For weeks a big promo at work involved people getting raffle tickets with the prize being an iPad Mini. They would win them for games, for sales, for getting friends hired; all sorts of shit. I think my one ticket was a sympathy ticket because my supervisor feels the client I work for doesn’t really remember the three of us exist. Fine; whatever. I signed it and gave it back.
The drawing was this afternoon. I didn’t pay much attention because I had (iHad?) a feeling I was going to win and someone would probably tell me. Except the first person pulled had quit already. So it goes. And the second person pulled had quit already, too (you can see why they need to bribe us to recruit for them). Then they pulled my name. I haven’t quit yet, so I won.
Lovely. I have to pay taxes on this white elephant. So I will try to return it for grocery money, and get my wife a rather nice $49 Android tablet from Wally World that gets good reviews on YouTube so she can surf her horse rescue sites and download her crappy 19th-century women’s novels from Project Gutenberg. Great. Then I’ll have to dig out my spare wifi router so she can get better speed upstairs or she’ll complain.
I assume you’re talking about income tax, because what the hell kind of raffle would force you to pay sales tax on something you won? Either way, I don’t see how your liability could possibly be more than $49.
Keep the iPad man. No android tablet is good for more than fixing an uneven table leg.
An iPad mini is 469 at micro center. Assuming tax of 9.75% in Cook County you’re getting an iPad for $43.38.
If you want to pay more for a shittier tablet well I can’t help you there.
You think you have it rough? Last month I won a 65’ flat screen TV in a raffle at work! Holy shit, what a royal pain the ass! It was too big to fit in my car so I had to arrange for someone to deliver it. I had to go buy new earthquake straps so it won’t fall over and kill the dog. It blocks the painting that hung over the old TV so I’ve got to rearrange all the art in the living room. Now my wife is riding me to mount the damn thing on the wall. And I have no idea what I’m going to do with the old TV. It’s just been sitting there in the front hall for weeks. A perfectly good TV, just sitting there!
Ha, this exact same thing happened to me last year, except I had paid for the raffle ticket (it was raising money for a charity event). Of course, in the UK there’s no taxes on prize winnings, so I didn’t moan about that. I mainly use it for playing games and checking e-mail/Facebook.
This is the US we’re talking about, right? Because this will be the least of the taxes. There’ll be 7.65% FICA tax (payroll) and federal income tax, which for many people is either 15 or 25% (but could be 0 to 40%). Then there’s the state income tax. So the tax could be substantial.
On a raffle prize won at work? That doesn’t sound right. My firm gives out raffle prizes every year at our holiday party - I’ve won a flat-screen TV and a pretty decent camera in the past years and never paid taxes on them, certainly not FICA!
