Hockey & Taxes: What An NHL Player Pays In Taxes Depending On Their Team
NHL players must deal with two certainties: the eventual death of their career and the taxes they will pay during it. We calculated the taxes they will pay.
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Barry Trotz this past July brought up the age-old argument that depending on income-tax rates, some NHL players want to play in a state or on a particular team where their take-home pay is higher.
He also inferred that U.S. teams located in states where there are no state taxes have an advantage over those in states with an income tax when attracting these NHL players.
Being the financial guy that I am, I wanted data.
Mark Feigenbaum is a partner with KPMG in their Vaughan, Ont., office, and he is arguably the No. 1 cross-border tax expert in Canada and the U.S. Not only has he been my tax accountant and tax lawyer for decades, but he is also the go-to guy for NHL players, NBA players and entertainers working on both sides of the 49th parallel.
In fact, Feigenbaum is representing John Tavares in his case against the Canada Revenue Agency, and although I have a strong opinion someone at the CRA is trying to make a name for themself by targeting wealthy athletes, I really don’t want an overnight audit to magically appear.
After hearing what Trotz said, along with similar claims over the years, I decided that I wanted The Hockey News to take a deep dive into whether tax rates were significantly different enough for players on the 32 NHL teams.
I sat down with Feigenbaum and asked him what he thought, and his response was that the only way to really find out was if someone was to complete a full set of tax returns in each of the 32 NHL markets. As soon as the words came out from his mouth, with a smile on his face, he realized that this was what I was asking him to do.
I wanted to set up conditions that enabled the most accurate apples-to-apples comparison possible. A series of assumptions were drawn up and agreed upon, which are listed below.
Using the 2024-25 NHL schedule of all 1,312 games, the basic premise was to take the approximate average NHL base salary of $3 million U.S. and see what effective overall tax rate this NHL player would have to pay.
One thing that people always get wrong is that they think that a professional athlete pays their total income tax in the jurisdiction where they reside. Not so.
Say there are 82 games in a season and 41 of them are played at home and the other 41 games are played on the road. NHL players pay income tax on the income they earned for home games to their local taxing authorities. The 41 games they play on the road, assuming they are out of state or province, they have to pay taxes to the state or province that they play their road games in.
If home games are in Florida, then their state income tax for those 41 games is zero, but when they go on the road and play in states like California, they actually have less take-home pay for an away game, since California has a high state income tax. Players on the L.A. Kings have a higher take-home pay for games they play in Florida against the Panthers or Lightning.
More than 100 U.S. federal, state, local, Canadian federal, provincial and local tax returns were completed to answer the question: do taxes differ significantly depending on which NHL team you play for?
The answer is absolutely and unquestionably yes, they do. NHL players, GMs and organizations now have the numbers.
Click on the gallery image at the top and zoom in to see a comprehensive chart of tax breakdown by team, including total taxes percentage, total taxed dollars and a $3-million salary after taxes.
Assumptions Used
Assumptions used by KPMG's Mark Feigenbaum
- All amounts are in the U.S. dollars
- Rates are for a single player with no dependents.
- The tax is calculated with the player assumed to be resident in the location of the arena where their home team plays and non-resident in every other jurisdiction.
- If the player plays for a U.S.-based team, then it is assumed they are not resident of Canada for tax purposes.
- If the player plays for a U.S.-based team, then it is assumed they are not resident of Canada for tax purposes.
- It is assumed they earn $3 million. No consideration is given for any bonus, escrow, playoffs, or any other payments.
- The player is assumed to have no other income than this salary (e.g., investment income, etc.).
- The player takes no deductions other than a standard deduction automatically applied.
- The tax rates used are for 2023.
- California state tax includes State Disability Insurance (SDI) of 1.2 percent with no maximum.
- For calculating state taxation, including city tax where applicable, the current 2024-25 NHL schedule was used to determine the location of each game for each team.
- For each game, one day was allocated to that state. No consideration was given for duty days, travel, training, etc.
- The schedule used included pre-season games but does not include any games outside Canada and the United States.
- It is assumed that Article XV, by way of Article XVI of the Canada U.S. tax treaty applies, and some of the states do not follow these Treaty articles.
For a deeper look into the world of the hockey business, including Q&As and the Top 100 People of Power and Influence, check out The Hockey News' Money and Power 2025 issue, available at THN.com/free.