New Jersey is the latest state to introduce a bill to exempt part or all of an Athletes NIL income. In New Jersey it would exempt $100,000 annually.
Arkansas already passed theirs making income exempt. Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Iowa and Illinois are also working bills to be completely exempt.
Pattern: All SEC/BIG 10 locations.
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Seems like a strategy that you are supposed to use for toddlers. Give in on things that matter a lot to them, but little to you. Give up a small amount of tax revenue to increase interest in state schools.
Agreed, probably less than a million or two to each state total but just one more selling point for their schools.
In what fucking world are paid athletes tax exempt? in what fucking world? Oh, the baller complex world. I forgot.
Well they're children remember, so that 28 year old, multiple transfer player shouldn't be punished for going to school.
This makes my head hurt. I'm sorry, but they wanted to be employees. Welcome to the real world where you pay taxes. Unless you're a billionaire or multi-billion dollar corporation, then it's fine to not pay taxes (throwing up in my mouth). But the rest of us, we all pay taxes.
"Unless you're a billionaire or multi-billion dollar corporation" Billionaires are taxed on income- just like you and me. Corporations are heavily taxed- payroll, Medicare, property, etc. You can argue that they have tax lawyers that use the law to minimize taxes, but they do in fact pay taxes... a lot of them.
Yeah the argument that corporations and rich people don't pay taxes isn't valid. Run a corporation and tell me business is tax exempt.... But the big hitters do get to take advantage of every law provided loophole that is discovered/exploited by their team of tax attorneys. That is true.
On the overall topic and to agree with all others, this is bullshit. You want to sit at the table, you gotta help wash the dishes.
You and DC are correct. But unfortunately most of the tax laws/loopholes that billionaires and large corporations get to legally use, aren't easily/feasibly accessible to the rest of us.
Billionaires don't have income. Bezos makes like 70k in income, which is great for lots of americans but nothing to him. He then uses his Amazon shares as collateral to get multiple million dollar loans at like 3% and pays off the loan with another loan. And that ball keeps rolling until he dies and his money gets transfered to his heirs where they pay the loans with stock capital gains tax free because it's waved when transferring inheritance.
Corporations have a lot of taxes, but then States will give them money to have jobs in that state. We couldn't hire remote employees at on job because Virginia was basically off setting payroll tax. Also electricity is cheaper for corporations in VA than for residents. So lower power costs help offset those taxes. We have some of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, but because they're progressive tax rates and there are so many deductions, US has one of the lowest tax burdens in the world for corporations. That's not zero taxes but when comparing the rates that a median income american family pays, the rich and large corporations pay way lower percentages
Yes but those corporations and businesses with revenue and payroll taxes makeup roughly half the total tax revenue, that's about 1,000,000 entities. The other half is from individual income tax; roughly 120,000,000 entities with a significant portion of that coming from the top 5% of earners.
Keep things in perspective
But if you are a corporation, you get a commercial account where AEP can slap peak demand surcharges on your account regardless if you are using power during peak hours. My FIL is a partial owner of a strip mall, literally the only thing his electrical bill covers is the parking lot lights all of the individual stores cover their electrical separately. But they get a peak day surcharge slapped on them every month that cannot be contested because it is a commercial account.
But you are right that many of the multi millionaires and billionaires have very small W-2 income. They get stock bonus's as profit sharing, etc. Loans on collateral as a way around income tax is a legal option as it is cheating the IRS spirit but not the law.
1. Billionaires do have income. and Bezos claims orders of magnitude more than 70K. That is a media talking point on the age old rich v. poor political power play. 2. The whole "corporation" argument is a false one of course. The individuals that work for those corporations who pay their income, pay income tax. Corporations pay a myriad of taxes beyond that and actually drive the economy by employing people- who buy gas, food, TVs with those corporate paychecks. Equating that to "Joe teacher pays more taxes than Amazon" is not only not true, it's irrelevant. 3. The US and State governments can't employ 4 billion people. People have to work for "corporations" those salaries pay the large bulk of "taxes". 4. Tax revenue is not and has never been an issue in the US. So the "fair share" nonsense is a talking point, not an issue and not a solution. The solution is to cut spending. Tax revenue is not the issue. 5. If you don't like bezos leveraging the 10K page tax code, elect officials that will change those laws.
100% agree with these two sentiments!
those "officials" don't exist
because every politician on offer is bought and paid for by....you guessed it...corporations that are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the 10k page tax code. As long as the code remains complex and wealthy entities are able to take advantage of them they're going to stay that way. No elected official is going to simplify tax code unless their financial stakeholders stand to gain from it, which, most won't.
