The ladder
The NBA has a soft cap. It did. Every tool a team can use to add a player, the exact line at which each one stops existing — and the point, reached in 2023, where the list runs out and a soft cap becomes the hardest ceiling in American sport.
The NBA luxury tax: brackets, rates and the repeater
What crossing a line used to cost, when money was the only thing crossing a line cost: dollar-for-dollar until 2013-14, escalating brackets after it, the repeater rate from 2014-15, and the two seasons the tax was never collected at all.
For the first eleven seasons it existed, the luxury tax was the simplest rule in the agreement: a dollar for every dollar over the line. It was a price, and a team willing to pay it faced no other consequence. The 2011 agreement replaced that flat rate with brackets that rise as a payroll climbs, and added a surcharge for teams that never come down. The 2023 agreement rewrote the schedule again.
None of it removes a single tool. That is what separates this page from the rest of the guide — and what made a second apron necessary, once it became clear that some owners would simply pay.
Indexed brackets, steeper top. The 2023 CBA’s schedule. The first two brackets are cheaper than the ones they replaced and everything above them far more expensive, so a small overage is survivable and a large one is not. Bracket width now grows with the cap instead of sitting at a flat $5M.
each block is one bracket — width is salary, height is the rate
$20M over the line in 2026-27 costs $43.46M. The next dollar costs $4.75. Every dollar of salary above the line has cost the team 2.17 times over.
All three schedules, in words
| Seasons | Schedule | Bracket | Rates | Repeater |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002-03 – 2012-13 | Dollar for dollar | — | $1.00 | none |
| 2013-14 – 2024-25 | Escalating brackets | $5M | $1.50 · $1.75 · $2.50 · $3.25 · $3.75 · +$0.50 thereafter | $2.50 · $2.75 · $3.50 · $4.25 · $4.75 |
| 2025-26 – today | Indexed brackets, steeper top | indexed to the cap | $1.00 · $1.25 · $3.50 · $4.75 · +$0.50 thereafter | $3.00 · $3.25 · $5.50 · $6.75 |
2002-03 – 2012-13, dollar for dollar. One rate, no brackets, no repeater: a dollar of tax for every dollar over the line, however far over you were and however many years running you had been there. A price, and nothing more than a price.
2013-14 – 2024-25, escalating brackets. The 2011 CBA’s real teeth, in force from 2013-14: five-million-dollar brackets at rising rates, so the twentieth million over the line costs more than twice what the first did. The repeater surcharge — a dollar more in every bracket — followed in 2014-15.
2025-26 – today, indexed brackets, steeper top. The 2023 CBA’s schedule. The first two brackets are cheaper than the ones they replaced and everything above them far more expensive, so a small overage is survivable and a large one is not. Bracket width now grows with the cap instead of sitting at a flat $5M.
The two seasons nobody paid
The record has two declared holes in it, and they are not missing data. The 1999 agreement wrote a luxury tax into the CBA but made it conditional on league-wide salaries passing a share of basketball-related income. Twice the condition was not met, and no team paid a cent however large its payroll.
- 2001-02
- The 1999 CBA made the tax conditional on league-wide salaries and benefits exceeding a set share of basketball-related income. The threshold was not reached, so no team paid, whatever its payroll.
- 2004-05
- The same conditional test, the same outcome: the trigger was not met and no tax was collected. The 2005 CBA removed the condition, and the tax has been levied every season since.
The repeater
A repeater pays more in every bracket. The test has three eras of its own: there was no repeater rate at all before 2014-15; in its first season it asked for a team to have been taxed in each of the three previous seasons; and from 2015-16 it settled into its present form, three of the previous four.
Nothing in this guide’s dataset records who was a repeater. It is computed from each franchise’s own taxed seasons, by the rule that applied in the year being asked about — which is the only way to be certain the two agree.
Every line, every season
The four lines from the first salary cap to today. A dash means the line did not exist yet; it is not a missing figure.
