Steve Ballmer Gets Billion-Dollar Tax Write-Off For Being Basketball Baron

McGruber (1417641) writes "According to a report published by The Financial Times (paywalled), ex-Microsoft CEO Billionaire Steve Ballmer will be able to write off about a billion dollars of his basketball team's purchase price from the taxable income he makes over the next 15 years. "Under an exception in US law, buyers of sports franchises can use an accounting treatment known as goodwill against their other taxable income. This feature is commonly used by tax specialists to structure deals for sports teams. Goodwill is the difference between the purchase price of an asset and the actual cash and other fixed assets belonging to the team."

Comments

If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[CRCulver]

This is a wise policy. If you tax the rich too much, then they won't buy local basketball teams and instead will look elsewhere. Eventually there wouldn't be any professional sports at all in our great and beautiful nation. Instead of sitting down to watch the NBA on their televisions, Americans would instead see only short-statured, low-wage Chinese tossing a ball around instead. Kudos to the government for allowing an entrepreneur like Ballmer to keep his local business going.

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[nucrash]

I thought he would most likely send the Basket Ball team, the Clippy's to India.

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[NotDrWho]

I'm just glad that we poor people can do our part in giving more money to rich guys so they can create more jobs and such. It's like Jesus said "Given unto the rich so they may beget to the poor."

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[king neckbeard]

If it's not that much to Ballmer, I'll gladly take just a month of that. 5 million is plenty to me.

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[Culture20]

You don't get taxed based on your net worth; it's "income tax" for a reason. How much taxable income does he receive a year (not counting this tax break)?

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[MachineShedFred]

Most of society, including wildly successful people across all faiths, disciplines, and cultures.

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[Anonymous Coward]

The successful ones aren't really watching. They're just playing a different game. It's amazing what you can get sports fans to do with a ticket to a suite.

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[luis_a_espinal]

*sighs*

A billion over FIFTEEN YEARS. Amounts to about $70 million a year.

Considering that Ballmer is worth north of twenty Billion, we're not actually talking about a huge tax break here.

What we are talking about is an article that combines fifteen years of tax deductions in order to put that magic "B" in the title to get people excited....

We shouldn't need a 'B' to get excited. A billion is a billion whether it gets paid in a year or 15. And $70 million in taxes is $70 million no matter how you cut it. Under what type of cynic logic can this be justified?

This is not $70 millions in non-taxable charities, but an investment on a money machine in the sports/entertainment industry.

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[Applehu Akbar]

Ballmer also wouldn't be able to work on the problem the Clippers have been having lately: in the middle of a game, all the players suddenly stop right where they happen to be in action and freeze in place. Whenever this happens, you have to restart the game from the beginning. The team doctor says that a large load of viruses seems to be responsible.

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[nucrash]

Think of it like this:

If we took that money and spent it on education alone, considering the average cost of what it takes to put a student through school in a year ($11,153), that would allow for 6276 students. That's per year for 15 years.

In less than two years, India would have been able to pay for another Satellite to orbit Mars.

Think of the amount of road work that could have been done in that time?

I know this is from a Tax and Spend Democrat, but right now, I know there are a lot of students that could use that money, as improving their living conditions would improve their school performance.

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[Rob Y.]

And as passive income that billion a year is taxed at a 15% rate after all of his other deductions and loopholes. Whether or not you think a $70 mil writeoff is insignificant to a hundred billionaire, it's just this kind of insult to injury loophole (available only to the hyper rich) that makes a travesty of the notion that we're all in this together. But, of course, we're not - and apparently CrimsonAvenger is fine with that...

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[RingDev]

$20 billion in the bank.
Figure 5% annual return (highly conservative) for $1 billion gross income
15% unearned income tax rate.
$150 million annual tax payment
-$70 million annual tax credit

So yeah, cutting his tax burden in 1/2 for buying a basketball team seems a little out of whack.

For instance, imagine if you or I got to cut our income tax rate in half because we sponsored a little-league team. Wouldn't that be nice! But of course we can't. This law isn't set up to benefit the whole of society, it's set up to benefit those members of society who have enough money and power to effect the rules.

