Most of us dread tax season. You gather your W-2s, hunt down receipts, and hope you don’t miss anything that needs to be reported. If your finances are complicated, the whole ordeal becomes a headache. But after learning what professional athletes deal with, I'm starting to think the rest of us have it easy.
Players who competed in Super Bowl LX on Sunday will lose thousands of dollars to California's infamous "jock tax" simply because the game was played in Santa Clara. That's right: Just showing up to work in the wrong state means a massive chunk of their bonus checks disappears so that Gov. Gavin Newsom can spend it on illegal immigrant healthcare and some high-speed rail fantasy that will never come to fruition.
The "jock tax" hits professional athletes based on how many days they spend playing or practicing in a given state or city, even if they live in a different state. California is especially aggressive about collecting, and both the winning and losing teams will feel the bite.
Under the NFL's collective bargaining agreement, winning players receive $178,000 each and losing players get $103,000. Sounds generous — until California takes its cut. Jeffrey Degner, a research fellow in economics at the American Institute for Economic Research, broke down the damage. "What that means here is that the winning team, their take-home pay will be approximately $86,000. If you're on the losing side, the take-home would be about $49,800," he said.
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According to Sportico, the Seahawks’ Super Bowl win triggered a $2.5 million Super Bowl bonus in quarterback Sam Darnold’s contract, on top of the postseason payouts he and his teammates earned along the way. Those bonuses included $58,500 for making the playoffs, $58,500 for winning the division, $81,000 for capturing the conference title, and $178,000 for winning the Super Bowl. Sportico projects that Darnold will owe about $249,000 in California state taxes tied to the Super Bowl game — more than his $178,000 Super Bowl winnings.
It must be nice to make so much money that you have to pay that much in taxes, but it's still disgusting.
And the Super Bowl isn't a one-time problem. Jock taxes follow NFL players all season long whenever they play or practice in states and cities that have implemented them. Both levels of government can pile on, creating a nightmarish web of tax obligations. These taxes are more common at the state level, but some cities get in on the action, too.
Both states and cities can implement jock taxes, adding layers of complexity to the player's tax burden, though they remain more popular at the state level than in municipalities.
Most jock taxes are implemented using a "duty day" standard, as other frameworks have faced challenges in court as well as feasibility issues.
The duty day format uses the number of days an athlete spends "on duty" playing in a game, practicing, participating in team meetings, travel days and – in the case of the Super Bowl – fulfilling team-related media obligations.
The total earnings are multiplied by a ratio of duty days spent in a given jurisdiction out of the athlete's total duty days to determine the jock tax liability.
The state takes an athlete’s total earnings, multiplies them by the share of duty days spent in California, and taxes that portion. It’s a bureaucratic cash grab that generates serious revenue by targeting out-of-state workers.
California, in particular, is aggressive about taxing anyone who does business within its borders, and professional athletes make easy targets. They’re wealthy, highly visible, and don’t even vote in the state. It’s taxation without representation, repackaged as fairness.
