Why was Joe Louis treated so poorly by the IRS?

The truth is Uncle Sam should have pardoned Joe Louis. Louis never had any sour grapes about owing his taxes. He said, " If they say I owe it, I owe it "

Louis was a poor money manager.

 

I think he got off lightly he should have gone to prison for tax evasion really.

 

Louis was treated appallingly by the IRS. They were wilfully blind to any sense of justice and utterly heartless.

Anybody in the IRS or the Government with a heart and even a sliver of imagination would have said "Hey, all that money we're hunting down ol' Joe for...can't we write it off against the all money he voluntarily gave us to fight the war and save US lives?

Wasn't Joe a national inspiration and symbol in beating the German symbol Schmelling? Didn't he support the US during the war in every way he could?"

Yeah, Joe was a fool with his money...but his fund raising efforts should have earnt him respect and mercy from the powers that be.

It's like someone in need being helped out by a generous neighbour, but when that good Samaritan needs a helping hand, the recipient saying "not my problem - the idiot should have managed his money better."

 

And furthermore, the hounding of Louis by the IRS doesn't exactly encourage anybody else to be a patriot and give voluntarily to the government, does it?

 

So you're saying the government charged him tax because he was Joe Louis? You don't think any heavyweight champion would've had money sucked out of them by the IRS?

 

This are pretty confusing statements, as I prepare tax returns for a living.

Where to begin. Point one is that the government and a charity are two distinct entities, they aren't one and the same. Secondly, if he kept the money, why wouldn't he have to pay tax on it? It was earned income and therefore it would be taxable. He would be able to deduct fees he paid to him trainers, managers etc, to go from gross income to taxable income.

I'm not sure if charitable donations existed back then, but if they did, he should have gotten credit for this. But it does seem to me he didn't get very good tax advice and they probably could have withheld some of his purse and sent in the taxes on his behalf. It would have been in his best interest to do this.

 

Actually the more I read this thread, the more convinced I am that he simply received bad tax advice, or more likely none at all. Certainly a tax advisor could have said "look Joe, the rules are as follows, if you donate this money to charity you'll have to pay tax on it and you'll be worse off then if you never fought at all. Why don't you put aside 20-25% of it for taxes and donate the difference"

If someone had said that to him, he would have been fine. I'm Canadian so it could work a little differently here, but at least where I live the revenue agency (ie IRS equivalent) can't ignore or change the tax rules, they merely inforce what the laws are. And the law is that you have to pay tax on your taxable income. So the IRS certainly wasn't at fault in this situation. The blame lies squarely on his advisors, who told him (or he may have suggested it himself) to donate this to charity without checking the tax consequences of such an idea. Hard to know what the purpose of advisors would be if they aren't going to do these type of basic things on his behalf. I'm pretty sure he paid them enough for this type of advice.

 

It isnt widely known but in both the fights that Louis donated his purses,[to the Army and Navy releif funds] both his opponents,Abe Simon ,and Buddy Baer ,donated a % of their purses.

 

The IRS is a fascist organization. That's the short answer. As written above, he fought Simon and Buddy Baer for free for the Army and Navy Relief funds (and as the time the Navy was a known racist branch of the military. This is not name calling, it's historical fact.) The kicker is that the IRS nazis didn't come after Louis until AFTER the war, which is when it arbitrairily decided those purse were taxable in part after all. The hounded him so badlyh that every time he fought after the war those purses were of course income. so the more he earned the more he owed.

When they had bled him dry they still tried to couge him, until his wife, who was a lawyer simply told him to quit earning a dime, and his friends, mostly Frank Sinatra just saw to it that he could fly anywhere, stay anywhere and not have to pick up a tab.

Finally the IRS just gave up.

Yes he was a big spender, yes he handled his money badly (in his case a lot of it was simply generosity,) and yes he got bad advice, but that's no excuse for the blood suckers to have done what they did.

McVey....Louis FILED his tax returns, which is the legal obligation, so he was not guilty of tax evasion.

hey...damned generous of Buddy Baer with that dieduction for less than three minutes work.

 

What I am saying is that it is unusual for sombody to be charged tax on money that they yhave donated to the government. It is in effect charging sombody tax on their taxes.

If Louis had dotted the i's and crossed the t's corectly he would have been OK but they found a loophole and screwed him.

 

I think Buddy Baer donated his entire purse if I am not mistaken. Billy Conn also gave a portion of the purse from his title fight with Louis.

Louis was esentialy a nationalised heavyweight champion for the duration of the war.

 

Dont like to seem racist here,bug im sure a lot white guys no matter how nice louis was and he was that indeed,did not like the fact he was knocking **** out of a lot of white boys.

 

Amen to that, brother.

 

In his biography Joe Louis explains how he gave control of some of his earnings to a finacial manager who, in effect, robbed him. Donations to the war effort were only a small part of the taxes that were not remitted. You also have to remember that the income tax department has usurious interest rates and that is why his tax bill got so high.