Own Goal: New World Cup Report Reveals Extreme ‘Jock Tax’ Hits Coming for Visiting Nations

Greenback Expat Tax Services maps every host venue and finds tournament earnings impacted by city draw; Teams in Los Angeles, New York hit with double-digit tax rates.

GRANDVILLE, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--When the largest FIFA World Cup in history kicks off in the United States this summer, players from 48 nations will be chasing the same trophy under wildly different tax rules depending on which state they're playing in.

A new report from Greenback Expat Tax Services, 2026 FIFA World Cup & Cross-Border Tax Compliance, mapped the tax environment of every U.S. host venue and found that the 11 stadiums were split into five distinct zones. The report found that, using identical tournament earnings, a player can owe zero state tax in Dallas or Miami and double-digit rates in Los Angeles, East Rutherford or Foxborough, meaning the “jock tax" - state income taxes imposed on professional athletes for earnings generated while playing in a specific state - will have just as much of a financial impact on players as how they place in the World Cup.

"When the groups were announced, fans focused on their favorite team’s match schedule but we saw a wildly inconsistent tax map," said Mike Wallace, CEO of Greenback Expat Tax Services. "Two teams can earn the same money from this tournament and keep very different amounts of it based purely on which cities they're drawn into. A group-stage assignment to Dallas versus Los Angeles is a multi-million-dollar swing for a team, and the filings that manage it have to be in motion well before the opening whistle. It’s an unprecedented wrinkle to this year’s tournament.”

Greenback broke out the five unique tax stories for the 2026 World Cup:

• Tax-Free Stadiums (Dallas, Houston, Miami): AT&T Stadium, NRG Stadium and Hard Rock Stadium sit in Texas and Florida, which have no broad personal income tax. Players here face only federal withholding with no state tax layer, no state filing. The most tax-friendly draw of the tournament.
• Atlanta’s 2026 Rate: Mercedes-Benz Stadium carries Georgia's 4.99% rate for 2026 after House Bill 463 lowered the state's flat income tax rate from 5.19% to 4.99%, effective January 1, 2026.
• High-Tax Finals (Los Angeles, Santa Clara, East Rutherford, Foxborough): SoFi Stadium and Levi's Stadium fall under California's 13.3% top rate; MetLife Stadium under New Jersey's 10.75%. The twist: Massachusetts' new millionaire surtax pushes Gillette Stadium to an effective 9% for top earners, putting Boston in the same bracket as LA and the New York area, a fact almost no one expects.
• Multi-Tax (Kansas City): GEHA Field at Arrowhead is the most complex venue in the tournament: a state income tax, a separate nonresident-athlete withholding, and Kansas City's own earnings tax, which was voter-renewed this April, combine into roughly a 7% burden across three separate taxing authorities at a single stadium.
• Calendar Tax (Philadelphia and Seattle): Philadelphia's nonresident wage tax is scheduled to change on July 1, mid-tournament, meaning a team playing a June group-stage match and a July knockout match at Lincoln Financial Field gets taxed under two different fiscal years. Meanwhile Seattle is the tournament's biggest near-miss: a new tax aimed squarely at nonresident athletes was signed in 2026 but doesn't take effect until 2028, leaving Lumen Field a zero-state-tax venue for the World Cup.

The draw determines the venues, the venues determine the tax exposure, and the filings that reduce or recover that exposure (taxpayer IDs, withholding agreements, nonresident returns, duty-day documentation) must be prepared well before the tournament begins. No host jurisdiction is granting player tax relief, and at least one is weighing a tournament-period increase. For the thousands of players and staff arriving this summer, the planning window is already closing.

The jock taxes land hardest on nations with no U.S. tax treaty (Brazil, Senegal, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia) whose players face a flat 30% federal withholding with no relief available. Senegal drew the harshest hand of the tournament: a non-treaty nation drawn into Group I, with two of its three group-stage matches at MetLife Stadium, where the 30% federal hit lands on top of a 10.75% state rate. Brazil faces the same New Jersey exposure in its group opener against Morocco. Uruguay and Saudi Arabia caught the opposite luck, facing the same federal penalty, but with their group matches to Miami and Houston, where there is no state tax at all. Identical earnings, identical federal exposure, opposite outcomes, all decided entirely by which cities each team was drawn into.

The full report, including a venue-by-venue tax table and a treaty breakdown for key participating nations, is available at: https://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/blog/world-cup-jock-tax-report/

About Greenback Expat Tax Services

Greenback Expat Tax Services is the leading provider of U.S. tax preparation for Americans living abroad. The company pairs every client with a dedicated CPA or IRS Enrolled Agent who specializes exclusively in expat returns, covering FBAR filing, FATCA compliance, the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, Foreign Tax Credits, and citizenship renunciation planning. Greenback has served tens of thousands of Americans in more than 190 countries.