D.C. business owners are becoming disenchanted with Major League Baseball. To fund a new stadium for the Washington Nationals, the D.C. city council imposed a "baseball fee" on District businesses. Now that the bills have been mailed out, many of the businesses are balking.

Warren J. Cox, a principal in Hartman-Cox Architects, said he did not closely follow the stadium debate in the fall and was shocked last week when his accountant asked him to approve a $10,800 check to the District. He dashed off a letter to D.C. Council members saying he was paying under protest and was considering legal action.

"When I told my partners, they had apoplexy. That's a lot of money," Cox said in an interview.

The justification for using the threat of lethal force to seize money from businesses, was that Major League Baseball would bring a lot of revenue into the city. I guess that Nationals fans aren't lining up at Cox's door requesting his architecture services.

Adding insult to injury, D.C. is seizing more money than they really need.

Officials said yesterday that the city could end up with more money from the ballpark fee than is necessary because they may have under-estimated the number of companies that will be required to pay. Officials declined to say what they would do with extra funds.

I have a pretty good idea where the funds will go. (Into more vote buying schemes.)

The tax bills rekindled the debate in which some company owners complained last fall that the tax represents an unfair subsidy to Major League Baseball.

It's not a subsidy, it's legalized theft. Furthermore, Major League Baseball is a government protected monopoly, which means they have nothing to fear from Vince McMahon types starting up their own Xtreme Baseball League and competing with them.

As with most taxation, there is the usual clamoring to sock it to the evil, hated, rich. Keep in mind however, that this tax is on gross receipts not net profit. You pay based on how much total revenue to you take in.

Another point of contention is that the fee structure puts an unfair burden on smaller companies, said Barbara B. Lang, president of the Chamber of Commerce. All businesses that gross more than $16 million pay the same amount -- $16,500 -- no matter if they make one dollar more or $100 million more.

The city's largest companies should assume more of the burden, Lang said.

The keyword being burden.

Look, I have a pretty simple solution to all of this. If Major League Baseball insists on remaining a government protected monopoly and on demanding taxpayer funds to build new stadiums, they should lose their government protected copyrights. D.C. firms and small businesses should be free to print up Nationals T-shirts and other merchandise, and sell them out of their offices. They would pay no licensing fees and no royalties to the league. If they can have the shirts printed for $2 each and sell them for $20, that's $18 they get to keep. And it's all the more money they'll have available to pay D.C.'s Baseball Tax.