Not to mention, no corporation "eats those costs". Any tax paid by corporations is ultimately a) passed on to consumers in form of higher prices, or b) paid by the investors/shareholders in the form of lower dividends or share value, or c) by the employees in the form of lower wages. Similarly , the "government" cannot "give" any person or company anything that it did not first "take" from someone else. It can "deficit spend" but that merely pushes todays "costs" onto future generations (when the bill including interest comes due) or by consumers with higher borrowing costs due to either inflation or government borrowing crowding out private credit availability.
I have some thoughts but don't want to get political. I'll simply say this is outrageous.
Until the coaches, professors, medical staff, field crew, broadcast team are tax exempt, the players can fuck right off. Seriously.
I assume these laws would apply to the coaches where NIL is tax exempt too?
They might be exempt from state taxes that is in their rights as states, but they cannot grant federal income tax exemptions for those athletes. The IRS man is the most feared government employee for a reason.
Going to laugh the first time one of these college athletes has the lambo seized because they didn't file federal taxes.
Bingo. To further the logic, Texas, Florida, and Tennessee are all no state income tax states. This being the case the schools in the other states don't want to be at a recruiting disadvantage to those schools in the no income tax states so they just waive it for NIL income.
Yeah I can see this being used as a recruiting pitch for certain states. Nevermind the fact that Tennessee, for example, has an average sales tax of over 9.5%.
Recruiting won't be a thing in 3 years. Teams will simply publish their salary cap and available space and Nike and Scum agents will fill the rosters they have interest in. We will get the leftover scraps. It could save a school like VT money in the long run. Yeah, you are systematically shut out of all 5 stars and most 4 stars, but hey. It's pro football. It's what the fans wanted. Players were slaves before. And if you don't like the team/hand that Nike and agents dealt you, you just buy a brand new team in the offseason.
Yet another reason to buy Asics and never buy Nike.
Been living off Under Armour and Brooks for at least the last 10 years
I am also on team Asics
Fair point if it saves tech money then bring it on - not like we've gotten a 5 star in 12 years anyway...
I agree this sounds ridiculous, but what I am absolutely not going to do is blame this on the athletes.
Once again, the NCAA has had decades to fix this and just make them employees of the university. They have steadfastly refused to do anything and instead hoped state/federal government would bail them out.
I blame grown fucking men salivating at 18 year olds throwing a football. They pay millions in no-show NIL bullshit to feed the machine, because their life would be worthless if not for Ole Miss football. That's who I blame. A society that places sports fandom over literally everything else. A society that coddles 8th grade football players and gives them special treatment. A society that wants to raise my taxes to pay off college debt for others yet argues this holds no monetary value- cause durrr durrr durrr ballers... A society where bartman received death threats because of a foul ball. A society where the dodgers can violate thousands of tax laws to defer hundreds of millions of dollars to Ohtani. Gotta beat the Giants. That's what's most important. Society fuels this- not the average player I agree.
Yeah despite being tired of hearing you say this 100 different ways this exemplifies what you've been saying for the better half of two years. The amount of occupations that should be morally in line to be tax exempt before student athletes is very very very long.
Yeah this is going to be abused to the point where any media personality, politician, and rich fuck who has their face known will now be able to claim their income is Name Image and Likeness based in order to skirt income taxed that the rest of us have to pay.
Just keep that wealth gap growing, baby!
New Jersey has not seen a tax it didn't like since 2018. The bending over backwards and taking up the ass by politicians to give more money to kids playing football and basketball has reached a new level of disgusting.
so, can i have my business pay me for my NIL instead of a salary and avoid state taxes too? What limits this to athletes?
Yes. 1. falsely argue that you are entitled to it- because. 2. Argue that you were forced to take a job at your company, which is a monopoly- thus forced and that you are underpaid with no justification. 3. Sue and certainly win.
Must attend all meetings with clients in full gear though...
Yeah, I run a delivery route and I should get a bonus for every picture of a freshly delivered package I take.
It's an image and I created it. NIL. Where's my bag?
Create your own delivery NFT's on opensea
Yep, I'm out on college sports ✌🏻
People say this all the time. You'll still watch.
I watch college sports and pro sports knowing that nothing about it is or has ever been clean.
I'll watch VT games on tv but as far as contributing or buying tickets or any interest beyond that, I'm fairly checked out.
