Meet the woman who wants to make the NFL pay its taxes

It happens every year, briefly and usually around Super Bowl time. That’s when the matter of the NFL’s tax-exempt status percolates to the surface, generally as a result of all the outrageous things that the NFL demands from whatever city is lucky enough to host the Super Bowl that year, and which kind of idly enrage those so-inclined. Most states exempt 501(c)6 non-profit organizations -- trade groups, ordinarily, like the Chamber of Commerce or National Beef Council -- from state income and sales tax, and the NFL is classified as such. The NFL also pays no federal corporate taxes.

This tends to offend, especially given the NFL’s notable dedication to profit and power above just about everything else; it also violates the spirit of the law, as Slate’s Jordan Weissmann points out, because the NFL is more like a closed cartel than an industry organization. And offend it does, generally for that one week in January. And then things roll on for another 50 or so weeks, more or less as it has since Congress first granted the NFL 501(c)6 status back in 1966.

Despite a relentlessly awful first few weeks of the NFL season, it can be difficult to imagine things being different in the NFL, or even just better. Colossuses don’t topple easy, of course, but it’s not easy to convince a mile-high bestriding monolith to listen to reason, either, let alone exercise any insight. Brands don’t argue, and can’t care. The NFL won’t, and doesn’t.

But a New Orleans-based activist Lynda Woolard hit upon an idea that might force a little bit of accountability upon an organization that’s otherwise proven itself resistant to it. Several years ago, she started a Change.org petition aimed at revoking the NFL’s tax-exempt status. Since then, first slowly and then all at once, the movement has picked up momentum -- the campaign now has the endorsement of a wide array of prominent national political figures, and the petition has more than 363,000 signatures. In the last week, two Senators -- Maria Cantwell of Washington and Cory Booker of New Jersey -- have introduced bills aimed at ending the NFL’s nonprofit status. The unlikely coalition supporting this cause includes an independent Senator from Maine, an arch-conservative Senator from Oklahoma, and a libertarian-leaning congressman from Utah.

Woolard, an artist and a Crescent City resident for over twenty years -- and a die-hard Saints fan -- was politically galvanized after Hurricane Katrina, and has dedicated herself to organizing in the years since. It’s not her only job, but it’s one she’s embraced with rare passion.

“All of us who have joined together to push for this cause have other issues we work on every day. This is a project we volunteer on in our spare time,” she told me. “[But] I have come to feel an extreme responsibility to the signers of this petition. I do think it is my job, having started this effort, to stick with it to the end, no matter how long it takes.”

It’s hard to know how long that will be, but she believes that her movement is still gathering momentum.

“Frankly, I’ve never heard a really good reason as to why they have this non-profit status,” she told me. We talked about why she’s doing what she’s doing, and why she believes her cause will win.

What was your inspiration for starting this petition -- that is, what was the moment when you decided that the NFL’s tax-exemption was unjust enough that you wanted to organize and try to do something about it?

The Super Bowl riders were something I learned about after I started the petition... and I have learned much more about the intricacies of the NFL’s finances in the course of talking to like-minded sports writers and sports fans over the last few of years. Besides the fact that this multi-billion dollar industry being governed by a non-profit seems, on the face of it, unfair to everyone else who works hard and pays taxes, I really started the petition as a tool to gain some financial leverage over the NFL, and as a mechanism to call in the only body who seemed to have any authority over them: Congress.

I felt like every season started with some issue that fans felt uncomfortable with, but that we had no power to do anything about, whether it be the player lockout, the replacement refs, the growing body of evidence that the NFL hid reports linking concussions to later life disabilities, and so on. We just see that list of concerns getting longer today.

I am an organizer by trade, so it seemed very natural to me to do something that fans could get behind and participate in as an outlet for our dissatisfaction with having no say in the league we loved. I was well aware that fans were not going to want to boycott their teams. I know what these teams mean to the cities they play in. And at that point in time, there was no indication that we could get corporations to pull sponsorship from the NFL. So the only way I saw to get a message to the NFL -- via their pocketbooks, which is what they seem to understand most -- was to go after their tax-exempt status. What I did not anticipate is that so few people were aware that the NFL was a non-profit, and that the petition would serve as an informational device to get that word out.

What are the NFL’s arguments for keeping its tax-exempt status, beyond convenience and the fact that they’ve had it since 1966? Have they engaged with the petition or the cause at all? And what rebuttal, briefly, would you make against the idea that the NFL should have this status?

To my knowledge, the only direct response we’ve received was from the NFL’s tax attorney, Jeremy Spector, through a writer who contacted them about the petition. The NFL’s justification was that it was only the league office that is tax-exempt, not the teams themselves; that they deserve that status as a trade organization promoting an industry; and that they wouldn’t really pay that much money in taxes anyway after all the accounting was done.

My response to that is that the league office is still making a ridiculous amount of money for a non-profit if they can pay Roger Goodell $44 million a year, which is twice what the highest paid player makes, and twice what the CEO of Walmart makes. Also, I have never seen the NFL promote anything but the NFL. A trade organization they are not. There’s something not right with these answers.

