An actual breakdown on taxes per team

[KevinRedkey]

NEWS FLASH TO ALL CANADIAN CITIZENS:

If you are out of the country for 6 months - less 1 day- you will not have to pay your federal income tax.

If your a canadian citizen who plays on a NHL team in canada then it's in your best interest to miss the playoffs.

Season ends mid April.
Training starts Mid September.

The only newsflash here is notifying everyone you're unable to properly count up to 6 in months.

 

[notsocommonsense]

I wonder if cost of living gobbles up a lot of this tax benefit. Not cheap to live in Florida between housing and insurance.

Well Vancouver has the 2nd highest tax on the list and the housing costs are through the roof

Edit: Haha, I just looked it up. Average house prices:

Vancouver: $1.1 million
Miami: $635,000
Tampa: $485,000

All prices in US dollars. Vancouver’s housing prices are way higher. Montreal would be higher too and they have the worst tax rate on the list.

 

[Rodgerwilco]

I'm surprised to see Pittsburgh and Philly on the lower end. I feel like we get slammed on Taxes here in PA.

 

[DistantThunderRep]

No one said that’s why they locked out.

First
-no human decision beyond 3 years old is based on one thing
Just like players don’t ONLY for the most part pick teams based on taxes/weather/family/media/hometown.

You don’t pick your house solely on sq ft.
This is childish thinking. No billion dollar organization wants just one thing.

The owners wanted many things. Absolutely they wanted cost certainty. For sure. No question. But they also wanted parity. They wanted teams to be able to compete with the big market teams. Of course they did. Lemieux said it in great detail. Bettman said it.

IF all you wanted was cost certainty. You had it. Ultimately. If you only had 1 million to spend. You had one million to spend. You could ice a team. It would just probably be terrible. You can find 700 people to play hockey for peanuts.

But that’s no good for a league to have 6 great teams. So they also as part of the cost certain league. Instituted parity by equal caps.

It’s not a Bi product. Because it’s in the founding rules.

You can easily make a 50% hrr with unequal caps if parity is not a goal.

You say parity isn’t a goal but won’t even in fake land say you would accept 98/78 Canadian/no state tax split.

They are equally certain and acceptable In your model. Not in my parity model

You agree with me. You just like being wrong I think

You have been arguing that parity was the most important thing to the league. It was not. The most important thing to the league was Cost Certainty. If Cost Certainty did not exist, in the sense of keep Player wages in check and tied to league revenues, the league was going to close and no one would get paid. Parity didn't even matter. You think if they didn't have Cost Certainty for wages vs revenue that they would have went "At least we got Parity, so let's not lock out."? Everything that came afterwards is secondary to the initial and most important factor of why the OWNERS locked out the players. They wanted to make sure the league wasn't spending 75% of their revenue on Wages, with bloating wages. For gods sake, Bobby Holik made $9.6M in 2003-04. He would be among the top paid players in the league 20 years later. Imagine if that Cost Certainty by pairing wages and revenue didn't exist. The NHL would have folded within 10 to 15 years from there.

Back then, the Nashville Predators, Panthers, Lightning, Stars, hell even the Canucks, Flames, Kings, Ducks, Flyers, Red Wings, pretty much every single owner didn't care about "parity" and being competitive. They were worried that eventually the cost of Players would be eating pretty much all their profits. The owners voted unanimously to lockout due to wanting Cost Certainty for then and the future.

You would never run a business where your employee wages were eating up 75% of your revenue. Not profit, but your Revenue. That is freaking insane and stupid as a business practice. If you were looking to buy a house and you needed SQFT more than prime location, you would PRIMARILY look for bigger houses, and then eventually work your way down and find a better area, better lot, slightly older house, one with reno opportunity. But you primary goal would still be to get the biggest house you could possibly get. This is the exact same situation. The owners had ONE thing they would not budge on, which was Cost Certainty and tying Salaries to Revenue and at max, having the HRR at 50%. Everything else that could fall in line did fall in line, and if it didn't so be it. They still got exactly what they wanted which was Cost Certainty.

