Duane Hoffman is a tax auditor who tracks professional athletes, and specifically their "duty days" in California. The state then shakes them down for state taxes at the same high rates as residents. According to a report in the Sacramento Bee, this brings in some $100 million annually, including $163,000 from a three-day trip by the New York Knicks and $106,000 from the 2006 California sojourn of Yankee infielder Alex Rodriguez. As we noted when we first covered this story in 2004, this confiscatory activity is not limited to athletes.

The tax also applies to a blues singer from Chicago, a home-care nurse from Nevada, and a novelist from Montana. According to the Los Angeles Times, an out-of-state salesman earning $50,000 a year, about $200 a day, would owe 9.3 percent of that, $18.60 a day, to California. Such people are not as easy to track as Shaquille O'Neal and other professional athletes, whose stellar salaries, usually public knowledge, make them an easy target for the "jock tax" that actually applies to everyone. Like all taxes, it has consequences.

Because other states retaliate, California's money grab is really a kind of zero-sum game. The Bee's report also notes that high taxes make contracts with California teams worth less money, and that state tax laws are now a factor in contract negotiations. It may not come out in the sports pages, but athletes have solid fiscal grounds for wanting to work elsewhere. So does everybody else, and many are doing so.