-Rick

Re:If you tax the rich, they'll leave

[geoskd]

Basketball tickets are a luxury. If you buy them, it's because you chose to give Ballmer money. I can't help you with that.

Thats right, we can choose not to buy basketball tickets (and I'm already in that camp), but we can't choose not to subsidize Balmers purchase of the team because a set of, long since gone, politicians wrote that nice little loophole into our tax code for us. The way I do the math, those assholes transferred about $10 from my pocket into Blamers pocket with just this one transaction. I had no say in the matter. I had no interest in the stupid basketball team (or the sport for that matter), and yet here I am subsidizing it...

I want to know: What humanitarian need did my $10 fill? In what way is the world a better place than it would have been if Balmer had to cough up the price without my subsidy? I could fully support the idea if my money had gone towards curing cancer, or helping dying children, or something equally righteous, but how is supporting Basketball, a sport that is fully capable of paying its own way, helping better humanity? How is this anything other than yet another way in which those with the power and the money are stealing from the rest of us?

So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[RichMan]

So when someone buys a team at overvalue, the regular tax payer is on the hook for that overvalue.

Nice deal the rich have going, getting someone else to pay their bills.

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[Imrik]

On the other hand, the person who receives payment has to pay taxes on the overvalue.

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[Overzeetop]

Yeah, we wish...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ro...

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[Anonymous Coward]

he would pay more in tax in a single year than 99% of the population pay in there entire lives.

Except he won't, he'll exploit exceptions and loopholes until he's paying less tax than a top-level middle manager. You don't seem to understand how taxation works.

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[ganjadude]

if the team was not sold, would there be any tax revenue??? no. its still a net gain for the government (the same government who uses that money to abuse americans and people abroad)

Can we PLEASE stop acting like letting people keep their own money is somehow the same as the tax payers giving money to "the ev0l rich"???

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[Shoten]

he would pay more in tax in a single year than 99% of the population pay in there entire lives.

Except he won't, he'll exploit exceptions and loopholes until he's paying less tax than a top-level middle manager. You don't seem to understand how taxation works.

Actually, this is only sort of true. On a percentage-of-annual-income basis, it's correct. But in terms of dollars and cents paid in taxes annually, it is incorrect.

The fact that Ballmer is involved in this is the only reason it's on Slashdot...let's face it. This situation relates to capital investment, and it happens several times a day with regard to transactions of varying sizes. We could argue about whether or not it's about the taxpayer that gets stuck with this or that, or whether capital will flee if we tax the rich more, but one thing is true: Ballmer is no more to fault for leveraging available, documented, and legal tax write-offs than we are when we all claim a write-off for our mortgages, business expenses, or even just the standard deduction (if we don't even itemize).

None of us seek to maximize the amount of taxes we pay. But we demonize the ultra-wealthy, by name, when they do the same thing as us but on a larger scale. Don't fault them, fault the system...and then change it.

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[weilawei]

We fault them because they design the system expressly to create loopholes that only they can afford to exploit, via legalized bribery and the good 'ol boys network.

Stop being an apologist shill. Fuck off. You're never going to be that rich unless you're a sociopath who doesn't mind screwing over everyone in your path.

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[Nemyst]

Sure, but only if I can get a tax credit for 50% the price of my next house. I mean, if the house was not sold, there wouldn't be any tax revenue.

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[king neckbeard]

And who do you think tells the politicians what to do? Hint: it's not the general public.

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[GameboyRMH]

Someone who makes $10 million (or more) a year could afford to pay 90% tax and still live comfortably. But in what way is that fair? Presumably this person is providing a service to a business that they have both agreed is worth $10 million a year, and that they are both happy with the arrangement. Why should the government be allowed to take such a large amount of money as taxes? The rich person doesn't really get much extra out of the deal. At the end of the year, they may have only paid $100,000 in taxes, which is 1% of their earnings, but the have paid the same in taxes than 10 people making $30,000 who may have paid $10,000 each.

The rich person gets to harvest most of the productivity of a vast number of people who receive many services from the government but don't personally cover the entire cost through their taxes.

