A trade, a signing, or an off-season decision moves the household, and suddenly the tax picture involves two home states plus every state he played in. The key to keeping it sane is realizing there are two completely different systems at work: one that follows him from stadium to stadium, and one that follows where you actually live.
The jock tax follows him, not you
Professional athletes are taxed by the states where they perform, under what everyone calls the jock tax. Each state with an income tax where he has duty days, games, practices, team meetings, claims a slice of his athlete compensation. Duty days in that state over total duty days for the year set each state's share. He files nonresident returns in those states, and his resident state then grants credits for taxes paid elsewhere so the same dollars are not fully taxed twice. Here is what matters for you: none of that applies to your income. Your brand deals, content revenue, and appearance fees are not athlete compensation, and playing-state formulas never touch them. Your business income is taxed by your state of residence, plus, rarely, a state where you personally performed paid work in person, an appearance or a shoot physically done there.
A real move makes you part-year residents
When the household genuinely relocates mid-season, each of you becomes a part-year resident: taxed by the old state on income earned while living there, and by the new state on income earned after the move. You file part-year returns in both, splitting the year at the move date. For your business, that means income is divided by when it was earned, so date-stamped invoices and payment records make the split defensible. If you moved from or to a state with no income tax, the date of the move controls how much of the year's income the taxing state can reach, which can make timing large payments around the move genuinely valuable.
The catch is the word genuinely. States, especially high-tax ones losing a resident, scrutinize whether domicile really changed. Domicile is your true home, shown by actions: the lease or purchase in the new state, driver's licenses, voter registration, where the kids are in school, where you actually spend nights. A temporary in-season apartment while the family home stays put usually does not change domicile, and his team's city does not automatically become your tax home.
Two spouses, two state stories, one joint return
It is common in athlete households for the spouses' state pictures to differ: he may have dozens of nonresident filings while you have one or two states, and in some years one spouse changes residency while the other does not. Most states accommodate this with part-year and nonresident schedules, though the mechanics vary, and a joint federal return can sit on top of differing state residency positions. Keep a simple calendar of where each of you lived and worked, and hand the multistate stack to a preparer who does athlete returns routinely; this is the one part of household taxes where that specialty genuinely pays for itself.