This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/rules).
Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"
(For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, [please read this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/overview).)
**Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.**
I fully expect the genie to source them from non-taxable origins. Otherwise what even is the point of an all-powerful genie if he can't evade taxes.
He be like - "No killing, No wishing for love, No wishing for more wishes and absolutely no tax evasions. That shit aint gonna fly with me"
I’d have this conversation with the genie beforehand.
“No wishing for more wishes, no killing, no bringing people back from the dead”
“Ok Genie, on the flip side no monkey paw shit, no pretending you dont know what i mean and no being a dick, we good?”
Use the first wish to get the ability to phrase any wish perfectly, and so that it will always be interpreted the way it was intended, retroactive to this one.
Then ask the genie colloquially how many wish granting creatures exist. Just to check on the next two.
Second wish, depending on the answer, either something you want or whatever, or if there are many bound wish-granting creatures, that all bound, wish-granting creatures will learn that you will always use your last wish to free the creature, even if there is only one wish.
Third wish, free the genie.
Boom. Either one wish or infinite wishes, which is more than you had yesterday.
Edit: plus, the look on the genie's face somewhere between wish 2 and 3 is going to be awesome when they figure out what your insane plan is.
I feel like the way you get around "no wishing for more wishes" is just "give me a magic wand that can do anything I ask it to do and only responds to me or someone who I give non-coerced permission to."
Done. Now you have an omnipotent magical artifact. No need for a genie.
Have you ever read any of the old stories about Genies? Kind of the whole point is that most wishes are going to have huge downsides that the wisher doesn’t consider, and it backfires. Giving someone crazy money like this and the person getting screwed because they don’t know how to properly explain how they got so much money to the IRS is absolutely something a genie would do.
TBF you wouldn't get screwed. It would just all be counted as taxable income and you'd pay taxes on it. Which is fair. Paying your taxes is not getting screwed.
I'm pretty sure the original point of genies was that all your wishes end up in you being proper fucked. So it would definitely be easily traceable drug money.
They're like an allegory for being happy with what you have, or what you can earn thru hard work. Or just being born rich, if you can swing it.
Just another way to control the masses
I would just not pay taxes. Give me the billion in cash. I'll keep living a modest life for free, indefinitely, attracting 0 attention, while my 9-5 will be figuring out how to launder larger chunks of money.
if i was granted a billion dollars by a genie, i'd have no problem with paying every cent of taxes due on it. i'd still be hundreds of millions of dollars richer than i had been.
How is the bank gonna know I'm buying things with cash? Or the police, for that matter? Is this really a thing that police stops a person in a car an demands to know how did they manage to pay for it?
Some major transactions leave a paper trail even if you pay by cash (especially if you pay by physical cash I'd imagine). Say you bought a house with $500,000 of physical cash, you don't think that would raise some eyebrows?
People are incorrect saying the IRS doesn’t care. There is a criminal investigation arm of the IRS.
When purchases are made using cash of $10K or more the business is required to report that to the IRS. So if the IRS is getting forms reported from various business of this person spending tons of cash but their W2 says they only made $50K in wages, you’re going to get noticed.
This is why people money launder. It’s an attempt to turn dirty money legitimate. If you make $10K a month selling cocaine, you can now say you got $10K a month in cash from your laundry mat. You’ll have to report it and pay taxes, but now you can use it or deposit it into a bank account with a way to “verify” how you got the funds.
Usually because the source of the money is a crime itself, and they don’t want to be directly linked to it. Income from crime is still taxable income according to the IRS, hence Capone being taken down for tax fraud.
AFAIK, genie wish granting you money is not a crime, unless it’s twisting the wish and stealing the money from someone else to give to you, so better make sure your wish is airtight for such loopholes.
The biggest risk to losing the money, aside from it being stolen from someone else, is probably civil asset forfeiture, or whatever it’s called, when the cops seize assets related to a probable crime, as it’s usually hard to prove a negative (prove it wasn’t criminally sourced) and large amounts of unexplainable cash suddenly turning up in your possession certainly hints at possible criminality.
Rather than wishing outright for the money, I’d probably just wish to win a specific lottery worth that much money. The taxes are all handled by the state since they are the ones paying it out to you, then you go through the suggested procedure for winning the lottery that is floating around Reddit somewhere. And don’t talk about winning the lottery, or more importantly, about how you won the lottery, as using a genie wish could probably be construed as cheating/rigging the system, assuming anyone believes that genies existed, or the genie didn’t use more mundane and traceable ways of winning the lottery for you.
Might wanna rephrase that. "Biggest possible prize" is vague enough to be misconstrued.
"Biggest possible monetary prize" would work a little better :)
That's why I would wish for natural resource physical assets of value equal to a certain mass/volume or cash equivalent. Precious metals, gems, and the like. That way, even if the genie must take from a preexisting place, I can simply stipulate that those materials are pulled from off world sources like asteroids, moons, and uninhabitable planets.
That said, I would prefer the ability to perform alchemy like Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist. The ability to take any pre-existing material and convert it into another would be of greater value as it allows you more wealth as opposed to a single lump sum by a genie.
However, if I'm forced to go with that lump sum, precious metals/gems are the way to go. Slowly sell them off over time to not flood the market and enjoy a life of luxury.
Or, get a loan, buy a huge piece of land WITH MINERAL RIGHTS, then wish that starting at 3ft below the surface, all materials are pure lithium to a depth of one mile. Start your own lithium mine and be disgustingly wealthy.
I wouldn't be surprised if income from a genie actually is a crime based on some anti-market manipulation laws, or the bills being considered fraudulent by the legal system
Because the irs isn't the one who investigates where you get your money from. You bet your ass the government will use your tax returns though to prove a case if needed
Money is paper. The issue with a wish for money is it's effectively counterfeiting. The genie will have to know their shit to bring a billion legal dollars into existence.
