DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: California sets high income taxes for World Cup players.

“Usually jock taxes only really impact domestic American players who are all playing in the same league and are all playing against each other, and in that context, they do nothing,” Wilford told The Center Square.

Take professional football. When the Los Angeles Rams travel to Philadelphia to play the Eagles, the Rams’ players and staff will be expected to pay income tax to Pennsylvania, proportionate to the amount of their salary they earn while in the state. The very next week when the Buffalo Bills travel to Los Angeles to play, the Bills’ players and staff will be expected to do the same for the state of California.

According to Wilford, over the course of the NFL season, everything tends to even out in terms of state revenues.

“States all do this to each other. It’s a circular firing squad where they’re all taxing each other’s athletes, and then they all have to give tax credits to their own resident athletes for the taxes they had to pay to other states,” Wilford said. “States pretty much end up with the same amount of revenue that they would have had if no one did this.”

The addition of foreign, nonresident athletes coming to the United States for the World Cup adds entirely different complexities.

It isn’t that complex, really. Sacramento long ago adopted the GoodFellas approach to tax collection.