Four months out from a presidential election he is expected to win unopposed, Gianni Infantino is dealing with a second story about his pay in less than a month.
Fresh reporting from The New York Times and Le Monde, picked up this week, says FIFA will have paid approximately $4m of Infantino’s US tax bill by the end of 2026. The arrangement covers the three tax years he has spent working out of Miami ahead of this year’s World Cup.
FIFA’s tax-equalisation mechanism was designed to shield staff relocated to the United States from paying more income tax than they would have at home. According to the reporting, it was supposed to cover only employees of the federation, not elected officials.
A small FIFA compensation committee signed off on the tax cover for Infantino at a meeting in Bangkok in May 2024. The decision was never recorded in the organisation’s official papers, and at least one senior official is said to have questioned both the calculation that Infantino should contribute nothing toward his American tax bill and the message it sent.
Read also: Vettel speaks out after Antonelli breaks his record
Bruno Chiomento, who chairs FIFA’s Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee and has known Infantino for about 20 years, argued that FIFA had already committed to offsetting taxes for roughly a dozen staff members moving to the US for the tournament, and that the president should be treated the same way. The other committee members agreed quickly.
Chiomento himself drew attention in the same reporting: VIP access to World Cup matches, and a salary paid in Swiss francs rather than dollars, giving him an exchange rate benefit.
Infantino has been living in a $27m Miami waterfront mansion owned by former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt for roughly three years, having relocated from Switzerland in 2023.
FIFA said in a statement that “all FIFA’s internal regulations and processes, and all applicable laws, have been followed.”
Read also: The Champions League matchday 5 overview
A second story about his pay
The tax reporting lands three weeks after a separate disclosure about Infantino’s compensation, first published by The Times in London on 12 October.
That investigation showed Infantino received $1.72m from FWC2026 US Inc, the non-profit entity set up to run the World Cup, in 2024. It was listed on the organisation’s IRS Form 990 as compensation to the FIFA president but never appeared in FIFA’s own annual report. The sum included $626,229 in “other reportable compensation” that reportedly covered the rent on his Miami residence.
His standard FIFA salary and benefits for 2024 totalled about $4.86m.
Article 43, paragraph 13 of FIFA’s statutes requires the individual compensation of its president to be made public. Miguel Maduro, a former chairman of FIFA’s governance committee, said the arrangement looked like “a clear contravention of the rules if he is paid other amounts by companies related to FIFA and it is not made public.”
Read also: Cristiano Ronaldo overtaken by Erling Haaland as expert points to ‘twilight of his career’
FIFA denied wrongdoing on that disclosure as well, saying it “does not pay a second salary to the FIFA President and complies with all reporting requirements in relation to compensation.”
Vancouver vote in March
Infantino is standing for a fourth term at the FIFA Congress in Vancouver on 18 March 2027. No rival has yet declared.
