"Now you tell me?" is a gag line, or TV trope, where someone is given a warning, but the warning is too late to be useful. It is not to be confused with a sentence beginning, "Now, you tell me..."
Today, I am not writing about commas, but about tax law as relates to overly-generous authors who go to extraordinary lengths with their marketing, such as by holding sweepstakes, lotteries, contests and the like.
Have you ever awarded a prize worth $600? Have you ever won a prize worth $600 from an author or publisher?
Apparently, if you won such a prize last year (or in a previous year) the organizer of the contest ought to have asked you to fill out a W9 form, and --before January 31st-- they ought to have sent you a Form 1099-MISC so you could declare your $600 winnings and pay taxes. Also, they would file the 1099-MISC covered with a 1096, with the IRS, by the end of February (2026).
Lovely. Who knew? (Now you tell me?)
Well, the law has changed, and for the better. Now, you may give or receive a contest prize worth up to $1,999:00 without having to fill out forms and pay taxes.
For more details on the new prize tax rules, you could see the article written by legal bloggers
Apparently, contest winners have been surprised to learn that they have to provide their social security numbers to the contest organizer.
Therefore --just a thought-- it might be a good idea for any author running a contest to include in the complete published set of Rules that any and all prizes (from the same organizer) with a value of $2,000 in total or in aggregate are contingent on the winner submitting a Form W-9.
Legal bloggers Kristin Lia and Ivana Petani of Sideman & Bancroft have a very good article from 2024 which summarizes Sweepstakes and Contests 101, what contest organizers need to know in order to stay within the law.
All the best,
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