Tax Officials Blamed For Rangers Downfall – HMRC Mistake Wipes Millions From Ibrox Bill (The Times)

The phrase ‘accounting error’ surely doesn’t apply in this context.

If HMRC adopted a different policy to claiming penalties and interest than in other cases then they are in a weak position.

Given the number of EBT schemes in operation, any case against HMRC would attract nationwide attention.
 
Who can sue them though Tags?

Technically the Newco doesn't have a relationship with the Oldco as we're a different company.

From what i can see, only Murray and Whyte(as previous owners of the oldco) and Green (as, i believe) current owner of Oldco, could have a claim. And i have zero interest in these guys making money from this situation.

This is just me thinking out loud as I don’t really know for sure, but BDO have a duty to maximise return for creditors, if one of the creditors is found to have, no laughing at the back, ‘mistakenly’ mislead in what they were due then BDO could start legal proceedings against them.
 
Jaw dropping. And people said we were paranoid. Once we win the league this season, a full boycott of every single club up and down the country needs to be organised until heads roll for this. Is it possible that the old company can be brought out of the process of liquidation? 2012-2019 truly is the "asterisk years". Tainted, each and every fucking little bauble they've won.
 
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There may be no criminal proceedings possible unless BDO bring them, and then it is a complex case.

However there may be the possibility of a civil Group Litigation against HMRC of all the individual shareholders of Oldco. In my opinion, the shareholders who sold to Craig Whyte were wronged and lost value and opportunities due to a monumental mistake by HMRC.
 
Jaw dropping. And people said we were paranoid. Once we win the league this season, a full boycott of every single club up and down the country needs to be organised until heads roll for this. Is it possible that the old company can be brought out of liquidation?
I laughed.........A full boycott, our support couldn’t boycott in the past 8 years. Yeah let’s all start now.
 
It would get rid of Ashley for a start
Are you speaking in the theory that the old company acquires the new one?

If it's old Co that takes over rifc, we need to reapply again to fifa won't we? And go to vote again on what league we're in/transfer bans etc.
 
Jaw dropping. And people said we were paranoid. Once we win the league this season, a full boycott of every single club up and down the country needs to be organised until heads roll for this. Is it possible that the old company can be brought out of liquidation? 2012-2019 truly is the "asterisk years". Tainted, each and every fucking little bauble they've won.
It must do, this is massive. I think Murray and BDO will sue the arse of HMRC for this, a fúcking scandal.
 
Jaw dropping. And people said we were paranoid. Once we win the league this season, a full boycott of every single club up and down the country needs to be organised until heads roll for this. Is it possible that the old company can be brought out of liquidation? 2012-2019 truly is the "asterisk years". Tainted, each and every fucking little bauble they've won.

The oldco isn’t in liquidation . It’s not been signed off .
 
Why didn’t Murray stop using EBTs and pay off the ‘manageable’ debt in 2008 when HMRC began investigating?

It hasn’t changed my views on Murray - he could have afforded to pay the bill from his own savings.

Quinn came up from the BoE and immediately stopped The Athletic Wing using EBT's, so Murray must have known there was, at the very least, doubt over their suitability.

The conspirators were aided, and ultimately born of, SDM's hubris.
 
Did fat Alkie Brazil have anything to say about this on talksport? Noticed the main story was still Sterling.

He usually likes to give his misguided say on the background of Rangers. Especially as ally mccoist was on.
 
I’m absolutely disgusted waking up to this news. No idea where we go from here. What a nightmare the last 10 years have been for Rangers. Good people lost their jobs and our name drugged through the mud day in, day out. Those bastards as the sfa tried to take our titles. I want blood
 
We were told this was a test case so HMRC could go after EPL teams who used EBT’s.
And how many EPL teams have been done to this date?
That’s right a big fat zero.
 
How much could be realistically expected as compensation though? We would probably also still be liable for the £9 million PAYE and VAT from the 'wee tax case' and Whyte's £26 million Ticketus mortgage, as well as whatever is left of the other creditors, the BBC say that was about £15 million(£7.7 million to debenture and bond holders), and then the £20 million bill that HMRC is expected to settle on now.

It could still work out at over £50 million which is owed. £34 million of which should never have been allowed to happen with proper due diligence and Murray not being forced to sell over a fantasy debt.

Remember we got a huge payment from someone.

I think it was about 30million.

The admin fees will be huge btw. These Liquidator's charge huge fees by the hour.
 
It would get rid of Ashley for a start
Folk who know this much better than I do say that it is extremely unlikely the oldco would have enough cash to fully pay creditors, lawyers and BDO even if it brought action and won. Liquidators and lawyers are expensive, and the oldco has paid a lot of them recently.

