I don’t know why stuff like this keeps me up at night but let’s pretend you just won some obscene amount and there’s a lot of people you’d like to set up for life. Let’s say after taxes you have $300m in your account
You can give someone up to 18k a year without incurring a gift tax and while that’d definitely be a nice bump to their income, you still have way more money than you know what to do with. So what’s the smartest way to hook them up?
A couple of options I’ve considered are:
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Give them a lump sum of $X million. They eat the taxes the first year and handle the savings themselves.
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Create a company and hire them to “work” one hour a month for a big salary. If you put $25m in an account, the interest covers the salary. They get a steady bonus income with the added bonus of getting the best insurance available. Is that legal?
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Set up a “shared” checking account they can use to pay for…whatever. But would these expenses count towards the gift tax? I do not know.
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Buy houses and let them live there rent-free. I don’t really like this one because I don’t want to be a lord to my friends and family.
For the record, I did not win the lottery. I don’t even play it. I’m just working out the details in a fantasy world for some reason
I think you missed the whole point of the story. The long example given of Whitaker was a guy that was already rich. If you hit the lottery and start giving to friends, a good deal of what’s written above will happen to you.
I’ll be honest - I only read about half of the first post. It was a bit too doomer for my tastes
I don’t think you know what that word means
Extremely pessimistic about the future? Everything I read there was negative and it’s a damn essay, why would I think the rest would be any different?
Well maybe because it’s one of the best comments of all time and it’s a good read, but I’m not going to make you read it, I’ll just think you missed out on the fun we were having. I think you’re being flippant.
It may be a good read but I was just asking a fun question. A copied reddit essay that starts by saying the theoretical situation I proposed would actually be terrible for me isn’t what I was looking for I guess. Kind of downer.
And I still think my use of the word “doomer” is fine. The rest of the comment(s) may not have been pessimistic but the first couple of paragraphs I was referencing were about how I’m statistically more likely to go bankrupt or die…