calscot

It looks like Aberdeen fans see themselves as a bottom six team but even then forget they will average 1.5 Rangers home games a season, rising close to an obvious 2 for a regular top six finish. But they donâ??t even understand that Rangers are by far their top box office draw with an average of 2656 more fans turning up for Rangers games over Celtic. (15468 vs avg of 12812). They also forget that a bottom 6 finish in the current system without Rangers could even see them having only one home Celtic game every second season with the two Rangers home games replaced with what would currently be the seventh team in the league. That is in addition to replacing the seventh teamâ??s two home games with that of the second placed SFL1 team. Therefore, at least every second season you are replacing two Rangers home games with that of Dundee or Hamilton etc. Now Aberdeen fans are not the most loyal against teams at the bottom of the table and not many teams have fans who can be bothered with such a long trip and the amount they would lose could be very significant â?? and you also have to add in the fact that tickets for Rangers are increased by £1. Their lowest attendance was against Hibs last season at 5281 and I think thatâ??s the ball park figure weâ??ve got to be looking at. Thatâ??s over 20k unsold tickets. At £23 a ticket thatâ??s over £46k PLUS the extra pound for 31k tickets and youâ??re looking at close to £500k before adding in programmes and catering. And then thereâ??s the impact of advertising and the biggy, TV. Seems to me that with a reduced TV revenue they could be losing up to £1m a season. Thatâ??s pretty hefty for a £7m turnover... At a reasonable 50% of turnover on wages that could force them to cut possibly 25-30% of their wage bill. With relegation already threatening them regularly, that wage cut could see them going down and a financial disaster. Or will they want the SPL to help them out again and fiddle it so they stay up? Weâ??ve been put in this mess by forces outwith our control, Aberdeen fans seem to want to be the architects of their own downfall â?? all because they have a pathological hate of our club which totally outshines any responsibility to their own..

What £10m hole? D&P don't think there is one, so what makes you think there is?

It's a bit of a stupid rule as it means any team who didn't qualify for Europe could take their FA to court just to stop their rivals from participating...

I get you but surely the granting was worded in a way that was discretionary and just because it was paid every time doesn't mean that it wasn't at the trustees discretion. That seems to me to be impossible to prove that it wasn't discretionary - unless they find a bona fide contract. I have discretionary death in service benefit but as far as I know it's always paid out. However, it means I couldn't get a interest only mortgage based on it (not that I'd ever want one) or secure anything else on it. It still seems to me the problem is a stupid tax law and it should be HMRC paying for their mistake, not us - they should basically change the rules and move on. They made the rules and SDM just played by them or actually exploited them. I can't see why we should be so severely punished for that. It's like banning a player for 20 years for a dive - when it's not even very conclusive that it ever was one...

But surely by asking for all or some of the money back you are explicitly showing it was discretionary and not a contract? But nowhere near as much as wages. What if you charge interest? But it still seems that if it's in an EBT then it's tax free. The EBT must be tax free in some circumstances or why did we use them? All I'm really saying is do something to show the EBT is an EBT and not a contract. Maybe I don't understand the discretionary bit. Seems to me that if you get one person to pay something back and let the others off at your discretion, you're ipso facto being discretionary. Then what is? Are they loans or not? I was under the impression there was some loan element which at the trustees discretion would be called in or not. Therefore you have a trust worded as a loan and a demand for the loan, therefore it must be a loan. But if that's the case, how can HMRC prove we did anything wrong? And in the same vein, could we not ask some of them to pay something back at their discretion (after all the club could do with some dosh) thereby proving the EBT's are discretionary? Maybe we're getting lost in my examples: my argument is really pretty simple - why can't we do "stuff" that shows the payments were discretionary and makes the EBTs cast in iron? Like I said, it's a stupid tax law and I really can't see how HMRC have much of a case in something so woolly. However, the law is an ass...

