Many people don’t know that the NFL gets literally billions of tax payer dollars in federal subsidizes. Mostly the money comes from taxes to pay for new stadiums, but that’s not always the case. The NFL was a tax exempt “non-profit” corporation up until 2015. How in the hell could the NFL over all those years have been classified as none-profit? The goal of NFL team owners is to make a profit last I checked. The NFL has gotten about $14 billion in government subsidize since last year. $14 BILLION! The Daily Signal has done an amazing job on researching just how much money the NFL gets from the taxpayer. It’s time to cut off welfare to the NFL (and all other professional sports teams) once and for all.
| Here’s how much money NFL gets from taxpayers |
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The fact is that a business that raked in $14 billion in revenue in 2016 is heavily subsidized by local, state, and federal money based on dubious claims about stimulating the economy.
The problem is rampant.
One report on Watchdog.org said that over the past two decades, the NFL has raked in about $7 billion of taxpayer money to spend on stadium renovation and building.
Another study from the Brookings Institution showed that federal taxpayers have subsidized the construction of 36 stadiums at a cost of over $3.2 billion since 2000.
Michael Sargent, an infrastructure expert at The Heritage Foundation, wrote about how sports teams use specially crafted tax breaks to get the public to finance their massive projects.
“Tax-exempt municipal bonds are typically reserved for public-use projects such as bridges, water systems, and other infrastructure,” Sargent wrote for The Daily Signal. “Yet because of a loophole in the tax code, private-use stadiums can take advantage of this tax break, and have done so prolifically.”