More and more NFL owners may be regretting the millions they gave to the President, because the President may be taking away the ability of NFL owners to get millions from the government.
The proposal to overhaul the tax code includes a provision that would eliminate tax breaks for cities and states that borrow money to build stadiums. And the NFL, according to Andrew Beaton of the Wall Street Journal (via SportsBusiness Daily) is pushing back.
“We believe that the construction of new stadiums and renovations of stadiums are economic drivers in local communities,” NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart told Beaton. “If the idea is to promote economic growth, this would be a step backwards.”
The proposed tax bill would target the tax exemption on municipal bonds, and those bonds have become a key piece of the $750 million in public funding that will build a new stadium for the Raiders in Las Vegas.
It’s way too early to suspect that the provision, if it becomes law, would actually keep the stadium from being built, but it’s definitely a potential complication for the NFL — and just another thing that a league suddenly under siege needs to worry about.