What? IRS says the NFL is a nonprofit organization

Is the National Football League, a $9 billion-a-year business, actually a nonprofit organization? How about the National Hockey League – are they in a labor dispute with the players because their nonprofit status means they can only pay menial salaries? Or what  about the Professional Golfers’ Association, where four days of play can bring fat, six-figure payouts? Is Tiger Woods part of a PGA where profits are not allowed?

Well, the truth is that each of these pro sports empires is allowed to call themselves “nonprofit” under an IRS tax code loophole, avoiding tens of millions of dollars of taxes each year, according to ABC News.
The NFL loophole is perhaps the most glaring of 100 examples in Sen. Tom Coburn’s new report on government waste, which identifies $19 billion in waste.

 “We have some of the biggest corporations in America paying no taxes whatsoever,” Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, told ABC. “You know something is wrong with the (tax) code.”

Here are some highlights of this year’s “Waste Book:”

-- A $325,000 grant for the development of "Robosquirrel" -- a robotic rodent designed to test the interaction between rattlesnakes and squirrels.

-- Though NASA has no plans or budget for any manned spaceflights to Mars, the agency spends about $1 million each year on developing "the Mars menu." It's an effort to come up with a variety of food, including certain types of pizza, that humans could eat one day on Mars.

-- Widespread fraud and abuse in the food stamp system, including an exotic dancer who earned more than $85,000 a year in tips, but also collected nearly $1,000 a month in food stamps while spending $9,000 during that time period on "cosmetic enhancements."

-- Nearly $700,000 from the National Science Foundation to a New York-based theater company so it could develop a musical about climate change and biodiversity. "The Great Immensity" opened in Kansas City this year. Along with the songs one reviewer described as sounding like "a Wikipedia entry set to music," the audience was also able to experience "flying monkey poop."

The list also includes taxpayer money being used to renovate a luxury yacht, and to pay for shuttle buses to the Super Bowl.

While $19 billion is a tiny slice of the federal budget, Coburn said the examples of waste are snapshots of the bigger problem. And the biggest problem of all – itself a waste of federal dollars – is Congress, he added.

"We're running trillion-dollar deficits. The way you get rid of trillion-dollar deficits -- a billion at a time," Coburn told Fox News. 

In fact, the Oklahoma senator lists Congress as the biggest waste of tax dollars in 2012 – No. 1 on the list.

"Would you agree with Washington that these (examples) represent national priorities, or would you conclude these reflect the out-of-touch and out-of-control spending threatening to bankrupt of nation’s future?" he said.

In this year’s list, Coburn explains that Congress — one half of which is controlled by his own party — is on track to be the least productive since 1947. He told The Hill that the House and Senate have approved only 61 laws this year, and Coburn says the $132 million spent to run Congress has been a waste.
“All of the outrageous and wasteful contents of this report were made possible by either the action or lack of action of Congress, earning it the well-deserved but unwanted distinction as the biggest waste of taxpayer money in 2012,” Coburn concluded.