goosen’s tax headaChes

far from having evaded paying his taxes, à la Jim thorpe, retief Goosen believes he acted as the “guinea pig,” as he called it, for a sizable group of international professional athletes and entertainers earning money in multiple countries from multinational corporations. determining who owes what to whom when you reside in one country and earn money from your performance and your face in multiple countries, often from multinational corporations, is about as easy as unraveling a bowl of angel hair pasta. Judge diane kroupa seems to have found it so in U.S. tax court. “I went up and did it for a week of bloody hell,” said Goosen. “It’s

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no fun sitting in front of a judge, and she’s screaming down everybody’s throat. It’s nerve-wracking. you feel like a criminal, but you’re not. you do everything by the book. everything’s done by the rules.” according to Goosen, this was never a matter of tax avoidance but, rather, legal precedent. “now that the judge has given us a guideline, a new law, how to file, we can go to each and every one of my sponsor companies and see how they distribute it, and under which section does my tax fall. It might be in my favor, it might not be in my favor. but now the papers [might stop writing that] I don’t pay my taxes. I’ve always paid my taxes.” —J.M.