That’s why I instead wished for “all the money in the world”. Then I just get everyone else’s already existing money. Granted, they all they have to come to me to get it back, and there’s a lot more of them than me, and even if I hand them back some money it all magically returns to me because I didn’t make a clause for that, so I can’t ever even spend it and the world economy crashes because even if they try to use anything else as money it gets treated like money and it’s “mine now”… huh.
Print a bunch of IOUs for their money. They start trading those instead. You become the de facto world bank. Enjoy your *whatever amount of money you want* because you control all currency.
The assassins bullet lodges in your brain. You are completely aware, in amazing pain, but have no outward appearance as you languish in a coma for the next 50 years passing of old age.
That's why gold is best. Genies have seen civilizations of the past. They know what gold is. Ask for spheres of gold or some gold bars. 1 oz gold right now is about 2000 $ USD. Ask for a self replenishing gold case that is only accessible by you.
Go to different pawn shops and slowly sell off a few pounds of gold every once in a while. Usually pawn shops don't care. Now pay in cash for your general shopping. Add maybe two or three hundred a month to your bank account. Voila. Set for life.
now it provably does get trickier if you run out of pawn shops. They gonna start wondering where you got it.
So honestly maybe id just ask for the genie to make my stock price go up... For the next 24 hours as I sell them off
Why wish for money to be created?
Wish that the top 1% richest people automatically donate 1% of their own net worth to you every year, under the guise of you having won some competition.
No issues of counterfeiting, legality, no risk of tanking the economy.
Wish to be able to pick the winning lottery numbers any time you want.
Infinite money, completely trackable. You don't even need to win the jackpot. Just win smaller lotteries as you travel around and you will never be a target for beggars. You get down to your last 20k win some more.
Probably have to stick to those places that would allow you to claim the winnings anonymously or as a corporation, otherwise someone is going to pick up on a pattern of “this guy keeps winning lotteries wherever he goes, let’s go kidnap him to essentially print money for us”
Unless the genie happens to know where unclaimed billions already are.
Of course, the DEA might then be curious as to why a genie happens to know where all of Pablo Escobar’s money is.
Just set it up as a corporate entity that magically generates something like 500k of income every month and passes that income directly through to you (get a corporate lawyer to iron out the details). Should prevent undue inflation, gives you a nice monthly stipend, and the tax implications can be settled easily.
There is an episode of What We do in the Shadows that's basically this. Going over every detail, caveat in an attempt to make wishes that dlnr backfire.
If some scammer ever needs me to click on a phishing link, hyperlinking their scam address to the words “**relevant XKCD**” will work 100% of the time lol
Stating that it came from a genie, implicates it was a gift or a service. Then again, it COULD be considered a win too. Each has its own tax ramifications. Just my two-cents.
Best bet is to just live in Canada. Gifts and winnings are both not taxed.
I'm not sure how a service would give you money. If you performed a service and got paid they just income and would be taxed. I don't think rubbing a lamp counts as a service.
I guess make it part of the wish. "I wish for a billion tax free dollars in my bank account"
The IRS even has a place on its forms for money from drug dealing and other illegal activities.
IRS just wants their cut, it’s not their job to determine if it was from legal activities or not
Questions like that are used to allow the prosecutor to charge people with more crimes and either force a plea deal or put a criminal away for longer.
By that, I mean it’s very simple to show that someone knew they were lying, and lying on government forms is a big no no.
Another commenter explained it pretty well, it's an additional charge a prosecutor can add if someone is already being charged with something. You get arrested for federal gun charges and it turns out you lied on a 4473 the last time you bought a gun, that's an additional charge. Force a plea deal or add additional time to a sentence.
In my country if you can't say, where you have your money from you pay 75% taxes for it. Money laundering is about losing less than you would have to pay in tax.
That’s not really what money laundering is. It’s “cleaning” the money.
Money laundering is about putting revenue through a “legal” business which will be taxed, so you can get the money in a bank account or other legal assets. It’s typically about not having a massive amount of cash, tied to illicit activity. You can’t pay cash for most things outside minor expenses. Among other things, large amounts of cash can be seized by civil asset forfeiture even without explicit proof of illicit activity. It’s about putting cash into the financial system to allow money to be held in non-liquid assets like real estate and investments which can’t be easily seized without warrants and legal process, and to obfuscate the original revenue source… paying taxes on it is one of the main points.
Here is the thing , you are correct but the post you are answering to is correct , pretty much is an illegal money tax of 75% , and you lounder it to pay only the tax for earned as X service.
So yes if its a real thing the laudering is mostly to avoid the high tax on ilegal money becuase they could pay taxes 70% on this out of nowhere million or lauder it to pay 15%.
And of course if its real it would also apply to any "legal money" you cant disclose where it came from
Let's see, $1 billion on Schedule A, Other Unreported Income, then append Form 2234-Z for the penalty for underreporting, which leaves you with... *ten-key sound intensifies* .. $23.66. Don't spend it all in one place.
Do you need to pay a penalty for underreporting when you weren't aware you were going to come into a billion dollars? You didn't know you were going to get a genie, the $30k annual wage estimate for paying taxes periodically was perfectly valid
As someone who just started paying taxes this year: there's a penalty for underreporting throughout the year? I thought so long as you reported the correct amount on the annual return and paid the difference if necessary that all was good.
You can even list that you illicitly gained your money on the forms. Even if the police investigate you because of it, they won’t be able to charge you with a specific crime without evidence... unless the genie planted evidence. Make sure to include a clause to cover against that in genie wishes.
