Organised Tax Avoidance
The latest edition of Private Eye has an interesting article on - 'Planet Football' - and the world of organised tax avoidance in our 'beautiful' game.
The Eye piece focuses on a Scottish team - Rangers football club - which is having a battle with the Inland Revenue - over a disputed tax bill of almost £50 million.
An accountant friend of mine says that Rangers are bound to lose this fight - and will end up having to pay most of this mammoth bill - which seems to be what the Private Eye thinks as well.
Apparently what many football clubs do is to pay their players salaries - into an off-shore Employee Benefit Trust - as a way of avoiding income tax and national insurance in the UK.
Which means that players end up paying only 2% or 3% in income tax - while the rest of the population (who are not paid shedloads of money of course) - are taxed at normal rates.
So it's one law for the mega-rich - and another law for everyone else.
Just imagine - someone like Wayne Rooney is probably being taxed at a lower rate - than your average, low paid council employee.
Sounds like a something for nothing culture to me - yet apparently all the big clubs behave in this way.
Which of course would amount to organised tax avoidance - on an industrial scale.
I doubt people mind footballers being paid astronomical salaries - the big TV money in football makes that inevitable these days.
But the fact that players and their clubs set out to pay as little tax as possible - less tax than your average fan - does stick in the 'craw' a little bit.
Whatever happened to - 'we're all in this together'?
Maybe that doesn't apply to famous football celebrities - and their equally famous managers and clubs.
The Eye piece focuses on a Scottish team - Rangers football club - which is having a battle with the Inland Revenue - over a disputed tax bill of almost £50 million.
An accountant friend of mine says that Rangers are bound to lose this fight - and will end up having to pay most of this mammoth bill - which seems to be what the Private Eye thinks as well.
Apparently what many football clubs do is to pay their players salaries - into an off-shore Employee Benefit Trust - as a way of avoiding income tax and national insurance in the UK.
Which means that players end up paying only 2% or 3% in income tax - while the rest of the population (who are not paid shedloads of money of course) - are taxed at normal rates.
So it's one law for the mega-rich - and another law for everyone else.
Just imagine - someone like Wayne Rooney is probably being taxed at a lower rate - than your average, low paid council employee.
Sounds like a something for nothing culture to me - yet apparently all the big clubs behave in this way.
Which of course would amount to organised tax avoidance - on an industrial scale.
I doubt people mind footballers being paid astronomical salaries - the big TV money in football makes that inevitable these days.
But the fact that players and their clubs set out to pay as little tax as possible - less tax than your average fan - does stick in the 'craw' a little bit.
Whatever happened to - 'we're all in this together'?
Maybe that doesn't apply to famous football celebrities - and their equally famous managers and clubs.
