It’s easy to envy sports stars and their giant salaries, but come tax time, professional athletes pony up a big portion of their paychecks to help keep their local, state and federal governments up and running. In fact, the highest-taxed athletes in sports forfeit half their income or more to their civic duty of paying the government. And in some states with higher tax rates, the payroll deductions for taxes can be hefty.
To find out which athletes have the highest tax bills, GOBankingRates used salary data from Spotrac to identify the MLB, NFL and NBA players with the highest salaries, then used its own internal tax calculators to assess the rates and dollar amounts that those athletes paid in state and federal taxes.
Note that NBA stars Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, who appear on this list, recently were traded. Their tax information reflects their tax bills in the states where their teams were based when they started the season last fall.
