Friday morning (Manila time), reports surfaced that 18-year-old Kai Sotto is set to earn US$ 200,000 over the five-month G League Professional Path program.
This is according to 24/7 Sports’ Evan Daniels.
Kai Sotto’s deal with the NBA G League is worth at least $200,000, sources tell @247Sports. Sotto, a 7-2 center from Philippines, is No. 51 overall in the @247Sports Rankings.
— Evan Daniels (@EvanDaniels) May 14, 2020
If converted to Philippine Pesos, that will be Php 10,123,100.
G League president Shareef Abdur-Rahim neither confirmed nor denied the report saying, “We think the players are all getting paid a good salary, but out of respect for their privacy, our policy is we don’t wanna discuss that.
“There’s a lot of rumors out there, but from a league standpoint, we don’t want to discuss that.”
But how much will Sotto really earn?
For starters, Sotto needs to pay federal and state taxes.
Sotto will have to pay US$ 64,000 (32-percent) in federal taxes, and at least another US$ 10,200 (7.75-percent) in state taxes — assuming that the G League’s select team will be based in Southern California.
Kai can apply for some tax relief in the Philippines by way of filling up this form. He will only need to prove that he has already filed for taxes in the US.
Of course, Sotto will have to give his management firm, East West Private, its due. Working on a three-percent agent fee, another US$ 3,774 will be deducted to his base salary.
This leaves Kai with at most US$ 122,026, or PHP 6,176,407 net.
Besides this, he will also be allowed to sign endorsement deals — something not allowed if he went to a Division I school — and be under the tutelage of former NBA players and coaches.
Not bad, as the average annual income of an American in 2019 is US$ 48,672.
