Kenneth Stafford, CPA, lives in Falmouth.

As Rory McIlroy basks in the glory of his back-to-back wins at the Masters golf tournament and the $22.5 million in prize money he earned this year, the nonprofit organization PGA Tours Inc. also collected some of its $2 billion in annual revenue tax-free. This has allowed the tax-exempt organization to accumulate an investment portfolio of $1 billion to $2 billion.

Furthermore, it has accumulated almost $400 million in its players’ retirement plan. The investment income on the accumulated $1 billion to $2 billion is also tax-exempt, despite
being invested in stocks, bonds and private equity funds bearing interest, dividends and capital gains.

In 2023, it earned $130 million of investment income without paying any tax. Additionally, it owns a majority interest in subsidiaries recently valued at $13 billion.

After a long career of being forced to contribute to our Social Security system with after-tax earnings, our retirees withdrawing their own contributions are then taxed a second time. Those who worked the hardest and have the least pay tax twice on their own Social Security contributions. Contributions that are not withdrawn during their lifetime are then forfeited to the government.

Had those retirees been lucky enough to stash a few dollars away in the same stocks and bonds held by the PGA Tour, they would have had to pay tax on such interest, dividends and capital gains as it was earned.

This is no different than the $60 billion accumulated by Harvard in its investment portfolio that earned $700 million tax-free last year. Yet parents lucky enough to be able to pay $90,000 annually in tuition for their children attend classes accumulate such funds only after paying income tax on the earnings first.

Our current U.S. Treasury debt is now $39 trillion and rising rapidly. The interest on this
debt is now our largest federal expenditure. But this is only the debt that the U.S. government is legally obligated to repay. It is estimated that it is responsible for an additional $60 trillion of morally obligated government debt. The rising debt requires increasing payments of principal and interest by American taxpayers.

The tax burden to repay this debt falls on the shoulders of those who can afford it least. While the top federal individual income tax rate on working Americans is 37% (plus Social Security and Medicare tax and an additional 3.8% surtax on investment income), our largest and most profitable corporations are only taxed at a flat rate of 21%.

And of course, tax-exempt organizations such as the PGA Tour and Harvard pay nothing at all. The PGA Tour spent $680,000 in 2024 lobbying Congress to maintain its status quo. It paid its CEO almost $200 million over the past nine years. It pays directors like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy more than $20 million annually.

Hard-working Americans paid the price of such efforts on April 15 and would no doubt
support shifting some of their tax burden to those that can afford it most. It’s time to stop
looking in all the wrong places. It’s time to speak up.