zurcher

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2225257/Neighbours-fury-porn-film-boss-builds-helipad-garden-Surrey-mansion-planning-permission.html Now this is feckin hilarious, this is the guy who advised minty et al on their EBT scheme. Check the video at the bottom of the page for an example of his advising talents...I now have a vision of him and minty chasing some scantily clad girls around the office with the Benny Hill music playing in the background... Hopefully this isn't a repost but I couldn't see it.

Fuckin hell! Not only is that the worst result in Sevco's short history, it's probably the worst result associated with the name rangers. Albion are clearly the worst team in senior Scottish football. There have been some chuckles this season but I'm genuinely shocked at that. Good for Stirling but Jesus!

Stop confusing matters around the EBT, I've explained it a few times before and I will try to do so again. Firstly, it's feck all like a pension, it may take advantage of pension rules, but the only way in which it's similar is that the payments come from your employer and no tax is paid on them. It can be used legitimately, and is used in fact, as a company sharesave scheme, but that's generally only used as it's against market rules to sell shares under their value, so companies buy them via the trust and place them in trust for their employees at a beneficial rate, all above board and open, all documented and well controlled. An EBT the way Rangers used it, and the way all other tax dodgers use it, is a managed fund in the name of the actual employee (possibly just a numbered reference, but that's irrelevant as it is tied to the employee in some way), to which money is added at regular intervals by the employer, usually in the form of monthly payments when the salaries are due. For example - Person A works as a contractor for Company A, his employer (Company Z) bills Company A 10k for a month's work, as per the agreement between companies A and Z, and this is paid. Company Z then pays 5k to Person A's account as salary, and 5k to his Trust. So far, so legal-ish. Now the first tricky part - The agreement between Person A and Company Z will be in the form of two contracts, one showing the 5k per month which is what he'll be showing when he does his tax returns, and one showing 10k a month which he most definitely will not. Second tricky part - the other 5k per month going into the trust most definitely belongs to Person A and is nothing to do with Company Z (or Company A for that matter) once it's there, hence why it's utterly irrelevant whether Murray did or didn't pay back 1 pound or 100 pounds or 1 pence towards the "loans". There is no loan, it's just weak legalese for give me my money but make sure I don't have to declare it to the taxman. The employees access these funds by submitting a loan request to the trust manager who will send the money wherever they want it to go and ask no questions. In some cases all it'll take is a phone call, in some they'll ask for a paper "loan application" in an attempt at arse covering, but there is complicit agreement that this "loan" will never be repaid. It is just allowing Person A to access money which belongs to him, which has been paid from his employer and for which no tax or deductions have ever been applied (save maybe a management fee from the trust manager). This above is the way in which it usually works, but in the case of Rangers there is no middle man and the company set them up themselves. They were aware this was certainly on shaky legal ground when it was set up, they ALMOST CERTAINLY used dual contracts, and the players may eventually be hit with large tax bills, the British based ones anyway. If I was Dodds, Rae or any of the rest of them I'd be saying absolutely nowt about it, but the fact these clowns are openly discussing it means Rangers didn't even bother trying to explain it to them past "here's what we'll pay you as salary, and here's what we'll pay you into your trust which you then get by speaking to this guy". Now Rangers, as the employer here, is responsible for all deductions on payments made to staff, hence why they are now twitching on the mortuary table after being consumed by the tax bill, and some of the ex-players and staff might be facing bankruptcy hearings themselves soon enough if they haven't got the cash to pay several years worth of backdated tax bills and interest. So please, stop referring to the EBT as a pension and confusing the issue by suggesting that payments could be made back to the offshore bank for them, that's never going to happen, there is no way to do this at all and in fact, there is no loan. HMRC decided many years ago these were not compatible with UK tax law and as such have been chasing companies down. If you ran one but were willing to pay the tax owed, then no problem, just Rangers lived so far beyond their means that the heft of the outstanding tax destroyed them, not to mention Whyte's use of employee deductions as petty cash too, obviously.

As far as I understand it, EBTs are only acceptable if used to buy and sell shares for a tightly controlled company sharesave scheme, and even under this, may still be taxable. Generally speaking, EBTs which are anything to do with employment, and which actual cash is paid into are deemed to be taxable, and so anyone using them is likely to face a hefty bill for back taxes.

