Prince being sued to $400k?

[chinabob99]

I wouldn't put too much of this blame on Cecil though. It's Prince's income, it needs to be reported as such on Prince's tax return, and Prince should be aware that Prince owes the money. Whether or not Cecil took the money from Prince's signing bonus is really irrelevant to who owes the tax.

 

I agree that, ultimately, Prince likely owes the money. But if its a situation where Cecil told his son, "I'll take care of the financials, you go out there and play baseball and don't get distracted by money issues", then Prince got duped. Prince owes what Prince owes, but its also entirely possible he got sandbagged here and thought this was taken care of by someone he trusted.

[Ashford Lando]

While I would agree that it is "highly unlikely" that Prince brought this on himself; we don't know ANY of the facts.

 

With that said; regardless of who in the end created the debt, it is ultimately Prince's problem to solve.

 

Based off of what I choose to assume, yes I feel sorry for Prince -- particularly now that it is public -- but I doubt there is an out-clause on the lawsuit if your father is the culprit.

 

 

(edit: gots to work on my grammar)

[Ashford Lando]

On a different note...

 

I think this is a situation where if you have an agent that promises big things down the road, stepping up and paying off the debt (with interest, obviously) would be the stand-up thing to do. Not to mention take some pressure off of your rising star...

 

Now, let's see what REALLY happens with SB...

[fondybrewfan]

Perhaps Prince should call the amazing Roni Deutch.

[pebadger]

No, there is no getting out of the tax debt for Prince, regardless of the circumstances. Now, if his dad was acting in a capacity where he owed some duty to his son in terms of handling these finanacial matters, Prince could sue his dad for breach of that duty. But how's he going to collect? Given that, how would suing Cecil, with all the bad publicity that would create, do anybody any good. And even with all the bad blood already out there, taking a parent to litigation pretty much tops everything off.

[monty57]

It's unfortunate no one taught Prince about little things like paying taxes while they were teaching him to swing a bat. If he hasn't already, he should work out a payment schedule with the IRS, as he's accruing a boatload of interest, and if they really want, they could put him into jail over this.

 

It does make me wonder about how players are viewed by teams. If they're employees of the team, the team would be responsible for withholding taxes. They're not in the union until they reach the majors, so are they technically subcontractors while they're in the minors?

[pebadger]

They (IRS) would probably have a prettty difficult, if not impossible, time making this a criminal tax evasion case. That said, it would be good if Prince came to an understanding with teh IRS on this ASAP, but we don't know that he hasn't already done so, either. I'd bet that he probably has, and that's why this thing has sat kind of quietly for so long.

 

WIthout all the facts it's hard to assign any blame to anyone here. It is quite possible that Prince put his trust in someone else to handle this, and that person failed him, That person may even have deceived him with respect to the handling of this andor other related issues. That would not absolve Prince of all responsibility for the current situation, but he would not be the first (or last) to arrive in that box by that route.

[AdvantageSchneider]

The IRS doesn't get paid if Prince is in jail, so Prince isn't going to jail.

[dogs with bees in their mo]

Haudricourt wrote a blog piece about his article about this where he talks about his conversation with Boras. It's not really interesting or anything, Boras thinks it's nobody's business and TH was a little queasy about doing a story that was mandatory and kind of makes himself look like a wimp who cares too much about not falling out of favor with somebody in the clubhouse.

 

The thing that gets me is the comments after the blog where people think it's "not news". One guy says he's canceling his subscription. Are you kidding me? Agreeing with Boras is just asinine. It's not a "personal matter", hence the reason it appears in court documents which are publicly available. And since when are pro athletes' finances ever private? If TH didn't write anything he would be the worst hack in the universe.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I read that blog, and you hit it on the head. TH was either butting into a personal matter, or acting as Fielder's publicist by not writing a story. Anyone who thinks the team's beat writer wasn't obligated to bring that story up, is severely misguided. Even McCalvy did a story on it for Brewers.com, which really surprised me.

 

What's also funny is the people threatening to cancel their subscription as they write on the JS's blog. I'm sure the JS would rather keep your subscription, but in all honesty, the print edition subscriptions aren't that valuable to them anymore. About 95 cents of every dollar is from ads in the newspaper biz. Print is dying anyway and media is digital. If they had the choice, the JS would probably rather have you visit their site than buy their paper. More traffic means more online ads, which is where the future is anyway, and they know it. Sorry for that lecture, but I just thought it was funny how much of a difference those guys thought they were making.

[craigharmann]

By the way, in TH's blog, he said Prince turned down a 5 year $60 million extension. So there ya go.

[Invader3K]

There is a precedent for athlete tax problems being reported. It's not like Prince is being singled out here. Remember that flap a couple years ago about Rollie Fingers?