Hooray for altruism!

[Kiara]

I took the title from the last line of this article:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Companies-offer-to-pay-taxes-Lopez-might-owe-on-?urn=mlb-wp12669

To summarize...Christian Lopez caught Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit.  Instead of keeping it to sell, he gave it back.  And received about $60-75,000 worth of stuff - tickets, signed Derek Jeter merchandise, and so on.  He's even getting his own baseball card.  Since all of that was a gift, it's might be taxable. To the tune of $10,000.  Christian is 23 with a boatload of student loans.

However!  Two companies have offered to pay the tax bill if it comes due.  Good for them, and good for Christian.  I just thought this was awesome.

[MrTango]

That's awesome on the part of the companies.

Given the current marketing campaign the mentioned beer company is running with one of their beers, this sort of things plays right into the attitudes to which they're trying to appeal.

[MonteCristo]

If somebody pays the guy's tax bill, wouldn't that also have to be counted as income?

[PeterM]

If somebody pays the guy's tax bill, wouldn't that also have to be counted as income?

I was thinking the same thing, but I'd bet there are ways around that. And the IRS is probably smart enough to not want the bad publicity that would come from raking this guy over the coals.

[Mopsy428]

If somebody pays the guy's tax bill, wouldn't that also have to be counted as income?

Yes, for federal. I'm not sure about state taxes.