The worst kept secret in Scottish football was confirmed when it was announced that Rangers (In Liquidation) had cheated Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for eight years.
Every trophy lifted by Barry Ferguson, Lorenzo Amoruso, Fernando Ricksen, David Weir and Steven Davis was the result of denying Her Majesty her richly deserved revenue and custom.
The judgement states ‘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”‘.
Rather than pay their fair share towards maintaining hospitals, schools and the armed forces, as every club they competed did willingly, the club from Ibrox were ensuring better cars, holidays, WAGS and wardrobes for players they couldn’t afford otherwise.
Dundee, Falkirk, Motherwell, Queen of the South and Ayr United are among the clubs that lost cup finals to a shameless outfit unwilling to play on the same level playing field as their competitors.
Tellingly, in this mornings announcement from the Scottish Judiciary website Lord Drummond Young explained: “Furthermore, so far as the footballers are concerned, at least, it seems to us that if bonuses had not been paid they might well have taken their services elsewhere.
“We realise that the fifth respondent [RFC 2012] was in, potentially, a difficult financial position, competing for good players in an international market where other countries may not have the same rigorous approach to taxation as the United Kingdom.
“Nevertheless, the law is clear: the payments made in respect of footballers were in our view derived from their employment and thus the payments were emoluments or earnings.”
As well as cheating every club in Scotland from 2001-2009 Rangers (IL) also fielded players in European ties where their full income wasn’t declared to the football authorities.
In a separate case, known as the wee tax case, the club was ended up with a £6m bill for untaxed payments made to Ronald de Boer and Tore Andre Flo.
It is unclear whether the SFA will review trophies won during that period, if normal UEFA and FIFA principles are applied Celtic won their 15th consecutive title last season.
This morning’s announcement came after the new club at Ibrox produced their audited accounts for the 2014/15 season which included a going concern that they won’t survive the current season.
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I despite what that man stood for no jealousy involed, his out and out hatred for everything celtic and his arrogance makes me vomit in my mouth but he played the dobs like a fiddle…..a tory when he had legs and a tory with no legs is still a fkn tory crooked cunt hh
Got my prediction correct on saturday with a 3 1 win for the bhoys I’m going for a 3 1 win for celtic tonight as well