Change … free agents may not believe in

As you may already know, President Elect Barack Obama has proposed to increase the federal income tax rate for the top bracket from 35% to 39.6%. The AP (via ESPN) points out that if a free agent signs after January 1st, his signing bonus would likely be taxed at the new rate, costing them an additional 4.6%. So if Mark Teixeira is looking to match Jason Giambi’s $17M signing bonus, he’d would stand to save himself nearly $800,000 by agreeing to a deal before New Year’s. I thought this was pretty interesting, and if we see a mad dash of guys signing just before the calender turns to 2009, this might be why.