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As I remember, years ago, when HGTV first started that "Dream House" contest thing, the house up for grabs was actually a reasonably sized & priced house. Then, they started with adding a car, building a McMansion, throwing in all kinds of bells & whistles. The last time I read anything about it (and that was years ago), the winner sold the car to try to pay some of the taxes he owed on the whole mess, & was trying to sell the house. It sounded like he was going to end up with nothing & was p----d that he had ever entered. The only benefactor is HGTV, IMO.
I remember a story on them where of the 1st 10 HGTV dream homes, only 1 person chose to live in it (everyone else sold to pay taxes) and the people that moved there were bankrupt in a year. From the sound of their story, they had no business living in any house as they were hiring out things like the changing of lightbulbs. I think this is why they started adding the cash prize to the house so people could pay their taxes.
Personally liked the old garage doors and main architect...they seemed to think otherwise.
I'm sure they bought it for a steal. Then invested on demo and grounds...
Often thought they should give true cost of work materials verses the "retail" inflated investment.
Some things are write offs by product vendors...yet the recipient gets taxed?
If I gift a hammer to my friend ( gave it to her at Christmas) ...I don't expect her to pay the sales tax or gift tax...sheesh...
Think I'll register as Uncle Sam and payback myself !
Are you interested in entering this annual contest to win a dream home? Have you already been entering?
Me too!
Now I've pored all over the internet including the sweepstakes rules but can find no answer or discussion forum to address a question I have.
Online entries are limited to two per day, once at hgtv.com, and once at diynetwork.com between 12/28/16 and 2/17/17, so what if I accidentally enter more than twice per day because I forgot that I already entered at the stroke of midnight earlier that day? Might one accidental superfluous entry disqualify all my entries? Online entry can be additionally confusing because once you enter at hgtv.com, the site leads you to enter at diy.com, then it takes you back to hgtv.com and I sometimes lose track of where I started, or which I entered first, possibly leading to entering more than the maximum of two entries per day.
In summary: If I accidentally enter more than once at each site per day, might one accidental duplicate entry disqualify all my entries?
To further any discussion, if you're interested: The cold, hard facts of this annual dream home sweepstakes has been well summed up by a tax consultant:
[If the winner decides to Keep the Home]: The grand prize is a $2 million home plus $500,000 cash. This means you’ll be taxed on $2.5 million. The tax owed would be $875,000 — meaning the cash prize won’t cover all the taxes. You’ll have to find another $375,000 to cover taxes. And that’s just federal taxes. You might owe state taxes, too.
[Or the winner can decide to Take the Home and Cash, Then Sell the Home]: Let’s say you sell the home for $2.1 million. You’ll be taxed on $2.6 million ($2 million value of the home plus $500,000 cash plus $100,000 gain from the sale). That’s $910,000 of taxes. Your net takeaway is $1.69 million ($2.1 million from sale plus $500,000 cash prize minus $910,000 taxes). A nice haul. But you still have to pay maintenance and upkeep on the home while it’s for sale.
[Now let’s say the winner can only manage to sell the home for less than $2 million.] Say, for $1.9 million. In that case, you’re still taxed on the $2 million value of the home even though you sold it for less than that. The tax hit is $875,000 and your net takeaway is $1.525 million ($1.9 million from the sale plus $500,000 cash prize minus $875,000).
Take the Cash: You have the option of taking a cash prize of $1.3 million instead of the home. After taxes, you would have $845,000 left. (I think there’s also a vehicle included as well – you would have to pay taxes on the market value of the vehicle, too.)
(In the remotely possible event I win, I'd opt for the cash-and-car prize option for the sake of simplicity & tax purposes.)
I would change that to "self-anointed tax consultant." There is so much wrong with the analysis that it is a laughable waste of time to read it. Regardless of how high the taxes will be they will never be more than about half of the prize and in many places quite a bit lower. Income taxes are not paid on the declared (by HGTV) value but on fair market value which is most easily determined by offering the house for sale in the open market - what it sells for is the fair market value.