You're made up notion that parity was the foremost goal of the lockouts is asinine. It was always a by-product, something that could happen if it all went as the owners planned. If it didn't happen, no sweat off their brows because they still had a guaranteed outlook on what wages would be every year going forward. Yes, Betteman spoke and said multiple times that parity would come with a hard cap, but he also stated the primary goal was cost certainty, and if everything worked out like he planned it to work out, eventually the league would normalize and there would be better competition across the league. But he also said, the league would not budge on tying wages to league revenue (NOT INDIVIDUAL TEAM REVENUE because the NHL is a collective not a singular team), you would not have an NHL today if it wasn't for Betteman digging his heels in and demanding Cost Certainty. Not Parity, Not Fairness for all teams, but Cost Certainty.

You are the definition of why the hockey world makes fun of Leaf fans. The complete egocentric view of the NHL. I realized that everything you have said is like a petulant child being in class and constantly making everything about them. This cost certainty was for the Health of the collective, not the singular. Its worked out brilliantly for the NHL and Fans (aside from ticket prices).

 

[DistantThunderRep]

Well Vancouver has the 2nd highest tax on the list and the housing costs are through the roof

Edit: Haha, I just looked it up. Average house prices:

Vancouver: $1.1 million
Miami: $635,000
Tampa: $485,000

All prices in US dollars. Vancouver’s housing prices are way higher. Montreal would be higher too and they have the worst tax rate on the list.

I live in Vancouver, I own my home. I work a good job. My wife works a good job. Anywhere else in the world we would be upper class citizens. In Vancouver, we barely get by. Its f***ing absolute trash. Pretty, but f***ing trash. But am I crying home about Millionaire hockey players saving money on tax, getting taxed more? No. Do I give a shit billion dollar sports teams are paying to Millionaires for my entertainment? No. All I really see is people complaining their Billionaires don't get to play with their Million dollar toys as much as they'd like, and somehow its everyone's problem.

 

[Jack Burton]

Season ends mid April.
Training starts Mid September.

The only newsflash here is notifying everyone you're unable to properly count up to 6 in months.

lolololo

So during the regular season do you think when said Canadian citizen who plays on a Canadian NHL team goes on a road trip to play other NHL teams who are located in the USA, somehow that doesn't qualify said Canadian citizen as "out of the country" for tax purposes??? News flash: It does.

I will admit that it's extremely tight for a Eastern based Canadian teams player to hit that 6 months -less 1 day- but it's an absolute lock if you play on a western based Canadian team.

 

[ElLeetch]

For NYR, (and games players play in NYC limits) there is also a local 3.876% income tax, on top of federal and state.

 

[Legion34]

You have been arguing that parity was the most important thing to the league. It was not. The most important thing to the league was Cost Certainty. If Cost Certainty did not exist, in the sense of keep Player wages in check and tied to league revenues, the league was going to close and no one would get paid. Parity didn't even matter. You think if they didn't have Cost Certainty for wages vs revenue that they would have went "At least we got Parity, so let's not lock out."? Everything that came afterwards is secondary to the initial and most important factor of why the OWNERS locked out the players. They wanted to make sure the league wasn't spending 75% of their revenue on Wages, with bloating wages. For gods sake, Bobby Holik made $9.6M in 2003-04. He would be among the top paid players in the league 20 years later. Imagine if that Cost Certainty by pairing wages and revenue didn't exist. The NHL would have folded within 10 to 15 years from there.

Back then, the Nashville Predators, Panthers, Lightning, Stars, hell even the Canucks, Flames, Kings, Ducks, Flyers, Red Wings, pretty much every single owner didn't care about "parity" and being competitive. They were worried that eventually the cost of Players would be eating pretty much all their profits. The owners voted unanimously to lockout due to wanting Cost Certainty for then and the future.

You would never run a business where your employee wages were eating up 75% of your revenue. Not profit, but your Revenue. That is freaking insane and stupid as a business practice. If you were looking to buy a house and you needed SQFT more than prime location, you would PRIMARILY look for bigger houses, and then eventually work your way down and find a better area, better lot, slightly older house, one with reno opportunity. But you primary goal would still be to get the biggest house you could possibly get. This is the exact same situation. The owners had ONE thing they would not budge on, which was Cost Certainty and tying Salaries to Revenue and at max, having the HRR at 50%. Everything else that could fall in line did fall in line, and if it didn't so be it. They still got exactly what they wanted which was Cost Certainty.

