You waited for this day to arrive for a long time. After months of numerous legal maneuverings, your slip and fall lawyer has finally reached an agreement with the other party to settle your case. The combination of lost wages and rapidly mounting medical bills has put you in a deep financial hole. Reaching a settlement gets you the long-awaited check that turns around your financial status.
Not so fast.
Just because your slip and fall lawyer negotiated a favorable settlement does not mean you receive your settlement check right away. Your attorney receives your settlement check and then takes out money from the settlement to pay for legal fees, court costs, and any liens placed on the settlement by creditors such as one or more healthcare providers. Then, you have to deal with the United States government, which wants its share of your settlement in the form of income taxes.
Are slip and fall settlements taxable? The short answer is yes, but only for a few sources of the income earned from a settlement check. In general, the federal government views settlement cash as taxable income. However, this is not the case for personal injury settlements. Some of the financial awards that constitute a settlement check are considered tax-exempt. If you settle a slip and fall lawsuit out of court, some of the compensation from the settlement check goes to the United States government and possibly your state government as well.
Because of the complicated nature of receiving a settlement check, working with an experienced slip and fall lawyer can help you expedite the process of getting just compensation for the injuries sustained as a result of a slip and fall incident. Your attorney also helps you gather physical evidence, such as the photographs shot at the accident scene and the video captured by a business security system. Hiring an experienced slip and fall lawyer also ensures you file a civil lawsuit before the expiration of the statute of limitations.
At Morgan and Morgan, we have compiled more than three decades of experience litigating personal injury cases. Over that span, our personal injury attorneys have recovered more than $14 billion in compensation. Some of the money recovered from personal injury lawsuits involved slip and fall cases that our lawyers settled out of court. Not only do we help our clients receive the compensation they deserve for sustaining one or more injuries as a result of a personal injury incident, but we also expedite the process of receiving a settlement check.
Learn more about how taxes impact your settlement check by scheduling a free case evaluation with a slip and fall lawyer from Morgan and Morgan.