Forbes: By Declining $10,000 Bet, Rick Perry Spared Mitt Romney a $4,000 Tax Bill, by Janet Novack:

By now, you’ve probably seen the video of Mitt Romney offering a $10,000 bet to Ricky Perry at Saturday night’s Republican Presidential debate and thought about the political ramifications. But what of the tax implications? …

What if Rick Perry had foolishly taken Mitt Romney up on his $10,000 bet offer?  According to PolitiFact, Romney would have won the bet, since Perry’s claim that the first edition of Romney’s book endorsed a Massachusetts individual health care mandate as a model for the nation is “mostly false.”

And in that case, if Perry had acknowledged the loss and handed over $10,000—ok, maybe that’s a heroic assumption–the cash would have been taxable to Romney as ordinary income at a 35% federal and 5.3% Massachusetts state rate. Hence Perry spared Romney a $4,000 tax bill.