"Out on college sports" is a state of mind
10 years ago I would agree with you 100%
I used to watch college football all day on Saturdays in the fall. Not just Hokies. Nowadays, I only watch the Hokies and I don't even watch every game. I used to make sure that nothing in my social calendar interfered with watching Tech play football but now my social calendar has taken priority - if I have nothing going on and the Hokies are playing I'll watch. Otherwise, I'm pretty much checked out on college football. (and that was really the only college sport I watched anyway)
I pretty much only watch Premier League these days - and even then I don't catch most games (again, social calendar). If Liverpool and the Hokies are playing at the same time I have a real conflict. Otherwise, it's pretty simple - if I'm free and there's a Hokies football game, I'm watching. If I'm free and there's a Liverpool match I'm watching. Otherwise, I'm not watching any sports.
You can't get too invested in it. Why? 70-100% of the team will be different next year anyway. Anybody really good will transfer to the SEC or B1G.
And the bottom of the roster will portal out to G5.
I will not portal. Portal is the roster-killer. Portal is the little death that brings total obliteration to college football. I will face the portal. I will allow the portal to pass over me and through me. And where the portal has passed, there will be nothing. Only bluebloods will remain.
Dune fan huh?
This last season I probably watched more professional sports than college sports for probably the first time since middle school because most likely a majority of players will be the same the next season.
I am in a similar boat, but how much of that is disapproval of the new world order in college sports and how much of that is simple growth/aging/family priorities?
I used to spend literally all day Sat/Sun watching as much football as I could. Now I have three teenagers and too many other priorities to do that. I don't think it has anything to do with NIL, I think it's the fact that I'm 46 and not 24 any more.
Came to say this. Three young kids right now. I can't watch gameday from 9-noon then watch games from noon-midnight like I used to. We have activities, chores, and a social life that no longer revolves around college football twelve weeks each year.
I still watch 90% of VT games each year, and maybe one other exciting game each weekend. Still follow along on socials, listen to podcasts, etc.
But the days of the multiple TVs, staying up late to watch Hawaii vs BYU Sickos game of the week are mostly over (for now).
It has zero to do with NIL or the portal. If anything, Conference Realignment plays a signficantly bigger role than either of those two things.
You're really hammering the "conference realignment" drum. I do think it's hurt the sport but there is no single issue. It's an amalgamation of different decisions along the way that have all degraded the sport in their own ways.
I do think getting older and having a child has impacted my ability to watch on Saturdays. But it's the devolution of the sport that has driven down my overall interest in it.
My wife is Hokie thru and thru. She grew up going to games every week through the 90s and early oughts. Then she went there as a student in undergrad and then grad school. Our lives revolved around Hokie football until about 2017. When she was a kid she named pets after players. Now she couldn't name more than 2 players on our whole team. The media coverage of football is so unashamedly biased towards the P2 it is unwatchable. The ACC is collapsing and pretty much every team in the league is trending downward. Players aren't in it for the long haul. We haven't been good at football since Beamer was coaching. There are just so many things making the sport feel uninteresting to us.
We suck and we know we suck. It's hard to get excited to watch VT football games anymore when we pretty much know every game is going to be an ugly 4 hour slog. IIWII
I think it's the single thing that has hurt the fan experience the most AND the player experience the most over the last 2 decades. I think a lot of the frustrations with the current playoff system go away if conference realignment doesn't happen. I think that the money is consolidated in significantly more schools if conference realignment doesn't happen.
NIL doesn't change the fan experience IMO. Transfer Portal really does. But the consolidation of power programs in conferences has:
If you're interested, I'm happy to point you towards some more interesting outlets.
Bingo- arguably the biggest sacrificial lamb is the 3 star HS P5 prospect. Many many of those spots are being taken by the portal thus players have to play down a level. Nobody cares about that though- a inconvenient consequence of the B.I.C.
conference re-alignment may not have such a big impact if, for instance, the playoff was structured properly to begin with. So, if every major conference gets maximum 1 spot in the playoff, and the only way to get that spot is to win the conference championship for your conference, then I don't think conference re-alignment has as big of an impact as you're saying it does.
