Denver Nuggets
This includes a projected signing that is not yet official, so these figures are an estimate.
The tax line sits at $200.4M. The Nuggets' tax payroll (contracts plus dead money; cap holds don't count here) is $213.2M, which puts them $12.8M over.
The bill is charged in $6.1M bands above the line at the steeper repeater rates: $3.00 on the first band, $3.25 on the second band, $5.50 on the third band. That works out to about $41.3M, at repeater rates because they have paid the tax in three of the last four seasons. The basketball penalties (lost exceptions, trade restrictions) start at the aprons above the tax line.
The rule behind this
The luxury tax is a financial penalty line above the salary cap. Teams whose payroll (contracts, dead money, and drafted rookies booked as signed; free-agent holds don't count here) exceeds it pay a tax on the overage, at rates that escalate in brackets the deeper a team goes.
More Nuggets questions
Numbers come straight from the live Nuggets cap sheet, recomputed whenever the data updates.