Rival watch

It's the well-known paradox that, while there is such a thing as not enough money, there's no such thing as too much money.

At the risk of quoting Stewart Lee and being mistaken for somebody who doesn't believe he's a self-important oaf who isn't actually particularly funny and was the weak link of Lee & Herring, he has this one routine where he outlines tax dodging as people earning a certain amount of money and then deciding "It's not their money, it's mine" and doing everything they can to keep every grubby penny they can.

Would it be churlish of me to mention so many BBC pundits are guilty of this, with Danny Murphy owing £2.5m while Martin Keown was fined an eye-watering £4.5m?

 

It goes back to the late 60's / early seventies when the top rate of tax was 98% . People had to either leave the country or find a way to reduce tax liabilities. Even the Rolling Stones all moved abroad and released 'Exile on Main-street' in order to vent their anger at the taxation system.

So many high earners moved/relocated their tax affairs, governments had to adjust the system because their revenues were quite rightly falling. However, some of the loopholes exploited in those days are still around today.

Personally I think that there should be a personal allowance then a flat rate for everyone (taking into account taxes paid in other jurisdictions) with no get-out clauses. If you are a british citizen and enter the UK for just one day or even own a house here, you should be liable for UK tax. It would maximise taxation revenue. However, both extremes of the political divide would object to this.
The right, for obvious reasons, 25% of £1000k for example is more than one or two percent of £1000k.
The left would object due to being blinded by the current law which says anyone earning more than £150k pays 50% on it. This never happens apart from when the odd mid-earner creeps over the threshold. Regular high earners have accountants to legally avoid paying the higher rate of tax.
What I would say is that when one upsets both the left and the right with the same proposal, the proposal has probably got some legs in it.

 

The tax man's taken all my dough, And left me in my stately home,.....

Within 10 years, if you had a car or paid tax at all, then you'd sold out...........

 

You knew I'd find a 'Prog' song on the subject

Has a Dennis Healey voiceover impersonation by Rick Wakeman. A sign of things to come as a comic personality.

 

A bad week for you Smithy...my commiserations

 

I still can't get over Trump giving billionaires tax breaks and working class having to pay for it in other ways!

 

All billionaires are equal smithy, but billionaires who support Donald Trump are more equal than others.

 

People want to minimise the amount of money they pay to the state.
Human nature (tis really that simple) .

Beyond that, people with basic knowledge of UK taxation
know there is far bigger "low hanging fruit" that should be
dealt with by the tax man way before the members of
"Panama papers" land are targeted (regardless of the
inherent inequity they benefit from) ...

 

No furth3r c0mment necessary...

please log in to view this image

 

Looking at the FA cup results today and wondering where the heck a lot of them come from.Never heard of a lot of those teams.

Also, why are Boreham Wood and Sutton United in the Scottish cup?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45471611

Nobody near him. Dive.

 

He's just showing his players how it's done!

 

Another tax dodger from one of the big two in Spain:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45482862

How many have to be charged before some of it's directed at the clubs? Criminal enterprises or coincidence?

 

If you or me did it,they would lock us up and throw away the key!

 

What happened to the UEFA player of the year today? Little was seen of him.Too much football,perhaps? All the Spanish goals were brilliant.Even the own goal!
Croatia should have been 2 goals up early.If they had been playing England they probably would have been 2-0 up!!!!!

 

The Sun (and at this point only The Sun) are reporting that UEFA are going to introduce FFP 2.0 this summer. The changes are aimed at restricting some of the dodgier peactices implemented by PSG, Citeh, Chelsea, etc. There seemed to be 3 main elements to the new laws as they were proposed:

• Impose a negative spend limit of 100 million euro per year. This would mean that when a club buys a player for 200 million euro, they would have to raise their sales to 100 million euro;

• Clubs will be limited to have 25 professional players registered over the age of 21;

• Sponsorship of state-backed clubs will be monitored more precisely. PSG has a host of sponsors from Qatar which can be interpreted as ‘state aid’ because their owners are both involved in the government as well as in large companies.

If all 3 are implemented, it's going to significantly restrict transfer spending by some clubs and limit Chelsea's/PSG's/Citeh's payment of wages. It probably makes sense of the massive spending by Liverpool this summer. They've done their spending for the next few years and won't be affected by the new rules for some time. Real Madrid's pursuit of Galactico's and Chelsea's stockpiling and loaning out players will be severely curtailed. It looks good for clubs that haven't just bought their way to success and should support the Spurs model of developing stars rather than buying them.

 

Suggest putting this one on the UEFA watch article ...

These rules are all very nice, but we all know they will die upon
conflicting with those clubs that are the darlings of :

1. UEFA officials
2. the major sponsors/advertisers of UEFA tournaments

 

Naturally this will lead to a bunch of "UEFA hate the Premier League" comments from droning pillocks who overlook the fact PSG are also quite clearly among the listed clubs

Of course what interests me is how clubs might look to get around it, for example the Taurine FC dynasty can shuttle players to and from their bases in Leipzig, Salzburg and New York Jersey while having obvious academies in Sao Paulo and Sogakope, and they're hardly unique with The Sheikh Mansour Team being a term that can be used about teams from Manchester, New York, Girona, Montevideo, Melbourne and Yokohama and there's certainly examples of them moving players around - mainly because I'm thinking that, even though they fall under "state sponsored" I'm going to presume some teams are monitored far less than others

 

The state sponsored clubs will be difficult to curb. I think as long as Citeh can simply write themselves a cheque from another "completely unrelated" company for sponsorship etc, then the spending isn't going to be much restricted. I suspect UEFA do not have the will to tackle this either, and that there will be (un)intended consequences on smaller clubs as there is now.

Will the 25 players include those on loan?