Maybe it's a chicken and egg scenario. If we assume that the playoff stays at 4 teams and we say that all of the 5 major leagues have a shot at getting exactly 1 team into the playoff via the championship game and then make a committee pick the best 4 candidates from the 5 champions - maybe then you don't see the conference re-alignment happen at all. I could make a case that the flawed playoff structure from the outset CAUSED conference realignment. When it became clear that the playoff was a sham and the most popular teams were going to get in every year all of the best teams clamored to be in the same leagues so they could bolster their cred purely by association and increase their odds of making the playoff. If only one team from the SEC is going to get in every year then Texas and OU probably hang out in the Big12 instead of jumping ship because in the Big12 all they have to do is win the conference championship (something both teams have plenty of experience doing) and then they've got a solid shot at the playoff. But now with the SEC getting half of the playoff spots, and the playoff growing every two years, Texas and Oklahoma realized that they probably stood a better chance at making the playoff as the 4th or 5th best team in the SEC than they did as the best team in the big12.
Conference Re-alignment may be a symptom, not a cause. The decision to go to a playoff structure that isn't actually a playoff at all is more of a cause which has yielded utter shit. Shit like conference re-alignment.
"So, if every major conference gets maximum 1 spot in the playoff"- you know I hate the SEC as much as anyone, but they have a point here. Take last season- Clemson won the ACC at 9-4. They got destroyed by Georgia, lost to unranked Louisville and lost to the SEC's 5th place team USCe. Compare that to Georgia- the SEC's second team that would be out of the playoff. 1. UGA beat them head to head, 2. and lost to 2 top 15 teams- Bama and Ole Miss. UGA has a much better resume.
yeah, because for the last 1.5 decades all the resources have been flowing to the SEC and nobody is stopping it. The playoff never should have been about the best matchups. It always should have been about pitting the conferences against each other for bragging rights. Make your team win your league to make the playoff. I promise you if that's how it was set up in the first place Georgia wouldn't be head and shoulders above every team in the ACC but still not good enough to win their own league. The SEC champion could win every playoff but how is that any different than it is right now? I am arguing that if the SEC only got one team in the playoff resources would disperse to the other leagues. Kirby Smart wouldn't stay in the SEC if he was going to be left out of the playoff for losing to Saban every year - he'd go to, IDK, the ACC, where he has, ostensibly, a pretty easy path to the Playoff every year. You know what would happen? Coaches and Players would gravitate towards the "easiest path" which would make those paths harder. The ACC would be a much better conference if the SEC was only permitted one playoff spot. Because the ACC would get filled up with good-to-great coaches and players who think it's an easy league to to win in order to make it into the playoff and before you know it each of the Power conferences start to look easier than some of the others in some ways and then hungry players and coaches who want to make it to the playoff the "easy way" would make those conferences more competitive.
This is an incredibly naive take. Bragging rights don't mean shit when it comes to pulling in more dollars in media rights.
It's definitely chicken/egg, just like almost everything in this sport. If a playoff system was created where every FBS conference champion got an autobid, then I bet there is less consolidation. But also, this is college football. The post season was an exhibition until the late 80's. We had Jim Delenay suggesting that the B10 would skip a BCS national championship bid because the Rose Bowl was more important than a national championship. I don't think a playoff model that was the same as every other American sport league was ever realistic.
Yea, I don't buy this. UW and Texas both made the 4-team playoff the year before they were departing from their conference. Until the FSU debacle, there was never a P5 conference champion that got bounced from the playoff in favor of team with a lesser or equal record who did not win a conference championship.
I see it differently... I think that UT/OU saw that from 2007 through 2023 (when they announced they were leaving the B12), only 2 non-SEC programs had won a national title: Clemson and Ohio State. The SEC brand had/has cache with recruits. UT/OU were losing recruits to SEC programs, so they went to fix the problem by becoming an SEC program.
The best playoff in the United States by far exists in the college game. It's called march madness. One and done, win or go home. A true playoff that includes all conferences and grips an entire nation for a month. That beats Mahomes having to win 2 home playoff games in 10 degree weather after a week off. It beats the fixed NBA- where you have 30 point swings in "playoff games". In football you had conference greed and ND dictating the model. They had FCS playoffs for decades. Nobody was worried about concussions or missed class time at that level. You didn't have it at the top level because the SEC wanted a lions share of the playoff and bowl money- so access was going to shut out the Big East, WAC, etc. It was always going to be that way with money as the driver. In a 16 team playoff with all conference champions, the SECs bid are limited. In the bowl system, they got their money for 12 teams, etc. No different than the last time march madness expanded to 68. Why? because conferences split and auto bids were added. So instead of not taking 14 SEC teams and leaving it at 64, coaches lobbied for 68 because scum like Beoheim made a career by "making the dance" 40 straight years. He wanted those at large spots to not go away. Also any model in football had to include a one-off school that hasn't won anything significant in 30 years - because. That throws a wrench in things. At top level football, the SEC and B1G will die before they give up more of the pie.
