DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

Read it.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the Cleveland Board of Review last week, cementing the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling that the “jock tax” applied to visiting N.F.L. players violated their due process rights. As a result, the Cleveland city government may be on the hook for millions of dollars owed back to professional athletes, according to data from the Cleveland Collections Agency.

The two former NFL players, Jeff Saturday and Hunter Hillenmeyer, both won their cases against a levy the Tax Foundation calls “arbitrary,” “unrealistic,” and “poorly targeted,” in the Ohio Supreme Court earlier this year. The Court’s decision in the former case struck down the tax Cleveland levied on Saturday even though he did not accompany his team, the Indianapolis Colts, to their game there. Calling the regulation “ambiguous at best,” the justices ordered the city to refund Saturday for the tax applied to his salary because he neither played in the scheduled game nor was present in Cleveland at the time.

In Hillenmeyer’s case, the justices took a more nuanced approach, finding the formula the city used to tax players unconstitutional, not the tax itself. Cleveland, grossly overstepping the bounds of its powers of taxation, argued that a 2% tax levied on the players entire salary, or 1/20th of their total salary, came from a calculation of the amount of games played in the preseason and regular season, 20, with one of those taking place in Cleveland. The court disagreed with this faulty logic, asserting that a NFL player’s total salary is derived from attendance at practices, off-season trainings, and a myriad of other duties.

Heh. Bloodsuckers lose one for once.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2015 at 12:47 and is filed under Is this a great country, or what?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.