Lord Nimmo Smith’s Scottish Premier League’s commission made clear their remit and the bounds on their decision:
“The Tax Tribunal has held (subject to appeal) that Oldco was acting within the law in setting up and operating the EBT scheme.
“The SPL presented no argument to challenge the decision of the majority of the Tax Tribunal
and Mr McKenzie (solicitor acting on behalf of the SPL) stated expressly that for all purposes of this Commission’s Inquiry and Determination the SPL accepted that decision as it stood, without regard to any possible appeal by HMRC.
“Accordingly we proceed on the basis that the EBT arrangements were lawful. What we are concerned with is the fact that the side letters issued to the Specified Players, in the course of the operation of the EBT scheme, were not disclosed to the SPL and the SFA as required by
their respective Rules.”
On this basis, Lord Nimmo Smith’s commission found that a legal tax loophole, inappropriately administered and which broke SFA and SPL rules, did not amount to a sporting advantage.
The Commission was clear their determination was bound by the Tax Tribunal and not influenced by the possibility of a successful HMRC appeal. We have no ruling on today’s question – whether a decade-long illegal tax regime conferred sporting advantage.
In noting their thoughts so clearly, the law lords opened the door to a subsequent determination based on a successful HMRC appeal.
The SFA and SPFL (previously known as SPL) must now address this question.
It is worth noting; SFA and SPFL officials have been trying to steer media away from looking into their affairs. These executives have no power on this matter. The clubs will determine what happens, not those watching their own hide.
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Think
She used to be ..
Looks like an old fat Cromwellian sour- puss these days ..
But, I guess that’s exasperated your narcissism ..
Good to have control over your own mindset.
Better to have an ugly woman treating you as an intellectual God .. Than a pretty one .. Thinking you’re a dick!!
Nite :)
My narcissism :-) is exasperated. Goodnight Moonbeams.
Hail Hail.
As long as you don’t find it irritating :)
Thank feck there’s a game tonight ..
Mon The Tims!!
Over and out!!
Fans know it, players know it ..
4-1
Really!
winning captains on 4th November 2015 11:09 pm
I think now is a perfect time to take to the newsprint again.
Perhaps QoS, Ayr United and Dundee United, who IIRC lost cups to the cheats, might join with us.
This is a full-on scandal of an arrogant, sectarian, supremacist organisation, accountable to no-one, working within a society and country whose leaders not only sanctioned it, but broke their own laws to try to keep it alive.
We’ve got CQN the blog, CQN the news site, CQN books.
Surely time for CQN films – it’s the logical next step. There’s a movie in this.
Martin Scorsese is a fan of ours. Just saying.
SOUKOUS on 5TH NOVEMBER 2015 12:29 AM
I don’t think ex managers or players get it how the fans really
Former Celtic manager Martin O’Neill has revealed that whatever happens in the aftermath of yesterday’s HMRC victory in the ‘big tax case’ that it does not hold significant bearing on the perception of his tenure in Glasgow.
===========================================================================
Mate
That`s the paraphrasing spin the reporter places on Mon`s account.
To my mind it bears little relation to the actual quotations.
To my mind,Martin is basically saying ” We can`t change the past.”
winning captains on 4th November 2015 11:09 pm
When we put together the Sunday Herald ad at the start of the year we had to go through an unbelievable amount of hassle to get the copy approved by the paper, their lawyers and also those folks associated with the ASA.
Later we assisted Auldheid when he wanted to do something similar for Res 12 but this time it got nowhere as the lawyers were shooting the text down.
Things are now different and we can deal in hard facts and rely on three judges at the highest civil court in Scotland.
The MSM will be spinning as soon as the shock wears off and it will all be about 11 v 11, best team won and so on.
We achieved global publicity exposing the same club myth – and the judges referred to ‘the former Rangers Football Club.’
Might be time to get active again and make sure that the cheating is reported down south and around the world.