I would argue that the NHL and MLB have the best professional playoff system/product. Even with the personally disliked Best of 3 opening round the MLB has.
Playoff hockey though is light-years more entertaining than playoff NBA.
The top players in the NBA are so freaking athletic that they get away with so many rule violations because the refs cant see what they are doing which i think hurts the product where as the top athletes in hockey are still slowed by skates and a stick so it makes for a way better viewing expirence for me.
Until this years NHL Finals....7 game series shouldn't take 3 1/2 weeks. If it goes to 7, it's on June 20th
The MLB's playoff system is nowhere near the best system, because of the nature of the game. A 5-game series, even a 7-game series, is still too small of a sample size to determine the best team. A lot of times it comes down to the schedule, and who is able to get their best pitchers ready to pitch game one of the series. When a team gets their pitching rotation thrown off by an earlier series, it can throw the series out of whack. Unless the team with their ace starting game 1 is coming off a bye, which is another thing I hate about the MLB postseason. Three years of this current setup, and we're starting to see that the bye is not really an advantage.
So no, the MLB does not have the best professional playoff system. Far from it. No, we're not going to get 9- or 11-game series, but having 7-game series throughout and no byes would be a start. If you have to have a bracket with byes, then at least have the first round take place at the bye team's stadium, with game 1 and 2 being the first two days after the regular season, with game 3 if needed being the first game of a doubleheader with the bye team. That way, there's only two days of rest between the regular season and the playoffs, which reduces the "bye penalty".
Correct, but you have try to have as horrid a post season as the NBA.. No travel, but 3 off days between games because they refuse to play on bad TV nights- Friday/Saturday. Its a joke. Not mentioning 85-41 leads vanishing regularly, etc. It's one level above the WWE.
At least the WWE is entertaining
I miss the days when the college football season felt like one big playoff that lasted 4 months. One loss could ruin your season. That was the best.
It wasn't that 1 loss 100% ruined your season, more like double elimination. If you had one loss your entire fan base now cared about every undefeated team. We rarely had 2 undefeated teams play for the title. But every 0 and 1 loss teams were watching everyone else. That 1 loss only upped the stakes.
Also in the 2000s we saw 3 of the top 5 upsets of all time. Anyone could lose a game. It doesn't feel that way any more.
I have said before the NCAA traded and entire season of meaningful games for 11 playoff games. I would expect total viewership and attendance to drop off as a result and the apathy could creep to the playoff games as more and more fanbases realize their team may never have a shot at the playoff under the developing feudal transfer portal system.
I think a lot of the attendance is pretty set. Most of the big schools it's not about the game but the expirence. We used to walk up amd down the gold lot at WVU just to see who we haven't seen in a while and get free food. My friends grandparents have been to every PSU game for 50+ years. His grandmother hasn't been in the stadium since the 80s. She would wake up early and cook for everyone and then game time she'd take a nap in their camper. It's not about the team you're playing it's about the expierence.
Let's not forget the extra $45M annually added to their budgets thanks to E$PN. Jumping to the $EC was a no Brainerd at that point.
Say what you will, but the SEC earned that ESPN money. SEC teams invested more in recruiting athletes, hiring coaches, and engaging fans than teams of any other league. I agree with DC's stance that it's silly that we live in a society where grown adults would rather throw money at college kids playing an 'amateur' sport than our civil servants, our schools, our healthcare, etc. But I don't blame ESPN for offering the SEC that deal, nor do I blame the SEC for accepting it.
We're only 2(?) years removed from Jim Phillips - a person hired by the presidents of ACC schools - opening ACC media days talking about student athletes, and NIL isn't think, blah blah blah. At least two thirds of ACC schools weren't/aren't interested in playing the same sport that the SEC is.
No, they didn't earn that money. They just decided that they were going to come out on top, period. To the point they were willing to sell out the sport in order to "win" it. It's a strong temptation to secure the future when you're ahead by rigging the game in your favor.
I'm not buying it. For a while, it was "TV markets" that was driving realignment. Conferences brought in new schools that converted certain states from "out of footprint" to "in footprint", thus driving up their cable channel rates. And the ACC had a competitive media rights deal with the other conferences around that time period. But I've seen analysis (really can't remember where, blame my ADD) that indicates that it's the big matchups, the > 4 million eyeball games, that are what is currently driving up the media rights. The more of those a conference has, the more lucrative their media rights are, because it's those topline games that drive the majority of the revenue.
