Spain's buyout clauses have often been set up as a deterrent -- symbolic, gigantic figures to warn off suitors. Sergio Busquets has just renewed his deal with Barcelona for example and his buyout clause is now €150M ($204M). But they do also have a practical use. They form part of a legal framework and also a gentleman's agreement between clubs. Which is why the price is not always the price. Because clubs are not always gentlemanly about it.
Under the terms of that basic agreement, clubs accepted that another club which paid the buyout clause could sign a player without resistance. If it's €45M, you pay €45M and you take your player, no mess and no fuss. It is, essentially, a price set at which you say you will sell.
But you don't necessarily have to sell at that price; that agreement has a legal foundation that is a little different. At an informal level, the modus operandi has been altered since Real Madrid walked off with Luis Figo for the symbolic but just about manageable figure of 10,000M pesetas. The buyout clause remains, but the application of it is different.
Now most clubs are saying: this is the buyout clause, sure, but if you make a hostile bid, a bid that we do not welcome, we will force you to apply the clause legally. And when you apply the law legally, that is a different issue. When you apply the law legally, it is a different price.
That means one of two things, both of which increase the price. Firstly, it can mean adding the VAT at 18 percent. In the past, clubs have agreed to include VAT in the invoice for a player's transfer (which of course can be claimed back from the state). Now, if the bid is hostile, they will not. In other words, the buying club will have to pay the clause plus the 18 percent. So, Aguero's price rises from €45M to €53.1M ($72M).
The other option is for a club to simply refuse to sell -- until, that is, it is forced to. That's where the legal buyout clause kicks in, Decreto Real 1006/1985. But that decree is exactly what it says it is: a buyout clause. A player (not the club) deposits the money, the value of the buyout clause, at the Spanish league and unilaterally breaks his contract. That money, of course, would be given to him by the buying club in order to buy himself out. The problem is that as soon as that money hits his account it counts as income -- even if it is then deposited elsewhere. And so it is liable to taxation at 44 percent. In other words, the €45M is the amount left after taxation. That is to say that Aguero's overall cost is €80.2M ($109M).
The other factor that's significant is that the buyout clause is a Spanish agreement. When it comes to international transfers -- to bids from aboard like the one supposedly from Chelsea -- it is irrelevant. Except as a symbolic price, a reference point from which you can negotiate.
