With this kind of money, you can absolutely get someone to do all the work you need to make your tax mostly disappear. Heck, they probably find your number and call you directly, you would only have to say "Yes, I want to save a couple million dollars".
I'm not saying it's good, but at the moment it's just so easy, risk-free and completely legal.
> With this kind of money, you can absolutely get someone to do all the work you need to make your tax mostly disappear.
Taxes can be deferred or distributed across a number of years with various structures if you’re willing to put that money into a business structure and pay it out to yourself over time (which they absolutely should)
But there is no magic wand someone can wave to get the money into your bank account and make the tax bill disappear without other consequences and/or breaking the law.
Note that in these situations, people absolutely will come out of the woodwork and try to talk you into various schemes to dodge taxes, but that doesn’t mean they’re legal. Plenty of stories about people using dubious structures to avoid taxes and then getting crushed by the IRS when they get around to auditing the situation.
The thing is that this is the first time they got this kind of money. And it was unexpected, since Dwarf Fortress sold their 8 month objective by the second week. So they weren't in a position of knowing who and how to call that someone.
If you add up all of the jurisdictional taxes, 50% is typical for high earners. For instance I pay 38% fed and 10% state here in Oregon.
Sketchy dudes will talk about various schemes to lower taxes but call it what it is: unethical tax avoidance. The real issue we should be talking about in the US is how poorly we use that tax income. Our built environment is absolutely dreadful because of our car dependency and we have little to no social benefits despite having massive tax income because our health care system is parasitic.
Sketchy dudes talk about it but can't actually provide solid examples and numbers that don't involve things like "invest all your profits in a failed startup so that it's all a business expense".
Look at the actual income tax paid by professional athletes; if anyone knew how to do it it would be them.
As an estimate, it will do the job. It’ll be wrong, but not horribly wrong, and if you had a windfall like that then planning based on a conservative estimate is a good idea. If you estimate your taxes high, then you get a pleasant surprise when your accountant actually crunches the numbers.
If they use the money to fund retirement they potentially pay taxes twice: once on company profits, and once for the natural person who gets the money.
