Jock Tax and the Super Bowl

[barrett]

http://www.si.com/nfl/2016/02/06/sup...tax-cam-newton

Cam Newton will pay the State of California $137,000 in state income tax despite not being a resident of the state.

I don't cry for the wealthy too often, but this is just absurd. The Federal Government should create guidelines to regulate this kind of thing. There is no way a State government should be able to create laws that regulate citizens of other states. At best it is taxation without representation of any kind, at worst it is robbery.

[Nconroe]

Agree, government gone wrong again.

[HPF Bob]

Cali is not alone in this. States and cities do this in many locations. New York does it. Chicago does it. Philadelphia does it. Just about any city with unchecked Democrat leadership does this because those athletes can't vote against them. They're sitting ducks unless they ban together and refuse to play championship games at sites with major taxes.

[chuck]

States levy jock taxes, states with overwhelming Republican majorities in both houses, states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, Missouri, Florida, on and on. I wonder what it would be like to be as brainwashed as you are, Baubles. I'll never know, but sometimes I wish I could spend fifteen minutes in a head like yours. It would be scarier than any haunted house your church puts on for Halloween, I'll tell you that.

[barrett]

California levies the largest tax and has the most pro teams, so the multiple visits allow them to tax more work at a higher rate. They collected over $200 million from out of state athletes. I wonder how the NFLPA feels about adding another team in California?

[HPF Bob]

Nice deflection, Chuck. The states with these taxes are overwhelmingly Democrat and if the state government is dominated by Republicans, there are still cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Washington DC and Philadelphia who do it on their own.

Florida, Texas, Washington and Tennessee have major sports teams and no personal income tax. Somehow, Tennessee still decided to tax out-of-state athletes. That's because it's an easy money grab and the victims have no way to fight back.

It's actually not that different than the hotel and car rental tax that Houston and many other municipalities levy - tax the people who cannot vote against you. They'd tax babies if they thought there was any money to made from it.

[barrett]

21 out of the 25 states with pro sports do this. It is not a political thing. It is a government thing. Like Bob said, it's very similar to Hotel tax, but at least hotel tax is applied to everyone who stays in a hotel. The way this tax is applied, you have businessmen who work in California half the year and never pay tax there because nobody knows when they are there or what money the make on the days they are there. Because athletes have public schedules and public salaries, they get hammered.

The worst thing to me is that I can guarantee California is not taxing the visiting owners on 1/16 of their revenue sharing since they played in town that week. That's because the owners are rich enough to avoid paying taxes through all manners of shelter/evasion. The players are only rich enough to get killed on their taxes. The various unions are an embarrassment, as this should be the exact thing they are protecting their members from.

[Warren]

The players get hit especially hard for the Super Bowl since the tax is calculated based on the number of days that they are in the state or city and have a game, practice, meeting, or other required activity. In the typical NFL road trip the visitors fly in on Saturday and leave right after the game on Sunday, but for the Super Bowl they're in town for a week. Cha ching