(Editorial by the Times-Picayune/Advocate, March 18)
Perhaps the best response to a new tax-exemptionhttps://www.google.com/search?q=you+cannot+be+serious&oq=you+cannot+be+serious&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyBwgBEC4YgAQyBwgCEAAYgAQyBwgDEAAYgAQyBwgEEAAYgAQyBwgFEAAYgAQyBwgGEAAYgAQyBwgHEAAYgAQyBwgIEAAYgAQyBwgJEAAYgATSAQkzMzI5ajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBaAGxZlSyYX68QWgBsWZUsmF-g&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:340d0893,vid:t0hK1wyrrAU,st:0 idea in the Louisiana legislature is to quote a famous on-court explosion by tennis great John McEnroe.
Forgive us if we express a high degree of scorn for a proposal by Rep. Dixon McMakin, R-Baton Rouge, which would exempt from state income taxes all “name, image and likeness” money earned by college athletes. The exemption would signify misplaced priorities and values, not to mention a stunning lack of fairness.
It also would be just bad tax policy on a macroeconomic level, not to mention a hypocritical step for this particular legislature.
Let’s take that last point first. This is the same legislature that late last year lowered tax rates in return for, among other things, significantly dialing back tax credits and special-interest deductions. The dial-backs were a recognition that state government should provide a level playing field, not be picking and choosing economic winners and losers – and also that abundant special-interest credits create economic inefficiencies the state should avoid.
Having just done that, how does it make sense to offer a huge exemption to an extremely small group of people who already are commanding large incomes at a young age? And doesn’t that open the state to yet a new round of supplicants begging for similarly favored treatment?
Next, consider priorities and values. The combination of the name-image-likeness system with wide open rules for transferring among universities already has made college sports into an openly rent-a-player enterprise. Before NIL and the transfer portal, college athletics at least had a tenuous, even if oft-violated, link to the overall educational enterprise. Transfers and NIL have reduced that tenuous link to a thread.
It’s a thread that tax-free earnings, all for playing a game, ineluctably would sever.
And what message would it send about how the state values education if its policy for top athletes already getting paid mountains of cash indicates that the value of a free scholarship – itself an untaxed benefit – is so negligible that the state also will exempt the athletes from regular taxes on personal income that every other worker in the state must pay?
Are we so besotted with the ability to throw balls or run fast that we need to turn athletes into their own, exalted class of citizen who can skate away from otherwise basic obligations of residence and employment in Louisiana?
That brings us to the most basic issue, that of fairness. Plumbers must pay state income taxes. Attorneys and anesthetists must pay taxes, and teachers and truck drivers must pay. Why should barely adult basketballers and baseballers, already basking in benefits, be absolved from the same civic requirements?
The legislature should reject this proposal. It amply deserves a failing grade.
