Local athletes, beware: play in the city, pay in the city.
D.C. Council member Jack Evans just introduced a bill that would require professional athletes to pay a specific tax if they earn money in the District but don’t live in the city, according to the Washington Times. The new fee would be known as a “jock tax,” and Evans believes it could generate as much as $5 million a year for the city.
Getting the tax enacted is not a simple task. Washington can’t impose a tax on nonresidents, so the council would have to adopt a nonbinding “sense of the council” resolution, according to the Times. City leaders could then ask D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton to introduce legislation on Capitol Hill amending a section of Washington’s tax code to state that professional athletes can still be taxed.
“This provision unfairly penalizes the District, which loses tax revenue not only from non-resident athletes who visit, but from the District’s own professional athletes, whose incomes are taxed by other states and who thus have their District tax liabilities reduced due to prohibitions on double taxation,” Evans said in a statement.
Not everyone is on Evans’ team when it comes to taxing athletes. Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, told the Washington Times that the tax could hurt athletes who don’t earn millions of dollars a year.
“[People] don’t realize this extends to people on these clubs who aren’t making the multimillion-dollar salaries,” he said.
Similar "jock taxes" are in place in other states.