Look, I know you're just trolling and probably nothing is going to change your mind, but EBTs are NOT legal, they are, in fact, ILLEGAL, at least in the common form of paying a tax free amount into trusts for employees to take "loans" which are never repaid . I've explained before how they work and why they're dodgy, and, importantly where Rangers are concerned, why there WILL ALMOST DEFINITELY BE secondary contracts. I've also said that Rangers may have believed they were legal at the time, but as with all these things, all they had to do was to sit down with an inspector from HMRC and ask them, they didn't do this for the same reason as everyone else, the knew them to be dubious but thought they'd get away with it. Now HMRC has decided they'll have all the tax due on them and, in theory at least, have the right to go back as far as they want to claw back the tax. But don't take my word for it, read HMRC's opinion on it yourself, an easy googling will show you they deem these schemes to be wrong and have gone so far as to offer people (companies and employees) a period of time in which to volunteer information on their EBTs and settle the outstanding tax due, obviously to avoid embarrassment and potentially costly litigation and see here - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/employee-benefit-trusts.htm There is plenty of information around on this, and this is what brought Rangers down in the first place, and the basis of the BTC. Rangers were found to be using illegal methods to avoid tax when paying their employees and were hit with a bill, they appealled but folded in the meantime due to Whyte's non payment of any dues whatsoever, despite taking the deductions from employees. (side note, this is insane, and surely he'll eventually go to prison for this. The theory is that he wanted to use it as a bargaining tool for the BTC but to take deductions and then not pay them is bad enough, he allegedly was actually using this money to run the club!! Nuts!) Even if Rangers had won the appeal, HMRC have taken this type of thing as far as the House of Lords before and won (search for Macdonald (HMIT) v Dextra Accessories Ltd if you're interested in that) and so would eventually have faced a bill that would have killed them even had Craig Whyte been running the place honestly and well. Just stop with the nonsense and do some reading on it.

I'll lay money on that being the page with the worst spelling, most ill-informed crap and poorest grammar in the comments section on the whole Reuters site too

Yeah, that's why you're in here arguing with us day and night, because you just don't care what we think. And I'm sure it's been pointed out many times before, but I'll do it again, none of the clubs are at any serious risk of failing, some of them may have some cash flow, or even solvency issues, but the debts are usually small and spread out, so none of them should have any trouble at all in getting approval for a CVA if they do end up in administation. The reason your old club actually failed and died is because the biggest creditor was your beloved defender of the faith, HER MAJESTY'S Revenue and Customs, who refused to accept Green's non existent offer of a vague "yeah we'll pay you something eventually" - a figure was never actually put on it, but it's unlikely to have been more than 1 or 2p in the pound. They had cheated the tax for so long that HMRC refused to let them off with doing it any further, so said no, the club folded, and Charlie started his attempt at a phoenix. None of the other clubs have anything remotely like the financial problems you had and will be fine if they do end up in some financial difficulties. With the possible exception of Hearts, who are in debt only to Mad Vlad, and that's a slightly weird and unpredictable situation to be in. *edit for tense fail.

Haha, am I privvy to information? You're the ones certain it will happen, so please do tell us where you're getting this information from since you seem so sure. It won't happen, and there is no call for it to happen. Apart from among sevco fans like you who are fuckin desperate for it to happen so they can have some kind of small ammo to throw back at their one time rivals who are in the champions league while sevco are sadfacing away in the third division, unable to win away from home and getting dumped out of the diddy cups to dwindling crowds. Feck Sevco, I'm just gonnie start calling youse Fourth Lanark. The decline is underway.

You're a class act. Not going to happen, regardless of how much you fantasise about it to distract yourself from the pishflaps, mid-table-4th-tier, start up tribute act that you follow, and the fact you have the worst manager in the league. And even if by some insane turn of events they do decide to go ahead with some sort of money sharing scheme, when sevco apparently eventually get to your "rightful place" at the top, you'll be sharing too. Oh no, wait, Charlie with more disrepute charges than suits wants to keep you in the SFL doesn't he?

absolutely spot on, a man with so little care for the effect his stupid outbursts have on the general atmosphere around sevcoites and the people of Scotland who have to live with them shouldn't be allowed near the game. He's taking them back decades, playing up to bigotry and paranoia in order to advance his feckin investment, then he'll feck off back to Yorkshire and leave with his pockets stuffed with ih peepul's hard-earned money and not care for the bitter, angry and divided fools he's left behind or the long term poisonous effects they'll have on the country.

There will be no gate sharing. Share TV, sponsorship and outside money round more equally, but the gates should be kept by the club. So Sellick and Newco have much more paying fans, they always did, it's only really since the advent of the SPL that Scottish fitbaw has gone so far down the toilet. The Champions League money also skews things, but I don't imagine there'll be much call for Sellick to share that out between us diddies either. The remaining half of the old firm will lose their rights to veto any sharing of cash outside them and their former best buddy/biggest enemy, but I don't see any need for the wee teams to get handouts from the gate receipts.

