Traynor launches his latest defence of Rangers

Are we being taken for mugs by image rights?
IN an era where sports stars the world over are making megabucks from image rights, would Scottish clubs have to inform the SFA of similar deals? LEWIS HAMILTON is leaving home at the end of this Formula One season. After 14 years with McLaren, the team that made him rich and famous, Hamilton is changing direction. The 2008 world champion is quitting McLaren for Mercedes to pursue his goal of matching his hero Ayrton Senna, by becoming a three-time champion. Yet McLaren, who have been the power behind Hamilton since he was a wide-eyed kid, have won 16 races so far in the past three seasons, while Mercedes have taken only one Grand Prix in that time. McLaren also made Hamilton an offer that would have guaranteed he’d be the highest-paid driver on the grid. It wasn’t enough to keep him. With Mercedes he’ll still be paid more than anyone else – it’s been reported Hamilton will rake in £15million a year from his new team.

But, you might wonder, where exactly is this going? Why is there Scalextric for grownups in the Winner? Well, let me tell you what we’re driving at here and why football, especially the SFA and SPL, should be interested in what’s happening in another testosterone-fuelled sport. It’s about image. Or image rights to be exact. With Mercedes, it’s believed Hamilton will have greater freedom to exploit sponsorship appearances and image rights. So, on top of his enormous basic salary he could earn a small fortune during the course of his new contract through money pulled in every time a T-shirt, mug, pen, toy car, picture or anything with his face or name on it is sold.

And having reported F1, I know loads of this tat is sold to that strange breed – larger in number than you might think – who are attracted to motorsport. Like golf geeks they’re quite mad. They arrive with more logos and names on their gear than the drivers themselves. Because there are so many doting fans out there a well-known driver, golfer, tennis player, or footballer will make fortunes by owning the rights to their own brands, their images. Now, here is the point for the SFA and SPL.

If a player signed by a Scottish club is receiving a cut, or all of the money, from the sale of any tops or the trashy memorabilia featuring his name or face, would the governing bodies know about it? Would the clubs have to detail payments, or inform the authorities of any contracts that may have been drawn up and signed?

Well, if we look at the terms of the SPL’s case against Rangers then yes, every kind of payment or deal should be revealed. It might even be possible to argue any kind of image rights deals, no matter how insignificant, are actually dual contracts.
And would they breach Scottish football’s rules? We have a right to know and I suggest once the SPL’s lawyers have concluded their investigation into whether or not a number of former Rangers players had two contracts, these legal hounds should be turned loose again. With orders to sniff out any signs or evidence that might prove clubs, including Rangers, may have operated any other payments designed to exploit tax systems.

Or are Rangers really the only club capable of some kind of wrong doing? Of course investigating others would be expensive but the SPL and SFA always seem to have enough for legal pursuits no matter how daft or downright vindictive they might appear to some fans. However, you do have to wonder where that money is coming from.

After all, a cash-flow problem meant clubs received only half (£300,000) of their August television payments and it would be interesting to know if they are being left short so that legal fees can be met. But remember, we are dealing with fair play and the game’s integrity here and we can’t start putting prices on those things, now can we? So, in the interests of fair play, might it now be incumbent upon the two bodies to run forensic checks on every other club? The governing bodies, the protectors of our game, should be scanning every set of accounts sent in by every club. You never know what might come to light. What would be the ruling if, for instance, if it was found a club had been paying foreign players modest wages, which were detailed and registered here, but lodging other payments in bank accounts back in the players’ home countries?

Far-fetched? But then again maybe not because agents and accountants can be pretty adept at enhancing the incomes of their clients and all sorts of strange deals have been struck within football.

And increasing earning power is exactly what image rights contracts can do, even for ordinary players. Basically it works like this: A player wants £500,000 a year but insists his image rights are worth £100,000. The club might agree to pay him £400,000 but allow him the freedom to exploit his image rights. The money from those rights goes to another source, usually a company, which means both the club and player are benefiting.