Celtic just play the "minority victim" card again and again and get away with it each time. You just have to remember the O'Donnel/Burns scenario, the referee's strike and the bloostained poppy banner among a plethora of other stuff to see why they should be the most pilloried club in the land. But somehow it's always us instead. It's like the Ali G parady with the phrase "is it cos I is black". We've always suffered from being perceived as the big, bad majority who picks on an innocent minority. People just don't see discrimination against the majority. And sometimes it's not even majority, like the sexism in tennis payments. You get a grand slam women's final that finishes in two sets after about 50 minutes of mediocre tennis, compared with a five set, five hour marathon between two fantastic players, and yet the winners get paid the same. No-one sees that as sex discrimination and it is in fact seen as EQUALITY!!! That's the kind of insanity we're up against.

But if they would rather see the club go under than get a bit involved then why should we care about them? Why not just call the loan in? It wasn't contractual, why not turn the EBT into what it purports to be? If we call in the loans and nobody pays, where does it say we have to sue them? We just write it off as bad debt... It's a little bit ironic that the arguments against what I'm saying seems to be, "but they're not really EBTs"... Why don't we make them such? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... It all seems to be conceptual. Why don't we call in 0.1% and give the rest as a discretionary payment? That way it's proven to be discretionary and not contractual. The whole thing is due to a totally stupid tax law. I can't see how we can't do something discretionary that makes the payments discretionary and therefore within the rules... Please, someone show me where my thinking is wrong when based on actually having EBTs? Ok here's how I understand it. Imagine there's a plumber who's your friend and he puts in a new bathroom for you. Instead of you paying for all the labour (at mate's rates), for tax reasons you agree to pay him half, and give a personal loan between mates for the other half but in the expectancy he never pays it back. He therefore doesn't have to pay tax on the second amount. Then the tax office gets on his back saying it was part of the contract. What happens if he then pays the loan back? Is there still tax due? After all there was no terms on the loan... Now imagine instead HMRC came after YOU for 10 times the money which was going to put you out of business. Would you call in the loan to save yourself? You could always get him to do some small job and pay him the money owed with full tax later...

What tax? There would be no tax due, it would be a bona fide EBT. Cast iron. They would be loans not wages - which are tax free according to the rules. HMRC argument is that they were neither loans nor discretionary and wholly based on probabilities over conceptions of intent. If the loans are paid back then their argument is non-existent. Ok, that seems like a problem. Perhaps if the payments don't quite match and all the players are under contract as scouts with bonuses for referals... I don't quite see the need to take them to court. A demand for repayment is evidence enough that it was a loan. If we don't get paid despite the demand, that does not make it a salaried contract. Surely the trustees would co-operate given that that was the rules of the EBT? If not then surely Rangers have done nothing wrong and it's the trustees who are at fault? Not in the context I'm suggesting. My point is that he did, but he could have done the same thing in a different way. That is, devalue the company to £1, then issue new shares at whatever each. So if you raise £20m, all the old shares combined are worth 1/20m of the company. I'm not sure if that is possible in the intricacies of the business world but it sounds logical to me. The point was to adjust things so that we now owe an extra £19m for a tax bill (although it doesn't sound as plausible in my head now), but once paid, there is no more threat to the club - bar the £14m of legacy debt which would be manageable. Who would NOT buy into that? Or do we need our club teetering on the edge of extinction to buy into pretty much the same thing? Like I said it's simplistic but if it's plausible at first glance, then one of the business whizz-kids could surely flesh it out?

Just thinking at a simplistic level - could we have avoided the tax case and reduced our liability by calling the "loans" in and then setting up new contracts for those ex-staff-members to do something nominal for the same amount and pay the tax on that? That sounds like a bill of about £19m. The only problem is that it needed someone to underwrite it. However, you could start up the new contracts in parallel to the loan repayments over a period of say 10 years and so spread the payments. The former employees would lose nothing - they could even get paid just before the loan repayments. Or, instead of selling the club, SDM could have devalued his shares to £1 and then floated a £20m share issue which could have given the fans half ownership and a consortium the other half. Surely that share issue with no threat of the tax case would be attractive to fans and current bidders alike? A scheme like that would at least avoid the 50 odd million in penalties AND interest. If the loans are repaid then it seems the tax loophole is fully and explicitly legal.

