danlichtie Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Yes, but they may not have signed for Rangers had they not received the level of tax free payment they did with an EBT. If Rangers wage cap () was £10k a week for example. £10k a week after tax is far more attractive to a player than £10k after tax, which becomes several thousand pounds less per week. Conversely, for Rangers to have signed the same player and pay them £10k after tax, without an EBT, would have cost the club several thousand pounds a week more, per player. Right, you've got me thinking in a slightly different way with that explanation - I guess it really depends on how the EBTs were set up and communicated. I suppose that's what the big tax case is looking at as well. I shall be watching tonight with interest - if RFC said to a player "You will get £10K a week after tax - £2k through RFC and £8K through RFC EBT Ltd" then I can see both the player and club in trouble, if simply the deal was you get £10K and nothing was revealed to the players then obviously RFC are in the shit. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ric Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 I said earlier that the names themselves don't matter and I don't think they do. It is utterly essential that there is full transparency. If no names are provided then you will build a conspiracy amongst the Rangers support who will claim that not naming them means there weren't any. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jakedee Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 CC was the best player to ever grace the SPL, but how did we manage to pay his wages yet allegedly rangers couldnt without using EBT's?? Do you really want this answered 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danlichtie Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Well something must, as the HMRC are going after Rangers Oh yeah - totally agree there must be something that HMRC are interested in RFC about but as you will be aware, taxation is a hugely complex issue. I would not be surprised if HMRC were also knocking on the doors of the beneficaries of EBT if the court case goes against Rangers. Similar to Sol Campbell ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/23/portsmouth-sol-campbell-image-rights ) - he wasn't chased as he wasn't actually paid by Portsmouth! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danlichtie Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 It is utterly essential that there is full transparency. If no names are provided then you will build a conspiracy amongst the Rangers support who will claim that not naming them means there weren't any. To be fair, I don't think anything would stop fans forming a crackpot conspiracy theory. You could install Sandy Jardine, Donald Findlay and the resurrected Bill Struth as investigators of the EBTS and there would still be murmurings of an anti-Rangers conspiracy. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GirondistNYC Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 1337778434[/url]' post='6264929']I appreciate where you are coming from - I'm not sure that SDM or any of the Rangers board will have increased their transfer/wage budgets by use of EBT. The main people who benefit from EBTs are the payees - not the club. No, no no. The market for players is global. An agent has a rough idea of what player X is worth, as adjusted for things like transfer fees (or lack thereof). An agent will push at the upper echelon of that range and the club will beat him down, but barring special circumstances wages n particular won't depart too much from market norms - otherwise the player or club will look somewhere else. By removing the tax obligation associated with a portion of wages, Rangers were able to offer more net cash to, say, Michael Mols than they otherwise would have. Mols decides to go to Rangers for roughly the amount of money he would have gotten from another club, and Rangers gets Mols for an amount of money that would have only netted them their second choice target if they paid tax. HMRC loses, both RFC and Mols benefit but there is absolutely no reason to suspect the player rather than the club garnered most of the "gain". I used Mols as an example (no idea if he is involved) because he is a prime case of why the No.8 "EBTs were legal, there were no second contracts" position is insane. For an EBT to be legal, the payments have to be DISCRETIONARY. This makes sense for an expat investment banker who expects the bulk of compensation in discretionary bonuses anyway. It makes no sense for a 29 year old footballer to except a lower salary than he could get otherwise in exchange for a legally non-binding possibility of discretionary payments. Football players are subject to injuries, loss of form and short careers in a manner bankers are not. Mols did in fact have a career blighted by injury. If EBTs worked in his case like they should have, he would of been paid zero through his EBT while injured. Do you think he would have accepted that arrangement? Any uncorrupt agent would demand market wages for his players and demand side letters (and extra dosh for the risk and annoyance) in exchange for an EBT making up a portion of same. To believe otherwise is fantasy. Now Daly claims to have hard libel proof evidence of such side letters. Nothing unexpected, except for the Bears still fighting in the forests of Burma for the Emperor circa 1948 on this issue. