Slight nitpick-hijack from your friendly local tax attorney. The check for $1,000,000 may have been a gift, in which case it would be excluded from Evan and Zora’s gross income under section 103 of the Code.
However, the interesting (well, to me) tax issue here is that the tax law normally won’t allow something to be treated as a gift if the donor and donee are in a relationship such as employer/employee, corporation/shareholder, etc.
So, the question now becomes: were Evan and Zora performing services for the network by appearing on the show, and if so is the check compensation for those services? If not, then they don’t have to pay US income tax on the proceeds (but France may assert taxing jurisdiction in some way).