You're made up notion that parity was the foremost goal of the lockouts is asinine. It was always a by-product, something that could happen if it all went as the owners planned. If it didn't happen, no sweat off their brows because they still had a guaranteed outlook on what wages would be every year going forward. Yes, Betteman spoke and said multiple times that parity would come with a hard cap, but he also stated the primary goal was cost certainty, and if everything worked out like he planned it to work out, eventually the league would normalize and there would be better competition across the league. But he also said, the league would not budge on tying wages to league revenue (NOT INDIVIDUAL TEAM REVENUE because the NHL is a collective not a singular team), you would not have an NHL today if it wasn't for Betteman digging his heels in and demanding Cost Certainty. Not Parity, Not Fairness for all teams, but Cost Certainty.

You are the definition of why the hockey world makes fun of Leaf fans. The complete egocentric view of the NHL. I realized that everything you have said is like a petulant child being in class and constantly making everything about them. This cost certainty was for the Health of the collective, not the singular. Its worked out brilliantly for the NHL and Fans (aside from ticket prices).

Basically all of this is irrelevant.

Cost certainty. Was getting 50/50 split. Agreed. This was of vital importance to small market teams. Yes. Ok. Good

The way the cap is equally split among all teams is forced parity that many didn’t want (ie Arizona) but Bettman did. He said it.

there is nothing that says that 32 teams can’t have 32 different caps as long as they equal 50% if all you want is certainty

Enforcing the equal caps and floors and not allowing trading cap etc is for parity.

Which was the goal of how he chose to implement the cap. Which was linked to cost certainty.

This isn’t hard.

 

[edog37]

no. He didn’t. He said linkage was for certainty. The equal cap implementation was for parity. He said it at the time and continued to talk about it 20’yewre later.

I posted multiple articles where Bettman specifically says this.

Just admit you are ok with certain teams that couldn’t compete in natural free market now getting unfair advantages.

Instead of just being blatantly wrong

You were saying something about being wrong….

Gary Bettman is out to make amends for NHL owners

How did the CBA, which seemed to benefit the owners and punish the players, transform into something the players want to keep but Bettman can no longer live with?

nationalpost.com

Bettman Seeks Cost Certainty; Lemieux Likely To Step Up?

www.sportsbusinessjournal.com

 

[Legion34]

lolololo

So during the regular season do you think when said Canadian citizen who plays on a Canadian NHL team goes on a road trip to play other NHL teams who are located in the USA, somehow that doesn't qualify said Canadian citizen as "out of the country" for tax purposes??? News flash: It does.

I will admit that it's extremely tight for a Eastern based Canadian teams player to hit that 6 months -less 1 day- but it's an absolute lock if you play on a western based Canadian team.

Again it’s Not only residency. It’s greater financial ties. Residency.property. Bills (kids in school etc) endorsements/appearances all factor in.

Even if you lived 51% of your time in the states. That’s a huge part. But you still could be considered to have greater ties to Canada

 

[edog37]

Playing field is equal, players fend for themselves for taxation and tax avoidance. They aren't going to write 32 rule books. One set of rules, everyone deals with it.

Your drivel has gone on and on and all you do is double down and make erroneous claims instead of owning the fact that you root for teams with shitty management and ownership. 57 years and counting for the Leafs, 31 years and counting for the Habs, rest of the Canadian teams don't even matter.

76 teams have made the conf finals since the cap was put in place, 17 of those times were teams from states w/o state income tax.

He’s just another whiny fan who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

 

[Legion34]

You were saying something about being wrong….

Gary Bettman is out to make amends for NHL owners

How did the CBA, which seemed to benefit the owners and punish the players, transform into something the players want to keep but Bettman can no longer live with?

nationalpost.com

Bettman Seeks Cost Certainty; Lemieux Likely To Step Up?

www.sportsbusinessjournal.com

Did you read the article? It says cost certainty AND a conservative cap. These are seperate and important goals. “And”
Seperates to objects/concepts as distinct

If I say I want cake and ice cream. That doesn’t mean ice cream cake.

