Forget The ‘Fearsome Foursome’: The NFL’s Top Players Are Being Sacked By Tax Liabilities; At Home & Away

With the NFL’s regular season set to begin next week, players around the league anxiously await the arrival of their first big game check of the season.

For many rookies, who collect signing bonuses well before the season begins, their first check signifies what they hope to be a profitable and prosperous career on and off the field.

This season’s NFL rookies, however, will be shocked to find out that the earnings for their first few games might as well be handed over to tax collectors – a fact of which veteran players are all too aware.

For players earning over $1 million in base salary per season, their federal income tax rate is 39.6 percent.

Add with the additional 3.8 percent Medicare surtax levied with the passage of the Affordable Care Act – “Obamacare” – that’s a combined top marginal federal income tax rate of 43.4 percent. With that in mind, care to guess how many games they have to play to pay off the tax collectors?

The answer is a whopping seven games. That’s one game shy of half the regular season just to pay federal income taxes.

And that’s before factoring in state income tax liabilities for home games and “jock taxes” for away games.

Depending on where the team is located and which teams they play this season, players could easily see their earnings for over half the season handed over to the various state and federal tax collectors.

Via: The Daily Caller

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