The 'side letters' were mentioned on Sportsbabble - Rangers, this was my response. I am not so sure about these 'side letters'. Okay, they may have 'guaranteed' the salary, but that salary has now been defined as income, so I return to my original point : that income is subject to income tax at the relevant rate and is payable by the recipients of that income. No 'side letter' could put its recipient above the Law of the Land; just imagine your own job. Would a letter from your employer saying you will not be paying the tax you are liable for have any standing in Law ? ... It would work if your employer said 'I will pay all of your tax' and did that, but that is not the case with the EBTs, as no tax was paid. So I think the duty to pay the tax falls on the employees.
Wrong again Larry, that's exactly what the side letters did say. They said if the EBT holders were asked to pay Tax on the EBT then Rangers would pick up the tab.
Stating the obvious here, but it has to be done for those who still conflate 'company' with 'club'. Rangers FC - Club Statement - 'Big Tax Case'
Club? Company? Who the **** cares? Rangers signed players they couldn't otherwise have afforded and won titles and cups as a result. Each trophy won during that period should be stricken from the record.
For the avoidance of doubt, Rangers have not lost the case. There is no question of any liability impacting on our Club, its history or any member of the Rangers International Football Club plc Group. The Rangers Football Club and the entities which currently own and manage it are not party to these proceedings nor do we have any say in what happens. The proceedings are a matter for those affected by them. Which one of those is "The Club" then Larry?
Clubs borrow money to sign players they couldn't otherwise afford. Strip all them titles too? Where do you stop?
That's not the same though, is it? There's nothing wrong with borrowing money as long as there's an agreement in place to pay it back. Rangers gave already well paid players money that should have been going to nurses, doctors, teachers etc. In other words, yer scum.
Having ploughed through the Court of Session Judgement, its key points are : 1} The payments from Rangers (and other respondents) to the Principal Trust constituted redirection of emoluments, i.e., payment for services rendered by the employee to their employer through their work. 2} Being emoluments, they are subject to Income Tax, prior to their transfer to the Principal Trust. That means the employers (including Rangers) should have paid income tax prior to the transfer of funds. 3} Any transfer of monies between the Principal Trust and the Sub-Trusts would be subject to taxation too, but that would be under the taxation applicable to Trusts and not the taxation applicable to income. This is the latest judgement in this saga; whether BDO appeals against it remains to be seen.
Rangers FC News 2 hrs · RECORD FC RANGERS: FROM EBTS TO DANGEROUS GAMBLES, DAVID MURRAY IS AT THE ROOT OF ALL OF RANGERS' WOES I THINK yesterday was the day we reached peak Sevco. Spurred on by pious, zealous pundits and manic bloggers claiming to be journalists, the Twitteratti were out for vengeance of a kind best served white hot. When I read the account of an ex-serviceman who was blaming Rangers tax issues for his lack of appropriate body armour when serving in war-torn Iraq it struck me how deranged this entire debate has become. As prominent Rangers supporters were hounded, lambasted as cheats and forced to defend their club over accusations of moral bankruptcy, one man’s name was suspiciously absent from criticism amidst the faux hand-wringing panic. It was the individual who has always been most significantly to blame for the chaos that enveloped Rangers in the last few years, Sir David Murray, the man whose decisions and actions we must come to accept are the root of ALL our problems. A gambler in his business life, Murray rode roughshod over his board. Rangers was his private fiefdom and his 6 million EBT payment, making him the single largest beneficiary from the scheme, is a shocking indictment on his now disgraced tenure. What exactly does a Rangers chairman do that entitles him to a £6 million pound payment? I would love him to go on the record and explain it now, without the succulent lamb culture that undoubtedly existed around our former chairman. A lot has been made of this issue as a slight on Rangers, but in truth, it hurt us the most. While Minty was financing a spending spree of gargantuan proportions on the never-never, no-one questioned the enormous time-bomb that was ticking down in front of them. Murray was extremely adept at pushing the right buttons and he was very skillful in playing the media game, delivering tidbits and doing favours for positive coverage in the kind of symbiotic relationship that develops in any working environment: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Murray’s biggest, and for his reputation decisive, gamble was to take the advice of the pornographer (you couldn’t make some aspects of this story up) Paul Baxendale Walker who brought the EBT scheme to Ibrox. While many other clubs used them, few quite so liberally as Rangers, but Murray the gambler clearly thought it was a risk worth taking. Like many gamblers before and since, the hard reality was sobering. The results of this tax case should be the epitaph of Murray’s chairmanship. He gave us 9 in a row, a UEFA Cup Final and Brian Laudrup, things I will always treasure, but the fact remains that his governance after 2000 was as calamitous as any since and the foundation for all our woes. I can only hope that as he rests in his opulent French Vineyard in the shade of the sun, enjoying a fine glass of red and some, no doubt, succulent lamb that his thoughts sometimes drift to the club and its fans, what he has put us through and the result of his hubris and bombast: honest, hard working fans who love their club being put through the wringer through no fault of their own. It is their pain that is his ultimate and overriding legacy. Spot on.
"Spurred on by pious, zealous pundits and manic bloggers claiming to be journalists" Or manic bloggers who think they are journalists. please log in to view this image
And Aldo agrees with him The daft huns were too busy waving 10 pound notes at Celtic fans to see their club was being shafted. Apart from some certain bloggers and Graham Spiers - who was banned from Ibrox much to the amusement of the daft huns.
