COTA claiming their tax bill is nearly $5 million too high

[NickHolt]

Now we hear that COTA is complaining about its tax bill from their taxing entity.

 

Reports from the Austin media are quoting COTA managers as saying their $7 milion bill should only be about $2 million.

 

Pretty big difference of opinion, eh?

 

We do know that both the city of Austin and COTA have been in court for over half a year and that a similar dispute over the tax bill surfaced last year as well.

 

Nick

[AustinF1]

Hey Nick! I made an earlier post on this. Tried to merge the two, but can't quite figure out how...

 

Some of our Facebook followers & did a little math on some of the numbers being thrown around in the article.

https://www.facebook.com/gpamericas

 

Tom Nickols "Dial, the Circuit of the Americas president, said the bill accompanying a $273 million value “translates to over $50 in taxes per ticket sold." It sure sounds like Mr. Dial needs to sell more tickets.

 

Tom Nickols "That $50 tax would be on top of sales tax and other applicable taxes. This is an excessive tax burden placed on Austinites attending or wanting to attend events at Circuit of The Americas and Austin360 Amphitheater.” No. We're not stupid. We won't buy this doublespeak. That tax burden isn't being placed on the citizens. The unreasonable tax burden being placed on the citizens comes in the form of hundreds of millions in corporate welfare being doled out to cota.

 

Cathy Olive My favorite blogs today from the AAS: If they are saying that the tax bill would raise the cost of all tickets by $50, that would imply that they only sell 92,000 tickets for all their events in the entire year. Boy, it must be a shame to be such a failure. Wasn't paying their taxes included in their business plan? Who do they expect to pick up the slack if those with money don't pay their taxes? And how much are they spending on lawyers to get out of paying their taxes? The county and city should move to condemn the property, pay the owners the $102 million they think it's worth, plus $25k in moving expenses to haul their tails to Oklahoma. The city could then sell the place for $300 mm or contract a partner to run it as a revenue generator.

 

Luca Costa Very interesting Cathy. So even if the total tax bill were divided by $50, that still only amounts to 147000 tickets. Does anyone have any idea how many tickets COTA say they've sold?

 

GP Americas Luca and Cathy: I can't tell what attendance total Dial is using to come up with that number. According to COTA, 2013 race day ticket sales alone was around 250K. As y'all have demonstrated, it looks like his math suggests they've sold far fewer than that.

[AustinF1]

This quote from the article also generated a lot of discussion:

 

" Based on the $2.8 million in taxes they have paid, the owners have apparently decided the track is worth roughly $102 million."

 

Cathy Olive COTA's close to taking 100 million out of the trust fund. That is our sales tax dollars folks and still they can't paid there property taxes. Wake up and smell the coffee. After bragging it's worth 400 million now they tell the county the value's REALLY only 102 million.

 

Ward Merrell Millions of fans? You must count attendance for Cota.

Cota has collected ten of millions via the various event trust funds. They have failed in their restoration projects. They have not hired a single person from Elroy or Del Valle. They are having new roads built at the expense of local tax payers. They owe venders from the last F1 race. And they are telling investors and anyone that will listen, the track is a 400 million dollar facility. It don't really matter. They won't make it past the next F1 race. Banks want their money, and they don't have it.

 

 

 

Cathy Olive “It’s ridiculous that after going around telling everyone what an asset to the tax base they would be, and getting tens of millions in tax breaks on the notion they are such an economic boon, that they would turn around and argue it isn’t really worth that much.” .....LMAO

 

Tyler Young Any amount will probably seem too high

when you don't have any money...

 

Bernard Ortiz It’s posturing because they don’t have the money to pay that particular bill. They cheaped out on the F1 tickets last year (going to the horrible, embarrassing ticketmiser paper tickets from the nice proper holographic ones the year before. Their financial problems partly stem from them being greedy (Tevo/Schwantz/etc) and the consequences they’ve had as a result (the Bernie tax went from $20M to $30M, had to pay Tevo and now Schwantz millions to go away), not to mention the harm this has had to them from a PR standpoint. Maybe the new management will help things out, but they have a deep hole to dig out of….