Barry Bonds Home Run Ball To Land Matt Murphy With Big Tax Bill
August 9, 2007 | Filed under News, Sports News
When Barry Bonds hit his 756 home run every MLB fan in the stadium was praying that they would be the one to catch the ball.
The Barry Bond 756 home run ball is going to worth a ton of cash but dont think the tax man misses a trick, they will want their slice of the pie!
In the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, as soon as the lucky 21-year-old Matt Murphy grabbed the Barry Bonds ball, the baseball was a souvenir, but a taxable souvenir in the eyes of the law.
“It’s an expensive catch,” said John Barrie, a tax lawyer with Bryan Cave LLP in New York who grew up watching the Giants play at Candlestick Park. “Once he took possession of the ball and it was his ball, it was income to him based on its value as of yesterday,”
The Barry Bonds ball is probably worth over half a million dollars and at 35% tax, Murphy faces a $210,000 tax bill if he sells the ball for $600,000.
Do you think Murphy should have to pay tax on the Barry Bonds home run ball?
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I think that this display is extremely disheartening, taxes of $210,000 for catching a ball at a baseball game. Baseball is supposed to be a game, an enjoyable family fun event and the great American game. Baseball has become like everything else in this country, a corporate run profit margin based company. What’s next, an army FBI agents lining the fields of every game with tax forms and receipts for every child who happens to be the “fortunate” one who catches a ball. Things are bad enough when we have to spend hundreds of dollars to take our families to see a single baseball game. All I have to say is keep your ball, keep your outrageous ticket prices and keep your high priced concessions. I don’t need my children growing up with steroid pumped millionaires as heroes. Baseball was commonly called “The Great American Game”, now all it has become is “The Great Corporate Game” because today, most Americans don’t have the revenue to go.