[Spiny_Norman]

Stanford is a private school. Pascrell should be focused on how SCOTUS is about to start telling Stanford who they can and can't admit, and not what the football coach makes. Dumbass.

Out of scope for Pascrell. He is on the Ways and Means subcommittee on Oversight. Anything related to federal taxes, including the law on federal tax exempt status, is within committee scope. I don't think it is out of bounds to consider the question about whether the government should subsidize through a tax exemption the $100M+ businesses that schools are running through their athletic departments (even if most of those businesses lose money).

There is some recent precedent for looking into this aspect of academia. Beginning in 2018, Congress changed the law on tax deductions for some athletic donations. Donations to a booster club for the right to purchase tickets to an athletic event are now completely nondeductible which was not the case before the law was changed.

This is a good post, but do you really think any bill is getting written that limits college football coach compensation? I'll be interested then but I think the odds are slim, and I imagine he has more important fish to fry than cracking some skulls for a few news stories.

Absolutely 0% chance of any substantive legislation coming out of this exercise. Plus there is no precedent for government restricting compensation at non-profits. In similar situations when Congress wanted to shine a light on what the public considered egregious pay packages for corporate officers for publicly traded companies, Congress changed the law on tax treatment of some incentives. And they required public disclosure of top officer pay. None of which really had any effect. Compensation consultants and tax lawyers will find a way around anything Congress might do or might want to do.

Rather, I imagine what the chairman might want do is investigate and challenge the tax exempt status of universities with big time athletics. It's mostly for show. But I admit feeling a twinge of interest at the thought of Bernard Muir or Persis Drell in front of a microphone (and a bank of photographers) being grilled by the subcommittee members about the finances and operations of the Stanford athletic department.

[Spiny_Norman]

Stanford is a private school. Pascrell should be focused on how SCOTUS is about to start telling Stanford who they can and can't admit, and not what the football coach makes. Dumbass.

Out of scope for Pascrell. He is on the Ways and Means subcommittee on Oversight. Anything related to federal taxes, including the law on federal tax exempt status, is within committee scope. I don't think it is out of bounds to consider the question about whether the government should subsidize through a tax exemption the $100M+ businesses that schools are running through their athletic departments (even if most of those businesses lose money).

There is some recent precedent for looking into this aspect of academia. Beginning in 2018, Congress changed the law on tax deductions for some athletic donations. Donations to a booster club for the right to purchase tickets to an athletic event are now completely nondeductible which was not the case before the law was changed.

This is a good post, but do you really think any bill is getting written that limits college football coach compensation? I'll be interested then but I think the odds are slim, and I imagine he has more important fish to fry than cracking some skulls for a few news stories.

Absolutely 0% chance of any substantive legislation coming out of this exercise. Plus there is no precedent for government restricting compensation at non-profits. In similar situations when Congress wanted to shine a light on what the public considered egregious pay packages for corporate officers for publicly traded companies, Congress changed the law on tax treatment of some incentives. And they required public disclosure of top officer pay. None of which really had any effect. Compensation consultants and tax lawyers will find a way around anything Congress might do or might want to do.

Rather, I imagine what the chairman might want do is investigate and challenge the tax exempt status of universities with big time athletics. It's mostly for show. But I admit feeling a twinge of interest at the thought of Bernard Muir or Persis Drell in front of a microphone (and a bank of photographers) being grilled by the subcommittee members about the finances and operations of the Stanford athletic department.