INFLCR partners with TurboTax to provide tax education

With the arrival of tax season, INFLCR is preparing to assist athletes.

The company announced a partnership Intuit TurboTax on Thursday, which will provide financial education and tax tools to athletes on the INFLCR platform. The brand-building technology has more than 200 Division I college partners and nearly 90,000 athletes.

Taxpayers have until April 18 to submit their returns from 2022. The IRS officially started accepting tax returns on Monday.

The need for tax education has become clear in the first 18 months of name, image and likeness. This past May, the NCAA released the results of an association-wide survey of more than 9,800 athletes.

Forty-nine percent of respondents indicated “a need for educational resources on tax and financial literacy.” The apparent need for tax guidance is even stronger in Division I, too. Fifty-three and 55 percent of male and female athletes at the DI level, respectively, said they need more tax resources.

A similar message was repeated by athletes at the inaugural INFLCR NIL Summit in Atlanta this past June.

“We had hundreds of student-athletes there and they gave us a ton of feedback on where they need the most support when it comes to name, image and likeness,” INFLCR founder and CEO Jim Cavale said in a video to announce the Intuit partnership. “That’s really been our mission along the way as the NIL Era began. Where do student-athletes need help, how can we support them with our technology. The top topic? Taxes, of course.

“We’re going into the second tax season of the NIL Era after the first full year of NIL in 2022. Student-athletes need help. There’s a lot of financial and tax implications that come with these paid opportunities with NIL and our partnership will be just for INFLCR student-athletes to have help in those areas.”

Some brands, such as H&R Block, stepped up last spring and signed athletes to NIL deals while providing valuable assistance. Other athletes were forced to turn to their parents for house or hire tax professionals.

Athletes at the NIL Summit in June told On3 there was a missing piece of tax education. The need to meet athletes on their terms in and a language they can understand. Some universities have instituted mandated financial literacy classes, but that doesn’t mean the content is being presented in a productive way for athletes.

“Most institutions, they’ve been the reason why we haven’t had the right to exercise our NIL and profit off of working,” UCLA quarterback Chase Griffin said last summer. “It wasn’t in the culture because it was literally prohibited to be in the culture to have enough to money to even be taxed, so it’s new for everyone.”