Elliot Westphal, State Street resident, has allowed people to park in his yard on University football game days for three years.He has made as much as $1,200 during more popular games by selling each space for between $20 and $60.Gary Graham, Office of Parking, Traffic and Transportation director, said there are between 30,000 and 35,000 gameday parking spaces available — a number which has proven inadequate for larger games, including the game against Florida in 2007.”For the most part, [the 35,000 spaces] handles the crowds,” Graham said. “When it’s off campus, that’s between the property owner and the person buying the parking space there.”When parking gets short, Graham said football attendees sometimes choose to pay to park off campus in areas like State Street, East Boyd Drive and Aster Street.If a car would be damaged while its owner is paying to park in a business’s parking lot or a person’s yard, LSU law professor Bill Corbett said tort law would come into play when determining who is responsible for the damages.”The question would be whether by letting [people] park in their lot, they have taken under the responsibility to protect it,” Corbett said. “Tort law steps in where there are no contracts.”Tort law deals with civil wrongs not arising out of contractual obligations.Corbett said he could not find any cases dealing specifically with people paying to park during high-demand times, but he said Posecai v. Wal-Mart Stores in 1999 closely addressed the issue.The case established the owners who allow people to pay to park in their parking lots have no duty to protect the people or their property — unless the damage is “foreseeable,” Corbett said. For instance, someone with a damaged car may have a legitimate case if they could establish damages at higher-than-normal rates.”A court is not going to hold [the property owner] liable for [accidents],” Corbett said. “You can’t prevent accidents.”Westphal said primarily college graduates park in the spaces, and he monitors the parking spaces throughout the night of the game until about an hour after the game ends. He has never had any issues with accidents.Income — regardless of the means — is considered taxable, said Christopher Pietruszkiewicz, LSU Law School tax law professor.”Income is income from whatever it is,” Pietruszkiewicz said. “When taxpayers deal in a cash economy, there’s no paper trail for the Internal Revenue Service to track.”In the United States, Pietruszkiewicz said more than $250 billion is lost in a “tax gap” — the difference between the amount the IRS should legally collect and the amount it actually does collect. About $197 billion is based on people who under-report on their tax returns, he said. The majority of the discrepancy is comprised of people who live primarily on a cash income.Earning money in a more traditional fashion would require both employers and the employee to report the amount of money they make to the IRS, Pietruszkiewicz said. Whenever the two amounts don’t match, a “red flag” is raised, and an audit is triggered.- – – -Contact Lindsey Meaux at [email protected]