Hahaha you win the internet!!

It has nearly died laughing a few times since the Sevco roadshow started but the heart is still beating

I heard the ref's cousin had a mate who once had a pint wi a guy who knew someone whose daughter once had a summer internship wi Harper MacLeod! It's a pure conspiracy man! Pure obvious innit?

fuckin 4 mins into injury tiume equaliser at the brokes? feck me, what a moment! The sevcoites will be telling that one to their children in years to come "I was there when..." oh wait

Sorry missed this earlier, but yer man here has beaten me to it: Great stuff, hound the swine to his fuckin grave!

Youse Sevco clowns can say what you like about Alex Thomson but the man deserves a fuckin medal for the hounding of that scumbag b*****d Kelvin Mackenzie on the ch 4 news there. He should repeat that every day until the b*****d dies of shame Eta - sorry, totally off topic I realise, but that was majestic and nobody deserves it more

Their sales have been dropping for years, but they're like the catholic church in the respect that rather than change the model and actually trying to win people back, they just go even more extreme and try to please the hardcore of idiots who still read them / follow them. The tabs could go back to printing proper journalism anytime they like, and with a bit of effort and investment, could definitely become relevant again, but no, they just wheel out the same useless goons to wheel out the same useless crap and more and more people will drift away. Most of the people who do still buy the Record or the Sun do so out of habit, but that generation will die out so they will die eventually unless they really try hard to change. The MSM has been shocking in every aspect of this, and if this had happened in the pre-internet bampot days it'd have been covered up nicely and we'd currently have The Rangers debt free in the SPL, and Traynor etc saying "it's the right thing to do..."

It's from Bill McMurdo's latest ill informed rant. He's the new hero, like leggo with half a brain

The article states that the investigation is going back to July 1st 1998. There are maybes about it, as he states they are the SPL's lawyers, and as such have acted on Rangers behalf before anyway. Were you complaining then?

I like this one, can we keep him If you really are a Rangers fan, then you are one of the few sensible ones around, certainly more sensible than 99% of the ones I know personally. Although backing Sally as manager kind of puts that sense into doubt somewhat, but all us non-orcs want him to stay too, so mair power tae ye!

As I already said, yes there may be a difference in taking the SPL to court rather than the SFA, but FIFA have already stated that action should be taken, probably part of the reason Charlie boy agreed to the original punishment as long as the embargo was delayed a little while. Also as I said, you have a *legal* right, undoubtedly, but will FIFA be so understanding second time around? We'll just have to see if Charlie has the baws.

It is illegal under FIFA rules for a club to take its association to court, Sevco got away with doing it once, and I don't think they will again. Now taking the SPL to court might not be as cut and dried a case of flouting these rules as would taking the SFA directly, but I'm pretty sure it would amount to the same thing and FIFA would have to ensure that necessary action was taken. You might want to think about the consequences of taking them to court before you start championing your right to do so. Undoubtedly you have a *legal* right to do so, but under the internationally agreed rules of ih fitbaw, you might well find yourselves a pure huge international giant of a massive behemoth of a legend of a club with loyal fans far and wide, but nae league to play in and, in effect, deid. For the second time.

Nope, EBTs have been deemed to be pretty far from legal as far as HMRC are concerned, they're offering, or have been offering any individuals or companies who used them an amnesty to come in and settle outstanding tax bills to save going to court, and I'd imagine quite a lot will do just that. HMRC have the right to go back as far as they like to investigate these things too, hence Rangers' massive, and eventually crippling, 75m plus tax bill. Anyone else using EBTs will either be coughing up what they owe, or living in fear of a nasty, and potentially very large bill from the taxman. The salesman at the time who set it all up for them, and the people who charged fees for managing it, will have ensured Rangers that it was legal, but all they had to do was sit down with a representative from HMRC at any time and ask their opinion on whether it was legal or not. They didn't do this because they knew it to be if not illegal, then at least highly dodgy, and so they ran with it in secret, as all other users of EBTs do. It eventually came back to bite them on their large orange bahookies though, and we are where we are now, with Rangers deid, new Rangers pretending to be old Rangers while plying their trade in SFL3, and months of entertainment for diddies and non orcs of all shapes and forms.

It might happen, as I mentioned above, if Charlie is stupid enough to try to take them to court over removal of Sevco's "history sale". The only option then left to them would be to kick you out the league. Oh there'd be dancing in the streets of Zurich that evening.