You are buried in a coffin 6ft deep, with no light or cell phone. There is only a small tube connected to the coffin from outside that allows you to breathe (edit: you can breathe with no difficulty). After 48 hours, you are dug up and given 1 million dollars. Do you do it?
Edit: No food and water, no diaper, and no contact with the outside world. Once buried, they leave for 48hr and come back to dig you up. The coffin is only wide enough for you to lay on your back (no rolling around), and the inside is wood and not particularly comfortable. The only items you’re allowed to bring with you are life sustaining medication (e.g. an asthma inhaler). No knocking yourself out with pills or anxiety meds. The money is a briefcase full of cash.
How much of that million do I lose to tax afterward?
It’s a briefcase full of cash.
I’m pretty sure you could just say “It’s tax free” or even double the amount to $2 million and it wouldn’t really change which people would do it and which wouldn’t.
I’d do it, as long as I was really convinced that the only danger was mental, not physical.
Apparently you’d owe around $350,000 in taxes if the IRS found out, but I don’t know if there’s anything you can do to reduce that. Even after that, I’d do it for $650,000. That’s still over 40 years of my current minimum wage job