Game Shows: Taxes game show production companies and not game show contestants for the...

...prizes (including cash prizes) given away on game shows and prohibits game shows from including what they pay in taxes for those prizes to falsely inflate the prize’s value.  The game show company can, however, require the companies that give the non-cash prizes to the game show company to pay the taxes.  The federal government also taxes state and local governments who tax game show contestants exactly what they tax game show winners, but allows them to tax the game show’s production company and/or advertisers that give the production company prizes.  [The truth is that with any non-monetary prize you see won on a game show, almost always the contestants take its value in cash or, if they cannot do that, they do not accept the prize to avoid having to pay what they’ll then owe the government on such prizes in taxes (about 50%).  In fact, many game shows know contestants will usually not accept the non-monetary prizes for fear of having to pay taxes on them and thus give these non-cashable prizes knowing they’ll be turned down by contestants.  The most common abuse of this is vacation package prizes.  With this change, the prizes offered by game shows will be more honest and contestants will then truly get all of the prizes they win.]

Future Challenges: First US game show host to champion this challenge and:

1) Publicly say so on their game show.  To win this challenge, the host must talk about the challenge and why they support it for at least three minutes on their game show.

2) Incorporate the challenge in some obvious and persuasive way on her/his game show on at least a weekly basis and for at least one year.  [For example, on The Price Is Right, contestants could guess not what the item costs but how much they'd have to pay the federal government in taxes if they won it.]

3) Get sitting members of the US House to be all the contestants on an episode and use their appearance on the show to pitch them the original challenge.

4) Get sitting members of the US Senate to be all the contestants on an episode and use their appearance on the show to pitch them the original challenge.

5) Ask viewers to go to the show's website to sign a We The People online petition to get the US President to champion the original challenge.  The host doing this on her/his game show until the petition has collected at least the minimum number of signatures to get the US President to consider the petition.

6) Film at least five episodes in Washington DC and on each episode campaign for the original challenge for at least two minutes on the game show.

7) Promise to host the "biggest" open-air nice-weather party in Washington DC if the US Congress and US President pass a law that does the original challenge.  The show's production company paying for this party and filming at least one episode of the game show on stage at the party and then airing that episode.  The host regularly making this offer on her/his show at the end of each episode and encouraging her/his viewers to petition their congresspersons and the US President to pass the law.

Discussion:
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