This is such a wonderful story for probably my favorite baseball player.
Johnny Bench gets his auctioned memorabilia back
- Thread starter rick64
- Start date
It sounds like a tax scam.
The guy “buying” the stuff, then “donating” It to Bench-designated museums will take a tax deduction as a charitable donation.
Bench couldn’t have simply donated the stuff himself because he had no income from which to subtract the decuction from the donation. And the guy couldn’t simply give Bench a million bucks - that’d not be deductible.
And they had to launder the stuff through an auction - Bench couldn’t simply give the stuff to a friend, take cash, then have the friend donate it. An auction established an inflated value for the guy’s charitable donation.
Let's say the deduction is worth $300,000 to the guy, net, after auction expenses. Sure he owes Bench $1 million. But that's between them. Maybe he gives Johnny $250,000. He walks away with a net profit, helps a friend with financial problems, and gets tremendous press as the world's most generous friend. Meanwhile, Johnny still gets to donate his memorabilia to the museums where he wanted it all along, to burnish his legacy. Quite a scheme.
I thought something didn’t smell right when Bench said he was selling the stuff to put his kids through college. Bench too broke to do that? Seemed unlikely.
The guy “buying” the stuff, then “donating” It to Bench-designated museums will take a tax deduction as a charitable donation.
Bench couldn’t have simply donated the stuff himself because he had no income from which to subtract the decuction from the donation. And the guy couldn’t simply give Bench a million bucks - that’d not be deductible.
And they had to launder the stuff through an auction - Bench couldn’t simply give the stuff to a friend, take cash, then have the friend donate it. An auction established an inflated value for the guy’s charitable donation.
Let's say the deduction is worth $300,000 to the guy, net, after auction expenses. Sure he owes Bench $1 million. But that's between them. Maybe he gives Johnny $250,000. He walks away with a net profit, helps a friend with financial problems, and gets tremendous press as the world's most generous friend. Meanwhile, Johnny still gets to donate his memorabilia to the museums where he wanted it all along, to burnish his legacy. Quite a scheme.
I thought something didn’t smell right when Bench said he was selling the stuff to put his kids through college. Bench too broke to do that? Seemed unlikely.
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