Chewbacca mom has already collected half a million worth gift from her video. Does she have to pay tax?

fIt’s been barely 3 weeks since Candace Payne posted her happy video on Facebook Live and now she’s no longer just Candace Payne, she’s the Chewbacca mom, the mom, the new darling of USA, and she’s basically a celebrity by now! Over the past three weeks, Candace has made a number of appearances on talk shows, met the real Chewbacca; Peter Mayhew, and yes, received tons of love and gifts!

Let’s break down all the gifts Chewbacca mom has received in the past few weeks!

First up the number is Kohl’s! After Payne posted the video wearing the Chewbacca mask from Kohl’s, the store’s Chewbacca mask sales skyrocketed and the store ran out of it. Hence for the free publicity, Kohl’s ought to be thankful to the Chewbacca mom. As a gesture of appreciation, Payne and her family have been gifted with surplus Chewbacca masks, dozens of toys, and $2500 worth gift cards. Candace Payne has supposedly made about $7,500 by traveling around the country and showing up at talk shows.

 

 

The Payne family also received a free vacation to Walt Disney World over Memorial Day weekend which included a visit to Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park, and an up-close meet-and-greet with Chewbacca himself, complete with prerequisite selfies which are expected to sum up to $7500. During one of her usual talk show visits, host James Corden revealed that she would be getting the chance to attend the Fan Expo Dallas with a VIP Treatment and meet the real Chewbacca and so she met Peter Mayhew. Her entire Fan Expo Dallas is estimated to be somewhere around $2000.

 

 

To top it all off, her entire family got the full college scholarships worth of $400,000 from the Southeastern University in central Florida. Now, that’s huge! If we sum it all up, her gifts’ value round up to half a million! But the real question here is will the Chewbacca mom be taxed for all the material love she’s being provided with? Since corporate handouts are not really counted as a just gift. Why? That’s because the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tends to believe that companies don’t give gifts for the same reasons people do and as a result, it believes that the tax consequences should be a little different.

But if the Payne family did receive all they did as gifts then the one who’s taxable is the donor and not the recipient. Furthermore, any kinds of gifts are not subject to federal income taxes. That’s a relief for Candace! Enjoy your gifts!