– See more at: http://www.celticquicknews.co.uk/nimmo-smith-commission-noted-unlawful-tax-affairs-beyond-their-remit/comment-page-2/#comments
========
WC
To clarify it wasn’t the veracity of the text or accuracy of the points made but the provenance of the documentation showing how and suggesting who had misled LNS.
That evidence is that LNS Commission was of itself irregular and imho that removes any excuse not revisit the scene of the crime which concealment allowed in metaphorical terms to be portrayed as petty theft when fact it was murder.
Indeed it was to counter any future and now current argument that LNS should not be revisited I bored the arse off everyone on the subject of irregular EBTS kept from LNS. :)
Yesterday was an awesome day,how awesome? time will tell.It was better than the day before and the wheels of justice will just keep turning.Theres no going back now.
ship soon sinking jumping rats the.I would imagine.All with a tale to tell.
HH
MacJay
Re Mon
The following if it reached him got no response.
21st January 2015
Dear Mr O Neil
On reading your comments about Scottish football missing Rangers as reported in the Daily Record of 19th January 2015
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/former-celtic-boss-martin-oneill-5003277
I reacted by posting an open letter on The Celtic Quick News blog as follows
Dear Mr. O Neil
You were a great Celtic manager and gave the Celtic support some wonderful memories.
Top of the memory list has to be the bitter sweet season of 2002/03 when you took Celtic to Seville but lost out on the SPL title to Rangers by a goal.
Rangers that season won the treble under Alex McLeish
I note your view that Rangers have been punished enough but I wonder if it is a view you would still hold if you knew that.
1. Ronald De Boer was paid for the first half of that season by an illegal ebt. Not an ebt that Rangers are still contesting with HMRC but one for which they accepted liability because they had lied to HMRC about the existence of the side letter to De Boer that was part of the tax arrangement they had with him since August 2000.
2. You were kept in the dark about the above because details of that side letter and why the ebt in question was illegal were kept from the SPL when they commissioned Lord Nimmo Smith to investigate the use of ebts and side letters at Rangers. How De Boer‘s ebt from August 2000 was treated as legal by Lord Nimmo Smith is something that the SPL have failed to answer.
There are punishments and there are consequences and what is happening to Rangers is a consequence, first of their behaviour and second the ongoing consequence of avoiding the football punishment that would have to have happened had the nature of the De Boer ebt not been hidden from those charged with the investigation.
How much less hurtful would 2002/03 feel now if you knew it was a title you had lost by unfair means?
I am not suggesting that the 2003 title be stripped or awarded to Celtic but the truth behind it has to be told so that pronouncements such as yours are made based on the facts.
You and Celtic and our support were cheated. If you can forgive that then so can I, but let’s not pretend what Rangers indulged in from 2000 is anything but the total corruption of Scottish football of which Celtic were but one of the many victims.
I decided after receiving many favourable comments that perhaps the matter was important enough to draw to your attention more directly, which I am doing via the FAI. That De Boer was paid by an illegal means can be confirmed by Celtic because they, like the other clubs on the SPFL Board were provided with the evidence during 2014.
I have copied this to Mr. Desmond who, having invested a lot in Celtic, particularly at that time, might wish to be acquainted with the detail.
I do appreciate that there are always social consequences to be considered when it comes to any involvement with matters surrounding Rangers FC from 2000 but I think it only right you be made aware about the reasons why your sentiments with regard to Rangers are not shared by those supporters who have read about the evidence of duplicity and feel proper football punishment was avoided.
Yours sincerely
sipsini on 4th November 2015 11:08 pm
Re The statement from Ibrox….
Revised score just in
Oct 1957 Celtic 7 MIH 1….
Paradise will be buzzing tonight. Can’t wait.
COYBIG. 4-1 to Celtic.
A well informed article on ebt decision by The Offshore Game folk
https://www.theoffshoregame.net/rangers-lose-the-big-tax-case-what-now/.