Both are beating the system. That’s a pretty simple example but the fundamentals are the same whether it’s £100,000 or £10m and we ask ourselves if these deals are really any different from EBT/dual contracts. Frankly, anyone who believes no player, or agent, has ever asked a Scottish club for the freedom to exploit their own image rights is naive in the extreme.

Of course they’ve asked, so it isn’t unreasonable to assume some might have been accommodated. And neither is it outrageous to doubt that every club will have disclosed in exact detail to the SFA, SPL or SFL every pound paid to every player ever signed. Yet, this seems to be the standard the SPL are demanding of one club but not all, even though the league body and SFA should have asked Rangers about their EBT scheme from the first year it was included in the Ibrox accounts.

I’m quite sure a growing number of people at fairly high levels in both organisations are now wishing they hadn’t embarked on the process that could lead to championships won by Rangers being erased from the records. But they may have been muscled aside by, well, let’s just say more zealous individuals. And of course they might regard the entire business as some kind of crusade to get to the truth as it has formed in their own minds. It’s a bloody mess and it will get worse before we see an end to it. Scottish football? Not at all a pretty image.
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Quite extraordinary by Jabba again, this seems to be a recurring theme and I have actually lost track of the number of articles he has now written defending Rangers' alleged actions with Dual Contracts/EBTs. If I were of a cynical bent I may suggest that Alastair Johnston wrote this and Jabba just put his own seal on it so partisan and blinkered is it.


Succulent Lamberry of the very worst, it almost makes me want to boak.

 

Don't have time to read it all I'm afraid, but I thought image rights had absolutely nothing at all to do with EBTs'/dual contracts.

I could be wrong though.

 

In short:

"...Aye, but, aye, but, whit aboot uther teams?!..."

 

Yep, that's about the gist of it.

 

Sorry Dev. I'm never reading Jabba ever again.

Unlike Leggo he's not even funny. He's just a fat rambling ****.

At least Leggo comes out with enough randomly crazy and completely unintelligible phrases at times to make him worth reading for a chuckle.

Jabba doesn't even warrant this kind of attention.

 

I tend to agree but I only posted this because it's so blatantly biased towards Rangers and their current woes.

 

I've only read the two sentences you put in bold and they were enough for me. No fact or basis behind it, just appeasement and apology for the Hunnish hoards.

 

the fat baldy mess of an excuse of a human being is obsessed with Rangers.

i dont actually read or listen to anything he says because he is a puerile pretend journalist like the vast majority in the tabloids.

is he still on Sportsound on the radio? stopped listening to that because of him.

oh for the days of proper football journalism like Ian Archer, Bob Crampsey, Arthur Montford and Alex Cameron. ok we all knew Monty was a Morton fan but he and the others were completely unbiased and spoke eloquently abou the game.

 

how ironic

 

Traynor knows he is talking shoite. If a player is entitled to image rights as a result of his clubs merchandise there is
no doubt it would be written on his contract. (A wee example why contract extention talks take some time).
Now Mr Traynor, Rangers or Sevco won't have any problem with their players earning image rights, certainly not if
you live your normal life span, it won't happen in your lifespan. A big worry off your mind, go back and try
to dig up something more to cover the arse of that evil club.

 

super goes crazy again

 

Image rights.

Willo Flood.

That is all.

 

Just what is it Murray has over him? I've never seen anyone defend the murray era as much as this man, but why? It could be worth investigating because it seems a bit weird to still defend the man who killed his club.

As for the article, complete rubbish and he fine well knows that.

 

Pathetic attempt by Jabbas.
Image rights have been covered by UEFA. The difference between IR and dual contracts issue, as Jabba well knows, is that the latter refers to wages for playing football or bonuses for football results, which have been hidden from the footballing authorities.
Image rights are for a completely different aspect of the players renumeration outwith playing football.

Doubt if Lord Nimmo Smith will be convinced by Janbas pathetic effort, however the Boyne Bampots will be. Those who are too dim to realise the difference.

