Colby Cosh: Taxing away the Stanley Cup
The other day a U.S. news network emailed me to see if I wanted to do a radio interview about Canada's Stanley Cup drought, which, as you all know, has just had its 32nd birthday; I presume somebody has done the decent thing and gone out and bought it a nice terry-cloth bathrobe or perhaps a stylish quarter-zip. I begged off from the request, citing pathological gloom, and resumed staring at the ceiling, an activity I intend to resume after I've written a few hundred words here. Nice to be back, by the way: please don't ask how my little Oiler-fan break went.
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The email brought a thought I've often had back to the surface of my mind, like a hunk of strawberry in a smoothie. People often blame high Canadian taxation for our Stanley Cup crisis; in a league bound by a collectively bargained salary cap, U.S. states with low income taxes have an obvious advantage in attracting free-agent players, an advantage generally accompanied by nicer weather, prettier golf courses and other features of American economics and culture.
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There can't be any doubt that this is a real contributing factor to the ongoing drought, although when I look at the roster of the victorious Florida Panthers I don't see the cruel talon of the taxman. Honesty requires me to report that Florida's just effing full of tough, capable players that other teams, mostly Canadian ones, flat-out gave up on and dealt away.
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But this reminds you that the tax burden influences every level of a competitive business that is even a little bit complicated. When it comes to the effects of onerous Canadian taxes, it's relatively easy to see that a free-agent player facing near-equal contract offers is likely to be tempted by the lower-tax jurisdiction. And the thought that keeps recurring to me is: 'We could fix that part. We could fix it easily. We could fix it overnight.'
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I'm frankly amazed that some banzai backbencher with ambitions hasn't picked up this flag — advocating a large, explicit tax cut for NHL players in Canada, with the stated goal of giving Canadian teams a positive advantage in contesting the Cup (which, you will surely recall, is morally and lawfully the property of the Canadian people and not the National Hockey League).
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Oh, sure, our governments would be forgoing some tax revenue from a particular category of rich people that we have decided we want to encourage, reward and retain; I suppose we can't countenance that sort of thing, except when it comes to, say, the inclusion rate on capital-gains taxes paid by corporations and trusts. If a government wanted to give more favourable tax treatment to professional hockey players, it could probably do so in a shrewdly disguised way. But it might be smarter to do it openly: declare that we're not going to fight for the Cup with one hand tied behind our backs.
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