Also, some may argue that the wealthy do get more out of their taxes, but that is something that should be changed. We should fix the system so that they get exactly as much as everyone else. Not make them pay more because we know they get more out of the system.

Sounds fair. We'd have to stop them from absorbing so much of the value that others produce.

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[aaarrrgggh]

No, not really. There are a few bad exceptions (Hollywood accounting comes to mind), but on the whole the system is designed reasonably fair. Specific tax credits (not deductions) are a problem, but it is all designed around the complexities of the tax code. Simplifying the tax code isn't easy.

Simple example: my wife has her own business, and makes less than $50k from it. Almost all that money goes into her 401k. She takes a minimal salary ($20k per year, of which $17.5k goes to her 401k, $2.5k goes to payroll taxes, and $2k goes to employment taxes). Everything else goes into her 401k, and we live off of my salary. This arrangement cost $400 to set up, and $250 per year in accounting, and saves us about $20k in taxes. (More importantly though it helps her build her retirement account which was non-existent 4 years ago.)

I also know several teachers that use real-estate tax benefits to fund their retirement or kid's college, taking advantage of the tax write-offs there.

The one thing I really wish would be different is that the IRS didn't tax retained earnings in small businesses. This is economically crippling and makes for poor business decisions busy not building sufficient reserves. However, if they did this it would make abuse significantly worse as it would allow a small business to choose when and how much taxes they pay.

If you want to learn about how to minimize your tax liability, read a book or hire an expert. The book can get you 90% of the way there. The one I read was something like "tax write offs of the rich" for $20. It wasn't anything revolutionary, but it makes you think about how you leverage your money. It had some terrible advice (in the post housing bust mindset), but you need to understand the implications of your actions and not just expect a magic formula to make you wealthy/happy/healthy/whatever.

Re:So the taxpayer pays for overage, got it

[swillden]

So when someone buys a team at overvalue, the regular tax payer is on the hook for that overvalue.

I don't think you understand what "deduction" means. It doesn't mean that Ballmer gets to recover his billion dollars from taxpayers, it just means that he doesn't have to pay taxes on that much of his capital gains income. Essentially, they're treating this as a bad investment on which Ballmer has taken a billion-dollar loss. In any investments you pay taxes on gains, but you get to deduct any losses against those gains.

In this case, it's actually an asset depreciation, not an actual loss... but those details don't really matter.

Note that the other side of this is that if Ballmer turns around in a few years and sells the team for exactly what he bought it for, any portion of the original value which he has claimed as a loss (depreciated away), but which he then recovers in the sale becomes a new capital gain. Basically, if the buys for $2B, argues that $1B of that was a loss and offsets it against other gains (using all of the $1B) then sells for $2B, the IRS will say "You bought for $1B and sold for $2B, so you have to pay capital gains on $1B".

There are lots of actual loopholes out there, but this isn't really one of them.

Re:Wrong headline

[king neckbeard]

And the loopholes are there because of the influence the rich have over the government. You can be mad at the people who made a loophole and the people who abuse it simultaneously.

Misleading- Good will is common accounting

[cbelt3]

The implied assumption in the article and in the commentary indicates a deliberate misdirection or a simple understanding of the accounting principles involved in how a business accounts for a BAD DECISION. Every business has the ability to use this 'loophole'. But it's not a 'loophole'. It's a simple recognition that a capital purchase that turns out to not be a good deal should have the loss (cost of the purchase price minus the fair market value of the asset) amortized over the book life of the asset against the income produced by the asset.

Kids, this is basic accounting 301 (Intermediate management accounting). Most accountants will tell you that having good will on your books means you made a dumb decision at some point, and paid more than something was worth. The title SHOULD read:

"Ballmer pays twice what Basketball team is worse, can't write it off immediately, has to wait 15 years."

Re:Misleading- Good will is common accounting

[Freedom Bug]

Waiting 15 years is a better deal than everybody else gets. Everybody else gets to wait indefinitely; most have to realize a loss before it can be claimed. In other words, if you overpay for an asset you don't get to claim a loss until you sell that asset to somebody else.