Murray could sue HMRC for loss of earnings due to their fraud forcing him to sell. King and other shareholders could sue Murray for being negligent enough to use EBTs and cause the entire issue. BDO maybe also has a case against HMRC and D&P on behalf of the creditors. It’s difficult to see who else has a case here.
 
d

David Murray's conglomerate was under scrutiny by HMRC at he time and RFC was front and centre.
Now, I am by no means going to justify him, or his actions but think on the following:

Why (or who) persuaded/forced Murray to sell RFC to Whyte?
Answer: LLoyds Bank via Donald Muir.
Who, I believe had previous dedlings with a certain John Reid
 
We were told this was a test case so HMRC could go after EPL teams who used EBT’s.
And how many EPL teams have been done to this date?
That’s right a big fat zero.
The test case talk was nonsense anyway.

For HMRC really to be able to rely on the caselaw, they’d need to find the same set up in the other clubs they went after. Since there’s so many different ways of Using EBTs, it’s unlikely the caselaw from the Murray case would have been directly relevant to other clubs they looked at.
 
Rumours afoot that Murray was trying to recover some

Murray will see this as an opportunity to restore his legacy in the eyes of Rangers fans and I can see him and King working together to go after this big time!
With all due respect my friend Minty can go phuck himself!
 
The whole thing was obvious from the start, yet no one questioned why we were being charged over £100 million for a tax bill of £20 million?

I mean surely the fact we won the initial court cases should've been taken into consideration that there was at least some form of debate to be had in terms of the amount owed at the very least?
 
Quinn came up from the BoE and immediately stopped The Athletic Wing using EBT's, so Murray must have known there was, at the very least, doubt over their suitability.

The conspirators were aided, and ultimately born of, SDM's hubris.

Absolutely.


In wider terms, though, there is surely something wrong when HMRC deliberately chases a company into liquidation to prove some kind of point when it would have received (much) more tax revenue by keeping the company alive.

The other angle to this that seems to be ignored is that Lloyds (only kept afloat by taxpayers' money, remember) consciously gave ownership of Rangers to someone they knew was going to take the club into administration, thereby stiffing HMRC and minority shareholders. Just how ethical is that?

The whole episode has shown that the law effectively gives carte blanche to white-collar cowboys.
 
How much could be realistically expected as compensation though? We would probably also still be liable for the £9 million PAYE and VAT from the 'wee tax case' and Whyte's £26 million Ticketus mortgage, as well as whatever is left of the other creditors, the BBC say that was about £15 million(£7.7 million to debenture and bond holders), and then the £20 million bill that HMRC is expected to settle on now.

It could still work out at over £50 million which is owed. £34 million of which should never have been allowed to happen with proper due diligence and Murray not being forced to sell over a fantasy debt.
I’d say that’s about right mate. Also dependent on whether we can get some of the money we’ve lost since 2012 back too. You’re bang on though, mental how we had to go through this absolute fucking mess for nothing.
 
Absolutely.


In wider terms, though, there is surely something wrong when HMRC deliberately chases a company into liquidation to prove some kind of point when it would have received (much) more tax revenue by keeping the company alive.

The other angle to this that seems to be ignored is that Lloyds (only kept afloat by taxpayers' money, remember) consciously gave ownership of Rangers to someone they knew was going to take the club into administration, thereby stiffing HMRC and minority shareholders. Just how ethical is that?

The whole episode has shown that the law effectively gives carte blanche to white-collar cowboys.
Yip. And the rulings in the Mike Ashley case proves that too. The law is designed to protect these parasites.
 
The test case talk was nonsense anyway.

For HMRC really to be able to rely on the caselaw, they’d need to find the same set up in the other clubs they went after. Since there’s so many different ways of Using EBTs, it’s unlikely the caselaw from the Murray case would have been directly relevant to other clubs they looked at.
Maybe so but at the time this was seen as the justification for them going after us so aggressively.Stinks to high heaven as far as and a great many others are concerned.
 
Sadly this scandal doesn’t change anything does it?

The new board would see no benefit of any compensation if it was forthcoming, we were still done ultimately with the EBT crap, although think it’s key to remember that’s no why we dropped through the leagues, we were placed there as we had to apply for a new licence that would not have happened if club was sold, something that was made impossible by the mythical tax bill, if we cast our mind back people were talking about it being over £100m, certainly putting potential buyers off, for HMRC to overstate it by £50m is scandalous and very sinister

Unless I am missing something then ultimately although we have been fucked over the scandal is there is no recompense, rest of Scottish football will shrug and say “it’s only Rangers”

Current board need to be our voice on this but really unsure how it changes anything for us now

Bastards
 
Any Rangers fan that thinks Whyte wasn’t appointed to put Rangers into liquidation is not seeing the full story. Green was then appointed to make sure we were hamstrung. Dark forces were at work and I know who my money was on
We got screwed over by HMRC and David Murray for putting us in that position in the first place ,no doubt about that, which then left us wide open to be taken advantage of by the likes of whyte and green.

