Wyden’s Clumsy PGA Tour Bill Slices Wide Right

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden hit a shot deep into the tree line with his recently proposed Sports League Tax-Exempt Status Limitations Act. It purports to strip tax exemption from “professional football leagues,” by which the proposal means the PGA Tour.  Here is a one pager summarizing.  Here is the operative language:

‘‘(B) Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to any professional football league if the average annual  value of the assets of such league, as reported on the league’s annual return, for any 3-taxable-year period beginning after December 31, 2020, exceeds $500,000,000.’’

Ah well, I know I am being a stickler about this but why continue using imprecise language that forces us to chase ghosts.  Why use and perpetuate “professional football league” as if it is obvious that it is meant “all central administrative offices of all professional sports?”  The Tax Policy Center reports that “professional football league” came to include central administrative offices of all sports sometime after 1966 but nobody can find any paper trail. And I have read in various places that the IRS treats sports league as exempt by analogy to  “professional football league” mentioned in IRC 501(c)(6).  But that ain’t no way to do business!      

It is not just the curmudgeon in me complaining.  The bothersome problem is that the PGA Tour has always referred to itself as a “Business League” even in correspondence to Congress.  Its 990s speak in business league language, not professional sports league language.  Business league and professional football league are two different phrases in IRC 501(c)(6).  So maybe redefining the phrase “professional football league,” doesn’t bother the PGA Tour at all.  “Who me?” They must be saying.  “We ain’t no professional football league, we are a business league and you have accepted our returns and other written characterizations as such for many years.”  Somebody better oughta check on that or there’s gonna be litigators to pay.  And we wouldn’t have these problems if statutes were written or when possible corrected so that “exclusively” didn’t mean “primarily,” and “professional football league” did not also mean “golf.”  

darryll k. jones