Happy Tax Day! Here’s what your favorite Bengals players owe today.

Unless you are at least 105-years-old (and congrats if you are!), you probably don’t remember a time when U.S. citizens were not required to pay a federal income tax. Believe it or not, that was the case for the first 135 years or so of the United States’ history. But that all changed in 1913 with the passage of the 16^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On a side note, the federal government also passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, creating a central bank comprised of private banks who create the money supply in the United States by lending it at interest to the federal government.

One interesting tidbit is that in 1913 the tax brackets were seven percent for the highest earners, and the lowest bracket was a paltry 1 percent. Although, those tax rates only lasted long enough to get the amendment passes. They were boosted much higher to fund a pair of world wars and federal works programs during the Great Depression. In the 1980’s the highest tax rates fell below 70 percent for the first time in half a century, and by the 1990’s the highest tax rate settled to its current level, about 40 percent.

So how does this relate to football, you may ask. Football players are wage earners, and have to pay taxes, due today.

When we speak about players and their high salaries, we often forget the high taxes they owe on these salaries. Of course, it’s not uncommon for the players themselves to forget about the high taxes, as some estimates list over three quarters of NFL players becoming bankrupt within five years of their careers ending.

So how much do our favorite Bengals players owe this year on tax day?

We can’t know for sure. Some players have additional income (such as endorsement deals) which increases their tax burden beyond their salaries and some players have deductions to factor in (such as interest payments on home mortgages and charitable donations, for example) which lower their tax burdens. But we can look at a player’s NFL cash earnings for 2017 and calculate what their tax bills are.

For the sake of making this simple, we’ll assume they all file “married filing jointly”. As such, the highest federal tax bracket is 39.6%, which begins at an income of $480,050. For those with income earned in the state of Ohio, their state tax bracket is 5%, which begins at $210,600. And in Cincinnati, every wage earner surrenders an additional 2.1% of their income.

Interestingly, every player on the table above loses just under 50 percent of their income to the total tax burden of federal, state, and city. Except for Cedric Ogbuehi. He’s docked about 10 percent more than his teammates.

Another interesting takeaway is that John Ross was taxed over $5M for each time he touched the ball last year (one carry and zero receptions).

Also of note is that a worker earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr would have to work for almost 500 years to make enough money to pay Dre Kirkpatrick’s tax bill. They would only have to work for 200 years to pay off Carlos Dunlap’s tax bill.

While it’s unlikely that any of the readers of this article owe Uncle Sam the millions and millions that the Bengals players do, we hope you enjoyed your two extra days of tax relief, and have a happy delayed tax day!