The Perfect Tesla Raffle

[stoebs]

Ok, so all tax liability falls squarely into 2016. This all makes sense to me now. Thanks for the clarity gang.

For the record, I still think the drawing should be on Dec, 31st, so that Pollux can call me to wish me Happy Birthday with the best birthday news ever :wink:.

 

[HankLloydRight]

For the record, I still think the drawing should be on Dec, 31st, so that Pollux can call me to wish me Happy Birthday with the best birthday news ever :wink:.

I would go far as to suggest that Pollux actually pick the winner in the morning of Dec 31st and notify them that they won, so they can spend the day ordering the car if they want to claim a $1000 referral credit.

And then just "announce" the winner that night.

But don't tell anyone he's doing this.

 

[tga]

Ok, so all tax liability falls squarely into 2016. This all makes sense to me now. Thanks for the clarity gang.

I'm still not convinced. Does the IRS practice accrual or cash accounting for raffle winners? Beats me. Any CPA's on here who want to give a professional opinion?

Hank's argument in post 260 makes sense, but IRS notice 1340 states that:

The exempt organization must file Forms W-2G with the IRS by the last day of February of the year after the year of the raffle. Use Form 1096, Annual Summary and Transmittal of U.S. Information Returns, to transmit Forms W-2G to the IRS. The organization
must also issue Forms W-2G to prize recipients by January 31 of the year after the year of the raffle.

The raffle rules on climate-xchange.org clearly state that the winner will receive a W-2G by 1/31/16, and they will file it with the IRS at the end of Feb. That tells me it'll be a 2015 W2-G. You can bet that if they file a 2015 W2-G, the IRS will consider it a 2015 tax liability, not 2016. But I'm not a CPA, so what do I know.

Another thought that just occurred to me - another benefit to 2016 taxes is that the winner has all year to plan for tax minimization. If it falls in 2015, their tax situation is what it is. Nice problem to have, I know. :wink:

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I would go far as to suggest that Pollux actually pick the winner in the morning of Dec 31st and notify them that they won, so they can spend the day ordering the car if they want to claim a $1000 referral credit.

If it weren't for that pesky referral credit, I'd suggest picking the winner the morning of Jan 1st, so everything is in 2016, regardless of time zone.

 

[HankLloydRight]

Ok, I am not a tax professional, but I do spend A LOT of time reading and doing taxes for myself and several businesses. So what I posted is just my opinion.

I just can't believe that if CXC disburses the cash in 2016 that it's a 2015 tax event. But I'm willing to be wrong. That is, only if I win.



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If it weren't for that pesky referral credit, I'd suggest picking the winner the morning of Jan 1st, so everything is in 2016, regardless of time zone.

Or with my plan, inform the winner the morning of Dec 31, and then "wink-wink we're not picking a winner until tomorrow, but if you want to place an order today...".

 

[tga]

Or with my plan, inform the winner the morning of Dec 31, and then "wink-wink we're not picking a winner until tomorrow, but if you want to place an order today...".

Got it. For the record, subtlety is not my strong suit.

 

[wdolson]

I think I looked up the IRS rules on taxable winnings once and if I remember correctly they consider the taxable event when you receive the prize or money, not when the drawing or other event happened. So I think the taxes would be in the 2016 tax year.

 

[AlMc]

I think I looked up the IRS rules on taxable winnings once and if I remember correctly they consider the taxable event when you receive the prize or money, not when the drawing or other event happened. So I think the taxes would be in the 2016 tax year.

Agree: Receive=Possesion

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

I've pinged our legislative director re Michael Moore. Stay tuned.

I've found your action page Take Action | Climate XChange and sent the letters there to Sen. Moore, and my Rep. Kate Campanale. Also signed the petition, and urge anyone in MA to do so. If British Columbia can do it, so can we.

Have started contacting geothermal installers. Might as well do it before the tax credits expire.

 

[Pollux]

Awesome!! OMG! This is like a poster-child case study for the Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle! The raffle gets attention, people get exposed to the idea of carbon pricing, it bubbles away... people start communicating with their legislators... Nicely done, sir! And keep in mind that especially at the state level, when a state Senator or a state Representative gets only FIVE emails then that issue becomes a big deal in their minds!

