{"id":4390,"date":"2026-07-28T08:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T08:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4390"},"modified":"2026-07-28T08:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T08:38:14","slug":"lebron-james-took-a-pay-cut-to-maybe-live-in-new-york-and-commute-to-philly-by-chopper-risking-double-taxation-as-nyc-also-tries-to-ban-helicopters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4390","title":{"rendered":"LeBron James took a pay cut to maybe live in New York and commute to Philly by chopper, risking double taxation as NYC also tries to ban helicopters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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James is reportedly toying with living in New York while playing for the Sixers, commuting to games and practices by helicopter. Several basketball insiders posted on X this weekend that James could commute by chopper, and noted NBA insider Shams Charania said the option to live in New York while commuting to Sixers practices and games by helicopter added to Philadelphia\u2019s appeal. James has not disclosed where he\u2019ll actually live. <\/p>\n

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That presents two issues: being a supercommuter isn\u2019t easy on the taxes, and there\u2019s an ongoing campaign in New York to stop helicopters. <\/p>\n

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New York wasn\u2019t a hypothetical for him. Sources told Hoops Wire<\/em> that James\u2019s camp reached out to the Knicks during free agency, but New York wasn\u2019t interested in pursuing him, preferring to keep the roster that had just won a championship intact. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, his 76ers deal is notable even without the commute. James is currently the only active NBA player worth a billion dollars, and he signed a two-year, $8 million contract with Philly, dropping to the league\u2019s veteran\u2019s minimum salary. That represents a pay cut of roughly $48 million, or more than 90% of what he made last season with the Lakers. <\/p>\n

By contrast, the Philadelphia are could see a windfall. The Boyd Company, a corporate location consulting firm, projects James\u2019s arrival will generate between $250 million and $430 million in regional economic activity during his first season.<\/p>\n

He wouldn\u2019t be the first Sixer to make this exact trip. J.J. Redick, who coached James with the Lakers last season, commuted from his family\u2019s home in Brooklyn to Philadelphia while playing for the 76ers from 2017 to 2019. Wilt Chamberlain did something similar decades earlier, living in New York during the season while playing for Philadelphia and running a nightclub in Harlem.<\/p>\n

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Helicopter bans, pied-\u00e0-terre taxes, and supercommutting costs<\/h2>\n

The appeal of the helicopter option is speed. A helicopter flight between New York City and Philadelphia takes about 45 minutes, covering roughly 150 kilometers, compared with a car ride of about an hour and a half. Charter operators already run the route regularly, connecting multiple Manhattan lounges to several Philadelphia heliports.<\/p>\n

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That convenience is colliding with a New York City political fight that\u2019s been building for years. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during last year\u2019s campaign that he opposed nonessential helicopter travel, after a tourist helicopter crash into the Hudson River killed six people. Now, helicopter opponents are pressing him to follow through by restricting flights from the city\u2019s own heliports. Over the 12 months ending in June, the city logged more than 17,000 helicopter-related noise complaints, and a city council proposal would limit the two city-owned Manhattan heliports to essential flights only.<\/p>\n

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Then, if James does buy real estate in the city rather than rent, he\u2019ll run into another new cost. New York\u2019s pied-\u00e0-terre tax, which took effect July 1, applies to second homes valued at $1 million or more, with properties above $5 million facing a 6.5% annual surcharge. A part-time New York residence\u2014even for a player calling another city home for tax and team purposes\u2014would sit squarely in the tax\u2019s target zone. The New York state governor\u2019s X account posted a joke about James: \u201cLePied-a-Terre.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Then there\u2019s the tax question tied to the commute itself, which is more complicated than a simple double bill. Ordinary supercommuters face a real asymmetry: New York City has no income tax on nonresidents who work there, so a Philadelphia resident commuting into Manhattan pays nothing to the city itself but is still subject to New York State taxes on those wages. <\/p>\n

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On the flip side, a New York resident working in Philadelphia owes Philly\u2019s nonresident wage tax on top of full New York State and city resident taxes, and it isn\u2019t settled whether the credit system fully cancels out that overlap.<\/p>\n

Regardless of what and where James chooses, many basketball fans online are wondering whether James purposely took the minimum offer so he can finally call New York City home, more than 15 years after he toured his first apartment in the Big Apple. (He never bought it, so a pied-\u00e0-terre tax on that does not potentially yet apply to him.)<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing says \u2018I\u2019m fully committed to the city of Philadelphia\u2019 like refusing to actually step foot in Pennsylvania unless there\u2019s a game,\u201d wrote one person X.<\/p>\n

Read more China\u2019s exports are so huge they\u2019re now lowering inflation in other countries<\/a><\/p>\n

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LeBron James might commute to Philadelphia via helicopter from New York, and if he does call the Big Apple home, he’ll face some big taxes too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\nLeBron James took a pay cut to maybe live in New York and commute to Philly by chopper, risking double taxation as NYC also tries to ban helicopters - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4390\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LeBron James took a pay cut to maybe live in New York and commute to Philly by chopper, risking double taxation as NYC also tries to ban helicopters - 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