How Losing a Major Championship Once Surprisingly Saved Phil Mickelson Thousands of Dollars

Phil Mickelson is one of the finest golf players but has also been a part of controversies. He is a six-time major winner who moved to the LIV Golf league. Winning trophies and the prize amount are great, but can you imagine losing a golf match can actually save dollars? Bizarre, but that’s what happened to Mickelson.

Back in 2013, Sean Packard, Director of Tax at OFC, revealed how the athlete saved a huge sum by coming second.

Phil Mickelson Pays Huge Taxes

Paying taxes is important as a resident of the country. And, as a mainstream sports person, Mickelson has been on the frontline of taxpayers. Thus, he pays a huge amount of taxes and, as reported by Packard’s article on ‘Forbes’, some fans were not happy with the statement he made regarding saving on taxes.

Voters of California wanted to increase the tax rate from 10.3% to 13.3%. After this, Phil said, ?be making some drastic changes.? As he was paying an exceeded amount of 60% of the tax, he wanted to save taxes and was planning to make some changes in his finances.

Read More- When Phil Mickelson Named His ?3 Biggest Professional Regrets?

Phil Mickelson was one of the highest-paid athletes in the world and he earned $48.7 million over a year then. And people were right to expect him to hold his tongue regarding his finances.

How he successfully saved taxes

Phil was holding the lead at the U.S. Open and winning the championship would have taken different turns in his plan of saving taxes. But God had other plans. Phil Mickelson finished as the runner-up at U.S. Open. This was the sixth time in his career. But this came in handy in saving taxes.

Ending up in the second position saved him a lot of money. As a winner, he would have earned ?$1.44 million, but as a runner-up, he got $696,104. He lost a considerable amount of $743,896, but he saved $76,100 in California income taxes.

Watch this story- Tiger Woods Once Had an Epic 4-Word Response After Winning a $200K Bet Against Phil Mickelson

Not just winning the championship was making him pay huge taxes. Every good golfer endorsement contract includes lucrative bonuses for winning majors. According to the rules, winning the U.S. Open, the state of California would have imposed its high taxes on millions of dollars from Phil?s sponsors, like Callaway, Barclay?s, KPMG, etc. But the loophole was that for every million he loses in bonuses, he was saving $133,000 in state taxes.