Done.
Most all of us working stiffs out here have sent our pound of flesh to Uncle.
Yes, it’s tax-time. Just ended, yours was due on Tuesday.
Unless you’re the PGA Tour.
We’ve spoken briefly about it in the past but today, thanks to the wonderful world of Guidestar, we bring you the complete and stunning tax return from your favorite golf powerhouse — The PGA Tour.
Guidestar has published the Tour’s 2016 tax return, which falls under Form 990 “Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax” and the tour falls under sections 501(c)(3), 501(c)(6) and 4947(a)(1) of the tax codes.
Before you go any further with us today, please peruse this gem:
The 2016 PGA Tour Form 990 in its entirety.
Okay, now that you’ve spent about a half hour with that, or not, we will hit some of the highlights, or lowlights, for you as a free service from DogLegNews.com.
First thing you’ll notice that is eye-popping is that the tour has more than $2 billion in gross receipts in 2016.
Later in the complex paperwork you might see that the tour also had $1,280,739,913 in total revenue two years ago. Who said golf isn’t healthy?
While golf on the local levels might be struggling, the PGA Tour certainly is not.
Another thing you’ll notice is that it’s very good to work for the PGA Tour. The tour boasts 280 individuals who earn north of $100,000. Doesn’t count all those ham-and-eggers making that $50,000 to $90,000 in “chump change.”
It was good to be Tim Finchem, former commissioner, now retired. His compensation and benefits were in the $10 million neighborhood. New guy commish Jay Monhan raked in about $4 million back then as deputy commish.
And hey, it’s good to be one of those “player directors.” Davis Love III hauls in north of $400k for his part-time gig. Mark Wilson just under $400k. Jason Bohn, like Love, north of $400k. Who needs to win when you can be a player director on the policy board?
Overall, the tour forks out about $35 million in executive pay, not counting the $100,000 minions.
Let’s not overlook the tour’s “War Chest.” The fellas have an investment pile north of $1.2 billion.
Normally pouring through a tax return sounds pretty boring but taking an inside look at the PGA Tour is pretty damn interesting.
Pay special attention to the pages and pages where the tour lists what it actually gives to local charities.
The tour touts itself as giving oodles of cash to local charities. We were sorta shocked to see that their biggest check — $11 million — went to the World Golf Foundation in St. Augustine, just south of tour headquarters. Last we checked, the World Golf Foundation did not stage a PGA Tour event. Looks like the second biggest goes to the East Lake Foundation to the tune of $2,233,000. Of course East Lake is the site of the Tour Championship, the fat year-ender that determines the FedEx Cup winner.
Another large recipient was the Northern Ohio Golf Charities. They got $1 million.
Yes, you’ll have a lot of fun going through all of those.
But we’ll leave you with this stunner.
The PGA Tour gave a piddling $222,529 to Arnie’s Army Charities. Let’s face it, maybe without Arnie, there might not have been a PGA Tour.
To make things worse, the tour gave more to, (drum roll please) — The Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation. Yes, $275,000 to the fraudulent farce that fattens the personal wallets of Slick Willie and his lovely wife.
And that ladies and gentlemen, is your PGA Tour in action.
6 Comments
RM
Like a dose of castor oil.
I recall you touched on this theme earlier. I know the pro golfers themselves are for the most part very wealthy, or at least, pretty wealthy. But I see Stacey Lewis graciously donate all her winnings in a tournament to Houston disaster relief after the floods there, and watch Charlie Hoffman donate all his winnings in a Las Vegas tourney to a Las Vegas cause after the Mandalay Bay shootings. Charlie commented that he felt it “was the least he could do.”
The PGA Tour can donate $275K to the Clinton machine. Wonder how the PGA $ directed toward actual real time victims in these horrific situations stacked up compared to Stacey and Charlie’s actions? (rhetorical question, of course)
Tom Edrington
RM: You can go through the detailed pages of this tax return and see every donation made by the PGA Tour…..will certainly open your eyes and everyone elses’……
RM
I did look them over until my eyes blurred on the list of organizations that received donations. Considering how much they do donate and to how many organizations, I wonder if they have (or need) some sort of policy that if a golfer donates winnings like Stacey or Charlie did, they would match it?
I’m just not that plugged in; perhaps they do something like this already…Maybe I’m wrong but I thought you might have already called them out for their relative lack of generosity as compared to what Stacey did.
Tom Edrington
RM: Exactly……most of the money that goes to the charities is actually raised and donated by the local groups such as the Salesmanship Club in Dallas and the Firebirds in Phoenix, etc.
charliej01
Have you done a side-by-side analysis of the income & salaries for our other favorite pastime non-profits, the NFL & MLB? I’d guess they might both dwarf the PGA.
But, hey…doesn’t the PGA provide you a livelihood?
Tom Edrington
Provides a continuation of my previous writing life, commercial real estate provides my livelihood…….also the NFL and MLB are much larger entities from a fan standpoint and money standpoint……I was shocked to see the PGA Tour’s biggest check goes to the World Golf Foundation so the tour is apparently underwriting the World Golf Hall of Fame, which no doubt is a big money loser