Is Tax Incentive for College Football Season Ticket Holders Fair? - NPQ – Nonprofit Quarterly - Promoting an active and engaged democracy.

Is Tax Incentive for College Football Season Ticket Holders Fair? - NPQ – Nonprofit Quarterly - Promoting an active and engaged democracy.: f this nation is going to assess the progressiveness—or lack of progressiveness—of charitable tax deductions, or any tax breaks for that matter, we should be looking at questions of who benefits, by how much, and for what reasons. Writing for Bloomberg News, Curtis Eichelberger and Charles Babcock describe a relatively little-publicized tax incentive: according to the highly regarded sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, many colleges require charitable donations to the school in return for the privilege of buying tickets at face value. The Bloomberg writers state that the ticket purchasers can then write off 80 percent of the value of the mandatory donations against their taxes, which costs the federal treasury $100 million a year.