5. As a business' tax deduction I dunno; but as a personal deduction, for which and how many total taxpayers would this push you over the $12,000 S/$24,000 M standard/itemized threshold? When you line that up with the private golfing club public, you realize that this IS a rich man's game and no amount of hoping or analysis or historical revision is going to change it.4. Whether a real effort or not, it will be hard to prove that deduction meaningfully during the 2020 Tax Year when nearly every club forbade or limited guests. Of course one can just lie, cry and wave a flag as the top has done for a thousand years in all things.
3.
I have long thought that when the travel and entertainment deduction got whacked 20 some yrs ago that clubs took a big hit from which they never recovered.
I don't know which whacked "deduction" you were referencing, but certainly in the last 20 years I processed dozens of such "de facto" deductions at my one club and the practice is still meaningful at the scores of other clubs I'm aware of... pharmaceutical, life insurance, technology companies, all sorts... host a "conference" at a sponsoring member's club. This is an outing really, but small in size....8-24 people, lunch, caddies, carts, even gratuity all go on the members bill; the hosting organization reimburses the member doctor, the member-insurance company VP, etc and those parties take as much they are allowed personally, while the corporation takes as much as they can for entertaining expenses. The bottom line is the private clubs didn't take a hit in this area; it did nothing to golf in this area; any changes in the rules are just a new line for lawyers or tax accountants to wiggle round, appeal or sue until the letter matches their spirit. If the 3-martini golf deduction was the line for an individual member staying/using/affording his private club, then their condition was suspect anyway... The 2007-09 Recession is what did the damage you're referencing and that to just to the weakest private clubs, whose members were quickly glommed into dramatically discounted new memberships at other area clubs.
2.
[/size]With the Trump administration apparently pushing (if they already haven't) to revert back to the meal deductibility for business lunches perhaps this will help golf clubs. Knowing the obvious benefit to his golf courses, I can see a line in whatever tax code is passed/amended to allow for entertainment expenses such as golf fees coming back with the meal deductions.
Orange MaxFli and his administration and the Republican Senate don't know or care what the law is or not. Second, he and Moscow Mitch are not going to be writing or enacting any more Atlas Shrugged tax codes this term and this Congress, maybe in the next one...but not this one. Third: How much more rich man's golf welfare can we underwrite than the olymPPPig-sized scam we just suffered which private clubs hi and lo vacuumed up?
1. As some have inferred, I too find the original piece to be more about sensation than substance, more than a bit outdated and hyper-selective in what it touts as universal evidence for its assertions. It's also got a malaprop spirit, in that its analysis of causes and remedies, it mixes the private club world's concerns of cost, business transaction, family and time with a general downtick of golf that is MORE meaningfully felt in the diminishment of play at everyday public venues, semi-privates and munis, where costs are notoriously low, business was rarely transacted, ones family is not a part of it and millions played every weekend through 4:45+ rounds at their home track for 100 years. Any downtick in golf is not being felt at Pebble Beach, nor at very many Top 500 American clubs discussed here.