Category Archives: Satire

You won a medal? Okay, fork up, the metal in the medal has a melt-down value and the federal government taxes it.  For the bronze that’s two dollars please.  I kid you not; this is for real.  Marcus Rubio has submitted a bill to end this utterly absurd tax.  Here is the link.  Let’s see what the Democrats do.  What if an athlete is rich?

Yes, there is more to the story.  The tax on the melt-down value is an insult that only a government could devise but the politicians want some real money too.  As though the insult weren’t enough, it comes with a slap in the face – tax on the honorarium.  Using the bronze as an example again, the honorarium is $10,000.  Typically the athlete would get $ 6,498 of that and the rest would go to the IRS, according to numbers supplied by  Americans for Tax Reform.

Why should the government get that?  Is it because the medal winner didn’t win it on his own?  How did he get to the gym to train, didn’t he or she use the roads?  Perhaps there should be a surcharge for cyclists and runners because they actually perform their mastery in competition on public roads.  Ridiculi, ridiculum, does the whole world run on idiocy or only Washington?

Rubio has a winner in this bill.  If the Democrats approve it, it bodes well for Rubio.  If they oppose it, they risk the wrath of Olympic fans.  The amount of money raised by the ‘US Tax on Olympic Achievement’ pales, pales, pales into insignificance compared to the negative statement it makes.  Let us honor our winners, not take a piece of their flesh.