Winning Olympic Medals A Taxing Experience

There’s an old British racing expression that says what you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts. That’s also the attitude off predatory governments around the world as they see the spoils athletes are enjoying and want an undeserved piece of the action. 

The Olympics are a prime target. Athletes who win a gold medal will receive US$37,500, while a silver medal will provide US$22,500 and a bronze medal US$15,000.  In addition, World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics, has pledged to award $50,000 to gold medalists in track and field events, with relay teams splitting the money. Plus bonus money under personal contracts are also targeted.

As reported by Sportico, “Under a U.S-France tax treaty, “artistes and sportsmen”—a classification that covers Olympic athletes—are exempt from paying French taxes on up to $10,000 or its equivalent in Euros for services performed while in France. After $10,000, those earnings are taxable.

A $15,000 with-holding tax is being used by France on visiting athletes during the Games. (Athletes typically do get a credit in their home tax jurisdiction versus any deductions made outside their home area.)

Gold, silver and bronze medals all carry prizes that exceed $10,000, and the amounts exceeding the $10,000 threshold will be subject to French taxes. Those taxes generally range from 11 percent to 45 percent depending on the level of earnings. A leading expert on French tax law told Sportico that U.S athletes must “declare all French source income” and will be subject to a “15% withholding [that] is offset against personal income tax due.” 

The French are hardly unique. For some time now municipal, state, provincial and federal governments have docked athletes for the amounts of their contracts paid for time spent in their jurisdictions. These so-called “jock taxes” deduct a figure proportionate to their salary relative to the number of days they do business in a jurisdiction. 

When Canadian NHL teams were suffering from a low dollar in the early 2000s provincial governments introduced the tactic. Combined with the Canadian Assistance Program, this kept Canada from losing more than just Winnipeg and Quebec City to American markets. While not universally employed jock taxes are used in many places where the highest-grossing athletes play. 

Naturally, athletes and their agents are looking to fight back against the encroachment of the tax man. (Ever notice that no one complains about making the term more inclusive? Tax Woman?) One of the ways they are doing this as salaries zoom to $50 million a year for more is to minimize their tax hit by heading to a state or province with a more conservative tax regime.

As we point out in our book Deal With It: The Trades that Shook The NHL & Changed Hockey, the 2022 defection of Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau from Calgary to American markets illustrated the peril faced by Canadian teams playing within a high-tax regime. Both players had expiring contracts— Gaudreau’s in 2022, Tkachuk’s in 2023. While Calgary was willing to meet their market value, they could not equal the after-tax packages both wanted.

Tkachuk, in particular, used the threat of walking away from Calgary to force a trade to Florida, a state with no state income tax. The Flames ended up trading him in a deal to the Panthers who made two Stanley Cup Finals— winning the Cup this year. The defection of Tkachuk and Gaudreau (to Columbus) gutted the Flames who are now re-tooling with younger players who are years from being able to use there NHL’s draconian salary cap to force a move.

There are five states with NHL teams that have a no-state-tax regime (Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Nevada, Washington). That makes them highly attractive to a player seeking to maximize his top contract. (Warm weather and anonymity away from the rink are also big draws.) The inequity is particularly punitive for Canadian teams which all function in very high tax regimes.

Leading some to demand the NHL tweak its salary cap to mitigate against tax breaks. As Eric Duhatschek writes in The Athletic, “The problem is that while there’s a lot of grumbling about the advantages that teams such as Florida and Tampa Bay may have, there isn’t a lot of belief that the system is about to change. For one thing, a change of this magnitude would have to be collectively bargained, and so the default position of the league is, if we need to address this at all, we’ll address it in 2026 when we need to go back to the bargaining table with the players’ association.”

Duhatschek points out that it takes more than low taxes to lure prime players. One executive told him, “His point was that Florida, Tampa Bay and Vegas all did something far better than any other team and that was why they won. Not because of the state tax codes. Tampa Bay found value in Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Ondrej Palat, Alex Killorn as players chosen deeper in the draft.

“Florida found gold on the NHL scrap heap: Carter Verhaeghe, Gustav Forsling, Oliver-Ekman Larsson. Sam Bennett came for a second-rounder and a prospect. Brandon Montour was practically a giveaway too (third-round pick). Sam Reinhart provided great value (2022 first-rounder, plus goalie prospect Devon Levi). And trading the No. 2 overall scorer in the 2021-22 season (Jonathan Huberdeau) as part of a package for Matthew Tkachuk took enormous guts by GM Bill Zito.”

It’s not just Americans wanting to avoid Canadian taxes. One agent privately admitted that Canadians would be shocked to know bow many Canadians have high-tax Canadian market on their no-trade-to list. So we might soon be saying that the only assurances in a hockey life are death, taxes and the power of the U.S. market.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.