Tiger and Taxes at Augusta
Tiger and Taxes at Augusta
Lynn Hecht Schafran: Tiger Woods and Taxes
When Tiger Woods returned to the golf spotlight at the Masters Tournament at the men-only Augusta National Golf Club, many noted the irony that a man who was publicly humiliated for using women like Kleenex was now staging his comeback at a club where women can’t even be second-class citizens. But few noted that this male-only club is yet another taxpayer-subsidized gift to big business.
Why, in 2010, does corporate America, as well as the golf-watching American public, have no qualms about participating in a four-day frenzy of media coverage and corporate partying that is hosted at a club that still excludes women? Augusta gave up on race discrimination in 1990 when Alabama’s Shoals Creek Golf Club was unable to host a PGA tournament because it was racially segregated. Even though the Masters is exempt from the rule because the event is not a part of the official PGA tour, Augusta didn’t want protesters from Jessie Jackson?s Rainbow Coalition at its gates and admitted a man who is not white
In 2002, when Martha Burk, president of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, began urging Augusta to end its sex discrimination, her calls were met with derision from the club, even though corporations withdrew their sponsorship for two years and the Masters was broadcast without commercials.
But advertisers began to return in 2005, and today America’s top companies are advertising at the Masters–and, of course, at the taxpayers’ expense. Every penny of corporate sponsorship is deducted as a business expense, which means, in the end, that taxpayers are promoting and subsidizing Augusta’s discrimination. As a lawyer with Legal Momentum, I have been involved with legislation and litigation all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court to end discrimination against women and minorities at clubs and organizations ranging from “private” men’s clubs to the Jaycees that are in fact centers of business activity.
The point we have made throughout this campaign has always been the same. In the 1979 words of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then a law professor: “If women are not offered equal access, if they are not welcomed as full members of the club, they are kept away from a traditional avenue for self-development, economic and political opportunity, and advancement.”
In the courts we successfully demonstrated why so many of these supposedly ?private clubs? function as places of public accommodation, which means they may not legally discriminate on a variety of grounds, including sex. At these clubs members’ dues and drinks are paid for by their companies and are often deducted as business expenses from their personal taxes. These clubs make money by hosting business events for their members? companies and for non-members? companies as well. To avoid being labeled a place of public accommodation and forced to stop discriminating, some clubs now require that members pay their dues and expenses personally and not discuss business on the premises.
Augusta maintains that it is a strictly private organization. But if so, why is the club hosting the Masters? This is a massively public event attended in person by anyone who can buy a ticket, and it is an event that is broadcast to the world by myriad corporate sponsors, who also bring a ton of guests to town to network and promote business at corporate events.
The reality is that golf is more than a game. The centrality of golf to American business is so apparent that women–and plenty of men–have felt driven to learn and play a game many don’t even like in order to join a foursome with their clients or company higher-ups. The centrality of business at Augusta is such that the interlocking directorates of their members make a daisy chain across corporate America. Whether one believes in tax deductions for businesses or not, we should be able to agree that deductions for money spent in discriminatory places should not be deductible. The end of tax deductions for the four-martini lunch changed the culture of some organizations, arguably for the better. It is well past time to do the same for golf.
Lynn Hecht Schafran is an attorney, Senior Vice President of Legal Momentum and Director of its National Judicial Education Program. An earlier version of this article appeared on Women?s e-News: womensenews.org.
