It’s official — Josh Hamilton is back with the Texas Rangers baseball club. And it’s thanks in part to California’s awful tax policies.

“Josh Hamilton’s short, tumultuous and disappointing tenure with the Angels officially ended Monday when the team announced it had completed a trade of the troubled outfielder to the Texas Rangers, the club with which Hamilton thrived from 2008 to 2012,” the Los Angeles Times reported last week. “The trade was for a player to be named or cash considerations. The Rangers will reportedly pay less than $7 million of the remaining three years and about $80 million on Hamilton’s contract, and Hamilton will forfeit a large sum believed to be at least $12 million to the Angels to offset the benefit he will derive by playing in Texas, where there is no state income tax.”

That’s right — a big factor in the financial aspect of the deal is the state income tax. California has one, Texas doesn’t.

“Why would Hamilton be willing to give up cash he’s entitled to in order to move from California to Texas?” asks tax policy expert Tony Nitti, writing in Forbes. “Tax savings, of course. The dramatic difference in state income taxes between California and Texas affords Hamilton the flexibility to forfeit some earnings — thereby saving the Angels money and making a deal more palatable — without decreasing Hamilton’s take-home pay.”

We can hope this has a positive effect on Hamilton himself. He’s had a troubled history.

“Hamilton, who has had a long and well-chronicled addiction to cocaine and alcohol, was a five-time All-Star and the 2010 AL most valuable player in Texas, but he was a bust in Anaheim after signing a five-year, $125-million deal with the Angels,” the Times explained. “Hamilton, who underwent right-shoulder surgery on Feb. 4 and did not report to spring training camp in Arizona, informed Major League Baseball of his relapse in early February.”

Hamilton has said he wants to play for Texas, and that he keeps a home here in the offseason.

Tax policy has a big effect on the sports world.

The Laffer Curve once again proves to be sound. The Laffer Curve, as expressed by economist Art Laffer, is the principle that raising taxes can have the opposite of the intended effect, by driving away economic activity and thereby reducing revenues. Higher tax rates, less tax revenue.

There are limits and exceptions, of course, but the principle is solid. That’s because money — capital — is mobile. And so are capitalists, by the way — and athletes.

Golfer Phil Mickelson got into trouble in 2013 when he told reporters that California’s recent tax hikes were squeezing him.

“If you add up all the Federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and the state, my tax rate’s 62, 63 percent,” Mickelson said, as he warned he might leave California.

He later walked back those remarks, but he was right — tax policy matters.

Hamilton is a welcome addition to the Rangers, and California is welcome to keep its state income tax.