First in a series.
The premise is that you’ve found and rubbed the right magic lamp, and a genie pops out and grants you 3 wishes. You wish for one hundred million dollars, and it suddenly appears at your feet in a humongous pile. Now what do you do?
How do you spend it without attracting the attention of friends, neighbors, the I.R.S. etc. ? Where do you keep it?
There’s no way to launder that much cash without getting into real trouble. Just walk down to your bank and deposit it. You will fill out a CTR.
If the IRS asks just say “It was a gift”. They have to show a possible source.
- Your friends and family are going to wonder where the hell the money came from.
- I really don’t think the I.R.S. will accept “It was just a gift”.
Wish number two: I wish nobody thinks that my sudden influx of wealth is a strange thing.
Second and third wish.
Sorry folks-You can only deal with the first wish in this thread. The other two wishes granted will be coming up in separate threads.
Did this money appear out of thin air? I mean, is this brand new money and there are now 100 million more dollars in the world, or is this one of those dirty genie trick things where the money was removed from a bank vault somewhere and someone is now missing $100 million?
I think a sudden appearance of $100 million in cash would kill you…literally. That’s got to be one hell of a pile of cash. Assuming it doesn’t kill you, then it’s going to quickly be gone in any case because it’s going to be a huge pile of cash. Unless it’s somewhere no one goes to and only you know about you are screwed. Best bet is to take as much of it as you can carry and bugger off, then use the cash slowly over time for all cash transactions.
Oh, and kick yourself for being such an idiot and wasting a wish on this stupid shit and in this silly way. 
Let them wonder.
Talked to my Bro, who worked for the IRS, and he confirmed this. First a CTR does not trigger a audit. The IRS does not routinely get copies, they only get a CTR if they had another reason to audit you. When talking unexplained income the IRS is obligated to show a *potential *source for that amount of income.
Now sure, if you did get audited, you’d have to go to Appeals or even Tax Court, but unless you were engaged in illegal activities, my Bro thinks you’d win… but he suggests hiring a real good tax attorney.
So you’re asking what if a pretend (could never exist in real life) genie gave me a million dollars, and how would I handle it in real life? I guess the same way I would handle being zapped into being beautiful and thin.
It might be more prudent to wish for an ATM card that always has sufficient funds.
Pack it into trunks, and chuck it in the attic. I already have several trunks I could empty and employ, and easily enlist hubby to abet me.
I’ll retrieve it at my leisure, unloading plenty in large cash donations to various charities and good causes in need locally.
Perhaps I would begin to weave a tale of a mystery acquaintance, newly made, of a philanthropic nature, but frightfully shy and humble to a fault. I believe I could sell that story without difficulty, as my own lifestyle would remain unchanged substantially. Such a story would make it simple to provide aid to most anyone anonymously, easily obtaining their silence, I should think.
I believe I’m ready for wish number two!
Not necessarily. Apparently, this is what a 100 million dollars looks like. I imagine you could haul that away in a pick-up truck or two.
Now, what to do? Keep it, obviously. And live worry free the rest of my life. I don’t need to go out and buy extravagant houses or cars to be happy.
No dirty genie tricks.
Oh…well, that’s not so bad then. I was picturing a mountain of cash suddenly appearing and crushing the unwise wisher to death.
If the genie would be so nice as to deliver the cash in US$100 bills then 100 million is about one decent size pallet load of cash. I can break that down and put it in the back seat of my car.
See the images from This Is What A Trillion Dollars Looks Like and you realize $1 million could be a pretty small pile and $100 million is still manageable.
I don’t think the IRS actually cares where the money came from, so long as the appropriate taxes are paid on it-- Just call it a windfall, and leave it at that. It means you’ll only get 60-something million on net, but that’s still plenty for anyone.
I don’t need that much. I’d keep $2-$3 million and tell anyone who asked I won the lottery. The rest would go first to a number of bank safe deposit boxes, and then anonymously to a wide number of charities.
You could always just report the money to the IRS. Put it on line 21 as “Winnings” and the IRS will just think you won the lottery. Nothing so unusual about that. (They won’t have a 1099 reporting the winnings to them, but you might have won it outside the US.)
You’ll pay about 42% in federal taxes on the winnings (and maybe another 10% depending on your state), but you can pick any amount you want from the genie. If the remaining 48 million isn’t enough, then just ask the genie for 210 million and you’ll still have 100 million after-tax.
I don’t know how you could spend that kind of money without your friends and neighbors noticing, though. What could you spend it on that they wouldn’t know about? What would the point of that kind of money be if you couldn’t buy a new house, boat, car, clothes, etc.? If all you need is beer money and a healthy retirement fund, you can get by with a much smaller wish.
Or maybe the stipulation of hiding it from friends just has to do with avoiding the appearance of tax evasion or other wrong-doing, which I’ve fixed by having you report it as winnings. Heck, with $100 million, you could pay the necessary people to pretend it’s a real lottery even if someone hired a private investigator to check up on you.
I’d disperse a bit of it to family and friends, and pay taxes on whatever ends up in the bank. $100,000,000 minus whatever taxes on that would be is still way more than I started with.