They are, but for the purposes of baseball's soft cap, it only impacts them for the duration Ohtani is on the team. Normally, the amount a player counts towards the luxury tax payroll is the AAV of the deal they signed. If I sign a free agent for 5/100, they'll count 20 million towards the luxury tax each year regardless of if I'm paying them 30 million in year 1 or 10 million. In the case of deferrals, the CBA says to use the Net Present Value of the contract to know what AAV they assign to the deal. Net Present Value basically says 'using a set discount rate, how much is this contract worth in today's dollars'. Since a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar 10 and 25 years from now, the net present value of Ohtani's 10/700 deal is roughly 460 million, so he counts 46 million towards the luxury tax for the next 10 years and then nothing afterwards. So the luxury tax captures the economic benefit that they gave to Ohtani, but the deferrals are so extreme it makes the announced 700 number not very 'real' outside of being technically correct.