Auldheid
Surely that score was Celtic 7 Lawrence Construction 1.
HH
From elsewhere, regarding EBT’s
“It’s sharp practice” until it becomes illegal. Once it’s illegal it becomes a crime.
Crimes are punishable.
The Lord Advocate stated recently in the Scottish Parliament that no crime in Scotland will escape punishment. Rangers EBT’s are now officially a crime.
Criminals and cheats.
They are now forever tainted
Rangers: winning titles but cheating the taxman
http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/rangers-winning-titles-cheating-taxman/10032
The judgement by three Scottish Law Lords is as comprehensive as it is damning. Whilst Rangers FC were busy winning titles and silverware the entire basis upon which they paid many players and executives should have attracted income tax and did not do so.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds was paid in “loans” through a trust scheme which at the time was seen as a way of avoiding paying income tax. You may wonder why Rangers – and other clubs – could exist in some kind of non-PAYE parallel universe. Now the Law Lords have wondered too and simply stated that “common sense” would suggest Rangers should have paid tax like the rest of the UK does.
Further – the non payment of tax allowed the club to buy and pay players it could not otherwise have afforded. A previous legal judgement ruled that the club gained no advantage. Today’s successful appeal by the HMRC would seem to bring that ruling into question.
There is no getting away from it – the upheld appeal means Rangers were systematically cheating the taxman whilst winning titles on the pitch.
04 rangers g w Rangers: winning titles but cheating the taxman
HMRC will now lodge a claim with the old Rangers company which will be substantially bigger now they have won their appeal. The taxman believes the old company still has money and they say they are due some of it now in unpaid taxation. They also point out that the old Rangers club can also appeal if they wish, to the Supreme Court.
An HMRC spokesman told Channel 4 News:
“As supported by the decision in this case, HMRC’s view is that Employment Benefit Trust avoidance schemes do not work. HMRC has collected over £1.3 billion tax through 1500 users of similar schemes.”
That is why the Rangers test case means so much. We are talking about a great number of these tax avoidance schemes and £1.3 billion clawed back from wealthy punters who may have thought they could get away with it should be applauded the length and breadth of the land today.
The judgement delivered by Lord Drummond Young reads:
“A scheme involving payments to various trusts set up in respect of executives and footballers employed by the former Rangers Football Club amounted to “a mere redirection of emoluments or earnings” and was accordingly “subject to income tax”.
The Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Carloway and Lord Drummond Young heard that Rangers ran these tax-avoidance trusts from 2001 to 2009.
The judges said there was a “fundamental principle” in this case that “if income is derived from an employee’s services… it is… earnings and is thus accessible to income tax”.
You have to sit back in wonder and astonishment that this simple common sense approach has taken so long and so much money spent on lawyers by the HMRC to be upheld. But we are where we are.
Lord Drummond Young said of the side-letters which were used to pay footballers extra money at Rangers:
“It seems to us to be self-evident that the obligations in the side-letter were part of the employee’s employment package, and provided him with extra remuneration. They were negotiated as part of the total employment package…it inevitably follows that those payments represented emoluments or earnings of the footballer in question.”
And thus they should have attracted a quaint old thing called income tax.
“Self-evident”…”common sense” – the judgement is festooned with phrases like this. How come it has taken so very long for such common sense and the self evident to make itself what it always should have been: obvious.
You get money. You pay tax. Even at Ibrox.
Follow Alex Thomson on Twitter: @alextomo
The peepil have no money.
No point in pursuing anything down that path.
My wish list is:
1. The perpetrators jailed.
2. Ibrox ownership by the government to see as they do fit.
3. 21 titles rescinded.
4. The SFA dismantled.
5. Verification that there is no New Firm.
Of course none of this will happen. Celtic’s custodians will remain silent hoping that none of this will happen. Meet the New Firm same as the Old Firm.