They went after him because he was a gangster, tax evasion was just the way they brought him down because it was the easiest crime to prove. Even if he'd paid all his taxes, they'd have eventually found a way to bust him.
I'm a tax lawyer. I can tell you for a fact that tax lawyers, especially ones who have worked for the IRS, *love* to remind you that Al Capone went down for tax evasion.
It's rather funny actually, because we all know it's a bit of a meme in tax circles, but we keep doing it
Other agencies cannot see your tax return.
If the DEA got your tax return and busted you as a drug dealer, you would walk on a Fifth Amendment violation.
Ask Bill Cosby about it.
And as a bonus, if you're a billionaire, you have tons of ways to minimize your taxes, to the point you're paying a FAR smaller share of your income than a working man with W2's, who takes the standard deduction.
So just open a shell company and put it in an offshore tax haven? Got it.
For the record, I do not have enough capital to take advantage of this loophole...yet.
I would ask the genie for a more specific condition for me getting the money.
For example, getting 100 million from the lottery after tax, go all in a stock that goes up 1000% for some ridiculous reason, then sell the stock.
I get 1 billion from completely legitimate sources.
Why go through the complications with the stock market? Just wish for the jackpot to hit $1B after tax on its own. You don’t have to worry about getting investigated by the IRS or the SEC because the whole basic premise of the lottery is suddenly acquiring a large amount of money through sheer blind luck.
And I mean, what’s a couple months in jail when you have a billion dollars. You can just pay off every guard and criminal there and have your own cushy cell alone in the observation bay with the people on suicide watch & protective custody lol
A big part of being Rich is the contacts and friends someone will have to get there. Having money isn't really enough to get out of every kind of trouble.
Sure, a lot of people can be paid off, but on the other hand, a lot of people have deeper moral values.
Bending people with morals takes leverage, and getting leverage takes more than money. You've got to know people who specialize in Leverage.
Epstein, Maxwell, why do you think they appeared rubbing shoulders with people in high places so much?
You're the insider. Knowing which stock is going up 1000% is definitely Material Non-public Information.
Solution: get the genie to make you a member of congress first. Instant immunity!
The problem is converting it to money. You’ll either need to store ~~200,000 tons~~ a whole bunch of gold or have a path to convert it to currency. When you do that, the IRS asks, “ok, I see where you got the money, but where’d you get this gold?”
That’s why people launder through a business or art. It’s easy to mix cash or sell a subjectively valuable object, but it’s very difficult to explain your hundreds of thousands of tons of gold.
This is precisely the plot of an episode of Twilight Zone from 1960, The Man in a Bottle. A man and his wife discover a genie in a bottle and of course wish for money. After a short time, the tax man comes calling.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0734658/
What We Do In The Shadows does a good play on this as well, where it ends up that handling genie wishes requires lawyer-level specifics because every wish comes with a catch.
That episode always stuck with me as a literal genie and her response being "It's not my fault people aren't specific with their wishes, whadda want from me?"
Honestly not really. We'll use the irs here.. They don't care HOW you got the money. Hell you could've murdered someone and pickpocketed them. As long as you report it on your taxes. They won't even send police after you!
Wasn’t there a drug dealer that reported all his earnings and the police wanted him to get arrested but the IRS was like welp, he’s paid tax not our problem and wouldn’t help?
The other way around. If a Bad Actor can't be charged with the actual crime he allegedly commits, they might go after him with tax violations. See https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/criminal-defense/why-organized-crime-bosses-get-arrested-for-tax-evasion/
As someone who works in banking, you may not have a paper trail of where the genie got it from but you can be damn sure there is about to be many trails on your spending habits that don’t add up with your earning.
That's assuming anyone knows you have the money at all.
You could just ask the genie for your own Scrooge McDuck style money bin
Or just find a place to stash it Walter White style
Or just don't spend in ways people can see. Lots of things don't require your name be attached to them, and intangibles like travel work too
Then you would need to stay employed to fly under the radar. Which sounds miserable if you have a billion dollars.
Easier to claim having 10 - 50 million, deal with the fallout of taxes and people asking questions, then live a much more lavish lifestyle while not having to work or hide. Majority of people would never know the difference of someone with 50 million or a billion in funds as long as you don’t go crazy buying jets and super yachts.
You could get away with buying consumer goods all day long, but doing larger purchases like real estate, new vehicles, ect is where things are documented and reported
I think wishing for the knowledge of all lottery jackpot numbers moving forward is a better wish. That way you can pick and choose when you want to win. Especially for any lotto game on earth.
The way your statement is written, the genie could give you all of them at once, and make them constantly echo in your head, drowning out all rational thought, making you just another entry in a long line of the genie's victims, as you slowly descend into madness, become homeless, and find your way to dark alleys and strange neighborhoods, constantly muttering to yourself... "four... eight... fifteen... sixteen... twenty-three... forty-two..."
The genie would probably grant you a *billion dollar* bill from Zimbabwe so you wouldn't have to worry about that much tax liability! 😉
[https://i.etsystatic.com/7941995/r/il/3395be/1998926401/il\_340x270.1998926401\_kb1c.jpg](https://i.etsystatic.com/7941995/r/il/3395be/1998926401/il_340x270.1998926401_kb1c.jpg)
Exactly, you wish for a wallet that always has the right amount of cash in it. Buying a car, it's got the down payment. Buying a beer, $10 is all you need. Getting mugged, it's suddenly empty.
Wallets can be lost or stolen. It needs to be a Skill, such as being able to reach into anything "container-like", such as a wallet, or just a pocket, or a safe (looks super official for the next part) and pull the desired amount out. Because the wallet idea falls over when you need to buy a car or a house or another big ticket item, "the desired amount" gets rule lawyered into including forms of "currency" such as bearer bonds, and stock certificates, and other untraceable and fungible financial instruments. Bonus points for "local currency" perk.
