The Loan Rangers

Well, well, well.

Anyone got a tin opener for this 'can of worms'!


Now I have been all over the Rangers story since the start, taking pictures of everything and anything surrounding the Ibrox scandal, then I starting doing this blog and I told you all how Ticketus own Rangers. I also told you about Ex Rangers player tax avoidance secrets.

Anyway.

So I was doing a study on the EBT'ers or the Tax dodging bastards as I like to call them when I happened to stumble across some information that took me by surprise.

First of all we must understand the difference between being Employed by (a football club) and being Loaned to (a football club) are two totally different things.



Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the Employer and the other being the Employee.

In football the Employer is the Parent club which means the club who holds the players full contract registration.

A loaned player is one who is Employed by a football club and his services are Loaned to another club. This club becomes the Loaning club not the Employer.

For more information please use the link below;

 http://www.football-league.co.uk/regulations/20110629/section-6-players_2293633_2125731



Now lets look at Employee Benefit Trusts.

The Employer establishes the trust, making contributions of an equivalent value to the deferred remuneration and the trustees will at a later date distribute the trust funds to employees or ex-employees. 

The basic idea is that the trustees can distribute the trust fund when it is tax advantageous to do so perhaps when the employee is retired or non-UK resident.

The ideal is that there is no employee tax charge until the trustees distribute benefits which may be many years after those benefits have been earned. 

The tax charge may be theoretical rather than real the employee or ex-employee may have moved to a ‘low tax jurisdiction’ or ‘tax haven.’

Further information can be found on the link below;

http://www.contractoruk.com/ebt/



Now it is going to get really tricky for David Murray to explain this one.

Gregory Vignal receive £173,000 via an EBT when he wasn't an Employee of Rangers.

He was loaned from Liverpool to Rangers 2004-2005. His Employee Benefit Trust is subject to Tax and National Insurance as he wasn't an Employee of Rangers Football Club, he was an Employee of Liverpool.


Federico Nieto receive £24,500 via an EBT when he wasn't an Employee of Rangers

He was loaned from Almagro to Rangers 2005. His Employee Benefit Trust is subject to Tax and National Insurance as he wasn't an Employee of Rangers Football Club, he was an Employee of Almagro.


Both players were not contractually Employed by Rangers but received the benefits of being Employed by Rangers.



Now surely the very fact that they are called Employee Benefit Trusts should have told the powers that be at Ibrox that these players were not entitled to and could not receive payments through them as they were not Employees.

Or did they know and done it anyway.

I'm sure we will find out in time but this is a 'clear a sign' yet that Rangers knew exactly what they were doing.

They never thought they would get caught, but they did.