Baseball Salaries and Income Taxes: The "Home Field Advantage" of Income Taxes on Free Agent Salaries

In this paper we examine the impact on the salaries of free agents in Major League Baseball of differences in state and local individual income taxes between major league cities, in an attempt to see if income taxes affect player salaries. Our basic specification suggests that each percentage point of an income tax raises free agent salaries by $21 to $24 thousand; other estimates indicate even larger impacts. Our findings suggest that the existence of this additional salary demand means that low tax cities (e.g., Florida, Texas, and Washington) have a "home field advantage" in the baseball free agent market.