McIlroy's majors success comes with a tax sting
Rory McIlroy made history in 2026 as he became just the fourth golfer to successfully retain the Masters title. However, his success at the biggest tournaments the sport has to offer has also led to some serious tax deductions.
McIlroy, 37, concluded his major season on Sunday with a T40 finish in The Open at Royal Birkdale. The Northern Irishman struggled to come back following a particularly disappointing two-over-par first round, ultimately finishing nine strokes behind eventual winner Ryan Fox.
That was still sufficient to bag around £52,000 in prize money, though nothing compared with his £3.4m winnings from adding a second Green Jacket. His second straight win at Augusta unsurprisingly accounted for the vast majority of his major money in 2026, which was also supplemented by his £478,000 winnings for a T7 finish at the PGA Championship.
When you add in in his £97,000 reward for tying 32nd at the US Open in May, McIlroy's total major prize haul for 2026 amounts to almost £4m on the dot.
However, calculations courtesy of golfclubs4cash estimate that also means he's paying the most tax of any golfer this year when it comes to the major tournaments.
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His total tax bill from those four competitions amounts to approximately £1,634,840, accounting for fluctuations in the dollar to sterling conversion rate. As such, he's expected to have handed back a little more than a third of his major winnings this year.
That leaves around £2.35m of McIlroy's earnings that he can take straight to the bank. However, that's in addition to the other £2.4m or so he's won on other PGA Tour events this year (or around £1.5m once you apply for the same tax rate on those earnings). That amounts to an estimated total take-home sum of £3.85m from all PGA Tour events so far in 2026.
Not bad for a season's work in which McIlroy de-escalated his activity to focus more solely on the major competitions.
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Clark and Scheffler also feature near the top
It's close at the top of the majors tax bill totem pole, however, as Wyndham Clark almost paid an identical sum. The American finished in second place on the list, having forked over an estimated £1,630,278 in deductions, just £4,000 less than McIlroy.
Clark, 32, won the US Open for the second time in his career to bag the £3.4m top prize. His T21 finish at the Masters also came with a £184,000 reward, though he missed the cut at both last weekend's Open and the PGA Championship.
It should come as a surprise to nobody that world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler also worked his way onto the tax podium. This year marked the first since 2023 that the Texan failed to win a major, though he placed top four at three (and T14 at the PGA Championship), leaving him with £3.4m in prize money and a tax bill of a little more than £1.4m.
Scheffler and Sam Burns (fourth) are the only names among the top six on the list who made the cut without winning a major.
And while the tax costs may be a burden, McIlroy will know he's doing something right if he features among the leaders once more in 2027.
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