AULDHEID on 5TH NOVEMBER 2015 1:42 AM
MacJay
Much appreciate your drawing these matters to my attention.
Having spent so many years overseas during these events, and thus being ” out of the loop” ,I feel reluctant to make any comment,however it did seem to me that my long held suspicion of the Scottish print media was justified by the “editorialising” of Mon`s recent statements.
K.T.F.
The sooner EBTGATE is taken to the Court of Arbitration for Sport the better.
It has to be remembered that Rangers cheated not only in Scotland but in Europe also.
Why waste time with the SFA and their ilk who will only hide behind LNS.
I hope that Parks of Hamilton have ordered a new fleet of open topped buses as they may be in big demand in Ayr, Paisley, Dundee, Falkirk, Leith, Motherwell and Dumfries in the hopefully near future.
The SFA & the SPFL are In The Thick Of It…….
The lead article at the top of the page illustrates how Malcolm Tuckeresque this fiasco is, was and will be increasingly so with each passing utterance. The customers/clients/market or ‘supporters’ whatever your perspective are In The Thick of It too. Fascinating to see how this plays out.. Especially given that the collective will of Scottish supporters has expressed its collective will unequivocally in the not too distant past..
The MSM (with rare exceptions) are TuckerWhipped PR Bots. We have known that for years but reports today, or should one say ‘reactions’, are the personification of Malcolm Tucker; risible and tragic in equal measure.
Roll on Respect to the Internet Bampots….
I SEE POSTERS SAYING CELTIC ARE/WHERE THE BIGGEST VICTIMS ………..LOOK WHERE THEY ARE NOW?….ITS GREAT BEING A TIM
Another slap in the face for the bigoted organization that calls itself the Scottish media.
We all know why the Scottish Media wont, dont or didnt ask the questions. Deep down, the stenographers also know themselves. Its time they faced up to that issue. Today they stand alongside their disgraced cohorts in shame and probably still in denial. Only the truth will set them free.
But I suspect that this is far from the end. Too many questions remain unanswered, too many people in positions of authority who have compromised their own integrity to look the other way.
The men who lead the SFA and SPL need to look in the mirror. Do they see fit and proper in their reflection?
Not only questions about who currently own Ibrox park today, but questions need to be asked about why Ibrox stadium and Murray park were sold at less than the Market value depriving the creditors of repayment.
Questions about how the current Sevco organisation can still claim to be Rangers using the same name and trademarks when their organisation liquidated.
Questions about Sevco fulfilling their obligations under the ill gotten Five way agreement
Questions raised by numerous Charlotte Fakeover releases remain to be addressed
So three cheers for all the prominent internet Bampots who have tenaciously kept these issues alive. God Bless.
“For every Fiver that Celtic spend……”
Viva the Bampots!
I trust the contribution of the UFH will not be forgotten in bringing the rabids to account
Just listened to Tom English (thanks GG). He presents himself as the one holding power to account ‘now’…. But shows he knows where power resides ‘now’..While pointing to the get out clauses for the SPFL, the SFA and even some ‘stars’ from the past. Yes, he criticized Murray, but waltzed around the studio with his pitch. No mention of lack of registration of players, no mention of the SFA, the SPFL, no mention of the Nimmo Smith legal status, no mention of how this was all facilitated by the hubris of one man and his mate at BoS.
The Dark Knight still makes them shite it….. That speaks volumes about Reality…
Fascinating watching them self destruct… The media bots that is. The Establishment will survive.
Must admit I thought HMRC would have to take the case to England to get a result-the dice we reloaded against them up here by virtue of certain secret societies.
Yes,they exist down south too,but Murray means nothing to them.
I wonder if Murray means anything to the ones in Scotland now? All very strange,a few favourable outcomes followed by a complete volte-face. Maybe they got sick of him piling up the goodies in his personal basket before shafting everyone in the process of liquidating his company.
It would certainly be nice to think so. And if true,I doubt they’ve even started on him yet.
