The Missouri state legislature is “facing a Friday deadline to approve a plan to keep the Kansas City Royals’ new ballpark on the Missouri side,” reports KMBC, and wait, what? Last we heard, Royals owner John Sherman was still kicking the tires on whether to look at a stadium site in North Kansas City or one in downtown Kansas City that the giant QR code wants or maybe something across the state line in Kansas somewhere, and now there’s suddenly a deadline this Friday? For what, exactly?
A bill already approved by the state Senate proposes $300 million in funding for the ballpark, allocating $15 million annually over 20 years.
The state House must approve the plan by 6 p.m. Friday to advance it to Governor Mike Kehoe.
Oh, okay, it’s just a deadline for approving one particular Royals stadium funding plan. This one would create a stadium authority in Clay County and fund it with $15 million a year in state money for 20 years, which would actually only be enough money to pay off less than $200 million worth of up-front stadium costs, because interest is a thing that exists. That would leave at least several hundred million dollars more still to come from somewhere; the Missouri Independent paraphrases bill sponsor state Sen. Kurtis Gregory as saying “some sort of local support would likely still be needed,” so this would only be a first small step toward building a North Kansas City stadium, if Sherman decides that’s something he’s even interested in.
And if your attention isn’t wandering off already, add that the bill is a last-minute addition to the legislative calendar that is pretty unlikely to pass, given that it has to pass both the state house and senate by Friday, and opposition senators can always run out the clock by filibustering it. Let’s all keep one collective eye half on this as the week progresses, and check back in on Friday night — or really Monday morning, we all deserve a nice weekend off — to see if there’s anything more to this than some weak vaportecture fireworks.
The House W&M tax bill draft, titled (seriously) the “One Big Beautiful Bill” cuts the ability of sports franchise owners to amortize the purchase price of the team.
This was a big deal that Bill Veeck convinced the IRS bless. This gives someone who purchases a sports franchise to amortize (i.e., deduct over time) intangibles allocated to the purchase price such as sure player contracts and broadcast rights, under the theory they are “wasting assets”. So in effect for players that are under contract when you buy a team, you two deductions — one for their current salaries (like any other employee) and one for the fact that the contract will end at some point. With broadcast rights you get to offset the money you receive from the broadcaster with the deduction for the wasting value.
The House proposal would cut the permitted deduction in half.
That would be a nice step toward eliminating team owners’ ability to double-count expenses, and instead only let them one-and-a-half-times-count expenses. Though it’s worth noting that the tax dodge only works if you use a particular type of corporate structure and the tax rates on capital gains and income are significantly different, such that Veeck himself was never actually able to take advantage of it.
Also, I’m 99% confident that sports league lobbyists will get this measure stripped before passage, just like they did the tax-exempt bond provision in Trump 1.0’s tax bill. But nice that someone is talking about it, at least.
It already is getting heavily lobbied but I am not so sure it gets kicked out. Trump is angry at the sports ownership fraternity as they never let him in. He is especially angry at the NFL (players and ownership). So he may push to keep it in.
I am trying to be to find a revenue estimate on the provision but have not been able to.
I saw the revenue estimate. Over 10 years it is estimated to raise $991M. So it won’t cure the budget deficit but it is not nothing.