Cincyblogs.com
Showing posts with label cheese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cheese. Show all posts

Sunday, November 3, 2019

NCAA: From Cream Cheese To Endorsements


You may have read that the NCAA voted to allow students to benefit financially from the use of their name, image or likeness.

In truth, their hand was forced when California Governor Newsom signed the Fair Pay to Play Act on Lebron’s television show “The Shop.” Other states, including Florida, were also lining up on the issue.

Newsom was striking at an organization that realized over a $1 billion in revenues last year from “student-athletes,” all the while banning players from receiving any compensation other than scholarships.

Mind you, this is the same organization that used to ban schools from serving bagels with cream cheese. The NCAA argued (with a straight face somehow) that a bagel was a snack but a bagel with cream cheese was a meal. Meals were a no-go.

The tax hook for this post came from North Carolina (U.S.) Senator Richard Burr, who indicated he would introduce a bill to tax scholarships if the student-athlete also earns money from endorsements.

Methinks that Senator Burr is not a fan of the new rule.

Alternatively, he may subscribe to the new-economics theory of taxing something until it stops doing whatever triggered its taxation in the first place.

Did you know that some scholarships are already taxable?

Yep, the plain-old variety.

Scholarships used to be tax-free until 1980. The Code was then changed to look at whether services were being performed as a requirement for receiving the scholarship. Teaching assistantships would now be taxable, for example.

There was further change in 1986, when the Code began taxing scholarships used for living expenses.  If one received a scholarship, it was now important to determine whether it was for tuition or for room-and-board. Tuition was tax-free but room-and-board was not.
COMMENT: This change seems erratic to me, considering that The College Board has reported that living expenses make-up over half the cost of undergraduate education.
Scholarships for non-degree students next became taxable.

I would have to think about what national existential peril we barely avoided with that change to the tax law.

Senator Burr would add another exception-to-the-exception if you could buy a jersey with someone’s name on it. Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa comes to mind. Your being able to buy a jersey with his name and number would make his scholarship taxable. It probably means little in Tua’s case, as he is projected to be a first round NFL draft selection. Take someone in a less prominent sport and the result might not feel as comfortable.


Then again, someone less prominent would probably not get into a payment-for-name, image-or-likeness situation.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The Fat Tax and Nutella Tax

There seems to be an international flavor to our blog this week. We last discussed the Carrot Rebellion. Let’s now discuss the “Fat Tax” and “Nutella Tax.”
Truly, I am not making this up.
About a year ago Denmark implemented a tax on all foods with saturated fat content above 2.3 percent. Its intent was to reduce the consumption of unhealthy foods; you know, like butter, sausage, cream and cheese. Apparently mankind has been on a one-way road to health perdition since we domesticated animals.



The tax didn’t go particularly well. While it did raise over $210 million, many Danes took to lower-cost alternatives or simply crossed the border into Germany. An additional advantage to Germany was that prices are approximately 20% lower.
This past Saturday Denmark announced that it was abolishing the tax, since it was having the negative consequences of inflating food prices and putting jobs at risk. The government further announced that it was cancelling its plans to further tax sugar.
Do you ever wonder how much ideological kool-aid one must drink to not have seen this coming?
That brings us to France.
Have you heard of a product called Nutella? It is made of chocolate and hazelnut, not a personal favorite. Senators in France have called for a major tax on palm oil (think 300%), which is a principal ingredient in Nutella. The tax has become known as the “Nutella Tax.” There are some bad things associated with palm oil, including deforestation pressures in Borneo and Indonesia. I agree – deforestation is a bad thing. So are droopy pants in public. Neck tattoos. Loud vulgar music. Inane cell phone calls in the grocery aisles.  
I am thinking palm oil doesn’t even make the top 300 list.