And it makes sense. At some point, there's a number of eyeballs watching a game where the producer breaks even based on the production cost (assuming today's standard of quality production, not the fucking ODU-level production). I don't know where that number lies, but it makes sense that the biggest games will make the studio much more money than a game against two basement-dwellers. Which means that the more games that a conference has that draw more eyeballs than the threshold, the bigger their media rights are going to be.
And what drives eyeballs these days? Winning, yes. But also name recognition, rivalries, and the size of a school's fanbase. The schools that the P2 have been gobbling up have all of those. The B1G grabbed two schools from the same city, UCLA and USC, because they are bluebloods, have huge national fanbases, and are a big rivalry. Forget that they're in the same footprint, that really doesn't matter that much anymore, if people in that state aren't watching the games. B1G games involving those schools are likely to draw above the threshold in eyeballs, and have a good chance, if they're winning, to draw more than 4M eyeballs.
Excuse my stream of consciousness post, but that is why the latest round of conference realignment happened. And that is something that even getting the playoff right 25 years ago wouldn't have prevented, as the bottom line for these conferences is MAKING. MORE. MONEY. Full stop.
"The schools that the P2 have been gobbling up have all of those."- yes post Rutgers, Maryland, Missou, etc- which have none of what you mentioned in football.
Yep, you're tracking what I was putting down. That realignment round was based on the fiction of "TV markets". This most recent round (Texas/Oklahoma, USC/UCLA, Washington/Oregon) is all about eyeballs, which is synonymous with $$$.
that's kind of you - my complaint, more than anything, has to do with the actual game coverage, though. It's not just "oh I hate MSM blah blah blah" it's more of "I can't even enjoy watching the game my team is playing because the network clearly has the C or D team covering it"
I'm in this same boat. I only watched 4 of our games last year and I think one other game. Where before the wife and I would watch games all day almost every Sat. And I only watched a couple of basketball games. I never used to miss any VT football games and watched at least 10-15 basketball games and a lot of the tourney. None of that this past year. And I anticipate less in the coming year. I used to know who most of the starting rosters were on both sides of ball. I loved back in the day when Kyle Tucker used to report about all the unknown up and coming kids during spring football and then you could watch for them during the season and watch them progress over the years. Not anymore. Half the roster turns over every year. I'm not investing the time to keep up with someone who's out the door to the first team that offers more money. I don't blame the kids, get your money while you can. But I just don't have the desire to buy in anymore. And I've talked to many other typical fans that seem to have the same feeling. Whether or not their participation will drop like my own, I have no idea, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I am in the same boat and I have realized over the last couple years that the only reason I still watch VT football in the fall is because of the kids, its one of the only ways I can get out of the house and hang with the guys over the course of the year. If I was able to get out more often, I don't think I would care anymore.
My interest in pro sports has increased during this time because there are legitimate ways for any team to compete. In college, it seems like everyone is working to push us down right now, and it has turned me off on all college athletics, hard. Didn't watch one Hokie basketball game this past year, men's or women's, I didn't even care to know when we were playing. Only college sports that I watched was Tech and the first weekend of the NCAA tournament, and even then there wasn't enough chaos to make it worth it. I honestly have no idea what our football schedule is next year, and really have no clue who our 2-deep is. To me, college sports is dead, might as well be as inconsequential as a AAA baseball or the AHL in hockey.
Virginia should follow suit so as not to put us at a competitive disadvantage.
I suppose we could have eliminated taxes for teachers and nurses.
Nah.
Arguably income taxes for everyone is a dumb concept but yeah as I mentioned above so many professions deserve this more than over paid 18-28 year olds playing football
Consumption tax is the way to go. We already have it of course, but it should be raised enough to eliminate income tax. If you want the rich to pay their fair share of consumption taxes, tax yachts at 110% for example. Tax country club memberships, tax dividends over a certain amount, yadda. Pay tax on what you use, not your income. It would work.
Problem is when you have a luxury tax, it just kills those industries, as wealthy people have a lot of control over their spending, and can spend in locations outside your control. This is well-documented. Ends up having effects you don't want.
So if you want to kill the boat industry, have a wealth tax on boats.
Any tax that is too tailored ends up being manipulated by politicians and industries. You want some tax revenue without killing a manufacturing industry? Tax capital gains on death. You can certainly make an argument for that, but there is an entire industry of lawyers and accountants who would object. Also, really rich people who borrow against their brokerage accounts so they don't have to pay taxes on gains.