This article should be noted carefully and remembered, because it is articles like this, which a meant to deliberately mislead those among the Boyne Bampots whose IQ fails to exceed their shoe size, which will cause probable unrest and perhaps attacks on innocent people who are unfortunate enough to be in wrong place at the wrong time.
I hope that the likes of Jabba can live with themselves if anything untoward happens, as a result of Lord Nimmo Smith's findings.

 

Not only was Traynor (along with a select few) invited to stay at Chateau Murray to sample succulent lamb and fine red but he was also a guest at his son's wedding.

So you can excuse him for writing with all the objectivity and impartiality of Lord Haw Haw.

 

A rebuttal from another site:


Correcting Traynor’s Record Myopia on Image Rights – by Ecojon
“In Traynor we Trust” is the current rallying cry from the Darkside with the great man leaving offside-rule explanations to mere mortal scribes to pontificate on intricate tax affairs.

His latest subjective rant has given the Ibrox faithful a vision of Hector hammering at the Parkhead Gates demanding back-tax for image rights. I doubt from his scratchings that Traynor had much of a classical education but Hector actually found Paradise at the Gates of Troy .

I would also observe that if the EBT route has been followed then perhaps Ibrox should be preparing to repel the taxman AGAIN. I won’t deal in detail with the lack of objectivity in his piece and the scorn he pours on the fair play and integrity of Scottish Football fans other than to observe that no one will be surprised by his partisanship.

Jabba appears to have lost the plot over the EBT issue and his latest frenzy calls on the SPL and SPL to mount a forensic tax examination of every set of accounts sent in by every club and darkly hints: ‘You never know what might come to light’. His ire is centred, as usual, on the unfair way he perceives Rangers to have been treated and he thunders: ‘Yet, this seems to be the standard the SPL are demanding of one club but not all, even though the league body and SFA should have asked Rangers about their EBT scheme from the first year it was included in the Ibrox accounts’.

The SPL Commission - when it reports - may well rule on whether the way Rangers reported its EBTs according to the rules and till then Traynor, like the rest of us, doesn’t have a clue whether it was acceptable or not. All he has is an opinion and a bias – just like most of us I would imagine although he is meant to be an objective reporter of the facts.

It could be argued that the SPL should have acted when first contacted by the HMRC but it’s likely that Hector asked them to stay their hand so as not to prejudice their EBT investigation and considering that almost £100 million of unpaid tax was involved I think the public purse trumps an SPL probe. I do believe that both the SFA and SPL would have done anything to avoid investigating Rangers but were dragged in because Hector was looking for his dosh and a Rangers director publicly blew the whistle about the activities behind closed doors at Ibrox.

So let’s cut the conspiracy against Rangers cr*p who landed in a mess they created all on their own despite strenuous efforts by the suits to find escape routes for them.

Back to tax-busting image rights payments which Traynor appears to think permeates the Scottish Game. What I can’t understand about Mr Scottish Football is his failure to name one single player receiving such payments. Says a lot about his forensic journalistic skills and lack of contacts IMHO. Of course he has never named anyone with an EBT and side contract either.
So let’s try to look at facts rather than fairytales.

Back in 2007 HMRC tested the law in ‘Sports Club Plc v Inspector of Taxes’ against a Premiership club and two of its players. Hector argued image rights’ payments were purely a tax saving device allowing inflated salaries, through tax savings, which should be regarded as employment earnings.

But they lost the case as the arrangements were declared ‘separate commercial contracts’ for full consideration and excluded under income tax legislation. Image rights aren’t legally recognised in the UK but any ‘personality’ can sell or licence rights to a third party or even his club and in recent times some players have been able to include contract clauses which distinguish between payments for footballing and image rights.

