Correct, but those are basically payroll taxes not income taxes.

In the United States, non-resident aliens are not subject to payroll taxes. If they are withheld by your employer you can get them back from the federal government by filing form 843.

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Zach, the agreement works both ways. If you’re from Japan, and you work in the US, then you will pay US taxes on your income earned in the US on your US tax return, then you’ll show that income on your Japanese tax return, but you’ll have a 100% credit against your taxes due to Japan on that foreign earned income in the amount of the taxes that you paid to the US.

So if your US tax rate was 20%, and your Japanese tax rate was 25%, and you earned 50/50 and won your fight, then your US taxes would be $20,000, and your Japanese tax would be $25,000, but you would end up paying $20,000 to the US and $5,000 to Japan because the tax you paid to the US would be a credit against the tax that you owed to Japan.

In reverse, if you were a US fighter working in Japan, and everything else was true, you would pay $25,000 to Japan and owe nothing to the US.

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Of course, it’s always possible that Pride was paying fighters amounts that accounted for the tax due. So if they wanted to pay the fighter $100k, then maybe they would pay them $125k so that in the end they ended up with $100k in their pocket instead of $80k. Heck, maybe UFC does that, maybe it’s part of how they “take care of their fighters.”

Even if that’s the case, there are a lot better choices than a newsletter (not even his site) from Meltzer. You’d have to depend on someone being a subscriber, for that someone to be a MMA fan, for that someone to have username at popular MMA site and for them disclose what they read. Is that a channel you’d use when you’re trying to “negotiate through the media”? They can easily release a statement through the Fight Network or MMAWeekly.

If they’re trying to “negotiate through the media”, why wouldn’t they go through the many larger outlets they have access to? I don’t buy it.

How many people in the mainstream know who Hansen is? If your target is a hardcore fan-type pick, you’re not going to do such negotiations with the major sites since their casual fans won’t give a damn.

It was in their newsletter. I wasn’t questioning the fact that it was reported in their newsletter. I was questioning whether it was an accurate news item or whether the fact that it came from UFC management means that it was just another attempt by Zuffa to negotiate through the media by putting the word out that “Fighter X turned down a great offer.” Based on what I know about the situation and based on what Jordan Breen has said here, I am more convinced than ever that it was the latter in this case.

It was in the newsletter, not on the website.