The luxury tax is an arrangement by which teams [cough! -- the Yankees -- cough!] whose payroll exceeds a certain figure determined each year are taxed on the excess amount. The tax is paid to the league which then puts the money into its “industry-growth fund.” I guess the industry as grown so it wouldn’t be appropriate to call it a slush fund or anything, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a breakdown of what actually happens to that dough.
Anyway, the Yankees have paid the tax every year since it was invented. In fact, they have paid $174 million of the tax’s $190 million in total collections since 2003. They are the sole team to pay it this year, getting rung up for $25.69 million. Put differently, their luxury tax is something like 70% of the Marlins total payroll.
Yet, despite the huge and disproportionate tax bill, they continue to prosper and don’t scream about tyranny and socialism and all of that. Not that I’m making a political statement or anything. That would be outside the scope of this blog, and I’d never ever go off on a non-baseball tangent, no sir.