The advent of the GOFUNDME drives on the behalf of Field McConnell brings with them a host of questions as well as a host of potential problems for not only those who set up these funding drives but for Field McConnell himself.
The first question to be asked is why does Field McConnell even need a legal defense fund to begin with?
Does anyone remember Eclause or the “Judge” from Minnesota or the retired judge from Alaska?
How about that Postmaster of the world fella?
The core belief of Field McConnell and those who surround them is the theory that the legal system prosecuting him is a fraud and that the legal firm representing Field McConnell is a fraud.
Now, oddly enough, These groups are raising thousands of dollars to pay the very people they claim are frauds and not qualified to practice law to help get Field out of the mess he has gotten himself into.
The next series of questions have to do with how the donors can be assured that the funds will go to Field’s attorney and defense and not into their own pockets.
People need to be reminded that these are the same people who wanted money for such things as Ranches in Texas, ostensibly meant for military veterans and their families.
Remember the Zim bonds or currency that Field bragged having Zillions of dollars of? Remember how he was going to fund his various enterprises with these foreign currencies?
And then there is also the ever famous Children’s Crusade and the infamous Pentagon Pedophile Task Force.
In many, many ways the driving force behind these groups has always been money and ways to extract it from the supporters of Field McConnell and his “Media agent” sidekick from Northwest Minnesota.
Now, as I said in the beginning, this is likely going to be more of a problem for Field than it will be for those who finally got around to this obvious potential way to commit wire fraud.
It is generally true that donations given to the target of the GOFUNDME drives are not taxable and may or may not be tax deductible from their own incomes but this may not be necessarily true true for Field McConnell who is already up to his eyeballs in trouble with the IRS.
The reason for his potential problems with the IRS lies in the fine print many do not read in the GOFUNDME terms of service.
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Donations made to GoFundMe campaigns are usually considered to be personal gifts which, for the most part, aren’t taxed as income.
However, there may be particular case-specific instances where the income is in fact taxable (depending on amounts received, use of the funds, etc.), so we recommend that you maintain adequate records of donations received and consult a tax professional to be sure. GoFundMe will not report your donations as income at the end of the year, or issue any tax documents. Because everyone’s situation is different and tax rules can change from time to time, we’re unable to give any tax advice.
For information about tax deductibility and Gift Aid for donors to certified charity campaigns, please click here. “
There are scores of stories out there about people who got $50,000.00 in donations for Cancer treatment and so forth only to find themselves slapped with a big income tax bill along with thousands in tax penalties.
One of the main reasons is that those who set up these funding accounts do not realize that GOFUNDME, PayPal and other companies that provide these services send a 1099 form to the IRS detailing how much money has been collected and paid out. These companies also deduct a commission for collecting these funds.
Field would also have to fill out a 1099K since the potential funds will exceed $20,000
IF those running the GOFUNDME accounts decide to pocket all of the funds or deduct some of the funds to cover their costs in time spent in raising these funds, Field would be screwed twice. First by only getting a fraction of the money raised but also in the additional tax liability he would be stuck with.
Now if the people of these funding efforts had decided to bypass the funding services and had the funds sent to them directly, they might have found themselves in trouble as well.
This is due to the fact that they have to go through legal hoops to comply IRS and Federal regulations when setting up and operating these funding operations.
The people running these things are themselves tax protesters and thus they may not be meeting the requirements for setting up and operating these funding drives.
The raising of funds for whatever purpose using GOFUNDME or other means creates more problems than it may be worth if the proper steps are not taken by all involved.
Field McConnell and his cult may well find this out the hard way.
Until later
William K Murtaugh
