Celebrities love to bitch and whine about being famous. "Boo hoo hoo," they go. "A man took my picture and now I'm sad." So why, if they hate it so much, do famous people still insist on being famous?
Simple, it's because of things like awards ceremony goodie bags. Anyone invited to present a prize at a Hollywood awards ceremony – basically dressing up nice and reading 20 words off the back of an envelope – can expect to be given a bag full of gifts and vouchers up to the value of $100,000. But not any more, since the Internal Revenue Service has decided to tax the goodie bags to kingdom come, meaning that the era of rich famous people getting given a bunch of expensive free stuff even though they're better positioned than the rest of us to actually pay for it in the first place is probably over.
Awards ceremonies, let's face it, are shit. Scratch the surface and they're nothing more than over-long, intensely smug back-slapping marathons designed solely to boost the DVD sales of films that most people didn't even want to see at the cinema that are full of desperately insecure dimwits all grasping for a slightly bigger picture in tomorrow's paper than any of the other pouting xylophones out on the red carpet.
Watching awards ceremonies at home on TV is bad enough, but at least you can break up the thudding monotony by getting your bum out and pretending it's Joan Rivers. If you're famous enough to actually get invited to an awards ceremony, though, you can't get your bum out – you have to sit in a chair for hours upon hours smiling politely at everything. It's crap. So why go? Because you get given a goodie bag stuffed full of all kinds of expensive shit just for turning up, that's why. And, following the news that the value of these awards ceremony goodie bags regularly touches $100,000, America's Internal Revenue Service has decided that it wants to see a cut of that deliriously expensive swag. According to the Los Angeles Times:
The Internal Revenue Service launched a campaign Thursday aimed at clarifying the tax consequences of the gift-jammed goody bags and luxury giveaway suites that surround awards ceremonies and film festivals. The bad news for every A-lister and low-level minion alike who ever pockets a freebie: It's taxable income. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in a related announcement, said it would eliminate the luxurious gift baskets it customarily offers to Oscar presenters such as Jennifer Aniston, Tom Hanks and Will Ferrell, starting with next year's show.
So that's effectively the end of goodie bags full of lobster-encrusted mobile phones and liquid diamond sports drinks for moviestars at The Oscars. To be fair, the IRS seems joyously unbothered by killing the chances of letting multi-millionaires get given a load more free crap just for walking into a building, as IRS Commissioner Mark V. Everson said:
"There was an awful lot of publicity about the ever-increasing value of these baskets. And somebody said, 'Why don't we do something about this?' It was just so clearly taxable we felt we had to step in."
And, yes, we're aware that this has been an article about tax. Sorry, it won't happen again.
Read more:
IRS Bags Oscar Swag – Los Angeles Times
[story by Stuart Heritage]