Mr. Sweepy's Forums

Dear ST Family - I think I finally made it here!!!  My head is still spinning as I am writing this!!!  Received an e-mail today stating that I am the GP winner of a trip - Me and 3 guests to a luxury 2-bedroom villa at the Grace Bay Club in Turks and Caicos (4 days, 3 nights) ARV on this is $14,549 (sure is a high ARV)  Also with this trip is a Scandinavian Svan High Chair and Lillebaby carrier and some MAM products and a Connoisseur Membership to Indagare.  Trip must be taken in a year.   My babies are 5 and 3 so I guess I'll try to sell the baby products...maybe make some money for the tax man!!  I hope I can forgo the membership...just trying to get around the high ARV!!!  I am very excited but a little apprehensive due to the taxes....maybe they will work with me!  I feel truly blessed right now - that's all I can say!  Mr. Sweepy, my heartfelt thanks to you and your crew!!  Please let me know if anyone has ideas about the ARV...

Thank you and God Bless!!!!

WTG. Great win.

 congrats! Have fun!

Congratulations on your win - enjoy the trip!

What a fantastic win. I remember that sweep.  Have a great trip. Congratulations!

 WOW - what a great prize!!!  Enjoy your trip.  I am not a tax expert but I think if you can price out a package that includes everything your trip does and you get a cheaper price you can save that information and use that price as the amount for tax purposes.  Congratulations!

Great Win! Congratulations

Hi Ashsky,  Congrats on the big win and making it to the $10K Club. I know the feeling about how special it is to make it into the club.

On the taxes, some if not most sponsors will put in the rules a high ARV on trip prizes.  The reason is they will figure in a high amount because of air travel and the local you are flying from.  Likely it is much lower. You can also do a Fair Market Adjustment (FMA) on your taxes if you can show the prize amount is lower to the IRS.  I would suggest to talk with the sponsor first about how they come up with ARV and see if it high like I think it might.

Congrats again,

Mr. Sweepy

Great win!!!! Big Congrat's to you!!!

Congratulations on your winnings, I'm very excited for you

Have fun take alot of pictures....

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU !!!!!!!     Way to go !!!!  Welcome to the 10k club !!! 

Congrats!!!  What fun.....please take pictures and post one for us when you get back.....are you going soon??

Thanks all for your congratulations...I hope I can get some sleep tonight...I've had Turks and Caicos on my brain for the past two days!!!  Sims-steph - I think we are going to try to go in June.  My son will start his first day of Kindergarden in two weeks (scary) so we'll wait until then.  Can't imagine staying somewhere for $1,200 per night but I guess I'll find out how it feels in June....

Ashesky68

  You must be on cloud 9!

  It's fantastic when wonderful things happen to good people. You deserve it. 

Really happy for your babies.

  A big congratulations on making it into the $10,000 club & Live it up on your Island trip!

Dixiemuse

 You certainly won the dream vacation.  If you aren't going until June that means that you don't have to pay taxes until 2011.  Hope I'm right telling you this.  When I won a trip I checked with travel sites I'd googled and found an exact match so I just attached it to the 2009 and filed for an adjustment.  It wasn't difficult to do.  I would think you would have to do this just before you go.  On the second trip they sent the tickets for the plane etc. so it was right there in front of me what they had paid.

You'll remember this trip for the rest of your life so you could do what I did and put a little something away for it every chance I got and it was well worth the penny pinching.  You have almost a year so you might be able to save what you need.