Further, I have heard other tax attorneys say that their taxes could amount to plenty, enough that the American people should not be denied that flow of money. The sports lawyer Andrew Delaney claims the NFL is set up as a glorified tax shelter, allowing the league to negotiate new stadium deals that benefit the owners and the league office tremendously, but once again dip into the tax-payers’ pockets. Senator [Tom] Coburn has indicated there is enough money there to be worth going after. My personal feeling is, I’m just a fan and I want to feel good about the game I support. Why not just do the right thing, get rid of sweetheart deal with the IRS and let the tax attorneys sort out the rest? If it isn’t that big of a deal financially to them, why do they fight so hard to keep it? The league has grown to a point where it can support itself perfectly well. It’s time for it to evolve.

There has been some recent progress, both in the House and the Senate, on bills that are aimed at revoking the NFL’s tax-exempt status, from a very unique coalition, liberal Democrats like Maria Cantwell and business-friendly ones like Cory Booker -- both of whom recently introduced bills to that end in the Senate -- extreme fiscal conservatives like Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, as well as independents like Maine Sen. Angus King and near-libertarians like Rep. Jason Chaffetz. In an incredibly fractious and stalled out DC, what about this issue do you think has created these unlikely combinations? More to the point, do you think there’s any real possibility of action?

I think it’s just a matter of time now. The more people who find out the league is tax-exempt, the more people believe that needs to change. The fact that Sen. Cantwell’s and Sen. Booker’s bills are linked to things that disturb them about the way the NFL operates says to me that others think like I think. The NFL league office has amassed too much power, has no checks and balances, and needs someone to pull the reins in. Congress would seem to be the only entity that has the authority to do that, and they are taking that responsibility seriously.

But at the end of the day, this is a pretty simple issue. It’s a matter of basic fairness. That’s what I think Senator Coburn realized so long ago. His PRO Sports Act really just says if you are a sports league making over $10 million a year, you can’t claim to be a non-profit. There’s nothing partisan about that. It’s just common sense. And wouldn’t it be nice to see something come out of Washington, D.C., that is for the benefit of the American people? I would love for this to be the issue that every party could agree on.

Sen. Coburn has supported your cause longer than any sitting politician, as near as I can tell. Why do you think he’s rallied so hard to the cause?

He has worked so hard on this cause, because he believes that a tax earmark is a tax increase for everyone who doesn’t receive the benefit. Now, I don’t agree with Senator Coburn on a lot of issues, but, again, this particular concept isn’t really complicated or partisan. On a personal note, he [has been] very kind and gracious to me. His staff mentioned they had been following the petition in the press and were always pleased whenever it got a mention.

You seem to be a pretty die-hard New Orleans Saints fan, which means that you’ve not only had a front row seat for some very strange and intense interaction between an NFL team and its community, but also for one of the more baroque recent Super Bowls. You’re clear in the petition that you don’t want to have to boycott your team, which I think a lot of people can relate to. How, as a football fan, do you think that dropping its tax-exempt status would benefit the NFL, let alone taxpayers? That is, besides allowing the NFL to keep the commissioner’s salary a secret.

The interaction between the New Orleans Saints and their fans is indeed intense. I will easily credit the team with helping this city rebound from the flooding and devastation that followed Hurricane Katrina. These men are members of our community. Part of their charge has been to be engaged and participate in the rebuilding of New Orleans. But, see, that’s what bonds us to them so intensely. When you are able to feel good about your team, you are connected and committed to them.

And that’s what the NFL seems to be missing in the big picture of all of this. Sure it’s a business. Sure it’s big money. But if that is all it is to the league office, they are missing the potential for deeper goodwill and loyalty. The game can fund itself. They do not need taxpayers to do that. Dropping the tax-exempt status would be an immediate benefit to taxpayers, of course, but it would also give the NFL a better name. Are they protecting the shield or are they protecting the bottom line?

I think they have confused one to mean the other. They are banking that our love for our teams is strong enough that we won’t focus on what the league office is doing, but I think if we have learned anything in the last few weeks, it’s that their belief that they’ve insulated themselves is incorrect.

Of all the things that a fan could do with her spare time, why devote yourself to this? This seems like the sort of thing everyone could agree on, in some ways -- most people don’t like the idea of businesses ducking out on their civic obligations -- but the NFL is a pretty conservative sport with a pretty conservative discourse, and that tends to have a strange effect on people where that’s concerned. How would you characterize the response you’ve gotten?

I love football. Look, my petition wasn’t created in an attempt to bring down the NFL. Almost every football fan I know wants to see the league changed for the better specifically because they love football. We want to cheer for our teams with enthusiasm, not with caveats or heavy hearts. The support from the fans has been overwhelming.

The issues that have been coming to a head with the league lately are not new to the sport or the personnel. But to be honest, they have been ignored for too long due to the sheer arrogance of the league office. They thought they were untouchable. Nobody is untouchable. And I think that’s part of what people want to see.

We want the NFL to be a team player, to have good character, to be the star we enjoy watching every week. More than anything, we want them to remember that without the fans, there is no league. Our voices should be heard and considered.