That was my understanding of the situation, warrington appear to be very twitchy about this, the scousers are very very quiet, and dont have that many overseas players, but its the retrospective of this going back to 2005, that could be an issue, and should clubs be saddled with bills, the taxman is not the most patient of credititors

i'll very likely see Doug (Lord Hoyle) in a couple of week, i'll ask him and watch for the reaction.

and if we've still not signed gleeson, i'll ask him about that as well.

It is very hard for the government to make it retrospective. Nothing is impossible, but it is currently not possible.

The premier league have some pretty fancy lawyers on this i imagine, clubs could owe 10's of millions. What would chealsea's foreign wage bill be for the last 4 years? £100 million conservatively?

you are working on the assumption that everything Mo and Dave have said is the truth then?

No. but it would be very very poor management if the club were using loopholes and then went over the cap............twice

They are as credible as McMannus.
[size=25
Have a look at the date of the Guardian article.[/size

Its not hard for them to make it retrospective but think they can only take it back 3 years.

As for Football i don't think they have the same problem as they are not limited to what they spend on players wages. The reason some Rugby clubs have been doing this is so they don't go over the cap but can in effect pay there players more.

the article states that the RFL are wokring with the Inland Revenue and the clubs to ensure that it is resolved. They will come to some sort of deal that doesnt involve any clubs being pulled under. Even if a club owes six figure sums, it is in no-ones best interests to cause otherwise viable businesses to go under.

I suspect Saints lack of recruitment and increased reliance on young talent is in part, down to preparation for this change of rules.

Why is everyone assuming Warrington have twitchy bottoms...weve been throwing money down the $hitter for the last 5 seasons....
a six figure Tax bill would be money well spent for us.....

I spoke to Dave Whelan a couple of years ago and he was quite angry that a certain club made these sort of payments and he said that he would not do it.
The good news is that it will once again be a level playing field and home grown talent will be more important...then we will win the World Cup.

I think applications have closed for the Salary Cap & Registrations Manager post at the RFL. Could have investigated from the inside!

loop hole or not,

is robbing from her majesty not in breach of the 'spirit of the cap'

or is that just reserved for when use loop holes?

This not a sentence.

Neither is that!

Lets face it it's hard not to be

Sorry missed out the capital and the word we.

Must try harder next time.

I didnt know if you were refering to wigan or saints or anyone else

Good point ( and grammar corrected to prevent the Saints fan from changing the subject).

When Wigan deferred wages all they did was adopt what was common practice in the NRL where deferment of wages has gone on for some time without punishment. Despite this Wigan were done for the "not in the spirit of cap" thing.

Using a different loophole to get around salary cap regulations is apparently OK. As you say how is this also "not in the spirit" of the cap?

What it shows is subjective catch all phrases like "not in the spirit of the cap" have no place in the regulations. They are lazy clauses open to interpretation.

That said the article was published on April 1st....

Dave

Acutually, this has potentially more far reaching ramifications, for example, say that a team who got a franchise based on not having broken the cap, has now been found to have broken the rules!

Sheffield United vs West Ham is case law for loss of earnings.

This could get messey.

Its published in print in todays paper and was uploaded at 9PM last night.

Why would they ask for all the 'lost tax money'
a loophole is not breaking the law until they close it.

So no-one has broke any law
what's the problem
it just means that in future people have to change the way they do deals

If any club were to be asked by those nice folk at HMRC, would that money come off this years cap.

If yes could that potentially lead to a breach and a point deduction?

I image rights themselves are covered in the salary regulations as part of what counts:

Image Rights Payments

5.6.7 the Gross value of all amounts that Accrue to the Player during the Salary Cap Year in consideration for the right to exploit commercially the Player’s name, image and/or other attributes in that Salary Cap Year;

What the Guardian article is suggesting is a form of tax and/or N.I. avoidance or that tax and/or N.I was liable on the image rights payments but not paid.

I am not sure if paying any such back taxes that are due would take a club over the salary cap for 2008.

I know N.I. payments were removed from the salary cap when it went down to £1.6M but not sure what year that was. Maybe 2007 or 2008.

So if a club had to pay more NI for a year [iafter[/i N.I. was removed from the gross salary cap, then I doubt they would have be considered to have gone over the cap.

However going back further and before N.I was taken out of the cap were the clubs were really liable to pay more N.I. than they actually did, I am sure this would have taken them over the cap. Saints spring to mind as they have always sailed close to the wind on paying right up to the cap.

The fact there has been a cloud hanging over these payments has been known for some time and is why Wigan (under Mo) chose not to do it. Whether IL has continued along those lines, who knows.

Busting the salary cap is one thing though. If any club did as a result of this then while we could claim the moral high ground, they can polish the trophies as I doubt they would be stripped of any titles as a result.

However what they may well be liable for is the back taxes and N.I. That could knock a serious hole in the finances of clubs and the Inland Revenue are not sentimental about this sort of thing. They will want the money.

It will also be interesting to see how some clubs who have a reputation for managing the cap better than Wigan do so when they have this to consider and it makes a mockery of claims that they did it better than Wigan. Yes they did, by avoiding tax and N.I.

Dave

Why? Because they can.

If the Inland Revenue judges you liable for more tax than you have paid they can go back several years and claim it off you. In the same way as if you paid too much you can claim it off them but only so far back.

What makes you think it was open in the first place? Some argue it wasn't.



If this is not an issue, why the article in the paper then?

Dave