Re:Misleading- Good will is common accounting

[eric31415927]

There is no loophole here.
Imagine buying a truck to use in a business. The cost of the truck can be written off against earnings over a number of years instead of all at once. The accounting principle here is to spread the cost of the asset over its useful life.

Goodwill is also an asset that can be written off over a number of years. It's an intangible asset with a more ambiguous useful life. The mechanism for writing it off over 15 years instead of, say, 40 years may be questionable. Government policy to attract investment may have led to the 15-year period.

So long as Ballmer is forced to follow the government's rules and he spreads the cost over many years, I see no problem..

Re:Misleading- Good will is common accounting

[DRJlaw]

The implied assumption in the article and in the commentary indicates a deliberate misdirection or a simple understanding of the accounting principles involved in how a business accounts for a BAD DECISION. Every business has the ability to use this 'loophole'. But it's not a 'loophole'. It's a simple recognition that a capital purchase that turns out to not be a good deal should have the loss (cost of the purchase price minus the fair market value of the asset) amortized over the book life of the asset against the income produced by the asset.

Kids, this is basic accounting 301 (Intermediate management accounting).

If it were basic accounting 301, then you would have learned that "goodwill" does not equate to the purchase price minus the "fair market value" of the asset. Goodwill represents the "fair market value" of the asset minus the value of the tangible assets -- the inventory, machinery, real estate, etc. that can be quantitatively and qualitatively priced by sales or marking to a known market.

If you were to purchase the Coca-Cola corportion, then you would be spending an enormous amount on "goodwill." That is because the value of the trade secret for the formulation of Coca-Cola, the value of the brand recognition for Coca-Cola, and the value of the bottler network relationships are all intangible assets that do not have a concrete or easily ascertainable value. A significant part of the value of Coca-Cola lies not in the value of the HQ building (real estate), the office computers, lab, and pilot plant equipment (you don't think the actual corporation owns very many bottling lines and delivery trucks, do you?), but in the value of being Coca-Cola and not Royal Crown Cola.

That's goodwill. You didn't necessarily make a bad decision buying Coca Cola because you didn't buy it for the price of RC Cola, you paid for intangibles that contributed to the medium term P/E ratio (or similar metric) that you actually used to detemine the price tha you were willing to pay. If you try to pack that value into the tangible assets of the corporation, which depreciate over time and must be replaced (note, also over much shorter depreciation scales), then you end up with silly values that are way above market. If you offer a price only based on "real" values of the physical assets, the seller is going to tell you to take a long walk off a short pier.

The difference between (1) the price of the tangible assets and (2) the price the buyer is willing to pay and the seller is willing to accept, i.e., the very definition of a "fair market value," is the value of the intangible assets. Some of those you can estimate a value for, if need be, but frequently they are all lumped together as "goodwill." Sure you can overpay and make a bad decision, but that's because you eff'ed up the value of the revenue stream you could generate versus the cost of the debt you took on(or the opportunity cost of the money you took out of whatever other investment you shifted out of to) to buy it, not simply because you spent money on goodwill.

Signed,
A guy who does M&A work

Re:Misleading- Good will is common accounting

[nealric]

Thank you. I am a tax attorney. People who rant about "tax loopholes" rarely understand what they are talking about. When people talk about loopholes, they can describe any of the following:

1) A logical flaw in the wording of the code allowing very low tax for a transaction or allowing a transaction to "shelter" other income. This would be something like the way Subchapter K was worded (portion of the tax code governing partnerships) allowing the Son of BOSS tax shelter. I would consider these this a "true" loophole. However, when this happens, the IRS will (usually successfully) challenge the transaction under various anti abuse rules in the tax law.

2) Tax preferences. These are things that can be as common as the home mortgage interest deduction or as esoteric as the special dispensation for non-profits that host bingo games. The government is trying to encourage home ownership or VFW halls and writes something into the tax code. Tax preferences can also be the result of lazy budgeting by Congress, describing what is really a spending measure as a tax cut.