I will be one of the Rangers fans you refer to that does not see the full story,Whyte and Green took advantage of the situation created by the big tax case because they were money grabbing charlatans who seen an opportunity for potential easy money.
 
This, amongst other reasons, is probably why the SPL was would up and phoenixed into the SPFL.

A point lost on many people mate.
Was practically the first thing they did after smashing %^*& out of us.

For all the chaos of the time, I firmly believe not much of what happened wasn’t deliberate.
 
Sadly this scandal doesn’t change anything does it?

The new board would see no benefit of any compensation if it was forthcoming, we were still done ultimately with the EBT crap, although think it’s key to remember that’s no why we dropped through the leagues, we were placed there as we had to apply for a new licence that would not have happened if club was sold, something that was made impossible by the mythical tax bill, if we cast our mind back people were talking about it being over £100m, certainly putting potential buyers off, for HMRC to overstate it by £50m is scandalous and very sinister

Unless I am missing something then ultimately although we have been fucked over the scandal is there is no recompense, rest of Scottish football will shrug and say “it’s only Rangers”

Current board need to be our voice on this but really unsure how it changes anything for us now

Bastards

This is when we really could do with political clout.

One MP or MSP raising the question of why Murdoch MacLennan is deemed a 'fit and proper person' by Scottish football authorities while Alastair Johnston isn't would be a nice way of setting the ball rolling.
 
A point lost on many people mate.
Was practically the first thing they did after smashing %^*& out of us.

For all the chaos of the time, I firmly believe not much of what happened wasn’t deliberate.
Could be something to it though was the, what was essentially, takeover of sfl by SPL not more to do with TV rights and sponsorship? As in keeping us in them in the same deals knowing were screwed without us?
 
This is the bit I don’t understand. HMRC should certainly not have made a mistake of this magnitude, but why the hell did no one from Rangers, our accountants, Duff & Phelps or BDO notice it? Does none of these highly-paid professionals have any idea how to calculate tax owed?
Must relate to interpretation of rules and regulations rather than arithmetic. Ràngers had statements on EBT's in audited annual accounts so amounts involved were known.
 
Ultimately, what does this mean for us?

I suspect it depends on BDOs appetite to take HMRC to court. They have to do what is in the best interests of the creditors. They may decide that taking HMRC to court and suing them is the best option. There will then be a big pot of money at the end of it (if BDO win) which will be shared out with existing creditors. Anything left over will be distributed to the shareholders at the time - Whyte, for example, could get a payday.

What would be interesting though would be if King somehow takes control of the oldco buy buying it from BDO.
 
We knew at the time this was a witch hunt and this confirms it.

This was nothing to do with "sporting integrity" - it was an effort to humiliate us because Celtic fans were sick of playing second fiddle.

Make no mistake, if they could have forced us to play in the 3rd division and have all our players laces tied together, they would have.
 
Anyone else bracing themself for a “ lets leave this in the past and build bridges “ statement from the club?

They’d be extremely misguided if they do that, this is an issue that’s going to seriously anger the entire support.

I’ve got faith that Dave King will realise this, he’s a supporter too after all, and he’ll come out with fighting.
 
Anyone else bracing themself for a “ lets leave this in the past and build bridges “ statement from the club?

No not really, it does read that HMRC did hang us out to dry though basically chasing the business to liquidation! Then years later admitting they may have got it wrong and over egged their calculations!
 
If the figure was 20m and not 70m then we could have attracted a better owner and not some scumbag such as Whyte, the new owner would have paid PAyE and 2012 would not have happened. Ultimately we have been screwed big time.

Absolute disgrace.
 
Absolutely.


In wider terms, though, there is surely something wrong when HMRC deliberately chases a company into liquidation to prove some kind of point when it would have received (much) more tax revenue by keeping the company alive.

The other angle to this that seems to be ignored is that Lloyds (only kept afloat by taxpayers' money, remember) consciously gave ownership of Rangers to someone they knew was going to take the club into administration, thereby stiffing HMRC and minority shareholders. Just how ethical is that?

The whole episode has shown that the law effectively gives carte blanche to white-collar cowboys.

Indeed and with no due diligence in the process!!
 
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