evidence: The records upend conventional wisdom about how taxation works in America. Billionaire owners are consistently paying lower tax rates than their millionaire players — and often lower even than the rates paid by the workers who staff their stadiums. The massive reductions on personal tax bills that owners glean from their teams come on top of the much-criticized subsidies the teams get from local governments for new stadiums and further deplete federal coffers that fund everything from the military to medical research to food stamps and other safety net programs. [...] Veeck is credited with convincing the IRS to accept a tax maneuver even he described as a "gimmick." Player salaries were already treated as a deductible business expense for a team. That was not controversial in the slightest. [...] Unlike billionaire team owners, millionaire players are virtually guaranteed to pay a large share of their income in taxes.