www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/ap ... e-payments I would'nt have thought it would affect us too much, not many overseas stars, and with all the players leaving last year we must be well under SC. Warrington seem twitchy though Both Hull teams as well i would guess.

www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/ap ... e-payments I would'nt have thought it would affect us too much, not many overseas stars, and with all the players leaving last year we must be well under SC. Warrington seem twitchy though Both Hull teams as well i would guess.

If we were twitchy, we wouldn't be spouting about it in the national press.

What a surprise, Andy Wilson reporting pessimism.

The teams that would be most affected are those with large numbers of overseas players.

Hull have a largely British lineup, but Hull KR are packed full of Antipodeans.

Similarly Wigan have quite a large foreign legion in their ranks.

Dont worry the SL players will take a pay cut just to keep the club's goign and the sport thriving, honestly !

Off shore banking and tax loopholes, shocking behaviour and being a good catholic boy means i wouldnt entertain such matters in my financial world.

Prodestants would do this, not a good catholic upstanding citezen smith. Also, I hear accountants of hotel chains are "inventive" with such tax things, disgusts me.

It's not the number of players it's the size of the contracts.

I am led to believe that it has happened at Saints in the past hence my question on here for Jamie Lyon at the Wellens forum, which no one asked.





If it's retrospective than a few clubs could find themselves in trouble.

That would be a concern, but can't be done, its like saying we are going to put up income tax from 5 years ago, you owe us X thousand of pounds! Cant be done

It can be done. Tax can be collected from up to 3 tax years in arrears.(It maybe more)
[size=25
Look at the date in was in the Guardian, so it may not be 100% true.[/size

That was my first thought

I must say I haven't seen it in any other paper - so perhaps it was something to do with the date.

a lot of effort for something not very funny, and it was put on late last night, which would suggest its not an April Fool gag.

The article has appeared in Thursdays Guardian, though was posted online late last night.

So not an April Fool

I would have thought we may be in the frame for this.

When the details of SBW "offer" were made public it gave us an insight into the types of deal we may be offering.

We have some clever guys at the club.

Not if this loophole is retrospectively closed we don't. We'd be up the creek if that happens.

try looking closer to home, i heard jamie lyon had a large collection of brown envelopes when he played for saints

Six years. Twelve IIRC if its fraud.

Yup.

IF - point needs to be made its all still hypothetical at this stage.

But IF a club has to settle with HMRC for arrears of tax and NIC, then that affects the salary cap spend because its the grossed-up amounts that would rank, not the net amounts actually paid. Which would likely lead to major and immediate retrospective salary cap breaches.

Much talk around the game over recent years that Saints have made use of this arrangement. If so, they'll not be the only ones.

Interesting times await, I fear.

did he eck...prove it, c'mon we need proof, jamie was da best der wuz. c'mon prove this or be banned.

My misses who is a lawyer type says that if the law is changed as it is in this instance, the only "crimes" that can be retropectively prosecuted are murder and something similar, i was falling asleep due to the interesting nature of the law

but the gist was that what has happened has happened, but you cant do it anymore. No club will have any liabilities for what happened before the law was changed

I've a fair background in tax law myself, being a qualified accountant of many years. If you read the Grauniad article, it suggests that this is not merely closing a loophole, but is being pursued by HMRC as tax evasion going back several years. Example: "...there are suggestions that they may be forced to make retrospective payments which in a couple of cases could run well into six figures."

That is indeed my understanding of how HMRC is approaching this, and its been ongoing for some time. If that is so (and we are still making assumptions at this stage) then we are not talking about retrospective law changes, but failure to comply with the existing law.

And yes, too right - the legal side is SOoooo bloody boring it does my head in! But I sort of have to deal with it as part of what I do

But what might be different is that the taxman has cleared up the interpretation of the rule.

If that is so, then the rules were already in place, so a retrospective payment may still have to be paid by the clubs involved.

But was it careless or reckless?

Of course we are all basing this on a reporter who has no knowledge of the law and is sensationalising to sell papers

Or was it "against the spirit of the cap"