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjc Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 If the EBT illegality is upheld (RFC are appealling an HMRC decision that they are illegal) then names of the EBT'ers is interesting but not essential at the moment. If there are double contracts associated then the names are essential because the games that they played in are nullified. No one really expects the SFA/SPL/UEFA to go back and change the scores but it would set the record straight albeit a bit late for the dopes they shafted i.e. us. am I not right in saying it's not EBT's that are illegal but the way in which they were administered in this case.......hence the HMRC chasing Rangers for the ta liability ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pansypotterthedirtyrotter Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 regardless of how the players were being paid, they were still the best team in the league and cups for those years. You're completely missing the point here, if they had paid the astronomical wages through the correct channels, without using ebt's then the wage bill would probably have doubled and they would never have been able to afford half of the players who won these trophies in the first place. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Buddie Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 CC was the best player to ever grace the SPL, but how did we manage to pay his wages yet allegedly rangers couldnt without using EBT's?? Sorry, must have brain death, but who was, is, CC? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross. Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Whether or not Rangers could have afforded or attracted the players if they were not paying through an EBT is not really relevant. The fact is they were used, and it gained them an advantage over their rivals. Player A is offered to Celtic & Rangers Celtic offer £20k a week, through the books. After tax he picks up maybe £12k. Rangers offer £20k a week, using the EBT to pay most of it. After the payment is processed he picks up £18k. Where will the player go? The financial advantage that comes with using the EBT will lead to a sporting advantage, which will lead to success on the park, which will bring in more money from CL qualification and the like, which leads to further sporting advantage. In fact, how Rangers managed to f**k that up completely is beyond me, that maybe says something about the incompetence of those running the club. Any club using an EBT, and I include Celtic as I know they used them, should have their records scrapped for any game a player who benefited from the payment participated in. Not just in Scotland, but in England as well. I like to think that the Rangers situation is just the tip of the iceberg, although I am wise enough to know that very little will be done to anyone. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green&White Zebra Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Any club using an EBT, and I include Celtic as I know they used them, should have their records scrapped for any game a player who benefited from the payment participated in. Not just in Scotland, but in England as well. I like to think that the Rangers situation is just the tip of the iceberg, although I am wise enough to know that very little will be done to anyone. I believe Celtic 'inherited' an EBT when they signed Juninho in 2004. They were then advised by Brian Quinn to drop it and they paid the tax to the HMRC. As far as the points gained in 2004/5, you're welcome to them ! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wellboy1978 Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Sorry, must have brain death, but who was, is, CC? Chic Charnley 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thelegendthatis Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 (edited) You have hit the nail on the head and re-iterated a point I have made a few times here. I know for a fact (because i know some of the staff, but obviously won't identify them) that they knew PAYE was not being paid. They also knew that VAT was not being paid or put aside. They chose to do nothing about it. Some of these people have been employed by Rangers for many years so that were not Whytes people. Some of these people wil be members of professional bodies and would have had a duty under that association to bring this behaviour to the attention of the authorites. None of these people are Craig Whyte. From the report from the SFA tribunal "Similarly, Mr John McClelland and Mr John Greig resigned in October because they knew that they were being excluded andmarginalised at the same time as they had great concerns for the governance of Rangers FC and were deeply suspicious of Mr Craig Whyte before and after hisacquisition of the majority shareholding from MIHL. Other than resignation therewas no eveidence that either of these directors took any steps with any person orauthority to do anything about what they knew was happening. Criticism might belevelled at these directors and others. Mr Olverman as Financial Controlleroccupied a very senior role within Rangers FC and as a matter of admission he knewof the non payment of taxes and the somewhat strange practices and secrecywhich was the deliberate policy advanced by Mr Craig Whyte. Though it was nopart in the matter before us, and did not impact on our decision on the complaintswhich were