Building a Stronger Profession Together

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that college and high school athletes should reap the benefits of the marketing of their name, image, and likeness (NIL). But as these young men and women will soon learn, there is no such thing as freebees in the world of sports marketing. They will soon confront a difficult, and often murky, Pennsylvania tax situation.

A case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is a threat to the ability of the Commonwealth to limit its exposure to liability through the enactment of damages caps. This is important because uncapped liability verdicts could wipe out funds set aside for critical government services, leading to ever higher taxes.

Internal Revenue Code Section 1031 permits taxpayers to defer paying tax on gain for federal income tax purposes when they invest in real estate and exchange one property for another property. In Pennsylvania, whether or not taxpayers can defer gain pursuant to Section 1031 for state personal income tax purposes has been contested for years. In Pearlstein v. Commonwealth, the decision from the state Supreme Court will be a test as to whether the DOR can effectively ignore the language of its own statutes and corresponding regulations.