As a person whose stock account was set up initially when they were 6 with a $40 investment into Norfolk Southern, I really don't want an increase on long term capital gains taxes. When I finally sold that stock in 2020, it had appreciated in value between dividend reinvestment and stock splits to over 16k. Today, a lot of those stock investments are in tax sheltered accounts so they are going to be safe from taxes.
I think realistically taxes need to go up or at least new brackets for higher income as well as spending being cut. Or the loopholes need to be closed. However, I am not sure it is ever going to happen as too many members of Congress use those loopholes.
The SS cap on income needs to be increased for earners over 186k a year and accordingly the SS payout should also go up for those people. That being said, those people are going to have their SS taxed anyway.
But I am going to stop there as we are getting perilously close to politics.
Sure. I agree with most of that.
I'm talking about capital gains NOT in a retirement account. I see no reason to reset the capital gains on death so that no taxes need be paid on the gains, which are already limited to 20% on long term gains. And I get the "family farm" argument, but there could be a carve out for that. As it stands, guys like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are never going to sell the majority of any of their personal stock, and taxes will never be paid on those gains. Most will go to charity, and I'm OK with that as well, but resetting capital gains avoids a lot of taxation, even at historically low rates.
A common strategy for wealthy people is to borrow money to live on rather than cash out stock, as they intend to leave stock to inheritors without paying capital gains.
My problem on eliminating the step up tax on death is mainly the family farms and for a good bit of people it is how the lower middle class becomes middle and middle upper, etc. My grandfather started as a coal miner, became an efficiency expert before starting a water treatment company. He built some wealth and wanted to be able to hand it partly down.
My father started by delivering meat during summers, and worked as a janitor and at a canning factory to pay for his grad school. When he died they reset the value on his accounts and that saved mom on some stocks but actually cost us tax write-offs on some other investments as paper losses became real losses with the reset.
I think it would just as easy to set up a lower level threshold of say $30 million (number out of hat) that if your estate is worth more than that number you can't reset capital gains or they are limited. That is going to protect inheritance of the middle class and probably 90% of the family farms while limiting the stupidly wealthy from just continuing to spin.
The best thing would be tax loans on capital borrowing or outlaw it.
Like I said, I'm OK with a (temporary) carve out for family farms, but when they eventually sell, they get taxed like everyone else.
Anything you make exempt from taxes can, and will, be exploited by anyone with a lawyer and an accountant.
Boomers get ragged on for "having it easy"- yet when they die and want to leave wealth to their family- well no fuck that, we need mucho tax money for other people besides their family. You do realize that all the death tax does is incentivize spending every dime you have and selling everything from your nursing home/death bed, right? Let's see- I can sign the house over to my son, so he gets killed on every single possible tax. Or? I could sell it- pay capitol gains only. Tough fucking decision. No american should ever favor more taxes. none. EVERY american should favor cutting waste and spending.
by and large, most governments need (and want) their citizens to spend money. So, yeah, the incentives are structured to encourage people to spend, not save. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be this way, but that's the way it is and has been for a long time. Obviously this is an over-simplification but economies want money flowing, not sitting in savings accounts. So it makes sense that governments would incentivize spending over saving.
I think your last point has merits. Taxes are a necessary evil. Nobody enjoys paying taxes but many people enjoy the benefits that taxes pay for. The main problem I think every taxed society faces is that we can't all agree on how that money should be spent. It's tough to swallow the tax pill. It's even tougher when you either don't know or don't agree with where the money is going. When you have as large and diverse a country as the U.S. that's a huge problem that you're just going to always face. The answer isn't simple, just like the problem isn't simple.
I, for one, would be in favor of a system where each tax-paying individual can select which government programs receive their tax dollars. If the IRS provided a form with a list of all the potential receivers of your tax money and gave you the option to select which percentage that you pay goes to which item on the list that would be pretty cool. I'd hate taxes just a little bit less if I had a little bit more control over how the money were spent.
I agree with you - my hang up has always been the revenue piece. We do not nee more tax revenue- we have shown this 10-fold throughout history. Half of our workforce doesn't even pay federal income tax and we are the strongest economy in the world with the largest military. We have plenty of "money" coming IN. Our issue is that we sign these ridiculous bills that include some great things to help society- but they also include a ton of bogus pork that you can't put back in the bottle once it's budgeted. So to avoid (more) riots in the streets, the government won't "cut" things like Welfare, the VA, etc, etc - because that is the end of the world. Get rid of the waste and pork, and spend it on critical things like healthcare, education, housing- you know what makes/breaks a society. Regardless, there is plenty enough revenue coming in.
