Saturday, January 31, 2015

The NFL Is Tax-Exempt? Good For Them

By Chris Rossini

Does the NFL receive taxpayer subsidies for its stadiums? Yes.

Does the NFL act as a militant propaganda arm of the U.S. government? Yes....and it's disgusting.

Does the NFL (not the individual teams unfortunately) have a tax-exempt status? Yes.

I do not agree with Cavuto.

As a libertarian, I view every penny that does not get removed from productive society by the government as a win. The NFL voluntarily satisfies the entertainment needs of millions of individuals around the world. Government is a black hole only.

As bad a crony as the NFL is, nothing good can come from government taxing them more. The organization should stay tax-exempt, and the only positive move is for more of us to receive such a status....with the ultimate goal being all of us.

If you're stuck in quicksand, you shouldn't look to pull anyone else into it with you. The aspiration is for everyone to be out of it.



Chris Rossini is author of Set Money Free: What Every American Needs To Know About The Federal Reserve. Follow @chrisrossini on Twitter.

6 comments:

  1. I am sorry but I do not understand this argument. Some of my tax dollars go to the NFL whether I want them to or not. Whatever taxes the NFL doesn't pay, someone else will have to pay. The NFL is not a charity or a public good and clearly can support itself. And the NFL is certainly not going to help me out of the quicksand by helping me to get tax-exempt status.

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    1. Thanks for highlighting the point of the article. The vitriolic attack at anyone who is doing better than you in whatever respect. Again, we should not look to pull others into the quicksand we are stuck in, but rather look for ways to get ourselves out as well. It's like leftists decrying the rich for owning yachts. Instead of trying to tax them so that they can't afford the yacht, we should be looking for ways to get rich ourselves, so that we can afford our own yachts.

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    2. So, some pigs are more equal than other pigs, or something to that effect? Forget the left/right paradigm. Collectivists own the yachts and don't pay the taxes they foist on others "for the common good." I mean the NFL is a for profit collectivist propaganda outlet that relentlessly promotes the State via militarism and even pimps Obamacare. Can we at least decry the hypocrisy here?

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  2. Yes, but they're tax exempt for a medical disability - deflated balls...

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  3. Totally agree and this is a detraction from the real crony capitalist problem of public funding for sports stadiums, etc. Sports should be treated just like religion and be totally separated from the state until the state hopefully gets abolished.

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  4. This argument rests on the premise the lower tax receipts from one entity does not increase taxes on others. I'm not convinced this is the case.

    When encountering budget deficits, government seems to either A) borrow to effectively transfer the burden onto future taxpayers, or B) print money to effectively transfer the burden to currency holders. So the NFL tax break arguably does come at the expense of others. If so, the state is not being deprived, it is just acting as a pass-through mechanism for the NFL to take from productive people. And if allowed to persist, such lucrative means of exploitation only attracts more cronyists piling on more state legislation.

    OTOH, the swollen debt does seem to at least partially moderate congressional spending and fear of public outrage over inflation is probably what's keeping the printing presses from running wild. So maybe lower tax receipts does reduce the net inflow of resources to the state for its nefarious pursuits. Which indeed can only be a boon to all of society.

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