[mieseratte]

Exactly my thought! This has "tax loophole" written all over it.

Company gets to subsidize favorable propaganda, while at the same time getting a nice tax write-off.

Edit: For those downvoting, would you care to elaborate? I don't see how this won't be abused. What am I wrong about here?

[cartoonworld]

I would imagine a non-profit isn't able to well.... profit as much. And if I know one thing it is that a rich guy loves his money as much as a preacher loves the Lord.

[jtbayly]

Non-profits are allowed to profit all they want.

The NFL is a non-profit org.

[lostapathy]

The league is - the teams are not.

[jtbayly]

That's what I meant. Apparently it changed. But so what? The league itself made enough money to pay Roger Goodell $44M in 2013. As a non-profit.

[lostapathy]

I kind of figured you did, but I wanted to underscore the difference because I feel like this fact is usually trotted out for (and gets) a knee jerk.

To be fair, I think it's a dumb state of affairs too, but overhyping problems is often counterproductive.

[jtbayly]

Well, I do think it (was) dumb, but I also didn’t bring it up to show a big problem. I just wanted a counter-example to the claim that profits are limited at non-profits.

[throwaway_law]

The Green Bay Packers are a not for profit...its the only team not privately owned by billionaires.

[vwuon]

Not anymore http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/nfl-no-longer-non...

[jtbayly]

Thanks. Not sure how I missed that. Regardless, the point still stands. Non-profit just means profit isn't its primary goal, but rather generally some mission. A non-profit can make oodles of money, but if it closes up shop, it can't be distributed to the "owners." It has to go to another non-profit.

[vonmoltke]

The NFL had a specific exemption added to the tax code just for it, so it really isn't a good example anyway. Nobody else could form such a "non-profit" without a literal act of Congress.

[mieseratte]

As a sibling comment mentions, non-profits aren't always "above board" in reality, e.g. the NFLs or Susan G. Komens of the world.

The position that I'm coming from is that a newspaper isn't always meant to be particularly profitable, e.g. in my small city our major paper is owned and underwritten by a wealthy real-estate family.

While the paper does good reporting in other areas, including having won a recent Pulitzer, they never publish anything negative about the local real-estate and development. You will never find a piece critical of development or developer mistakes in this paper.

If you're of the mind that papers can and are used as a way of laundering business propaganda for the owner, allowing it a non-profit status would then allow it to be a money-sink. The owning family can now provide donations to the non-profit paper which serves the business interests in the PR sphere. These donations can be written off. This means the tax-payer is now further subsidizing their PR efforts by virtue of a tax write off.

[cartoonworld]

Thanks, didn't consider that angle and also that non-profit might be a nonsequiter.