Financial Transparency Coalition

There’s very little our lawmakers won’t do to show their patriotism. And this week Senator Marco Rubio took the prize when he introduced a bill that would exempt American winners of Olympic medals from federal taxes on their cash prizes. In case you haven’t heard yet: when an Olympian wins a gold, silver, or bronze medal, he or she receives a cash prize of $25,000, $15,000, or $10,000, respectively. At the moment, Olympians pay taxes on those prizes just as they would on any other income. Under the Olympic Tax Elimination Act, they would not. As someone who was once an...

The Olympic Games are a wonderful celebration of excellence in sport. But is there a danger thatcorruption may have tainted the Games? As London prepares to launch the Games tomorrow, it is sobering to reflect on whether the event is living up to the ‘respect for universal fundamental ethical principles’ cited in the Olympic Charter.

Aside from the empty seats, the big scandal of the Olympics so far has been the disqualification of eight badminton players for deliberately losing their matches. What’s that got to do with tax justice? Well since you ask…

Cheating in sports has existed for as long as the sports themselves. During the ancient Olympic Games in Olympia, Greece, officials placed pedestals inscribed with athletes' names at the entrance of the stadium. The names were not of great athletes, but of those who violated the rules of the Games, in order to punish them into perpetuity. In today’s version of public dishonor, our media nationally broadcasts the names and crimes of steroid-injecting baseball players, blood-doping cyclists, and plotting figure-skaters. Other athletes, who are perhaps not directly cheating in their sports, are engaging in morally reprehensible behavior. Nearly daily,...