Wait, are you saying we shouldn't kill the yacht industry? Cause I'm fine with that, I don't want a yacht.
Yes, I'm saying we shouldn't kill the yacht industry.
Because 1) I like boats, and 2) why is the government interfering with commerce, and 3) selecting one kind of luxury item that you don't happen to own to tax is (IMHO) bad policy. I mean, we're having this discussion in a thread about giving athletes a break on taxes, which is also bad policy, but a particular influential audience (college sports fans) may be inclined to overlook it.
I want the guys that design, build and maintain and crew them to have the jobs they want. It's like cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Besides, we did that once before with the yacht tax and that's exactly what it did, killed the yacht industry.
Next they are going to propose a private plane tax... What will Tech do then fly commercial for scouting trips?
A very good book, although fairly old, that does a great job illustrating the absurdity of government policies is The Death of Common Sense.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Common-Sense-Suffocating-America/dp/0812982746
Along with The Millionaire Next Door, those are books that should be required reading in high school. Illustrates how certain aspects of government - like the ones written in the late 1700s - could be clear and consistent, while others, like the tax code (all 10,000 pages of it*) is practically nothing but loopholes allowing special interest groups and those that can afford the best tax attorneys to benefit.
* Do not know how long the tax code is now or was when the book was published, just listing the number from above in the discussion.
That makes too much sense and doesn't benefit lobbyists and the politicians they pay enough to ever happen.
smh yall
How in the hell did a game played with a leather ball as a form of fun and entertainment get this complicated.
1. Conferences expanded and ate the smaller conferences. Big 12 ate the SWC the ACC ate the Big East. The B1G added Maryland and Rutgers. This expanded markets and thus TV contracts. 2. There was so much money, that coaches salary's ballooned to 5-10 million per year. 3. With so much money "in" the sport, amateurism went out the window. 4. Schools had to spend money on facilities because they wanted the best players. They couldn't offfer them money, so they offered mini golf and arcades instead. 5. The more you win, the more you get from boosters to lure said players via facilities. 6. Global pandemic strikes and the NCAA stopped giving a shit about eligibility and transfer rules. 7. This opened a window for the players to double down and say not only can movement not be restricted (precedent), compensation can't be restricted either. Genie out of bottle. 8. The NCAA was is and remans useless- they have no power, no authority and where they do, they are corrupt to the core- giving UNC, Michigan others a free pass for cheating. 9. Absent any governing body, simply sue for direct payment to players, unlimited eligibility and put it in a judges hands who will always rule for the allegedly oppressed not free market. 10. The wild fucking west.
This is pretty much spot on.
Is it complicated?
Or is it just another case of "The folks that own the place win"?
Just saw a post that for next season Texas Tech is slated to pay out a combined $55M to football between revenue sharing and NIL.
Its like money comes out of wells down there in TX.
Pretty soon we'll be getting Big Dogged by North Dakota and University of Alaska Fairbanks with the oil money, I guess.
It's going to be really interesting to see if their nonblueblood status holds them back or not. How much does the brand matter in the pat-for-play era?
Didn't hold them back in Softball which they have more than doubled down on. They have commitments from two of the top portal Entrants so far in Softball. Guess they saw it work there and decided to go big in football too. Helps the SEC took most of their blockers out of the way to Big12 championships.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/west-texas-boom-inside-t...
Seems relevant. Whole article on a oil landsman pumping cash into a no-cap Wild West NIL landscape. I kept waiting for the return on this cash, closest thing I can find in the article is a trip to the playoff.
multi-billionaires dumping millions in college athletics is like the Saudis investing into professional sports. They're not doing it for the ROI, they're doing it to amuse themselves as a fun side project or hobby. Their investments make more in a day in the markets than they donate to these schools. They literally don't care, its a tax write off for them.
The saudis do it to distract you from their horrid human rights, anti religious freedom and terrorist sponsoring regime. If you watch Phil Mickelson shoot 81, you might not think about how women there are not permitted to testify in court and only recently were allowed to drive. And as our luck has it, we have very few of those. In fact the world has very few multi billionaires. There will be a college football team sponsored by the saudis soon- my money is on Ohio State being the first. Beating michigan is more important than freedom of religion.
Can we not
Unlikely. But I appreciate your effort.
Not voting up or down, but he isn't wrong.
CG violations to continue down that road 🤷♂️
True. Which is why we all stopped.
Ahh cmon man, you gotta use a gif when appropriate