Saturday, March 04, 2006

Oscar with tax?

Entertainment industry is one of the major industries today. There are thousands of movie stars, editors all around the world. Every year, they are make a great number of movies. How to define the quality of a movie and how to say if an artist is good or not? Awards maybe is the best way to identify the quality of a movie.
Oscar is one of the most important awards for movie makers. The movie makers who win the Oscar will not only recieve honor, a golden statue and a lot of gifts, but also a income tax bill.
According to CNN news, the star who win the Oscar will recieve a great number of gift bag. It is said that the gift bags have estimated to be worth more than $100,000. Some people says these gifts might be treated as a taxable income. However, the other group of people argued that they are just gifts and might not treated as a taxable income.
Right now, this is a contriversial issue. The IRS spokeman Terry Lemons said, "It really depends on the facts and circumstances of each of these cases."

2 comments:

Joshua S. Walker said...

I think it is important to understand that our Federal Government does have a nice little tax called the "Gift Tax" and that would apply in this situation if the government choose to push the issue, but I think that we may be missing an important part of the equation. I am not a big awards show fan, but from talk shows and such that I have watched I remember hearing that all of those items are given from companies to these celebrities in hopes that they can get their product "on" the celebrity. I am not a tax expert but if the product has been created by a company and given to somebody I don't believe that it should be subject to any kind of tax. If I make a chair and give it to my friend should they have to pay tax on that chair that I made for them? I don't believe so. If you give someone a car, a house, or money then maybe it should be taxed but I don't believe that bags should be in this situation.

Joshua S. Walker said...
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