Because the lightenings gm was able to get their players signed to team friendly deals.
Fans of other teams would rather blame it on “unfair tax advantages” than just admit Tampa’s gm is better than their teams gm.
Exactly, most of this complaining comes from fans of Canadian teams. Canadian tax law has an advantage that puts pretty much puts us on par with the No state tax teams. The use of a RCA (retirement compensation Agreement). It is so advantageous that the NBA's CBA prohibits their use as it would unfairly advantage one team - The Raptors.
Using an RCA, up to half of a players salary can be directed to a retirement account. Player cannot access it until retirement (it is invested and accumulates). In retirement the money is taxed when it is withdrawn. The real benefit is if the player is a resident of a lower or no tax jurisdiction on retirement. Assume Tavares has one for this contract. lets say he instructs that half of his pay goes to the RCA so 5.5M a year. He will get the other 5.5M each year and pay taxes on it based on his current situation residency etc.
After retirement he can move to Texas and withdraw a million. Since he is not a Canadian resident at this point he pays tax to Canada at the treaty rate of 15%. (150K) He will file a return in Texas and pay about 35% tax 350K but he gets credit for the foreign tax paid so really Canada gets 150K and the IRS gets 200K and he is left with 650K.
But wait he has always liked Monaco that has no income tax. He moves there and withdraws the million. Since Canada does not have a tax treaty with Monaco he pays the full withholding rate of Canada 25% or 250K to Canada and $0 to Monaco. He can earn up to 1/2 of his salary and pay ultimately only 25% on it. Some other vehicles on the 5.5 he is taxed on each year- use of signing bonus etc (esp for a non canadian) and he can pay much less than 50% on that.
Someone like Matthews who is from Arizona can have the best of both worlds. He can use a RCA to tax 1/2 his salary as low as 25%. He can spend less than 183 days in Canada a year and keep Arizona has a residence for taxation purposes. Because most of his salary is signing bonus that can be taxed in Arizona at 35%. He can effectively pay 30% overall fairly easily- that advantage is not available to any player on a US team.
