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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

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bradleyjg

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You may be around 400 years too late to this battle, apparently.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/gift-as-a-verb

Webster's 1913 lists only the sense:

Gift, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Gifted; p. pr. & vb. n. Gifting.] To endow with some power or faculty.

Your link notes that much older examples exist for "to give as a gift", but also that it wasn't popularized until the 1990s, probably by Seinfeld. Might be why it strikes bradleyjg as odd—it was unusual until fairly recently, so one is unlikely to encounter it used that way in older media.

[EDIT] Are the downvotes because readers are taking the "probably by Seinfeld" as my own speculation? It's not, it's from the parent's link.

Despite other arguments, even taking at face value that gift as a verb was popularized in the 1990's, why are you fighthing about language which at the worst, has been in common parlance for nearly 30 years, and if we take other sources, even longer?

Who are you responding to? I wasn't fighting about anything.

Maybe because "gift" has a specific meaning in the tax code, especially with money transfers that involve immediate family members. No idea if that's why Forbes is using that language though.

I’d think that gift is slightly different in this situation in that a gift severs control completely vs theoretically you can give someone an item with the expectation of getting it back.

It’s really splitting hairs though, what is your problem with the word gifted? I’ve never seen someone critique it’s use before

It's not slightly different at all. If I say, "The server at the restaurant gave the man a fork", would you think the man expected to walk away with the fork?

Or to put it differently: Depositors gave money to FTX, which gave the money to Almeda Research, which gave the money to SBF, who gave it to his father. But only one of these four transactions was a gift.

To me, using Gift implies his father wrote it off on taxes as part of his lifetime gift exemption ($12.06 million). It just means SBF gave $10M to his father and his father didn't have to pay taxes on that money because he reported it as a gift.

It doesn't add much to the story though.

Edit: Thanks to comments below I found out the sender pays the tax if over $12.06M not the receiver of the gift.

Just a random bit of information but I am clearly astonished by the amount of the American gift exemption !

In France, as far as I know, it is $150k€ every 10 years to your children only.

Edit : above it has to be integrated to your income tax IIRC, paid by the receiver only.

It's tied to the estate tax exclusion. The first ~$12million of estate isn't taxed, and you can give that money away before or after you die.

> To me, using Gift implies his father wrote it off on taxes as part of his lifetime gift exemption ($12.06 million).

The gift exemption and gift taxes apply to the giver, not the recipient. (The gift and estate tax are effectively one combined tax.)

The gift exemption is for the giver, not the recipient of a gift. Recipients don't pay gift taxes in the US; givers do.

This is not quite correct. If you receive a large cash gift you may be subject to income tax on that money. This is a separate issue from The Gift Giver claiming a deduction on their taxes. The gift tax is a transfer tax, and my understanding is that it could be paid in theory by either party.

Most people don't want to pay income tax or a windfall tax on the gift so it makes more sense for the Giver to pay the transfer tax

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

The IRS link you provided supports what I said.

> The donor is generally responsible for paying the gift tax. Under special arrangements the donee may agree to pay the tax instead.

The lifetime exemption on gifts and annual exemption on gifts are thresholds for the giver; not the recipient of the gift.

> If you receive a large cash gift you may be subject to income tax on that money.

This is more or less not true? Other than the (very weird) situation of agreeing to pay the gift tax, as the recipient you generally do not owe income taxes on the gift. If you were gifted something that generates income (e.g., stock or rental property), you will owe tax on that income after you receive it.

>Why do we need gift as a verb all of a sudden?

All of a sudden? I'm in my 30's and "gifting" as a verb has been pretty commonplace for as long as I can remember...

Is there something inherently wrong with that?

Same, nothing about the verbiage struck me as odd. Perhaps the Germans in here think SBF has poisoned his father?

Gifting is a subset of giving.

tax exemption

Because "gave" could encompass a wide variety of transactions and "gifted" is a specific one.

Jumps out at me too - it's a meme spreading all over the online discussion world. not that it's improper use or a new idea or anything, but it's become really popular in the last several months. It is a useful nuance - signifying that ownership has transferred, not just possession. But, also cringe it seems like a lot of users are trying so so hard to fit in with the cool trendy kids.

I don't know about trends, but might also have something to do with non-native English speakers. In at least some other languages clearly distinguishing between to give and to gift is very common.

We give presents and we present gifts. He gifted me a bitcoin has always sounded weird to me.

It is a shortcut though. He gave me a bitcoin should be good enough. One may want more specificity. He presented me a bitcoin gift. Or he gave me a bitcoin present. Gifted makes the point quickly even if it grates on me.

This isn't new...

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