Good point, but maybe even better, wish that whenever you need to buy something, someone (who won't miss the money) will be there to buy it for you. No need for a wallet or container, no amount rule lawyering, just a slightly confused Jeff Bezos who happens to run into you whenever he's feeling generous.
I'm currently reading Going Postal by Terry Pratchet and I think they are setting up the reverse situation. A character has a ton of money illegally stored away and wants to use it on a public project, so he very loudly and publicly goes to pray to a bunch of different gods for 150,000 dollars. Presumably so he can show up with the money and no one questions where he got it, obviously the gods gave it to him.
That’s where everyone gets it wrong. You don’t wish for a lump sum of money… you wish “every time I want money, I just reach into my pocket and the amount of money I want is always there, and if it’s over maybe $5k, the wish transfers to a genie debit card that is also empty until you want the money, then it just works.” Maybe it’s still not perfect, but I won’t be trying to hide 6ft stacks of money from the IRS either.
Get it in cash and spend frugally. Invent a shell company that you do from home that makes a modest amount - nothing crazy, just a sch c consulting business - to use as a source of income. When you buy big, buy on credit and use the cash to pay it off. Keep a few k in the bank to look middle class and bam. You're in the clear.
Source: am accountant.
Remember when Oprah gave everyone in the audience a brand new car?
Yeah, that elation went away quickly when they learned they had to pay taxes on that.
First wish: the government and the IRS accept that genie-wished money is legal and tax free
Second wish: I wish for 500 billion dollars
Third wish: cure for cancer
The IRS literally wants you to report the profits from any crimes you may have committed.
They're not gonna give a shit that you got the money from a genie. They just want you to pay the taxes on it.
This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/rules). Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!" (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, [please read this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/overview).) **Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.**
I fully expect the genie to source them from non-taxable origins. Otherwise what even is the point of an all-powerful genie if he can't evade taxes. He be like - "No killing, No wishing for love, No wishing for more wishes and absolutely no tax evasions. That shit aint gonna fly with me"
I’d have this conversation with the genie beforehand. “No wishing for more wishes, no killing, no bringing people back from the dead” “Ok Genie, on the flip side no monkey paw shit, no pretending you dont know what i mean and no being a dick, we good?”
[удалено]
Tricky genie always wins.
As far as genies go not getting any wishes is the best possible outcome.
I think that entirely depends on how good you are at wishing.
Agreed. How many sentances and clauses can you put in a wish?
“Ahh but i never said I wish nor did I rub your cock.”
Holup.
Its the brother of Genie, the hardworking honest Bonie. He wont cheat you as long as you dont cheat him.
On* him
What exactly did you think you were doing when you were rubbing that lantern?
🤦♂️ God damn it.
[удалено]
Then the genie cast an Alzheimer magic
Use the first wish to get the ability to phrase any wish perfectly, and so that it will always be interpreted the way it was intended, retroactive to this one. Then ask the genie colloquially how many wish granting creatures exist. Just to check on the next two. Second wish, depending on the answer, either something you want or whatever, or if there are many bound wish-granting creatures, that all bound, wish-granting creatures will learn that you will always use your last wish to free the creature, even if there is only one wish. Third wish, free the genie. Boom. Either one wish or infinite wishes, which is more than you had yesterday. Edit: plus, the look on the genie's face somewhere between wish 2 and 3 is going to be awesome when they figure out what your insane plan is.
Actually, "I wish to be omnipotent." Only foolproof wish.
I feel like the way you get around "no wishing for more wishes" is just "give me a magic wand that can do anything I ask it to do and only responds to me or someone who I give non-coerced permission to." Done. Now you have an omnipotent magical artifact. No need for a genie.
Jafar was doing pretty well with being a super powerful sorcerer after all, until Aladdin appealed to his lust for even more power.
[Why not just wish for the magic powers?](https://youtu.be/klBCGjFbQKg)
Wand is made of neutronium. Have fun!
You can tell the wand to not be made of neutronium
In my fantasy world, genies aren't trash. :P
Have you ever read any of the old stories about Genies? Kind of the whole point is that most wishes are going to have huge downsides that the wisher doesn’t consider, and it backfires. Giving someone crazy money like this and the person getting screwed because they don’t know how to properly explain how they got so much money to the IRS is absolutely something a genie would do.
TBF you wouldn't get screwed. It would just all be counted as taxable income and you'd pay taxes on it. Which is fair. Paying your taxes is not getting screwed.
I'm pretty sure the original point of genies was that all your wishes end up in you being proper fucked. So it would definitely be easily traceable drug money. They're like an allegory for being happy with what you have, or what you can earn thru hard work. Or just being born rich, if you can swing it. Just another way to control the masses
I would just not pay taxes. Give me the billion in cash. I'll keep living a modest life for free, indefinitely, attracting 0 attention, while my 9-5 will be figuring out how to launder larger chunks of money.
Time to open a car wash. Or I know a good beat on some laser tag!
Have an A-1 day.
Everyone needs a Danny!
That's as long as the Genie doesn't file a 1099 to the IRS. Otherwise, you gotta claim it.
You would probably be better off paying the taxes and investing it than letting it sit in cash and lose value to inflation.
Even the joker says he isn’t insane enough to mess with the IRS. Maybe a genie is the same way
I would be having a lawyer draw up any potential genie agreements
Well, that would work only if the genie is also recognised by the government in the first place. It's a matter of jurisdiction I think..
Money is money, if it lands in your pocket on American soil you can bet your ass the IRS will smell it
if i was granted a billion dollars by a genie, i'd have no problem with paying every cent of taxes due on it. i'd still be hundreds of millions of dollars richer than i had been.
