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Apple Announces Countdown to 25 Billion App Store Downloads with $10,000 Gift Card Prize

When you get $10,000 as "gift card" it is reportable as income at the full $10K face value. Despite the fact that you might have purchased the same things elsewhere for far less than you'll end up paying with the gift card. Same holds true if you win a big screen TV, car or other big ticket item. This makes you liable for income taxes that total more than you really would have owed. Be sure to report it. Otherwise you get fines, interest, penalties and even jail time. Some free gift, huh!
 
Apple will need to use McDonalds slogan "Billions and Billions Served" on their App site. In honor of this momentous event Apple should name their new Mac Pro line the "Big Mac".
 
this is cool, however on Apples website, you also have the ability to win through a form. If you choose to try and win through submitting a form (which takes the fun out of it if you ask me! :) ) you can submit the form up to twenty five times a day, until the contest is over
 
nwcs said:
Actually, I bet the way it'll work is you get 10,000 credit and you pay taxes out of that credit. So it's like you're actually winning 7500 but they "upped" it to 10000 to account for taxes. So you probably won't have any out of pocket expenses but your buying power will be subsequently reduced. Govt wouldn't care because they'd get their money either way.
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Sometimes companies will do this: Give you a $10,000 gift card, then give you like $3,500 in cash (which immediately goes to pay for the taxes).

I think Oprah did this when she gave all the free cars to the audience.

Of course, it all depends on your tax situation how much tax you would pay on $10,000. If you were married and earned no money in 2012, you would pay $0 taxes. If you earned more than $180,000 and filed as single, you'd pay $4,500 in taxes on this same $10,000 gift card.
 
its a pitty lady luck wont be smiling on any of us. I havent even gotten so much as a glance. Dont get your hopes up guys. the winner will be some kids again. (im willing to bet 14-15 year olds this time, not sure why)

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Edsel said:
Apple will need to use McDonalds slogan "Billions and Billions Served" on their App site. In honor of this momentous event Apple should name their new Mac Pro line the "Big Mac".
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Big Mac, Little Mac and Slim mac actually sound like cute names for the pro, mini and imac
 
KPOM said:
I think the tax bill may be due right away, however. That is, unless the IRS is willing to accept an argument that all Apple is doing is offering a discount on future purchases.
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I see, you live in a country where the state taxes lottery wins. I don't.
 
Getting one of these would be fantastic.

I could buy tons of new albums to build my collection. I have around twenty TV Shows I'd like to download (some of them having quite a few seasons). And how about the Mac App Store? Logic Pro + Final Cut + bunch of other apps comes out to a lot of money. I'd make use of this if I got it, no doubt.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Laco said:
isoMorpheus said:
Just so you know, the countdown is just a programed animation; it does not reflect the actual number downloaded. So, how did you figure it'd take 8 days?
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My guess would be more like about a month.

If it is going to take about 4 years to reach 25 billion then

25 billion divided by 4 years divided by 365 days in a year = 17 123 287 downloads per day.

Since there are about 700 million downloads remaining then 700 divided by 17 million per day is about 45 days. However, since the rate of downloading is probably increasing the number will probably be closer to 30 days.
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I doubt the counter pic is displaying a accurate "snap shot" of the current #. Its just to show its getting close. Could be 22 billion right now...no way to estimate.
 
Four oF NINE said:
Also.. How can anyone possibly spend $10,000.00 USD on apps? Couldn't it be used at an Apple store instead?
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iTunes cards work on more than just Apps.

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Dagless said:
I tried to find a link to the old story with no luck, but I recall (many years ago) a similar prize give away that had some complicated tax problem.
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Taxes are possibly why they are doing an iTunes credit and not a standard gift card, which could be deemed 'cash' and thus taxable.

It could also be why they are doing $10k and not something more which again could be taxable. Same as if I were to give you more than $10k (although I think now it's $12k). You'd have to pay taxes on it even though its a gift
 
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sweetbrat said:
I can't believe how many people are complaining about a company giving something away. Apple doesn't HAVE to give away anything. People are saying that Apple is greedy because they're only giving away a $10,000 gift card. Maybe you're the one that's being greedy, because you're complaining that a $10,000 gift card isn't good enough.
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no joke. Perhaps Apple should just cancel the whole thing since the folks around here say it's not good enough

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nwcs said:
Actually, I bet the way it'll work is you get 10,000 credit and you pay taxes out of that credit. So it's like you're actually winning 7500 but they "upped" it to 10000 to account for taxes.
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If they were going to do that then why not up the prize so that after taxes it's $10k. After all, they can afford it
 
dr-evil.jpg

BILLIONS

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If I won this, I'd just use it to buy movies from the iTunes Store for my Apple TV... you know, the easy, expensive way?
 
nexsta said:
torrents and installous make this gift card useless.
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Please refer to Economics 101: money can be exchanged for goods and services.

Torrents don't allow content creators to get paid. Gift cards do.

If you are proposing a radical new economic system where none of the products are paid for, please detail it in another thread.
 
It'd be more awesome if it was a 10K Apple Store Gift Card....I'd wait for the new Mac Pro and pick up one of those and an iPad.

Also I noticed you can submit a free chance to win entry up to 25 times a day, no purchase needed! So submit a few legally mandated no purchased needed chances!

BTW I believe the "App Store" also sells full programs and games. It's not all 1.99 Apps, for example you can buy Logic Pro on the App Store for 199.99 and Final Cut Pro for 299.99 ....so you could easily blow half of that 10K on high end pro apps right from the App Store.
 
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