Lakers Luxury Tax bill: 29mil

[dockingsched]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/ESPNSteinLine/status/354802641802510336[/tweet]

this was already known since the lakers had a 100 mil payroll, which was 29mil over the 71 mil lux tax. up to this point, lux tax was at a simple dollar for dollar rate. This means the player salary bill came out to about 130 mil, which still fits in nicely within the ~$180 mil average they get from their tv deal (3bil/20 yrs)


The interesting part is how the new luxury tax rate is going to change starting this next season.

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2013-2014

This next season, the CBA will be introducing a new incremental tax which starts off at $1.50 tax for each dollar over the luxury tax line. the higher you are over the lux tax, the more you pay per dollar. For the specifics go here (http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q21)

If the Lakers kept the same payroll for next season, they would be looking at a tax bill of about 75mil, so a total of $175mil for players (100mil salaries + 75 lux tax). all of a sudden thats getting pretty close to eating up all the tv money.


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2014-2015

The season after, 2014-2015, the yr the lakers have virtually all salary off the books is the yr that the repeater tax rate kicks in, which is an even higher tax rate for teams that have been tax payers for the previous 3 seasons. any season after that it applies to teams that have been tax payers for 3 of the 4 previous seasons.

With this 100mil payroll, the lakers would basically be on the hook for another 100mil in lux tax for a total bill of 200 mil.

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anyway, i thought this would be an interesting look at some of the motivations the team may have for keeping salary flexibility on hand besides the prospects of signing a big time free agent. our fan base needs to get in line very quickly with the new realities of the CBA and how it affects the lakers ability to spend spend spend.

[kblo247]

I'm going to say it. The Russian will pay these taxes out his ass, la will give up revenue sharing money, but when the new CBA comes the revenue sharing will drop or tax will lower. The big owners will have it one way or another with these small teams giving out these horrid deals

[gotokyo]

At least we were the champs of something last year

[KB89]

29 million was totally worth this disastrous season.