The Alberta NHL Players Tax: The Jock Tax Comes to Alberta - or Does it?

Abstract

The Alberta government introduced the Alberta NHL players tax in 2002. This tax is controversial in two respects. First, it exclusively targets a single profession, namely, players in the National Hockey League. Second, the revenue generated from the tax is channelled directly back to the owners of the Alberta NHL franchises, the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton Oilers. For players employed by the Alberta teams, the tax collects approximately 3 percent of the players' salaries and transfers it back to their employers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Alberta NHL players tax in the larger context of the taxation of professional athletes. Owing to their large salaries and high public profile, professional athletes have often attracted the attention of taxation authorities.

At the federal level, Canadian and US authorities have worked out a fairly simple and effective compromise under the Canada-US tax treaty to deal with the taxation of professional athletes. However, at the subnational level in the United States, the taxation of professional athletes has become complicated and retaliatory as a result of the imposition of jock taxes by many states and cities. Essentially, jock taxes require visiting professional athletes to pay income tax on the portion of their salary attributable to the time spent in that particular state or city.

This paper considers the US approach to the jock tax, and the many criticisms of and proposed reforms to the jock tax system. Then the Alberta NHL players tax is discussed in detail, and compared and contrasted with the US jock taxes.

Finally, the paper considers the justifications given by the Alberta government for the unique structure of the NHL players tax. In particular, the application of the tax to all NHL players, whether resident in Alberta or not, and the use of the tax revenue to subsidize the two Alberta NHL franchises are discussed in terms of both tax policy and potential conflict with the North American free trade agreement.

The paper concludes by noting that, while the Alberta NHL players tax is indeed a variant of the US approach to the jock tax, several functional improvements have been made. However, both the Alberta tax and the US jock taxes clearly disregard the principles of simplicity and transparency reflected in the Canada-US tax treaty. Finally, the Alberta NHL players tax is questionable at a policy level. While the tax may be somewhat justified as a means of recovering revenue lost to US jock taxes, it sets a dangerous precedent that could tempt taxation authorities to subject other high income earners to extra taxation based on profession.

Keywords: Alberta, athletes, Canada/US, income taxes, nonresidents, tax policy