Bryce Harper's move to Philly will generate at least $5 million in wages taxes for the city, more if he lives there, compared to zero for DC when he played for the Washington Nationals

As I age, I become even more nuanced in my thinking -- what you can call "yes, but..." and I am weakening a bit on tax subsidies for sports teams and facilities--especially because in many situations, despite local opposition unless funding requires a public vote, the money will be provided to the team regardless.

I don't think there should be a blank check and there should be a cost benefit analysis in favor of reducing costs and maximizing benefits, and the application of a planning framework ("(Post Super Bowl) Towards a framework for maximizing community return on investment from professional sports venues," 2019) with the aim of maximizing benefits.

Game day income tax revenues from professional sports...  One of the benefits that every city and state has in the US EXCEPT DC wrt taxing professional sports players  is the ability to apply wage taxes on home and away players on the day of game.

What that means is that if you're the LA Lakers playing in Philadelphia, you end up getting taxed.  Or the Washington Capitals playing in Detroit, they get taxed.

exclude DC.  But in DC, because the city is banned by Congress from assessing nonresident income taxes--the primary aim is to protect the 70% of the people who work in the city but live elsewhere mostly in Virginia and Maryland--this also ends up restricting DC from taxing athletes on game day income.

The baseball player Bryce Harper will generate lots of wage tax revenue for Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Inquirer has an article ("How Bryce Harper’s Phillies contract could be a hit for Philly — in wage taxes alone") about how much Bryce Harper will pay in taxes to the city over the life of his contract, which is even more than it would be in DC, because the Washington Nationals proposed deferring 1/3 of the stated income, and not paying it out fully for more than 20 years.

Philadelphia Inquirer graphic.

From the article:

Outfielder Bryce Harper got a record-breaking $330 million, 13-year contract this week to leave the Washington Nationals and join the Phillies.

But there’s another number that’s almost as eye-popping: $12.6 million.

That’s the amount Harper could expect to pay in wage taxes if he made Philadelphia his primary residence for the duration of his contract, according to an Inquirer analysis.

Harper could save millions, however, if he lived outside the city, paying just $5.1 million in Philadelphia wage taxes in the next 13 years, the Inquirer estimated.
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Philadelphia’s wage tax, long among the highest in the nation, claims close to 4 percent of income earned by Philadelphia residents, and just under 3.5 percent for those who live elsewhere but work in the city.

Why the large difference between Harper’s tax burden if he lived in Philadelphia or elsewhere? Athletes who live outside the city have to pay wage taxes only for days that they work in Philadelphia. They don’t pay the tax for working days spent at spring training and away games — and that adds up for Phillies players.

If Harper decided to live in Philadelphia, however, 100 percent of his wages would be subject to the resident rate.

The article also discusses the "jock tax" on nonresident players:

Philadelphia also taxes visiting teams’ players for any time spent here — even if it’s just one game.

Harper, therefore, has already paid thousands of dollars to Philadelphia while playing for the Nationals. Last season, he played 10 games at Citizens Bank Park. Kidder said most baseball players have an average of 220 working “duty days” per year, meaning that about 4.5 percent of his salary could be taxed in Philadelphia for the time he spent here. He made $21.65 million in 2018, according to mlb.com, so Philadelphia would have collected nearly $34,000 in taxes.

Cities’ and states’ practice of taxing visiting athletes is known as a “jock tax.” In December alone, Philadelphia raised more than $2 million in wage taxes paid by sports teams, according to city revenue reports. It’s not the sector with the largest wage tax collections — workers in the health and social services sector paid more than $32 million in wage taxes that month — but large athlete salaries add up quickly when it comes to tax collections.