Pop quiz: you're on a top-rated nationally-televised TV show and win $1.1 million dollars, and are further paid $300,000 to co-host a radio program. Do you:
A. bask in the media attention that your winning makes and report the prize money on line 21 of your federal income tax return for that year as "other income."
B. Bask in the media attention and assume that no one at the IRS watches CBS or reads the news since they all live under rocks and can't get over-the-airwaves broadcasts of Survivor.
If you answered A, you agree with the Internal Revenue Service. If you answered B, you would have done what Richard Hatch, the winner of the first Survivor, did. As if it were not frightening enough that you would do something that a man who ate rats on national television did, you would also be facing 10 years in jail and a half million dollars in fines. For those of you keeping score at home, yes, this is how they got Al Capone. The principle is the same: if you can't nail him for sparking this whole Reality TV thing, nail him on tax evasion.
