Your Taxes Buy Billionaires Stadiums, They Charge $7 For A Hot Dog Obama Says No More

[GMDino]

I wasn't sure if this should go in PNR or Around the NFL.


http://www.addictinginfo.org/2016/02/12/your-taxes-buy-billionaires-stadiums-they-charge-you-7-for-a-hot-dog-obama-says-no-more/

Quote:Imagine you’re a billionaire who buys himself an NFL team. You’re obviously doing well if you can afford to even consider such a venture, but you’re about to start raking it in big time. At an average of $85 per ticket, 70,000 people or so are going to come pouring through the gates.
They aren’t allowed to bring any food or drinks with them, of course, so if they get hungry they’ll be feasting on $7.50 hot dogs and $16 cheese steaks. If you toss a couple of Oreos in the fryer at a cost of about 30 cents they’ll fork over another six bucks. That’s not including the drinks. The bottom of the barrel at most stadiums is the $5 bottled water.
Owners love to chalk up the price of tickets and concessions to the amount of money they pay their players. That certainly does factor in, but if you walk through your local mall you’ll see ridiculous amounts of merchandise from teddy bears to framed pictures, hats, jerseys, shoes and even pet clothing with your team’s logo on them. it’s not there for free. Multiply that times every mall in a team’s fan base and what you have is an entity that is so ridiculously profitable it goes beyond description.

Why, then, are we footing the bill to build these elitist one percenters new stadiums? With very few exceptions, when an owner wants a stadium, they go directly to those whose campaigns they donate to and get the ball rolling on state funds. They sell fans on voting for these funds because “don’t you want to have a nicer stadium than the one in Philly?” Ask a Washington fan the answer to that one.

At the federal level, owners bilk all of us out of tax dollars through a tax exemption on bond interest that means that even if you live in Billings Montana with no chance of ever going to a Wranglers game (because your market is too small for such a team to exist in any sport), you’re paying for that shiny new facility they’re planning in Los Angeles.

According to a 2012 Bloomberg report, the exemption amounts to roughly $4 billion in federal taxpayer money. In President Obama’s FY2017 budget, the exemption is eliminated, which would create a savings of $542 million for the year and hopefully create a more cost-conscious building process for stadiums that will still be footed largely by taxpayers at the state and local level.

It’s welfare for billionaires.

A family of four can save for a year and spend upwards of a thousand dollars for a single afternoon at Texas Stadium, but Jerry Jones should be able to be exempt from millions in taxes because he has so much debt on a stadium he could have written a check for.

The Presidents proposal will, of course, be met with Republican opposition, because they are in the business of giving billionaires as much of your money as possible.

[JustWinBaby]

While I applaud this, the bigger issue is the NFL holding cities hostage to issue bonds to fund the building of the stadiums.

The problem is, no governor/mayor wants to lose a team (for reasons that have little to do with economics). Just once I'd love to see one of these stadium deals come up and have the mayor say "go ahead, move the team...I dare you". The NFL could move one or two teams, but they'd kill their popularity if they moved more.

[*michaelsean*]

Who is getting the tax fee bond interest? It would be the people who buy the bonds right? Not the owners.

[XenoMorph]

(02-12-2016, 01:51 PM)GMDino Wrote: I wasn't sure if this should go in PNR or Around the NFL.


http://www.addictinginfo.org/2016/02/12/your-taxes-buy-billionaires-stadiums-they-charge-you-7-for-a-hot-dog-obama-says-no-more/

Obama waits till the end of 8 years to try this? hotdogs have been 7 dollars a long time.

But this also tells me. our President likes cheap weiners.

[McC]

Yeah, this really seems like a presidential level concern.

[JustWinBaby]

(02-12-2016, 02:14 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Who is getting the tax fee bond interest?  It would be the people who buy the bonds right?  Not the owners.

Muni bonds usually issued (I think) to fund this are tax free to the investor.

But the issuing corp can also deduct that interest from net income when it comes to taxes.

I'm not sure of how this all works, since interest on debt is a standard corporate tax deduction.  But the govt gets its taxes on the interest income to the holder.  I assume this is some other type of special asset where the interest is deducted and the income is excluded.  So it's some sort of federal subsidy of local govt spending, and there are all kinds of similar examples as a large chunk of federal spending gets divvied out to states and, ultimately, local govts.

In many respects, this is no different from billions of other dollars in pork.  Just that in this case you have billionaires and a company with a very public face as opposed to the "faceless, nameless" millionaires getting the other pork.

[Benton]

(02-12-2016, 02:19 PM)McC Wrote: Yeah, this really seems like a presidential level concern.

It should be.

Loopholes like this account for billions in waste. How much, I've got no idea. I doubt anyone truly does. But until someone actually says "hey, this shouldn't be happening" AND puts a plan in place to stop it, it's going to continue. Lots of politicians run on platforms of fixing this stuff, but it's just lipservice.

