The Rangers Saga and Fallout Thread
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Not quite over yet, seems to be more of a score draw since although Rangers have "won", it might just mean reduced payments. The released statement also seems to indicate the payments were contractual, which brings us into the SPL's investigation. Will need a few days to process everything in it I think.
No rangers are not liable as it was a loan scheme and not illegal. It's those who took these loans that can get a call from liquidators for the loaned money back. The big thing is the CVS would have passed as hmrc would not have had as big a claim. There will I'm sure be some kind of fallout from this. I wonder if Celtic sorry the spl well still be chasing the stripping of trophies.
Associate
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So they went to the wall over nothing?
HA!
HA!
Basically yes. Would Murray have been forced to sell to Whyte? Did Whyte stop paying tax after the initital result went against the club, resulting in liquidation? Also, would Green be in charge now if the BTC wasn't hanging over the club while in administration? If I was a Rangers fan I'd still be raging at the governing bodies for the way things have turned out.
Radio saying it's unlikely anyone will go after the players/staff over the money and now up to HMRC whether they go to appeal (thought it was the final appeal)? I'd expect the SPL to announce an end to their investigation soon as well.
I guess it'll mean league reconstruction will start getting more interesting soon since no real barriers anymore for newco Rangers to be invited into the top division?
For anyone interested, the ruling document can be found here.
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I cant see HMRC appealing it, even if oldco lost, HMRC where never going to receive that money.
I wouldn't say the issue is over yet. The side-letters are what the SPL panel is looking at, and the judgement is pretty clear that Rangers avoided dealing with the issue so the players were most likely improperly registered.
The HMRC thing around EBTs was just so they could set a precedent and start going after the bigger clubs using the scheme. Rangers were a softer target because of the other tax non-payment issues.
Soldato
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There is no scope for liquidators "calling in loans". The Murray Group Remuneration Trust made the loans, in part funded by the company formerly know as The Rangers Football Club PLC. However, once that money left the PLC's accounts their claim and subsequently any creditors claim over any of this money ended. The money would never, nor will ever make its way back to the company formerly know as The RFC PLC.
Any monies recovered by the trust would sit in trust to be re-distributed at the trustees discretion.
No, shocked. I guess Dr Heidi Poon can expect to feel the love!
How much has this case cost the public purse now? By my reckoning it can't be far off 40 million now. 3 million in legal fees. 11 million hmrc turned down from Murray and the 25 million or so Whyte managed to run up which wouldn't have happened had this case not been pushed for as Murray would have found it easier to find a buyer and therefore the tax would have most likely been paid. Real value for money for the public purse.
Just think how many hospitals it could have been spent on....
So 35 out of 118 loans were deemed to be taxable? Bugger for those employees who got those wrongly worded letters.
Either way, it matters not. Oldco are dead. It has been proven they acted without integrity. Legal or not, the "loans" were merely enticements to play for old Rangers, salaried or not.
It is safe to say we can continue to call them cheats
Dont see why you mention Celtic, no-one has mentioned re-allocating titles or cups to runners ups. Celtic dont run the SPL, they are a member, just like old Rangers were, before they imploded, with no apparent reason to
Soldato
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Just think how many hospitals it could have been spent on....
So 35 out of 118 loans were deemed to be taxable? Bugger for those employees who got those wrongly worded letters.
Either way, it matters not. Oldco are dead. It has been proven they acted without integrity. Legal or not, the "loans" were merely enticements to play for old Rangers, salaried or not.
It is safe to say we can continue to call them cheats
This guy would disagree:
By James Traynor
RANGERS have had many massive triumphs in their time, especially the 3-2 win over Moscow Dynamo in the 1972 European Cup Winners’ Cup final.
But yesterday’s result will surely go down as the most significant in their history. It wasn’t even played out on a pitch.
This victory came inside a stuffy office somewhere along Edinburgh’s George Street.
But even though no one kicked a ball, Rangers’ 2-1 win in the First Tier Tax Tribunal represents one of their greatest successes.
And it should bring an end to one of the longest and, given the behaviour of so many mean spirited and malicious individuals, certainly one of the most shameful tax cases in Scottish history.
Murray Group Holdings and Others were contesting a potential tax liability of £87million (made up mostly of penalties) and if there is to be a bill it will come to no more than £2m but probably even less.
This will be in combined penalties against individuals who may be guilty of minor breaches of technicalities.
But the point is Rangers were brought to their knees by a debt which was never real.
And they became victims of a case which should not have been allowed to run in the first place. Long and complex, it has cost something like £5m in legal fees. But at the end of it all there remains one unanswered question: Why?
What was the point and what were the real motives behind the zeal with which some in HMRC, and the media, tackled this case? This is not to say the Revenue shouldn’t try to reclaim money when they believe it’s due. It must be stressed they should but there are aspects of this case which deserve to be scrutinised closely and perhaps they will, if some of them people denigrated and wronged decide to take legal action.
This case has been about money but there has been a greater cost.
There has been a heavy human cost, too. Innocents, Rangers fans, for instance, have been damaged and so have former directors, especially Martin Bain.