I asked our legislative director about Sen Moore and this is what he reported back:

Alan - we don't know his position on carbon pricing. An attempt was made to ask him to co-sponsor, but we (Launa Zimmaro of the LWV) was unable to reach him. On environmental issues in general, the Environmental League of Mass. did ratings of legislators from the 2013-2014 session. Senators were rated on 10 votes, Moore voted "correctly" on 9 out of 10 for an 86 percent rating. But his no vote was on an important issue, below:
An Act relative to natural gas leaks
(SB2073) — 4/10/2014
Amendment #12, filed by Senator Jamie
Eldridge: Would require that Dept. of Public
Utilities review include a full analysis of the
greenhouse gas emissions impacts of proposed
expansion, including an accounting of life cycle
fugitive emissions.
ELM position:
Support
Status:
Failed



I'm leery of the whole "Report card" rating thing for legislators, so I'm not particularly enthusiastic or particularly negative about Moore's "86 percent rating". I think that's why our legislative director was putting "correctly" in quotation marks, because we shouldn't get hung up on scoring people as perfect conservatives, perfect liberals, perfect anything.

That said, I suspect Moore is receptive to the carbon pricing issue given his stance on other environmental issues, and your feedback (and from others, too) could help swing him on carbon pricing. For that matter, could have future knock-on effects for other legislation, such as any future attempt again at SB2073 above.

If you can find four other people to write letters to Moore and Campanale, there's a good chance you will materially impact them.

Thanks,
Alan

I've found your action page Take Action | Climate XChange and sent the letters there to Sen. Moore, and my Rep. Kate Campanale. Also signed the petition, and urge anyone in MA to do so. If British Columbia can do it, so can we.

Have started contacting geothermal installers. Might as well do it before the tax credits expire.

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

I've put it up on FB, working on family and friends. Five should be doable.

I should add, your website is top notch, kudos to your IT staff.

 

[Canuck]

If British Columbia can do it, so can we.

We got it in sort of a backwards way:

"Public opinion polls in 2007 showed that the environment had replaced the economy and healthcare at the most important issue to a majority of respondents. This cultural change, brought about by greater media and political attention both inside and outside of Canada, changed the political dynamic of British Columbia. Traditionally the left-leaning BC New Democratic Party (NDP) had been seen as the greener of the two largest parties, as opposed to the more free market BC Liberal Party. However in 2008 it was the Liberals who introduced the carbon tax and tax shift, which was thought to be a more market-friendly method of regulating carbon than the competing idea of cap-and-trade which the NDP supported. During the 2009 British Columbia election the NDP as well at the BC Conservatives made repealing the carbon tax part of their platform, but the Liberals won another majority government."

British Columbia carbon tax - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Only in BC can the "Liberals" be the right leaning party, and only in BC can the carbon tax be part of a free market political party (since it's more "right" than cap-and-trade). It was almost the perfect storm that caused us to get it, and good thing too because we are proving how effective it can be.

 

[Pollux]

Thank you for saying so, @DNAinaGoodWay. Our web designer is based in Florida and works very, very hard. She has been crucial to our success! And very flexible, too. Anyone looking for a web designer? I'd be happy to pass on her contact info.

I've put it up on FB, working on family and friends. Five should be doable.

I should add, your website is top notch, kudos to your IT staff.

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BTW, @DNAinaGoodWay, this is very cool re getting to five. You could almost literally, almost single-handedly, swing two votes, one in the MA Senate and one in the MA House. Depending on how your district is laid out, you might also reasonably be able to affect an adjacent Senator and/or Representative!

I've put it up on FB, working on family and friends. Five should be doable.

I should add, your website is top notch, kudos to your IT staff.

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We are shameless in pointing to BC as proof that the carbon tax can work. In the US, I think fee-and-rebate is a critical implementation detail versus tax, because there's such generalized suspicion about how the money will be used if it goes into the general coffers.

I love the idea that support for the carbon tax was more "right" than supporting cap-and-trade. Seriously! I'm a capitalist. If we can find ways to direct capitalist energy towards solving this problem, we'll get more innovation sooner. The price signal can be a very powerful motivation. While I'm not against cap-and-trade per se -- there is a capitalistic basis there, too -- cap-and-trade continues to shield individual consumers from thinking about and incorporating the price signal directly into their calculations. Even EPA regulation has its place! Anyone who is dead set against the benefits that came from creating the US EPA probably didn't grow up with the smoggy US cities of my youth... and maybe hasn't visited Mexico City or Beijing.

We got it in sort of a backwards way:

"Public opinion polls in 2007 showed that the environment had replaced the economy and healthcare at the most important issue to a majority of respondents. This cultural change, brought about by greater media and political attention both inside and outside of Canada, changed the political dynamic of British Columbia. Traditionally the left-leaning BC New Democratic Party (NDP) had been seen as the greener of the two largest parties, as opposed to the more free market BC Liberal Party. However in 2008 it was the Liberals who introduced the carbon tax and tax shift, which was thought to be a more market-friendly method of regulating carbon than the competing idea of cap-and-trade which the NDP supported. During the 2009 British Columbia election the NDP as well at the BC Conservatives made repealing the carbon tax part of their platform, but the Liberals won another majority government."

