you honestly think HMRC will chase Football, not a prayer, the likes of Man Utd et al would have them bound up in red tape for years.

I think they have to make the attempt now as more focus has been placed on closing down these loopholes and getting the back tax into the treasury.

They will. There could be billions at stake.

This is why they are establishing the precedents with other sports first. They are still smarting after losing the Beckham case a few years ago.

As for the RU/RL difference, the HMRC team working on this project is based in the West Midlands, where they know jack shìt about RL and deemed it to not be a national sport therefore how could players' images be worth anything at all? Compared with RU, where they agreed that images could be worth up 15% of the player's total package. Leeds sought to give the lie to that by demonstrating that they have RL players - allowed 0% who are far better known and have a far higher profile than RU players - allowed 15% - who few even in RU circles give a toss about. It was less about treatment precedent, more about whether RL has the same profile as RU.

They do. In some sports, on a far bigger scale than in RL where I think few clubs went down that route. In some sports, I gather the numbers are quite large.

You would only restate a set of accounts for the current and comparative year (2011 and its comparative for 2010). This if its considered a fundamental Prior Year Error.

standee has made a good point here though. football with all the money sloshing around can afford to employ the best lawyers to fight or at least delay these issues for years. RL cannot afford such luxuries, except perhaps in the leeds test case. we should all hope that leeds win this one

HMRC are skint, they need to set a precedent of case law (Leeds?) So they can go after the bigger fish. They'll get them.
We should support HMRC in their actions as tax avoidance costs the treasury billions every year. In these austere times, I don't think we can afford not to.

As they have got big fish in the past, only to see the European Court eventually overturn the verdict and then have to repay the money.

The Leeds case is nothing to do with setting a precedent by HMRC. It was an action by Leeds to try and demonstrate that RL players actually HAVE an image to which a value can vbe attached. The underlying battle over whether there should be an upper limit on the proportion of a player's total package that can consist of club-paid image rights (15%) was lost long ago.

HMRC WILL get soccer in the end. It is effectively part of the "non-dom" issue. My guess is that we will see legislation in a future Finance Bill to formally address the issue of image rights in sport, and embed the arrangements reached with other sports in statute.

In my view, HMRC are correct in pursuing this issue. It is desperately unfortunate that, in tackling RL, they were dealing with a sport and a game that is skint and is kept alive at the top level by a handful of sugar daddies.

so in the case of ryan mcgoldrick does he have to pay some money back