Suppose I wanted to give a stranger a million dollars. Anonymously, legally, with the minimum hassles for them. How might I do that?
I’ve had a few ideas. Maybe I could courier it in cash. Addressed to the recipient, full name correct. They’d have to report it to the tax people of course, and they’d probably get a visit from the police. But if they just said, “it’s addressed to me, I don’t who it’s from, I’ve paid the tax, now get lost,” would that be the end of it?
This one is probably better suited to IMHO. MOved.
**samclem ** General Questions Moderation
matt, your problem is over. Mail it to me at your earliest convenience. 
No, no. I will accept the burden. Send it here.
The easiest way would be in cash–no record. You could leave a package of one million in hundred dollar bills on their doorstep in the middle of the night.
I’ll PM you my address
You certainly couldn’t do it in the US. Local laws and taxation issues would preclude such a transaction, no matter how it was done.
But remitting it to someone in Australia would be no problem. We strive to make theeengs easy over here! I’ll be your local agent, for a very nominal fee of course.
The first part is easy; it’s the second bit, “minimum of hassles” for YOU, that’s the problem. If it’s sent by courier and addressed to you, you could at least argue that it is in fact yours, an anonymous gift, after your bank manager shops you to the Feds.
Or you could try keeping it under the stairs and paying cash for everything. But that means no Ferrari, no mansion, even paying for flying first class travel with it might be tricky!
Or you might try to launder it. Start a business, run it through the till for a few years, expanding rapidly as your amazing profits permit. But why should you have to, if the money’s perfectly legit?
Maybe it could be done via a lawyer. “This has been bequeathed to you etc.” Would the lawyer’s client be protected from enquiries from the police? Would the lawyer be obliged to investigate the source of the money? Or would a lawyer deliver an unopened package without knowing what was in it?
IANAL, but I’m not sure that having the cash show up would be “hassle-free” for the recipient: RICO laws are pretty powerful, and often seem to remove the presumption of innocence. (Well, again, AIUI, not from the recipient - s/he won’t be treated like a criminal by the courts. But the money will be treated as laundered funds unless, and until, it is proven that they did not come from illegal activities. And until that proof is made, the gov’t has the ability to seize the money, to fight Racketeering.)
The best way to transfer the money to the recipient would have to get around that. One possibility would be looking to establish a ‘treasure trove’ in their property. But that assumes that they own the property, and that the the previous owners are unable to make a claim on said found monies.
Now, if one were to give cash, that would remain undetected until it were deposited - so if the recipient wanted to avoid the complications that a large deposit would generate, simply keeping the money in a mattress might be a valid way to shortstop governmental interference. Of course, that also means that the recipient can’t use that million to buy a house, or any other large purchases.
One question I’ve got is what are the reporting requirements for PayPal vis-a-vis banking laws? AIUI banks are required to report a deposit of $10,000 or more to the Feds, as part of the various measures against money-laundering. But, since PayPal isn’t a banking institution, I’m not certain that they would meet that requirement.
Have a lawyer do it for you - surely client confidentiality must come into it - as in, the lawyer may be forced to reveal who you are to the cops or the IRS, but not the recipient, and I don’t think either of those institutions will reveal it either.
Of course, for the least amount of hassles, you’ll have to give them enough so that there’s a million left after taxes.
Here’s one possibility, but it would still leave the recipient open to tax burden.
Leave an authentic, though obscure, historical document in an object that could have been sold at a garage sale. Something that can be presumed to have an antiquarian value, say a letter from Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Then have one’s agent contact the recipient - telling him/her that you will pay one million dollars for the document, to avoid the hassle of bidding on it at Sotheby’s. Fabricate some family claim to the document to explain why you’ve placed a personal value on the document all out of proportion with the antiquarian value to most collectors.
There is, after all, no law that prevents a rich collector from stiffing themselves when buying their latest obsession.
No doubt there would be reporting requirements to get that much money in cash. But once you have it - walk past a homeless person begging in the street and drop it all into his lap. Then walk away.
You could give someone fifty-five dollars a day for fifty years.
Sounds like cash kept hidden is the best way to go. Not entirely legal, but in this case there wouldn’t be any illegal activity. Except if you didn’t report the tax.
You could certainly spend it all if you bought your usual things with your paycheck monies/credit card and then payed cash for everything else. Imagine how much paycheck money you’d have left over if you just paid cash for gas, food, anything from Best Buy/WalMart (etc) and maybe your utilities and such. You couldn’t live too extravagantly. If you had a decent job and credit you wouldn’t have any trouble getting higher end vehicles and a modest home with the help of a non-red-flag cash down payment. Especially after a couple years of doing this and your accounts are loaded with the extra money from your income that you haven’t been spending.
Or a nun.
Haven’t you seen Ghost ?
Cite?
In the US, the giver is responsible for paying gift taxes.
Not without being disbarred. You could probably find a crooked lawyer willing to risk it, but the risk would be very large.
I would take it, quit my job, and hopefully be able to just live comfortably in a way that would not arouse suspicion until I died.
It occurs to me that you’d be less likely to raise suspicion if you didn’t try to make the gift a secret. Would it be possible to establish some kind of private foundation dedicated to giving a million dollars to the most good-hearted, deserving, upstanding person in the country? Could you do this without letting the general public know whose money is backing the project?
Really? I had no idea.
Suppose e.g. eccentric dying millionaire Bob Bobson wants to annoy his wastrel offspring by giving a million to the nice muffin-stall girl he drives past every day. He doesn’t want her to know where the money’s come from, he doesn’t want said offspring to know who it went to. He doesn’t want nosy journalists to dig up a story, and he doesn’t want the IRS giving her a hard time. (no tax avoidance, just avoid the barrage of questions!) Can’t his expensive lawyer arrange something legal?
On another tack, suppose you FOUND a shoebox full of 500-euro bills and took it to the cops? Nobody claims it. Do you get it, or in the USA does the government grab it because it might be racketeering money? Why does the government have any more right to it than you, especially since you found it? It’s not like the presumed racketeers are profiting from their crime.
This is starting to touch upon Treasure Troves, and ISTR that Gfactor did a couple of good reports on them. The short answer is that it varies from state to state. I can’t bring up the threads we’ve had on it with a search at the moment, though.
ISTR that Florida, in particular, has written state law so that the state does have a permanent claim to any found valuables, passed when they lost their bid to claim portions of the Atocha wreck. I don’t think that government should have a greater claim than the finder does - but that doesn’t change that I can believe it’s possible for the gov’t to have laws passed to that effect.
I always thought of this if I had ever won the power ball or something. I figured going to my bank and requesting a cashier’s check for the amount I wanted and the name of the recipient. Then going to the bank of the recipient and then having it deposited to their account while wearing a wig or something to hide my identity.
I work at a bank and have many people come in to deposit money in other people’s account, that aren’t actually on the account. They just don’t get a receipt.
With cash there is always a record of it. A cashiers check wouldn’t have my name on it. Just the bank of where it came from and due to privacy policy or even laws, they can’t give who they gave the check too. Unless there was some court order.
Though if I got a gift like that, sure I would wonder, but I wouldn’t go hunting. If the person wanted me to know, they would tell me. I wouldn’t disrespect them by trying to hunt them down.
If I ever won the power ball, I already have a list of 10 people that I would do something for. People that have been influential in my life.