We literally just had an offseason where the most sought after free agent took a smaller salary offer from a team in a higher taxed city than a larger offer from a team in a lower taxed city. Taxes are a factor that players consider, but Tavares is the ultimate example that it's not the only or primary factor in player heads. If it was, we'd see a deluge of players going to lower or no-income tax state teams, and yet we haven't really seen that to any noticeable degree other than arguably Stamkos taking a good deal to stay with Tampa and that almost assuredly had more to do with him wanting to stay with an at the time unarguably better team that he was accustomed to.
I'm sorry, as a fan of a team in a fairly high-taxed market, this is making much ado about nothing and prioritizing one factor compared to any number of other factors that bounce around in player heads when they make free agency decisions. Should bad teams or boring/small markets or cities with high property taxes or teams with larger than average amounts of travel or literally any other potential negative factor under a free agent's consideration get competitive boosts, too? Not to mention that if a state or province jacks up their tax rates on a whim, what happens to all those long-term deals everywhere in the league, does the cap hit suddenly change across the board?