Happy Tax Day, folks. Today is the one day of the year you can be thankful you are not a baseball player. Ballplayers — and all professional athletes, for that matter — have incredibly complicated tax returns because they pay local taxes to the city and state of the opposing team for every road game. Given the nature of their large salaries, these tax payments amount to big bucks. The new tax laws make these payments even larger, because these local taxes are no longer deductible against federal taxes.
I often wonder if free agents factor in tax savings when choosing their new teams, and just how significant the differences between teams are.