British Columbia carbon tax - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Only in BC can the "Liberals" be the right leaning party, and only in BC can the carbon tax be part of a free market political party (since it's more "right" than cap-and-trade). It was almost the perfect storm that caused us to get it, and good thing too because we are proving how effective it can be.

 

[bonnie]

Leilani just tweeted out the info, too. PLEASE update your website to include the 501c3 status under 'About Us' (found it over in 'Donate').

Leilani Münter on Twitter:

 

[Pollux]

Just came here to proudly report on the Leilani tweet but Bonnie way ahead of me.

501c3 - will have website updated in two places, one in About Us and the other a further clarification in raffle legal details (which mention our fiscal sponsorship arrangement but didn't include the more recent c3 IRS letter).

THANK YOU, Bonnie!

Leilani just tweeted out the info, too. PLEASE update your website to include the 501c3 status under 'About Us' (found it over in 'Donate').

Leilani Münter on Twitter:

View attachment 104426

 

[Pollux]

By popular demand! We'll be updating the website occasionally with ticket sales numbers, going forward.

Why not a running counter? First there's the question whether we want a running counter. We're not entirely sure. But second, and definitely a big issue, is that we're nervous about the implementation. We're being *very* conservative about website and back-end changes at this point. And it turns out that a running counter is not so trivial to implement after all, either in the back-end OR displaying on the website. (For instance, there's the small matter that the *exact* correct number of tickets sold has a manual calculation step in it, due to the way we're handling cancellations, test tickets, and other categories.) Implementing a small text change, though, is much less risky. And we don't have to get the number perfect, as for all practical matters (including people who like to calculate odds), the exact number is a lot less important than a reasonably close number. It also means that we don't have to be quite as rigorous in making sure that the information is available to all potentially interested parties at the exact same moment.

The website is still catching up but I've already disclosed this information in an email to existing ticket holders (inviting them to the raffle drawing, RSVP ASAP, only 50 spots available). And since I've disclosed it there, I'm going to go ahead and disclose it on this thread and a few other threads besides:

"We have sold almost 1000 tickets."

Alan


P.S. Let the nit-picking begin! "Alan, in your view, is almost, like, um, within 10?" "Alan, do you define 'almost' as having one or two digits in the variance?" "Alan, why not just publish the exact number as of a given second (be sure to timestamp it when you publish it), and then you can let people decide for themselves how many tickets might have been sold since the timestamp?"

 

[S'toon]

By popular demand! We'll be updating the website occasionally with ticket sales numbers, going forward.

Why not a running counter? First there's the question whether we want a running counter. We're not entirely sure. But second, and definitely a big issue, is that we're nervous about the implementation. We're being *very* conservative about website and back-end changes at this point. And it turns out that a running counter is not so trivial to implement after all, either in the back-end OR displaying on the website. (For instance, there's the small matter that the *exact* correct number of tickets sold has a manual calculation step in it, due to the way we're handling cancellations, test tickets, and other categories.) Implementing a small text change, though, is much less risky. And we don't have to get the number perfect, as for all practical matters (including people who like to calculate odds), the exact number is a lot less important than a reasonably close number. It also means that we don't have to be quite as rigorous in making sure that the information is available to all potentially interested parties at the exact same moment.

The website is still catching up but I've already disclosed this information in an email to existing ticket holders (inviting them to the raffle drawing, RSVP ASAP, only 50 spots available). And since I've disclosed it there, I'm going to go ahead and disclose it on this thread and a few other threads besides:

"We have sold almost 1000 tickets."

Alan


P.S. Let the nit-picking begin! "Alan, in your view, is almost, like, um, within 10?" "Alan, do you define 'almost' as having one or two digits in the variance?" "Alan, why not just publish the exact number as of a given second (be sure to timestamp it when you publish it), and then you can let people decide for themselves how many tickets might have been sold since the timestamp?"

Hurrah! Congratulations!

 

[Pollux]

Well... thank you, kind sir!

Hurrah! Congratulations!

 

[Tedkidd]

Alan, you are a hero.

BTW, there seems to be negotiation around the oil trade embargo (? - exporting US oil) and the ITC (Solar tax credit)

Since the tax credit would decline over a period of years, might be good to include CFD in the negotiations. Any thoughts o ow to promote this?

 

[S'toon]

Well... thank you, kind sir!

Oh, no no no no no! I'm not a sir. I never got higher than corporal.

 

[McHoffa]

When I got the email, I was surprised there were only "almost 1000" sold. I mean, that makes my chances that much better, but wow. Your raffle is light years ahead of the other Tesla raffles I've looked at (and passed by). Hoping you get a good number in the next 2 weeks.