Roger Goodell made a whopping $44 million in the fiscal year of 2012, and the NFL doesn’t want you to know about it. Now the NFL will not have to disclose that type of information to the public since they have decided to relinquish their tax exempt status. That seems like a very strange occurrence that a $1 billion industry that has been profiting for decades, and it’s league office has not payed a single dollar in taxes. The NFL has been a tax exempt “trade association” for the last 70 years, and has only decided that now is time for a change because of all of the embarrassing information on how much they pay their employees is now being revealed.
This has gotten to be too public of an issue for them, and it’s probably kind of embarrassing,” said Bruce Hopkins, author of the book The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations. “I think it is more smoke than fire, and it shouldn’t make any difference to them. They just don’t want to the attention given to it.”
Members of Congress have criticized the exemption in recent years, questioning why such a rich sports league shouldn’t have to pay taxes, especially as it gave Goodell an eight-figure pay package . The league also combines to rake in around $10 billion in annual revenue.
Tax experts say that this move is actually more symbolic than anything regarding actually tax money that the league will be paying, as each respective team pays taxes and just the league office that does not have to pay taxes. The NFL’s tax bill would not have to go up because they would be entitled, like any taxable business, to claim offsetting deductions for their expenses. So in theory, all of this has been done to protect the public from knowing that they are backing up a Brinks Truck directly to Goodell’s house.