With the infamous tax day now upon us we are going to provide you millionaires and the occasional billionaires four great ways to get some tax exemptions for fiscal year 2015. Of course though there are millions of great philanthropic ways (pun completely intended) to spend your money but these ways are mainly concerned with track and field in Virginia.
1. Build an amazing, perfect, variable banking indoor track!
Ok, this is a serious one guys! Everyone in the state is on board with this and agrees that Virginia needs a new banked track. We need a real facility that is not only going to bring talent to the state but also unite the state under one roof for a true meet of champions each year. Since we are doing this as a tax write-off donation we should just go ahead and do it right and make it a hydraulic variable banking track. I think we should also make it a really cool looking building like Yale's field house pictured above but bigger and better.
Some necessary things for this of course are brand new equipment, a huge video board with live results capabilities, plenty of parking, a Chipotle inside the facility, and of course a warmup track on a lower level. We can just start with all that and see if we need any renovations in a couple years.
2. Host a mega meet
Photo: NY Times
Though Virginia has some stellar meets each season, (Maymont XC, Virginia Tech Indoor, Dogwood, Southern Track Classic, Atlantic Coast Invitational, and many more) Virginia still needs a meet the size and level of the Penn Relays or Arcadia. One that brings teams from Texas, Florida, New York, California, and of course Jamaica. We have had that level of a meet in the past in the East Coast Invitational but we need one now!
Now we understand you want to write-off a whole lot of earnings so we strongly suggest inviting a lot of teams and paying for their travel and of course giving singlets, medals, gold watches, and a whole lot of other things to the participants and winners of the races. No need to find sponsors though or charge admission to the meet... let's make it about the athletes and huge! If we are talking indoors, lets rent out the Richmond Coliseum and put in a banked track or if we are talking outdoors let's put a track on the inside of UVA's football stadium for a weekend. Tell me that wouldn't be an awesome location to watch a track meet.
3. Create a collegiate powerhouse track, field, and cross country program.
So, there are a few ways to build a really great track program in college. You can hire a great coaching staff and over time they can recruit and build quite a great program or you can build amazing facilities to entice would be recruits to your school. Of course though, when you are trying to spend money you can do both! Why not pay for both a great coaching staff and a great facility? If you need a huge tax shelter, and we are talking about a monstrosity of a tax shelter, then kick starting your own SEC level track program in VA would definitely be your safest bet.
You could even make it an annuity! You would of course start with a 1.5 million dollar salary for a coach and then another .5 million for the assistant coaches. From there you would have to build a big stadium, a new workout facility, and of course subsidize future expansions and the such. All and all you could save a lot of tax dollars by "donating" it to a good cause. Not to mention, you would all but likely get floor seats and a nice box at the football games too.
4. Make the most epic cross country course ever
The final suggestion, and the more in-tune with nature option, is to build the most epic cross country course ever. We are talking 3.1 miles of perfect rolling hills, lush grass, and of course creeks throughout. This course would be just like Great Meadows but made just for cross country and be open 365. It would be able to hold night races and be extremely fan friendly.
It would be made for xc so it would have build in sensors to read your chips at each kilometer and mile and a display board to let you know where everyone was during the race. Best yet, it would have stands on both sides of the finishing straight to make it very intense and loud down that final stretch to the finish line... can you say Epic Meadows.
These are just some of the many options that are before you this year. If you don't want to pay taxes on all your millions or billions earned in 2015 then we suggest taking one of these examples and making Virginia the place to be for track and cross country.
If you have some ideas then comment below or tweet us @MileStatdotcom