Should college athletes be classified as employees with salaries and benefits?

Employee status comes with a tax bill nobody mentions. Right now athletic scholarships are generally not treated as taxable income. The moment athletes become employees, the scholarship, the housing, the meal plan, the tutoring, all of it starts to look like compensation, and the IRS taxes compensation. A swimmer on a $60,000 scholarship could owe thousands in federal taxes on money she never saw, which is a strange way to help college athletes. The IRS rules on scholarships already draw careful lines here, and employment blows past them. The stars with NIL millions can absorb it. The rower from Ohio cannot. Revenue sharing under the House settlement delivers money without reclassifying anyone. NCAA. Employee status delivers a W-2 and a tax bill to the athletes it claims to rescue.