Wow! @DNAinaGoodWay tipped me off via teslamotorsclub.com (TMC) that the Climate XChange Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle was being discussed here... wow, wow, wow! I am so thrilled to discover this thread!
Hi, folks... @Pollux666 here. @Pollux on TMC, @Pollux on teslamotors.com. I'm the Climate XChange raffle guy. I appreciate you people noticing it!
Hope I'm not stepping on any toes by registering for the forum so that I can offer a few of my own observations.
Re discussion about awarding prizes versus cash raffle -- as I've made clear on the raffle website and in a TMC thread and now here, I've killed off the cash raffle element of the raffle. I have come to thoroughly hate that part of the raffle, which I modeled on several other raffles I examined. Who the hell wants to win a cash raffle, anyway?!?! I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, the Tesla and the 5 other prizes are now the ONLY prizes being awarded, no matter how many tickets we sell or how few. No matter whether the ticket numbers are consecutive, random, started at 500, are counting backward from 2000, or every third person gets the same ticket number (#14, of course).
@Urs - thanks for kicking off this thread!
@LeftieBiker, others -- yeah, that "ticket #14" thing at checkout time is confusing. You can bet that when the web designer and I decided to stick a sample ticket in the checkout process, we were way too busy patting ourselves on the back to stop to think whether anyone might find that ticket number confusing. So, yeah, it's a sample ticket, it has no meaning.
@LeftieBiker - "odds are better than 1 in 400". Yup, 332:1 if all 2000 tickets are sold versus 6 total prizes to award.
@DNAinaGoodWay, other -- CXC pays the fees and taxes on the Grand Prize awarded in the form of a Tesla vehicle. That's the $5K towards state vehicle taxes and $36,730 towards US withholding taxes. @redLeaf goes into a nice analysis of the tax implications, concluding that "people think it's free [winning a big raffle prize], but it's not". So, so, true.
By a quirk of the tax code, if an individual bears the responsibility for the taxes, current tax code requires a 25% withholding payment upfront. If the prize were $100K, that'd be $25K out of the winner's pocket, up front. But if the raffle sponsor picks up the tab, the requirement is a 33.33% withholding payment, which effectively includes paying taxes on the gift of paying the taxes.
CXC does not pay any of the taxes if the Grand Prize Winner chooses to take the cash alternative ($100K), so the winner in that case comes up with $25K to pay the withholding tax OR elects to have CXC deduct that payment from the cash prize, in which case CXC cuts a check to the IRS for $25K and a check to the winner for $75K. I think the winner will still be happy with that.
That said, if it isn't obvious, I'm a Tesla owner (2013 Model S P85+). I really, really want someone to win the goddamned car! And not the base model, either, something that has some options on it. And not a huge tax bill either. So: car @ $103K, doc & delivery fee @ $1200, high power wall charger @ $750, electrician to install HPWC @ $500, money to winner to use towards state vehicle taxes @ $5K, totaling $110,450 value to winner. US withholding calculated against that $110,450 yields a tax payment of $36,730 and a total layout by CXC of $147,180.
I went nuts last year when I entered a raffle and figured out that winning the Grand Prize meant incurring out-of-pocket withholding taxes. It outraged me that an ordinary person winning a raffle might have to pass up the actual prize and take the cash alternative simply to pay off Uncle Sam. I vowed that that would not be the case with this raffle. That said, CXC can't calculate everyone's particular tax situation nor guarantee to pay off any and all taxes out there. That's why everything is carefully defined as above. The goal/hope, though, is that the Winner will either net out positive or worst case small negative. Which brings me to....
@redLeaf, @LeftieBiker, maybe others -- YES, this thing is designed so that the winner is the First Owner of the vehicle. It does NOT pass through Climate XChange's hands first. Therefore, a winner in Central Massachusetts (or anywhere else in the USA) will be eligible for up to $7500 credit on US taxes. In MA and some other states, Winner may also be eligible for a rebate (in MA, that's another $2500) or a tax credit of some kind. In Louisiana, if memory serves, that's $8K! I'm thinking that federal and possible state tax help means that a Winner should ultimately net out positive -- i.e., walk away with the car and all the goodies, PLUS probably net a few extra dollars! -- or at worst just a little bit negative.
@TomT - "if it were a raffle of 1, I'd lose". :-( :-( Just so you know, even if the CXC raffle were to sell ZERO tickets, were I then to purchase one for myself, the Massachusetts AG would show me into the grey bar hotel for a stay of indeterminate duration. :-( :-( :-(
I appreciate that you people are paying attention to all this, and hope you're also noticing the carbon pricing aspect of all this and Climate XChange's focus on getting carbon pricing enacted in MA to show that it can be done and serve as an example.
Thanks,
Alan