The Billionaire Playbook: How Sports Owners Use Their Teams to Avoid Millions in Taxes

[turbinetree]

Owners like Steve Ballmer can take the kinds of deductions on team assets — everything from media deals to player contracts — that industrialists take on factory equipment. That helps them pay lower tax rates than players and even stadium workers.
by Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Ellis Simani July 8, 5 a.m. EDT

At a concession stand at Staples Center in Los Angeles, Adelaide Avila was pingponging between pouring beers, wiping down counters and taking out the trash. Her Los Angeles Lakers were playing their hometown rival, the Clippers, but Avila was working too hard to follow the March 2019 game.

When she filed taxes for her previous year’s labors at the arena and her second job driving for Uber, the 50-year-old Avila reported making $44,810. The federal government took a 14.1% cut.

On the court that night, the players were also hard at work. None more so than LeBron James. The Lakers star was suffering through a painful strained groin injury, but he still put up more points and played more minutes than any other player.


https://www.propublica.org/article/the-billionaire-playbook-how-sports-owners-use-their-teams-to-avoid-millions-in-taxes

[MyOwnPeace]

1. And to think..........

I thought TFG was getting off easy with paying $750 a year!

[ProfessorGAC]

2. K&R

Interesting article.
No surprises, but a good read.

[Mosby]

3. I didn't know that player income is treated

As ordinary earned income. Why is that the case?

Great piece, thx for posting.

[Zeitghost]

5. Because they are normal employees

Athletes are just like any other employee working for a salary. Their paychecks are just a bit bigger.

[Mosby]

7. Regular employees are not paid on contract

Freelance employees are.

They meet a lot of the guidelines for freelance work.

[melm00se]

9. That is not entirely true

I have signed contracts for my job as a W-2 employee.

[turbinetree]

6. Wado................thank you

[Zeitghost]

4. A very misleading article

There are plenty of reasons to change the corporate tax code. Depreciating assets is not one of them.

If you buy an asset for 200M and then "make" 20M your first year, you have yet to make any profit to be taxed. You can't ignore the purchase price and pretend it's not a deductible expense just because it's not a periodic expense.

[Mosby]

8. They are allowed to claim player contracts as a fixed asset.

And yet the contracts are just payroll expense, but they depreciate the "value".