It seems that the practice really spread after the 1998 World Cup when foreign players apparently learnt from Premiership stars that London lead the way in manipulating more than just Libor. These image rights’ payments are placed in a limited company which creates tax advantages as well protecting against unauthorised use of images. It was even more advantageous for foreign players with non-domiciled UK status to have the money paid into offshore companies where income is taxed at corporation tax levels, potentially less than half the 45% top PAYE tax rate if company profits are £1.5m or less.

Despite losing the 2007 court case HMRC still believed the mechanism created tax evasion with a strong possibility that the image rights percentage would be inflated to save income tax and national insurance on the footballing-only contract with a £60 million tax loss across English Football. The problem they faced of course was that unlike EBTs the image rights payments weren’t in a trust for a named player but were being paid to a limited company which had a distinct legal personality from the player.

There was the further complication that image-rights payments didn’t simply reflect the playing ability of a player. Indeed you could have a much poorer player being paid more in image rights than the best player in the team because he had a more marketable image. Footballing ability might be a factor but it’s only one strand of the complex mix that produces a David Beckham whose image rights might well overtake his footballing ‘wage’.
HMRC came under more pressure by a 2007 change in law allowing companies to lend large sums to their directors which was only taxed at 2%, being classed as a benefit in kind, rather than direct income. With the 2009 introduction of the 50p top tax rate the whole enterprise became even more financially lucrative for players.

Pressure from Hector finally forced West Ham United in 2010 to freeze payments on the image rights contracts of seven first team players until HMRC finalised their investigations. The club justified the freeze by noting HMRC said tax and NI should be deducted at source and told players’ agents that if they had any complaints then their clients should take it up direct with HMRC. I don’t think there were any takers.
HMRC also challenged the Portsmouth CVA – they were owed £24 million in taxes but also wanted £13 million off image rights paid to offshore accounts.

By February 2011 HMRC calculated the overall tax loss at £200 million and were cranking up the pressure with Man Utd and Chelsea in their sights and now Mike Ashley at Newcastle United has followed Chelsea, announcing an agreement with HMRC with an undisclosed sum being paid to settle image rights issues. HMRC have confirmed that most Premier league clubs have agreed to pay tax arising from image rights payments and they continue to negotiate with the others although the clubs now know the game’s a bogey.

Private discussions between the FA and HMRC hammered out the solution whereby players are graded from A to E depending on their profile and how a club uses their image. Most importantly HMRC has accepted a cut-off date before which payments haven’t been contested. I would think the same formula will be agreed by the SFA and Hector.

However, I really doubt that there will be that much of a problem to be faced in Scotland and the number of players involved will be small compared to England. I therefore doubt we will see the cataclysmic collapse of Celtic no matter how fevered the imagination of some ageing hacks might become. Perhaps if the Great Man was a regular reader here he might have learnt the importance of separate legal personalities when considering anything remotely connected with Scottish Football these days.

 

I read that this morning, Dev

Here's why Traynor's abuse of his platform is more dangerous than a casual blogger:

His claims are being given credence amongst the Twitter Loyal.

All the STV journalists were bombarded yesterday with the usual suspects (Graham, Gow, Vanguard Bears ***** and Limond) for not researching this story further!!!???!!!!

The party line was that, although there was no evidence, Traynor must have some to go to print with that (compare that with the same mongs calling Mark Daly's efforts "a hatchett job").

When pointed out by fellow journalists that this would be stupid for a journalist to do this as it gives someone else the chance to trump you with the story, the beelometer went tonto.

Gow claims that Traynor is sitting on the info to release it at the right time "for maximum impact", Limmy suggested that they've been in talks with Traynor for a while to be on his bizarre bigotfest podcast and Graham claimed that they had already had extended talks with Traynor to write for the Rangers Standard.

Graham then spent the rest of the evening getting his followers all whipped up with false hope that "Every trophy Celtic won with Larsson will be stripped".

The sort of anti-logic dependant on this "fit the facts to suit the theory" nonsense is giving these idiots false hope and an additional misplaced sense of persecution.

Traynor has (for real) become their new poster boy and an example for other journalists to follow

Beggars belief.

It's an insult to critical thought.