BlueStar

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/newcastle-united-owner-mike-ashley-10303566 Um... Alan?

Are these lot dead and withered yet?

Mentioned this earlier, but often tax dodges aren't to save money, it's cos they're payments you don't want people to know you made and obviously if you whack them in your tax report they come out.

Of course the other worry is that hmrc now have our club computers and who knows what other dodgy stuff Ashley and Co have been up to.

Illegal payments to players is what got Swindon knocked down two divisions.

http://i53.tinypic.com/2d2hx7n_th.jpg

They've also got a separate thread where they're trying to come up with a song about it.

Opportunity to recycle this again I guess

What's the patter with this, like? Nowt on Google. Try twitter. But not at work.

Woken up to see Charnley getting nicked, Terry's pretend mam noshing someone off, Jordan saying the N-word on daytime telly and Barton done for betting. Gonna turn off twitter and go back to bed.

Let's hope they've done exactly the same as us, cos there's nee way the FA would let the Premier League be decided on a points deduction.

How come you pay less tax on money you get for image rights than you do for playing football anyway? Surely whether you're getting paid for scoring a goal cos you're a good footballer, or getting paid to model the new training gear cos you're a good footballer makes no odds? Or is your image sold as a product like a painting you'd done and cos VAT is lower than the top rate of income tax it works out cheaper?

I think this used to be a problem with the housing market, mortgages etc, where you could do all kind of dodgy shit just by claiming you value your shed at £3.2m or your rockstar mansion at £1. Unsurprisingly I think there are ways of demonstrating things are falsely valued to avoid money laundering by selling valuable properties for nowt or getting huge loans on worthless buildings.

Is our borehole an illegal hole, or a loop?

So wait, is that a loophole or is it illegal?

Phew.

Does this mean we have to play full strength teams in our remaining games in the hope that we get enough points to absorb any deduction? Or if we're due a 5 point deduction and that wouldn't make a difference to automatic promotion, would they just roll it over to next season?

In terms of the relative peanuts involved (£5m in NI and tax across us and West Ham, and possible others), firstly it's not a small amount to HMRC. If you or I fiddled that much we'd be in a hell of a lot of trouble and, as the statement says, they want to show nobody is above the law on this. Secondly though, stupid as it sounds, tax avoidance isn't always about the money. Obviously both us and West Ham would be crazy to risk our top flight status for a few million quid in saved taxes. If you've done a deal or made a payment you don't want people to know about (either because it relates to an illegal activity, it's against the rules of the sport, it goes against company policy, would appear immoral or it's simply embarrassing) you've got a problem, because even if you wanted to pay the proper taxes on it, you can't. So because you don't want to put "unauthorised payment to player" or "bung to agent" on your tax returns you've got to come up with some way of doing it outside of the system, or explaining it away as something else. And as is often the case "the cover-up is what gets you" because now you've broken the law and you've got some very skilled and driven people backed by the government who will be on your arse once they get a sniff of it. So hopefully the main story is indeed the 'financial irregularities' and not anything they were used to disguise.

Mondial have clients all over the Premier League mind - Coutinho, Matic, Kante, Mahrez among others (https://www.forbes.com/companies/mondial-sports-management/). Would expect more clubs to be implicated if the investigation is linked to them. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/04/26/newcastle-managing-director-lee-charnley-arrested-st-james-park/

That fucking bore hole. Bet there's wads of cash in there.

Strange. That should not be related to any of the current players? Just looking for computers, mobiles etc for info I guess.

Just the kind of things they specifically said they'd deduct points for then, ace.

What's the betting Charnley's defence is that he's woefully under-qualified and didn't understand what was going on.

Surely Charnley doesn't pay £5m in NI and tax in the first place, never mind would he be able to dodge that much. My worry would be if it's something where we've come up with some 'creative' bonus system to avoid our players paying as much tax or NI as they should, so we can give players a bigger take-home wage without having to shell out as much. That would definitely be something which would have given us an on-pitch advantage and be deserving of a sporting penalty as well as a legal one.

Well it's income tax and national insurance, so could be player wages.