Are we not getting a copy of the Administrator's Report, then?

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What kind of screwup is thinking you can get away without paying VAT on season tickets?

I think it's down to selling them as memberships i'm sure thats what the argument was, I dont think you pay VAT or pay smaller amounts on sold memberships. Bit daft really when its plainly clear they were season tickets

Haven't we done this in years gone by when your ticket/pass got you discount at various places. In that time you could have said it was a membership as it gave you other benefits. However with the later version I think the only benefit was that it got you into matches and that is why HMRC classed it as a season ticket and not a membership.

On the face of it I'd agree but the law is a very strange beast sometimes.

To be fair, the idea that Green thought he didn't need to pay VAT because they were 'memberships' is what I understood the problem to be. When you think about it, having a club and allowing 'members' free entry and use of facilities isn't[i that[/i much different from the concept of season tickets and I can certainly see how the law relating to those entities might overlap in places.

Whether he just, 'didn't set it up correctly', or was 'bang out of order', might often need to be settled some arcane legal processes, I suppose. ...and what mood the judge is in!

The second type - deliberate stupidity

the VAT legislation is pretty clear that club memberships can have both vatable and non-vatable elements. The element relating to entrance to matches must have been vatable, that is described in words of one syllable in the VAT regulations, so the argument surely must have been about what value of membership to attribute to the non vatable benefits package and the match entrance element. The Vatmans default position will have been a split of 0/100% on the basis that it was a marketing incentive by the club not the purpose of membership. I would have sought the advice of a VAT consultant after checking his PI insurance before witholding large amounts of VAT on the basis of such an assumption of the split.

i'd suspect the membership pack freebies and member only votes on things like naming stands and bars plus talk about making some bars member only (although only superficially implemented) were an attempt to give extra value to memberships in attempt to increase non vateable percentage.

It was a scam, nothing more. He tried to con the revenue, deliberately. This was never going to work.
We've had previous owners who f*cked up through stupidity and ignorance, this time it was just devious.

There are lots of companies which deliberately 'scam' the tax laws though, mainly big multi-nationals, pretending they don't do business in this country. I'm pretty sure there is a basic attitude, in many people - in big business or otherwise, that taking the P out of the taxman is fair game. In the accepted knowledge that the big beasts get away with it, it's hard to take a moral line when the, 'little people', try to get away with it. The law should work for all, imo.