So instead of 48hrs, we now have to wait 28 days for news?

Now what self employed person on the brink of bankruptcy wouldn't delay paying their taxes in the hope something would come up to save them? How is it that bad? It's not even criminal. As to match fixing to me that's more akin to burning down your office and claiming on the insurance. What person WOULD do that? Can I also ask, is there anyone in this country who hasn't at some point paid less tax than they should have? I know people who complain about benefit cheats and then do a wee cash in hand job to help a friend out - without declaring it to HMRC. Anyone who fills in their own tax return is going to at least do a wee bit of fiddling but then justify it to themselves. There are people who sell a house for £299,999 and then have a side charge of 20 grand for fittings - to avoid the higher stamp duty rate (although that tax is incredibly stupid and unfair). People sell things on ebay for a profit but don't pay the tax etc, etc.

Yeah and Goebbels deserves no blame for the travails of the Jews...

It's got to be said though that our supporters have played probably the biggest part in any hatred. There are too many that are simply not likeable and then the majority jump on their bandwagon. Supporters tend to try to live up to their image and Rangers fans like to live up to the "nobody likes us" aspect. All the "proddy", Ulster, Unionist, Tory party stuff is alienating even to me and really, who likes anyone with an attitude of "I will do what I want no matter who it upsets"? Then there's the kicker: the complete lack of respect for the other teams in the league by our fans which borders on contempt. It's akin to how English people sneer at Rangers and the rest of Scottish football and is the main reason I can't stand English football and love their national team to lose. A big part of the problem is that as fans we've been pretty shit and are reaping what we have sown. The thing is that Rangers fans on the whole have great qualities and often these are expressed in the immense support of the team and generosity to charities etc. We also have a far great sense of sportsmanship and integrity than our greatest rivals. I'd like us to reinvent ourselves in the secular aspects of the spirit of William Struth but I think most fans would find it too "goody goody". But then, that is the immature mentality that so many have - they want to be bad-ass and then get whiny when their victims kick them when they are down. As the biggest and most successful club, we can either be great, benevolent leaders, or supercilious bullies. Unfortunately we seem to like the latter.

Don't remember that... The worst they got was a bit of laughing up of sleeves as I recall.

You know I've read it again and still really don't get it. Is it talking about business or football - the blog seems to confuse them? Business law may treat the company and those that run as the same thing, but why should football do that? I can't think of a good answer. You would think that those in football would be more sympathetic to and more protective of the club as football associations are all about clubs and not businesses.

Yeah the Coke analogy didn't fit. It's more like the government trying to fine Coke something like 130 billion dollars for false advertising for saying "Coke adds life" ages ago as it is unproven that it actually adds life. Who would be to blame there?

So where's the option: "May be some truth there but it's all wrapped in a load of cheaply made tabloid bollocks"?

But not enough to be able to deal with any countering arguments? At least have the conviction and decency to defend it without just presuming to be right and then peddling it as fact.

It's still a dual contract. Also, it means that if we settle with HMRC we are equally as guilty as them. Therefore if HMRC accept the CVA we're no more culpable as we'll have settled.

Seems to me that Celtic DIDN'T use EBTs - they paid a SECOND, unregistered contract which was therefore taxable - which they paid. We are guilty of EBTs which were not contracts at all. The problem is that HMRC want to prove they were de facto contracts. I can't see how you can punish someone for not registering something that wasn't covered in the rules while not even hiding them. At worst it's a mistaken interpretation of the rules which the SFA should have brought to light sooner. Trouble is they didn't think it was against the rules either - till now. The fairest thing I can see in this scenario is a clarification of the rules.

