I'm sure that to you, Imperial and Peter Staxton, things like that are a simplified version, but is there a way of wording it in a way that a thicko like me could try to grasp?
Some sort of analogy to a mortgage or something I've some familiarity with?
I can appreciate that lots can get missed when they're dummed down to that level.
I thought I'd kept it simple!
Erm, you own two properties, one with a small interest only mortgage (SM) and one with a huge interest only mortgage (HM)
You rent them both out. The rent on SM is higher than interest, making you a profit. The rent on HM is lower than interest, making you a loss.
As you own both you can offset loss on HM against profit on SM, leading to a small net profit on which you end up paying tax.
Not sure that really helps.
The thing about companies is that each one is a separate legal entity and thus any money owed can generally only be claimed from the company, not the shareholder (the limited in a company name refers to limited liability - if the company doesn't have the money then it can't pay you and it will either be wound up or creditors can come to an agreement to get some money back if they think they will get more of their money back (pennies in the pound better than nothing) - whereas a person who owes money can be hounded into bankruptcy.
Borrowings are generally secured against assets to limit the borrowers liability (you don't keep up repayments = bank gets your house).
The club has a lack of assets and therefore will struggle to get finance (someone might provide funding but the extra risk of no security would mean a higher interest rate being charged for the increased risk - the 5% interest on the loan from allamhouse is much lower than a commercial loan rate (I seem to remember Bartlett's Investec loan being something like 14%).
When Allam bought the club it had a lot of tax losses and these have been offset against the profits of Allamhouse over the last few years.
The loan from Allamhouse is there to provide City with cash for day to day operations. If the club becomes profitable then it should have enough cash to support itself and chunks of the loan can be transferred back to Allamhouse.
I've kind of gone off on one there TL;DR.