SPL dominoes might all fancy ditching HMRC debt

It’s difficult not to associate Hearts’ owner, Vladimir Romanov’s outburst on their club website yesterday with the current issue over Rangers finances, which could soon see the SPL, the SFA and the media take sides between Rangers and their creditors, in particular HM Revenue and Customs.

Romanov’s rant on the demise of the Scottish game was ignorable until he dragged in the “tax authorities” for blame.  As you and I know, the tax authorities don’t play favourites, they collect vat, income, corporation and other taxes in line with the law.

Hearts failed to pay player wages last month and Romanov now says, “there is no point is spending millions to watch someone else’s show”.  Most of Hearts debt is owed to Romanov’s own bank but if player wages are unpaid there is a good chance HMRC will also be outstanding, explaining the “tax authorities” reference.

If a new football club playing at Ibrox is ushered into the SPL with a points tally calculated from the position of a defunct Rangers you can expect a gold-rush of clubs ready to flush their debts to the country, and history, away.

Well done to STV who yesterday revealed the actual decision making process which would be put in place to judge an application to join the league midseason or at any other time.  The SPL board, by simple majority, have the decision, while the SFA need to ratify membership.

If the SPL board vote to reward bad debtors’ shares in their league what incentive would most clubs have to pay their bills?  Fortunately, our history is more valuable than any amount of cash.

The new issue of CQN Magazine will be out next week, let me know if you would like to advertise, celticquicknews@gmail.com.