In the event that anyone here should be in the position that they win the house and are afraid to accept the prize because of the tax consequences be advised that for no charge to you I will allow you to deed the house over to me and I will contractually agree to accept the tax burden on your behalf.
I would change that to "self-anointed tax consultant." There is so much wrong with the analysis that it is a laughable waste of time to read it. Regardless of how high the taxes will be they will never be more than about half of the prize and in many places quite a bit lower. Income taxes are not paid on the declared (by HGTV) value but on fair market value which is most easily determined by offering the house for sale in the open market - what it sells for is the fair market value.
In the event that anyone here should be in the position that they win the house and are afraid to accept the prize because of the tax consequences be advised that for no charge to you I will allow you to deed the house over to me and I will contractually agree to accept the tax burden on your behalf.
Yes, this is correct. It didn't make sense what was in the published synopsis, at a minimum if you had to accept the price as what HGTV quoted as your basis, you would have a loss equal to the delta between selling price and HGTV price.
When it comes to taxes it is not often that a Canadian can say that they have an advantage over the US system, but, a house or anything, including cash lottery winnings, offered in Canada as a prize for a contest is at least non-taxable at the time of receipt. You still have to decide however if you can afford to keep up with maintenance/utilities and property taxes from that time forward of course but if the prize also includes a cash component as well usually that means you can take your time to decide whether you actually want to live where it is located or sell it.
The prizes, on average (though winning a house, etc. in a contest in Canada is not unheard of these days) may be smaller than those offered/available in the US but the red tape and nickel and diming at least is much less of a mathematical issue, thank goodness.
If however you are a US citizen and win a prize in Canada, you have to pay US taxes on it. I guess the only consolation there is that you will pay on the US $ equivalent of that Canadian $ prize - and that will (at least right now) be considerably less than what it would seem on paper in Canada due to the exchange rate. Needless to say, since I am a citizen of both countries, I don't buy tickets or enter contests in either country as a result (even though I am not a 'lucky' person anyway so my chances of winning are probably nil anyway).
If you can get a mortgage for the tax amount and taxes and live in the house long enough to not have to pay for the gains as long as you roll into a new home, it might not be a bad deal. Of course, it would depend on the projected appreciation for the house and location. I'm sure a professional could find some legal ways to lessen the tax burden.
On a tangential topic, do you recall when Oprah gave everyone in her audience a new car? It was a nice gesture but do you remember how it backfired when no one could keep their new cars because the tax burdens were unmanageable?
Instead, what if Oprah had included a sufficient cash gift with each car? Of course that cash gift would be taxed too, so she'd have to make the cash gifts sufficient for paying its own tax plus the car tax, not to mention the license, title, & registration fees etc in order to NOT place a burden on these people she wanted to help. I wonder why she didn't do that??
Instead, best case scenario, the giftees had to sell their gifts and use the funds to buy affordable cars.
I'll conclude by quoting a bumper sticker I saw recently: "Taxation is theft."
On a tangential topic, do you recall when Oprah gave everyone in her audience a new car? It was a nice gesture but do you remember how it backfired when no one could keep their new cars because the tax burdens were unmanageable?
Instead, what if Oprah had included a sufficient cash gift with each car? Of course that cash gift would be taxed too, so she'd have to make the cash gifts sufficient for paying its own tax plus the car tax, not to mention the license, title, & registration fees etc in order to NOT place a burden on these people she wanted to help. I wonder why she didn't do that??
Instead, best case scenario, the giftees had to sell their gifts and use the funds to buy affordable cars.
I'll conclude by quoting a bumper sticker I saw recently: "Taxation is theft."
I have a friend who won a bunch of stuff from Dr Phil and the tax bill was 75k. Crazy
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, so she'd have to make the cash gifts sufficient for paying its own tax plus the car tax, not to mention the license, title, & registration fees etc in order to NOT place a burden on these people she wanted to help. I wonder why she didn't do that?? 
