What about if you are totally broke and heavily in debt and declare bankruptcy? The IRS treats all the debt you walk away from as "income in forgiveness of debt." Thus, it is taxable as ordinary income.

Hello? I can't pay my dry cleaner so I surely can't pay you motherf@ckers. And the bankruptcy procedure is designed to make sure you are broke (depending on your particular state's definition), so how much sense does that make?

Using the phrase "makes sense" in conjunction with taxation does not "make sense." The tax laws are based on the revenue needs of the government and the relative political clout of the members of Congress. All I can do about this is apologize.

I am a former IRS revenue agent, for which I will probably rot in H-E-double hockey stick, but I did quit after 2 years and get a real job that provided added value to society.

JD

Makes sense to me. If you owed $10,000, declare bankruptcy, and now owe 0, it's equivalent to getting $10,000 and paying off the debt (in terms of taxes, not the bankruptcy court).

How is that related to taxation of FF awards? Wiping out $10,000 of debt costs someone else $10,000. A FF award ticket doesn't cost anyone anything.

I’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with the moralists on this. Programs should be used as they are intended. If you want to share points with your spouse, take your business to Hilton as they have made a business decision to allow combining spousal accounts, but don’t exploit having a similar name to your husband/wife.

Similarly, I think that it’s one thing on switch from Sprint to MCI because MCI “bought” your business by offering more miles per dollar, but it’s totally another thing to switch every month, or to move the same $50,000 from brokerage to brokerage, simply for a pay day. And then, invariably, when after the 17th time one is finally denied an enrollment bonus, responding by screaming bloody murder about being unfairly gazumped by the evil company.

In my business we have a name for people who take shortcuts: “inmates”

In the final analysis, if you’re gonna steal, for God’s sake, steal big. At least you will have sold your soul for a villa in the south of France as opposed to a measly upgrade from Cleveland to Miami.

It never ceases to amaze me. Now we have a number of FTers, including a TalkBoard member, trying to justify taking advantage of a mistake made by Hilton:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum57/HTML/003576.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum...ML/001418.html


[This message has been edited by cactuspete (edited 02-19-2002).]

Uh ... because you called it a personal attack and you wrote the post ...?

One more thing Mr. Always Ethical - I notice you seem very concerned about how others actions affect you while you don't seem to mind how your actions impact others ... do you have an extra wide computer screen or something?

Thank you. That is one of the nicest compliments anyone can receive. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

No, just more evidence of your warped sense of "ethics". Clearly, a simple UBB coding error. Sorry to inconvenience you. The link has been corrected. You may now go check it out and, perhaps, learn something. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ideasmilie.gif

Doppy, I was making a point about ethics, not taxes. The IRS has for a long time ignored the value of FF miles, but technically the value is income when realized.

I don't think your analogy to having paid for the ticket in the first place is the best one. For example, you can buy a stock or a CD with after-tax dollars but the dividends are subject to a whole new income tax.

Conceptually, you realize income that is required to be taxed under Sectino 61. For political and logistical reasons, the IRS ignores this.

Not sure if that's directed at me, since I haven't made any comments about the income tax thing.

I'm certainly not a tax expert, but I would expect that you'd only have to claim FF benefits as income if you earned them for tickets you didn't pay for (i.e. your company bought the tickets and let you keep the miles, which would make the miles part of your compensation package).

If I pay for a ticket for personal travel, the miles I get are part of the purchase price. It's similar to using a coupon at the grocery store; the discount you receive from the coupon doesn't count as income per the IRS, as far as I know. Anyway, I understand your point, and it isn't about taxes.

d

Once again ... huh?

What does ethics have to do with you accidently inputing the link twice, forcing everyone to have to arrow over to completely read the posts?

Anyway, I accept your apology.

Thanks for fixing your error.

Yes, that was exactly the question that I had when you posted the following:

See post by Russ21Atl in this thread: IRS won't tax frequent flier miles earned while making business trips.

A moral dilema for comment:

I used this example on another thread. There is a stop sign by my house, a residential area. Late at night many cars blow right through the intersection without stopping. A car was traveling on the cross street at 11 PM without lights on. A car that normally barrels through the intersection ran right into the car without lights.

The stop sign runner felt it wasn't his fault, if the other car had lights on, of course he would've stopped at the stop sign. The driver without lights said the accident was the other guy's fault - laws are not written for when we want to obey them.

I know how the trial ended, but who was at fault?

Were the other driver's lights intentionally off, or accidentally?

If it wasn't intentional, I'd say the driver who went through the stop light is 100% at fault. He broke the law intentionally, causing the accident.

If the other driver had his lights off intentionally, then the blame should be split more like 75% the guy who blew through the stop sign, 25% the guy with his lights off.

d

Eugene, that story is consistent with my post above. The news in that story is that the IRS is formalizing what had been an informal policy of ignoring the income tax liability of frequent flier miles.

I brought up the tax issue becuase it seems to me (someone without elite status) that there are an awful lot of folks on this thread using moral arguments to convince this guy not to do this when what really motivates them is they want to preserve elite benefits for themselves. I doubted their professed morality and inquired whether they were paying income taxes on their FF benefits.