The article even says that the goal of the cap system he implemented was to bridge the gap between the haves and have nots.

It’s literally in the article.

 

[edog37]

Did you read the article? It says cost certainty AND a conservative cap. These are seperate and important goals.

If I say I want cake and ice cream. That doesn’t mean ice cream cake.

The article even says that the goal of the cap system he implemented was to bridge the gap between the haves and have nots.

It’s literally in the article.

Move the goal posts much? He literally said in many news conferences back then about cost certainty. You have a direct quote from Mario Lemieux. The economic model wasn’t working & teams were losing money left & right. It was literally about league survival.

 

[Legion34]

Move the goal posts much? He literally said in many news conferences back then about cost certainty. You have a direct quote from Mario Lemieux. The economic model wasn’t working & teams were losing money left & right. It was literally about league survival.

He also had many conferences where he referenced parity and competitive balance before during and after. I posted multiple articles and you can easily find plenty.

Both things are true. They wanted cost certainty which was achieved by making player salaries 50% of HRR

Agreed. Now there are plenty of ways to do that. Salary cap is one obvious way.

There are many different versions of caps. Bettman made an equal cap with no transfer and so rigid to enforce parity. It’s incredibly complicated and arduous and was implemented in the way it was to cause parity.

the way the cap is implemented is about parity. Because you could have made 50%hrr without equal caps.

Annnnnd he said so for 20 years. That’s a clue

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Withholding is an estimate of your taxes. You can be pretty precise with it if you have the prior tax returns and full knowledge of everything an individual has done that year.

Are we expecting all players to provide their tax returns to the NHL? Is the NHL going to be involved in tax planning?

Agreed. This is why the "after tax salary cap" idea isn't practical:

First, in order to do the calculation, the league would need every player's tax return. Does anyone think that the NHLPA would agree to this? It's inconceivable that the player's union would accept the league obtaining so much sensitive financial information. (Yes, player salaries are publicly available, but tax returns contain plenty of other confidential information).

Second, the cost of compiling and analyzing all of this data would be substantial. My best estimate is it would cost between $750K and $1M annually for a team of accountants or lawyers to do this. Why would the NHL agree to that? The owners aren't going to waste a million dollars to alleviate the complaints of a very small (but vocal) number of fans.

NEWS FLASH TO ALL CANADIAN CITIZENS:

If you are out of the country for 6 months - less 1 day- you will not have to pay your federal income tax.

I wasn't sure if this was posted as a joke or not, but for the record, that's not how this works.

2.) all teams are allowed to provide the exact same signing bonuses. They choose not to.

It's not just a matter of "choosing" not to. It's a question of which teams have the resources to do this.

Irrespective of any tax benefits, players would prefer to get as much of the money upfront (in the form of a signing bonus). Taking into account the time value of money, that maximizes the NPV of their contract.

Not every team has the financial capacity to pay huge signing bonuses. The Leafs certainly can (as demonstrated with Matthews, Marner and Tavares). I suspect that teams in smaller markets (Winnipeg, Columbus, Phoenix etc) don't have the cash flow to do this. This is yet another inequality between teams. Should the Leafs be prohibited from making their contracts more appealing due to their ability to make multi-million dollar upfront payments? (If the answer is no - then why would we adjust for the difference in tax rates, but not the difference in a team's ability to pay large signing bonuses?)

Agreed.

It's hard for me to believe that anyone who thinks the league should use players' individual after-tax income for the cap has ever done or knows anything about taxes.

There are some real-world applications to calculating someone's after-tax income in different jurisdictions. It often happens when someone who works for a multi-national corporation gets temporarily transferred to a different country (long enough that they have to pay tax on the income that's earned there - this gets complicated very quickly because different countries have different rules). The calculations are done to "equalize" the individual's take-home pay (comparing what they actually received, versus what they would have received, had they not been transferred).

