The good news is that if you get back under it, even for just a year, it reverts to the 17.5 percent rate. this is why the Yankees are off free agents for now. They have $100 million coming off the books the next couple of offseasons (Teixeira and Beltran after this coming season, Sabathia and Rodriguez after 2017), and they want to use their young players, lower the payroll, and get under $189 million.
The “luxury tax” is joke. The day they signed that CBA Steinbrenner said “this changes everything” and then proceeded to make signings that increased his team’s salary by over 100 million dollars. That is not a salary cap.