The Chicago Cubs/Sam Zell Tax Dodge

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



The Chicago Cubs/Sam Zell Tax Dodge
By Isaiah J. Poole

August 4th, 2008 - 8:59am ET


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Sam Zell, an idiosyncratic real estate magnate, is making quite a name for himself these days as the man who is gutting the newspaper chain that owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. But he is about to become notorious as a tax evader — a legal tax evader, anyway — and a symbol of how rich people game the system.

Zell, in addition to being a successful developer and a so-far disastrous newspaper owner, is also the owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, which currently has a "For Sale" sign on it. Fortune Magazine editor-at-large Allan Sloan wrote last week that Zell may seek to structure the sale so that he will pay no tax on the profits.

It's a plausible story because Zell has done it before. His purchase of the Tribune Company in a leveraged buyout was a convoluted deal in which he used company pension funds and an employee stock ownership plan to minimize the tax hit. Then, to pay off some of the debt he incurred from the leveraged buyout, sold one of the Tribune newspapers, Newsday in Long Island, N.Y., to Cablevision Inc. Though Tribune netted $630 million in the sale, Sloan reports that the proceeds are considered by Zell to be a nontaxable distribution from a leveraged partnership.

This kind of dealing, of course, is nothing new; big businesses spend millions annually to structure deals so that they can avoid paying their fair share of taxes. This exploitation of corporate tax loopholes—some legal, some not so legal—costs taxpayers an estimated $150 billion a year, according to Bob McIntyre, director at Citizens for Tax Justice. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008083204/chicago-cubs-sam-zell-tax-dodge

[madrchsod]

1. worse for the cub fans--mark cuban

mark has the official blessing to buy the cubs. the ball park is also for sale. it`s going to be interesting in chicago in the next few years

[RB TexLa]

2. The only sports team he owns gets in the playoffs every year and is near the top of the league in

revenue. That just sounds dreadful, doesn't it?

[madrchsod]

3. i`m a white sox fan....actually->

i think he`d be great for the cubs. a guy who actually wants to win and a town that been waiting for what--a hundred years?

the big problem is wrigley field...it`s a dump