| Season | Cap | Tax | 1st apron | 2nd apron | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-27 | $164.96M | $200.43M | $209.01M | $221.69M | The cap rises 6.7% rather than the 10% the league had projected, after local media revenue came in short. Season in progress. |
| 2025-26 | $154.65M | $187.9M | $195.94M | $207.82M | New tax rates take effect: cheaper in the first two brackets, far more expensive above them, and the brackets themselves now widen with the cap instead of sitting at a flat $5M. |
| 2024-25 | $140.59M | $170.81M | $178.13M | $188.93M | Every apron restriction is now in force. Within twelve months the reigning champion trades two starters and lets two more rotation players walk. |
| 2023-24 | $136.02M | $165.29M | $172.35M | $182.79M | The 2023 CBA adds a second apron, $17.5M above the tax line, and starts phasing in restrictions above it. The old apron is renamed the first apron and given more to do. |
| 2022-23 | $123.66M | $150.27M | $157.3M | — | The last season with one apron, and the last in which a team could be as far over the line as it liked provided it was willing to write the cheque. Nine teams paid; the bill came to $633.6M. |
| 2021-22 | $112.41M | $136.61M | $143M | — | |
| 2020-21 | $109.14M | $132.63M | $138.93M | — | The pandemic season. Rather than let basketball-related income drag the cap down, the league and the union freeze every line at the previous year’s figure — which is why this row is identical to the one above it. |
| 2019-20 | $109.14M | $132.63M | $138.93M | — | |
| 2018-19 | $101.87M | $123.73M | $129.82M | — | |
| 2017-18 | $99.09M | $119.27M | $125.27M | — | The 2017 CBA moves the apron from a flat $4M above the tax to $6M, and indexes it: from here the gap grows with the cap. |
| 2016-17 | $94.14M | $113.29M | $117.29M | — | The television money lands all at once. The cap rises 34% in a single summer, every team has room, and the resulting free-agent market is the reason the next CBA smooths cap increases rather than passing them through whole. |
| 2015-16 | $70M | $84.74M | $88.74M | — | The repeater test settles into its modern form — taxed in three of the previous four seasons. |
| 2014-15 | $63.06M | $76.83M | $80.83M | — | The repeater rate applies for the first time: a team taxed in each of the three previous seasons pays an extra dollar in every bracket. |
| 2013-14 | $58.68M | $71.75M | $75.75M | — | The 2011 CBA’s teeth arrive together: the dollar-for-dollar tax becomes an escalating bracket system, and a team more than $4M over the line can no longer take a player back in a sign-and-trade. That $4M is the first apron in everything but name. |
| 2012-13 | $58.04M | $70.31M | — | — | |
| 2011-12 | $58.04M | $70.31M | — | — | A lockout costs 16 games a team. The 2011 CBA that ends it invents the apron — a second line above the tax, at a flat $4M — and splits the mid-level exception in two, so that for the first time a tool is denied to a team on the grounds of what it already spends. |
| 2010-11 | $58.04M | $70.31M | — | — | |
| 2009-10 | $57.7M | $69.92M | — | — | The cap falls for the first time, as the financial crisis reaches basketball-related income. |
| 2008-09 | $58.68M | $71.15M | — | — | |
| 2007-08 | $55.63M | $67.86M | — | — | |
| 2006-07 | $53.13M | $65.42M | — | — | |
| 2005-06 | $49.5M | $61.7M | — | — | The 2005 CBA makes the tax automatic: a level set in advance every season, no trigger, no escape. From here the line is permanent. |
| 2004-05 | $43.87M | $54.6M* | — | — | The second and last season the trigger was not met. No tax was levied, however high a team’s payroll — the last time in NBA history that crossing the line cost nothing at all. |
| 2003-04 | $43.84M | $54.56M | — | — | |
| 2002-03 | $40.27M | $52.88M | — | — | The trigger is met and the tax is levied for the first time: $173.3M collected, at a flat dollar for every dollar over the line. |
| 2001-02 | $42.5M | — | — | — | The season the tax was meant to start. Under the 1999 CBA it was conditional: it applied only if league-wide salaries and benefits passed a share of basketball-related income. They did not, and no team paid a cent. |
| 2000-01 | $35.5M | — | — | — | |
| 1999-00 | $34M | — | — | — | |
| 1998-99 | $30M | — | — | — | The lockout season. The 1999 CBA that ends it introduces maximum individual salaries and an escrow system — and writes in a luxury tax that will not be triggered for another three years. |
| 1997-98 | $26.9M | — | — | — | |
| 1996-97 | $24.36M | — | — | — | |
| 1995-96 | $23M | — | — | — | The 1995 CBA lifts the cap by 44% in one step and writes the Bird exception into its modern form — the tool that lets a team pay its own players without limit, and the reason the cap has never been a budget. |
| 1994-95 | $15.96M | — | — | — | |
| 1993-94 | $15.18M | — | — | — | |
| 1992-93 | $14M | — | — | — | |
| 1991-92 | $12.5M | — | — | — | |
| 1990-91 | $11.87M | — | — | — | |
| 1989-90 | $9.8M | — | — | — | |
| 1988-89 | $7.23M | — | — | — | |
| 1987-88 | $6.16M | — | — | — | |
| 1986-87 | $4.95M | — | — | — | |
| 1985-86 | $4.23M | — | — | — | |
| 1984-85 | $3.6M | — | — | — | The first salary cap: $3.6M per club, negotiated to save franchises that were losing money and, from the start, soft — a team over the cap could still re-sign its own players. |
* a tax level was set but never levied — the trigger was not reached
Where these figures come from
League announcements where the NBA published them, cross-checked against SalarySwish’s cap-history table and Hoops Rumors’ annual figures pieces. Apron levels for 2013-14 to 2016-17 are the 2011 agreement’s flat $4M-above-the-tax rule applied, which is how they were derived at the time; from 2017-18 they are published figures.