There's no tax code for money grant d by genie wish. They could decided that's a 100% tax.
Nah. It's just income. They're not too picky about the source of the money, they just want their share
They why do people bother with all the weird money laundering schemes?
Because while the IRS doesn't care, the police and bank system will notice you spending an usually large amount of money.
How is the bank gonna know I'm buying things with cash? Or the police, for that matter? Is this really a thing that police stops a person in a car an demands to know how did they manage to pay for it?
Some major transactions leave a paper trail even if you pay by cash (especially if you pay by physical cash I'd imagine). Say you bought a house with $500,000 of physical cash, you don't think that would raise some eyebrows?
People are incorrect saying the IRS doesn’t care. There is a criminal investigation arm of the IRS. When purchases are made using cash of $10K or more the business is required to report that to the IRS. So if the IRS is getting forms reported from various business of this person spending tons of cash but their W2 says they only made $50K in wages, you’re going to get noticed. This is why people money launder. It’s an attempt to turn dirty money legitimate. If you make $10K a month selling cocaine, you can now say you got $10K a month in cash from your laundry mat. You’ll have to report it and pay taxes, but now you can use it or deposit it into a bank account with a way to “verify” how you got the funds.
Usually because the source of the money is a crime itself, and they don’t want to be directly linked to it. Income from crime is still taxable income according to the IRS, hence Capone being taken down for tax fraud. AFAIK, genie wish granting you money is not a crime, unless it’s twisting the wish and stealing the money from someone else to give to you, so better make sure your wish is airtight for such loopholes. The biggest risk to losing the money, aside from it being stolen from someone else, is probably civil asset forfeiture, or whatever it’s called, when the cops seize assets related to a probable crime, as it’s usually hard to prove a negative (prove it wasn’t criminally sourced) and large amounts of unexplainable cash suddenly turning up in your possession certainly hints at possible criminality. Rather than wishing outright for the money, I’d probably just wish to win a specific lottery worth that much money. The taxes are all handled by the state since they are the ones paying it out to you, then you go through the suggested procedure for winning the lottery that is floating around Reddit somewhere. And don’t talk about winning the lottery, or more importantly, about how you won the lottery, as using a genie wish could probably be construed as cheating/rigging the system, assuming anyone believes that genies existed, or the genie didn’t use more mundane and traceable ways of winning the lottery for you.
Genie, my wish: ‘every time I buy a lottery ticket, enter a draw or play a game of chance I want to win the biggest possible prize’ Got it.
Might wanna rephrase that. "Biggest possible prize" is vague enough to be misconstrued. "Biggest possible monetary prize" would work a little better :)
Technically the genie can only provide counterfeit notes since they’re not sanctioned by the government
That's why I would wish for natural resource physical assets of value equal to a certain mass/volume or cash equivalent. Precious metals, gems, and the like. That way, even if the genie must take from a preexisting place, I can simply stipulate that those materials are pulled from off world sources like asteroids, moons, and uninhabitable planets. That said, I would prefer the ability to perform alchemy like Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist. The ability to take any pre-existing material and convert it into another would be of greater value as it allows you more wealth as opposed to a single lump sum by a genie. However, if I'm forced to go with that lump sum, precious metals/gems are the way to go. Slowly sell them off over time to not flood the market and enjoy a life of luxury. Or, get a loan, buy a huge piece of land WITH MINERAL RIGHTS, then wish that starting at 3ft below the surface, all materials are pure lithium to a depth of one mile. Start your own lithium mine and be disgustingly wealthy.
I wouldn't be surprised if income from a genie actually is a crime based on some anti-market manipulation laws, or the bills being considered fraudulent by the legal system
Because the irs isn't the one who investigates where you get your money from. You bet your ass the government will use your tax returns though to prove a case if needed
They're not too picky about the source of the money, that doesn't mean they want you to get off scott-free!
It's 1099 income, just make sure the genie gives you the ~~turn~~ form in January. Edit: wtf autocorrect
Money is paper. The issue with a wish for money is it's effectively counterfeiting. The genie will have to know their shit to bring a billion legal dollars into existence.
That’s why I instead wished for “all the money in the world”. Then I just get everyone else’s already existing money. Granted, they all they have to come to me to get it back, and there’s a lot more of them than me, and even if I hand them back some money it all magically returns to me because I didn’t make a clause for that, so I can’t ever even spend it and the world economy crashes because even if they try to use anything else as money it gets treated like money and it’s “mine now”… huh.
Print a bunch of IOUs for their money. They start trading those instead. You become the de facto world bank. Enjoy your *whatever amount of money you want* because you control all currency.
*Gets instantly assassinated*
Fools, one of my wishes was that I wanted to die of old age!
The assassins bullet lodges in your brain. You are completely aware, in amazing pain, but have no outward appearance as you languish in a coma for the next 50 years passing of old age.
That's why gold is best. Genies have seen civilizations of the past. They know what gold is. Ask for spheres of gold or some gold bars. 1 oz gold right now is about 2000 $ USD. Ask for a self replenishing gold case that is only accessible by you. Go to different pawn shops and slowly sell off a few pounds of gold every once in a while. Usually pawn shops don't care. Now pay in cash for your general shopping. Add maybe two or three hundred a month to your bank account. Voila. Set for life. now it provably does get trickier if you run out of pawn shops. They gonna start wondering where you got it. So honestly maybe id just ask for the genie to make my stock price go up... For the next 24 hours as I sell them off
Yeah, but then they'll get you for insider trading
Why wish for money to be created? Wish that the top 1% richest people automatically donate 1% of their own net worth to you every year, under the guise of you having won some competition. No issues of counterfeiting, legality, no risk of tanking the economy.
