It’s time to chill with the grousing, New Jersey. While New York may be getting all the glory, the Garden State is coming away with the cash.
All those dozens of players, coaches, broadcasters and other hangers-on from each team? They pay the so-called jock tax on their earnings to New Jersey – for every day they are in the area for the big game. That’s 8.97% of their daily pay — plus any bonuses (using the state’s highest income-tax rate, which hits those who earn at least $500,ooo). New York gets none of that.
The Star-Ledger newspaper figures Peyton Manning will sign a check to the Garden State’s tax department for about $57,000 in 2014, based on the eight days the Denver quarterback will be in the state for the Super Bowl and two days in the 2014 regular season for a game against the Jets (assuming he doesn’t retire first). Others may not owe as much, but each member of the winning Super Bowl team will earn $92,000 before taxes, while each member of the losing team will earn $46,000, according to the newspaper. That adds to New Jersey’s claim.
Both the Broncos and the Seahawks are staying in a pair of fancy Jersey City hotels, across the Hudson River from Manhattan but without the traffic headaches. Ka-ching – there’s that 5% state tax on hotel rooms and another 7% state sales tax on the same bill. Again, New York is missing out.
Yes, many fans will be paying to stay in New York City hotels, eat in New York City restaurants, drink in New York City bars and freeze on Super Bowl Boulevard (normally a tourist trap known as Broadway, sandwiched between the bigger tourist trap of Times Square and that foreign tourist shopping mecca known as Macy’s, at Herald Square). And, yes, New York will collect plenty of taxes from them. Now you know why Daily News columnist Mike Lupica insists the game really belongs to New York.
But that income-tax money is as good as guaranteed to New Jersey, unlike that $600 million impact to New York and New Jersey that the Super Bowl Host Committee has cited for the big game. Some experts say that’s greatly exaggerated. Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., puts it at between $30 million and $90 million.
One other way New Jersey wins: When many fans actually head to the game at MetLife Stadium, it will be on a New Jersey Transit train from Penn Station to the Meadowlands about 10 miles away in, yes, New Jersey, not a New York City subway line to somewhere in Queens. New Jersey Transit expects 12,000 customers. That’s another $5.25 per trip. Not enough to build a new train tunnel to New York, but still a nice chunk of change.
All told, New Jersey on average collects $10 million a year in income tax from visiting athletes, according to the state Treasury. The Super Bowl should bump that up a bit.
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