3) Provisions of the tax code that apply to certain complex business transactions. Things like the tax deferral for controlled foreign corporations, or as we have here, the amortization of goodwill. Business transactions can be really complex, which means the tax code tends to have to follow suit with complexity. Sometimes these provisions can produce really good results for the business. Often, they can produce very bad results if you aren't careful as a tax planner. When they produce favorable results (or what seems like favorable results) we call them "loopholes". But really, it's just an attempt to accurately measure and tax "income", which can be a very difficult thing to do.

4) Tax evasion. People talk about things like undeclared offshore accounts as a "loophole". It's not really a loophole. It's just tax evasion that is rather hard to catch.

Re:Misleading- Good will is common accounting

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have to understand to the same level as you, they know that the extremely wealthy can protect their wealth via vehicles the rest of the world cannot. That's the fucking difference.

Re:Misleading- Good will is common accounting

[nealric]

It's actually a lot more simple than that. As currently written, the tax code preferences capital over labor because capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. All of the complexity is mostly a red herring. Increase the capital gains rate to match ordinary income, and the effective rate on the wealthy will increase substantially.

Re:Misleading- Good will is common accounting

[laughingskeptic]

Accountants from the 1970s will tell you that having good will on your books means you made a dumb decision at some point. Modern accounting practice is to assign as much value of a major purchase as possible to 'Good Will' because of the associated write off. If you review the fortune 100's annual filings you will find them full of purchases of lesser companies where the majority of the value of the purchase was assigned to 'Good Will'. Since the IRS takes 'Good Will' assignment at face value, why wouldn't you take as big of a write off as possible if you are a business spending money?

Re:Misleading- Good will is common accounting

[DRJlaw]

Goodwill is the 'gap' between the valuation numbers and the purchase price by definition (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill.asp).

No. Valuation only combines identifiable tangible and intangible assets. If you do not break out and assign distinct values to intangible assets like copyrights, trademarks, patents, or especially other intangible assets such as distribution contracts, those items do not fall within "book value," but rather the goodwill account. Read your own link. There are times that this needs to be done -- for certain tax benefits -- but otherwise you try to avoid this exercise.

To assign a book value to an intangible asset you have to be able to demonstrate that you've given it a so-called "fair value" . For intangible assets that can extremely difficult to do. The value of the "Coke" trademark is not traded on a market, or readily comparable to equivalents, or entirely described by a separate revenue stream (it is in part - licensing revenue for merchandise - but it is also inextricably part of the value of the base product). The entire point of "goodwill" is to provide an account mechanism for that portion of the fair market price -- the non-book value -- that cannot be marked to an asset market like most physical goods.

Everyone is equal before the law.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Americans, do not give into class warfare arguments. You too have the right to buy sports franchises and write off billion dollars from your taxable income. You too have the right to create a SuperPAC and spend a million dollars to launch attack ads against the politicians who you don't like. Every one is equal before the law. And America has the best political system money can buy, let no one try to convince you otherwise.

Major league sports are a welfare scam

[Required Snark]

NBA, NFL, MLB, it makes no difference. They are all state supported monopolies that make obscene profits by stealing from the general public.

They have lots of ways to steal, and they are really good at it. First, of course is their monopoly status. It's what every giant corporations dreams of. All the benefits of pretend capitalism, none of that pesky competition.

Then there's the stadium scam. Get a city to build you a stadium, along with getting a bunch of tax breaks. Pretend that you are bringing in "jobs". In fact most of the jobs are low level minimum wage jobs for running the physical plant and selling food. Not much in the way of real economic benefit.

The media contracts are where they real big time theft happens. If you have cable or any high speed media link, you are automatically paying for sports. Then if you want to watch something not in your area, you have to pay extra for the privilege. It's like the MicroSoft Tax, only worse. The only way to opt out is to stick to terrestrial HD broadcast.

No wonder Ballmer joined the owners club. He finally achieved 100% monopolist status, which he was never quite able to get at Microsoft.

Personally, I hope he chokes to death on some greasy stadium food.

Re:Loophooles for poor people too...

[king neckbeard]

Giving a pittance to the poor doesn't really compare.