Is it true that the kid that caught Bond's 756th home run ball had to sell because of tax implications?

Question

If anyone can provide an explanation, that would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

No, not true. He wouldn't have been taxed on it if he had kept it, but now that he sold it obviously will. If you read the articles closely with those claims, he was told that he'd owe tax anyway by some publicity hound lawyer, not by the IRS. The IRS didn't make an official statement about this, but in a similar situation a few years back when the same false rumor was going around, the iRS commissioner (top guy in the IRS) came out with an official statement basically saying that idea was crazy.

The kid who caught the ball sold it to make a lot of money. If he'd kept it he'd have had storage issues and insurance issues. Now he's got a pile of money.

Answer 2

No, it is NOT true. One publicity whore of an attorney made the statement that he could be taxed on the ball even if he kept it. Virtually no other expert in the field of taxation agreed with him -- yours truly included. In fact, with prior incidents of a similar nature (Mark McGuire's record-breaking homer if memory serves correctly) the Commissioner of the IRS had publicly stated that that "was madness" or a statement of similar wording.

While prizes and found property ARE taxable, there must be a reasonable way to determine the value of the item. In most cases that's easy -- the fair market value is easy to determine. However given the once-in-a-lifetime nature of that event there's no way to determine the value until it is sold.

Now, once the kid sold it, it became a different matter. Now the value IS known and he'd owe tax on the money he received, possibly less the cost of the ticket to the game.

Answer 3

The question never really became an issue because the ball was sold in the same year he acquired it so it becomes taxable on his 2007 tax return no matter what. Besides that, he could really use the money.

Answer 4

I heard that, but don't understand it... Wouldn't the tax liability be deferred until he actually sold it? Why couldn't he just hang onto it indefinitely?