So, yeah, it should be a presidential concern. Not because it's about football, but because it's tax reform. That should be one of the top three presidential concerns.

[JustWinBaby]

(02-12-2016, 01:51 PM)GMDino Wrote: The Presidents proposal will, of course, be met with Republican opposition, because they are in the business of giving billionaires as much of your money as possible.

The more likely scenario is it will be part of a bill that eliminates other pork, a bill Dems will filibuster in the Senate guaranteeing the outcome they all want which is to protect the pork they bring home.  And then both sides will have plenty to point fingers, and idiots will line up on their partisan sides oblivious to the fact it was a mutually agreed, beneficial manufactured outcome.

Harry Reid was a master of this, adding amendments that would cause a bill to fail providing cover to feign support of something they didn't want to pass. 

[Au165]

(02-12-2016, 02:08 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: While I applaud this, the bigger issue is the NFL holding cities hostage to issue bonds to fund the building of the stadiums.

The problem is, no governor/mayor wants to lose a team (for reasons that have little to do with economics).  Just once I'd love to see one of these stadium deals come up and have the mayor say "go ahead, move the team...I dare you".  The NFL could move one or two teams, but they'd kill their popularity if they moved more.

...The NFL has moved teams plenty of times and it has never affected it's popularity. For every city that loses a team another one gets one, so it's a wash.

[Millhouse]

Lol if they lower hot dog prices, I bet they will install credit card ketchup/mustard machines for $5 per squirt to counter it. Uh oh, I might have just given them greedy bastards an idea.

[McC]

(02-12-2016, 02:42 PM)Benton Wrote: It should be.

Loopholes like this account for billions in waste. How much, I've got no idea. I doubt anyone truly does. But until someone actually says "hey, this shouldn't be happening" AND puts a plan in place to stop it, it's going to continue. Lots of politicians run on platforms of fixing this stuff, but it's just lipservice.

So, yeah, it should be a presidential concern. Not because it's about football, but because it's tax reform. That should be one of the top three presidential concerns.

And how often does this come up?  And when will it come up again?  You wanna do tax reform, do it.  This ain't tax reform.  How many millions will be spent studying what to do about it?

[GMDino]

(02-12-2016, 03:34 PM)McC Wrote: And how often does this come up?  And when will it come up again?  You wanna do tax reform, do it.  This ain't tax reform.  How many millions will be spent studying what to do about it?

It has already been proposed as part of his budget.  No more studies.

If closing a loophole isn't tax reform, what is?

[McC]

(02-12-2016, 03:37 PM)GMDino Wrote: It has already been proposed as part of his budget.  No more studies.

If closing a loophole isn't tax reform, what is?

As long as you close them all, sure.

[fredtoast]

(02-12-2016, 03:27 PM)Au165 Wrote:  For every city that loses a team another one gets one, so it's a wash.

This.  Just as many new happy fans in the city that gets the team as there are mad fans in the city that loses one.

[Benton]

(02-12-2016, 03:34 PM)McC Wrote: And how often does this come up?  And when will it come up again?  You wanna do tax reform, do it.  This ain't tax reform.  How many millions will be spent studying what to do about it?

It comes up every time someone runs for office. Hell, I had a guy running for school board a few years ago saying he was going to close tax loopholes. I laughed, but the guy almost won.

As far as the bold, I don't understand what you mean. Closing the tax loopholes that allows them to have the funds tax free is tax reform.

 If you get to purchase a car tax free because you're special — but then that loophole gets closed — it's tax reform. In this instance, replace "car" with "billion dollar football stadium."

[StLucieBengal]

Tax reform is nice and should be applauded.    But this is like putting black magic on the bald Tires of a beater car.

[JustWinBaby]

(02-12-2016, 03:27 PM)Au165 Wrote: ...The NFL has moved teams plenty of times and it has never affected it's popularity. For every city that loses a team another one gets one, so it's a wash.

Plenty?  Maybe a handful over several decades.

The league's base is ultimately passionate, loyal fans.  That's why you can't just keep transplanting teams.  It is not a wash - most teams have fans scattered across the nation.  Plus, it still takes time to build the local fanbase (and, in some cases that never happens).

They are also sort of running out of major cities that can support an NFL team.  You obviously don't need a huge population for it to work, but it carries a lot more risk.  The NFL isn't going to move the Cowboys, or the Steelers, or many other teams.

[XenoMorph]

(02-12-2016, 03:34 PM)Millhouse Wrote: Lol if they lower hot dog prices, I bet they will install credit card ketchup/mustard machines for $5 per squirt to counter it. Uh oh, I might have just given them greedy bastards an idea.

first things first.... it takes 3 dollars to get into the bathroom

[6andcounting]

The issue isn't that interest is tax deductable. The issue is that tax money and government bonds pay for stadiums.

[6andcounting]

(02-12-2016, 06:48 PM)XenoMorph Wrote: first things first.... it takes 3 dollars to get into the bathroom

$3 jus to get in sounds about right.