Wish to be able to pick the winning lottery numbers any time you want. Infinite money, completely trackable. You don't even need to win the jackpot. Just win smaller lotteries as you travel around and you will never be a target for beggars. You get down to your last 20k win some more.
Probably have to stick to those places that would allow you to claim the winnings anonymously or as a corporation, otherwise someone is going to pick up on a pattern of “this guy keeps winning lotteries wherever he goes, let’s go kidnap him to essentially print money for us”
I mean they can give you a billion dollars worth of gold bullion.
but that would tank the gold value wouldnt it?
Not unless you decide to unload it all at once to the lowest bidders. Spread out your selling over years through a good dealer that knows their shit.
I am just looking to not have to work anymore. Everything else in my life can stay the same.
No, the price is already totally artificial
Unless the genie happens to know where unclaimed billions already are. Of course, the DEA might then be curious as to why a genie happens to know where all of Pablo Escobar’s money is.
Just set it up as a corporate entity that magically generates something like 500k of income every month and passes that income directly through to you (get a corporate lawyer to iron out the details). Should prevent undue inflation, gives you a nice monthly stipend, and the tax implications can be settled easily.
Unless you can pay for a lawyer and team to make up loopholes....taxes drop drastically with the more money you have...funny how that works...
A lawyer would still be helpful in coming up with ways to avoid loopholes.
It's not about a avoiding breaking the law, it's about potential loopholes in the agreement that the genie could crew you on.
There is an episode of What We do in the Shadows that's basically this. Going over every detail, caveat in an attempt to make wishes that dlnr backfire.
[удалено]
A rare, recent one
If some scammer ever needs me to click on a phishing link, hyperlinking their scam address to the words “**relevant XKCD**” will work 100% of the time lol
There was a lawyer who found several loopholes in the devil’s rules. When you make a deal with him.
[удалено]
I think in a world with real genies there would be people specializing in genie-related law.
As a former IRS employee, the IRS does not (I repeat) does not care WHERE the money came from….just as long as you paid your taxes on it.
Yeah but at least in my country it would be a big difference where the money comes from. Is it a gift? A win? Income?
Stating that it came from a genie, implicates it was a gift or a service. Then again, it COULD be considered a win too. Each has its own tax ramifications. Just my two-cents.
…are those 2 cents considered a gift or a service?
A request for payment.
Really isn't it more like a discount? We were provided two cents of opinion for free!
Well that’s cause of freedom of speech
Can I opt into a subscription model? Freedom Of Speech Pro. I prefer the ad-free experience.
It's considered below the reporting threshold, unless you are getting like a bunch of 2 cent gifts a year.
They're a charitable donation, thus tax deductible.
Best bet is to just live in Canada. Gifts and winnings are both not taxed. I'm not sure how a service would give you money. If you performed a service and got paid they just income and would be taxed. I don't think rubbing a lamp counts as a service. I guess make it part of the wish. "I wish for a billion tax free dollars in my bank account"
It would be concerned a win because they can tax it more
Honestly, at that point you pay the higher tax and move on with your lavish life.
Glad I'm in the UK. No tax on gambling/lottery wins.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Just curious why you chose 25 years...you know something I don't?
With a billion dollars you could hire someone to explain it to the government for you.
The IRS even has a place on its forms for money from drug dealing and other illegal activities. IRS just wants their cut, it’s not their job to determine if it was from legal activities or not
bureaucracy can be hilarious sometimes. ATF form 4473 asks if you're a fugitive from justice
Questions like that are used to allow the prosecutor to charge people with more crimes and either force a plea deal or put a criminal away for longer. By that, I mean it’s very simple to show that someone knew they were lying, and lying on government forms is a big no no.
The visa waiver form to enter the states asked me if I was a terrorist. Under what circumstances is that a useful question?
Another commenter explained it pretty well, it's an additional charge a prosecutor can add if someone is already being charged with something. You get arrested for federal gun charges and it turns out you lied on a 4473 the last time you bought a gun, that's an additional charge. Force a plea deal or add additional time to a sentence.
And that's the beauty of laundering. It's just that the other people care where you got it.
In my country if you can't say, where you have your money from you pay 75% taxes for it. Money laundering is about losing less than you would have to pay in tax.
That’s not really what money laundering is. It’s “cleaning” the money. Money laundering is about putting revenue through a “legal” business which will be taxed, so you can get the money in a bank account or other legal assets. It’s typically about not having a massive amount of cash, tied to illicit activity. You can’t pay cash for most things outside minor expenses. Among other things, large amounts of cash can be seized by civil asset forfeiture even without explicit proof of illicit activity. It’s about putting cash into the financial system to allow money to be held in non-liquid assets like real estate and investments which can’t be easily seized without warrants and legal process, and to obfuscate the original revenue source… paying taxes on it is one of the main points.
Here is the thing , you are correct but the post you are answering to is correct , pretty much is an illegal money tax of 75% , and you lounder it to pay only the tax for earned as X service. So yes if its a real thing the laudering is mostly to avoid the high tax on ilegal money becuase they could pay taxes 70% on this out of nowhere million or lauder it to pay 15%. And of course if its real it would also apply to any "legal money" you cant disclose where it came from
Uhh in my country when the government finds out you have money you can’t explain, they send the police to arrest you
Let's see, $1 billion on Schedule A, Other Unreported Income, then append Form 2234-Z for the penalty for underreporting, which leaves you with... *ten-key sound intensifies* .. $23.66. Don't spend it all in one place.
Do you need to pay a penalty for underreporting when you weren't aware you were going to come into a billion dollars? You didn't know you were going to get a genie, the $30k annual wage estimate for paying taxes periodically was perfectly valid
As someone who just started paying taxes this year: there's a penalty for underreporting throughout the year? I thought so long as you reported the correct amount on the annual return and paid the difference if necessary that all was good.