before us, Mr Ken Olverman was also aware of an apparently unusualtransaction involving Ticketus which had a substantial significance in the exercise of any fiduciary duty which he, as a senior officer of the company, owed towards thecompany, rather than owed towards Mr Craig Whyte" These are just some of the people responsible for what has happened to Rangers. Why Rangers supporters are not irate about how those into whose hands they put their trust let them down so badly. Greig, McClelland and Olverman are the 3 named here. Rather than pouring their ire on the SFA, SPL, or other clubs, they would be more productively employed asking those whom they considered to be 'one of them' why they failed so miserably. They not just let them down, they screwed their club totally. Hopefully tonight's programme will give us other names who took what was a genuinely world famous club to where it is today, on its kness, with a high probability of disappearing totally. Edited May 23, 2012 by thelegendthatis 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dundee Hibernian Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 CC was the best player to ever grace the SPL, but how did we manage to pay his wages yet allegedly rangers couldnt without using EBT's?? That's a very difficult question (for you it appears) But let's stick to slagging Rangers! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivo den Bieman Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Sorry, must have brain death, but who was, is, CC? Claudio Caniggia 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteRoseKillie Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 Chic Charnley You've just set of my chuckle muscle five hours ahead of schedule! :lol: :lol: 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~~~ Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 CC was the best player to ever grace the SPL, but how did we manage to pay his wages yet allegedly rangers couldnt without using EBT's?? He would have been earning a bigger wage at Rangers, and Dundee couldnt afford the wages either 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dundee Hibernian Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 did the rangerstaxcase.com dude not claim a while ago (as an example), that every player that they fielded at Easter Road on the last day of the season in 2005 was on one of these EBT / 2 contract deals ? Team that day (from Soccerbase):- (G) R Waterreus (D) F Ricksen (D) M Andrews (D) M Ball (D) S Kyrgiakos (M) B Ferguson (M) A Rae (M) T Buffel (F) S Arveladze (F) D Prso (F) N Novo Referee: Kenny Clark (suspect he may too have had an Ibrox EBT ) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green&White Zebra Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 The silence from the Rangers directors and employees while all this EBT and deliberate non-payment of PAYE and NI can almost be compared with Omerta. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cuyahoga Posted May 23, 2012 Share Posted May 23, 2012 No, no no. The market for players is global. An agent has a rough idea of what player X is worth, as adjusted for things like transfer fees (or lack thereof). An agent will push at the upper echelon of that range and the club will beat him down, but barring special circumstances wages n particular won't depart too much from market norms - otherwise the player or club will look somewhere else. By removing the tax obligation associated with a portion of wages, Rangers were able to offer more net cash to, say, Michael Mols than they otherwise would have. Mols decides to go to Rangers for roughly the amount of money he would have gotten from another club, and Rangers gets Mols for an amount of money that would have only netted them their second choice target if they paid tax. HMRC loses, both RFC and Mols benefit but there is absolutely no reason to suspect the player rather than the club garnered most of the "gain". I used Mols as an example (no idea if he is involved) because he is a prime case of why the No.8 "EBTs were legal, there were no second contracts" position is insane. For an EBT to be legal, the payments have to be DISCRETIONARY. This makes sense for an expat investment banker who expects the bulk of compensation in discretionary bonuses anyway. It makes no sense for a 29 year old footballer to except a lower salary than he could get otherwise in exchange for a legally non-binding possibility of discretionary payments. Football players are subject to injuries, loss of form and short careers in a manner bankers are not. Mols did in fact have a career blighted by injury. If EBTs worked in his case like they should have, he would of been paid zero through his EBT while injured. Do you think he would have accepted that arrangement? Any uncorrupt agent would demand market wages for his players and demand side letters (and extra dosh for the risk and annoyance) in exchange for an EBT making up a portion of same. To believe otherwise is fantasy. Now Daly claims to have hard libel proof evidence of such side letters. Nothing unexpected, except for the Bears still fighting in the forests of Burma for the Emperor circa 1948 on this issue. This explains the EBT situation perfectly, especially the point on discretionary payments - that is the nub of the issue . Thanks. Greenies all gone for today... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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