Maybe if you took on board what other people are saying you'd see an even bigger picture. How can you see the any picture while ignoring everything that counters what you think is the truth? You have unsuccessfully defended your opinion, sometimes in the face of simple logic, and yet you're now stating it as fact. I have yet to see an explanation that shows Rangers FC is fully at fault. The only thing Rangers have initiated is something that has yet to be proven as wrong. The rest is a chain of events initiated by other parties. But hey, let's blame Rangers anyway.

When are they going to investigate Celtic? They have tacitly admitted they had a dual contract for Juninho by paying the tax...

To be honest, he's not been good but he's been little more than a very naughty boy. The real malice in all of this is HMRC whose ethics in this are totally questionable. As I've said before and so many people don't seem to get, is that there is very few justice systems where there is a rule which is incredibly woolly, and using a loophole round it in full view is condoned for 12 years and then the authorities decide to heavily punish one party and backdating it 10 years and thereby trebling it. Not only is that totally unethical they used their muscle and threats to almost push Rangers out of existence even before they have proven that the club are even guilty. Murray may have been reckless, but in a fair tax system, it would never have happened. After we paid the tax return in the first year, if it was wrong, HMRC should have cried foul, demanded the payment and that would have been that. End of. Any other debt is statute barred after six years, this should be as well as HMRC have not asked for the money in time. I can see no need for penalties as there was no malice involved and it was done in good faith in full view. We should be paying four years of the tax plus interest for the last six years AND be allowed to pay over a period of time which allows it to be affordable. If it was Celtic or other companies I dislike (like Apple), I would be saying the same thing. HMRC are the main villains of the piece. Other villains have just been feeding off the carcase. What HMRC have done is highly wrong and unfair and should not be happening in a modern, democratic country. I've also dealt with this many times. YOU may have bought into it. I know most people had the dream but I know of few who bought into the idea of spending a crippling amount of money to achieve it. That is a complete fallacy and I wish people would stop stating it as fact. It's complete rubbish. Like I say, speak for yourself. Many of us know how to balance a bank account and the dangers of over borrowing for short term gain - and don't buy into it. When you have a propaganda expert with an agenda against you, why wouldn't you have indignation at everything they say? Without a CVA or newco it wouldn't matter as HMRC would just appeal and appeal again. How he played it is very related to the EBTs and interpretation of wrongdoing. If he hadn't done them or they say Vodaphone had proven them totally legal then he'd have mismanaged the club but left it with £14m of debt. OR if HMRC had done a deal for say £12m over 12 years, he have left the club in £26m of debt. Hardly criminal. That's just not understanding the situation. We could easily have been in admin without that - eg Whyte not paying other bills; Ticketus seeing they weren't getting paid; if Whyte hadn't bought the club, Lloyds could have put us in; and if none of that, the BTC, if we lost, would eventually put us there. I think Whyte just acted in a pre-emptive way which reduced the club's and his eventual liabilities. Mainly in my opinion due to the Ticketus payments. Whyte was playing a game where we nullified the BTC and he makes a profit while shafting HMRC, Ticketus and other creditors. Unfortunately, he didn't give a shit about the collateral damage to the club. No-one else was willing to take Rangers on and face the BTC - and Murray and Lloyds wanted desperately to avoid it. Whyte seen a way to profit from it. Administration was always going to happen due to the actions of HMRC in relation to Murray's EBTs, Whyte just chose (aproximately) when and how. It's like blaming chemotherapy for making you ill. Chemo is poison but could save the patient in the end. Whyte is a particularly nasty version.

Don't like the way that the RST are taking the BBC Scotland report at face value. Maybe it's because it suits their agenda. They should be more objective and cautious when it comes to stuff like this especially from those that look to have an agenda against our club.

That's the bit that gets me about everyone ganging up to have a go at Rangers. They don't get it could happen to them and I would bet they wouldn't be baying for blood if it was their own team. The point of justice is to look at it as applied to everyone, including yourself. You can't be a prompt person who wants lateness to be a sacking offence no matter what and then complain when a pile up on the motorway makes you late. The lack of empathy from other teams is staggering.