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Let’s do a Friday roundup based on the idea that the return of Donald Trump to the White House means some potential changes are in store on the sports side of things. None of these issues are full-blown stories on their own at this point, but there’s something to watch for with each of them.
First, Trump has already pushed to have the Internal Revenue Service cut back on one of the few positive things the Joe Biden White House managed in its four years, which was to increase staffing and focus on collecting money from wealthy taxpayers who weren’t… well, paying their taxes. At least not to the degree that they should have been. Back in 2024, the IRS reported that they’d pulled in $462 million from “1,600 millionaires who have not paid tax debts,” which is substantial. Now, Trump has demanded that no more agents are to be hired, and the energy utilized for cornering millionaires is now going to be put towards immigration crackdowns, with agents poring over employer records to make sure everything is on the up and up. Or, you know, just to have a log of even the legal immigrants in case they want to send them packing, because you can’t put anything past this administration in that regard, given how loud they’ve been with their anti-immigrant agenda both before and after November’s election. Two terrible ideas in one go, now that’s efficiency.
My initial concern — from a sports perspective, I mean, let’s be clear about that — was that this kind of behavior would also let the owners of these teams off the hook. The rumor last spring was that the IRS was going to start looking into the tax loopholes these owners utilized, which allowed for a second deduction on player contracts because they were treated as separate assets from the clubs themselves. Curiously enough, Trump seems fine with continuing the closing of this loophole, though, not necessarily through the IRS. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, mentioned a week ago that his administration was looking to “eliminate special tax breaks for sports teams owners.”
Now, it’s probably confusing to consider that Trump would do something that would anger so many billionaires when so much of everything that’s going on in D.C. in these past few weeks is focused on wealth transfers from the rest of us to the already wealthy, but consider this: the move would still be consistent with his personality. Trump is a vengeful sort, which is why the smallest people in your life adore him so, and an attack on sports teams owners likely stems from nothing more than his failure to buy the Buffalo Bills back in 2014, or, his failed attempt at merging the United States Football League with the NFL back in the 80s via lawsuit.
Anyway, motivations aside, if this ends up happening, it’s going to be a bit of a broken clock situation. And it certainly wouldn’t mean Trump is pro-player in any sport or anything of the sort, either. Which I’m sure we’ll all be reminded of when the eventual gutting of the National Labor Relations Board ends up causing one problem or another for a players association or two over the next four years.
Speaking of Trump changes, economist J.C. Bradbury brought up a point worth paying attention to over on Bluesky earlier this week, on the subject of tariffs:
Yes, steel tariffs are bad for stadium-building.
Let me explain how this is going to go down. Teams are going to ask taxpayers to contribute more to cover the added costs, and representatives are going to give in and say, “this is beyond our control.
It’s going to hit already approved plans immediately. New stadium proposals are just going to tack on a few extra 100s of millions to the demands.
You’ve already got the Rays claiming that delaying the vote for their new stadium funding for just a short amount of time added so much in new costs to the project that they’re now unsure if they’re even going to go through with it. Which, sure, that’s as much of a lie as anything else going on with that whole situation, as it’s some kind of bid by the Rays to back out of a deal they worked to get for years. But when something actually does happen to raise costs, well. You can imagine what’s going to happen, and not just because Bradbury pointed it out.
Everything is going to cost more, is the thing, and it’s going to be have to be paid for by you, because the rich, if anything, are going to catch even more breaks under Trump. Unless they own a sports team, anyway. Small victories and all that.
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