Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

Comments

With President Barack Obama getting ready to leave the White House in January, his final budget proposal includes saving Federal taxpayers roughly $4 billion dollars to lessen the financing of sports stadiums.

The budget for 2017 which was released yesterday, calls for a repeal on federal tax exemption bonds used by cities and states to fund new stadiums. The exemptions currently utilize tax-free bonds that include discounted interest rates, which in the end stacks up to about $4 billion in stadium debt for Federal taxpayers to pay.

Ending the exemption would provide a great beneficial result with about $542 million saved throughout the next decade as well.

Getting rid of the exemption would cost more for states and cities to build stadiums, which in turn hopefully makes the budgets for the stadiums much more cost-conscious. The Treasury Department has also voiced their thoughts on the subject matter overall saying that the use of tax-exempt bonds for the use of stadium expenses tends to shift the cost and charges from the private owners to the local residents and taxpayers.

Although this wouldn’t completely shut-down the practice of publicly funding stadiums, it would still serve as a stance for those who oppose the use of public tax money to build stadiums that benefit the wealthy owners more than anyone else; at least this way the federal taxpayers are not paying taxes on one less thing they don’t want their money going to.

Obama previously included this repeal in his proposure for the 2016 budget but received very little consideration from the Republican-controlled congress. The budget faces a similar scenario this year as well.

Source: HuffPost