The point is - an accurate calculation of after-tax income in different jurisdictions absolutely can be done. But this is usually done by accountants or lawyers who specialize in this area. It's complex and expensive. That goes back to my previous point - there's no way the league would waste several hundreds of thousands of dollars on this, to address online complaints from a very small subset of fans.

 

[DistantThunderRep]

Basically all of this is irrelevant.

Cost certainty. Was getting 50/50 split. Agreed. This was of vital importance to small market teams. Yes. Ok. Good

The way the cap is equally split among all teams is forced parity that many didn’t want (ie Arizona) but Bettman did. He said it.

there is nothing that says that 32 teams can’t have 32 different caps as long as they equal 50% if all you want is certainty

Enforcing the equal caps and floors and not allowing trading cap etc is for parity.

Which was the goal of how he chose to implement the cap. Which was linked to cost certainty.

This isn’t hard.

Teams literally can trade cap.

I think I am done. I can't believe someone can be this stubborn and dumb. Enjoy the rest of your life. You managed to break me with your idiocy.

 

[Legion34]

Agreed. This is why the "after tax salary cap" idea isn't practical:

First, in order to do the calculation, the league would need every player's tax return. Does anyone think that the NHLPA would agree to this? It's inconceivable that the player's union would accept the league obtaining so much sensitive financial information. (Yes, player salaries are publicly available, but tax returns contain plenty of other confidential information).

Second, the cost of compiling and analyzing all of this data would be substantial. My best estimate is it would cost between $750K and $1M annually for a team of accountants or lawyers to do this. Why would the NHL agree to that? The owners aren't going to waste a million dollars to alleviate the complaints of a very small (but vocal) number of fans.


I wasn't sure if this was posted as a joke or not, but for the record, that's not how this works.


It's not just a matter of "choosing" not to. It's a question of which teams have the resources to do this.

Irrespective of any tax benefits, players would prefer to get as much of the money upfront (in the form of a signing bonus). Taking into account the time value of money, that maximizes the NPV of their contract.

Not every team has the financial capacity to pay huge signing bonuses. The Leafs certainly can (as demonstrated with Matthews, Marner and Tavares). I suspect that teams in smaller markets (Winnipeg, Columbus, Phoenix etc) don't have the cash flow to do this. This is yet another inequality between teams. Should the Leafs be prohibited from making their contracts more appealing due to their ability to make multi-million dollar upfront payments? (If the answer is no - then why would we adjust for the difference in tax rates, but not the difference in a team's ability to pay large signing bonuses?)

Sweet Jesus. Because there is a difference between

1.) teams being artificially handicapped and being held to different circumstances

2.) all teams having equal rights/ability to do something. And not being successful enough to do so (despite getting millions and other teams being handicapped).

You have to see the difference right? If the NHL allowed only the leafs to have signing bonuses I would agree. Every team has the exact same rights/rules
Regarding SB. Toronto can’t pay the tax difference.

Lack of success is not the same as different rules

 

[Legion34]

Teams literally can trade cap.

I think I am done. I can't believe someone can be this stubborn and dumb. Enjoy the rest of your life. You managed to break me with your idiocy.

They cannot trade cap? What are you talking about? You can’t trade money. You can’t trade assets for cap?

Toronto can trade a first round pick to Utah for 5 million in cap?

if it was about certainty you could. Parity you cannot.

It’s probably best if you are done. I have to keep correcting for the third party who is reading and thinking this is about basketball. Or there is some fake Tampa accountant who can school me on the rules.

 

[Legion34]

Actually @DistantThunderRep unwittingly just proved that the cap was implemented in this manner for parity.

If it was just about certainty. Then teams could just trade for cap without contracts.

Toronto could have traded a 1st for 6.25 million in cap and kept Marleau. Instead of forcing Carolina to spend 4 million and buy him out.

Arizona wouldn’t have to take on and pay Webber and pronger etc. just to fake to the floor. They could just lower the floor by selling cap. All of the shenanigans and 3rd party brokers etc are to keep parity.

NOT certainty

 

[DistantThunderRep]

They cannot trade cap? What are you talking about? You can’t trade money. You can’t trade assets for cap?

Toronto can trade a first round pick to Utah for 5 million in cap?

if it was about certainty you could. Parity you cannot.