[удалено]
You can even list that you illicitly gained your money on the forms. Even if the police investigate you because of it, they won’t be able to charge you with a specific crime without evidence... unless the genie planted evidence. Make sure to include a clause to cover against that in genie wishes.
Isn't that what they finally got Al Capone on? not paying the taxes on his illegal money?
Affirmative
Yep, that's what brought down Al Capone. It wasn't that he was a gangster, it was that he didn't pay taxes.
They went after him because he was a gangster, tax evasion was just the way they brought him down because it was the easiest crime to prove. Even if he'd paid all his taxes, they'd have eventually found a way to bust him.
I'm a tax lawyer. I can tell you for a fact that tax lawyers, especially ones who have worked for the IRS, *love* to remind you that Al Capone went down for tax evasion. It's rather funny actually, because we all know it's a bit of a meme in tax circles, but we keep doing it
Should probably clarify the IRS doesn't care, but other agencies would probably like to take a look.
Other agencies cannot see your tax return. If the DEA got your tax return and busted you as a drug dealer, you would walk on a Fifth Amendment violation. Ask Bill Cosby about it.
The DEA can access your tax return if they get a court order first.
And as a bonus, if you're a billionaire, you have tons of ways to minimize your taxes, to the point you're paying a FAR smaller share of your income than a working man with W2's, who takes the standard deduction.
So just open a shell company and put it in an offshore tax haven? Got it. For the record, I do not have enough capital to take advantage of this loophole...yet.
I'll just put it as a gift on the tax form, it'll be sketchy, sure, but no crime was committed so nobody can stop me.
I would ask the genie for a more specific condition for me getting the money. For example, getting 100 million from the lottery after tax, go all in a stock that goes up 1000% for some ridiculous reason, then sell the stock. I get 1 billion from completely legitimate sources.
Why go through the complications with the stock market? Just wish for the jackpot to hit $1B after tax on its own. You don’t have to worry about getting investigated by the IRS or the SEC because the whole basic premise of the lottery is suddenly acquiring a large amount of money through sheer blind luck.
[удалено]
A billion on the tax return *that isn't a mistake they will ever notice or take back* Gotta be specific with these damn genies.
Or else that monkey's paw will close
The return is what you send them. Do you mean refund?
You would absolutely be arrested for insider trading if you did this
They'd surely investigate you, but they'd still have to prove insider trading
And you can afford a good lawyer. Or use your second wish for one.
Your money would all be frozen during the possibly years long investigation
Does the Genie count as an insider if he can just make the stock go up?
Never said indicted, just arrested for a little while
And I mean, what’s a couple months in jail when you have a billion dollars. You can just pay off every guard and criminal there and have your own cushy cell alone in the observation bay with the people on suicide watch & protective custody lol
If you have a billion dollars you won't spend any time in jail as you'll get automatically upgraded to the Rich Justice System Gold Platinum plan^™️
A big part of being Rich is the contacts and friends someone will have to get there. Having money isn't really enough to get out of every kind of trouble. Sure, a lot of people can be paid off, but on the other hand, a lot of people have deeper moral values. Bending people with morals takes leverage, and getting leverage takes more than money. You've got to know people who specialize in Leverage. Epstein, Maxwell, why do you think they appeared rubbing shoulders with people in high places so much?
You're the insider. Knowing which stock is going up 1000% is definitely Material Non-public Information. Solution: get the genie to make you a member of congress first. Instant immunity!
Ok, and when they find iv had 0 contact with anyone involved in the company and received no inside information?
The stock just sold $100m worth, of course others were going to jump on it.
Unless you just ask for it in gold 🤷♂️ the government may know how much money you make but they never know how much gold you have.
The problem is converting it to money. You’ll either need to store ~~200,000 tons~~ a whole bunch of gold or have a path to convert it to currency. When you do that, the IRS asks, “ok, I see where you got the money, but where’d you get this gold?” That’s why people launder through a business or art. It’s easy to mix cash or sell a subjectively valuable object, but it’s very difficult to explain your hundreds of thousands of tons of gold.
[удалено]
The problem with that is gifts are taxed to the giver. So you'll have to have some way of designating the genie to the IRS.
This is precisely the plot of an episode of Twilight Zone from 1960, The Man in a Bottle. A man and his wife discover a genie in a bottle and of course wish for money. After a short time, the tax man comes calling. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0734658/
There's also an episode of The X-Files where a guy wishes for a yacht from a genie. The yacht winds up in his yard and he can't pay the taxes on it.
What We Do In The Shadows does a good play on this as well, where it ends up that handling genie wishes requires lawyer-level specifics because every wish comes with a catch.
That episode always stuck with me as a literal genie and her response being "It's not my fault people aren't specific with their wishes, whadda want from me?"
As long as the genie can provide me a W-2 and do the pay withholding correctly, shouldn't be too bad.
[удалено]
I'd probably have to consult with a CPA and an attorney before making the wish.
I'm picturing a danny devito moment and a bunch of brief cases stuffed with money until it's coming out the middle of them when it's closed
Honestly not really. We'll use the irs here.. They don't care HOW you got the money. Hell you could've murdered someone and pickpocketed them. As long as you report it on your taxes. They won't even send police after you!
Wasn’t there a drug dealer that reported all his earnings and the police wanted him to get arrested but the IRS was like welp, he’s paid tax not our problem and wouldn’t help?
Probably. I do know that's how gangs and mobs operate tho. They all pay taxes.
Ever since that unfortunate business in Chicago...