And what was his crime? He inherited the EBT controversy but managed to hold his club together at a time when it seemed the entire country was pounding at the red facade of Ibrox. But there was no gratitude. Bain, and others, were wrongly accused of malpractice. They, Rangers, were all guilty. Fact.
Their persecutors, an alarming number of other clubs and their fans, should be hiding in shame this morning, or breaking cover only to apologise. Fat chance.
Blind hatred and poison has saturated this case which could actually have paid off for HMRC. They were offered £10m two years ago to settle but refused, probably because they wanted a trophy win to set a precedent which would allow them to pursue hundreds of other companies for untold millions.
But they failed. Yesterday two of the three judges ruled Rangers’ EBT system was a form of loans and not taxable after all.
And yet, because the tax man insisted Rangers owed them £50m, a catastrophic chain of events then unfolded.
No one wanted to touch a club with a potential bill of that size hanging over them and eventually Rangers fell into the wrong hands, the hands of a man who really didn’t pay tax and who then caused one of Europe’s biggest clubs to slide into liquidation.
But let’s be clear on this, the Revenue’s demand for payment, which it has now been declared invalid, started Rangers’ slide towards the precipice. Companies who sell cups of coffee and mobile phones can escape payments for hundreds of millions but Rangers?
No chance. They were chased and backed into a corner for piddling amounts by comparison. Amounts they didn’t even owe. Of course David Murray is responsible for selling but he was being pressed by a bank, who wanted rid of the club. They didn’t like the bad publicity their squeezing of Rangers attracted and Donald Muir, their man on the Ibrox board, wasn’t about to let Craig Whyte’s offer pass by.
The rest is history but it is a bitter and twisted chapter in a story which shines a light on a side of this country which should embarrass us. So many people wanted Rangers shut, or at least cut down and now they know there was nothing illegal in what was done with EBT payments they should take a good look at themselves.
Sadly, they just wanted to believe Rangers were guilty and it became popular belief that this lot really did owe almost £90m in tax. People spoke matter of factly about Rangers being tax cheats and there was such a groundswell against the club few were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
The facts were trampled as the crowds rushed to dance on Rangers’ grave.
Even people who should have known better were swept along in the rush to accuse and condemn Rangers or anyone who dared say, ‘hold on, shouldn’t we wait until the real financial experts rule.’
But now we all know the truth, although we haven’t a clue as to the identities of those at the centre of this sorry saga.
Bizarrely an anonymised form of the tribunal’s ruling was published yesterday revealing that evidence had been delivered by Mr Red, Mr Purple, Mr Turquoise, Mr Yellow, Mrs Scarlet and other colourful people.
Neither Quentin Tarantino nor the makers of Cluedo could have done a better job of disguising characters yet the identities of those who had received loans in the form of EBT while at Rangers were leaked routinely to
journalists and bloggers.
But the Revenue didn’t want the names of any of their people out in there in the public domain. Why? Because we’d then know who had rejected the £10m? Or was it felt they had to be protected for other reasons?
But there are names on various emails and documents in circulation and maybe one day soon there will be greater transparency as a case which has brought so much strife to the game is finally put to rest.
We can argue until the end of time about whether the Rangers in question still exist or whether the history with all its glories, defeats, highs and lows remains intact. But one crucial truth cannot and should not be lost.
Rangers, we know, were stricken, taken down by a fantasy tax bill. They were declared guilty before trial.
Rangers, as a brand, was tarnished because HMRC said they owed tax on EBT payments which the club had always argued were loans. Yesterday two of the three judges agreed. So HMRC, who had insisted an initial tax and National Insurance bill of £37m, which climbed to £87m, be paid, were left with nothing. They say they’ll appeal but it could be argued they’ve caused more than enough damage.
Besides, even if they’d won their case yesterday they still wouldn’t have got anything out of the Rangers they had pursued. They were forced into liquidation, remember.
And the real bottom line in all of this? Rangers’ closure was all so unnecessary and the turmoil and upheaval caused could have been avoided. Despite accusations Rangers did nothing wrong. Pity the same can’t be said of all those self-proclaimed experts, bloggers and journalists.
Rangers will be clobbered they had said. The verdict will be damning. Rangers will be shown up as cheats, they squealed.
It’s clear now who the guilty parties are and Rangers are not among them.
I stopped reading at "By James Traynor". He is a proper idiot, one of those journalists who lapped up everything Murray said.
It was because of people like James Traynor not doing his job that allowed the bloggers to become central to the investigation and leaks. We ended up having to rely on these sources during the story as the Scottish media refused to print anything about it. It also allowed Alex Thomson and Mark Daly to make a fuss for their 15 minutes of fame.
Ranger's fans are saying he's one of the few to come out of this with dignity over his defence of the oldco, yet all he did was put out PR that was disproven by these blogs time and again. Of course, we knew that if Rangers won the BTC he'd be in overdrive with the spin, despite the fact the result at the end of the day only mattered to those looking for the titles that Rangers had "cheated" to win.
The main thing to come out of this story is just how poor the tabloids in Scotland have actually become in investigating anything about the (then) Old Firm out of fear of losing customers.
Still, the same media are reporting this morning that HMRC are likely to appeal the decision on the grounds of a 2-1 majority so might take another few years before it's all over.
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