$9,000 tax on medalists? Not so much (Updated)

Americans for Tax Reform caused a big stir yesterday with a blog post pointing out that U.S. Olympic medal winners will have to fork over up to $9,000 of their winnings to Uncle Sam come tax time. The Weekly Standard jumped on the news, which was quickly picked up by the Drudge Report. By day's end, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) had introduced legislation to keep the feds from grabbing any of the athletes' hard-earned winnings.

Just one problem: The premise, by and large, wasn't true.

At least that's the verdict of PolitiFact, the fact-checking news site that won a Pulitzer but has drawn the ire of conservatives who think it's tilted against them. (It has also taken flack from liberals such as MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.)

Here's PolitiFact's takeaway:

Americans for Tax Reform is correct that gold medalists’ winnings are taxable, and it provides some leeway by saying that U.S. winners could be taxed up to $9,000. Still, it’s not likely that anyone would pay that much per medal in taxes -- even if the winner was fortunate enough to have annual income well over $380,000 and refused to deduct any business expenses on their winnings. Any accountant worth their salt should be able to get the rate of tax on medal winnings much below $9,000, and maybe even to zero. We rate the statement Mostly False.

Read the group's full analysis here.

UPDATE: Americans for Tax Reform has issued a detailed response to PolitiFact. Read it here.