I'm no fan of tax expenditures. I'm not even particularly fond of most tax deductions regardless of whether or not they're based on religion. Taxes should be about raising revenue, and a complex tax code just makes inserting more loopholes--as well as outright cheating--even more possible. If conservatives were actually serious about shrinking government, they would make the Treasury write checks rather than give tax rebates.
Anyway, the Republicans have decided how they will tackle the deficit: they're going to remove the NCAA's tax-exempt status. It's not clear that the NCAA should be tax exempt, but I can think of some other ways to raise revenue. How about we re-institute the tax on rich, dead people--the estate tax? If you can't tax the dead, who the hell can you tax?
Politically, this is abject idiocy. I can hear the campaign ads now: the Republicans want to tax your football. And if this is what passes for conservative policy....
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Bear with me here: NCAA athletic scholarships often give kids a chance at a college education that they might not have otherwise due to their economic situations. This move to revoke NCAA's tax-exempt status is totally in keeping with the anti-education, anti-poor folk platform of the Republicans.
However, I can tell you that even Republicans down here on Tobacco Road will be expressing some outrage for entirely different reasons.