Continuing TaxProf Blog’s coverage of the tax consequences to the fan who caught Barry Bonds’ 756th home run:
Matt Murphy called a news conference to say he will sell the ball online, from Aug. 28 to Sept. 15, through an auction house that expects it to fetch at least $500,000. Murphy said his hand had been forced by a dreaded foe: the tax man. He feared he would be taxed on the value of the ball, even if he declined to cash in. "I most likely would have kept it," Murphy said in his thick Queens accent, two days after returning from a beachcombing and female-admiring excursion to Australia’s Gold Coast. "But it would have cost money to keep something I already had. I’m not poor, but I don’t have $100,000 or $200,000 lying around."
To check out the online auction site, see here. Home run ball #755 also will be auctioned off at the same time. (Hat Tip: Darron Hamilton & Robby Packard.)