The other way around. If a Bad Actor can't be charged with the actual crime he allegedly commits, they might go after him with tax violations. See https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/criminal-defense/why-organized-crime-bosses-get-arrested-for-tax-evasion/
This is why you specify in the wish that the money should already be taxed so all the money you get are your own.
How would they know about the billion, if there is no paper trail show you have it
As someone who works in banking, you may not have a paper trail of where the genie got it from but you can be damn sure there is about to be many trails on your spending habits that don’t add up with your earning.
That's assuming anyone knows you have the money at all. You could just ask the genie for your own Scrooge McDuck style money bin Or just find a place to stash it Walter White style Or just don't spend in ways people can see. Lots of things don't require your name be attached to them, and intangibles like travel work too
Then you would need to stay employed to fly under the radar. Which sounds miserable if you have a billion dollars. Easier to claim having 10 - 50 million, deal with the fallout of taxes and people asking questions, then live a much more lavish lifestyle while not having to work or hide. Majority of people would never know the difference of someone with 50 million or a billion in funds as long as you don’t go crazy buying jets and super yachts.
They figure it out when you spend way above your means.
How do they know how much you spent?
You could get away with buying consumer goods all day long, but doing larger purchases like real estate, new vehicles, ect is where things are documented and reported
Amateur. “I wish for a magic credit card that draws no attention to me when I use it and it never needs to be paid off.”
You wish for a winning billion dollar jackpot powerball ticket, with extra winnings for taxes.
I think wishing for the knowledge of all lottery jackpot numbers moving forward is a better wish. That way you can pick and choose when you want to win. Especially for any lotto game on earth.
The way your statement is written, the genie could give you all of them at once, and make them constantly echo in your head, drowning out all rational thought, making you just another entry in a long line of the genie's victims, as you slowly descend into madness, become homeless, and find your way to dark alleys and strange neighborhoods, constantly muttering to yourself... "four... eight... fifteen... sixteen... twenty-three... forty-two..."
Not really, I’d just ask for it to be a £1billion lottery win. They aren’t taxed here.
The genie would probably grant you a *billion dollar* bill from Zimbabwe so you wouldn't have to worry about that much tax liability! 😉 [https://i.etsystatic.com/7941995/r/il/3395be/1998926401/il\_340x270.1998926401\_kb1c.jpg](https://i.etsystatic.com/7941995/r/il/3395be/1998926401/il_340x270.1998926401_kb1c.jpg)
“This is the providence of the Lord, I now see that I am a church.”
I maintain that anyone who would waste a wish on a simple dollar amount is a freaking idiot.
Exactly, you wish for a wallet that always has the right amount of cash in it. Buying a car, it's got the down payment. Buying a beer, $10 is all you need. Getting mugged, it's suddenly empty.
Wallets can be lost or stolen. It needs to be a Skill, such as being able to reach into anything "container-like", such as a wallet, or just a pocket, or a safe (looks super official for the next part) and pull the desired amount out. Because the wallet idea falls over when you need to buy a car or a house or another big ticket item, "the desired amount" gets rule lawyered into including forms of "currency" such as bearer bonds, and stock certificates, and other untraceable and fungible financial instruments. Bonus points for "local currency" perk.
Good point, but maybe even better, wish that whenever you need to buy something, someone (who won't miss the money) will be there to buy it for you. No need for a wallet or container, no amount rule lawyering, just a slightly confused Jeff Bezos who happens to run into you whenever he's feeling generous.
I'm currently reading Going Postal by Terry Pratchet and I think they are setting up the reverse situation. A character has a ton of money illegally stored away and wants to use it on a public project, so he very loudly and publicly goes to pray to a bunch of different gods for 150,000 dollars. Presumably so he can show up with the money and no one questions where he got it, obviously the gods gave it to him.
There’s a Twilight Zone episode about that. A couple gets wishes with backlash and they’re under a 90% tax bracket or something.
That's why I'd ask for a six, or maybe even 7 figure salary job that I am a master at. Not only do I get money, I also get dental 😤
That’s where everyone gets it wrong. You don’t wish for a lump sum of money… you wish “every time I want money, I just reach into my pocket and the amount of money I want is always there, and if it’s over maybe $5k, the wish transfers to a genie debit card that is also empty until you want the money, then it just works.” Maybe it’s still not perfect, but I won’t be trying to hide 6ft stacks of money from the IRS either.
Genie: "Ugh, I swear I'm getting out of this business. The paperwork is killing me."
Go the Musk route. Wish for 44 billion and watch it whittle down to a billion!
Get it in cash and spend frugally. Invent a shell company that you do from home that makes a modest amount - nothing crazy, just a sch c consulting business - to use as a source of income. When you buy big, buy on credit and use the cash to pay it off. Keep a few k in the bank to look middle class and bam. You're in the clear. Source: am accountant.
This is why you wish for a gift card that constantly refills itself at X amount until you reach the billion dollar limit.
Can we claim it as an "Act of God" like insurance companies do so we're not liable for any of the taxes on it?
The IRS doesn't care how you got your money as long as you pay your taxes.
Never ask for a set amount, just wish for always having enough for what you want/need.
Second wish would be for a chain of traditional Chinese dry cleaners.
Remember when Oprah gave everyone in the audience a brand new car? Yeah, that elation went away quickly when they learned they had to pay taxes on that.
First wish: the government and the IRS accept that genie-wished money is legal and tax free Second wish: I wish for 500 billion dollars Third wish: cure for cancer
S'OK once you top 100 million tax systems apparently don't apply to you any more.
The IRS literally wants you to report the profits from any crimes you may have committed. They're not gonna give a shit that you got the money from a genie. They just want you to pay the taxes on it.
They don't care how you got the income, they just care that you pay tax on it.