 Tax Bill for What Was in 'Free' Gift Bags
Gift bags handed out to Oscars nominees come with a tax liability that can top 50 percent of the value of the bags.
Who gets to pay when you get a gift? All of those Hollywood A-listers who accepted gift bags at the Oscars or any other awards show.
Holy cow, 63K in taxes on a "gift?" Now this shows something, taxes do make people change their behavior. That is heresy to good libs that infect Hollywood. But isn't this an example of taxes affecting behavior?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences no longer hands out bags due to the tax issue.
Over at Forbes, contributor Robert Wood looked at the cost of the freebies and estimated that the gift bags handed out this year totaled $126,000 in value each. For the record, that’s down from the $137,000 per bag estimated last year by CNBC.
The Internal Revenue Service has long decided these gifts were not really like presents from grandpa and grandma under the Christmas tree...
...The IRS alerted the entertainment industry in 2006 to the practice of taxing so-called gifts years ago, writing, “In general, the person has received taxable income equal to the fair market value of the bag and its contents and must report that amount on his or her federal income tax return.”
Wood did the math. Ouch.
“At the 37 percent IRS tax rate, that’s $46,620. California-based stars will have to pay California’s up to 13.3 percent tax too, another $16k or so. That’s up to $63,378 in state and federal taxes,” he wrote.
Oscar nominees in the acting and directing categories received more than 60 gifts.
This year’s choices included a three-night stay at The Lifestyle in Canada worth $40,000, a $12,000 arm liposuction procedure, a private hair restoration consultation valued at $7,000 and $10,000 worth of cosmetic procedures.
“It seemed a little inappropriate to offer a gesture of thanks that then carried with it a [tax] obligation,” Leslie Unger, a representative for the Academy, told CNN in 2006, when the deal with the IRS was struck to tax all gift bags from that point forward.
So if you tax an item or activity too highly, it reduces that activity. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you to hear this from the Left Coast.
I recall a former actor, governor of California, and president word's on taxation:
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan
So to all those good liberals in Hollyweird who are annoyed at being told to "pay your fair share," us in Flyover Country can only say, "We feel your pain."
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