Zeal For Truth

On August 7th, SF Giant’s left-fielder Barry Bonds pounded the final nail into ‘Hammerin’ Hank Aaron’s 30 year home-run record coffin when he knocked #756 into the right-field stands off a lefty pitch by the Washington Nationals. It marked not only a big day in baseball, but it unintentionally changed forever the life of one Met’s fan, Matt Murphy, forever.
From his August 9th interview on NBC’s Today Show:

Part of me wants to keep it. It’s the greatest American sports accomplishment in history. Part of me might want to sell it, but I really am leaning towards keeping it. It’s just too valuable, sentimental.

Well, as it turns out, he doesn’t really get much of a choice.

Applying Murphy’s Law to the matter of Catch 756, it is clear that catching a baseball worth hundreds of thousands of dollars is (assuming you can keep nearby fans from wrestling it away from you) an immediate and valuable ascension to wealth. Granted, the recipient/beneficiary/ball catcher has done nothing whatsoever to “earn” the income, but this does not mean it is not income—it merely means that it is not subject to social security or self-employment taxes on earned income and wages.

To make matters worse, according to John Barrie, a NYC tax attorney, capital gains taxes also could be levied in the future as the ball gains value. Essentially, it becomes subject to property tax and income tax, whichever may come first. Essentially, Mr. Murphy, a college student from Queens, NY, may be forced to sell the ball based on that principle alone.

The IRS’s argument? Since he could sell it, it is considered income and a liquidable asset, so therefore subject to taxation based on approximated value increase. My own personal aversions to taxes aside, according to the law, this makes sense if Barry Bonds is knocking two-story beach homes over the fence, not so much when a $14 baseball suddenly becomes considered valuable due to fluctuations of the emotionally-based memorabilia market. Are we then to be taxed each year based on “determined income” of my computer, my vehicle, my gun collection and my DVDs? All these items could be sold, some for profit, within a few hours. They probably would be if this “rent-to-own” tax mentality was an actual reality, which is the basis of the immoral property tax: continual payment on property already owned based on yearly considerations of worth. Hardly makes “owning” anything worth it from that standpoint.

Then again, that’s the summation of progression of most governments, hence why the right to property is of utmost importance to all people. For with this right we gain the right to control, profit, transfer and sell. In a sense, we become the ruler of that estate, and it is by this right that all other rights come into being. For if our property no longer becomes ours, but instead becomes the government’s, we are then subject to the government. Hence why taxes on owned property is the antithesis of the basis of our rights - it wrestles our right to own freely, as it forces us to pay dues to an unintended body.

As John Locke said in his Second Treatise on Civil Government:

…it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.

In more recent times, Ayn Rand made her case in Atlas Shrugged:

Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.

Mr. Murphy may make his own anti-taxation statement once he gets the bill for the ball that calamitously fell from the sky.