Yahoo! Finance: Was Steve Balmer Hunting Good Will in Clipper’s Deal?
media mentionArguments aside, some, including Matt Gardner, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), said the law including sports franchises in the Goodwill tax write-off was a bad one.
In a blog post, Gardner said, “It’s bad enough that the goodwill tax rule allows companies to deduct costs they may never incur — but it’s even worse that wealthy team owners can bid up the asking price of their teams as a tax shelter.”
Gardner’s solution called for Congress at least to reverse the 2004 change that invited sports team owners to use “Goodwill.”
A better response, he said, would be to get rid of the 1993 law that allowed corporations to write off the value of intangible assets in the first place.