We reloaded= were loaded.
Bliddy iPad…
Morning Hoops
Question:
If the spivs are found guilty of securing asserts illegally.
Would the asserts not be returned to Oldco??
Said asserts would then be sold to pay the creditors surely??
Unsure as to where this would leave MA and the GSL and loans and securities.
I’ll leave it up to those who know these things??
I’ll be happy with any win tonight.
HH
TAMRABAM
“Not only questions about who currently own Ibrox park today, but questions need to be asked about why Ibrox stadium and Murray park were sold at less than the Market value depriving the creditors of repayment. ”
—————————————————————————————————————————————————
I like the sound of that question.
Good Morning Timland.
I was thinking that the GB may have a banner tonight
about the hun been found GUILTY of cheating.
This is a massive game for Celtic so I for one would rather
they left it for another day.
We need all the clubs on board if we are to clean up
Scottish fitba,the fans showed their teeth in the summer
of 2012 they must do so again.
Yeah let’s concentrate on our own game today.
I agree Celtic should say nothing for moment,there are others affected too , let them step up. It’s like in work others moan about the conditions but leave it to others to complain
Good Morning.
I have a really busy day today and will try to get around to reading the whole judgement.
However, in the interim, here are my comments from 23rd November 2012 in which, as well as analysing the FTT decision, I pose some questions which are even more poignant today.
The Hoover, The Runaways and a Judicial nod is as good as a wink ……………
https://broganrogantrevinoandhogan.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/the-hoover-the-runaways-and-a-judicial-nod-is-as-good-as-a-wink-on-the-rangers-tax-case/
Also sure some of the playing staff were stated as assets also at one stage.
That would be funny…….
Good morning friends.
I can see clearly now the fog has gone. Damp undefoot but no current precipitation and, in many ways its yer typical 5ht of November type of atmosphere. Here in East Kilbride, that is.
Just over 10 hours and Neymar sleeps.
Well, again….rebellious-anarchy from the Celtic fans….is the real medicine required here.
SFA / SMSM / Rangers FC / Sevco….are all enemies to be guarded against.
Some say that Rangers FC died?….So, show me the death certificate.
All of the above will fight with their last breath to crush Celtic supporters….the tried before in 94.
But, ye know what?….None of the above are your worst enemy.
Yer worst enemy are, the very folk who take your money then, look the other way when your done over.
Only you….the Celtic supporters can right all the carnage of the recent past.
Ogilvie / LNS / SFA / SMSM….all of them have shafted you before and, if…..your waiting for the custodians that you ‘trust’ with all yer money and, the leadership of your club….that they lock you outside of….to take this fight to it’s bitter end then….the game is over already.
There are no hurting-uppitty-Tim-rebels on any level of, any of the structures of Celtic Football Club who will, jump into the arena and fight for Timdom.
Maybe res:12 will bear fruit and defy doubters like me but, taking yesterdays decision on its own….I think it’s an outcome that could lead to complacency amongst Tims.
Dont take yer eye off the ball.
Celtic PLC with no rebels….wont win the war for us.
I hope I’m wrong but, given the dynamics since yesterday….throw a kowtowing Celtic board into the mix and you’ll see a great leveller.
Dont forget that….if it wasnt for the fans, holding a financial gun to directors heads with their threat of a bhoycott in 2012 if the huns remained in the league….on that occasion…the board were ready to do what their best at….look the other way.
Deal with the kowtowing board 1st….the rest will take care of itself….you have to believe.
…..laters…..
Beat Molde 2-0 tonight and that’s that head to head won.
Beat Ajax in 3 weeks and that’s that head to head won.
Treat both ties as being the 2nd leg in a knockout round.
I honestly believe that 8 points will get us through.
Kevj……hope yer keeping well pal.
Away tae put a double mattress intae the back of my car..
……..aye it will go effin in!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have a good day cqn.