benefits, payrolls for the Los Angeles Dodgers ($244 million), New York Yankees ($209.3 million ), Boston Red Sox ($187.9 million), Detroit Tigers ($190.4 million), San Francisco Giants ($186.4 million) and Chicago Cubs ($199.5 million) were in excess. This was the 15th straight year the New York Yankees paid the luxury tax. In 2018 only two teams met the luxury tax by the MLB: The Boston Red Sox ($9.4 million) and The Washington Nationals ($1.2 million). Several teams came just under the $197 million tax threshold: The San Francisco Giants ($196.66 million), The Chicago Cubs ($183.9 million), Houston Astros ($182.4 million), Los Angeles Dodgers ($181.99 million) and New York Yankees ($178.8 million). The luxury tax is separate from revenue sharing, which is a system to balance out the income distribution between large and small market teams by dividing money from merchandise sales and media contracts. The money generated from the luxury tax is not distributed to the rest of the league, as is the case with the NBA, but rather is used for other purposes. The first $2,375,400 and 50% of the remaining total are used to fund player benefits, 25% goes to the Industry Growth Fund, and the remaining 25% is used to defray teams' funding obligations from player benefits. National Basketball Association (NBA) The NBA utilizes a soft salary cap, meaning there is a salary cap but there are a variety of exceptions that allow teams to exceed that cap. For example, teams can re-sign players already on the team to an amount up to the maximum salary allowed by the league for up to five years regardless of where their payroll is relative to the cap. This provision is known as the "Larry Bird" exception, named after the former Boston Celtics player who was retained by that team until his retirement under the provisions of this rule. The result is that the majority of teams are over the cap at any given time. In addition to the soft cap, the NBA utilizes a luxury tax system that is applied if the team payroll exceeds a separate threshold higher than the salary cap. These teams pay a penalty for each dollar their team salary exceeds the tax level. From 2002 to 2013, if a team exceeded the luxury tax threshold, they must pay one dollar to the league for every dollar that they are over the limit. For the