Now imagine that Garnett's absence costs you $10,667. As a Utah taxpayer, it would.

The Utah Tax Commission doesn't care about the Wolves' defense or the Jazz's rebounding. For the state bureaucracy, it's all about the cash - and by showing up tonight, the Minnesota superstar, who earns $16 million this season, is required to pay Utah its 7 percent cut of the roughly $152,381 he makes during every game.

Similarly, when Carlos Boozer stayed home from the Jazz's 94-85 loss to the Clippers in Los Angeles on Tuesday, it meant California cannot collect about $9,714 from Utah's injured power forward. Andrei Kirilenko and Raja Bell weren't there, either, costing California $1,480 and $1,170, respectively.

Professional athletes earn unearthly salaries, it's true. But with those supersized paychecks come myriad tax collectors, each shaving off a small slice of hoop-star bling. Over the past 15 years or so, nearly every state with a pro sports franchise within its borders, Utah included, has begun levying taxes (or simply collecting assessments already in place) on the income earned by visiting players - not to mention coaches, trainers and broadcasters - in their cities every night.

"I know we're lucky to be making the salaries we do, and I'm not complaining. But our take-home pay isn't close to the numbers you see in the newspaper," said Jazz forward Matt Harpring, in a sentiment shared by taxpayers everywhere. "By the time everything is said and done, I pay out 51, 52 percent of my paycheck in taxes and all the other stuff."

Accounting fees are part of the "other stuff," too, because an NBA player's tax return is a CPA's nightmare. Think your 1040s were complicated this year? Try multiplying that complexity by a factor of 10.

By tonight's midnight deadline, Harpring is required to file nonresident returns in 17 states and a couple of cities - a stack of fiscal gobbledygook nearly eight inches tall.

"You don't want to get behind me in the line at the post office," Harpring said with a laugh. "I end up spending close to $75 just in postage."

He spends even more to hire Bob Sicking, a CPA based in Cincinnati, to sort out every state's laws and calculate his liability come April 15. "It's a mammoth task," said Sicking, who has several professional athletes among his clients. "You're not only figuring out several different sets of tax laws, but you have to know how long the player was in that jurisdiction, what percentage of the player's income they can tax. . . . It never ceases to amaze me how many different formulas state legislatures can come up with."

With increasingly big money at stake, it's no wonder that states began aggressively enforcing the nonresident tax laws a little more than a decade ago, soon after the recession of the early 1990s. "Whenever the economy goes down, and the state coffers are tight, states turn up the fire on collecting revenues," Sicking said.

In many cases, however, it's a zero-sum game, since almost every state allows a credit for taxes paid to other states. Utah, for instance, allows Harpring to subtract the money he pays Arizona, Colorado and all those other states from his Utah taxes. "In some ways, states are just shuffling revenues among themselves," Sicking said.

Not all of them, however. Three states with pro teams - Florida, Texas and Washington - have no state income tax, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit tax policy research organization based in Washington. Tennessee only has levies on dividends and interest, not on nonresident income. And the District of Columbia is barred by federal law from collecting from nonresidents.

Those variations cause many players to give serious consideration to where they call home. Jazz center Jarron Collins, for instance, grew up in California but now claims Utah residency, largely for its lower tax rate. Harpring is careful to spend enough of his offseason at his Florida home to meet residency requirements in that no-tax state, allowing him to avoid taxes on much of his off-the-court income.

"You have to have a tax strategy," Harpring said, "because the numbers can get big real quick."

Legend has it that the pursuit of taxes from visiting teams began in response to Michael Jordan and the Bulls' NBA Finals victory over the Lakers in 1991, as California's revenge on the out-of-towners. Whatever the motive, California - with 15 franchises in the four major team-sports leagues - was the first to make tax collections from visiting teams a priority.

"We never had all this when I was a player," said Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, who filed his own six-inch stack of returns on Monday. "All of a sudden, about eight or 10 years ago, every state started requiring tax forms. They even wanted money from five years back. . . . It was a pleasure to have to pay all that," he said, gritting his teeth.

It didn't take long for other states to notice, and follow California's lead. Some enacted laws specifically aimed at athletes and entertainers; others, like Utah, simply made it known that it expects all nonresidents to comply with its already existing law.

"We treat everybody the same. We don't treat athletes differently than any other taxpayer," insists Jodi Monaco, spokeswoman for the Utah Tax Commission. "The law applies to all nonresidents. If we come across a case in which income tax is due, we collect it, no matter who owes it."

Still, it's a little easier to track ballplayers, whose schedule is printed in the paper every day, and the threat of audits or penalties is enough to make most players conscious of their obligations to each state. NBA teams now even take the various state taxes out of players' checks and forward the withholding to each state.

"The NBA is very conscious of its image, so it does a good job of tracking all this," Sicking said.

Not always as good as California, though. Its tax-collection bureau even has an employee devoted entirely to tracking which players are in the state, and for how long.

"California is very serious about taxes," Collins said. "They actually investigate whether you spend one day or two days in a city, whether you're with the team or stayed home."

Even staying home doesn't necessarily reduce the paperwork. Harpring required knee surgery in January 2004 and didn't travel with the Jazz for the last half of the season, meaning he never set foot in Indiana or Oregon, among other states. He filed zeroed-out returns in those states anyway, Sicking said, "just so it's on the record and the statute of limitations runs, so they don't come back five years from now and try to collect."

The states are becoming more sophisticated about tracking athletes. "I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for people who make what [pro athletes] do, but these guys are always being nitpicked," Sicking said. Many states "check the injured lists and waiver wire pretty closely."

Plane manifests, too. Though they don't earn millions like the players, trainers, equipment managers, broadcasters and even public-relations employees have the same tax obligations, creating plenty of tax-day headaches. "It's a nightmare," said Jazz media-relations director Kim Turner, who frequently travels with the team. "I have to pay somebody a lot of money to figure out all these forms, just so each state can collect these tiny little checks from me."

All because, in a league in which the minimum salary now tops $385,000, a lot of those checks aren't so tiny.

How it works

* In most states, tax liability is calculated by the days each athlete

is considered to be earning a salary.

* In the NBA, a regular season consists of 82 games, another eight to 10 preseason games, plus roughly two weeks of non-game days per season that the player is on the road with his team - generally about 105 "duty days."

* Every duty day spent by a Jazz player outside of Utah is considered taxable in that state - whether or not the player ever sets foot on the floor.

Two examples:

* MATT HARPRING GOES TO OREGON: His $4.69 million current salary means he earns $44,667 every day of the season. So when the Jazz face the Trail Blazers in Portland on Sunday, Oregon will expect him to pay 9 percent of that salary, or $4,020, on next year's tax return.

* SHAQ IN UTAH: When Miami Heat center Shaquille O'Neal, the NBA's highest-paid player at $27,696,429 this season, faced the Jazz at the Delta Center on Dec. 6, he racked up 21 points, 13 rebounds - and a bill for $18,464 in taxes from the state of Utah. That's 7 percent (the state's top rate) of the $263,775 he earns every day, and since the Heat arrived a day before the game, the levy doubled to nearly $37,000.