It’s probably best if you are done. I have to keep correcting for the third party who is reading and thinking this is about basketball. Or there is some fake Tampa accountant who can school me on the rules.

Three Way trades for cap space. Tampa's done it, Toronto's done it, its a thing. God you are insufferable.

Also with your stupid ass idea. What happens when you trade a player?

Player from Toronto who has inflated cap hit, gets traded to Vegas, does his cap hit get pro rated? does it stay the same? Conversely trading a player from Dallas to Montreal, does the traded player get an inflated cap hit to equal out what the cap percentage is supposed to represent?

Its a f***ing logistical nightmare. It doesn't promote parity if more expensive players have their cap hit lowered to a place they make more take up, and it has to inflate from a player signing in a no income tax state to equal the same cap hit percentage that was used if you are adjusting Total Salary Caps for specific team.

You think either Owners or the PA agrees to some stupid fans crying solution?

 

[Legion34]

Three Way trades for cap space. Tampa's done it, Toronto's done it, it’s a thing. God you are insufferable.

This is wrong. You cannot trade for cap.


That is entirely different. You cannot under any circumstances trade for cap. Because of parity.

You can trade for
Players
Players rights.
Draft picks

And associated contracts (dollars and hits). If you could. You could just trade for more cap.

This is not at all what Toronto or Tampa did. They never traded for cap.

You can trade for a player. Then retain and retrade the player and associated (lesser) contract.

You cannot. Under any circumstances trade for cap.

It’s strictly prohibited to enforce parity

 

[DistantThunderRep]

This is wrong. You cannot trade for cap.


That is entirely different. You cannot under any circumstances trade for cap. Because of parity.

You can trade for
Players
Players rights.
Draft picks

And associated contracts (dollars and hits). If you could. You could just trade for more cap.

This is not at all what Toronto or Tampa did. They never traded for cap.

You can trade for a player. Then retain and retrade the player and associated (lesser) contract.

You cannot. Under any circumstances trade for cap.

It’s strictly prohibited to enforce parity

Its called retention for a third party. where the f*** have you been? in a bunker writing a salary cap manifesto to present to the league?



This is TRADING FOR SALARY CAP. What did Detroit do besides act as middle man to retain another 50% of Savard's cap hit?

 

[Legion34]

Its called retention for a third party. where the f*** have you been? in a bunker writing a salary cap manifesto to present to the league?



This is TRADING FOR SALARY CAP. What did Detroit do besides act as middle man to retain another 50% of Savard's cap hit?

No. It’s not at all?? Tampa never traded for cap.
Third party retention is NOT trading for cap. That ks not the same thing. At all

Trading for cap would be.
Toronto pays a 1st and now has a 98 million dollar cap. And Utah has a 78 million dollar cap. That’s trading for cap It is prohibited.

Just like
When teams paid money for rights to players. You can’t do that.

But you can trade for players and their contracts.

Teams cannot trade assets for money.
They cannot trade assets for cap.


This is insane. You can’t possibly think making flipping a contract with retention and trading for cap are the same?

Really????

 

[Golden_Jet]

He’s just another whiny fan who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Ya everyone has figured that out, if not doesn’t take long.
It’s become comedy now.

 

[edog37]

He also had many conferences where he referenced parity and competitive balance before during and after. I posted multiple articles and you can easily find plenty.

Both things are true. They wanted cost certainty which was achieved by making player salaries 50% of HRR

Agreed. Now there are plenty of ways to do that. Salary cap is one obvious way.

There are many different versions of caps. Bettman made an equal cap with no transfer and so rigid to enforce parity. It’s incredibly complicated and arduous and was implemented in the way it was to cause parity.

the way the cap is implemented is about parity. Because you could have made 50%hrr without equal caps.

Annnnnd he said so for 20 years. That’s a clue

Bro, you keep changing your story thinking it will somehow work out in your favor. The cap was done to protect franchises & create a certain economic model. I remember it quite well. The Pens just came out of bankruptcy & other teams would’ve done similar had things not changed. The owners wanted (& still do) a hard cap. It’s not that hard.